Samuel: Chapter 12

 

Make your voice heard

over the storm

See, fear, tell your story.

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"Then Samuel said“I have listened to your voice in all you have asked and set a king over you"--from the redemptive "joy" in Saul's story in the previous chapter, we return to the pain of Samuel's frame story. If before God told Samuel to subsume his hurt and betrayal and "listen" to Israel's voice, now it is Samuel who makes his voice heard. The chapter is sturctured around the thrice-repeated anaphora: And Samuel said...and Samuel's singular "call".

Many before have "judged" Israel, but Samuel here enacts a courtroom, demanding the people stand (n't'v) while, calling for testimony, as he "judges" them, in a recreation of Moses's final address. 

This linkage to Moses is central to Samuel's argument, as he seeks to assert a vision of leadership that subsumes this shiny-new toy of kingship. God, he asserts, comes first. It is he who "made" Moses and Ahron. History needs to be seen as a continuum from that initial act of redemption, with the people forgetting, and then being saved by those that God "sends". It is you, Samuel, asserts, who have attempted to disrupt this continuity, by asserting "‘No, we must have a king reigning over us’—though the ETERNAL your God is your King." 

Redemption lies in seeing-fearing (r'e'h) (another leitwot) the deeper reality, which must always subsume local human kingship: "if you will see-fear (ti'reuh) your God and serve him and listen to his voice...if both both you and the king that he crowned over you follow God..." The voice that must be heard is not yours, but God's. The human king is subordinated to this overarching Voice, just as the tale of Saul's coronation is subsumed by the frame story of Samuel's critique of the kinship. 

The king might lead, but the deepest service (a'v'd) is to God: you must serve him, and listen to his voice. Samuel drives home the lesson with a recreation of Sinai's overwhelming sounds, at the very time of Shavuot's "wheat harvest" (See Exodus 34:24). Do not fear, Samuel concludes. You have not yet lost true leadership, which lies in this continuous connection to God. Samuel returns to his role as intermediary, yet if before he was almost an invisible conduit, now he is force that must be activated:  I will not cease to pray for you.

The child born through an act of definitive prayer makes prayer the definitive act.

  

Samuel: Chapter 8

 

Hear the sounds beneath words

The breathing spaces

What was put, what is given, what is asked

Who listens, who screams.

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After the heights--the fall. If the previous chapter portrayed Samuel's greatest triumph, as he "restores" what was lost in a great victory over the Philistines, this chapter portrays his decline. The youthful beloved usurper now becomes, in turn, "old" like the aged Eli, and like his mentor, he too cannot control his children, who waywardly do not "follow in his ways." As in the case with Eli, alternative leadership must be found: "Appoint (sima שימה) upon us a king, so we might be like the other nations.")

Yet if the problem is one of a lack of continuity between father and sons, then appointing a king is counterproductive--it is, after all, defined as hereditary leadership: "rule over us, also you, also your son, also your son's son," the nation begged Gideon, the last time they requested a king--and learned to their detriment the problems of such leadership.  

And indeed, the demand for a king is driven by something far deeper and more visceral than the failures of Samuel's sons. "It is not you they are rejecting, but Me...Like everything else they have done ever since I brought them out of Egypt to this day—forsaking Me and worshipping other gods—so they are doing to you," says God, creating a clear and shocking camaraderie between Himself and Samuel.  Idolatry and the desire for a king are presented as driven by parallel desires--for distance, for control, for the estratz. And indeed, Gideon responded to the initial request for kingship by returning power to God--"No I will not rule over you,God will rule over you"--before slipping himself into idolatry. 

Here, the rejection of Samuel makes the problem more acute. Throughout, the chapter emphasizes Samuel's role as intermediary between God and Israel by  repeated dedicated sections that highlight that  act of communication per se: "Samuel prayed to God" "Samuel reported all of God's word to the people"  "when Samuel heard all that the poeple had said, he reported it to God" "And God said to Samuel... and Samuel said to the poeple."

What begins as a demand for an alternative judge--appoint us a king to judge us like the other nations--is quickly revealed to be something far broader: "'No' said the people, we must have a king over us so we may be like the other nations: he will judge us and go out at our head and fight our battles." What the people are rejecting is not Samuel's sons, but Samuel's mode of doing battle: his demand to look into their "hearts" and "remove the alien gods." 

The biblical command to appoint a king does not define the king as judge: the Levites and judges are clearly differentiated from the temporal power of the king, who is appointed (שימו) by the people themselves, not set up by the judge. The people's confusion and slippage between the position of judge and king, spiritual leader and warleader, reveals a deep ambiguity.

The rejection of Samuel expresses a desire to not be led by a prophet. To not be in constant dialogue with a hidden voice. The people don't want to be exceptional. They want a leader "like all the other nations", with all the accoutrements of power that can be respected, mocked and resented. Samuel's very warnings about the dangers of worldly power evoke the crie de cour: let us be like everyone else.

There is a desperation in this cry. And because it's desperation, it cannot be ignored. Samuel hears "all" their words, the text and subtext. "Listen to their voice" commands God, despite his anger. There are inner necessities that become external realities. In a parallel construction to God's command to Abraham to listen to Sarah, God closes: "Listen to them and appoint them a king."