Samuel: Chapter 5

 

Watch for the portal

Enflamed limen

between here and there

you and me

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As the Israelites scream in despair, the Philistines triumphantly carry off the Ark of Covenant--Israel's great hope--to the Temple of Dagon. We are returned to another nadir in Israel's history, when Samson, who had "begun to redeem Israel from the Philistines," was publicly debased in Dagon's temple. Yet the intertextual link contains a hint of hope: the very triumph of the Philistines may be their downfall, bringing their temple down upon them. 

If in the previous chapter, Israel was punished when they celebrated their prowess and control over the Ark, now the Philistines' turn has come.  As in the previous chapter, the emphasis is on the word "take" lakakh, highlighting the physical manipulation of what should be sacred, beyond human ken; the human propensity to grab. The Philistines "take" the Ark from Even HaEzer, they "take" it to the Temple of Dagon, and they "take" Dagon when he topples at the foot of the Ark. 

In response, God severs Dagon's "hands". There will be no handling. The public debasment of Dagon is followed by a private debasment of the Philistened. God's "hand" spreads throughout the Philistine city in a plague (echoing the Exodus,when the "hand of God"  kills the livestock ). The Israelites had hoped for a Lord of (military) Hosts Who fights in the open, "trumpeting" the arrival the Ark to their camp, as though it were a weapon.  When the Ark finally acts against the Philistenes, it is specifically through the hidden, the invisible. The Philistines are struck with hemeroids, their most private bodily functions made public in a general outcry (homeh) that echoes Israel's despairing cry in the previous chapter. The Ark is avenged through shame, the debasement of the Philistines both elided and inscribed in the text by the difference between the written and read form of the word for "hemeroid"--read as t'horim (hemeroid), written as afli (sahdowed, dark), as though the word is too shameful to be written, but highlighted by its very absence. The "dishonor" (I-kavod) experienced by Israel in the previous chapter is countered here by the " very heavy  (kaved) hand of God".   

As in the case Samson, who carries the gates of Gaza on his back, the interaction with the Philistines, Israel's closest neighbors, revolves around liminal spaces. Dagon's severed hands and face are found on the threshold of his temple; the priests of Ashdod avoid the temple doorway; similarly, in the previous chapter, Eli dies at the entrance to the Mishkan, his neck broken when he strikes the doorpost. God here attacks the Philistines through the most hidden limen of all, the portal through which the body excretes what does not belong, a passageway between self and not-self.   The battle between Israel and the Philitenes takes place in this charged space between self and other, feeling for boundaries.

Samuel 4: In Writing

Within the darkness

that presses its nose

against the window

a baby screams

and screams

her father humming

desperate sursuration

Not mine. Not now 

Not today. 

Lights out. Bedtime

On distant lit pathways

a stroller appears. Disappears. 

I’m scared to go to the army,” my son says.

What if I don’t like the food?

And also--I might get killed. 

Crouch in a ditch. Pray. 

So many promises I want to make.

But nothing to say. 

I tell him of the Davidka,

the canon that couldn’t aim

but saved the city with its roar

The siren shriek

haunts the night

but my children have learned

to barely flich. 

 

Today my son has an earthquake drill;

last night, a missile.

Saferoroms sprout like mushrooms

before the rains. 

Two helicopters circle 

locuslike overhead.

encircled in the angry

howl of aircraft. 

I will have mercy

on whom I have mercy

And grace 

on whom I have grace.

Yet how we long to lock

salvation in a box

to shoot at will

Samuel: Chapter 4

 

When words fail...

The center

does not hold.

What will the future birth? 

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"And Samuel's word went forth throughout Israel"-- a triumphant announcement of Samuel's ascension. Yet this opening verse also contains a hint of threat. For if Samuel's "word" is trustworthy, then the destruction he prophesied must and will come.

And come it does: the decimation of Israel's army, the capture of the Ark of Covenant, the death of Hofni and Pinhas, the heartbroken death of Eli. Only in his death do we learn the extent of his greatness--he is one of the few pivotal judges, who like Otniel, Debora and Gideon led Israel for a definitive 40 years. Yet there is no hope for his family's future, as even birth turns deadly: Pinchas' wife dies in childbirth, naming her child I-Kavod, No-Honor--a fulfillment of God's initial prophecy "For I honor (kavod)  those who honor Me, but those who spurn Me shall be dishonored."   

Between Samuel's definitive "word" (davar) and the "word" (davar) brought by the soldier of Israel's defeat is a collection of wordless cries: the army "trumpets" (tru'ah) in triumph as the Ark is brought to the encampment; the city screams (tza'aka) and shrieks (zaaka) as the terrible news of defeat spreads. Language becomes a chaotic cacophony (hamon; homeh).

The breakdown of speech into primal screams creates a need for interpretation:  “Why is there such a roar in the camp of the Hebrews?” the Philistines ask; What is the meaning of the uproar?" asks Eli.  Functionally, these sounds echo Samuel's prophecy: a warning coming to fruition. There are no true surprises--everything has its "herald", if we but learn to listen.

Intertextually, these wordless cries return us to the moment Moses descends Mount Sinai after the creation of the Golden Calf, to be greeted by wordless cries demanding interpretation:

"When Joshua heard the sound of the people in its boisterousness, he said to Moses, “There is a cry of war in the camp.

But he answered,

“It is not the voice of those who scream in mastery, 

neither is it the voice of those who scream for being overcome: 

the voice of screaming do I hear.” (Exodus, 32: 17-18)

The linkage to the Golden Calf is illuminating. 

The Calf was created out of Israel's inability to deal with existential uncertainty--out of a need for safety, a desire for a god they could control. “Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for we do not know what has happened to that man Moses" (Exodus 32: 1). The Golden Calf is God without the terrifying Otherness; the intermediary without the originator. 

This is a role that parallels that of the Ark of Covenant here: “Why did God put us to rout (nagaf) today before the Philistines?" the Israelites ask--the word "rout" n'g'f synonymous with "plague", suggesting a defeat by divine order. Yet rather than attempting to answer this question by turning to the terrifying, unknowable God of Knowings (as Hanna named Him), they decide to "fetch the Ark of the Covenant of God  from Shiloh, to be present among us and deliver us from the hands of our enemies.”

The identity of the savior here is ambiguous--is it God, or the intermediary Ark? 

The slipage becomes more pronounced in the reaction of the Philistines, who declare: "God has come to the camp!" making Him plural: "These are the same God who struck down Egypt..." The plurality that Hanna identified in God--whom she named Lord of Hosts;  Lord of Minds, multi-faceted and unknowable--is here reduced to an idolatrous merging of God with the "Ark of the Covenant of GOD of Hosts Enthroned on the Cherubim." The priests, Hofni and Pinhas, play a role parallel to that of their ancestor, Aaron, creator of the Golden Calf. Their "taking" of the Ark reflects Hofni and Pinhas's initial sin of seeking to force the divine: "Give it to me or I will take," they say, grabbing the gifts meant for God; reducing God's "hosts" (tzva'ot) to the women who "congegate" (tzovot) around Shilo, or to the literal Israelite and Philistine armies (tzvaot); 

The attempt to force and manipulate God via His tangible symbol becomes here the source of destruction. If the priests thought they could "take" the Ark at will, they leave it  to be taken. The wordless jubilation at the coming of the Ark, which echoed the wordless celebration of the Calf--becomes the screams of mourning at its taking--in a separation of the symbol from the symbolized. 

Samuel 3: In Writing

It's only a matter of time, 
he says, till they try again. 
There may be a warning-- 
there may not. So just know.
Everybody says. 

Sun ricochets off the waves

and the siren begins

ereely unconstrained.

Bathers stampede towards the changing huts.

I crouch over my baby

tell the preschooler arms over her head

It's nothing, I say. Nothing

to fear. The wail dies.

See, not even a boom, I sooth.

These days, these weeks,

in a shark mouth

propped open with a stick 

ready to snap.

An egret scries the murkey water

then plungers, silver

flailing in her beak.

Two weeks till first grade,

two weeks till kindergarten

We balance at the soupy cusp

of the turning year.