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 - 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...

de Lubac on Christianity and history

Not bad stuff this, from Henri de Lubac, everybody's favourite mid-century French Catholic theologian:

The Bible makes an extraordinary impression on the historian: the conbtrast between the humble beginnings of Israel and the potency of the seed, or rather the explosives, which it contains; its concrete shape shrouded from the outset in the loftiest beliefs; then its stately expansion its confident though hidden progress to a boundless and unpredictable end: nowhere else can be found anything in the least like it. Nothing resembles the stupendous incoherence of its prophetic literature; only a transfiguration of the whole, glimpsed in sudden flashes, can prevent overwhelming and endless contradictions. The historical character of the religion of Israel can be understood in all its originality only through its consummation in the religion of Christ. We should never forget that the explanation of Judaims is not to be found within itself. Catholicism, p. 164

I think he is right about the OT... its coherence (without Christ) is rather slippery. Deuteronomy is a wonderful case in point: a law book that points to its own redundancy and to the inevitability of its own insufficiency... amazing.

Introduction to the Bible: some notes V - 2 Samuel 7

Some notes on 2 Samuel 7 for the interested:

Some readers are tempted to conclude that this covenant abrogated the existing covenant with Israel, but the close interweaving of 2 Samuel 7 with earlier covenant material should prevent this conclusion ‘The covenant of David fits within the covenant structure of Israel’ (Dumbrell 1994, 72). What is more, David receives this promise as Israel’s representative; as the king he embodies and represents the people (Köstenberger 2001, 39). Note the hope of royal priesthood in Exodus 19, which allows us to conclude that the person of the king ‘embodies the covenant expectations of Exodus 19:6’ (Dumbrell 1994, 72). 2 Sam 7:14 should thus be read against Exod 4:22; and 2 Sam 7:1 should be read against the goal of the exodus. ‘Through the occupant of the throne of Israel, Davidic kingship is to reflect the values that the Sinai covenant requires of the nation’ (Dumbrell 1994, 71f.).

Likewise, we have seen how the Davidic covenant takes up the promises to Abraham. The ‘great name’; the ‘place for my people Israel’; the ‘rest’ from enemies still to be given which echoes not only exodus but the creation rest to which the exodus rest pointed, all suggest a reiteration of the Abrahamic covenant in such a way that God’s saving purposes for humanity through Abraham are seen to be continued through the Davidic king, YHWH’s viceregent in his rule over the nations (Köstenberger 2001, 39f.).

Bill Dumbrell also writes:

Through Davidic kingship, divine government through Yahweh’s appointed intermediary, to whom the world must be subject, is established. Thus, Yahweh’s full intentions for the human race will be realized through wise administration by Israel’s messiah. The notions of the charter for humanity, of the dominion which that is to confer, and of kingship over Israel exercised by the Davidic representative were all finally brought together and fused in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who as son of David was son of Abraham, yet also Son of God.

Introduction to the Bible: some notes IV:Big Love

We had a discussion about polygamy tonight...

There is an excellent article on the matter of polygamy here by Bishop Glenn Davies from Sydney - Is Polygamy a Sin? He makes this comment:

While it is true that legislation existed under Mosaic Law to regulate polygam(Exodus 21:10-11), such legislation did not thereby legitimise polygamy. Rather it is akin to the sufferance exercised by God, a divine permission, which best explains the accounts of polygamy in the Old Testament.

Serena's question however related rather to the felt imbalance: on the one hand, men were allowed this polygamous lifestyle; on the other, those accused of adultery were usually wives rather than husbands. I think the right responses is to say that, as Davies suggests, polygamy is conceded rather than endorsed; that it is a sign of wealth and power rather than a social norm, or seen as a sexual liberterianism of a kind; and that as such it still involved vows and contractual agreements that needed to be honoured...anything else?

To take it further: is the OT unacceptably patriachal? Does the whole approach to polygamy/adultery indicate that the status given to women was somehow offensive to our contemporary sensibilities? Is violence against women not condemned as it should be? Here are a few points in reply:

1. Women share co-humanity with men. Genesis 1 and 2, quite remarkably for their times, assert the full participation of women in the image of God and the flesh of Adam. She is not a lesser being, or a being of a different nature. She stands side by side with Adam.

2. Women are given a voice. One complaint from feminist interpreters is that women are largely silent in the Bible's narrative. But this would be to neglect the Songs of Miriam, Deborah and Hannah in which they are certainly given a voice. The Song of Songs seems to be largely narrated by a female voice - and gives startling (if we are expecting to see patriarchalism everywhere) expression to female sexual desire. God frequently uses women rather than men to show his subversion of men's determination to sort it out for themselves.

3. If women are significant in terms of their roles as wives, mothers, daughters and so on, it is worth saying that the individualism we now value so highly was not a part of the cultural context of the Bible. It is true of men as well that they were fathers, brothers and sons as much as individuals. Sins against individuals had ramifications for their families.

4. The law actually seeks to protect women as vulnerable to abuse by men. It also takes the actions of women just as seriously as men in that they are held responsible for their sin as well.

5. In Leviticus it is true that menstruation leads to a state of ritual uncleanness which needs purification. But it is also true that any male emission leads to the same uncleanness. Note that this does not mean 'sinfulness', by the way. It is a symbolic reminder of the human inability to remain holy.

It helps to remember that, in the OT, there are laws and customs given that are particular to the time and place: not everything should be held as a universal affirmation that this is the right course of action for all times and places. Remember that the OT points ahead to something greater - the need for something more definitive and lasting if the promises of God are to be fulfilled.

Violence, the OT and teaching children

In teaching the Old Testament to children in the 7-15 age range I have myself in the past emphasised the drama and action of the narratives. They are really well told stories and they make for good reading - and frankly, anything to get kids to read the Bible will do.

But I have noticed a tendency to glorify the gory aspects of it, or, to make them cartoonish so that kids will find them appealing in some way.
As an ad for one Bible for boys puts it:
Finally, a Bible just for boys! Discover gross and gory Bible stuff...

Shouldn't we be teaching our kids to be troubled by the destruction of Jericho and Ai? The terrible fate of household of Achan? The highly symbolic violence of the book of Judges? And so on? Not that these should be edited, or seen as in some way compromising the character of God, but it just troubles me that we teach these texts as if they are Itchy and Scratchy cartoons ...

The Mission of God IV

[Caveat: I am responding to the book as I go rather than producing a well-thought response. Things may annoy me now that won't when I see the whole vision of the book.]

Mission that claims the high spiritual ground of preaching only [sic!] a gospel of personal forgiveness and salvation without the radical challenge of the full biblical demands of God's justices and compassion, without a hunger and thirst for justice, may well expose those who respond to its partial truths to the same dangerous verdict....if faith without works is dead, mission without social compassion and justice is biblically deficient. p. 288

Yes, yes, yes: but it is the conceptual looseness that confuses me here. Is social action part of 'mission'? (Actually, I have a problem with the term 'social action' anyway). Or is social action the result of mission? Or is social action mission? The false dichotomies and straw men don't help. He is attacking nameless opponents: do they exist? Who knows? As he says:

There may be an element of caricature in the way I have sketched this view, but it is not unrepresentative of a certain brand of popular mission rhetoric. p. 280

This is frankly annoying. We are in the middle of what purports to be a scholarly work and what we get is hearsay and gossip! Come on, Chris! I am not interested in whether you can show up a 'certain brand of popular etc.' Who cares? Find a serious thinker who would oppose you and show where THEY are wrong and that your argument is stronger.

In this section, where Wright starts to use the OT to draw ethical implications for Christians today, I start to scratch my head, as I did with his OT Ethics book. It just seems so arbitrarily done, or done with so little reference to the distinctive character of the Church qua Church and Israel qua Israel. Unless you are quite ruthlessly and unbiblically supercessionist, you can't just say that the Church adopts the habits and marks of Israel except in a carefully qualified way. I remain to be convinced as to whether the qualifications have been made here. But I have a long way to read!
Is the Jubilee such a prominent theme that it warrants a whole chapter? Also: I will be very interested to see what he does with the wars of conquest. Mission in OT perspective was carried out by means of the sword! (no index entries under 'Conquest' or 'War' I note)...

Idolatry and Fertility

The worship of the fertility gods and goddesses expressed through idol worship draws attention to created objects themselves.

Could we say that is the attempt to make the divine immanent through made objects that is (partly) the problem with idolatry? It is not accidental surely that worship of the pagan deities (as portrayed by the OT) is worship of the fertility/agricultural deities is it?

Ricoeur on Narrative Theology

Harris Manchester College, Oxford.

At the end of his article 'Biblical Time' Ricoeur, asserting that the strands of the OT combine to produce a very complex notion of 'time', critiques the proposal for a kind of narrative theology:

...the project of a merely narrative theology is a chimera. What it fundamentally fails to understand is first the primitive overlapping of narrative and law in the Torah, then the dialectic between the whole of tradition as prescriptive as well as narrative with prophecy and its eschatological indication. Next, a simple narrative theology misses the deepening of the transitory character of historical accomplishments through the immemorial time of wisdom, and, finally, and most important of all, the powerful recapitulation of all these figures of time in the 'today' of the hymn.'

See, the bible is not just a narrative: it's a musical. At one and the same time, you have a particular history, and a universal history of the world; you have action and commentary on that action; you have the past sung into the present, and the future promised. He's spot on, but I can't help feeling that Reformers knew this already. Certainly, my old teacher Graeme Goldsworthy has been saying this for years. Still it is nice to have someone with Ricoeur's street cred saying the same thing.

Goldingay and the OT

I have been reading John Goldingay's Old Testament Theology: Israel's Gospel which is the first of three volumes in a planned OT Theology. To my mind, every Christian theologian of whatever stripe ought to at least have OT theology as a hobby - bearing in mind that OT Theologies as such have only been written in the last century or so. And 'OT theology' is a far more fruitful and interesting approach to the OT than reading commentaries on individual books. For one thing, it shows just what a complex - and rich - entity the Hebrew scriptures are.

Anyhow, Goldingay writes a very interesting appendix to his first volume, on the matter of history and criticism. As he puts it:

Modern historical study has presupposed that we are in a better position to determine where the facts lie than the authors of premodern narratives were, as well as having the motivation to do that. The trouble is that the resuts of a historical approach to the First Testament narratives are disappointing... First, in the 2000s we know much less than we knew in 1900 or 1950 about the origin of most of the narratives. p. 866

Speculation, as Goldingay shows, has repeatedly become confident assertion in one generation only to be exposed and overthrown in the next. And the real business - of asking 'what are these texts actually saying?' becomes further obscured. Gerhard von Rad's work is an interesting example: I find his interpretations and insights almost always fascinating and helpful and he writes with rare power. But you have to pass over or take with some grains of salt his source-critical and historical material which has not stood the test of time.

Show no mercy...?

Moses says to Israel:

Deuteronomy 7:1-2 "When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than yourselves, 2 and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.

What can a biblical Christian make of this? The word of God, or the word of Man?