¹⁵ And Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites; ^(A)for the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen, to sacrifice to the Lord your God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed.”

¹⁶ Then Samuel said to Saul, “Be quiet! And I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night.”

And he said to him, “Speak on.”

¹⁷ So Samuel said, ^(B)“When you were little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribes of Israel? And did not the Lord anoint you king over Israel? ¹⁸ Now the Lord sent you on a mission, and said, ‘Go, and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are ^[a]consumed.’ ¹⁹ Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the ^[b]spoil, and do evil in the sight of the Lord?”

²⁰ And Saul said to Samuel, ^(C)“But I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me, and brought back Agag king of Amalek; I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. ^21 (D)But the people took of the plunder, sheep and oxen, the best of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.”

¹² Then the man said, ^(A)“The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”

¹³ And the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, ^(B)“The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”