1 Samuel 13-31 - 6

So the damage of Saul has taken a lifetime to undo, even though he appeared doomed from the start of his reign. Kingship has not yet proved a solution for Israel for their complaint. While Saul is not portrayed as greedy in the way Samuel feared kings would be, he is vain, lazy, rash, moody and willful. Sometimes he is just plain stupid. The narrative portrays him as to blame for his own downfall; but at the same time, there is nothing he can do to change the outcome, it seems. The hand of Yhwh is guiding events as always. In one sense, too, Saul takes the wrap for the folly of Israel in demanding a king. The wickedness of Israel in pleading for a king has had devastating effects. She has learnt a terrible lesson; the new true king had better take note, and Israel with him. Otherwise the terrible consequence of disobedience – that God would stop communicating with them – would be meted out on them too.

Was he doomed from the very start? D.M.Gunn is a scholar who thinks so, and points to the deliberate contrast between God’s instruction to Samuel to “appoint for them a king” in 1 Sam 8:22 and his later announcement that he had provided for himself a king from the sons of Jesse in 16:1. By this reading, Saul is a king who cannot succeed because he was never truly acknowledged by God as his choice in the first place. The rejection of Saul is God’s response to the people’s rejection of him. This perhaps explains why Saul is condemned for apparently trivial offences – when later we see David doing worse and surviving as king. But as the rejection sayings in 15:23, 26 insist, it is Saul’s repudiation of Yhwh that has provoked Yhwh’s repudiation of Saul.

On the other hand, there is no question but that David is the right man. He is a model of trust in Yhwh and loyalty to his anointed, although of course ironically it is he who is the true anointed. He refuses to take matters into his own hands and assassinate Saul (and Nabal); but rather trusts in the promise and intention of Yhwh who will manage events without David’s intervention. That said, he is also portrayed as decisive, charismatic and effective: brutal when necessary but also just. He is not greedy for spoil as Samuel had feared a king would be. Are there perhaps some shadows emerging in David’s character? The incident with Abigail innocently shows his weakness for a pretty feminine face. Certainly as a military figure he involved in killing on a large scale. He appears to sail close to the wind with his pragmatism when he makes friends with King Achish, and was apparently only providentially spared from warring with Israel.

1 Samuel 13-31 - 5

However the story is interrupted at this point by the terrible narrative of the witch or medium of Endor. Saul enlists the help of a medium to raise the ghost of a rather grumpy Samuel. As appropriate to Torah, Saul had expelled all the witches and wizards from the land, but now he has need of one and so goes contrary to his own principles. Once again, Saul is seen to have the desire to consult Yhwh but on his terms and using inappropriate means. His consulting the spirit of Samuel is a desperate act, as he himself says. God no longer replies to him by prophets or by dreams. Samuel’s answer is doom –laden – a prophecy of the death of Saul and his sons at the hands of the Philistines.

The stage is set for the collapse of the house of Saul at the hand of the Philistines and David. However, David is prevented from making the blunder he has so far avoided ie fighting against the anointed of Yhwh. He is spared the ignominy of warring with God’s people. The other Philistine kings reject Achish’s trusted mercenary (who ironically has been lying to him all along). Thus by the providential hand of Yhwh David takes no active part in Saul’s downfall and is also kept a free force able to fight for Israel when the Philistines defeat the armies of Saul and Jonathan.

The Ziklag incident (ch.30) delays the end further. We see in this episode David the great warrior, taking command of his potentially murderous group in the aftermath of a devastating raid by the Amalekites; and organizing successfully to take his revenge. David is a man of decisive action and military ability; but he also takes great care to distribute the spoils of victory in a just way. Here is perhaps a king who will not take, take, take: but one who will give. In vs 26 David’s language starts to assume the tone of one who fights the fights of Yhwh: he speaks there of “the spoils of the enemies of the Yhwh”, as he hands over the loot to the elders of Judah.
The final scene of 1 Samuel is the defeat of Saul and the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. The pathos is maintained by Jonathan’s death: we the readers are not to feel too triumphant here. The demise of this flawed king comes at the cost of defeat for Israel. Ironically, it is Saul himself who lifts up his hand against Yhwh’s anointed – perhaps this too is a false step, proving Saul a blunderer to the last. The bodies of Saul and his sons are shamed by the Philistines in the same way David had dismembered the fallen Goliath. The territories of Israel beyond the Jordan are occupied by the Philistines; and so the reign of David begins with a military complication that needs resolving.

1 Samuel 13-31 - 4

Interestingly, David’s deviation from religious practice in the Abinadab episode is not classed as disobedience in the way that Saul’s religious deviations were. Why?

The incident of Nabal and Abigail illustrates contrasting responses to Yhwh’s anointed. Abigail’s resourcefulness and her beauty win her a husband and David and his men win provisions. This is an interesting variation on a stock rape and pillage by a maraudering band. David does not have to steal Abigail from her stupid husband. Rather he is struck down by Yhwh. Abigail’s speech to David captures in a nut-shell the presentation of David in this story, 25:30ff: “and when the Lord has done to my lord according to al the good that he has spoken concerning you, and has appointed you prince over Israel, my lord shall have no cause of grief, or pangs of conscience, for having shed blood without cause or for my lord taking vengeance himself.” The long-term benefit of a clear conscience outweighs the rash moment of anger, even when it is provoked. Nabal’s death at the Lord’s hand without David’s intervention foreshadows the death of Saul to come.

David’s alliance with the King of Gath shows the level of desperation he has reached, as he explains in 27:1. This wins David peace from Saul, but obviously puts him in an invidious position: living outside Israel and in league with her enemies. By being more than a little loose with the truth, David is able to convince Achish that he is making raids on Israelite territories, when in fact he and his men were attacking the Canaanite tribes. It seems in 28:1-2 that David will even fight against Israel, such is the trust he has won. What will happen? Will David prove to be a mercenary of questionable loyalty, happy to kill the men of Israel?


to be continued

1 Samuel 13-31 - 3

At the end of the story Saul appears to have forgotten the name of his court harpist: it may be that we do not have a strict chronological series of events presented here. At this point the close relationship between Jonathan and David begins. This is the tragic romance of the book: Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as his own soul. Of course we reading from our cultural perspective find the closeness of their relationship quite confronting and more than a little homoerotic. David’s relationships with the women in his life do not seem as deep or affectionate. However, we must be careful not to project our own cultural expectations back on to the text at this point. The affection between the two young men, as we readers know, complicates matters extraordinarily. Jonathan is the heir apparent. It is he who stands to lose most from the rise of David and the fall of Saul. Yet he is a model of faithful friendship, protecting David from Saul’s rages in chapter 20, and providing for his escape by the symbol of the arrow. We readers know that Jonathan is a major obstacle to the rise of this second king in Israel; which heightens the tragedy for us as we realize that these close friends must eventually be separated. What the bond between the two men ensures for us is that this civil war between David and Saul is not a struggle to be continued by their descendents. Even the man who stood to lose most saw in David the true destiny of Israel according to Yhwh’s choice.

Saul’s envy of David grows with David’s success and fame. The women of Israel sing “Saul has slain his thousands, but David has slain his tens of thousands.” Even in the process of arranging marriage to Michal, David excels himself by returning with twice the number of Philistine foreskins as a comically grisly present for his king. In 18:28 Saul comes to the fatal realization: Yhwh is with David, and even Saul’s daughter loves him. Saul thus veers between anger and fear, with murderous consequences. From then on, David becomes a man on the run, hunted by Saul and operating as a freedom fighter on the boundaries of Israel. He never quite pursues out and out war with Saul; but he does make a tentative alliance with the Philistines, especially King Achish. In 24 and 26 we are told of incidents where David had the chance to kill Saul and yet held back, both taunting Saul with his power over him and assuring him of his respect for Yhwh’s anointed. This technique of the repetition of similar stories in the same narrative is commonly used in biblical literature: and yet critics of the old school have viewed this as sloppy editing or the presence of two traditions or versions of the same incident. However, as Robert Alter shows in his book The Art of Biblical Narrative, the repetition of two very similar scenes is a literary device the authors of scripture deploy quite deliberately.

To be continued

1 Samuel 13-31 - 2

The stage is obviously set for the entry of David, the man truly after God’s own heart.

Once again, the narrator comes at this important moment from several angles: his anointing by Samuel in Bethlehem, his ability as a musician and the slaying of Goliath. As we meet the shepherd boy we are told he “ruddy, and had beautiful eyes and was handsome”: he has the charismatic looks of a potential hero. That he is the least of the sons of Jesse is emphasized in 16:1-13: once again the Lord has chosen contrary to human expectation. He is anointed in this private way by Samuel, so that now in Israel there are two anointed kings, a situation that obviously needs resolution.

The David and Goliath story, which the narrator tells in detail, introduces David as a warrior in Israel. Like the boy Samuel, the boy David is able to teach his elders something about trust for Yhwh. David’s speech in 17:45ff is a paradigm for holy war. The battle is Yhwh’s: it is he who determines the victor, regardless of the disparity in power or weaponry from a human point of view. It is Hannah’s song fully illustrated once again: the theme is the same! The humble overthrows the mighty. Though his anointing is still secret and David does not appear to act out of a consciousness of being the anointed one, he has by his character displayed the attitude expected of God’s king in battle – not intimidated by enemies but rather trusting completely in the power of Yhwh. His weapon is his faith.

1 Sam 13-31: an interaction - 1

The second half of 1 Samuel narrates the enmeshed tales of the fall of the house of Saul and the simultaneous rise of the house of David. But both houses are enmeshed in ways that ensure that the tragedy of the fall of Saul is fully felt by the readers. David is linked to the family of Saul by marriage to Michal and by his deep friendship with Jonathan. But it is also David’s insistence that the Lord’s anointed be protected at all costs – even when he is the mortal enemy seeking to hunt him out and kill him – that serves to prevent the reader from too readily casting Saul as a despised villain. This in fact heightens the tragedy, prolonging the civil war and means that Saul has to bring about his own destruction. Of course, the secret to the whole narrative is that it is Yhwh who is sovereign over Israel and the life of her king.

Monarchy gets off to an inauspicious start in 1 Sam 13-15. From the very beginning of his rule it is clear that Saul is doomed. By 13:13 Samuel is declaring the whole thing off: using language that pre-empts the covenant in 2 Sam 7, he tells Saul that his kingdom will not continue. The air of inevitability hangs over his decline and fall from here on. The effect of this is tragic: we know the outcome of this phase of the story must end in his demise. The question for the reader is “how?”
His crimes do not appear that severe: merely filling in for a late prophet in the matter of sacrifice at the behest of the people. The dialogue between Samuel and Saul reveals a little more. In 13:11 Saul’s words suggest he felt that he was losing his grip on the people, and was responding in order to maintain his popularity. In 13:13 Samuel views the sin as disobedience of a direct command of God; and then implies that by contrast with the man the Lord is about to appoint that Saul is definitely not a man after his own heart.

Just as his anointing was a complex story told from several angles, so the reason for his decline is given to us over several episodes. We are given the story of his rash oath, of which Jonathan fell victim – a story which hearkens back to the story of Jephthah’s daughter in Judges, but with a different outcome illustrating perhaps a man of insufficient integrity; and of his sparing the Amalekite king Agag contrary to the clear command of God. By these incidents, Saul is proven to be rash and far too easily prey to the will of the people. The rejecting of Saul is more fully ratified by Samuel’s curses in 15:10-35; and symbolized terribly in the tearing of Samuel’s cloak. Saul makes a pitiful grasp for power, but it will be no use. In 16:14ff we find him tormented by an evil spirit; and he becomes prone to depressive episodes and murderous rages.

To be continued...