Samuel: Chapter 14

Cross over

the split between 

known and unknown

climbing up, standing still

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The leitwort of the chapter is "crossing" (a'v'r), and the story is replete with doublings: two craigs, two camps, a lottery that splits between two sides. We are arriving at an essential demarcation. 

The Oedipal hints introduced in the previous chapter now burst into the open. Jonathan "son of Saul" crosses to once again attack the Philistines--"but he did not tell his father." It is he who breaks his father's vow--and upon finding out that he has done so, criticizes his father for making it.  Saul's relation to his son is equally fraught. When Saul searches for the source of sin, his son's name is first on his lips, and he is quick to threaten death, revealing an underlying violence: "You shall be put to death Jonathan!"

For where once it was Saul, now it is Jonathan who goes on a quest with a "naar-boy" at his side. Jonathan, whose "heart" defines victory. If Saul was once given a series of three intimate signs from Samuel, Jonathan now defines his own sign--and is answered immediately. If Saul once channeled Samson's power by tearing apart an animal, it is Jonathan who now eats the honey, and Samson-like, attacks the Philistines in a lone quest.The prism of  Jonathan's story casts a different light on Saul's own. Saul set out on a quest for his father; Jonathan initiates. Saul asked his naar for advice, borrowing his money; Jonathan takes the lead, his naar following behind. Saul came to Samuel for guidance; Jonathan charges forth with faith. So quickly is Saul, the bright young hope, dimished. 

Retroactively, Saul's search for a seer becomes a dark portent, introducing his fatal flaw: the need to know (y'd'a)--another key word of this chapter. If Jonathan sets his own sign, Saul's camp revolves around petitioning for external knowledge, with the Ark, priest, and Urim veTumim all in attendance. The repeated invocation of the Ark of the Covenant, along with the reference to Pinchas's tragic son Icavod, takes us back to Israel's great defeat at the hands of the Philistines, when the Ark was taken, tying these two battles together. Back at that great defeat, Israel's fatal mistake was the attempt to force certainty, to contain the unknowable God of Knowings through the Ark. Saul, scrambling for the Ark and Urim, even as the war rages around him, is stuck in the same conception,.  Saul's indecisiveness in this battle is a perfect mirror of his previous failure to stand fast: both point to lack of negative capability; a breakdown of faith. The king is here exposed as stunted, unable to respond in the moment.

Even when Saul finally turns away from the priest to join the fray, he remains caught in his personal struggle. Like Jephtha before him, he tries to overcome uncertainty by making language binding--and the vow focuses wholly on himself, ignoring the need of his soldiers: “Cursed be anyone who eats any food before night falls and I take revenge on my enemies.” This self obsesisons weaknes the army, and the vow, like Jephtha's, redounds on his head, almost cutting off Saul's own bloodline. This time, the fatal consequences are headed off by the Israelites' redemptive intervention. Yet  if Saul doesn't actually kill Jonathan, he does stanch and block Jonathan's miraculous  victory, rendering it as diminished as he.