Samuel: Chapter 7

 

Loop around

and return

back to where you began

back to your heart

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The saga of the Ark's capture, which seemed to end in the previous chapter with the Ark's return, is now revealed to be part of a longer saga of twenty years of longing and displacement. For "return" (sh'v שב)--the chapter's key word--is a process. The Ark has physically returned to Israeli territory, but remains decentered, tucked away on a hill outside of national consciousness. The Philistines' "sending forth"  of the Ark undoes its physical taking, but not the distance from God that precipitated its capture.  Only after time and space become saturated with "longing" can this distance be addressed.  

The saga, which is introduced with  Samuel's "word going forth to all of Israel" can only be resolved by Samuel. Return, he tells the people, begins within: God will only return when "you return to God with all of your heart." Samuel, indeed, goes back in history, all the way back to Joshua, and his final address to the people, where he demands that they remove "the alien gods from within you" and "prepare their hearts" for God.

Israel's removal of the alien gods precipitates a second address, as Samuel calls the people together in Mitzpa (a redemption, perhaps, of the last gathering of "all" Israel in Mitzpa, which ended in civil war), which becomes a reprise of the fatal war with the Philistines--with profound differences. This time it is the Israelites rather than the Philistines who fear the "sounds" in the camp; this time, the people pray, rather than mechanically attempting to control God; this time, it is God, rather than the Israelites, who makes the noises that terrify the Philistines.  This reprise ends in victory, offering a way back, as the territory previously lost "returns" to Israel. 

The looping nature of this saga of restoration is highlighted by the location "Even HaEzer"--the "helping stone": previously introduced as the site of Israel's great defeat and the loss of the Ark,  it is here reintroduced as indicating that "God has helped us unto here". The reprise has redefined the beginning. 

Samuel: Chapter 6

 

What do you see 

making its way towards you?

Will you rise

Or will you fall?

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This chapter continues several of the leitworts of the previous chapter, repeating the thematic hand (y'd) and heavy-honor (k'v'd). Yet the root k'v'd, which previously echoed the despairing "honor is lost from Israel" of the defeated Israelites, here gains deeper resonance, stretching back all the way to the Exodus, with Pharaoh's heavy (k'v'd) heart: "Why harden you hearts as Egypt and Pharoah did" warn the Philistine magicians.

And indeed, the Philistines take heed. Now, instead of taking the Ark as they did before, they send it (sh'l'kh)--another leitword, that echoes Pharaoh's sending forth the Israelites. The power of God's hand loosens the human hand. Relinquishin the control they previously celabrated, the Philistines embody their elided shame in forever-gold, offereing it to God. 

Yet the relinquishment is not total: rather, it is a provisinal test. They  free the Ark, placing it on a wagon drawn by two nursing cows, and see if it can override the biological imperative of motherhood to make its way back (the last of the chapter's keywords), rising and fallng to Isralite terratory. This "seeing" is the last remnant of transgresive control, and remains dangerous. The Isralites, overjoyed to see the Ark coming towrads them through the fields, are punished for their casual gaze.

The story which was introduced with the declaration that "God continued to show himself to Samuel in Shilo" closes with a punishment for those who gaze on God unbiddne outside Shilo's confines.    

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: 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. 

Judges: Chapter 16

Rise and fall

on waves of passion

enwrap both sides

and bring it all down around you

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The initial hint of redemptive promise embedded in Samson's marriage in Timnah has come to naught. Now there is no pretense of  relationship, as Samson baldly "meets a prostitute and sleeps with her." Yet even at this nadir, a new hint of redemption awakens: Samson sleeps only till "midnight", returning us to Gideon and his "midnight" battle. And when Samson carries the door with its two "sideposts" (mezuzot), we are carried back to an earlier midnight-- that fateful midnight of the Exodus, when the Israelites demarcated their boundaries by painting their sideposts with blood, so that God "passed over them."

And indeed in the next section, Samson "loves" for the first time--a change from the commodified, brutely sexual language used in his earlier encounter with women. Yet now, instead of buying women and their favors, it is Samson who is bought. Initially, Delilah sells him for silver, which the Philistine chieftains are careful to bring with them to the ambush. Yet as Delilah realizes that the wiley Samson has tricked her, the betrayal also becomes personal, a battle for power over this all-powerful man. "How can you be made helpless?" she asks him, again and again.

The answer is that fatal "love", along with Samson's permeable boundaries, the doorposts he never learned to demarcate. The physically strong Samson is internally weak, lacking staying power.  Just as when his wife coaxed out the answer to his riddle, he cannot withstand Delilah's questioning. Accusations, nagging, and his very "soul wishes to die." On some level, he wishes to be as helpless as he feels inside. Short bursts of intense power he can manage, yet cannot withstand sustained pressure--much as he was ready to die if God did not quench his thirst. 

And die he will. For this time it is not a riddle he reveals, but the source of his strength. In a scene of strange and terrifying tenderness, Delilah realizes that he has revealed "his whole heart", making himself utterly vulnerable. In a dark echo of Jael, she takes on a quasi-maternal role,  lulling him to sleep on her lap. When he is somnolent and infantilized, she calls in the Philistines to strip him of his strength. 

The degradation of Samson alludes to several episodes in his life, a kind of back window view of his downfall. Where once he chose a woman "who was right in his eyes" he is now reduced to an eyeless spectacle to be watched. After sauntering into Azza to sleep with a whore, he is now returned to Azza "to play" for his enemies.  Samson's final moments highlight the leitmotif of duality that has defined him from the moment his birth was announced, his death set into place before his conception. Strength and weakness; rough and sweet. He is the lion, riven in two; the twinned foxes running terrified of the fire burning between them. Where once he carried the gate and its two sideposts, balancing both sides, now he prays to be avenged of only "one of my two eyes." Symbolically, he wraps himself around both supporting beams, crushing them together, his duality forced to singularity, bringing the temple down.

Let my soul die with the Philistines, he prays. The saga ends chiastically, as Samson is collected by his brethren, and carried back to the Dannite lands between Tzorah and Eshtaol where his story began. And yet despite this return, Samson remains entwined and defined by the Philistines--the nation to whom he related, married, hated, loved, and died. Yes, he is buried with his father Manoach, but does he truly return?

Judges: Chapter 14

 

Between up and down,

predator and prey

rough and sweet

strong and weak--

how not to be torn in two

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And Samson went down to Timnah. The prophesized Samson has grown into maturity--and domination. No longer is the story about Manoach and his wife, or about the woman and her man: the former protagonists are now simply "his father and mother", Manoach as nameless as his wife.

With Samson's growth into manhood, the ambiguity introduced before his conception comes into full expression. The chapter is taught with the tensions between contradictions: Samson rises and goes down; he is physically strong and psychologically weak; he riddles about sweetness and terror. The striking image of the lion carcass dripping honey embodies these contradictory forces. The fact that the carcass is riven in two adds a dark undertone of doom. Samson skirts the edge of possibilities, walking through vineyards he is forbidden to drink from; marrying a woman he cannot really have. His inability to withstand his wife's nagging hints that these tensions cannot always be contained.

The opening movement toward Timnah returns us to Judah's journey toward Timnah in Genesis 28, where he too discovers duality. The two scenes are in dialogue: Judah's journey begins when he "goes down" from his brothers; he too discovers a woman, in language that is crude and sexual; both scenes contain a kid goat. The allusions to Judah's encounter with Tamar introduce the possibility that Samson's descent to the Philistines will also be redemptive: Judah's apparently illicit encounter with Tamar led to life after repeated death (and to the birth of Peretz, eventual forefather of the Davidic dynasty). Here too we are informed that Samson's "request was from God." Yet in contrast to Judah, who "goes up" to Timnah, Samson repeatedly "goes down," implying that the movement is more than spatial--and that perhaps these journies have different metaphoric trajectories. ]