Consistency is key.
And boundaries. Boundaries--
again and again,
I review: Don't walk back.
No regrets. Say it once
and hold. He cries
when I say no chocolate.
Forgets the warning: if you don't LISTEN,
if you don't stop. Now!
Please, he pleads
I'm good now. I didn't kick
since I got home.
M heart cracking.
Hand running through his swear-soft hair
his amber-flecked eyes.
Please, Imma, please.
One last chance.
And though I know it shoud be know
out slips yes.
at the moment of parting
before it's all torn away
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The chapter is framed by the relationship between Samuel and Saul: opening with Samuel defining himself as the one who anointed Saul, it ends with Samuel's mourning that God regrets annointing Saul. A chapter of intimacy and severance, when the entwined protagonists merge--and are torn apart.
Saul, indecisive, scrambling, fearful, is given one more chance: he can be leader of the level of Joshua, avenging Israel against their historic nemesis, and become part of Israel's eternal story. Saul steps up to the challenge, calling on the Kenites to depart by invoking a relationship that reaches back to the Exodus.
Yet the initial bravado is undone by his fundamental weakness. The king anointed under the command to Listen to all Israel demands listens to the voice of the people, unable to hear God's voice--or even his own. Indeed, it is unclear if Saul can even access his own desires. It is "Saul and the people" who originally spare Agag, yet Saul experiences the move as initiated by the people. He is the dog being wagged by the tail: "I feared the people, and listened to their voice." The inability to listen completes the dissolution introduced in the previous chapters: God "regrets" [n'h'm] that he chose Saul as king, introducing the twinned leitworts of the chapter: n'h'm (regret / reconsideration) and sh'v (return / turn away).
Samuel originally opposed the creation of the monarchy, and reproached Israel even as they joyfully celebrate Saul. Yet now, at the moment of dissolution, his personal investment is laid bare as well: very distressed, he entreats God all night. Samuel is the lynchpin of Saul's relationship to God and to the people --the chapter opens by emphasizing this intimate triangulation: "It is I that God sent to anoint you king over Israel." The moment that the kingship falls away, the relationship between Saul and Samuel becomes primary: I transgressed God's mouth and your words" Saul says, realizing that his sin is also against Samuel. Even as God rejects Saul, he clings to Samuel, the two merging linguistically until it is unclear who is the tearer and who the one torn: "And Samuel turned to leave and he grabbed the edge of his cloak, and it tore." God, the Eternal of Israel, might not return or change his mind, but Saul begs Samuel to "return" with him, and at least provide him backing against the people he so fears. Samuel, after refusing, is unable to refuse. His weakness echoes Saul's own inability to stand fast, the two mirroring each other.
This final intimacy presages the final dissolution, as Saul and Samuel split forever: Samuel never saw Saul again to the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul, because God regretted [n'h'm] having made Saul king over Israel." The chiastic structure of God's n'h'm frames Samuel's assertion that God is "not a man, who is n'h'm." We return to the world of flux defined in Hanna's thanksgiving prayer, which first introduced the idea of kingship. In this world of mutability and change, God may transform individual destiny, but there remains an immutabl anchor, the Eternal of Israel, who does not lie or regret [n'h'm].
-You can't take that! / But I want to / Stop! Stop kicking him! Can't you see he's crying ?! / smiling into my eyes / But it's fun/ / in my contacts, the psychiatrist, the school psychologist, the guidance counselor, the clinic social worker, the social service social worker // when you sleep / in the passage / between battle and battle // past the day's sharp teeth / I shoot messages / wait for answers / any answer / parenting by committee / because the one thing I know / is I don't know / what the hell I should be doing.
Indetermindable
moments between the vibrating
phone, the blaring alert,
the siren that might--
might not--sound
I want to go,
my daughter whines--
I want to go down. I gulp down
the still-dewed air, breathe
in jasmine like I'm drowning.
It's too far, she scrambles towards the steps.
I'm scared.
Hunker underground. Between concrete slabs.
My dove, in the crevice of stone
the shelter of the step--
She says, I always dream
we keep sleeping
And then the missile hits.
I dream I am buried alive
in the endless expanse
before the All Clear.
or you will not stand.
For full chapter, click here.
The kingship has only just been established, and hairline cracks are already spreading.
Saul was a year old when he was crowned, indicating something shiny-new. Yet the Saul introduced as a dutiful son is suddenly a father, with Jonathan holding the fateful Geba, using it as a springboard to attack the Philistines--while Saul gets the credit. We are once again in the Oedipal realm between fathers and sons (be they Eli with Chofni and Pinchas, or Samuel with his unnamed children), returning to the central tension that defined the Book of Judges.
Now Geba, locus of civil war, is launching a war with external enemies--yet the Israelites join this war less willingly than they joined the war against their kin. Some join because they feel they have no choice, others hide in caves, tunnels, cisterns, while yet others cross the Jordan.
The people's fear is reflected in their king's irresolution. Here he is, back in Gilgal--site of the "renewal" of the kingship, where he and Israel felt joy; recreating the meeting point point that Samuel anounced back when he gave Saul a series of signs that God is with you (10:7): After that, you are to go down to Gilgal ahead of me, and I will come down to you to present burnt offerings and offer sacrifices of well-being. Wait seven days until I come. Yet now the man who stood head and shoulders above Israel is unable to stand and wait. After holding on for seven days, he cracks, and brings the sacrifices just before Samuel appears.
In a recreation of their first meeting, he meets the prophet just as he arrives, with the same evocative use of ve-hineh, "and behold." What is beheld this time is dissolution rather than establishment. GOD would have established your dynasty over Israel forever, but now it will not stand. If Saul's heart was once transformed, as he drew the true-hearted in his wake, now he is no longer chosen by God's heart, his heart insuffincently willing. The doubled pair of Saul and Samuel splits--and with it the triangulation between Saul-Samuel-God and Saul-Samuel-the people. The monarchy is falling before it ever fully stood, disintegrating from its very core.
I am not atrustworthy
witness. When accused
I crumble. Anger
burns my tongue, sour in my throat.
Days of harvest. Thistles browned.
Lupine dried. Wild oats
empty themselves to open beaks.
Air alert with leashed thunder--
I have not yet put winter away.
The night-planes whine like wasps
We sleep beneath haunted skies.
When do i stop to pray
excep silently?
"History rhymes"
my friend posts
it doesn't repeat
exactly
it does merge, mix, echo
Same lined walls,
same gym mattress in the corner
same wail. Same pile of shoes by the door.
When it rained, the perichor
slippery stones
and lights blinking through the clouds
marked which year it was
which round
but now it is the same sullen heat
Fallen figs smashed into the floor.
Swim through the same menace,
watch the same dusty sky.
But now my baby can run halfway
and my daughter can cross the street.
There are two new rabbits in the school petting corner
a new row of graves in the military cemetery
and I am more tired, and sad and heavy
body the clock tracking history
Push the bounds
to find the story
tell it anew
For full chapter, click here
This chapter continues and intensifies the Book of Samuel's redemptive dialogue with the closing of the Book of Judges. If the opening chapters revisited the relationship to women and to vows, here we return to the painful linchpins of the closing of Judges: the relationship of individual to tribe and national framework. These issues come to a head in the final stories of Samson, and Pilegesh bGiva--the rape of the concubine at Geva and its aftermath. If Samson represents the extreme of individuality, the story of Geva exemplifies its opposite: nameless characters acting within a context of mob rule.
Samson is consecrated before birth, a nazarite who is set apart. The "spirit of god pulses within him"--he is never "like one of the people." In his superhuman strength, he is the archetypal superhero, his fight against the Philistines that of a lone vigilante. He is a leader who dies, as he lived, separate from his people. It is only after death that he can p be brought back "to his fathers" for reintegration.
On the other side of the pendulum is the Israelite response to the incident at Geva, in which "all Israel, brothers" unite as one to fight Benjamin. This is a model of national identity sans individual leadership, where the people themselves seem to spontaneously self-organise into a cohesive national group. Yet it is a group that allows no individuality, with every dissent ruthlessly destroyed.
Both these stories are framed by the refrain: "In those days there was no king in Israel."
This chapter returns to these painful stories, to recontextualise them in the context of "a king in Israel."
Here, the tragedy of Geva seems to run in reverse, as though time can be turned back and redeemed. The allusions to Geva introduced in the previous chapters become more explicit and insistent. Now it is Jabesh Gilead, destroyed in the aftermath of the war on Benjamin, that is attacked. As in the case of the concubine, there is a threat of mutilation. The people of Yabesh, like the Levite in Geba, send messengers to "all the border of Israel"--yet this is a message that seeks help, not revenge. As in the case of Geva, there is a response of helpless weeping.
Ironically, help comes when the message reaches Geva itself. This time it is Saul who acts the part of the Levite, tearing apart flesh--but this time of animals, rather than a woman. Like the Levite, he sends these body parts to "the borders of Israel" to call in the people for war. Yet this time, it is not just a wordless horrific message, but an explicit command. And the people come, "as one." In this iteration, the rejected tribe of Benjamin comes to the rescue of the city it indirectly destroyed, rewarding Yabesh's hesitancy about joining the civil war. This time, Saul takes responsibility, and the weeping is turned to "joy" (a leitword repeated several times at the closing of this chapter.)
When "the spirit of God descends upon him," Saul not only acts the part of the Levite. He also channels Samson's preternatural power in tearing apart the lion. Similarly, Nahash's threat to poke out the right eye of the people of Jabesh echoes Samson's prayer to be "avenged of one of his eyes." The book of Samuel evokes Samson from its very opening, with the figure of Samuel--also a Nazarite consecrated before birth--recreates his vast powers, yet places them within the safe confines of the Mishkan. Now Saul also channels the inspired. charismatic leader, yet his power is placed within a national context, as the cleaving of the animal is used to call the nation together.
Saul's first battle as king weaves together the two sides of Judges' pendulum, placing the individual within the national structure, while placing a leader at the head of the faceless masses--a leader who heads off threats of violence.
Yet Saul can only play this part via Samuel. The merging between himself as Samuel continues in this chapter, as there is a consistent pattern of triangulations--between Saul, Samuel and God; and between Saul, Samuel and the people. The people follow "after Saul... and after Samuel... and fear God." The people go to Samuel to initiatite the recrowning of Saul. Samuel, as prophet, continues to enable linkage and communication.
