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 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.

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: Chapter 3

 The fraught moment

Before

it all begins

it all ends

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This chapter continues where the previous one closed, reiterating and amplifying the prophecy regarding the fall of the House of Eli.

As in the previous chapter, Samuel and the sons of Eli are repeatedly juxtaposed, in an implicit yet insistent link. Every description of the sins of Eli's sons is bookended by descriptions of Samuel's virtue; Samuel here becomes Eli's "son", after the two biological sons fail so completely. He is the beloved usurper, stepping into the place of the rejected priests. In this chapter, Samuel's linkage with the destruction of Hofni and Pinhas becomes more explicit, as he actually speaks the words of doom. With the rise of the "naar" (youth) Samuel, Eli's "nearim" fall.      

Their fate was already been inscribed with the previous chapter's prophecy. What this chapter adds is the element of time. Samuel hears God speak "on that very day," and prophesies about "that very day" that will bring destruction that lasts "forever." A key word of the chapter is terem--before, not yet. The light of God has not yet gone out; Samuel has not yet heard God voice, he does not yet know God. We stand at the cusp, in the expectant before. The silence that precedes the storm that will end Eli; before Samuel regularly communes with God. 

Judges: Chapter 5

Awaken from the dephths

the mother seeking 

the ferocious core

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The chapter reiterates and crystallizes the themes raised in the previous chapter. Reiterated is the spatial dimension, the leitwords "falling" "to go" (l'kh). Intensified is the focus on gender, and on the role and leadership of women.

The intertext of Deborah's Song is Moses' Song of the Sea, continuing the Book of Judges dialogue with the Book of Exodus. Both are replete with water imagery and the downfall of horses and chariots (Then the horses’ hoofs pounded / As headlong galloped the steeds ) . 

Az yashir, "Then sang" open both these iconic songs. In Exodus, the singer is the male Moses, while Mirian "the prophetess" (Exodus 15:21) only takes up the chant at the end with the band of dancing women, declaring "Sing to God." Here, Deborah takes up Miriam's imperative form, but it is "the woman prophetess" who is the primary singer, with the male Barak as secondary. Deborah is the speaking heart, Barak her physical arms: "Awake, awake, O Deborah! Awake, awake, speak  song! / Arise, O Barak; Take your captives, O son of Abinoam!").

The  poem switches to first person, as the prophetess calls on herself to speak: "I (anochi), to God, I (anochi) will sing," The song is a claiming of women's speech: "Awake Deborah...speak (Dabri) song"  as Deborah puns on her name to claim the authoritative speech (dibur) that is usually the preview of men. And the song is indeed structured around  the power of femininity, subverting female archetypes. History itself is redefined in feminine terms (in the days of Yael). It opens with the rise of Deborah, "a mother in Israel" (5:7), and closes with Sisera's mother, sitting and awaiting the return of her son. Between the bookends of these maternal figures is "Most blessed of women Yael, wife of Heber the Kenite, most blessed of all women in tents" (5:24). These three women are the structuring principle of the song, reaviling the hidden female matrix of warfare. Each woman drives the war in her own way: Deborah by ordering Barak to battle; Yael by seducing Sisera to supposed safety in order to assassinate him; and Sisera's mother, who raised her son to revel in the sexualized violence of war, where he can claim "a womb or two for every manhead (5:30). The male "taking of captives" is the muscle power playing out these deep drives. 

 

Western society has traditionally divided women by different traits: nurturance vs. sexuality, the mother and the whore. In this song, these female paradigms are intermixed, so no woman is one or the other. Deborah the mother is Deborah the speaker, calling, judging, "exploring the heart."  Sisera's mother, sits inside sniveling and worried, but is revealed as ferocious and predatory, reveling in rape. Yael exits the traditional female space of the tent to beckon Sisera in, in language that is sexually suggestive: "Between her legs" Sisera rises, falls, and collapses, rises and falls and collapses again, to be utterly destroyed.  Yet the seductress is also maternal, offering nurturing  "milk" as she soothes him to sleep. Has the rapist between her legs been birthed or undone? 

The maternal emerges as a dangerous, ferocious, and celebrated  power.]

Deuteronomy: Chapter 18

the desire for absence

to be not

to circle the gaps of the unknown "no"

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This chapter is dominated by the same key words as the previous one: k'r'v-- close, within; and d'r'sh, to investigate, analyze; d'v'r--thing, saying. It too focuses on to'eva--usually loosely translated as "abomination"; it too places it in opposition to tamim --pure, without blemish.

Thematically, the two chapters are  related as well, as here we further define the relationship of center to periphery and the space "within". The "chosen" (18:5) tribe of Levi is intimately linked  to the place that "God will choose," and so cannot have "an inheritance amongst / within [k'r'v] his brother" (18:2)--he cannot truly be part of the space between the periphery and the center. Coming into the land will bring a to a new leadership that will come from among (k'r'v) the people: "I will raise them a prophet from amongs (k'r'v) their brothers, like you [Moses]". This leadership will draw directly from Sinai,  the place where all the nation "heard the Lord."

Yet rhetorically, this chapter is dominated by the negative: it opens with a sonorous "no": "lo yihiye--there shall not be."  This negative is balanced by the positive "ze yihiye--this shall be" in the next subsection, but the negative floods once again at the closing, with the return to Sinai. The prophet who will come to replace Moses will come to preserve "not": "let me not hear again the voice of God" "let me not see this great fire." Too much Presence leads to complete absence: "so I not die." 

The coming prophet will straddle the line between the known and unknown, between yes and no: "the prophet who will speak in My name that which I have not commanded, that prophet shall die.... that which the prophet spoke in the name of God and was not (lo yihiye) and will not come (lo yavo), that is the thing which God has not spoken..." Hu ha-davar asher lo davro--that is the thing that God has not--the negative here gains a positive presence, becomes an actual davar, thing, object, speech act.]