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Saul said to his servant, ‘That is good, but what will we give to him? We have eaten all the food that we brought with us in our bags. What else do we have? We must give him something.’

The servant answered, ‘I still have one small silver coin. I will give that to the servant of God. Then he will tell us which way we should go.’ (That was the custom in Israel. If someone needed to hear a message from God, he would say, ‘We should go and talk with the seer.’[a] The man that we now call a prophet was called a ‘seer’ at that time.)

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Footnotes

  1. 9:9 A seer could see things that other people could not. God sometimes gave special dreams to a seer about things a long way away in time or in space.

Saul said to his servant, “If we go, what can we give the man? The food in our sacks is gone. We have no gift(A) to take to the man of God. What do we have?”

The servant answered him again. “Look,” he said, “I have a quarter of a shekel[a] of silver. I will give it to the man of God so that he will tell us what way to take.” (Formerly in Israel, if someone went to inquire(B) of God, they would say, “Come, let us go to the seer,” because the prophet of today used to be called a seer.)(C)

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Footnotes

  1. 1 Samuel 9:8 That is, about 1/10 ounce or about 3 grams