Samuel: Chapter 16

 

The spirit moves

and leaves a void

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If the previous chapter closed with Samuel's ceaseless mourning till the day of his death, this chapter opens with God's impatient demand, How long will you grieve for Saul?--a rejection of the intimacy and merging between the king-maker and king. God's solution is a brutal break.  Samuel is to crown another king--and must acknowledge that the man he grieves so deeply could and would kill him:"if Saul hears of it he will kill me." There are fatal boundaries to this all-encompassing relationship.

The two annointings are paralleled. Both take place after a zevach, a public sacrifice; both are defined by the same leitworts : sh'l'kh (send); r'e'h (sight). Both kings are described with the appellation t'v, good. Yet these surface parallels serve to heighten the contrast. If Saul is sent in a quest for his father and finds Samuel, Samuel is sent to find David: one is introduced as a hero, the other discovered by a process of elimination. If Saul is accompanied by a naar servant, David is the naar. 

There is to be none of the destructive intimacy between Samuel and this second king: if Samuel is foretold of Saul's arrival, he must arrive at David after running through all his brothers. It is God who takes the active role, and Samuel must discover whom God chose. There is no private communion on the roof: David is anointed within the presence of his brothers. There is no final kiss, no series of signs. Instead, Samuel, having fulfilled his function, leaves. 

Yet the dangerous intimacy persists, but now moves to a different triangle. The codependency between Saul and Samuel is replaced by a linkage between Saul and David. Having been crowned, God's spirit imbues (tz'l'kh--a root that also implies success) David--and vacates Saul. Hanna, in the prayer after Samuel's birth, defines a world in flux, where one side of a binary constantly transforms to its opposite.  There is no going back to what Saul once was: after being anointed, he became another man.  With the departure of the kingship and God's spirit, the void in Saul is invaded by an evil spirit (a force that returns us to the saga of Abimelech, the first man who sought to be king, also destroyed by an "evil spirit").  This spirit can be calmed only by David, the positive to Saul's negative. The two kings are bound together in a single sine curve, two sides of one reality, bound together by Saul's love for his own replacement. 

Samuel: Chapter 15

Grab tight, 

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].

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.

  

 

Samuel: Chapter 13

Fractures. Learn to stand fast--

or you will not stand. 

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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.

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 11

 

Push the bounds

to find the story 

tell it anew

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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.  

 

Samuel: Chapter 10

 

Are you a seeker,

or are you saught?

And who do you find

deep down, within? 

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This chapter continues seamlessly from the previous one, with its fable-like pattern of trees (3 signs, 3 actions, 3 men, 3 kids, 3 loaves of bread), and it's leitwords of seeking (ב'ק'ש)and found (מ'צ'א). The Saul who set out in quest of the asses is now sought by his father, and later by the entire nation as he hides away from Samuel's announcement of his kingship. Yet now that  "God is with him", his hands can do all that they "seek"--he is seeker and saught at once.

After anointing Saul as king, Samuel immediately shifts to giving him a series of signs--implying  fundamental doubt. These signs revolve around a series of give (נ'ת'נ) and take (ל'ק'ח)--echoing Samuel's address to the people about the royal right to confiscate at will. 

The placement of Saul's encounters by "the burial place of Rachel" further scopes us back to the primal story of Joseph and his brothers, which began with a similar search (It is my brothers I search for"), and splits into a bifurcation between Joseph's receiving and Judah's taking. The signs are not passive proofs, but transformative, forcing Sual to wrest with the issues of kinship: you will become a different man.

 
One of those issues is prophecy, as Saul's body is taken over by the spirit of God, and he is mitnabeh, in a reflexive form that echoes Hanna's discovery of a new level of prayer. This sign is not only an exercise in transformative submission, it also raises one of the book's thematic concerns: the relation of fathers and sons, and its impact on the question of hereditary leadership. Eli's sons did not follow in his footprints; Samuel's sons did not follow in his. In both cases, this disjunction is juxtaposed to the question of kingship. Here, Saul's prophecy causes people to exclaim, "What’s happened to the son of Kish? Is Saul too among the prophets?” prompting the riposte: “And who are their fathers?” 

Some gifts are sui generis, with no relation to antecedents. The prophets prophesize without relation to their fathers, and Saul prophesizes without relation to Kish. And yet, if that is the case, why the turn to kingship, with its focus on fathers and sons, and why the placement of Saul within the context of his foremother Rachel--and within the context of his tribe, Benjamin? 

The story is placed within the boundaries of Benjamin, and as it continues, the echoes of Benjamin's story become more insistent. Benhamin is the "smallest of tribes" because they were nearly annihilated in the civil war triggered by the incident that took place at Geva--Saul's own hometown. Saul is appointed king in a lottery that echoes the lottery that accompanied the war on Geva, while he is attacked by bnei Bliyaal--rabble--the same word used to describe the guilty parties in the incident at Geva. 

The individual and his family in a fraught, tension-filled dance. Saul is head and shoulders above the rest of the nation, a perfect individual--and very much Kish's son, a Benjaminite. A leader is a person--yet can perhaps become a dynasty. The story is both Samuel's an Saul's, shifting between the two, as Samuel's latest convocation at Mitzpah places the fairytale interlude back within the larger story of the state, and Samuel's negative view of kingship. At stake is the issue of the heart--another leitword of this chapter--as Saul's heart is transformed, and those "with heart" accompany him home.