Introduction<\/p>\n
BIBLICAL STORY AND LITERARY CRITIC<\/p>\n
It is my belief that much Old Testament narrative belongs naturally to the life-sphere of art and entertainment and that to approach this material as a literary critic might an epic poem, a novel or a play, can be helpful to the modern reader. Well to say that is hardly to break new ground. So let me say a little more in the hope of being useful, at least in giving some indication of how I wish to approach the subject of this book.
\nSo many Old Testament stories seem to me to embody a desire to capture and hold an audience, through the creation of tension and relief, the provoking of laughter and tears, the moulding of thoughts and words into soothing, startling, pleasing or simply decorous shapes. Ask the \u201cman in the street\u201d what he knows of the Old Testament and chances are that high on the list (which will probably be a short one!) will come some of the best narratives\u2014of Jacob and Joseph, Moses and David. If many Old Testament stories began life as entertainment so too have they sustained life as entertainment.
\nBut, as we all know, there is entertainment and entertainment. So I borrow the term \u201cserious\u201d from Matthew Arnold who once spoke of the artistry of the finest poets in terms of its \u201chigh seriousness\u201d. \u201cSerious\u201d entertainment (be it comic or tragic or whatever) grips one and challenges one to self- or social-reassessment. It has (to risk another phrase) a moral dimension. This I believe to be true of the Old Testament. My concern in this present book, then, is with a particular narrative, the story of King Saul, as literary entertainment of high seriousness, of moral probity. An appropriate mode of analysis might therefore involve more than \u201caesthetics\u201d but be concerned with discrimination and evaluation at both aesthetic and moral levels.
\nObviously one of the dimensions of seriousness in Old Testament narrative is likely to be a theological dimension. It is not the only such dimension but it is an important one and clearly it is of major concern to many readers and most commentators. Nevertheless, it is helpful in discussing such literature to bear in mind that if the \u201ctheological\u201d aspect indicates the \u201cseriousness\u201d of the literature, the story also embodies principles of aesthetics and enjoyment. In Old Testament studies critics have (in my view) sometimes too readily viewed these stories as simply prescriptive of a particular kind of seriousness\u2014theological, political, historical\u2014and, just because they are fundamentally only interested in prescriptions, read a drastically simplistic \u201cmessage\u201d or \u201cpurpose\u201d from the narrative. Some serious entertainment does offer simple categories of \u201ccomment\u201d and succeeds in doing so; more often it deals in complexity and ambiguity. Literature that reads like a theological tract or a political pamphlet has generally a short life as entertainment. The critic whose primary interest is in the theological or political-historical dimensions of an Old Testament story might usefully take due cognizance of the aesthetic\/entertainment dimension of a narrative and consider whether in reading off prescriptions he or she is not unduly ironing out the enlivening ambiguities or \u201copenness\u201d of the text.
\nBut before I can start my own exploration of the Saul story there are one or two preliminary questions to be dealt with briefly.
\nFor a start, what is my text? It is a section of narrative from within the books of Samuel. But is it a proper \u201cunit\u201d? Yes, depending on how one defines the term \u201cunit\u201d. Old Testament scholars have become accustomed to see \u201cunits\u201d in terms of the \u201csources\u201d, \u201ctraditions\u201d or \u201cliterary forms\u201d which were drawn upon by authors\/editors in the making of a biblical book. It is not the only way of usefully defining a literary unit in a biblical book. That depends on what the critic is setting out to do. I have written elsewhere (1978) on what I like to call the \u201cStory of King David\u201d, arguing that what I am interpreting is substantially a self-contained \u201coriginal\u201d unit of material which has been incorporated, more or less as it stands, into its present context in the books of Samuel and Kings. Well and good, as long as the reader is prepared to accept my definition of what constitutes the original boundaries of the story, a matter which is far from being beyond dispute. On the other hand, in what I wish to say here about the story of King Saul\u2014partly because I do not believe that anyone has succeeded in delineating the constituent sources of 1 Samuel and partly because I happen to be interested this time in the \u201cfinal form\u201d of the text\u2014I shall take as my focus of attention the narrative about Saul as it stands and not attempt to establish the relationship of this narrative to its putative sources. To be sure, I am imposing my own precise boundaries (beginning and end) on the text. That is to say, I am defining the literary unit without claiming that it necessarily once had a distinct life of its own in precisely that form. But I would argue that these boundaries are not entirely arbitrary; on the contrary, the resultant text could be shown (a) to conform to various conventions of story-telling (with, for example, situation, complication, resolution and aftermath), (b) to display internal coherence, and (c) to be amenable to an empirical test of what might constitute the \u201cstory of Saul\u201d (namely, try it on your friends!).
\nLet me clarify: I am not suggesting that questions of constituent sources, redactional alterations, etc., are in principle of no value. If we wish to know something of the history of a text and perhaps something of the history of the ideas and thought-forms which are incorporated in it, then they are obviously indispensable. When it comes, however, to reading the text in the form in which we have it now, seeking an integrated interpretation, it is not surprising to find such discussion to be often of relatively little assistance. Unless the compilation of the material has been made purely mechanically, or redactional material inserted that is totally out of sympathy with the \u201cbasic\u201d material, then it is likely that there will be an overall flow and coherence in the final product\u2014and this is what I have found in looking closely at the Saul story.
\nThe only significant difficulty with the plot lies in the abrupt juxtaposition of the two stories of David\u2019s introduction to court (1 Samuel 16 and 17), though in practice this \u201cgap\u201d can be bridged with merely the smallest suspension of disbelief. As for difficulties at the level of \u201cmeaning\u201d in the sense of \u201cmessage\u201d or \u201cvalues\u201d, my assessment is that where redaction critics (that is, critics concerned with the contributions of editors, \u201credactors\u201d) discern the hand of DtrN, DtrP or whoever, the passage in question may usually be seen to underline or strengthen an already existing element in the (postulated) basic story-material\u2014for example, David\u2019s restraint and freedom from bloodguilt, Jonathan\u2019s acquiescence in David\u2019s rise to kingship, a less than fawning attitude to the monarchy, or an interest in the authority of the prophetic word. In a sense, then, these touches of \u201cpropaganda\u201d (if that is what they are, originally) are digested and become part of the story as a whole.
\nThat is not to say that there are not tensions within the narrative. On the contrary, it is the presence of genuinely competing perspectives or value-systems that makes literature most challenging, and this, as far as I am concerned, is certainly the case with the Saul story. In speaking of \u201cflow\u201d and \u201ccoherence\u201d I am simply claiming that these tensions, some of which may be due to redaction, are subsumed (which does not necessarily mean eliminated) in a complex but artistically satisfying whole. That this is the case with the Saul material is, of course, an assertion inviting critical demonstration\u2014which is what the rest of the book is about.
\nPerhaps a more difficult theoretical matter for the \u201cfinal-form\u201d critic concerns the story\u2019s matrix. In what I shall say here about the story of Saul I shall largely leave out of consideration its relation to the books of Samuel as a whole as well as to the larger \u201cDeuteronomistic History\u201d (Deuteronomy to 2 Kings) which scholars posit as a single and coherent unit (drawn from many \u201csources\u201d) of which our story is but a small part. In this respect my discussion is, in principle, deficient. Perhaps an overview of the greater unit would push into the background certain elements which I find to be prominent and vice versa. My defence is that variety is the spice of life. Just as different methodological starting points can only enhance our view of the nature and function of the Bible, so in considering a large work, using broadly a single method, it can be valuable to employ different starting points\u2014moving from smaller constituent units (many of which may overlap) to the larger entity and vice versa.
\nBut the difficulty does not end here. By talking of the \u201cDeuteronomistic History\u201d I invite the question, Just whose narrative precisely is it that you are writing about? When you write about the meaning of the text are you specifying some particular author\u2019s intention? To these questions I have no easy answers. The problem of authorial intentionality is complicated enough with literature where the author is known. With Old Testament narrative it is vastly more complicated by the facts (a) that most ascriptions of particular authorship, as well as of date and circumstances of composition, are heavily notional and (b) that most narrative (the Saul story is clearly a case in point) is the product of composite authorship. One cannot simply speak of the author being the last redactor since the last redactor may not have been the last substantial redactor (and is a redactor really the same as an author?)\u2014and so the difficulties multiply.
\nMy own response to the question lies in the direction of minimizing talk of particular authorial intentionality and of conceiving authorship in broader terms, thinking of the author as a kind of super-ego, if you like, linked to all who have left their mark on the story. If indeed our text has a rich redactional history (howbeit untraceable in detail), then what I see as its coherence is the product of a process of interaction between, on the one hand, the stuff of the story (not only elements of plot and character but insights and values already resident in it at any given stage of redaction or compilation) and, on the other hand, those who have grappled with it (the author[s], redactors, etc.). Their contributions have shaped the story. The story has shaped their contributions. When I find subtlety in this story it is not necessarily the deliberate contrivance of a master narrator that I am exposing, though that may also be the case; rather it may be a subtlety created unconsciously in the dialectical process by which the story is created, a subtlety which is the logical resolution of the variously nuanced contributions and not a property of the contributions themselves.
\nThus I think it important that the story may be thought of as having a certain life of its own\u2014a universality of discourse\u2014which can be probed and appropriated independently of particular author and\/or intention. It is some such underlying assumption of universality that has allowed these texts to continue to have a life as serious entertainment up to the present day, and I would suggest that some such assumption needs to go on being made if the texts are to have an existential function in the future.
\nInevitably such talk will prompt accusations of \u201csubjectivity\u201d, as though subjectivity were not a major matter to be reckoned with in the proliferating hypotheses of sources, tradition-history, authorship and socio-historical context. Perhaps what is at issue here is more fundamental than an argument over precise method. Rather it concerns one\u2019s understanding of one\u2019s role as critic. Many Old Testament scholars have liked to seek and find for their work a model in the physical sciences. There is also room, I believe, for an unashamed assertion of humanism in our discipline\u2014for a view of the critic as one whose most important task is to discriminate between, and mediate, aesthetic and moral values.
\nThis is heady talk and it is tempting to indulge it further. But while recognizing that it is important for a critic to have thought through some of the main theoretical implications of his or her approach I am not persuaded that every scholar needs to be a philosopher of method. That is a valuable role for some to assume, but there is a danger that when the commonality of critics (in which I include myself) is absorbed by the deep puzzlements of \u201cmethodology\u201d all too little actual criticism (interpretation, exegesis, or what you will) of the text gets done.
\nPerhaps something of my hesitation to theorize derives from my experience (a good many years ago) as a student reading English Literature. As the end of the course approached I grew increasingly restless over precisely this question: what was it that we were really doing as \u201ccritics\u201d of literature? It was the one subject no one talked about. How one performed as critic, yes, but not the fundamental \u201chermeneutical\u201d question. My moment came with an option in the final year: I (and two others) took a course on the History and Theory of Criticism; the other forty or so in the class took some more exotic option (Australian literature, it was, I believe). It was a good course, fascinating, but frustrating. Alas, Aristotle and Longinus, Sidney and Johnson (etc., etc.) all had insights but none seemed to have any truly satisfactory answer that served for now as well as for then. Frustrating, but in time illuminating; for it allowed me to see that in the last analysis it was the critical practice that counted. It is not the theory of criticism that I look back on with gratitude but the critical essays of Empson and Leavis (amongst others) and of Johnson, for that matter.
\nBound up with this point about criticism is another which is encapsulated for me in another experience (not such a number of years ago) when I was quizzed on a \u201cliterary\u201d essay which I had written on an Old Testament text. My interlocutor was puzzled by the essay, understandably as I see it now, inasmuch as it offered an interpretation but not the usual massive sets of \u201cevidence\u201d or \u201cargument\u201d so familiar in the products of Old Testament studies. How had I gone about the analysis? Where was my \u201cworking\u201d, my \u201csifting of evidence\u201d? Had I tried other themes (other than the one I was exploring in the essay)? How had I settled on this one? He seemed only to want to know how I arrived at my interpretation; I wanted to know whether he found it stimulating or not! Again a somewhat teasing experience but a profitable one.
\nMy answer to such questioning is, Yes, you see the outcome of a lot of \u201ctrying on for size\u201d, using various time-honoured techniques but also relying a good deal on intuition at various points in the process. One isolates certain \u201cprima facie\u201d lines of interpretation and then tests how they fit the text, through and through, modifying, modifying and modifying (and often abandoning!). To set out all such working can be to kill off the essay\u2014to no advantage. For the acid test is whether the interpretation is \u201cworkable\u201d\u2014does it illuminate the text? Does it stay with a reader on subsequent readings of the text?
\nIt may be that other critics will proffer (or have proffered already) more convincing interpretations\u2014interpretations which are more consistent, coherent, which throw more light on larger areas of the text, which account more smoothly for more difficulties in the text (and so on)\u2014in which case one\u2019s own interpretation will wither away and be discarded. But it may be that it will be found to gel with other interpretations or to go on vying with them\u2014for there is no reason to suppose that there is a single answer to the question, What does this story mean? If an interpretation enjoys some measure of tenacity, however small, in the reader\u2019s view, then the critic\u2019s endeavour has been worthwhile.
\nLet me now come more directly to our story.
\nFor purposes of defining the boundaries let me simply assume the beginning of the story with the appearance of Saul (chapter 9) and the end with his death (chapter 31). But the issue of the kingship is so strong in the opening episodes that I see it as essential to include chapter 8 as a prologue, and equally the story of the burial of Saul and the crowning of David as king in Hebron seems to be a fitting epilogue even if the climax of the story has been reached with Saul\u2019s death on Gilboa (the anti-climactic aftermath is familiar in traditional stories). The plot then is relatively straightforward. A king is asked for (\u0161\u0101\u2019\u00fbl), promised and chosen in the person of Saul. Saul proves his worth in battle (chapter 11). But there is a complication\u2014in the eyes of the god, Yahweh, and his prophet, Samuel, the king is only king on sufferance. He is still on trial (chapter 12), and indeed he fails the subsequent tests (chapters 13 and 15). His successor, David, is chosen by Yahweh and the remainder of the story depicts Saul\u2019s vain struggle for self-preservation by striving to check David\u2019s rising fortune. A major sub-plot concerns the king\u2019s betrayal by his own family, culminating in Jonathan\u2019s abdication as heir to the throne. Finally Saul\u2019s death resolves the plot by opening the way for David, without having used violence against Saul, to succeed to the throne.
\nCommentators on the material which comprises our story of Saul are not slow to recognize in it serious theological interests. While differing purposes are postulated of different sources (for example, pro- or anti-monarchic), usually an account of the story is spelt out along the following lines. The story of Saul is really subordinate to that of David\u2019s rise. The interest lies in justifying David as the legitimate king of Israel, that is, sanctioned by Yahweh. Saul is essentially a foil to David. Chosen by Yahweh and endowed with his spirit, Saul nevertheless fails to measure up to the strict standards of obedience to God (through his prophet) demanded of one who is to be king over the people of God. The spirit departs from him and is given to David who is depicted as the model of the true king.
\nThere are other dimensions to this story, however, which are perhaps less often explored. D. H. Lawrence, in his play David, has Saul say, \u201cI am a man given over to trouble and tossed between two winds\u201d. Adam Welch, some years ago, wrote of Saul as \u201ca man wrestling with fate and with the dark powers which hem in every man\u2019s destiny, which limit him at every point in his effort to reach the thing he has set before him\u201d. Both writers (and others have made similar points) see Saul as subject to forces beyond his control. On this reading, then, Saul\u2019s failure as king is not simply a matter of obedience or disobedience; nor is the story presented in simple categories of right and wrong, good and evil. Yahweh, in Welch\u2019s phrase, is a \u201cdark power\u201d.
\nThe following essay is the product of explorations prompted by a growing awareness of these other dimensions.<\/p>\n
Part One
\nSETTING THE SCENE<\/p>\n
Since I love him it must be my fate, it must be my destiny.
\nMasha<\/p>\n
But I\u2019ve made up my mind. If I can\u2019t go to Moscow, well, I can\u2019t, and that\u2019s that. It\u2019s just the way things have turned out. It can\u2019t be helped, it\u2019s all God\u2019s will and that\u2019s the truth.
\nIrina<\/p>\n
If we could only know! If we could only know!
\nOlga
\nChekhov, The Three Sisters<\/p>\n
Chapter One<\/p>\n
SIN AND TRAGEDY<\/p>\n
Saul\u2019s reputation has been hardly an enviable one, at least in Christian circles. While Jewish tradition has treated this first king of Israel with some sympathy, Christian tradition has shown him a large measure of hostility.
\nPerhaps one of the roots of such hostility lies in the fact that for many early commentators David is seen as both the progenitor of Christ \u201cin the flesh\u201d and the \u201ctype\u201d of Christ in terms of his spiritual significance. In a sense, therefore, Saul who persecuted David, persecuted also Christ. Augustine (fourth\/fifth century), for example, in his commentary on Psalm 56 sees Saul in his hostility to David as representing the Jews who sought the death of Jesus. For Nicholas of Lyra (twelfth\/thirteenth century) Saul is, moreover, the figure of Satan (\u201cnot merely as an empty figure of Satan but his instrument at a certain moment on earth\u201d), a type of the persecutor of the Church\u2014in particular of the Roman emperors, Diocletian and Maximianus\u2014and represented, on a moral plane, the \u201cworld\u201d (from which David sought to escape) as opposed to the \u201cundiluted goodness of God\u201d. Among the Reformers of the sixteenth century Saul is pictured, in contrast to David, as \u201ctied to the law\u201d and, in political theology is persistently exampled as the type of the tyrant\/king\/magistrate who persecutes true religion and faithful pastors. Thus for Beza, Saul represented the impure and corrupt Valois monarchy and readily provided a parallel to contemporary persecution of religious minorities (through, for example, the story of the massacre of the priests at Nob; cf. Psalm 52).
\nComing closer to our own time (say the last two hundred years), we can see the same negative evaluation in (Christian) commentator after commentator, particularly in writings with a homiletical or devotional purpose. The story of Saul is to be read as a salutory warning, a lesson about sin and failure. Let us not be like Saul, is the concluding prayer.
\nIn one tradition Saul is utterly to be abhorred (Robinson, 34, 64):<\/p>\n
Awful as the case is, there are not a few, who, to our apprehensions, begin in the Spirit, and end in the flesh. Such was Saul. Let his example be improved as a solemn warning to all, to beware of dissimulation.\u2026 We wonder not at any the most execrable wickedness, which one, given up to final impenitence, may perpetrate. \u201cLord, what is man?\u201d What enormities is he capable of committing? From the examples of some obdurate sinners, we perceive, what we ourselves might have been or may still be, if the grace of God prevent not. Let us learn, then, under a sense of our entire depravity, to pray, \u201cHold thou me up, and I shall be safe: and I will have respect unto thy statutes continually\u201d.<\/p>\n
The best that can be said of him is that he directs our view to one who is greatly to be emulated (Ridout, 3):<\/p>\n
The subject in one sense is a depressing one, and the proper effect should be to turn us from the contemplation of the man after the flesh [Saul] to the man after God\u2019s own heart, David, who \u2026 shows the contrast between faith and nature. As a type of Christ, he is the antidote to the baleful example and influence of poor Saul.<\/p>\n
Another tradition of exposition condemns yet finds more room for sympathy. While the lesson of Saul\u2019s failure retains a central position, it does not wholly displace all hint of identification between the expositor and the failed king (Hastings, 73):<\/p>\n
It is hard to blame Saul for failing in the test which the prophet imposed on him [1 Sam 13], when he persistently delayed till the end of seven days. A severer trial would not have been devised for a man with military instincts, who had to watch the opportunity slipping away before his eyes. And Saul nearly stood the test.\u2026 There was some excuse, considerable temptation, no slight admixture of better motives, some superstition, some sense of the necessity of God\u2019s help, much neglect of God\u2019s directions as to the proper way of securing it. Saul showed that he could not wait for God in absolute faith that He would not fail or deceive. He was careful to maintain an outward rite, but the spirit of devotion and faith was altogether wanting.\u2026 He owns to having forced his conscience; he acted against the inward warning; he resisted the Spirit of God; he preferred his own thoughts to the express command of the prophet; he had light and he chose darkness, because his heart was not with God.<\/p>\n
Echoes of such exposition are not difficult to find among modern \u201ccritical\u201d commentators, even where the style of exposition is less directly homiletic. Hertzberg\u2019s account of the \u201cfinal compilation\u201d of Saul materials (by a \u201cdeuteronomistic compiler\u201d) concludes (p. 133):<\/p>\n
[Saul] is the anointed; he is loved by many, even by his opponent Samuel, he is pious in the extreme, brave yet modest, without doubt a man of the stuff of which kings are made. But despite his zeal for Yahweh, he appears, in fact, more as the king which other nations have than as the instrument of Yahweh, which the king over the people of God must be. This is the view of ch. 15, and it is the view which the final compiler appropriated and made his own. Here he saw the outcome correctly. Saul is the inauguration of the kingdom. But the king set over the people of God must be a man of God\u2019s grace, called by him and a real instrument in his hand. This Saul is not. To this extent, the history of the beginning of the kingdom at the same time also ponders the theological evaluation of the kingdom in Israel. Only the man \u201con whom the spirit of the Lord shall rest\u201d (Isa. 11:2) can really be the king of Israel. The first king is like a sign pointing toward the true kingly office, but at the same time also a sign showing that the man who holds this office can come to grief in it. Only he who allows God to be wholly king, and who is therefore himself completely obedient, can be king over the people of God. The first king is measured strictly by this standard and cannot come up to it. But he remains the anointed one nevertheless, and continues to bear the insignia of the kingship which have been handed to him; even as rejected king he remains king, the first of the line at the end of which stands the One who alone was completely obedient.<\/p>\n
Though the commentator has retained a certain \u201chistorical\u201d perspective here\u2014the evaluation of Saul is couched in terms of the final (\u201cdeuteronomistic\u201d) compiler\u2019s assessment of what is demanded by kingship\u2014there is never any significant distance between Hertzberg\u2019s description of the compiler\u2019s evaluation and his assent to it together with his urging of it upon his reader as a standard which applies to people in general and not just to Israelite kings. This is evident not only from the value judgement at the beginning of the passage (\u201cHere he saw the outcome correctly\u201d), but also from the final sentence which suggests that the story has its ultimate meaning only within the framework of a Christian doctrine of the nature and significance of Jesus the messiah (\u201canointed king\u201d). Clearly, for Hertzberg, as for Ridout, Saul functions negatively, as a paradigm, an example of failure to respond properly to the demands of God, and positively, as a pointer towards a model of obedient response, of a proper relationship with God.
\nStill, there is more to Hertzberg\u2019s evaluation than this. For, like many before him (as in the extract from Hastings, above, and, as already remarked, more noticeably so in Jewish tradition), he is prepared to recognize, indeed to paint in strong colours, some positive qualities in Saul: \u201che is pious in the extreme, brave yet modest, without doubt a man of the stuff of which kings are made\u201d. These are stirring words. What function do they have in Hertzberg\u2019s evaluation of the king? On the one hand, of course, they make the theological point about Saul\u2019s failure so much the sharper. Saul was all these things yet he did not measure up to the demands of God\u2014for in themselves these things were insufficient. On the other hand, such praise of Saul softens the judgement; no man like this can have been a total failure. Saul demands our sympathy. Thus it is not altogether surprising that Hertzberg\u2019s closing comments on the story of Saul (p. 234) include a description of Saul\u2019s life as \u201ca life full of tragic greatness\u201d.
\nSaul is a model of human failure; he is also a figure of tragedy, a figure who prompts sorrow. Accounts of the story of Saul in such terms are many. For present purposes let me instance just a few. The first is from Hastings (p. 63):<\/p>\n
It is one of the many signs of the reality and truthfulness of Scripture history, that the examples most held up for our warning are not those of the worst men, but those of persons in whom there has been a doubtful conflict between good and evil, and the evil has ultimately prevailed; or of men who, having been placed in the midst of high privileges and responsibilities, have fallen back on their ordinary characters and natural enjoyments, and despised their loftier calling. To the latter of these classes belongs Esau, whose character is referred to in the Epistle to the Hebrews for our avoidance; to the former belongs Saul, the first king of Israel. As if to throw a stronger light on the character of the unhappy Saul by comparison or contrast, the Scriptures present him along with Samuel, the man of prayer, with David, the man after God\u2019s own heart, with his son Jonathan, so lovely yet so truly great. Saul might have prayed like Samuel, might have waited upon God as David did, might have loved with largeness of heart like Jonathan. But his story is the story of the downward progress of the soul; his life is a succession of gradual changes, and in his successive trials evil prevails over the spirit of grace and opportunities of good. As a day that begins with sunshine and then clouds over gloomily and at last closes with a storm, so is the life of Saul. He is the most tragic character in the Old Testament records; historically tragic in the solitary awfulness of his might and the unutterable pathos of his fall; yet more ethically tragic, a soul of noblest endowments and highest aspirations struggling against and overborne by surroundings, duties, claims, to which his nature was unequal. It is the theme of the old Greek tragedians; they lay it on an irresistible, cruel, overruling Fate. It is the theme of Shakespeare; he bares the springs of moral and mental weakness causing it. It is the theme of the Hebrew historian; he sees in it the contest between a good and evil spirit from the Lord.<\/p>\n
This is an interesting passage, for its simple exposition of these two ingredients in the evaluation of the story of Saul\u2014exemplary failure and tragedy\u2014also conveniently exposes some difficulties with the evaluation itself. Central to the tradition of viewing Saul as a model of failure is, of course, an account of his weakness or sin. This is perhaps most often spoken of in terms of his \u201cdisobedience\u201d although there have been many ways of exploring in detail this \u201cfault\u201d (as we shall see shortly). My point here is that such an interpretation of the Saul story is congenial to one particular kind of tragedy, that in which the tragic hero is depicted as \u201cflawed\u201d in some way\u2014the kind of tragedy which Hastings, rightly or wrongly, typifies as Shakespearian, where the author \u201cbares the springs of moral and mental weakness causing [the hero\u2019s fall]\u201d. On the other hand, we might wonder what place \u201ccharacter flaw\u201d has in a drama where the hero\u2019s fall is due to \u201can irresistible, cruel, overruling Fate\u201d? Hastings speaks in this connection of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Is Oedipus (in Sophocles\u2019 play) to be condemned for his behaviour, held up as an exemplar of moral or religious failure? On most readings of the play I should have thought that the answer was \u201cno\u201d. The tragedy of Oedipus is what we might call a tragedy of Fate rather than a tragedy of Flaw. The question then is, what sort of a tragedy is the tragedy of King Saul? Curiously Hastings, whether intentionally or not, seems to suggest that it is a tragedy of Fate, for the Hebrew author, he says, sees the hero\u2019s fall in terms of a \u201ccontest between a good and evil spirit from the Lord\u201d. That is to say, it is the god (Fate?) who controls the forces which dictate the hero\u2019s fortunes. Such is Gloster\u2019s view of the tragic experience:<\/p>\n
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, They kill us for their sport. [King Lear, IV, ii]<\/p>\n
The same tension\u2014between the interpretation which sees the hero as flawed and thus creating his own fate, and that which sees him in the grip of forces or circumstances beyond his control\u2014is apparent in my second example of a \u201ctragic\u201d interpretation. Von Rad observes (1965: 324f.) that<\/p>\n
to faith [Saul\u2019s] supreme interest was as the anointed who slipped from Jahweh\u2019s hand, the one quitting the stage, and yielding to him who was coming; that is, Saul as the God-forsaken, driven from one delusion to the other, desperate, and in the end swallowed up in miserable darkness. Right to the end the stories follow the unhappy king on his way with a deep human sympathy, and unfold a tragedy which in its final act rises to solemn grandeur. Actually, Israel never again gave birth to a poetic [i.e. literary] production which in certain of its features has such close affinity with the spirit of Greek tragedy. However convinced the story-tellers are of Saul\u2019s guilt, still there is at the same time something supra-personal in the way in which he became guilty\u2014it is the fate which overtakes the one from whom God had turned away.\u2026 Of course, Saul was not in the power of a dark destiny, nor had he overreached himself in hybris. He was called to be a special tool of the will of Jahweh in history, for it was through him that Jahweh wanted to give effect to his plan to save Israel (1 Sam. 9:16). On this task he came to disaster.<\/p>\n
There is unresolved tension in this analysis too. Von Rad wants to assert Saul\u2019s \u201cguilt\u201d, yet he cannot but admit that \u201cthere is \u2026 something supra-personal in the way in which he became guilty\u201d. The passage is full of phrases which indicate a reading of the \u201cfailure\u201d as beyond Saul\u2019s control: Saul is the \u201cGod-forsaken\u201d and the fate which \u201covertakes\u201d him follows from the fact that \u201cGod had turned away\u201d; he is \u201cdriven\u201d from one delusion to another\u2014by whom?, we want to ask. Perhaps realizing the fragility of his position von Rad hastens to back away from this interesting parallel with Greek tragedy by denying any essential similarity between the causes of Saul\u2019s downfall and those typical of Greek tragic heroes\u2014\u201cof course\u201d Saul\u2019s sin is not \u201chybris\u201d (man over-reaching himself, overweaning ambition), nor is he in the power of some dark destiny (cf. Hastings!). Yet what then is this \u201csupra-personal\u201d dimension to \u201cthe way in which he became guilty\u201d? Given the limited number of characters in the story can this be anything other than some dimension of God? I find it fascinating that von Rad moves directly from denying that Saul was in the grip of a dark power to affirming that he was, rather, \u201ccalled to be a special tool of the will of Jahweh\u201d. A tool of Yahweh? A \u201csupra-personal\u201d dimension to his \u201cguilt\u201d? The clear implication seems to be that in some way this is a tragedy of Fate and that the supra-personal agency with the hero in its grip is none other than God (Yahweh). But although this is the logical implication of his analysis von Rad will not allow that on this reading perhaps the \u201cblame\u201d for Saul\u2019s fall cannot be pinned upon Saul himself but must lie ultimately with God. In that case might we not affirm rather than deny that Saul is depicted as being in the power of a \u201cdark destiny\u201d? For again the logic of this analysis of the story as a tragedy of Fate, is that in this context Yahweh functions as Fate itself, as the \u201cdark destiny\u201d which holds sway over the king.
\nThe same tension, between fate and flaw, can be met frequently in exposition of the King Saul story as tragedy. Our final example is in two brief extracts (pp. 78f.) from Welch\u2019s fine essay on Saul:<\/p>\n
And Saul went down to meet his end, a great soul face to face with a ravelled world who refuses to turn his back on what he has taken upon him, but also a great soul with a fatal defect in his nature, not quite big enough to do the thing which his time demanded from its leader, but doing all which it was left possible for him to do.<\/p>\n
But here is a man, all a man, wrestling with fate and with the dark powers which hem in every man\u2019s destiny, which limit him at every point in his effort to reach the thing he has set before him.<\/p>\n
Again we have, set out with clarity, both elements in the analysis\u2014the tragic flaw and the hostility of fate. Again we may ask, so what ultimately is the cause of Saul\u2019s fall? Is it \u201cflaw\u201d or is it the machinations of these \u201cdark powers\u201d? If, as the commentators wish to assert, it is somehow both (von Rad: \u201cHowever convinced the story-tellers are of Saul\u2019s guilt, still there is at the same time something supra-personal in the way in which he became guilty\u201d), then clearly there is need for some explanation of the \u201csomehow\u201d, a need to look more closely at the alleged \u201ccauses\u201d and to clarify how they stand in relation to each other. Any moral or theological evaluation of the story must hinge on this question of the cause or causes of the fall; for if the sole or primary cause is Saul\u2019s own weakness then obviously he may properly be deemed culpable (and so provide a fitting exemplar of moral or religious failure), but if some dimension of Fate (Yahweh?) is primary, so much the less may Saul be deemed blameworthy, whatever his character defects, and so much the more must the motivation (and so nature of God as he appears in the story), be opened to question.
\nLogically speaking the tragedy of Fate and the tragedy of the character flaw are incompatible. Aesthetically speaking they are not, as may be observed in practice. Scott Fitzgerald once observed that an artist is one who can hold two irreconcilable views together and still function, and I would suggest that this is not a bad definition of the thought-world of many a work of art. Shakespeare\u2019s Macbeth has, as we shall later observe, some interesting points in common with the story of King Saul, and, while not prejudicing whether this is one of them, it may be noted here that it is a play which contains elements of both tragic causes: it is common to ascribe Macbeth\u2019s fall to his fatal flaw, ambition; but I have also seen a most convincing production in the \u201cGreek\u201d style, with Macbeth from the beginning in the grip of a Fate which manifests itself and controls him, at the most obvious level, through the witches. It is in the nature of much literature of high seriousness to thrive on an ambiguity which challenges the reader to wrestle with the meaning and which reflects the ambiguity of life. With that sobering thought in mind I do not pretend that we shall find any definitive answers to our question about these key elements in any interpretation of the story of Saul. But perhaps we can hope to see some of the possibilities of interpretation more clearly.<\/p>\n
Chapter Two<\/p>\n
SAUL\u2019S FAILURE: 1 SAMUEL 13<\/p>\n
The formal rejection of Saul by God takes place in chapters 13 and 15. If we are to look for some weakness in Saul, some general flaw or specific sin which might be said to be the cause of his fall, these chapters seem an obvious starting point. Why did God reject Saul? At least a prima facie answer is likely to be found here. Let us start, then, with chapter 13.
\nSaul has defeated the Ammonites at Jabesh-Gilead and been confirmed in his new role as king. But the Philistines are still a threat. Provoked by Jonathan\u2019s defeat of their forces at Geba (13:3f.) the Philistines gather for a major onslaught. Saul calls up the men of Israel to Gilgal but faced with the huge Philistine army the people begin to desert him. Saul has been instructed by Samuel (10:8) to wait seven days at Gilgal until he, Samuel, should come and offer sacrifice. Having waited seven days, Saul feels constrained to offer the sacrifice himself (verses 8f.):<\/p>\n
He waited seven days, the time appointed by Samuel; but Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and the people were scattering from him. So Saul said, \u201cBring the burnt offering here to me, and the peace offerings\u201d. And he offered the burnt offering.<\/p>\n
Immediately Samuel appears and condemns him (verse 13).<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have done foolishly; you have not kept the commandment of Yahweh your God, which he commanded you\u201d.<\/p>\n
What is Saul\u2019s crime? Commentators have long been in difficulties over this question and have come up with various answers. Obviously the first step to take is to identify the commandment which Saul has broken, and this seems relatively straightforward. If it is a particular command then it is most naturally connected with Samuel\u2019s instruction to Saul in 10:8, after their first meeting and Saul\u2019s designation as future king:<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you shall go down before me to Gilgal; and behold, I am coming to you to offer burnt offerings and to sacrifice peace offerings. Seven days you shall wait, until I come to you and show you what you shall do\u201d.<\/p>\n
Here in chapter 13 we have Saul, in Gilgal, waiting seven days, \u201cthe time appointed by Samuel\u201d, and then himself, reluctantly, offering sacrifices. Samuel, as prophet, speaks the word of Yahweh; that he should speak here of his command to wait as \u201cthe commandment of Yahweh\u201d appears a natural enough transition. The alternative to taking \u201ccommandment\u201d with this particular reference is to construe it as referring to some general law which Saul has broken by himself offering the sacrifice, the most likely being a law which prohibited any but a priest from officiating at the sacrifice. Both interpretations of \u201ccommandment\u201d have had and still have their advocates, and, indeed, it is possible to argue that both are operative at once.
\nIf the commandment which was broken was the particular instruction to wait the seven days until Samuel would come to offer sacrifice then the sin was that of disobedience to the prophet, and hence to the word of Yahweh. If the commandment was a general one governing cultic practice then the sin was perhaps the fact that Saul wrongly intruded on the priestly office (taking Samuel in the role of priest as well as prophet) or, as some modern commentators speculate, in some (now unknown) way he misperformed the sacrifice that was appropriate before a \u201choly war\u201d (as these scholars designate it). A third understanding is that the instruction was itself framed to protect Saul from breaking a cultic law and so his sin was both the cultic one and disobedience to the particular command to wait for Samuel.
\nAre there any clues to a solution? Looking outside the passage, advocates of the view that Saul had broken a cultic law sometimes point to 2 Chron 26:16\u201321 where king Uzziah (Azariah) was condemned for entry into the temple to burn incense; but against this is the problem that the evidence here comes from a much later source, Chronicles, and that elsewhere in the Deuteronomistic History (in the books of Samuel and Kings) we are given no reason to suppose that there was any absolute prohibition against a king performing sacrificial rites (and cf. 1 Sam 14:33\u201335, 2 Sam 8:18, 20:26, 1 Kings 3:3). As regards \u201choly war\u201d: the notion is a problematic one and I shall look a little more closely at it in connection with chapter 15 (below, Chapter 3) where it has at least some prima facie claim to be considered a pertinent factor. In the present context let it suffice to say that if there is little enough evidence to prove that in monarchical Israel some wars were especially designated \u201choly\u201d and others not, according to some well-known institution, there is considerably less that the war spoken of in chapter 13 was so conceived in our story. Moreover, as Smith remarks (p. 98), if the rejection were a matter of Saul\u2019s usurpation of the priestly office it is strange that the narrator gives no indication whatsoever of such usurpation anywhere in the story, either here in chapter 13 or elsewhere. It is certainly difficult to sustain as the best interpretation. The reason it has been sought as an explanation is simple: commentators have been puzzled by the fact that if the commandment is taken, as in the broader context it is most readily taken, to be the instruction to wait (10:8), then on at least one reading of the close context Saul appears to have fulfilled the letter if not the spirit of the instruction\u2014he is said in verse 8 to have \u201cwaited seven days, the time appointed by Samuel\u201d, and in verse 11 he protests that \u201cyou did not come within the days appointed\u201d.
\nThe way out of the difficulty, however, is not, in my view, to seek an explanation outside the terms of the text in some unattested cultic law but to work through the information that we do have in the text. Conventionally there are two routes taken. The first is to assume that since Samuel condemns Saul, the king must not in fact have fulfilled the conditions of the instruction, despite the apparent implication of verses 8 and 11. Thus, for example, after the fashion of much Jewish exegesis David Kimchi (commentary on 13:9) explains that Saul should have waited till the night, instead of just the morning, of the seventh day; by contrast the \u201cfire and brimstone\u201d tradition of Protestant Christianity is generally reluctant to enter into such detail on the question, but, being anxious to move to more important concerns such as the condemnation of Saul and to expatiate on the king\u2019s sinful nature, simply indicate that the set time was \u201cnearly expired\u201d (Robinson, 28; Hastings, 73) or leave the whole matter of how precisely the instruction was broken decently obscure (cf. Wilberforce, 218). Nor, for that matter, do modern \u201ccritical\u201d commentators who assume the breaking of the instruction often attempt to clarify the point.
\nAnother response is to take the narrator\u2019s sentence in verse 8 and Saul\u2019s protest in verse 11 at their face value. The instruction said to wait seven days; the narrator tells us in verse 8 that Saul waited seven days; and Saul himself is depicted protesting as much in verse 11. Thus Smith (p. 98), Mauchline (p. 113f.) and Hertzberg (p. 105f.) comment, respectively:<\/p>\n
It is difficult to discover anything in the text at which Samuel could justly take offence. The original command was to wait seven days, and this Saul did. In the circumstances he might well plead that he had been too scrupulous. It would not be impertinent to ask why Samuel had waited so long before appearing.<\/p>\n
Saul seems to come well out of the incident. Samuel\u2019s riposte sounds unconvincing to us (vss. 13\u201314).\u2026 Which commandment is not specified; we may feel convinced that [Samuel\u2019s] reference is to his own instruction to Saul to wait for him (10:8), but that had been obeyed within the limit set by Samuel himself.\u2026 The impression left on the reader unquestionably is that the sentence was unfair and against the evidence.<\/p>\n
Saul \u2026 justifies his conduct in a modest and at all points irrefutable way. From the description of the affair we seem to have a vindication of Saul rather than a charge aganst him. Saul had done what was permissable for him to do according to Samuel\u2019s express instructions.\u2026 If anyone is in the wrong here it is Samuel and not Saul.<\/p>\n
What then is Saul\u2019s \u201cfault\u201d? Mauchline takes the matter no further. Smith and Hertzberg, however, have more to add.
\nHertzberg\u2014we shall come back to Smith in due course\u2014feels sure that, taking the overall picture of Saul and Samuel in the story of Saul as a whole it is the compiler\u2019s intention to show that Saul had trespassed from the beginning of his kingship. Therefore, despite the fact that the \u201cproper content of the material\u201d depicts Saul sympathetically it was felt nevertheless by the redactor to be capable of reflecting disapproval of the king. Thus Hertzberg writes (p. 106) of the passage that in it we see \u201ca manifest contradiction between the proper content of the material used and the purpose for which the compiler wanted to use it\u201d. By the compiler Saul\u2019s trespass is seen as consisting in the fact that he did not act according to the spirit of the instruction: that is, whatever the precise instruction (seven days or whatever) the important thing for one who was truly and utterly \u201cobedient\u201d would have been to wait until Samuel, the prophet of God, came to give further lead.
\nThus on this view (Hertzberg, 106),<\/p>\n
[Saul] had no patience, i.e. no faith, and allowed the disturbing situation to be the most important factor in his decision.<\/p>\n
On this view (that of Hertzberg\u2019s \u201ccompiler\u201d) the offence is less strictly disobedience than an underlying lack of faith. Blaikie (pp. 211f.) puts it more strongly:<\/p>\n
Saul was under instructions to wait seven days at Gilgal, at the end, if not before the end, of which time Samuel promised to come to him. This was a distinct instruction from Samuel, God\u2019s known and recognized prophet, acting in God\u2019s name and with a view to obtaining of God\u2019s countenance and guidance in the awful crisis of the nation.\u2026 The real offence of Saul was that he disregarded the absence of God\u2019s prophet and representative, of the man who had all along been the mediator between God and the king and between God and the people. If Saul had had a real conviction that all depended at this moment on his getting God\u2019s help \u2026 he would not have acted as if Samuel\u2019s presence was of no moment.\u2026 God was not a reality to Saul.<\/p>\n
For me the problem with Hertzberg\u2019s approach is that he is prepared too readily to abandon the impression which the passage actually leaves on him in favour of what he thinks that impression ought to be (in the light of other material in the Saul story), without reconsidering the whole picture. Since the sympathetic depiction of Saul and the problem of the hard-to-find fault will not easily go away his solution is, for all practical purposes, to ignore this passage in his reading of the Saul story. But before I take such a drastic step I should wish to explore further whether the undoubted tension exposed through this scene has an integral place in the wider story. Hertzberg dismisses his own exegesis because it does not fit with his picture of the rest of the work. I am curious to see what happens to the picture of the rest of the work if a sympathetic exegesis of Saul in this scene is allowed to be a factor in the formulation of that wider picture.
\nIn point of fact, it could be argued that if the rest of the story be considered for a moment the picture is not obviously as Hertzberg paints it. The attempt to lay at Saul\u2019s door the fault of \u201clack of faith\u201d is one that runs counter to much evidence elsewhere (in our story) of Saul as a pious man, devoted to Yahweh (as is recognized by Hertzberg himself, p. 133): he is ever anxious (perhaps overanxious) to perform his religious duties\u2014and gets himself into difficulties thereby, in chapter 14 as well as in chapter 13\u2014and, remarkably, remains throughout his life absolutely loyal in his religious commitment to Yahweh alone amongst gods. To be sure, the ascription to Saul of \u201clack of faith\u201d could be argued to gain some support from 15:22f. (the second \u201crejection\u201d episode) as we shall see, in which case the many expressions of Saul\u2019s piety have to be taken (as is frequently done by commentators though more often by default than design) as in some way defective and superficial, a matter of \u201cmere\u201d piety rather than \u201cfaith\u201d, outward form rather that inward disposition. What I would suggest, however, is that if such an explanation is to be brought to bear upon the problems of chapter 13 it must be considered very much an explanation of last resort.
\nIs there another way forward which takes seriously the \u201csympathetic\u201d portrayal of Saul and yet recognizes the earnestness of Samuel\u2019s accusation and condemnation? I believe that there is and that Blaikie is touching on it when he sets out his understanding of what it is that Saul is instructed to do. The instruction in 10:8 is as follows:<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you shall go down before me to Gilgal; and behold, I am coming to you to offer burnt offerings and to sacrifice peace offerings. Seven days you shall wait, until I come to you and show you what you shall do\u201d.<\/p>\n
Blaikie (p. 211) paraphrases this as:<\/p>\n
Saul was under instructions to wait seven days at Gilgal, at the end, if not before the end, of which time Samuel promised to come to him.<\/p>\n
This way of putting it suggests that the seven days are merely an approximate indication of the time that Saul should allow to elapse before expecting Samuel; the heart of the instruction is not in the \u201cseven days\u201d but in the coming of Samuel (and his showing Saul what to do). Saul (and so too Mauchline, Smith and Hertzberg!) take the instruction as essentially entailing a prohibition against taking any action until seven days have elapsed, for until that period has elapsed Samuel is to be expected: \u201cseven days you shall wait\u201d. Samuel (and so, for example, Blaikie), on the other hand, sees himself as commanding Saul to wait about seven days until he [Samuel] should come:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026 you shall wait until I come to you and show you what you shall do\u201d.<\/p>\n
Here is the point. The instruction to \u201cwait\u201d is ambiguous with regard to time. On Samuel\u2019s interpretation Saul has not waited as instructed, for he should have waited until the prophet came and issued further instructions; as Saul sees it he has waited precisely the required time, seven days, before being at liberty to take action himself.
\nSmith (p. 98), who sees the instruction as Saul sees it, concludes that the condemnation is arbitrary:<\/p>\n
The only conclusion to which we can come is that the author glorifies the sovereign will of Yahweh who rejects and chooses according to his own good pleasure. Samuel is the embodiment of this sovereign will.<\/p>\n
My own suggestion, that the instruction can be seen both ways, leads easily to the same conclusion. But what appears arbitrary about the condemnation, where we see the excercise of Yahweh\u2019s will \u201caccording to his own good pleasure\u201d, is not, as Smith suggests, that the judgement is perverse, in simple defiance of the clear meaning of the command in question, but rather that Yahweh, though Samuel, requires of Saul \u201cthis\u201d rather than \u201cthat\u201d interpretation. I shall come back to this point in due course.
\nI suggest, therefore, that a provisional answer to the question, Why (in chapter 13) does God reject Saul?, can be given as follows. The immediate cause appears to be Saul\u2019s breaking of Samuel\u2019s instruction in 10:8. But we have seen that this instruction is ambiguous and that on Saul\u2019s understanding no sin has been committed. The question therefore resolves itself into one about the motives of Samuel and Yahweh. Why is no account taken of Saul\u2019s defence? Is Samuel unaware of the ambiguity of the instruction or does he choose to ignore it? Does the real cause of Saul\u2019s rejection lie, not in his action in chapter 13, but in the attitude of Yahweh towards him, or perhaps something he represents?<\/p>\n
Chapter Three<\/p>\n
SAUL\u2019S FAILURE: 1 SAMUEL 15<\/p>\n
Samuel comes to Saul with a command from Yahweh. Saul is to attack the Amalekites and devote to God, by destroying (\u201cput to the ban\u201d, \u201cutterly destroy\u201d\u2014\u1e25rm), them and all that is theirs. In due course Saul defeats the Amalekites (15:8f.):<\/p>\n
And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed (\u1e25rm) all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fatlings, and the Iambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them (\u1e25rm); all that was despised and worthless they utterly destroyed (\u1e25rm).<\/p>\n
Yahweh sends word to Samuel (verse 11):<\/p>\n
\u201cI repent that I have made Saul king; for he has turned back from following me, and has not performed my commandments\u201d.<\/p>\n
Samuel is told that Saul has gone to Gilgal, so he meets him there, and accuses him of disobeying Yahweh\u2019s command (verse 19):<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did you swoop on the spoil, and do what was evil in the sight of Yahweh?\u201d<\/p>\n
Saul protests that, on the contrary, he has done what was asked of him (verses 20f.):<\/p>\n
\u201cI have obeyed the voice of Yahweh, I have gone on the mission on which Yahweh sent me, I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have utterly destroyed (\u1e25rm) the Amalekites. And the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction (\u1e25rm), to sacrifice to Yahweh your God in Gilgal\u201d.<\/p>\n
Samuel retorts with those much quoted lines (verses 22f.):<\/p>\n
\u201cHas Yahweh as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
\nas in obeying the voice of Yahweh?
\nBehold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
\nand to hearken than the fat of rams\u201d.<\/p>\n
He goes on to declare that because Saul has rejected the word of Yahweh, so Yahweh has rejected him from being king. Saul then acknowledges that he has sinned:<\/p>\n
\u201cfor I have transgressed the commandment of Yahweh and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice\u201d.<\/p>\n
His request for pardon, in order that he might again worship God with Samuel, is thrown back at him and he is told that Yahweh has rejected him and given the kingdom to a \u201cneighbour\u201d. A final plea by Saul that he be allowed to worship God with Samuel before the people is this time acceded to. Saul worships Yahweh while Samuel hews Agag in pieces before Yahweh. Samuel and Saul go to their respective homes.
\nUnlike in chapter 13, commentators generally find in this chapter no difficulty in determining Saul\u2019s \u201cfault\u201d. He was commanded to destroy utterly (\u201cput to the ban\u201d) the Amalekites \u201cto the last chicken\u201d (Good, 69). He fails to do so, and in the view of many critics, compounds his sin, his failure to obey to the letter God\u2019s word, by hypocritically pretending that he had done what was required (verses 13, 20), and by attempting to put the blame for his failure on the people (verses 15, 24). If opprobrium is to be heaped on Saul then chapter 15 usually provides the occasion par excellence (Robinson, 49, and Blaikie, 252f., respectively):<\/p>\n
What wonder was it then, that the Lord rejected him, whose best service was an act of vile dissimulation? We read not, that he was ever humbled for his offence. Though he was spared for a long time after this transaction, the goodness of God did not lead him to repentance; for he continued, to the last, proud, and cruel, and profane.<\/p>\n
Saul\u2019s worst qualities had now become petrified. His wilfulness, his selfishness, his passionateness, his jealousy, had now got complete control, nor could their current be turned aside. The threat of losing his kingdom\u2014perhaps the most terrible threat such a man could have felt\u2014had failed to turn him from his wayward course. He was like the man in the iron cage in \u201cPilgrim\u2019s Progress\u201d, who gave his history: \u201cI left off to watch and be sober; I sinned against the light of the word and goodness of God; I have grieved the Spirit and He is gone; I tempted the devil, and he is come to me; I have provoked God to anger and He has left me; I have so hardened my heart that I cannot repent\u201d. It is a terrible lesson that comes to us from the career of Saul. If our natural lusts are not under the restraint of a higher power; if by that power we are not trained to watch, and check, and overpower them, if we allow them to burst all restraint and lord it over us as they will,\u2014then will they grow into so many tyrants, who will rule us with rods of iron; laugh at the feeble remonstrances of our conscience; scoff at every messenger of God, vex His Holy Spirit, and hurl us at last to everlasting woe!<\/p>\n
A little startled, I search again through the pages of my Bible. Was it such a monstrous sin? Have I missed something? I am reassured (Chappell, 134):<\/p>\n
Saul did sin. He sinned deeply. But there have been countless others who sinned in a far more ugly and hideous way than he whose lives yet ended in glory and in victory. Saul was never so guilty of any sin half so detestable as the sin of his successor, who came to be a man after God\u2019s own heart. The tragedy of the life of Saul was not so much in the fact that he sinned as in the fact that he could never be brought to face his sin and to confess it and to hate it and to put it away.<\/p>\n
Now this is interesting. This commentator is so far from recognizing anything particularly heinous in Saul\u2019s sin, that he is obliged to locate the king\u2019s tragic flaw elsewhere, in a supposed inability to repent. It is not the validity of the \u201cinsincerity\u201d interpretation that need detain us here; it has been argued by others (for example, Hertzberg, 76) but faces difficulties in coping with Saul\u2019s expressed repentence in verses 24\u20135 and the fact that the rejection (in verse 23) is tied specifically to the matter of the disobedience, not to any question of repentance. Rather, what is of interest is the tacit acknowledgement that there is some imbalance between the \u201csin\u201d and the \u201cpunishment\u201d.
\nChappell is not alone in sensing an imbalance. While others are content to find the cause of rejection in the act of disobedience, the sparing of Agag and part of the spoil, they are often at pains to stress the alleged hypocrisy of Saul or his perfidy in shifting the blame upon the people, as though this particular crime of disobedience were hardly enough to warrant the sentence which follows upon it. Sometimes, indeed, the expression of doubt about the relationship between sin and sentence is more explicit. Knierim, for example, questions (p. 36) conventional explanations of the sin in terms of the infringement of cultic law or the opposition of two types of religion (those of prophet and priest). Do such explanations<\/p>\n
really explain the radicality of the judgement of rejection? Even David himself had become guilty of the violation of central and sacral laws (II Sam., chs. 11f. and 24) without having been rejected.<\/p>\n
Soggin (p. 195) is blunter:<\/p>\n
To the modern reader Saul might hardly seem to be a \u201csinner\u201d, and we might doubt whether his \u201csin\u201d made much impression on the reader or hearer of that time.<\/p>\n
Clearly, then, this story of Saul and the Amalekites bears closer examination. What precisely is the accusation against him? How culpable is he?
\nAs already observed, most commentators speak of his failure here in terms of disobedience. After all, this is precisely what Samuel accuses him of: \u201cWhy then did you not obey the word of Yahweh?\u2026 You have rejected the word of Yahweh\u201d. For many it is the simple fact of disobedience that constitutes the sin. For others, however, there is also involved the question of what the broken commandment was about, and to me also, this seems to be an important question. While it is conceivable that, in terms of the story, the act of disobedience is all that counts, it is also possible that the picture being painted is not just in black and white, not just a matter of \u201cgoodies\u201d and \u201cbaddies\u201d but of complex characters and conflicting moral and theological elements.
\nSaul is commanded to \u1e25rm the Amalekites. What does this mean? The word \u1e25rm seems to be connected with the idea of holiness, separation or taboo and can be used of various things forbidden to common use. In the Old Testament it is especially connected with warfare and the status of a defeated enemy and his possessions, and is used in some texts of the extermination of an enemy and the destruction of booty. In scholarly theory the term is often connected with the \u201choly war\u201d, a concept which owes much to the advocacy of von Rad\u2019s book (1951). He argued that \u201choly war\u201d was a homogeneous and distinct institution in ancient Israel with a number of recognizable features. These he drew piecemeal from various biblical contexts to form a theoretical reconstruction of the original institution (idea). But despite the attractiveness of the theory for supplying a background to some biblical texts and the support it has sometimes been found to have in analogies with the Islamic jihad, it remains very much a notional matter as the criticisms of recent scholars make clear. In essence the problem lies, as Gottwald (1976:942) observes, in \u201cthe high incidence of erratic and contradictory war practices [instanced in the Old Testament]\u201d:<\/p>\n
This strongly indicates that the entire range of traits compiled by von Rad was never normative in Israel. Steps toward initiating holy war, for example, which von Rad viewed as serial and cumulative, may in fact have been alternative courses followed on different occasions.\u2026 Even more tellingly, the different accounts of the destruction of war captives and booty, or of their reservation or setting aside for sacred use, show great variation from the schematic formulations of the later Deuteronomistic program of \u1e25erem.\u2026 What is in question, therefore, is not the existence, but the frequency, scope, and degree of standardization of holy-war practices.<\/p>\n
It is clear, then, that despite the confidence with which some scholars have spoken of the \u201choly war\u201d it is a concept which is clothed in considerable uncertainty. Nor does our present text do much to clarify matters. Nowhere is reference made to any special condition distinguishing this war from any other except that a specific stipulation is made by the prophet concerning the disposal of the \u201cbooty\u201d. When the prophet accuses Saul of disobeying the word of Yahweh he nowhere suggests that Saul has broken some well-known cultic law relating to some well-known and distinctive category of war. On the contrary he simply asserts that Saul has not completely fulfilled the specific instruction regarding the spoil. That \u201choly war\u201d was a concept important to our narrative is a moot point.
\nIf \u201choly war\u201d is thus an uncertain base on which to build an understanding of the precise nature of Saul\u2019s crime, perhaps the term \u1e25rm (which does have the advantage of being securely located in our text) will avail us more. We have seen that linguistic evidence suggests a meaning of something like \u201cto devote to a god by destruction\u201d. Clearly, then, it is something akin to the notion of \u201csacrifice\u201d (zb\u1e25). Now this last observation is, I believe, of fundamental importance for understanding this chapter. Let me turn to our text for a closer examination, and I trust my point may become apparent.
\nIn verse 3, Samuel, speaking formally as the messenger of Yahweh, demands that all Amalek be \u1e25rm, and the subsequent clauses in apposition\u2014\u201cdo not spare [have compassion on] them, but kill both man and woman,\u201d etc.\u2014make absolutely clear that \u1e25rm means destruction. Saul duly attacks and defeats the Amalekites. But then in verse 9 we read of the sparing of Agag and the best of the spoil. As if to doubly underline the apparent disregard of the prophet\u2019s command the narrator repeats the key terms of the commandment: \u201cSaul and the people spared Agag and the best of the [spoil] \u2026 and would not destroy \u1e25rm) them\u201d. And to make matters worse, the account of the sparing ends by emphasizing the fact that what was spared was the best of the spoil; only what was despised and worthless was devoted to destruction (\u1e25rm).
\nOn the face of it this action can only be seen to be in defiance of Yahweh, and indeed Yahweh is depicted as taking it to be so (verses 10f.). He anounces to Samuel his \u201crepentance\u201d (n\u1e25m) of having chosen Saul; accordingly next morning Samuel arrives, angry, at Gilgal to meet Saul.
\nThere is great subtlety in the writing here. The black shadow already cast over Saul extends further: Samuel is told of Saul, that \u201che came to Carmel, and behold, he set up a monument to himself\u201d. Then on meeting Samuel at Gilgal Saul greets him with what to the reader at this stage in the proceedings is a most astonishing sentence:<\/p>\n
\u201cBlessed be you to Yahweh: I have performed Yahweh\u2019s commandment\u201d.<\/p>\n
The retort of the older commentators was \u201cdissimulation!\u201d. Indeed, it looks as though a self-regarding Saul, not content with failing to fulfil the command, is now trying to deceive the prophet. His predicament worsens. Samuel observes coldly:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of oxen which I hear?\u201d<\/p>\n
Then comes a remarkable and dramatic shift in Saul\u2019s favour. The king replies, apparently without embarassment, by volunteering the information that the noise issues from the best of the Amalekite livestock which has been brought here\u2014to sacrifice to Yahweh. Now we have a completely different view of what is going on: to be sure, Saul and the people had not \u201cdevoted to destruction\u201d the best of the livestock on the spot, at the scene of battle (or wherever), but that was because they had decided it would be more appropriate to \u201cdevote\u201d it to Yahwe\u1e25 at his own sanctuary. Seen in this light, of course, the sparing of the best of the spoil makes excellent sense, for how could they bring what was despised and worthless back to Gilgal to sacrifice formally to their God?
\nCuriously\u2014or should we say characteristically?\u2014Samuel wishes to hear nothing more: \u201cStop! I will tell you what Yahweh said to me this night\u201d. To which the narrator has Saul\u2014by now growing accustomed to this kind of scene?\u2014reply simply, \u201cSay on\u201d. With sarcasm (\u201cThough you are little in your own eyes\u201d) Samuel sets out his accusation:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy then did you not obey the voice of Yahweh? Why did you swoop on the spoil, and do what was evil in the sight of Yahweh?\u201d<\/p>\n
Then comes what I think is the key to the scene. Saul replies, again unabashed:<\/p>\n
\u201cI have obeyed the voice of Yahweh: I have gone on the mission which Yahweh sent me, I have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and I have devoted to destruction the Amalekites; and the people have taken of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to Yahweh your god in Gilgal\u201d.<\/p>\n
This is a splendidly forthright reply. As in the earlier speech, much of which is simply reiterated (with perhaps a strong note of irritation), there is no evasion of the pertinent \u201cfacts\u201d. Saul freely acknowledges that Agag is present at Gilgal and that the people have brought the best of the spoil to Gilgal. Saul asserts, however, that these facts are consonant with his fulfilment of the prophet\u2019s instruction. Now had they been so patently in contravention of the instruction we might have expected the king to veil them in some way (by claiming, perhaps, that the livestock were captured elsewhere, and so on). On the contrary, Saul\u2019s response makes clear (what the first response suggested) that it is not the \u201cfacts\u201d that are in dispute but their interpretation vis-\u00e0-vis the instruction. There is ambiguity in Saul\u2019s reply only with regard to one item, namely his intentions concerning Agag. This matter apart the reply appears as unanswerable a justification as the earlier report (verse 9) seemed a condemnation. Has Yahweh moved too hastily? Agag apart (and we shally come back to him shortly), when the best of the livestock has been sacrificed the devotion to destruction of all Amalek will be complete. There was nothing in Yahweh\u2019s command about the precise circumstances of the destruction; so the people had wished to pay special honour to Yahweh at the same time as fulfilling his command, and Saul had acquiesced.
\nBut questions arise. Is it true that there was nothing about the precise circumstances of the destruction in Yahweh\u2019s command? What if \u1e25rm should plainly mean \u201cto destroy on the spot\u201d? From the reaction of both Yahweh and Samuel it would seem that, strictly speaking, \u1e25rm is not compatible with zb\u1e25 (sacrifice); despite Saul\u2019s explanation Samuel goes on specifically to contrast obedience and sacrifice\u2014a contrast which only makes sense if we assume that to bring the spoil to sacrifice at Gilgal could not count, for Samuel at least, as fulfilling the instruction to \u201cdevote to destruction\u201d. Whether the key to the technical incompatibility of \u1e25rm and zb\u1e25 lay in where the destruction took place or in some specific cultic rites to be observed, or in both, we simply do not know. But while it would help us to be a little more \u201cat home\u201d with the story were we to have this detailed background knowledge, it is not, I believe, fundamentally important for our understanding of the text. This supplies sufficient information without such detail.
\nThe fact is that, as the story has it, neither Saul nor the people were aware that there was any significant incompatibility; neither realized that to bring to a sanctuary livestock designated \u1e25rm in order to offer it to God as a sacrifice (zb\u1e25) was to infringe seriously the rules of \u1e25rm (or zb\u1e25, or both). If we suppose them to have been thus aware then their action in so risking divine wrath becomes particularly difficult to comprehend, since all they were attempting to do was to honour Yahweh by their action. Gilgal figures prominently in the story of Saul as above all the place where the people meet in assembly and where they offer sacrifice to Yahweh; so what could be more natural than that the returning army should wish to share the major sacrifice with the whole community before their God in his central sanctuary?
\nMany a commentator has labelled Saul as \u201cgreedy\u201d\u2014greedy because it is accepted (as, to be sure, the narrator leads us to accept in verse 9) that the spoil was spared for his and the people\u2019s own personal enrichment\u2014assuming his \u201chypocrisy\u201d and \u201cdissimulation\u201d in verses 13ff. (cf. Robinson, 45, 49f., Wilberforce, 221, and Blaikie, 248) without second thought. Why, on the contrary, should we (or Samuel) believe that Saul\u2019s explanation is genuine? The answer is to reiterate the point already made about that final phrase of Saul\u2019s explanation (verse 21), \u201cin Gilgal\u201d. Why else should Saul and the people have come to Gilgal, the sanctuary of Yahweh, the scene of sacrifice, if not to do precisely what he claims?
\nAnd this assumption of Saul\u2019s sincerity is no modern invention: the LXX actually reads, at the end of verse 12:<\/p>\n
And he [Samuel] came down to Gilgal to Saul, and behold he [Saul] offered a burnt offering to Yahweh, the firstfruits of the spoil which be brought from Amalek.<\/p>\n
Whether the reading is original or a later expansion does not matter greatly; either way it lends powerful support to our exegesis and encourages us to take Saul\u2019s explanation as offered in good faith, as we have seen the context to suggest.
\nThus if Samuel\u2019s bitter contrast between obedience and sacrifice only makes sense when it is assumed that he saw a significant incompatibility between \u201cdevotion\u201d (\u1e25rm) and \u201csacrifice\u201d (zb\u1e25) of the booty, so Saul\u2019s (and the people\u2019s) actions and subsequent protestations that the command had been fulfilled only make sense when it is assumed that they, for their part, saw no significant incompatibility.
\nBut there is an outstanding question mark in Saul\u2019s explanation to Samuel. What about Agag? Was Saul intending to put him to death here, \u201cbefore Yahweh at Gilgal\u201d, thus truly completing the \u1e25rm of all Amalek, or was he, in fact, going to spare him, and in this respect, at least, break the terms of the commandment? We are not told directly. We do not know for sure. But while the storyteller opens up the tantalizing possibility that after all Saul had acted not wholly in good faith he allows us at the same time no confidence in this possibility. It is not easy to see how, without a positive hint that Agag was to be exempted from the fate of the rest of Amalek, we can set this particular element of Saul\u2019s action against the strong impression of sincerity that we have otherwise found in his response. More specifically, there may perhaps be found a hint of Saul\u2019s intention in the way in which his reference (verse 20) to the bringing of Agag is capped by the clause, \u201cand\/so Amalek have I devoted [\u201ccaused to be \u1e25rm\u201d]\u201d. This clause may be taken simply as a parallel to the report in verse 8 (\u201cand he devoted\/utterly destroyed all the people [excluding Agag] with the edge of the sword\u201d) but may also be read as a more \u201csummary\u201d statement of his actions. Perhaps then we are to take it that Agag\u2019s fate is assumed in this summary clause?
\nThus the issue between Saul and Samuel on the matter of Agag may be viewed as similar to that on the matter of the spoil. Was it technically in defiance of the rules of \u1e25rm to bring the defeated king to Gilgal in order to slay him at the sanctuary? Should Agag have been lined up on the field of battle, or in his palace (or wherever), no doubt along with others who had survived the battle, and there executed? Saul apparently sees no problem in delaying the execution and believes that he is acting in the spirit of the instruction; Samuel holds that the letter has been broken.
\nSeveral further small points need to be dealt with before we can discuss the implications of this interpretation of the scene.
\n(1) When assessing Saul\u2019s behaviour in this chapter commentators have sometimes cast doubt on his sincerity by another means. The following comment (Mauchline, 124) makes the point:<\/p>\n
The claim made by Saul to Samuel that he had fulfilled the commission was either a piece of bluster or bravado, or reveals a lack of awareness that he had done wrong which is well-nigh incredible. But any inclination to hold to the latter line for Saul\u2019s sake is surely made impossible when we read that Saul weakly attributes to the people the responsibility of reserving the best animals for sacrifice and so, implicitly, dissociating himself from the act and from responsibility for it.<\/p>\n
This point rests on two grounds. First, it looks back to verse 9 where we are told that \u201cSaul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, etc.\u201d; thus, it is argued, the sparing of the spoil had been the act of both Saul and the people, in flat contradiction to Saul\u2019s claim in verse 21. The point looks well taken but it is far from being conclusive. A more sensitive reading of verse 9 might recognize a possible complexity of rhetorical style: to say that \u201cA and B spared C and D\u201d may mean that \u201cA spared C\u201d and \u201cB spared D\u201d or, as we would say in English, \u201cA and B spared C and D, respectively\u201d. When we look at Saul\u2019s explanation in verses 20f. we find him saying: \u201c[1] I have brought Agag, the king of Amalek, and [2] I have devoted to destruction the Amalekites, [3] and the people have taken of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the \u1e25rm-things to sacrifice to Yahweh your God in Gilgal\u201d. When we recognize the possibility of reading verse 9 as just indicated we have an appropriate correspondence; for the narrator tells us in verses 8 and 9 that: [1] Saul took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and [2] devoted to destruction all the people with the edge of the sword. And [1] Saul spared Agag, and [3] the people spared the best of the sheep, etc. Perhaps it is being over-subtle to say so, but it seems to me that the ambiguity in verse 9 is probably not accidental. Throughout this chapter the text teases us by setting the characters, especially Saul, in different lights, thereby contributing not only to the dramatic impact of the narrative but also to its capacity to stimulate the reader intellectually. To read the story, as is so often done, as though all were obvious is to underrate it.
\nThe second ground on which rests the argument against Saul from verses 9f. is that, whether or not it was he or the people who spared the best of the spoil, it was he who was king and therefore he who was ultimately responsible. To divide responsibility or \u201cpass the blame\u201d is a sign of culpable weakness. It is an accusation that is made explicit in Samuel\u2019s sarcastic response to Saul\u2019s talk of \u201cthe people\u201d:<\/p>\n
\u201cThough you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel?\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever justification there is in this mockery, it does not in fact (despite the insinuations of the commentators) have any bearing on the question of Saul\u2019s veracity. \u201cWeak\u201d he may (arguably) have been, but speaking the truth, nonetheless.
\n(2) A second point requiring clarification concerns Saul\u2019s confession of sin in verse 24. The RSV translates:<\/p>\n
\u201cI have sinned; for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice\u201d.<\/p>\n
Does this not suggest that he had known all along that he was in breach of the commandment, that he had acted against his better judgement through \u201cfear\u201d of the people? That interpretation is clearly possible. However, it is not the only way of understanding the passage, nor, I believe, the most probable. We have already seen that there is a strong case for viewing Saul as having acted in good faith, unaware that the distinction between \u1e25rm and zb\u1e25 was of special religious importance. His explanation of this action had been of no avail. His second attempt to account for himself (verse 20f.) had been met with fierce rejection and an assertion, through the contrast of obedience and sacrifice, that Samuel (and so Yahweh) regarded the matter as of the utmost importance. Saul therefore has little choice but to acknowledge that as it now appears he has, after all, sinned, broken the strict terms of the command. Hertzberg (p. 126f.) notes that \u201cSaul \u2026 is only convinced that he has done wrong during the course of his conversation with Samuel\u201d. What he had been urged to do by the people and what he had clearly felt to be no serious deviation from his religious obligation has turned out to be a matter of major consequence. By speaking of the initiative of the people he is not weakly passing the blame but freely acknowledging his own error. The translation \u201cfear\u201d is misleading. The immediate context makes quite clear that it is not \u201cterror\u201d but \u201crespect\u201d or \u201chonour\u201d that is intended. Saul acknowledges that he has \u201ctransgressed the commandment of Yahweh\u201d. What a devout Israelite normally hopes to do is to \u201cfear\u201d (yr\u2019), that is \u201crespect\u201d or \u201chonour\u201d Yahweh. The \u201cbecause\/for\u201d clause (ky) is thus an appropriate rhetorical counterweight to the confession of sin; it draws a humbling implication, as if to say, \u201cmy action in going along with the people\u2019s wish has turned out to be tantamount to honouring them instead of Yahweh, obeying their voice instead of his commandments\u201d. Saul is not \u201cwriggling\u201d but expressing the deepest contrition possible in the circumstances.
\nSeen in the above light, then, the passage (verse 24) neither contradicts our earlier exegesis, that Saul acts throughout in good faith, nor adds any weight to an assessment of him as weakly attempting to shift the blame to others.
\nWe are now in a position to pose again the question posed a little earlier. How culpable is Saul?
\nSaul\u2019s crime is either that he was ignorant of some technical implications of two sacral concepts (\u1e25rm and zb\u1e25) or, if he were aware of them, that he wrongly evaluated them as unimportant (and therefore of no consequence in the fulfilling of the instructions). Samuel accuses him of disobedience. Clearly Saul considered himself obedient.
\nHow culpable is Saul? Since he is depicted as acting in good faith, then, on even the most rudimentary system of morality, it is hard to see that he is being judged a moral failure; his disobedience is neither wilful nor flagrant. Did his unwitting disobedience have some dire moral consequences (apart from the consequences to himself!) or infringe some major tenet of Israel\u2019s faith? How can we answer other than \u201cno\u201d?\u2014and few commentators have attempted to show otherwise. Weiser (who accepts that Saul acts in good faith) is at pains to show a theological difference between the two concepts of \u1e25rm and zb\u1e25 which he believes to be of consequence for our assessment of Saul\u2019s action in condoning the offering of \u1e25rm-things as sacrifice: \u1e25rm is man as God\u2019s instrument (and thus living completely \u201cin obedience\u201d) giving back to God what is already decreed by God to be his; zb\u1e25 is offering something to God by man, as man, out of man\u2019s own store; therefore to bring \u1e25rm-things for sacrifice is wrongly to confuse the essential meaning of the two cultic acts. This hypothesis may be right, we cannot be sure; even if it were so what would it signify for Saul? A theological \u201cerror\u201d, yes; an unwitting \u201csin\u201d, perhaps; but a sin of devastating consequence, warranting God\u2019s rejection, surely not!
\nOr is it then a matter of his having broken some immutable law of the sacred, some powerful tabu? Hertzberg, who develops Weiser\u2019s thesis, seems at first to be groping towards some such explanation (p. 127):<\/p>\n
Above all, however, Saul, by bringing the plunder undestroyed from the place of the \u201cban\u201d [\u1e25rm], has thereby introduced it into the profane sphere of life, where it is exposed to the usual contamination.<\/p>\n
But apart from the fact that the plunder was being introduced into a sanctuary, hardly a \u201cprofane sphere of life\u201d, this kind of suggestion still runs into the difficulty that if it were really a matter of such import is it not strange that it was unknown to any but Samuel? The irony is that Hertzberg discusses the problem in the context of the following remark (p. 127):<\/p>\n
Behind this conversation [between Saul and Samuel] lies the question whether the \u201cban\u201d and sacrifice are equivalent, as Saul first assumes. The discussion of this is particularly important, because it recalls the criticism of sacrificial worship in classical prophecy.<\/p>\n
However, if Weiser and Hertzberg are right that there is an important difference at stake, then Samuel stands not for the (classical) prophetic vein of religion over against the priestly or sacrificial, but the other way round, for he is seen to be championing the necessity for the strictest formal observance of sacred rites.
\nThis point is important for it makes it more difficult to sustain an argument that in chapter 13, ambiguous instruction notwithstanding, Saul\u2019s choice of interpretation indicates lack of a proper faith, an absolute dependence on the prophet (\u201cwait until I come\u201d), whereas Saul places weight on the necessity for cultic observances in the critical circumstances. Chapter 15 makes doubly clear that the judgement against Saul is not a matter of his rejecting prophetic religion, since the (formal) basis of condemation is a technical nicety of cultic religion. Significantly the narrative offers a picture of conflict between prophetic and cultic religion and to this extent those commentators who see this conflict as the key to the rejection (the story champions the prophetic word against cultic practice) are not entirely off the mark. But a thorough reading cannot ignore the complication woven into the account of the rejection, namely that in both chapter 13 and chapter 15 the judgment against Saul hinges on a matter of cultic propriety. In other words the story cannot just be paraphrased in terms of conventional doctrine (inner disposition\/obedience to the word versus outward form\/concern for cultic religion). It is too complex for that.
\nTo return to the question of \u1e25rm and zb\u1e25, then, I conclude that such theorizing as Weiser and Hertzberg attempt is unnecessary. Nor are there sufficient clues in the text to sustain it. The precise meaning of these terms remains obscure and it is difficult not to agree with those remarks of Soggin\u2019s (p. 195) which began this analysis:<\/p>\n
To the modern reader Saul might hardly seem to be a \u201csinner\u201d, and we might doubt whether his \u201csin\u201d made much impression on the reader or hearer of that time.<\/p>\n
Thus, on the interpretation I have just sketched, it becomes otiose to seek an underlying reason for Saul\u2019s failure\u2014such as greed, irreligion, desire for public \u201cface\u201d, lack of faith, emotional insecurity, lack of self-esteem, \u201cwilfulness\u201d, or mental instability, to mention but a few that have found advocates\u2014for here in chapter 15, as in chapter 13, there is essentially no failure on Saul\u2019s part to be accounted for, no failure, that is to say, for which he can be held seriously culpable.
\nWe noted that the sparing of Agag was the point in Saul\u2019s account of himself that raised the biggest question mark. We also saw that there was reason to interpret this action too as taken in good faith. But what is really important for our understanding of the story is that Samuel does not bother to question him on this one point where Saul\u2019s explanation seems most potentially vulnerable. Rather Samuel chooses to ignore the explanation altogether and to respond to the king\u2019s protestations merely with fine rhetoric (verse 22f.). Again (as in chapter 13), therefore, the real point of the scene can only be that in some way Saul is already doomed and that any detailed justification for his condemnation is essentially irrelevant. As with the command to wait at Gilgal, the command to destroy Amalek may be interpreted in such a way that Saul be deemed to have disobeyed it. The privilege of interpretation belongs, of course, to God, and God, allowing no explanation on Saul\u2019s part, chooses to interpret as he does. Even when, by the end of Saul\u2019s altercation with Samuel, it appears that he is in effect being convicted on a technicality, that fact appears to be of no consequence. A technicality seems to be all that is required.
\nThe story thus forces us to re-examine, not Saul\u2019s conduct and motives, but those of Samuel and Yahweh. Why do they hold such a rigid pose? Why is Saul\u2019s penitence disregarded? Why is Saul rejected? We are back at the fundamental question.<\/p>\n
Part Two
\nTHE STORY<\/p>\n
\u2026 in Aeschylean phrase \u2026
\nHardy, Tess of the d\u2019Urbervilles<\/p>\n
Chapter Four<\/p>\n
THE STORY: 1 SAMUEL 8\u201315<\/p>\n
Prologue (1 Samuel 8)
\nThat Yahweh is to be a significant factor in the story is made clear at the outset, in what we might call the \u201cprologue\u201d (chapter 8), and in the story of Saul\u2019s anointing as king which follows. Likewise Samuel\u2019s key standing as confidant and agent of Yahweh is brought home from the beginning. To call chapter 8 a \u201cprologue\u201d is not to suggest that it is a mere appendage; on the contrary, in it lie the seeds of the main story.
\nThe established system of leadership, by \u201cjudge\u201d (s\u0306p\u1e6d) has failed. Samuel has resigned his judgeship in favour of his sons but they have turned out to be corrupt. In desperation, the elders of Israel seek a remedy in a change of system\u2014why not have a \u201cking\u201d to \u201cgovern\u201d (s\u0306p\u1e6d) and lead in battle (verses 5 and 20) like everybody else? Why a king should be any better than a judge is of no interest to our narrator. More significant is the response of Samuel and Yahweh. Samuel is \u201cdispleased\u201d (\u201cand the thing was evil in the sight of Samuel\u201d). But why? He himself has recognized his own incapacity in the matter (by abdicating on account of his old age) and it is his own sons who are the immediate cause of the problem. Yahweh\u2019s reassurance\u2014\u201cthey have not rejected you [as you suppose]\u201d\u2014suggests that Samuel\u2019s displeasure is on account of his own self-regard. Yahweh\u2019s response is also that of displeasure. He alone is \u201cking\u201d of Israel and to him the people\u2019s desire for an earthly king is a denigration of his own kingship: he likens the action to the disloyalty of the people in former times \u201cforsaking me and serving other gods\u201d. Both characters, therefore, might be regarded as having taken the people\u2019s request as a personal affront.
\nYahweh\u2019s reaction contains a key term: the people, he says, have \u201crejected\u201d (m\u2019s) him. When Samuel in chapter 10 gathers the people at Mizpah to choose a king, he delivers Yahweh\u2019s word to them, reiterating his understanding of the people\u2019s request for a king as a \u201crejection\u201d of his own kingship (10:19):<\/p>\n
You have this day rejected (m\u2019s) your God, who saves you from all your calamities and your distresses; and you have said, \u201cNo! but set a king over us\u201d.<\/p>\n
The term m\u2019s next occurs again in our story in the context of Yahweh\u2019s rejection of Saul (15:23):<\/p>\n
Because you have rejected (m\u2019s) the word of Yahweh he has also rejected (m\u2019s) you from being king.<\/p>\n
The only other occurrence of the term is in 16:7, with Yahweh\u2019s word to Samuel that he is not to look on the appearance or height of Eliab because he has \u201crejected\u201d him. The scene of course follows hard on the \u201crejection\u201d of Saul, and is indeed the implementation of that rejection: with the description of Eliab we are doubly reminded of Saul (cf. 9:2 and 10:23). The use of the motif of rejection thus formally links Saul\u2019s fate with Yahweh\u2019s understanding of his own treatment at the hands of the people. We shall return to this connection further in the final chapter (Seven).
\nDespite his strong sense of grievance, Yahweh does not hesitate. His first words to Samuel are (astonishingly, for one so aggrieved): \u201cObey (\u201chearken to the voice of\u201d\u2014\u0161m\u201bbqwl) the people in all that they say to you\u201d (8:7). His repetition of this instruction, before adding that Samuel should first warn the people of the perils of earthly kingship, suggests that, for Yahweh, the warning by Samuel is no more than a formality. Yahweh expects the people to \u201crefuse to obey (\u0161m\u201b bqwl)\u201d Samuel and insist on having an earthly king; the warning merely serves to underline their wilfulness in \u201crejecting\u201d their true king.
\nSure enough, Samuel\u2019s words fall on deaf ears. Nor (looking at it from the people\u2019s point of view) is this surprising considering that he has offered no constructive counter-proposal to meet the people\u2019s need. Yahweh\u2019s response is reiterated a third time with a curt, \u201cObey (\u0161m\u201b bqwl) them and make them a king\u201d.
\nWhat is the spirit of this compromise? Is it open-hearted generosity? Simple resignation? Or, bearing in mind the unwavering determination of this response, is it a concession which conceals a deep-seated conviction that the wrongness of the people\u2019s request will inevitably become manifest, must become manifest, as if to say, \u201cHearken to their voice, and make them a king\u2014and let us see what we shall see!\u201d. Is, then, the instruction to \u201cobey the people\u201d an ironical one? That interpretation presses itself upon one. There is little gracious acquiescence here; and Samuel\u2019s instruction to the people is equally curt.
\nThus chapter 8 presents us with two figures whose potential for influencing future events is clearly great. They may also be two figures nursing a grievance. We have been warned against expecting the forthcoming experiment in kingship to be an unmitigated success.<\/p>\n
Saul\u2019s rise (1 Samuel 9\u201312)
\nThe story of Saul\u2019s anointing begins brightly enough. He is a fine lad who prosecutes his errand, looking for his father\u2019s asses, with vigour and a nice concern for his parent (9:5). Fate rapidly works its way into the pattern of events: the young man would have turned back but for his servant\u2019s chance find of money to provide a gift to the seer; fortuitously, also, Saul discovers Samuel at just the moment when he is able to join the ritual feast. The reader soon knows that Saul\u2019s expedition is pre-ordained by Yahweh (verse 16); Saul learns the same thing through Samuel\u2019s demonstration that he was expecting him (verses 23f.). Furthermore there is now a comforting hint of benevolent motivation behind Yahweh\u2019s involvement in the events\u2014he has heard the cry of his people, we are told, and it is to be Saul who will deliver them from their enemies, the Philistines (verse 16).
\nThe story of the unlikely hero (cf. verse 21) rapidly moves (through a series of oblique disclosures) to the anointing\u2014an astonishing end to the search for Kish\u2019s asses\u2014and to the giving of further signs as proof of the \u201creality\u201d of Saul\u2019s designation as potential king (\u201cchief\u201d, \u201cprince\u201d\u2014nag\u00eed). The third, and climactic, sign is the seizure of Saul by the spirit of prophecy. Saul, at least momentarily, is given the status of prophet (like Samuel) and is thereby apparently marked out as Yahweh\u2019s servant.
\nA few elements of interest invite comment. The anointing takes place in the context of a sacrifice\/feast; a sacrifice is also the context of David\u2019s anointing, later, when Saul has been rejected, though ironically the main reason for the sacrifice on that occasion seems to be in order to provide a cover story for the visit to Jesse, in order to deceive Saul! The sacrifice does not only provide resonances for that later anointing episode; it is also linked to the first scene of rejection (chapter 13). When we read there of Saul\u2019s predicament in waiting for Samuel to come to the sacrifice we are prompted to remember Saul\u2019s first introduction to Samuel (9:11\u20133):<\/p>\n
As they went up the hill to the city they met young maidens coming out to draw water, and said to them, \u201cIs the seer here?\u201d. They answered, \u201cHe is; behold he is just ahead of you. Make haste (mhr); he has come just now (hyywm) to the city, because the people have a sacrifice today (hyywm) on the high place. As soon as you enter the city you will find him, before he goes up to the high place to eat; for the people will not eat till he comes, since he must bless the sacrifice; afterwards those eat who are invited. Now go up, for you will meet him immediately (hyywm)\u201d.<\/p>\n
Here (chapter 9) it is all urgency, for the prophet is \u201cahead of\u201d Saul and Saul must make haste to catch up before he officiates at the sacrifice; there (chapter 13) it is all urgency, but the urgency is for the sacrifice to take place and it is the prophet who lags behind. Saul\u2019s haste in the one scene leads to success, in the other to disaster. In chapter 13 he decides to wait no longer for the prophet. The remark in chapter 9 comes back to us: \u201cfor the people will not eat till he comes, since he must bless the sacrifice\u201d.
\nThe crucial instruction regarding Gilgal comes as the episode draws near to an end (10:7f.). It sits amongst the other instructions of the prophet, a seemingly innocuous item, one amongst a number; and to lend to the feeling of the smooth flow of fortune here, the other items are quickly met and fulfilled without apparent disharmony.
\nOne final point: the spirit of God comes mightily upon Saul and he \u201cprophecies\u201d\/\u201craves\u201d (wayyitnabb\u0113\u2019) in the midst of a band of prophets. We are told (verses 11f.) that<\/p>\n
the people said to one another, \u201cWhat has come over the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?\u201d And a man of the place answered, \u201cAnd who is their father?\u201d Therefore it became a proverb, \u201cIs Saul also among the prophets?\u201d.<\/p>\n
The precise significance of this \u201cproverb\u201d has long been debated by commentators. I do not wish to enter the debate; rather I would merely observe that at issue in context is whether the saying indicates a positive or negative attitude towards Saul. This question, in turn, is tied up with that of what attitude towards the \u201cprophesying\u201d prophetic band is implied here. In the present context it would seem that Saul\u2019s \u201cprophesying\u201d is being presented as a positive sign\u2014that, as I have described it above, he is given the status of prophet (like Samuel) and thereby marked out as Yahweh\u2019s servant. Yet as we shall see, later in the story (19:23f. and cf. 18:10), compulsion to prophesy can be a sign of Saul\u2019s rejection. McKane is on the right lines, I think, when he comments (p. 124) on 19:23f.:<\/p>\n
Saul is still possessed by spiritual forces, but this possession is now the evidence of his rejection.\u2026 Ecstasy once made him free and able to do Yahweh\u2019s will, but now it evidences his derangement and slavery.<\/p>\n
\u201cProphesying\u201d can be \u201craving\u201d. It is, therefore, an ambiguous gift. Perhaps, therefore, it is no accident that the stance of the proverb is so elusive. In itself the proverb expresses surprise, perhaps even incongruity. It is its context that determines whether it is disparaging or not; but even if here in chapter 10 it may be taken positively, its ambiguity lends yet another hint of a dark tone to Saul\u2019s success.
\nA lull in the story follows (10:14\u20136). The private designation of Saul as \u201cprince\u201d is then succeeded, in verses 17\u201327, by public designation as king, again the divine choice being indicated by \u201cchance\u201d (here the lot). Yet once more there is present a strong negative undertone. Samuel introduces the proceedings with nothing other than a restatement of Yahweh\u2019s complaint against the people for their desire to have a king. Moreover, at the end there is a further complication with the expression of scepticism by some of the Israelites: \u201c \u2018How can this man serve us?\u2019 And they despised him, and brought him no present\u201d (10:27).
\nThe third phase in Saul\u2019s way to the throne is the deliverance of Jabesh-Gilead. As the divine spirit had seized him and caused him to prophesy at the time of his anointing, so now it emboldens him to make a challenge to all Israel to come to the help of the besieged city. The aftermath shows us a magnanimous Saul who spares the life of those who had earlier opposed him (11:12f.; cf. David\u2019s similar response in 2 Samuel 16:5\u201312 and 19:18\u201323) and who ascribes to Yahweh the victory. With this test behind him Saul\u2019s kingship is \u201crenewed\u201d (confirmed?) \u201cbefore Yahweh in Gilgal\u201d, with great rejoicing by all the people. As for Samuel\u2019s instruction of 10:8, we are left uncertain as to whether or not it has been fulfilled in this event.
\nChapter 12 brings us back to the theme of Samuel and Yahweh and the principle of kingship. If Saul and the men of Israel are rejoicing greatly, Samuel is not. The first part of his speech appears defensive, self-protective: the old has made way for the new\u2014is there any complaint outstanding against the old? Again we are given a hint of Samuel\u2019s sense of personal rejection. Old age and his sons he mentions as though they were incidental to the whole matter. In the light of chapter 8 they clearly are not. Yet the people without further ado bear witness loyally to Samuel\u2019s personal integrity\u2014and thereby appear to put themselves in the wrong. If they have nothing against Samuel why then should they have demanded a king? The prophet now moves easily into a broader attack. He attacks them for their history of disloyalty to Yahweh. This history is apparently one of Yahweh\u2019s deliverance of his people out of, and into, oppression. The key to the people\u2019s fortune is their undivided loyalty to God. Since Yahweh alone is king of Israel, the demand for another king is disloyalty.
\nSo far the speech has simply recapitulated, or amplified, the complaint of chapter 8. Not that this recapitulation is insignificant. On the contrary it shows us that the affront is still keenly felt. But we know, and the people know, that Yahweh has made a compromise and has, in fact, chosen a king. So now the terms of the compromise are spelt out a little more clearly: the king must recognize his subordination to the king of kings\u2014to hearken to the voice of Yahweh (and by implication, his prophet) and obey his commandment is absolutely essential if Yahweh is not to turn against both king and people. And to demonstrate finally that his word is indeed God\u2019s word, and that the power he represents is a power to be reckoned with, Samuel invokes the ruin of the harvest.
\nAt no point in the the scene does anyone remonstrate with Samuel, even though it is apparent that no one is particularly convinced that the move to kingship was a wrong one: in the face of the thunder and rain the people confess a sin and ask that they may not die, but nowhere in the scene do we find anyone suggesting that the decision for kingship be revoked. The people recognize the power that confronts them and do what is expected of them. For most people, in the face of divine anger, that is wisdom. It is significant that it is only Saul, in the whole story, who remonstrates directly with Yahweh or his prophet (chapter 15) and even then his self-assertion is short-lived (and like the people here he confesses his \u201csin\u201d).
\nThe scene thus ends with Samuel totally in control. He it is who will pray for the people, despite their present lapse, and he it is who will instruct them in what is right. \u201cBut if you do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king\u201d (12:25).
\nSo the precariousness of Saul\u2019s position is made doubly clear as the first act of his story is rounded off. Not only is he a secondary figure in Yahweh\u2019s scheme of things, but he walks a tightrope. He is caught in the midst of a situation of tension which is not of his own making and over which he has but limited control. To the reader it is now growing obvious that there is likely to be little room for error in Saul\u2019s conduct as king, and if fault is to be found in him it is likely to be in the matter of \u201cobedience\u201d. Saul is vassal to an overlord who seems fundamentally hostile and Saul is potentially vulnerable as an object-lesson by Yahweh to a people who are less than totally committed to their God.<\/p>\n
Saul the king: the Philistines (1 Samuel 13\u201314)
\nThe next main section of the story opens with Saul engaged in his first major exercise of kingship\u2014a campaign against the Philistines. Right at the beginning we get a further strong hint that success is not going to come Saul\u2019s way readily: it is Jonathan who defeats the Philistines at Geba, a point which is only accentuated by the subsequent rumour, that Saul had defeated them (13:4f.). In the event the Philistine army that confronts Saul at Michmash (13:5) is a massive one. Not unnaturally the people begin to desert or at least fail to rally to the king.
\nSaul waits at Gilgal, disaster staring him in the face. He waits for Samuel (verse 8). Suddenly, for the reader, the tension is doubled. The Philistine threat is only one aspect of the potential disaster; with verse 8 we know that here at last is the situation corresponding to the command of 10:8, and we now know (in the light of chapter 12) that it is a situation fraught with risk for Saul.<\/p>\n
He waited for seven days, the time appointed by Samuel; but Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and the people were scattering from him.<\/p>\n
As his later explanation makes clear (verses 11f.), Saul feels that it is imperative that the proper religious rite be performed, both to boost morale and to ensure that the Israelites are properly prepared (according to religious law) for a battle that could ensue at any time. As earlier in the matter of Jabesh-Gilead he is decisive. He acts as he thinks his responsibilities as king demand and decides to wait for the tardy prophet no longer. He offers the sacrifice himself. But (verse 10),<\/p>\n
as soon as he had finished offering the burnt-offering, behold, Samuel came.<\/p>\n
This sentence as much as any other encapsulates the predicament of Saul. He appears here starkly as the plaything of fate. Can this extraordinary timing of Samuel\u2019s arrrival be merely accidental, we wonder? The urgency with which Samuel moves into the attack is instructive, too. Saul\u2019s explanation of his action is brushed aside without even cursory consideration: Saul, declaims the prophet, has not obeyed God\u2019s command and stands condemned. Nor is the king given any opportunity to beg mercy of God. It is as though that condemnation, and the accompanying judgement, was the primary object of Samuel\u2019s visit. At the very least we might say that Samuel (which must mean God) has seized this opportunity with both hands.
\nThe question that immediately arises at this point is the one we have already examined (above, chapter two): On what grounds has Saul been condemned?\u2014for nowhere are they precisely stated. As we saw, the condemnation is most readily seen as deriving from the instruction of 10:8; and it is unlikely that the propriety of the sacrifice being offered by other than a prophet or priest is really at issue. The answer to the question lies rather in the ambiguity of the instruction: while it may seem that Saul has fulfilled the conditions of the command, in that he has waited the required seven days, the instruction also speaks of him being required to wait \u201cuntil I come to you\u201d. It is the ambiguity that becomes the trap.
\nSo Saul is caught.
\nIt is important to note that the judgement also is ambiguous: at the least it means that Saul will not establish a dynasty; at the most it could be taken to mean that his kingship will come to an immediate end\u2014for a successor is already chosen. Thus Saul acts henceforth knowing that unless he can manage to defy this destiny, he has himself no certain future as a king, while Jonathan his son has no future at all. (It is all the more ironical, then, that it is Jonathan who achieves most of what military success comes Israel\u2019s way in the Philistine campaign.) For Saul there remains only the dignity of pressing on with the task in hand.
\nJonathan\u2019s sortie against the Philistines in chapter 14 not only develops the motif at the beginning of chapter 13\u2014it is Jonathan, not Saul, who exhibits military prowess\u2014it also illustrates that, despite the condemnation of Saul, Yahweh is still on the side of Israel. We may be prompted to recall that amongst the more ominous tones of the beginning of the story, there was also that expression of goodwill in 9:16,<\/p>\n
He [Saul] shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines; for I have seen the affliction of my people because their cry has come to me\u201d.<\/p>\n
Jonathan puts his trust in Yahweh (\u201cit may be that Yahweh will work for us\u201d, 14:6), wreaks astonishing havoc, and has his exploit marked at the end by a panic and earthquake that can only come from God. The battle grows and not even Saul\u2019s involvement seems able to contain the extent of his victory (14:16\u201323).
\nAt this point, however, another complication for Saul arises. No sooner has the story moved to a peak (\u201cso Yahweh delivered Israel that day\u201d, verse 23) than the narrator undercuts the mood of triumph and slows down the pace (14:23f.):<\/p>\n
And the battle passed beyond Beth-aven. And the men of Israel were distressed that day, for Saul had laid an oath on the people.<\/p>\n
The battle starts quite independently of Saul, through Jonathan\u2019s foray, which at first no one else knows about, least of all Saul. The king\u2019s pious vow, imposing a fast on the army as a token of devotion to Yahweh, then ensnares an unsuspecting Jonathan who, precisely because of his succesful, divinely aided, initiation of the battle, knows nothing of it. It would seem that Saul is to be allowed a victory only at a cost\u2014and the cost is to be exacted, ironically, through the agent of victory. The king triggers the complication by his own action, but only through the mechanism of the \u201cchance\u201d absence of Jonathan and the \u201cfortuitous\u201d abundance of honey in the forest into which the pursuit happens to move.
\nJonathan\u2019s response, on being informed of his infringement, is for the first time openly critical of his father. He takes a pragmatic view: the honey has revived him (\u201csee how my eyes have become bright\u201d, 14:29) and food would have sustained the army in a more vigorous mopping-up of the enemy. The response thus has the function of pointing up the piety of the king\u2019s action.
\nIn fact the problem for Saul grows, for in desperation the people fall upon (reading y\u201b\u1e6d) the live-stock of their enemies and eat it in a way that breaks the ritual law (14:31f.), so that Saul is forced to withdraw his attention from the battle and provide a make-shift arrangement in order to ensure proper cultic observance (14:34f.). The oath, therefore, however well-intentioned, is shown to have proved disastrous in practice. It is as though God has thrown it back in Saul\u2019s face.
\nWorse is to come. That evening, dutifully consulting the priestly oracle before furthering the attack on the Philistines, Saul learns of Yahweh\u2019s displeasure, and when an elimination is made by lot (an ironic reminder of Saul\u2019s designation as king) it becomes apparent to the king that Jonathan is the offender. At this point the narrator presents us with another great irony, for Saul behaves now towards Jonathan, his own son, in just the same unbending way as Samuel had earlier behaved towards him, Saul, in the matter of his \u201cbreaking\u201d Samuel\u2019s instruction to wait for him at Gilgal. No allowance is made for the circumstances of Jonathan\u2019s sin. The undeniable fact of it is enough. Saul simply condemns him to death. In Saul\u2019s case, of course, there is a positive as well as a negative side to his response\u2014negative, in that he exhibits an inappropriate rigidity of attitude; positive, in that he has done what he has done with the interests of his people at heart and at the sacrifice of his own (family) interest (as is the case with Jonathan who with simple dignity offers to die). He is doubly trapped, since (with unconscious irony) he has already sworn (verse 39) that if it be he or his son who is culpable then he or his son should die.
\nSo the story switches direction dramatically, moving from success to disaster; and the pious oath, which at first seems the cause of only minor complication, issues finally in a terrible dilemma for the king.
\nResolution comes through the people (verse 45). They too adopt the pragmatic view and refuse to allow the death of the one person who had most distinguished himself (\u201cwrought with God\u201d) that day. Saul\u2019s dilemma is resolved, but at the cost of another oath broken (that of 14:39) and with a significant abdication of authority. In the end it is the people who rule, not Saul the king. Yet that is perhaps as it should be; for it is the ordinary, humane, commonsense view that prevails. Indeed there has been a curious shift in Saul\u2019s role in this episode. It is as though, in reaction to the circumstances of his condemnation at Gilgal, he has been playing the role of a Samuel, giving token of his acceptance of God\u2019s absolute priority over all merely human considerations (as in the oath) and demanding strict and uncompromising compliance with the divine scheme of things (as in his preparedness to execute Jonathan). It is Jonathan and the people who play the role that Saul had played at Gilgal. In a sense, therefore, in accepting the people\u2019s refusal to allow the (humanly speaking) absurd to happen, Saul becomes himself again.
\nOne further consideration arising from this episode of the oath: given the swearing of the oath as an initiating cause in the sequence of trouble, have we an indication that perhaps Saul\u2019s problem is to be sought within himself? Is he prone to be rash? And may we then look back to his sacrifice at Gilgal and wonder if there also he was hastily decisive, unduly pressured by events? Should he have exercised a little more patience? Such an interpretation is not easily dismissed. On the other hand, our observation in the preceding paragraph concerning the circumstances of the oath-swearing, and the remembrance of that so-delicately-timed delay by Samuel at Gilgal is sufficient to bring back into focus that other perspective, of Saul as a victim, while the series of \u201caccidents\u201d vital to the cause-and-effect chain in the oath story reinforces a judgement that, whatever Saul\u2019s failings, he has much to contend with that lies beyond his control.
\nThe immediate outcome of all this trouble is that no further action is taken in the battle against the Philistines. Both sides withdraw. The section ends (14:47\u201352) with a brief recital of Saul\u2019s campaigns against enemies on all sides, with some measure of success; and perhaps in verses 47f. we are indeed to see the fulfilment of Yahweh\u2019s promise in 9:16 that Saul would save the people from the hand of the Philistines. If so, the last verse of the chapter (14:52: \u201cthere was hard fighting against the Philistines all the days of Saul\u201d) may warn us that, strictly speaking, the promise leaves open the possibility of a complete reversal of fortune as well.<\/p>\n
Saul the king: the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15)
\nSaul\u2019s second major experience in the exercise of kingship is his campaign against the Amalekites. The episode begins with instructions from Samuel, so that we are immediately aware that Saul is in another \u201cobedience\u201d situation. Nothing is said of the earlier judgement against the king. Samuel simply states his authority, implicitly reminding the king of his vassal status, and issues his command to attack and destroy Amalek.
\nWe have already looked closely at this chapter and the way it narrates the story of Saul\u2019s \u201cdisobedience\u201d over the matter of the spoil, swinging our sympathy now away from, now back to, the king. As was the case with chapter 13, we saw that here too there is every reason to take it that Saul acts in good faith. And again, Samuel\u2019s refusal to accord Saul\u2019s explanation even the most cursory consideration (exemplified most markedly in his disdaining to ask about Agag) leads us, as in chapter 13, to conclude that judgement wil be made against Saul for \u201cdisobedience\u201d irrespective of any good faith in the motivation of his action. The scene, like that in chapter 13, discloses to the reader that Saul when \u201ctested\u201d is bound to fail. That is his fate.
\nWithin the story itself, the king too knows what his response must be to the prophet\u2019s condemnation. He realizes that he is trapped once again and that he can do nothing other than submit. He confesses that after all he has sinned (recognizing that he cannot contest Yahweh\u2019s\u2014or his prophet\u2019s\u2014definition of \u201csin\u201d). Whether there is a mischievous distinction intended in his reference to \u201cYahweh\u2019s commandment and your words\u201d we cannot be sure. At any rate he asks pardon and requests permission to be allowed continued access to the worship of God. The reader knows now, however, that this is useless.
\nSamuel rejects Saul as king, on Yahweh\u2019s behalf, and turns the robe-tearing to his purpose of judgement: the kingdom is torn from Saul \u201cthis day\u201d and given to a neighbour who is \u201cbetter\u201d than he. Thus the judgement of chapter 13 is confirmed. But while the phrase \u201cthis day\u201d seems to lend it an immediacy and the term \u201cneighbour\u201d a specificity it did not previously have, the judgement still retains that openness that characterized the first rejection. All Saul can truly know is that he finds no favour with God; the moment of his removal from the throne is still not disclosed to him. So Samuel rejects him, on Yahweh\u2019s behalf. Nor, he adds, will Yahweh \u201crepent\u201d of his action.
\nThe rest of the scene is one of pathos. Saul asks for at least a token show of honour before his people, and Samuel, with little to lose\u2014after all, he knows now that Saul is irretrievably doomed and that Yahweh, in due course, will be vindicated\u2014accommodates him. So, ironically, the scene ends with the \u201cdisobedient\u201d Saul worshipping Yahweh.
\nFor his part Samuel takes the completion of the \u1e25rm (or so it seems) into his own hands and deals with Agag. His sentiment is human\u2014\u201cAs your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women\u201d (15:33)\u2014but his action lacks humanity. But to seek humanity in Samuel is to mistake his role. He is like Teiresias in Sophocles\u2019 King Oedipus. He is the mouthpiece and agent of forces beyond him. He has no choice but to give effect to the intractable demands of divine decree, the dictates of fate:<\/p>\n
So Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before Yahweh in Gilgal.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore Yahweh in Gilgal\u201d is like a refrain in this story, for before Yahweh in Gilgal take place the key events in these first formative episodes. The phrase thus speaks to us of Saul as well as of Yahweh and his prophet.
\nThe scene ends with the short summary sentence:<\/p>\n
So Yahweh repented that he had made Saul king over Israel.<\/p>\n
It is as if to say that the episode has been about not only Saul\u2019s \u201csin\u201d but even more, perhaps, Yahweh\u2019s \u201crepentance\u201d. The sentence picks up the theme of verse 11, Yahweh\u2019s word to Samuel:<\/p>\n
\u201cI repent that I have made Saul king; for he has turned back from following me, and has not performed my commandments\u201d.<\/p>\n
It also forces our attention again to the remarkable discrepancy between these lines and Samuel\u2019s assertion in verse 29 of Yahweh\u2019s divine immutability.
\nAs a question to a humbled Saul, Samuel\u2019s words in 28f. work well: Saul has embarked on a course of action and now wishes to \u201crepent\u201d; Yahweh too has now embarked on a course of action\u2014the designation of another king in Saul\u2019s place\u2014but he, being no mere man (like Saul), will not \u201crepent\u201d (which term in the context clearly has connotations of change of heart\/attitude). To the omniscient reader (who has read verse 11 and will read verse 34), however, the rhetoric gives rise to serious misgivings. Does God \u201crepent\u201d or not? What does Samuel really believe (given verse 11)? Is it possible that the prophet\u2019s confidant-sounding assertion that God will not repent may mask a deep unease on the subject (that is to say, is he over-compensating)? That may be too subtle a conclusion. But the point I wish to make is that the way the text focusses on this matter of Yahweh\u2019s \u201crepentance\u201d is to raise questions about it.
\nOn the one hand, the word of Yahweh to Samuel in verse 11 sounds straightforward enough. Because Saul has broken his commandments (as Yahweh sees it) Yahweh has repented of giving him the kingship; that is, he will now take the kingship away. On the other hand, indicators in the story so far (including chapter 15) have suggested that the basis of the judgement against Saul, the \u201crepentance\u201d of Yahweh, is more complex than this simple explanation (\u201cbecause\u201d) suggests; Yahweh\u2019s dealings with Saul are, shall we say, less than impartial. Our feeling, therefore, is likely to be that there is more to Yahweh\u2019s \u201crepentance\u201d than verse 11 discloses. Such a feeling can only be reinforced when verses 11, 29 and 35 (taken in concert) themselves set a question mark against the nature of God\u2019s \u201crepentance\u201d and invite us to look a little further. Accordingly we shall come back to this question, in the Chapter Seven.
\nChapter 15 is obviously a pivotal scene in the story. By the end of the chapter Saul\u2019s rejection as king by Yahweh is beyond all further doubt. The actual process of rejection, however, has set up some interesting contrasts. Chapter 8 began the story with a question about \u201cjudging\u201d (s\u0306p\u1e6d) which led to the making of a king. From the final appointment of Saul in chapter 11, the major episodes (chapters 12\u201315) have all centred around important judgements. In chapter 12 Samuel upbraids the people for their sin against Yahweh (and himself) in asking for a king, passes judgement on them and calls upon Yahweh to ruin their wheat harvest with a storm. The people\u2019s response is to ask that Samuel should pray for them to Yahweh, owning that their request for a king was a sin. Samuel\u2019s response is one of reassurance: \u201cFear not!\u2026 For Yahweh will not cast away his people\u201d.
\nThe judgement against Saul in chapter 13 is peremptory\u2014there is no pause to consider the king\u2019s response\u2014but that in chapter 15 offers a nice parallel to the judgement in chapter 12. Saul in the position of penitent receives, of course, strikingly different treatment from Samuel\u2019s treatment of the people: to his acknowledgment of sin and his request for Samuel to return with him in order that he might worship Yahweh, the prophet refuses outright to have anything more to do with him, though to further entreaties he does accommodate the wish to worship Yahweh. But there is no pardon as there is for the people in chapter 12.
\nAs we have observed, Saul\u2019s condemnation of Jonathan echoes Samuel\u2019s unbending mode of \u201cjudging\u201d. Again the contrast with the Samuel scenes is striking, for a satisfactory resolution is reached only by the timely and sensible intervention of the people who demand, in effect, that the religious laws be bent to accommodate the realities of the situation. It is tempting to conclude that it is neither Saul the \u201cking\u201d nor Samuel the \u201cjudge\u201d, but the people who turn out to know best what \u201cjudging\u201d is about!
\nChapter 14 is, of course, not the only place where Saul listens to the people. In chapter 15 he owns to having \u201cobeyed the people\u201d (verse 24) and we have already seen that this admission is often marked against Saul as a sign of weakness, a sign of his little deserving to be a king. There is a rather charming irony in the charge, for it is precisely the autocratic king who far from obeying the people will oppress them with his every whim, whom Samuel urges against the people in chapter 8 as a reason for not having a king at all! The observation of \u201cweakness\u201d on Saul\u2019s part, therefore, merely underscores the fact that whatever Saul is being condemned for, it is nothing to do with Samuel\u2019s list of royal horrors. Whether his \u201clistening to the voice of the people\u201d is a weakness or strength lies, I believe, in the eye of the reader.
\nChapter 15 is about a judgement; it is also about \u201cobedience\u201d. The phrase \u201clisten to the voice of Yahweh\u201d (\u201cobey\u201d\u2014\u0161m\u201b bqwl) punctuates the speeches and reminds us of chapter 8 where its use was nearly as frequent. We observed a probable undertone of irony in Yahweh\u2019s instruction to Samuel to \u201cobey (\u0161m\u201b bqwl) the people\u201d. That irony is confirmed now in chapter 15 where we find Saul being condemned for doing precisely what Samuel had been ordered to do:<\/p>\n
\u201cI have sinned \u2026 for I honoured [feared?] the people and obeyed their voice\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the divine sphere of operation \u201cobeying the people\u201d is implicitly opposed to \u201cobeying the god\u201d and can only produce negative results. It is appropriate that Saul, whose appointment as king came from \u201cobeying the people\u201d should meet with rejection through \u201cobeying the people\u201d.
\nSo Saul\u2019s formal rejection is complete. The remainder of the story is a matter of either how the rejection will be implemented in practice, or whether Saul can cheat his fate. On previous indications the reader may well doubt the likelihood of the latter alternative; but one of the more fascinating aspects of the story itself is that Saul, despite foreknowledge of his fate as decreed by God, strives almost to the last to maintain his hold on the kingship. To this extent he retains a spark of independence as a character and his role is not simply a reflection of Yahweh\u2019s divine intentions. Yet paradoxically the more he struggles against his fate\u2014which from now on is increasingly embodied in the figure of David\u2014the more he himself becomes fate\u2019s agent. In this regard, as in others, the reader who wishes to set our story in a wider literary context will find some interesting parallels between this story and that, say, of Sophocles\u2019 King Oedipus or Shakespeare\u2019s Macbeth.<\/p>\n
Chapter Five<\/p>\n
THE STORY: 1 SAMUEL 16\u201323<\/p>\n
Saul and his rival:
\nDavid at court (1 Samuel 16\u201319:17)
\nThe new phase in the story introduces David and explores his relationship with Saul at court. From the outset it is made clear to the reader that David is to be Saul\u2019s successor, but Saul is left to divine that for himself. The anointing of David is carried out by subterfuge involving, ironically, the pretence that the real purpose of Samuel\u2019s excursion is to offer a sacrifice. Two other points may be noted at the very beginning of this section of the story. Samuel claims that were Saul to hear of his mission he (Saul) would kill him. Is this a touch of paranoia on Samuel\u2019s part, or is it an intimation of a violent strain in Saul that will begin to mark his life from now on? (Should we find, then, a kernel of this characteristic back in chapter 11, in the violence of that message to the men of Israel to come to the rescue of Jabesh-Gilead?) Furthermore, the tense atmosphere of suspicion and potential violence is not confined to relations between Yahweh\/Samuel and Saul. The elders of Bethlehem meet Samuel with fear and barely disguised hostility (16:4f.). To ordinary people, as to kings, Samuel can be a dangerous man.
\nThe choice and anointing of David takes place (16:6\u201313). Like Saul, David is a \u201cleast likely hero\u201d, the youngest of the brothers. Like Saul, too, he is a handsome youth. One wonders whether it is with conscious or unconscious irony that the narrator, having had Yahweh deliver his fine sentiments in verse 7 (\u201cDo not look on his [Eliab\u2019s] appearance.\u2026 Man looks on the outward appearance but Yahweh looks on the heart\u201d), introduces David with no other recommendation than that David \u201cwas ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome\u201d. Presumably, however, the outward appearance is fortuitous (or perhaps a concession to man\u2019s weakness!). We have already been told that Yahweh\u2019s choice was of \u201ca man after his own heart\u201d (13:14); so Samuel anoints the young man. If, looking back to Saul\u2019s anointing, we wait for God\u2019s command to David, we wait in vain. Where Saul\u2019s kingship had been immediately hedged around with provisions, David\u2019s is left open. No trap is set for the new king. Clearly David\u2019s fate has been marked out very differently from Saul\u2019s.
\nAs earlier had been the experience of Saul, the spirit of Yahweh comes mightily on David. Yahweh is with him. For Saul, on the other hand, the experience is reversed (16:14):<\/p>\n
Now the spirit of Yahweh departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from Yahweh tormented him.<\/p>\n
Here for the first time explicitly we have Welch\u2019s \u201cdark powers\u201d (cf. the discussion in Chapter One, above). Again, therefore, we are confronted with the theme of Saul the victim, and this theme competes for our sympathy during our growing alienation from Saul as he becomes ever more moody, jealous and violent.
\nThere is no flabbiness in the narrative at this point. The introduction of the spirit tormenting Saul leads directly to David\u2019s involvement in Saul\u2019s life. By the cruellest of fate\u2019s tricks no sooner is David anointed and Saul unwell (poisoned by Yahweh, one might say) than his own servants are recommending David as the cure for his sickness. The economy of plot is superb and the irony of the situation that is created is quite overwhelming. \u201cBehold\u201d, says Saul\u2019s servant (16:18), \u201cI have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skilful in playing, a man of valour, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence\u201d; and, as though this were not enough, he adds, \u201cand Yahweh is with him\u201d\u2014as if to underline the fact that Yahweh is not with Saul! In many respects 16:14\u201323 is the rest of the story in microcosm. With an introductory nudge by fate, Saul delivers himself into the hands of David. The king provides the youth with the opportunity to gain the status of an alternative king, and Saul becomes totally dependent on David\u2019s goodwill for his survival. Thus, right at the beginning of his career, David is shown to have the upper hand\u2014as befits God\u2019s new servant.
\nJust as Saul\u2019s rise to prominence had been pictured in several stages, so now with David. Secretly anointed, then brought to court in a role ancillary to the king, he is finally put to public test. The plot is flawed at the end of chapter 16\u2014we need some mention of his being sent home from court and perhaps of his appearance, as he matures, being greatly altered so as not to be recognizable on his reappearance before Saul and his general. Be that as it may, the movement of the story in chapter 17 can carry us across the break if we can but momentarily suspend our disbelief.
\nIt is interesting to compare David\u2019s deed with that of Saul: Saul\u2019s achievement had been to rally his fellow Israelites and, as a conventional soldier, to lead them successfully in battle at Jabesh-Gilead. David\u2019s achievement is to overcome, singlehanded and unconventionally, the champion of the Philistines and with him the whole army. Again, therefore, David is marked out as enjoying the favour of providence in a most remarkable way. Moreover, the narrator goes to some pains to show that David proves himself in the face of Saul\u2019s impotence (and that of everyone else) and quite deliberately without aid from the king (17:38f.). The incident of the armour points up the fact that Saul\u2019s way is not David\u2019s way.
\nI have already observed that by the introduction of David into his court Saul has begun unconsciously to pave the way for his advancement. It is not, however, simply a matter of David\u2019s opportunity for experience as armour-bearer and courtier, that is significant. There is an emotional web spun around David in which Saul becomes enmeshed. In 16:21 we learn that Saul came to love David greatly. Likewise, no sooner has David won his victory over Goliath than we are told (18:1): \u201cThe soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul\u201d. Saul\u2019s sudden eruption of jealousy at the public acclaim of David, and his realization that David poses a menace (18:8), is thus vastly complicated. The struggle with David is henceforth conducted in the context of a love-hate relationship, and the story, inasmuch as it may be considered a mirror of the human condition, gains immeasurably in intensity and sophistication. (It is worth observing, incidentally, that this important \u201cfamily\u201d dimension to the story is characteristic of many other stories in the Old Testament\u2014nowhere more so than in the story of King David in 2 Samuel and 1 Kings 1\u20132.)
\nA crucial difference in the relationship between David and Jonathan, on the one hand, and David and Saul, on the other, is hinted at immediately Jonathan is introduced into the narrative (18:3\u20135):<\/p>\n
Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his armour, and even his sword and his bow and his girdle. And David went out and was successful.<\/p>\n
In 17:38f. we saw David offered Saul\u2019s armour and sword, only to reject them\u2014\u201cI cannot go with these\u201d\u2014in favour of going to meet the enemy champion clad and armed simply as he was. Yet now he can accept Jonathan\u2019s armour and sword and clad thus (so the following sentences seem to imply) he is able to go out successfully to battle! As Jobling has observed (1978:22), already Jonathan\u2019s future mediating role between Saul and David is being marked out. David can receive from Jonathan what he cannot receive from Saul.
\nWhat he will ultimately receive from Jonathan is the kingdom (23:17)! The symbolism of the clothes nicely encapsulates and foreshadows this transference. In 15:27f. the tearing (qr\u201b) of Saul\u2019s robe (me\u201b\u00eel) is directly associated with the tearing (qr\u201b) of the kingdom from him. The robe thus becomes a symbol of (royal) status so that when now we find Jonathan stripping off his robe (me\u201b\u00eel) and giving it to David it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are already witnessing, in anticipation as it were, the transference to David of Jonathan\u2019s status as heir apparent.
\nWith 18:8, Saul\u2019s outburst of jealousy, we come to a second major pivot in the story. From this point on he becomes locked (unknowingly?) in a contest with the will of fate, represented by the \u201cman after Yahweh\u2019s own heart\u201d, David, and from this point on the negative side of his character comes increasingly to the surface. Humphreys with justification speaks of the \u201cdisintegration\u201d of Saul, though I would not wish to speak of complete disintegration.
\nThe remainder of David\u2019s stay at court develops the themes of God\u2019s incitement of Saul to jealousy and madness, of Saul\u2019s increasing entanglement with David, and of Saul\u2019s inability to damage David\u2019s interests. On the contrary, every move Saul makes against David only enhances his rival\u2019s prospects. He makes him captain in order to get him out of court (18:12\u20136) but with the result that David is yet more successful, so that \u201call Israel and Judah loved David\u201d (18:16). He tries to kill him by proxy, using the Philistines as agents and his daughters as bait (we are reminded of David\u2019s proxy killing of Uriah, in 2 Samuel 11). The first attempt ends in failure\u2014David, like the folktale hero, succeeds in his impossible task\u2014and Saul is put in the wrong by having to break his promise. The second attempt also fails and he is forced to give David his daughter. He is thus even more enmeshed with David: indebted to him for his harp-playing\/healing and his military service, and tied to him through Jonathan\u2019s love and his daughter\u2019s marriage.
\nHis action also begins to drive a wedge between Jonathan and himself. Having tried without success to kill David by his own hand (18:11) and by the hand of the Philistines (18:17ff.), Saul then tries to persuade Jonathan and his retainers to do the deed (19:1f.):<\/p>\n
But Jonathan, Saul\u2019s son, delighted much in David. And Jonathan told David, \u201cSaul my father seeks to kill you; therefore take heed to yourself in the morning, stay in a secret place and hide yourself\u201d.<\/p>\n
From this point on, Jonathan\u2019s love for David comes increasingly into conflict with his loyalty to his father. The result is that his loyalty (\u1e25sd) is transferred to his friend (especially in chapter 20), culminating in his secret abdication to David (23:16\u20138). From this point on, too, secrecy becomes a dominant motif in the story, until David finally shakes Saul from his pursuit (chapter 26).
\nIn chapter 18 the intrigue was all Saul\u2019s; now in chapter 19 Saul\u2019s own conspiratorial action sets up conspiracy against him with first David and Jonathan, and then David and Michal. At this stage Jonathan is still closely identified with his father. His conspiracy is directed towards reconciliation and indeed he succeeds in making peace between Saul and David, although, as so often in subsequent speeches of Jonathan, there is some unconscious irony (19:4f.):<\/p>\n
\u201cLet not the king sin against his servant David; because he has not sinned against you, and because his deeds have been very good for you. And he took his life in his hand and slew the Philistine, and Yahweh wrought a great victory for all Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n
Given that what David has been doing most recently are \u201cdeeds\u201d which have totally frustrated Saul\u2019s attempts to be rid of him we might have expected the king to be somewhat less than enthusiastic about being told of the \u201cgood\u201d that David has been doing for him. Moreover, the phrase descriptive of David\u2019s defeat of the Philistine\u2014\u201cand Yahweh wrought a great victory (te\u0161\u00fb\u201b\u0101h) for all Israel\u201d\u2014takes us back to Saul\u2019s own initial triumph, at Jabesh-Gilead, and to his own words to the people (11:13)\u2014\u201ctoday Yahweh has wrought a victory [deliverance] in Israel\u201d\u2014thus emphasizing that David is treading the road to kingship that Saul once trod. But what Jonathan says was true: Saul \u201csaw it [the defeat of Goliath] and rejoiced\u201d.
\nIf Saul sees the pattern of his doom in Jonathan\u2019s speech he does not let on. Rather he acts as he acted at Jabesh-Gilead when the people demanded the death of those who had poured scorn on him and when he had ascribed to Yahweh the victory (11:13):<\/p>\n
\u201cNot a man shall be put to death this day, for today Yahweh has wrought a victory in Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n
He \u201cobeys\u201d (\u0161m\u201b bqwl) Jonathan and declares (19:6):<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Yahweh lives, he shall not die!\u201d<\/p>\n
So there is peace and David \u201cwas in Saul\u2019s presence as before\u201d. But Yahweh cannot have peace between Saul and David. With the requisite conditions for a fit of violent jealousy established by another of David\u2019s military feats, the evil spirit from Yahweh attacks Saul and so Saul attacks David (19:9\u201310). At the first attempt on his life (18:11) David had evaded Saul (sbb); now David not only eludes Saul (p\u1e6dr), he flees (nws) and escapes (ml\u1e6d). The end of David\u2019s time at court comes with his escape down through the window, aided by Saul\u2019s own daughter, Michal. The story is preceded by \u201cAnd David fled (nws) and escaped (ml\u1e6d)\u201d (19:10), end\u2019s with \u201cAnd (so) David fled (br\u1e25) and escaped (ml\u1e6d)\u201d (19:18), and is punctuated by the same refrain (19:12, 17). The motif of \u201cescape\u201d will dominate the next section of the story.<\/p>\n
Saul and his rival:
\nDavid at large (1 Samuel 19:18\u201323:29)
\nThe next stage in the story is another that begins with Samuel. Now the prophet is openly engaged in helping the king\u2019s enemy. Once more we are taken back to the beginning of Saul\u2019s career, as the spirit of prophecy, which had marked out his election then (10:10\u20132), is used now to circumvent his purpose (19:19\u201324). As we have seen already, the gift of \u201cprophecy\u201d is an ambiguous one. Saul is reduced to impotence before Samuel by being thrown into an ecstatic frenzy: he \u201craves\u201d or \u201cprophesies\u201d (depending on how one chooses to see it). In the light of his raving\/prophesying in 18:10, it is clear that the spirit of prophecy can function in precisely the same way as the spirit of evil. Both are weapons in the hand of God.
\nHis helplessness before Samuel is marked symbolically by his nakedness. We are told that he \u201cstripped off\u201d (p\u0161\u1e6d) his clothes and lay naked, as he raved\/prophesied.
\nWith chapter 20 the relationship between Saul, David and Jonathan is further explored. The episode with the arrows provides some dramatic tension, though this is not particularly well handled since the point of the arrows (secret communication without personal contact) is destroyed by the subsequent conversation of the two characters involved. What is lacking in the manipulation of the plot, however, is more than made up for by tensions concerning the relations of the characters one to another, tensions created through both speech and action.
\nThe role of Jonathan as mediator has already been remarked upon (above, on chapter 18). It is prominent in the present chapter. But chapter 20 also carries forward the process by which Jonathan\u2019s identification of interest with his father becomes less and his tendency to identify with David becomes more marked. The scene starts with David\u2019s demand to know his fault:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat have I done? What is my guilt \u2026 that [your father] is seeking my life?\u201d<\/p>\n
Clinging, no doubt, to Saul\u2019s assurance to him (19:6), Jonathan protests:<\/p>\n
\u201cFar from it! You shall not die! Behold, my father does nothing either great or small without disclosing it to me; and why should my father hide this from me? It is not so\u201d.<\/p>\n
Yet by the end of the subsequent negotiations Jonathan has only moved backwards; his father\u2019s answer (20:31) is: \u201cTherefore send and fetch him to me, for he shall surely die\u201d. And Jonathan finds himself now demanding, as David himself: \u201cWhy should he be put to death? What has he done?\u201d
\nIn a sense Jonathan is on the way to becoming David. It comes as no surprise, then, to find Saul, in an upsurge of mad anger, hurling his spear at his own son (20:33), as he had done in the past at David his rival (18:11, 19:10)\u2014Stoebe (p. 288) notes that the spear is cast \u201cin effect at David\u201d.
\nIt is an irony typical of Saul\u2019s fate that his action only results in Jonathan\u2019s further identification of himself with his friend (cf. Jobling, 14). Not only does he \u201clove\u201d David \u201cas his own soul\u201d; now for the first time we see him in anger\u2014against his own father. Jonathan\u2019s \u201cmediation\u201d, like everything else, ends by driving Saul further into isolation. And again Saul cannot win. While we may admire Jonathan\u2019s loyal commitment to his friend, the concomitant of that love is an astonishing na\u00efvet\u00e9 as regards his own father\u2019s position. He fails to see that David represents any threat to his father and is accordingly reluctant to acknowledge that Saul actually intends David harm (20:1\u20137)\u2014hence the facility with which he is prepared to aid his friend and, as the reader may see it, betray his father.
\nAt the heart of his na\u00efvet\u00e9 is a simplistic view of good and evil, seen typically in the following comment (20:13):<\/p>\n
\u201cShould it please my father to do you harm, Yahweh do so to Jonathan and more also, if I do not disclose it to you and send you away. May Yahweh be with you, as he has been with my father\u201d.<\/p>\n
That Saul\u2019s attempt to harm David might be a direct result of Yahweh\u2019s intervention, Yahweh\u2019s having been \u201cwith him\u201d, or that good and evil might both belong in the repertoire of God, is beyond Jonathan\u2019s understanding. The rest of his speech is full of awful irony, right down to the final invocation (verse 16):<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd may Yahweh take vengeance on David\u2019s enemies\u201d.<\/p>\n
When we remember the narrator\u2019s comment earlier (18:29)\u2014\u201cSo Saul was David\u2019s enemy continually\u201d\u2014and Saul\u2019s words to Michal (19:17)\u2014\u201cWhy have you deceived me thus, and let my enemy go?\u201d\u2014we see that Saul\u2019s isolation here is doubly great. Even in the face of Saul\u2019s fiercest anger (20:30\u20134) Jonathan cannot comprehend the king\u2019s predicament.
\nJonathan\u2019s negative influence upon Saul is captured in the text in another way. His first meeting with David is an intense experience (18:1\u20133):<\/p>\n
And Jonathan loved him as his own soul \u2026 and Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul.<\/p>\n
Within the space of a few verses Saul is intensely angry (verse 8) and, with the urging of the evil spirit from God, he has cast his spear at David to kill him. In chapter 20, the conversation between Jonathan and his friend ends with a renewed expression of that earlier intense commitment:<\/p>\n
And Jonathan made David swear by his love for him; for he loved him as his own soul.<\/p>\n
Again within a few verses we see Saul bursting out in anger (verse 30) and hurling his spear (verse 33). But this time the situation has been cruelly twisted. In 18:2, in the midst of the report of Jonathan\u2019s love, we were told that \u201cSaul took [David] that day, and would not let him return to his father\u2019s house\u201d. In chapter 20 the issue is David\u2019s absence from Saul\u2019s house, but this time, ironically, there is more than a dark hint that Saul wants David\u2019s presence only so as to be in a position to kill him. In chapter 18 Saul\u2019s anger is first kindled at the song of praise for David and Saul by the women who go to meet the victors; in chapter 20 it is anger at the attempted justification against Saul by his own son. And, as we have observed, his attempt to kill David in chapter 18 is now transformed into an attempt to kill his own son. Saul\u2019s fall gathers pace.
\nWith chapter 21 we follow the fortunes of the fleeing David. First he approaches the priests at Nob and taking a pragmatic view of his ritual obligations persuades (deceives?) Ahimelech the priest to give him provisions in defiance of religious law. Then, with Goliath\u2019s sword in hand, he flees\u2014to the Philistines! David certainly has panache. But this (first) time his visit is not timely; sensing danger he extracts himself from the situation by feigning madness. It creates a nice contrast. David controls madness. Madness controls Saul. As things turn out his cool reception at Gath proves a boon in the long run. Forced to escape to the cave of Adullam he finds himself rapidly acquiring a sizeable band of armed men, the power base which is to make him a force to be reckoned with in the land and which clearly makes his second visit to Achish (chapter 27) a rather different occasion from the first.
\nWith his establishment as captain of an armed force, the verbs of motion (\u201cescape\u201d [ml\u1e6d], \u201cflee\u201d [br\u1e25]) become for a time less urgent (\u201cdepart\u201d [hlk] and \u201cgo\u201d [bw\u2019]). This sense of quiet consolidation is reinforced by the snippet of information about his moving his parents to the safe keeping of the king of Moab. Saul\u2019s subsequent action against the priests of Nob seems, therefore, all the more hysterical.
\nThe story of David\u2019s visit to Nob is not without its point for Saul. At the level of interpretation we can see once again the contrast between Saul and David. Saul the pragmatist is condemned by Yahweh (chapter 13, and compare the ironic reversals of chapter 14); David the pragmatist finds only favour. At the level of plot we have another thread leading towards yet another failure on Saul\u2019s part\u2014the slaughter of the priests (22:6\u201323).
\nThe scene starts with Saul venting his anger at his discovery that Jonathan has \u201cmade a league with\u201d David. He accuses all his servants of \u201cconspiring\u201d (q\u0161r) against him by refusing to disclose the truth to him. (And did Saul, we might wonder, \u201cdisclose\u201d his true intentions about David to Jonathan?) The accusation is clearly somewhat wild and the truth as he sees it is blacker than we know it to be: for he believes that not only has Jonathan made a pact with David but he has \u201cstirred up (qwm)\u201d David against him, \u201cto lie in wait (\u2019rb) as at this day\u201d. David is contemptuously referred to as \u201cthe son of Jesse\u201d and his inferiority clearly defined by calling him \u201cmy servant\u201d.
\nAn evil genius is never far from Saul. Doeg the Edomite cleverly deflects Saul\u2019s anger from the servants by offering now his \u201cinformation\u201d about Ahimelech. Shrewdly he picks up the king\u2019s tone (\u201cI saw the son of Jesse \u2026\u201d) and offers just enough information\u2014nothing about Ahimelech\u2019s cautious enquiries about the propriety of David\u2019s request\u2014to make a damning case. An angry Saul needs no prodding. In a trice the accusation he has just hurled at his servants and Jonathan is now hurled at Ahimelech (22:13):<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy have you conspired (q\u0161r) against me, you and the son of Jesse \u2026 so that he has risen (qwm) against me, to lie in wait (\u2019rb) as at this day?\u201d<\/p>\n
Saul\u2019s world has become so packed with suspicion that his suspicions are now indiscriminate.
\nAhimelech\u2019s answer is rather unfortunate. In the circumstances the last thing Saul wishes to be reminded of is that David is his son-in-law and the captain of his bodyguard. That is to add insult to injury. So again Saul plunges into a reckless judgement (cf. chapter 14?), again one that bears some of the signs of Samuel\u2019s judgement against him. The priests must die, he says, \u201cfor they knew that [David] fled, and did not disclose it to me\u201d (22:17). When we remember Ahimelech coming to meet David, \u201ctrembling\u201d (21:1[2]), we cannot be sure that Saul may not be close to the truth. But crucially he is prepared to make no allowance for either the exigencies of the situation or the possibility of action in good faith. Prima facie the crime has been committed and that is all that matters. The episode thus (rather like chapter 14) parodies the scenes of Saul\u2019s rejection, especially chapter 15.
\nWhile it is hard to retain any sympathy for Saul in this scene, there is yet a certain pathos about it, just because it presents Saul in such a terrible reversal of role. His isolation is also further stressed since none of those about him will \u201cput forth their hand\u201d (\u0161lh \u2019t ydm) against the priests, save the treacherous Edomite, Doeg. (With this scene the narrator has increasing recourse to the motif of \u201cputting forth the hand\u201d and indeed to the theme of \u201cpower\u201d (yd)\u2014the question is increasingly one of who has the real \u201cpower\u201d and into whose \u201cpower\u201d (yd) who will be delivered.)
\nThus the king of Israel who delivered Jabesh-Gilead and protected the Kenites is depicted as having his own Israelite priests slaughtered, and that by a foreigner. And there is further heavy irony in the writing, as we can see if, as we read the climax of the scene (22:19), we also remember the circumstances of Saul\u2019s condemnation in chapter 15 (verse 3):<\/p>\n
And Samuel said to Saul: \u201c\u2026 Now go and smite Amalek, and devote to destruction all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both men and women, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass\u201d.<\/p>\n
And Nob, the city of the priests, he put to the sword; both men and women, infant and suckling, ox and ass and sheep, he put to the sword.<\/p>\n
And whereas Agag was spared, in the one episode, to Saul\u2019s eventual discomfort, Abiathar now escapes, to David\u2019s considerable advantage (cf. 23:6); for with the magical \u201cephod\u201d David has the possibility of direct access to information belonging to the divine world of foreknowledge, so that no amount of double dealing (the treachery of Keilah, 23:8\u201313, or of Ziph, 23:19\u201324) can do him harm.
\nThe contrast with the earlier Saul is furthered with David\u2019s triumph at Keilah, rescuing the city from the oppression of the Philistines, echoing Saul\u2019s deliverance of Jabesh-Gilead from the oppression of the Ammonites. There are various interesting differences between the scenes. In chapter 11 the initiation of the episode is caused by the \u201cspirit of God\u201d coming mightily upon Saul and later by the \u201cdread of Yahweh\u201d falling upon the people. In chapter 23 it is a matter of David coolly consulting the oracle. Moreover, we might note that David is allowed considerable flexibility in his dealings with the divine world: the oracle gives him a perfectly clear answer (23:2)\u2014unlike Saul\u2019s earlier experiences, especially in chapter 14\u2014and yet David asks again (23:4), in the face of the people\u2019s wavering. But he incurs no divine displeasure for hesitation in the face of Yahweh\u2019s clear word, for \u201clack of faith\u201d; on the contrary, he receives an even more explicit assurance!
\nIn the oracle in verse 4 we are told that Yahweh will give the Philistines into David\u2019s hand and this victory duly transpires. In verse 6, on learning that David had entered Keilah, we find Saul proclaiming, with a na\u0457vet\u00e9 that momentarily rivals that of Jonathan, that God has given David into his hand, and setting out to besiege the city himself. It is David\u2019s role now to deliver Israel (Keilah) from her mortal enemies; by contrast the king of Israel is pictured as setting out to do precisely what the Philistines had done! Far from having mastery over the country\u2019s enemies he is now in danger of identifying himself with them!
\nYet the story is not content to leave it at that. The final irony is that the people of Keilah are prepared, despite this topsy turvy situation, to recognize Saul\u2019s mastery, not David\u2019s, and to betray their erstwhile deliverer. To another man than Saul that would have been an amazing stroke of good fortune. To Saul it is more apparent than real. David, of course, is allowed to escape, by divine decree.
\nDavid now retreats into the wilderness, and it is in the next major segment of the story (chapters 24ff.) while David is in the wilderness, that Saul reaches his lowest ebb, finds, so to speak, his own wilderness. In the remainder of the chapter there are three brief scenes that mark the end of a major phase in the story.
\nFirst (verses 15\u20138), the extent to which Saul\u2019s position as a king with dynastic prospects has disintegrated is brought sharply into focus with Jonathan\u2019s further movement towards David\u2019s position (23:16\u20138):<\/p>\n
\u201cFear not! For the hand of Saul my father shall not find you; you shall be king over Israel, and I shall be next to you: Saul my father also knows this\u201d. And the two of them made a covenant before Yahweh.<\/p>\n
Though there is still na\u00efvet\u00e9 here (\u201cand I shall be next to you\u201d), the covenant with David is made with an awareness, at least, of the real challenge to Saul that David represents. The last clause of the speech is also significant: it gives us a strong hint that Saul is near the end of his tether, ready to capitulate. With his conscious espousal of David\u2019s cause, Jonathan ceases to have any distinct function in the story (cf. Jobling, 1978) and disappears from sight, to reappear only in death alongside not his friend but his father.
\nSecond (verses 19\u201324), the extent of Saul\u2019s loss of perspective is indicated by the willingness of the Ziphites to betray David. Possibly the inhabitants of Keilah made their decision partly in fear for their homes (cf. 23:10), but the Ziphites arrive unprompted at Gibeah, keen for betrayal. We cannot help remembering that, but a short while before, Saul was accusing everyone of treachery towards him. In fact, as chapter 23 makes clear, apart from his own son, his own countrymen are all on his side, prepared to give up David and demonstrate their loyalty to the king. It is not treachery that defeats Saul but the will of Yahweh.
\nThird (verses 24\u20139 [24:1]), the irony of Saul\u2019s fate is once more thrust at us in the story of David in the wilderness of Maon. This time he is nearly caught\u2014so much so that the name of the place was called thereafter the Rock of Escape. Who should be instrumental, this time, in calling off the pursuit, just as Saul and his men were \u201cclosing in on David and his men to capture them\u201d? Why, none other than the Philistines!<\/p>\n
Chapter Six<\/p>\n
THE STORY: 1 SAMUEL 24\u20132 SAMUEL 2<\/p>\n
Saul and his rival:
\nFailure (1 Samuel 24\u201327:4)
\nThe story now enters a new stage: the roles of pursuer and pursued are reversed. Two rather similar episodes with Saul falling into David\u2019s hand (chapters 24 and 26) frame a picture of David as an aggressively successful outlaw captain, winning booty and wives and making inroads of power into Judah itself (chapter 25). And at every point fate deals to David the right cards, the wrong ones to Saul.
\nIn chapter 24 the action is narrated within the space of a few verses. The tension inherent in the situation\u2014Saul helpless, exposed (!), in the cave; David\u2019s men eager to take advantage of a golden opportunity to rid themselves of their enemy\u2014is nicely manipulated. Momentarily there is added tension, as David, we are told, \u201carose and cut off \u2026\u201d\u2014but it is not Saul\u2019s head that is severed, but the \u201cskirt\u201d of his robe! The bulk of the episode, however, is concerned with the verbal confrontation between Saul and David after the action in the cave.
\nThey meet here for the first time since David fled from court, and for the first time David himself protests his innocence face to face with Saul (cf. earlier Jonathan\u2019s intercession, 19:4f.). It is an opportune moment to do this since it is only with the incident in the cave that David has had an opportunity actually to demonstrate his innocence. Thus while it is tempting to see this chapter (and to some extent the two that follow) as somewhat flabby, overburdened by a preponderance of rhetoric in the form of set speeches, this would be to miss the significance of the episode in the context of the larger story. It is not just another David-adventure but the moment for Saul to be put on trial (\u201csued\u201d) by David, accused by his former servant\u2014\u201cMay Yahweh judge between you and me!\u201d\u2014and faced (yet again) with an unbeatable case. The case, of course, has been long in the making; the incident in the cave merely provides the final damning evidence allowing the suit to proceed.
\nIt is impossible for Saul to win. What has he against David but his suspicions, his jealousy and his anger? By all obvious standards, David is in the right. He puts the whole matter in conventional terms of good and evil (r\u201b, rs\u201b, verses 11, 13). What can Saul do but acknowledge (24:17):<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are more righteous (\u1e63add\u00eeq) than I; for you have repaid me good (hatt\u00f4b\u0101h), whereas I have repaid you evil (h\u0101r\u0101\u201b\u0101h)\u201d.<\/p>\n
It sounds compelling. The reader, however, knows that it has not been as simple as that. Whence emanated this \u201cevil\u201d with which Saul \u201crepaid\u201d David? The irony is, of course, that it was, at least in the first instance, Yahweh\u2019s evil. Is it then Saul\u2019s evil or Yahweh\u2019s that is being contrasted with David\u2019s \u201cgood\u201d?\u2014a contrast that seems so stark to Saul that he is compelled to cap his acknowledgement of David\u2019s goodness with a prayer that Yahweh should reward him with further good (verse 19). The reader, on the other hand, is wondering whether David has not had more than a fair share of \u201cgood\u201d strewn along his path. David\u2019s own speech has already alerted us once more to the complexity of Saul\u2019s predicament. By his invocation of Yahweh not only as judge but as prosecutor and executer of judgement (verses 12 and 15) he reminds us that it has been Saul\u2019s lot to find himself cast as defendant before such a court\u2014an unenviable position, as the ironic oracles of the classical prophets proclaim.
\nSaul, for his part, appears to recognize that he is in a totally untenable position. \u201cThis day your eyes have seen how Yahweh has given you into my hand in the cave\u201d, says David, and Saul in reply does not demur at this interpretation of the event (verse 18), though it cruelly contrasts with that fond hope before Keilah (23:6\u2014\u201cAnd Saul said: \u2018God has given him into my hand\u201d \u2019). So his speech moves naturally from the blessing (\u201cmay Yahweh reward you with good\u201d) to the real climax of the scene which is Saul\u2019s first public acknowledgement of David\u2019s destiny: \u201cfor I know that you shall surely be king\u201d (verse 20).
\nThe first protestation of David\u2019s innocence was made by Jonathan to Saul (19:4f.); it produced a vow from Saul (verse 6) that David should not be put to death\u2014a vow that was almost immediately broken in intent if not in practice. In chapter 20 David protested his innocence to Jonathan and secured a vow of loyalty by Jonathan in return for David\u2019s oath (a nice parody of 19:6) that Jonathan should not die (be put to death) nor his \u201chouse\u201d be \u201ccut off\u201d as David\u2019s enemies will be \u201ccut off\u201d (20:14\u20137). The inexorable movement has continued. Now in chapter 24 David\u2019s direct protest to Saul produces an open recognition of David\u2019s coming kingship by the king himself; that recognition on Saul\u2019s part means at the same time recognition of the vulnerability of his own \u201chouse\u201d. In return for \u201crecognition\u201d, David now swears to Saul himself, just as he had sworn to Jonathan, that he will not \u201ccut off\u201d the king\u2019s descendants.
\nThere is still a spark of struggle left in Saul. He does not offer to abdicate (as Jonathan had done); the kingship will have to be seized from him. But the demand for David\u2019s oath shows that, for the rest, Saul is now completely on the defensive. He can no longer hope that Samuel\u2019s threat against his dynasty will be averted; he can only try to shore up his house against depredations more terrible than the loss of the crown that was its treasure.
\nThere are some interesting resonances in Saul\u2019s plea that David should not \u201ccut off\u201d his \u201cseed\u201d (zr\u201b; RSV: \u201cdescendants\u201d) which are worth a moment\u2019s exploration. In a sense, David has already done just that; he has effectively cut off Jonathan from \u201cafter him\u201d (that is, from \u201cfollowing\u201d him\u2014both as obedient son and as heir). More than that, we have seen this \u201ccutting off\u201d played out as a sexual metaphor in the love between Jonathan and David. While David\u2019s heterosexuality\u2014indicated, for example, in the stories of Michal and Abigail\u2014offers promise of a dynasty for David, Jonathan\u2019s intensive and exclusive devotion to David is strongly suggestive of a homosexuality which in turn would represent a denial of Saul\u2019s dynastic hopes. Thus in this sense also David as the object of Jonathan\u2019s love may be seen to have \u201ccut off\u201d Saul\u2019s descendants.
\nThis sexual metaphor surfaces strongly here in chapter 24. Saul goes into the cave (me\u201b \u0101r\u0101h) to \u201crelieve himself\u201d (leh\u0101s\u0113k \u2019et-ragl\u0101yw). The very term \u201ccave\u201d has a potential for sexual connotation: it associates easily with words such as ma\u201bar, a bare place, \u201b\u0101r\u0101h, \u201b\u00fbr, to be naked, exposed, \u201b\u0101rar, to strip oneself, and \u201berw\u0101h, m\u0101\u201b\u00f4r, nakedness, genitals. David and his men sit in the \u201cinnermost parts\u201d (yark\u0101h: flank, side, recesses, extreme parts; cf. y\u0101r\u0113k: thigh, loins) of the cave. Saul goes in to perform one private bodily function; the scene that ensues hints at another. He \u201ccovers his feet\u201d (a euphemism for defecation; that is, he squats so that his robe falls over his feet and no doubt as he \u201ccovers his feet\u201d he exposes his backside). But in Hebrew the term \u201cfoot\u201d (regel) is a common enough euphemism for \u201cpenis\u201d, and the difference in Hebrew between \u201che covered his feet\u201d (ragl\u0101yw) and \u201che covered his foot [=penis]\u201d (ragl\u00f4) is but a subtle shift in a vowel. In such a context\u2014and with an appropriate hesitation after \u201cand he cut off\u201d (wayyikrot)\u2014what attentive Hebrew listener or reader could miss the sexual humour implicit in David\u2019s action? \u201cAnd David arose and cut off\u201d \u2026 his head? his penis!? No, Saul protects his sexuality but loses only the \u201cskirt\u201d of his robe. Yet what of this term \u201cskirt\u201d (k\u0101n\u0101p)? K\u0101n\u0101p is a \u201cwing\u201d, an \u201cextremity\u201d! Several other biblical passages encourage us to suppose that in this term, too, there is the distinct possibility of euphemistic use. So even with k\u0101n\u0101p the sexual overtone may well continue. It is only when the k\u0101n\u0101p is defined as that of Saul\u2019s \u201crobe\u201d (me\u201b\u00eel) that the story can continue on a literal level as one about the cutting off of the \u201cskirt\u201d of Saul\u2019s robe.
\nAt the symbolic level, however, the sexual connotations of the scene, having been established, continue to function through what follows. At this level of reading, then, Saul has failed to protect his sexuality (cover his penis); David has stolen it and its potency is now his. In verse 11 he proclaims that he has Saul\u2019s k\u0101n\u0101p in his hand: \u201cSee, my father, see the skirt of your robe in my hand\u201d. Jobling has remarked on the frequency with which David and Saul use the terms \u201cson\u201d and \u201cfather\u201d in this chapter (p. 22, and cf. Koch, 139); and indeed the use is striking. David has usurped Jonathan\u2019s sonship; symbolically he requires Saul as father in order for his future kingship to be (symbolically) legitimate. The sexual metaphor now pictures David in the classic (Freudian) role of the son who has usurped his father\u2019s function\u2014he (so to speak) castrates Saul as Cronus castrates Uranus. Thus when, at the end of the episode, Saul pleads that David will not \u201ccut off his seed\u201d it is not without a certain irony\u2014for his \u201cseed\u201d has already been cut off! Yet the sexual metaphor also makes sense of this plea, for at the same time it has shown that the \u201cseed\u201d is firmly in David\u2019s power (\u201chand\u201d, yd: verse 11).
\nBut the k\u0101n\u0101p (penis) is properly, of course, the kenap-me\u201b\u00eel, the skirt of the robe, and the robe, we have seen, is a potent symbol of status in the story. The robe-tearing in chapter 15\u2014Samuel\u2019s symbolic demonstration of Saul\u2019s loss of status\u2014is significantly recapitulated now. The robe of kingship is at last in David\u2019s hands, torn from Saul first by Yahweh\u2019s prophet and now, to complete the process, by the one anointed by the prophet. It is interesting to note, moreover, that in contrast to David\u2019s earlier refusal to borrow Saul\u2019s clothes (armour) in chapter 17 he now seizes the piece of robe. Thus the incident not only pictures David\u2019s restraint from physical aggression towards Saul (echoed in the insistence, at a literal level, that David has not \u201cput forth his hand against Yahweh\u2019s anointed\u201d; even the cutting of the robe troubles David). At the same time it confirms symbolically that Saul\u2019s status\u2014as king and father (i.e. dynast)\u2014is in effect transferred to David and that in the process violence has been done to Saul.
\nThe hint of violence is not confined to the symbolic activity of David; it is also present in Saul\u2019s speech, \u201cFor if a man finds his enemy, will he not let him go away safe?\u201d (20:19). As we have already noted, Saul has abandoned his dynasty, but he has not abdicated. There is no invitation to David to return to safety. David, he says, is more righteous than he. David has let his enemy depart safely. Saul does not say, however, that he intends to emulate that righteousness or that he no longer regards David as his enemy. Not surprisingly when Saul goes home David goes up to the stronghold.
\nSaul\u2019s public recognition of David\u2019s coming kingship is the cue for Samuel to leave the scene. His only remaining function in the story will be finally, and at the eleventh hour, to reveal to Saul the time and circumstances of his demise and, in effect, of the transference of the kingdom. For that purpose Samuel will be summoned back from death (chapter 28).
\nChapter 25 picks up the motif of reward for good or evil which we observed in chapters 20 and 24 (especially 24:17\u20139). Already in the description of Abigail and Nabal a polarity of good and evil is being indicated (25:3):<\/p>\n
The woman was good (\u1e6d\u00f4b\u0101h) of understanding \u2026 but the man was churlish and evil (ra\u201b) of behaviour.<\/p>\n
And as the episode continues the terms \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cdo good\u201d (\u1e6d\u00f4b, y\u0101\u1e6dab) and \u201cevil\u201d or \u201cdo evil\u201d (ra\u201b, r\u0101\u201ba\u201b) will appear at frequent intervals, twice as frequently indeed as in any other chapter in our story. We also find here the familiar themes of violence and status. While the episode treats the action of David only and not Saul, the king is continually the object of thematic reference. Thus Saul, though absent, is never far distant.
\nHearing that a wealthy farmer, Nabal, is \u201chaving shearers\u201d\u2014which will mean a feast\u2014David sends his men to take a share of the bounty. The speech with which he sends them is a model of the rhetorical art, the first of several such. It is to begin with a salutation: \u201cPeace to you, and peace to your house and peace to all that is yours\u201d. They are to point out that Nabal\u2019s shepherds had suffered no harm at their hands and that they come on a \u201cgood\u201d day (RSV: \u201cfeast\u201d day). Only at the very end are they to indicate what they want and who it is who sends them: \u201cPray give whatever you have at hand [=all that is yours?!] to your servants and your son David\u201d.
\nThere is a wonderful effrontery about the speech\u2014or so it appears to Nabal. Despite its polite dress, the salutation, the request to \u201cfind favour in the sight of\u201d, the humble familiarity of \u201cyour son, David\u201d (cf. 24:11, 16; are we then to see Nabal as another Saul?), the request looks remarkably like a demand for pay-out in a protection racket. David\u2019s men have done Nabal\u2019s men no harm and David wants a reward.
\nNabal answers with marvellous sarcasm (verse 10):<\/p>\n
\u201cWho is David? and who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants nowadays who are breaking forth from their masters (\u2019ad\u014dn\u0101yw)\u201d.<\/p>\n
So much for David\u2019s claim to \u201csonship\u201d. Of course, Nabal knows perfectly well who David is\u2014he is David the son of Jesse. But the \u201cson of Jesse\u201d is nothing but a runaway \u201cservant\u201d, and there are plenty of those about. This scathing dismissal is strongly reminiscent of Saul\u2019s sarcastic outburst against David in chapter 22 (verses 7f.):<\/p>\n
\u201cWill the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards, will he make you commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds?\u2026 None of you discloses to me that my son has stirred up my servant against me\u201d.<\/p>\n
Like Saul earlier in the story, Nabal refuses to recognize that David is anything more than a servant\u2014whereas he, Nabal, is master (cf. 25:9, 14). That may prompt a wry smile from the reader, who has come straight from the scene of Saul\u2019s recognition that David is in fact a future king. Yet Nabal\u2019s response is not unprincipled even if it looks like being unwise (to say the least) in practice.
\nHis shepherds certainly think it unwise. They hastily approach Abigail seeking help. Nabal, it appears, is a stiff, unyielding person. Clearly he totally disapproves of David\u2019s life-style and his servants know that it will be impossible to talk him around (\u201che is so ill-natured [a \u2018son of Belial\u2019] that one cannot speak to him\u201d, 25:17). Yet they also know that to rebuff David is to invite drastic retribution (\u201cfor evil [h\u0101r\u0101\u201b\u0101h] is determined against our master and against all his house\u201d, 25:17)\u2014a most interesting sidelight on David\u2019s character which the narrator has confirmed in verses 12f. David\u2019s response to the rebuff has been, without further discussion, to initiate violent action against Nabal (verse 13; note the repetition of \u201csword\u201d):<\/p>\n
And David said to his men: \u201cEvery man to his sword!\u201d And every man girded on his sword; David also girded on his sword.<\/p>\n
Nabal\u2019s servants obviously find Abigail a much more flexible proposition than their master. They give her an account of their predicament, and we do well to observe some subtle shifts of emphasis in the picture. David\u2019s men had been sent, the servants say, as messengers to \u201cbless\u201d (leb\u0101r\u0113k; RSV: \u201csalute\u201d) their master and he merely railed at them. No mention is made of the demand for \u201cwhatever you have at hand\u201d; the mission was merely one of friendly salutation. Moreover the claim that David\u2019s men had done them no harm while out in the fields and that they had \u201cmissed nothing\u201d during that time is now put in a slightly more positive light by the sentences that precede and follow: David\u2019s men were positively \u201cgood\u201d and \u201ca wall\u201d (against other sources of harm?). Thus, though the speech is still suspiciously vague about the nature of the \u201cprotection\u201d it does offer the possibility of a different perspective from that which had confronted Nabal. Are Nabal\u2019s servants really recalling a genuine favour or merely dressing up a racket in the interests of practical survival? We simply cannot be sure. All we can know is that the speech proves effective. Abigail needs no further prompting. Without word to Nabal she lays hold of a sizeable quantity of provisions and sets out to intercept David.
\nDavid is still breathing violence. He has \u201ckept\u201d (\u0161mr; RSV: \u201cguarded\u201d) all that \u201cthis fellow\u201d (hazzeh\u2014David\u2019s equivalent for Nabal\u2019s \u201cson of Jesse\u201d) had in the wilderness and \u201cnothing was missed of all that belonged to him\u201d. By refusing to offer provisions, Nabal has returned him \u201cevil for good\u201d (r\u0101\u02bf\u0101h ta\u1e25at \u1e6d\u00f4b\u0101h; cf. 24:17f.). Again there is a veil over the precise nature of the activity in the wilderness. \u201cKept\u201d from what? \u201cWatched over\u201d against what \u201charm\u201d? Had Nabal asked for protection? Just how \u201cgood\u201d was this \u201cgood\u201d? And, even more to the point, how \u201cevil\u201d was the \u201cevil\u201d? Did it really warrant wiping out Nabal and his household? Is David, then, to do to Nabal what Saul in his jealous anger had done to the priest of Nob? The narrator having prompted such questions at this stage opens the way for Abigail\u2019s plea to David to restrain himself from bloodguilt.
\nAbigail bows to the ground before David. The last time such obeisance occurred in the story was David before Saul, after sparing him at En-Gedi; and it was followed, we may remember, by an elaborate piece of self-justification concerning his refusal to do violence to Saul despite Saul\u2019s having done him \u201cevil\u201d\u2014\u201cevil\u201d in the form of actually pursuing him with intent to kill. The contrast is considerable (cf. Levenson, 23). Now David is threatening to wipe out Nabal and his male servants merely because Nabal has refused to reward him for a service he never asked for. Or, taking his refusal at the level of \u201cstatus\u201d, for refusing to recognize David as more than a mere \u201cservant\u201d.
\nAbigail\u2019s speech is a model of tact. She strikes the right note from the beginning: \u201cUpon me alone, my master (\u2019ad\u014dn\u00ee) be the guilt!\u201d For Nabal, David is \u201cservant\u201d; for Abigail, he is \u201cmaster\u201d. Indeed within a few sentences she is formulating an oath (note the stress on \u201clife\u201d and \u201cliving\u201d here and in the speech as a whole) which parallels David with Yahweh himself (verse 26): \u201cNow then my master, as Yahweh lives, and as your soul lives.\u2026\u201d The phrase should strike a jarring cord with us; the speech is over-full, it is flattery, it is designed to persuade; it should not be taken at face value.
\nThe vein of flattery continues (verse 28):<\/p>\n
\u201cYahweh will certainly make my master a sure house, because my master is fighting the battles of Yahweh and evil (r\u0101\u201b\u0101h) will not be found in you as long as you live\u201d.<\/p>\n
But what battles is the \u201cmaster\u201d fighting? Right now he is proposing an onslaught on a farmer and his shepherds\u2014a somewhat less than heroic \u201cbattle of Yahweh\u201d.
\nAt the centre of the speech the gift (\u201cblessing\u201d\u2014cf. 25:14) is offered, with almost studied casualness. Built around it, however, is an important theme (verses 26, 29):<\/p>\n
\u201cLet your enemies and those who seek to do evil to my master be as Nabal\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf men rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, the life of my master shall be bound in the bundle of the living in the care of Yahweh your God; and the lives of your enemies he shall sling out as from the hollow of a sling\u201d.<\/p>\n
Here we have the culmination of that series of imprecations against David\u2019s enemies begun by Jonathan. To the reader, of course, the primary referent is Saul. In the context of the speech the curse in verse 26 is that David\u2019s enemies should be \u201cfoolish\u201d, as Nabal (a play on the name which may be taken to mean \u201cfoolish\u201d); but in the context of the whole episode the curse is more potent, for Nabal is struck dead. Verse 29 also functions as a curse, I think, though strictly speaking it is not so grammatically. The lives of David\u2019s enemies shall be \u201cslung out\u201d by Yahweh: the metaphor is complex but the final image of the sling brings clearly to mind the fate of David\u2019s first enemy, Goliath. Lest there should be any doubt about the referent of the curse here the language dispels it: for it is quintessentially Saul who has \u201cpursued\u201d (rdp) David and \u201csought his life\u201d (bq\u0161 np\u0161). Thus one of the important functions of Abigail\u2019s speech, in the context of the story as a whole, is to foreshadow Saul\u2019s death. Her curses pick up the unconscious irony in Jonathan\u2019s earlier imprecation against David\u2019s enemies (20:15f.: \u201cAnd may Yahweh take vengeance on David\u2019s enemies\u201d) and make plain that it is the life of these enemies that is at stake.
\nAmongst the closing phrases of her speech Abigail slips in the last great flattery: Yahweh has appointed David \u201cprince\u201d (n\u0101g\u00eed) over Israel\u2014not \u201cking\u201d, for that, from Abigail, would be treasonable, but \u201cprince\u201d, a word redolent with sanctity and authority. what man, thus wooed, could then resist the force of those last words (verse 31) of the speech?<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd when Yahweh has dealt well with my master, then remember your handmaid\u201d.<\/p>\n
That reiterated reference to David as \u201cmy master\u201d (whereas Nabal who, in the ordinary run of things\u2014in ancient Israel, that is\u2014might be supposed to be her master, is no more than \u201cthis fellow\u201d) comes sharply into focus. Abigail throughout has been looking to the future, holding out an invitation.
\nAbigail knows how to look after her own interests. Nabal\u2019s servants know how to look after their interests. Nabal, by contrast, is indeed a \u201cfool\u201d.
\nDavid\u2019s response is inevitable. He accepts Abigail\u2019s present, grants her petition and sends her back \u201cin peace\u201d.
\nWe follow her back to Nabal who is now holding a feast\u2014the feast of the things he had held back from David; and the feast is \u201clike the feast of a king\u201d. That phrase has a sharp edge to it, for Nabal has not known that the issue was not just a matter of \u201cservants\u201d and \u201cmasters\u201d but of \u201csubjects\u201d and \u201ckings\u201d. He has provoked a king, Yahweh\u2019s anointed, not a servant, and he who feasts as a king will soon be less than a servant\u2014stone dead. The coup de gr\u00e2ce comes, we are told, from Yahweh (25:38).
\nDavid receives the news of Nabal\u2019s death as notice of Yahweh\u2019s judgement upon Nabal for his insult to David: \u201cYahweh has returned the evil-doing (r\u0101\u201b\u0101h) of Nabal upon his own head\u201d (25:39) Abigail is seen as God\u2019s agent in restraining him from doing evil by taking vengeance himself (25:39, cf. 32\u20133). Almost inevitably the final outcome of the episode is David\u2019s marriage to Abigail\u2014which prompts a momentary speculation. Did David spare Nabal and his household through his concern over the question of bloodguilt, or because he had already decided to accept the bargain offered by Abigail (\u201cmy master\u201d, \u201cremember your handmaid\u201d)\u2014his restraint for her hand in marriage when the time was ripe (\u201cwhen Yahweh has dealt well with my master\u201d)?
\nAt face value this is a tale about good and evil\u2014about good and evil people, and good and evil actions. Abigail is good, Nabal evil. Nabal does an evil action; David, a good person, is about to do an evil action in return but is stopped in time by Abigail\u2019s good action. Nabal is punished by Yahweh.
\nScratch the surface of this \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cevil\u201d, however, and a rather different picture is revealed. These stark contrasts of good and evil are conveyed through some slippery rhetoric\u2014rhetoric that is not necessarily motivated primarily by a concern for the truth. Is Nabal\u2019s death a just reward for his rebuff to what he sees as the \u201cMafiosi\u201d? The narrative itself suggests not, not merely in the fact of Abigail\u2019s rhetoric, but through the contextual parallel with the slaughter of the priests of Nob. David is stopped only by the \u201clucky\u201d intervention of Abigail from aping the violence of Saul. Yet Yahweh in David\u2019s place strikes Nabal dead.
\nNabal is not an evil man. He is stiff-necked, a \u201cson of Belial\u201d, but he is \u201cevil of behaviour\u201d (25:3) only in the sense that he is not \u201cwise\u201d. Abigail is \u201cgood of understanding\u201d in the sense of \u201cshrewd\u201d. Nabal is indeed Nabal by nature as well as by name\u2014at least in terms of the worldly wisdom that sets the standard in the story. He tangles with the wrong person. But does he deserve to die? It is the case of Saul all over again. The judgement against Nabal is not a matter of morality but of policy. As Saul is doomed to rejection for reasons beyond his ken and control so Nabal is doomed because, unknown to him, he stands in the way of God\u2019s favourite. To rebuff that person is to rebuff God\u2014and the circumstances of that rebuffing, it would seem, are irrelevant to God. Retribution here is not decided on moral grounds.
\nWith chapter 26 we come back to the pursuit of David by Saul. Again, as in chapter 24, the episode turns the pursuit topsy turvy, though from Saul\u2019s point of view the second episode is an even worse reflection on the state of the pursuit than the first. At En-Gedi Saul had gone alone and by accident to the cave where David happened to be hiding. Now on the hill of Hachilah David goes by design to where Saul is sleeping surrounded by his army.
\nLearning of Saul\u2019s presence, David arises and comes to the place where Saul is encamped (26:3). Teasingly the narrative focusses first upon Saul\u2019s vulnerability to David\u2014\u201cDavid saw the place where Saul lay\u201d\u2014but then progessively lengthens the odds against any attack: for Saul is not alone; beside him is Abner; moreover Saul is within the encampment and, to cap it all, around him is the whole army! Yet despite these impossible odds David and Abishai go down to the camp. Verse 7 recapitulates verse 5: there lies Saul asleep, with Abner and the army around him. The only additional detail is the spear, stuck in the ground beside Saul, that spear which is a hall-mark of Saul. It is a significant detail, and the rest of the episode will hinge around it.
\nAs if by magic (for how else could it happen?) the two intruders find themselves beside the sleeping king. Abishai imagines, as David\u2019s men had imagined in the cave at En-Gedi, that \u201cGod has given your enemy into your hand this day\u201d (25:8, cf. 24:4): \u201cNow, therefore, let me pin him to the earth with one stroke of the spear, and I will not strike twice!\u201d The irony would then be superb\u2014that Saul should be killed by David\u2019s man with Saul\u2019s own spear, the symbol of his authority, and in the manner in which he, for his part, had sought to kill David (\u201clet me pin him with my spear to the earth\u201d; cf. 18:10f.: \u201cand Saul cast his spear, for he thought, \u2018I will pin David to the wall\u201d \u2019).
\nBut David responds as we expect. No, he says,<\/p>\n
\u201cfor who can put forth his hand against Yahweh\u2019s anointed and be guiltless? As Yahweh lives, Yahweh will smite him\u201d.<\/p>\n
The last person Yahweh smote (ngp) was Nabal, who crossed Yahweh\u2019s anointed. That thought is interesting for in the light of it David\u2019s rhetorical question is no longer simply an expression of forbearance, as if to say, \u201cI cannot put forth my hand against him for that is Yahweh\u2019s prerogative\u201d. It is that, but more than that it is nuanced with menace, since it offers the precise reason why Yahweh will smite Saul. Saul is Yahweh\u2019s anointed; but then how much more is David Yahweh\u2019s anointed; and who has \u201cput forth his hand against\u201d David if not Saul? If Nabal is smitten by Yahweh for rebuffing his anointed, how much more will he smite Saul who has relentlessly pursued that anointed, \u201cseeking his life\u201d?
\nSuddenly, therefore, despite David\u2019s forbearance, Saul\u2019s death is close and almost tangible. David sees it variously: he will be \u201csmitten\u201d by Yahweh (with a \u201cstroke\u201d?), or he will just \u201cdie\u201d (that is to say, before his time), or he will \u201cgo down into battle and perish\u201d. So here we have our first glimpse of Saul\u2019s ultimate fate. It is almost as though David has been unconsciously weaving a spell of death over the sleeping king.
\nIn place of the king\u2019s life\u2014so confidently placed in the hands of Yahweh\u2014David and Abishai take the spear and a jug of water (a staple and symbol of life) and depart. The magic still envelops the scene (verse 12):<\/p>\n
No man saw it, or knew it, nor did any awake; for they were all asleep, because a deep sleep from Yahweh had fallen upon them.<\/p>\n
The aftermath of the incursion into the camp is first an amusing scene between David and Abner, and then a scene of some pathos between David and Saul. First, David calls to the army and to Abner (26:14): \u201cWill you not answer, Abner?\u201d Abner answers, \u201cWho are you that calls to the king?\u201d For Abner, to disturb the king\u2019s right-hand man is to disturb the king; for David who has just walked right past him to the king, he is no king nor even a general. With a sarcasm that will momentarily be hidden to Abner he replies: \u201cAre you not a man [a real man!]? Who is like you in Israel [a man beyond compare!]?\u201d Then savagely he deflates the general: \u201cWhy then have you not kept watch over your master, the king?\u201d He has not even guarded the king\u2014he is merely a man, certainly no king, and as the man responsible for the safety of Yahweh\u2019s anointed he deserves to die. We hear nothing more from Abner!
\nSaul now calls out to David, \u201cIs this your voice, my son, David?\u201d David replies, \u201cIt is my voice, my master, O king\u201d. There has been a subtle shift since chapter 24. In chapter 24, too, Saul addressed David as \u201cson\u201d, but whereas there David addressed Saul in return as \u201cfather\u201d as well as \u201cking\u201d, now he replies, \u201cIt is my voice, my master, O king\u201d. Twice more Saul speaks to David as \u201cmy son\u201d, but throughout his own speeches David coolly addresses himself to his \u201cmaster\u201d, \u201cthe king\u201d. A shift in their relationship has occurred. Saul is grasping at straws. Having acknowledged David as heir (24:20), David\u2019s \u201csonship\u201d offers him at least the shadow of a dynasty. David, however, has now the kingdom firmly in his grasp, acknowledged by the king. He no longer needs Saul as \u201cfather\u201d; on the contrary, he is now anxious to distance himself from the rejected of Yahweh; Saul to him is now simply the king who has designated him legitimate successor.
\nThe coolness of address is matched by the heat of his protest to Saul. He shifts his accusation from unjust killing to committing sacrilege: the pursuit is a crime against Yahweh for it is tantamount to forcing David to \u201cgo and serve other gods\u201d (note the foreshadowing of chapter 27, David\u2019s settlement in Philistia). Saul is forcing David to break the first and greatest commandment! This accusation is rhetorically clothed in such a way as to allow David, in (apparent) humility, to give a nod to the possibility that Saul\u2019s pursuit may be justified, while in fact directing the force of his attack (and yet another curse) against Saul himself (verse 19):<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it is Yahweh who has stirred you up against me, may he accept an offering; but if it is men, may they be cursed before Yahweh, for they have driven me out this day that I should have no share in the heritage of Yahweh, saying \u2018Go, serve other gods\u2019 \u201d.<\/p>\n
Yet for the reader David\u2019s (rhetorical) question is not so easily answered as David appears to believe. It was Yahweh who stirred up Saul against David. If Saul is forcing David to commit a crime against Yahweh, then it is, indirectly, Yahweh\u2019s own doing.
\nSaul\u2019s response also takes us back to the Saul of earlier days, to Saul replying to Samuel\u2019s accusation in chapter 15 (26:21, cf. 15:24f.):<\/p>\n
\u201cI have sinned; return, my son David, for I will not again do you harm (evil)\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have sinned.\u2026 Now therefore, I pray, pardon my sin, and return with me, that I may worship Yahweh\u201d.<\/p>\n
He continues now with an even greater expression of self-denigration:<\/p>\n
\u201cI will not again do you harm, because my life was precious in you eyes this day. Behold, I have played the fool and erred exceedingly\u201d.<\/p>\n
Once before there had come a point at which peace seemed to be a possibility between Saul and David, only to be broken by the evil spirit of Yahweh (19:6\u201310); now we sense in the strength of Saul\u2019s self-abasement the possibility of a genuine offer of reconciliation. If so, it is short-lived\u2014at David\u2019s choosing. His reply is to offer the spear back\u2014but let one of the soldiers come and fetch it! He does not offer to bring it back himself. His speech resorts again to self-justification. There is no hint of recognition of Saul\u2019s abasement or acceptance of Saul\u2019s apology (verses 23f.).<\/p>\n
\u201cYahweh rewards every man for his righteousness and his faithfulness; for Yahweh gave you into my hand today, and I would not put forth my hand against Yahweh\u2019s anointed. Behold, as your life was precious this day in my sight, so may my life be precious in the sight of Yahweh, and may he deliver me out of all tribulation\u201d.<\/p>\n
Far from being conciliatory, the speech throws back Saul\u2019s gesture in his face. \u201cAs your life was precious in my sight, so may my life be precious in.\u2026\u201d We expect a reciprocal \u201cyour sight\u201d; instead we get \u201cYahweh\u2019s sight\u201d. David\u2019s reward for his restraint will be Yahweh\u2019s protection, not Saul\u2019s; and the implication, spelled out even more obviously in the clause that follows, is that he believes he needs protection still\u2014from whom if not Saul?
\nAgainst this reception, and as things are to turn out they are David\u2019s last words to him, Saul remains positive. If there is rancour it is buried deep:<\/p>\n
\u201cBlessed be you, my son David! You will do many things and will succeed in them\u201d.<\/p>\n
So David goes on his \u201cway\u201d (for he is on the move, the way to the throne) and Saul \u201creturns\u201d to his \u201cplace\u201d (for he remains trapped where he was; he has failed to escape).
\nAnd what of the spear? It had been flourished by David before the king, but although its return is proposed we are not told of any such eventuality. Symbolically David has now taken Saul\u2019s place (and so properly retains his spear). The plot reflects this symbolic transference of power with Saul relinquishing the pursuit. With this resignation from his struggle to survive we are ready for the account of his death.
\nCuriously it is David who thinks he is in mortal peril: he now makes explicit what we sensed in his previous speech: \u201cI shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul\u201d. His solution is to desert (\u201cgo over\u201d) to the Philistines. The news of David\u2019s defection reaches Saul, \u201cand he sought him no more\u201d (27:4).
\nThus a cycle is complete: David had come into Saul\u2019s life in large part through the Philistines (chapter 17), and now he moves out of Saul\u2019s life through the agency of the Philistines. The difference is that in the first place he had defeated them whereas now he joins them! On the one hand this remarkable reversal can be seen as the result of Saul\u2019s persecution (Saul has driven out Israel\u2019s champion); on the other hand it can be seen as yet another illustration of the latitude allowed to the favourite of Yahweh. Without detriment to his status as Israel\u2019s future king, David can ally himself to Israel\u2019s sworn enemies.<\/p>\n
Saul\u2019s end (1 Samuel 27:5\u201331:7)
\nNevertheless, despite his new vassaldom David does manage to play a double game, serving his own, and Israel\u2019s, ends. As Saul had done so now he campaigns against Israel\u2019s traditional foes\u2014\u201cthe Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites\u201d (27:8). The Amalekite motif is pursued a little further (verse 9):<\/p>\n
And David smote the land, and left neither man nor woman alive, but took away the sheep, oxen, asses, the camels, and the garments.<\/p>\n
Unlike Saul (with the Kenites and King Agag) David spares no one; like Saul he brings back (but to the Philistines, not to Yahweh at Gilgal) the best of the booty\u2014with impunity, for there are no finely worded hedges (whether of \u1e25rm or zb\u1e25) around his activity.
\nAchish is doubly deceived: not only does he think that David is out fighting Philistia\u2019s enemies; he also makes Nabal\u2019s mistake, thinking, \u201che [David] will be my servant for ever\u201d. As we know only too well, David is no man\u2019s \u201cservant\u201d.
\nThe speculation about Saul\u2019s death in 26:10 and his capitulation in 27:4 lend ominous overtones to 28:1, where we are told that \u201cthe Philistines gathered their forces for war, to fight against Israel\u201d. The focus of the narrative is still on David but in such a way as to have Saul always in the background. If war between Israel and the Philistines is to be the scene of Saul\u2019s end (as it was the scene of his first triumph) will David, as a vassal of the Philistines, find himself with his hand raised against Saul despite himself? David is in a dilemma which is only resolved, in chapter 29, by the lucky intervention of the Philistine lords themselves. The whole scene is redolent with ironies, one of the nicest being that it is Achish\u2019s trust (entirely misplaced, of course) that looks as though it will enmesh David in the coming battle, and only the mistrust of the other lords (David viewed as turncoat) that is his salvation.
\nThese scenes frame the central episode of the section, Saul\u2019s consultation with Samuel. (The whole section has a chiastic arrangement: a. David with the Philistines, b. David against the Amalekites, c. David\u2019s dilemma, d. Saul consults Samuel, c. David\u2019s lucky escape, b. David against the Amalekites, a. Saul against the Philistines.) The episode begins (28:3) with brief mention of Samuel\u2019s death and burial, together with a rather cryptic note, the point of which will subsequently become obvious, about Saul having put the mediums and wizards out of the land (an act of religious significance). This is economical writing, sustaining the suspense concerning David yet introducing, with a minimum of explanation, the Endor episode.
\nThe Philistines have confronted Saul and Israel at Shunem\/Gilboa. Saul is dismayed. The wording of this introduction (28:4f.) is notable, for it is strongly reminiscent of two other fateful confrontations between Saul and the Philistines, the first at Michmash\/Gilgal (13:5f.), the second at Socoh\/Elah (17:1f., 11).
\nWhen Saul seeks guidance (\u201casks\u201d: wayyi\u0161\u2019al \u0161\u0101\u2019\u00fbl) from Yahweh he is met with silence (cf. 14:36f.). Once again his subsequent action is triggered by the action (or, as here, the inaction) of God and a sharp contrast is thus drawn with the favours enjoyed by David. As though re-living that day at Gilgal, he takes matters into his own hands. He does what he himself has decreed is unlawful (or so the story implies) and seeks (bq\u0161) a medium. It is the last time in our story that Saul, who for so long has sought (bq\u0161) David, seeks anyone. The story is narrated with skill and subtlety (see Beuken\u2019s essay) especially in the way it conveys the nuances of tension, suspicion and fear in the interplay of king, medium and prophet, who is still very much alive in death. There is pathos in the fact that Saul should even at this stage seek out the advice of his long-standing antagonist. Above all we are given to understand the grip that Samuel has upon Saul. Samuel has decreed his fate in terms both decisive and yet ambiguous. Saul has spent the intervening period struggling with that foreknowledge. Now it is as though he can bear no more ambiguity. He needs certainty and is paralyzed without it. Past enmity is as nothing before the need to see the future with total clarity (again we might usefully compare Macbeth) and so he is prepared to humiliate himself again before the prophet.
\nSamuel\u2019s response to Saul (verse 16) is uncompromising\u2014as we have come to expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy do you ask (\u0161\u2019l) me, since Yahweh has turned from you and become your enemy?\u201d<\/p>\n
But this time, for the first time, there is no ambiguity. Saul is a dead man; his sons too are to die (and so there can be no question of their succession); and the people (RSV: \u201carmy\u201d) of Israel will be delivered into the hands of their enemy (28:16\u20139; here the threat of chapter 12 comes to fulfilment). And at last the time is fixed\u2014\u201ctomorrow\u201d. The implication for Saul is that his life\u2019s achievement is to be blotted out. Israel is to revert to where it was at Saul\u2019s first appearance, blighted by foreign conquest.
\nThe scene comes to a climax in Saul\u2019s fear (verse 20). There are no heroics here. But another tone, of resignation, is immediately introduced by means of the motif of Saul\u2019s physical weakness through fasting (again the dutiful act of piety before battle, reminding us instantly of that earlier engagement with the Philistines, in chapter 14, and the story of the oath). Saul\u2019s fear is real enough\u2014sufficient to make him collapse to the ground. But the narrator restores his dignity by shifting the focus from the weakness occasioned by fear to that occasioned by actual lack of food. The woman\u2019s rather motherly concern and the sudden intrusion of mundane incidentals\u2014Saul sitting upon the bed, the kneading of the bread\u2014serve the same purpose. We are moved (with Saul) from the high world of destiny to the ordinary world of subsistence. Saul eats and accepts life, for food is the most elementary concomitant of life. Jonathan had broken the fast unwittingly and found himself condemned by his father for infringing the divine law, against the protest of ordinary human practicality voiced in Jonathan\u2019s speech in 14:29f. and in that of the people in 14:45. Deliberately now Saul breaks the fast: he signals for the last time a willingness to sit loose from the constrictions of the sacral world. He becomes again Saul the pragmatist, the Saul who was brought to recognize the futility of a sacrifice of Jonathan in the interests of a rigid piety.
\nIn the light of Samuel\u2019s words Saul\u2019s action can be little more than a token gesture. Yet it is typical of him that in the end he faces life, even when he knows that this time life holds only death in store for him. Without further word he eats and goes back into the night.
\nImmediately the narrator turns back to David, who, as already noted, is enjoying his good fortune in being released from involvement in the forthcoming battle, and released, moreover, with blessings coupled with assiduous advice. Whereas Saul\u2019s deception in chapter 28 has been quickly seen through, David has been amazingly fortunate in his deception of Achish, even when pushing his luck to the very brink as in verse 8:<\/p>\n
And David said to Achish, \u201cBut what have I done? What have you found in your servant from the day I entered your service until now, that I may not go and fight against the enemies of my lord the king?\u201d<\/p>\n
Then almost as rapidly as it has arrived the good fortune is replaced by ill: Amalekites have raided David\u2019s base at Ziklag and carried off his people. Even in this calamity, however, there is good fortune almost beyond belief: in sharp contrast to David\u2019s own practice against them, the Amalekites have killed no one but simply carried off all, wives and children, alive. Fortune lends a further hand in the \u201cchance\u201d encounter with a former Amalekite slave who can guide David to his goal. David, like Saul before him (chapter 15), wins a swift victory. The spoil is the Amalekites\u2019 undoing (as it was Saul\u2019s undoing), for they are \u201cscattered abroad\u201d, celebrating their successful raid and the great booty they have taken. Thus David takes them unawares. He spares none within his reach. Furthermore he rescues everyone and everything that belongs to him (30:18f.).
\nUp to this point the good fortune of David might seem to provide a sufficiently pointed contrast with the obstacle-strewn path of Saul to more than account for its inclusion in the story. But there is more to the contrast than this. As already indicated, the attack on the Amalekites draws particular attention to Saul\u2019s Amalekite campaign (chapter 15)\u2014and the circumstances of his final rejection in its aftermath. The aftermath of David\u2019s campaign (30:20\u201331) is most instructive: the remainder of the account is devoted to one theme\u2014the spoil taken from the Amalekites. As David carries off the spoil (\u201cThis is David\u2019s spoil\u201d, say the people as they drive off the livestock), lays down rules for its division among his own men (\u201cit is what Yahweh has given us\u201d, he says) and makes \u201cpresents\u201d of it to his \u201cfriends\u201d, the elders of Judah, Saul faces the Philistines and death at Gilboa. Samuel\u2019s words of rejection still ring in our ears (15:19, 28:17):<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did you not obey the voice of Yahweh? Why did you swoop on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of Yahweh?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause you did not obey the voice of Yahweh and carry out his fierce wrath against Amalek, Yahweh has done this thing to you this day\u201d.<\/p>\n
The arbitrary disparity in God\u2019s treatment of the two figures is nowhere made more manifest than here at the very culmination of the story. The thematic statement is plain. Good and evil come from God. He makes smooth the path of some; the path of others he strews with obstacles. He has his favourites; he has his victims. The reasons, if reasons exist, lie hidden in the obscurity of God\u2019s own being. Saul is one of God\u2019s victims.
\nSaul\u2019s death (chapter 31) is recounted in a simple, matter-of-fact, style. Perhaps the true climax of the story has already come, in chapter 28, with the last confrontation of Saul with Samuel. Within a few sentences we learn of the death of the sons (as prophesied). Then there is a moment of tension as Saul\u2019s last request, to be allowed at least a dignified death, is refused. But Saul acts typically. For the last time he takes matters into his own hands (quite literally now) and kills himself. It is a fine ending, in the best \u201cRoman\u201d fashion.<\/p>\n
Epilogue (1 Samuel 31:8\u20132 Samuel 2:7)
\nAs Samuel has predicted, the battle is a disaster for Israel; the focus, however, is not upon Israel but upon Saul. The epilogue takes up two themes. Dignity has marked the manner of Saul\u2019s death; the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead, in an action of striking loyalty to the man who had delivered them from the Ammonites so long ago, see to it that he suffers no further humiliation in death. The other theme concerns David, who now stands ready to receive the gift that has long since been his. Dramatically he dissociates himself from Saul\u2019s death and underscores his own previous restraint (2 Sam 1:1\u201315), and movingly he grieves for the dead (1:17\u201327). Emotionally there is resolution in the epilogue, particularly through the poem of lament, so that we are prepared finally for the decisive action of the closing segment: David consults Yahweh, goes up with his consent to Hebron and is anointed king over Judah. Samuel\u2019s prophecy has come as close to fulfilment as matters for the story. The rest of the country (the north) will come inevitably to David, as is clear from the tone of authority and firm resolve of the final speech (in which, cleverly, the theme of Jabesh-Gilead\u2014representing now the north\u2014is neatly merged; 2:5\u20137):<\/p>\n
So David sent messengers to the men of Jabesh-Gilead and said to them, \u201cMay you be blessed by Yahweh, because you showed this loyalty to Saul your lord, and buried him. Now may Yahweh show steadfast love and faithfulness to you! And I will do good to you because you have done this thing. Now, therefore, let your hands be strong and be valiant. For Saul you lord is dead, and the house of Judah has anointed me king over them\u201d.<\/p>\n
Part Three
\nREFLECTIONS<\/p>\n
I gave thee a king in mine anger,
\nand took him away in my wrath.
\nHosea 13:11<\/p>\n
Chapter Seven<\/p>\n
SAUL AND YAHWEH<\/p>\n
If the story of Saul is to be labelled a \u201ctragedy\u201d, what kind is it? Is it a tragedy of Fate, or a tragedy of Flaw? The question, which was raised at the outset of the book, could be rephrased to avoid any suggestion that it depends entirely on one\u2019s definition of \u201ctragedy\u201d. Does Saul fail as king because of his own inner inadequacy as a human being, or because he is brought low essentially by external forces or circumstances?
\nIf my exploration has not wholly been on a sidetrack then I think that the answer is fairly clear.
\nFrom the moment of his anointing the future is loaded against him (in the form of the fatally ambiguous instruction of 10:8) and from his establishment as king in chapter 11 it is as though fate has become his active antagonist, thwarting and twisting his every move. (In this respect he is remarkably like King Oedipus.) We have looked closely at the key chapters, 13 and 15, and seen that his rejection by God and the prophet appears, at the most, to be calculated and contrived and, at the least, to reflect a remarkable readiness on their part to find against him. From then on he plays out an unequal match with David. Yet the demands made upon him and the obstacles placed in his path are conspicuous by their absence from David\u2019s experience. David is given a free hand and can do no wrong in the eyes of God, even when his action (for example, in his visit to Nob) appears no \u201cbetter\u201d (cf. 15:28) than those fatal actions of Saul at Gilgal. David is \u201ca man after [Yahweh\u2019s] own heart\u201d (13:14). Whatever precisely that phrase means, the context makes abundantly clear that David is a favourite of Yahweh. Saul, on the other hand, appears as a victim. For David, Yahweh is \u201cProvidence\u201d; for Saul, Yahweh is \u201cFate\u201d.
\nThe mainspring of Saul\u2019s failure, then, is depicted as the outworking of fate\u2014fate which is in some hidden way the reflection of the will of Yahweh. Thus it is a conclusion which cannot easily be side-stepped in any moral or theological appropriation of the narrative by the reader. Nevertheless, the moral universe of the story is clearly not one of simple blacks and whites. Saul is not painted as any ideal hero. His attitudes and actions are at times tinged with a shadowy ambiguity, and although behind some of his most destructive initiatives (as behind the positive ones) lurks the spirit of Yahweh, it would be simplistic to claim that Saul makes no contribution to his own fate. The web of causality and (moral) responsibility in this story is complex and I do not pretend to unravel it. But I do offer a few reflections which my reader may care to pursue further than I have done.<\/p>\n
Saul<\/p>\n
The story makes much of Saul\u2019s jealousy\u2014at times a desperate, insane, even violent, jealousy\u2014and there are more than a few hints of rashness in his action, though the action most commonly cited in this respect, the imposition of the fast in chapter 14, can equally be seen as an expression of deep piety or the cautious exercise of kingly responsibility.
\nThe motif of jealousy prompts comparison with Shakespeare\u2019s Othello where we see this mind-warping emotion distort a fine leader\u2019s perception of things and lead him to reject and destroy an innocent person, the one, indeed, who most loves him. The biblical story\u2019s treatment of the theme, similar in many respects, is yet significantly different. For example, Desdemona, the object of Othello\u2019s jealousy, is essentially loyal to Othello and innocent of the charge of adulterous conspiracy (though it is possible to play her as more ambiguously motivated in her dealings with her husband and Iago). Similarly David is shown to be innocent, though charged with treasonable intentions: he makes no overt claim to the throne, does not fight against Saul, and refuses to \u201craise his hand against\u201d him, even when it is in his power to do so, and effectively at that.
\nJonathan, the object of Saul\u2019s anger (anger which is triggered by his jealousy of David), is likewise shown to be acting in good faith, attempting to mediate between his father and his (as he sees it) wronged friend. On the other hand, both characters are in fact much more ambiguously placed vis-\u00e0-vis Saul than ever Desdemona is vis-\u00e0-vis Othello. Jonathan does, in fact, deal (conspire, make a league?\u201422:8) with David behind Saul\u2019s back, and he ends by abdicating as heir to the throne in favour of David, thus effectively destroying Saul\u2019s dynastic hopes. David\u2019s position is more subtle. We (the readers) know that David is to replace Saul, according to Yahweh\u2019s plan, but Saul only knows that he, Saul, has been rejected and that a \u201cneighbour\u201d has already been designated his successor. Thus David, through his success as a leader (\u201cSaul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands\u201d), naturally presents himself, in Saul\u2019s view, as a potential rival, perhaps the designated successor. Othello is fed by Iago (and \u201cchance\u201d?) a series of (false) clues pointing to a (non-existent) threat; Saul, on the contrary, is faced with (genuine) clues to a (real) threat. Thus his attitude to David poses a moral conundrum for the reader, for his violent jealousy, objectionable as it is, nevertheless happens to be right on target.
\nThis brief comparison suggests at least two points which might usefully be explored a little further, namely the part played in Saul\u2019s fall by (1) his jealousy, and (2) his \u201cknowledge\u201d of his rejection.<\/p>\n
(1) Saul\u2019s jealousy. Through his jealousy of David, and his consequent attempts to remove him not only from court but from the face of the earth, Saul only succeeds in enabling David to consolidate his position as a successful military captain and an independent leader in his own right, with his own power base. When Saul dies there is, bar the Philistines, no other power in the country. On the level of a political analysis, therefore, the story seems to be saying that the jealousy is instrumental in facilitating a course of events precisely the opposite of what Saul was wanting. In this sense, then, jealousy contributes to Saul\u2019s fall as it does to Othello\u2019s. But there the similarity ends, for the nature of each character\u2019s \u201cfall\u201d is so different. Othello\u2019s jealousy leads directly to his murder of Desdemona, and, on his realizing his terrible mistake, to his suicide. The jealousy, the mistake and the suicide are all organically linked. Saul\u2019s death, on the other hand, has no direct link with his jealous persecution of David. Perhaps we are invited to consider whether at Gilboa, had the Israelites been fighting fully united, with David standing alongside Saul, the outcome might have been different. If so, the text only hints at such a possible construction; it is not inescapably a function of the plot.
\nWe might compare another Shakespearean play with many points of similarity to the Saul story, namely Macbeth. Macbeth, like Saul, meets death in battle, struggling to retain his hold on the crown, against a foreign army. But the army is there on the encouragement of the \u201crightful\u201d king, Malcolm, whereas the biblical story is at pains to show that David has nothing to do with the Philistine attack, and (again in contrast to David) Macbeth\u2019s other rival, Macduff, is in the thick of the fight. Macbeth\u2019s persecution brings the fateful battle and his subsequent death upon him, in a way that simply cannot be said of Saul\u2019s action against David vis-\u00e0-vis the Philistine attack.
\nIn both Othello and Macbeth, then, the plot itself establishes a link between the character flaw (jealousy, ambition?) and the destruction. With Saul, on the other hand, the character flaw (jealousy) is linked, not with the death of the figure, but with his replacement, and this fact points to a significant difference in the nature of Saul\u2019s fall when compared to those of the other two tragic heroes. Their tragedy lies in the waste of their own lives. The tragedy of Saul lies as much in the significance of his replacement as in his defeat in battle and suicide. Saul dying of advanced old age and being replaced by David might still have added up to a tragic story. The death in battle, while certainly creating a dramatic high-note, essentially only complements the picture of a king who struggled.
\nThe link between the jealousy and the replacement by David underlines the importance in the story of the dynastic theme. Saul\u2019s rejection is not just a personal matter but a dynastic one. In a sense, of course, his failure in this respect has already begun to be realized in chapter 23, when Jonathan assigns his status as heir to David\u2014a self-negation in favour of David shown through the plot to be closely linked with Saul\u2019s persecution of David. Jonathan\u2019s death at Gilboa\u2014nothing to do with David\u2014is in effect largely irrelevant to the question of succession. With David\u2019s coronation at Hebron this process of replacement is completed. Saul, therefore, is shown to be a double loser\u2014for himself and for his son. And his failure is so much the more total inasmuch as his successor is the one man whom he has seen as a rival and against whom he has pitted himself in jealous anger (howbeit anger that is stirred up by God, though Saul does not know this) almost from the beginning (contrast Macbeth and Malcolm\/Macduff).
\nIn the sense outlined above, therefore, jealousy can be said to function as a significant factor in Saul\u2019s tragic failure.<\/p>\n
(2) Saul\u2019s knowledge of his rejection. At the beginning of this book I observed that it is possible to read the story of Macbeth as a tragedy of fate rather than of character flaw. This is done, not by denying the existence of (say) ruthless ambition in the pattern of Macbeth\u2019s behaviour, but by emphasizing the priority of other influences on the action of the play. In particular Lady Macbeth may be pictured as an embodiment of ambition who snares Macbeth at certain key points in the play (for example, in the murder of Duncan), and the witches may be depicted as no longer merely neutral purveyors of information, which is to be used or abused by the hearer, dependent upon his or her character, but as positively evil forces who reappear in various guises at pivotal points throughout the play (i.e. not only in the explicitly \u201cwitch\u201d scenes). Read thus, the way Macbeth interprets, and acts upon, the oracles can no longer be seen to be simply a matter of his own moral failure; rather he becomes to a large extent a toy in the hands of forces more powerful than he. I say \u201cto a large extent\u201d because the text of the play makes it difficult to remove all sense of culpability from Macbeth even on this reading.
\nThere is a useful parallel here with the function, in the King Saul story, of the announcement to Saul of his rejection. Has the announcement any link with Saul\u2019s subsequent behaviour (the persecution of David)? If so, does it have a morally neutral function or does it serve to shift culpability from the king? That it is pictured as having an effect seems to me to be fairly clear. One example is in the haste with which Saul, who as a lad was so reluctant to be king, chooses to interpret an innocuous piece of poetic extravagance (\u201cSaul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands\u201d) as indicating a threat to his crown (\u201cand what more can he have but the kingdom\u201d), and in the passionate warning to Jonathan about David as alternative ruler (20:31). Moreover the hold that announcement has on him is demonstrated above all in the lengths to which he is prepared to go to gain precise knowledge of what the announcement means, in the closing hours of his life (chapter 28).
\nBut how this foreknowledge functions, morally speaking, is a much more open question, just as it is in Macbeth. We can hold him wholly culpable for a violent and suspicious jealousy against one who had done him great service, and certainly no harm; but then, as we observed earlier, we know that his jealousy was nevertheless well-founded. And why was the possibility that another\u2019s success should be interpreted as a threat to himself and his dynasty so much to the forefront of his mind?\u2014surely because of the announcement of his rejection. Moreover, the very ambiguity of the terms of that announcement (as it appears in both chapter 13 and chapter 15)\u2014no names, no places, no dates, not even any certainty about whether rejection meant life or death for Saul himself or for his son\u2014may be seen as a recipe for suspicion and jealousy. As in Macbeth the text of our story allows us to see the complexity of the moral dimension, the complexity of human motivation and action. Saul, one may say, is culpable, but \u2026; and the \u201cbut\u201d sends us back to look again closely at that announcement of rejection, its author, and its motivation. Thus by yet another route we arrive back at the role of Yahweh and the question of why Saul is rejected.
\nBut before moving to the subject of Yahweh there is another aspect of Saul\u2019s knowledge of the rejection that needs to be touched upon. I introduce it with two quotations, the first from Soggin (p. 195), the second from Jobling (1978:21):<\/p>\n
In the case of Saul we have a man who was elected by God for a specific task but could not surrender his office once that task had been accomplished and could not see that others, more gifted than himself, were ready to succeed him. From this spiritual insensitivity there arose an inner conflict which led the protagonist to pathological forms of mistrust, hypochondria and persecution mania.<\/p>\n
Saul does not learn who his successor is, but he does learn of the rejection of his house, so that ignorance of this on his part is refusal to know \u2026; and wherein can Saul\u2019s rebellion against Yahweh lie but in this refusal to know?<\/p>\n
These comments, while not making exactly the same point, do have something in common. Both seem to find to be significantly blameworthy Saul\u2019s active attempt to keep the kingship for himself and his house. Soggin\u2019s attempt to link, psychologically, this failing and that of the violent jealousy and suspicion, though intriguing, requires perhaps a little more demonstration from the text and explanation of the psychology before compelling more than passing notice. Rather what concerns me immediately here is the central point about Saul\u2019s apparent refusal to accept his rejection with equanimity.
\nWhile I am not sure that I have grasped precisely what Jobling is arguing here, it seems to me that by distinguishing between the rejection of Saul\u2019s house and the identity of the successor, and by emphasizing the question of knowledge, Jobling indicates some useful lines of thought. Is Saul\u2019s struggle with David a matter of acceptance (whether termed \u201crefusal to accept\u201d or \u201crefusal to know\u201d) or of knowledge proper?
\nThe answer is not simple. Saul knows that he and his house are rejected. He \u201cknows\u201d, however, nothing else concerning either his designated successor or the appointed manner of his removal from office. He knows everything yet he knows nothing! He certainly does not \u201cknow\u201d that David is the neighbour who is better than he. David himself is made aware of his role by Samuel; Jonathan is blessed (but, as Jobling notes, not by direct revelation) with a sure insight into the identity of the successor; Saul is left with little but his suspicions. Why\u2014to repeat our question\u2014does Saul refuse to surrender his kingdom gracefully? One simple answer, therefore, would be that he does not know when, and to whom, and how, he should surrender it!
\nBut let us put the question a little differently. Does he refuse to \u201caccept\u201d the rejection of himself and his house? While the text does not allow us the luxury of being quite sure, it seems to me that Saul\u2019s concern for Jonathan\u2019s status as heir (for example in chapter 23) hints that he has not in fact accepted that Jonathan has no such status. That suggests in turn that Saul is perhaps not prepared to accept his removal, or the removal of his son, without a struggle, irrespective of the question of David\u2019s identity as Yahweh-designated successor. If this is right, Saul, in this post-rejection phase of his life at least, invites condemnation (from the religious point of view) for a stand against Yahweh.
\nHere too an interesting contrast between Saul and David emerges. Elsewhere (1978) I have written of the story of King David in 2 Samuel in terms of a theme of \u201cgiving and grasping\u201d. David is at his best when he is content to let the kingdom be a gift by others to himself; or indeed when he is content to allow others their freedom when prudence might have dictated grasping them, unwilling, to prop up his cause (a good example is the case of Ittai in chapter 15). In our Saul story we can see the same theme in operation. David finds blessing (good fortune) in his careful refusal to seize what has been promised him. Perhaps, then, the finely constructed counterpointing of David and Saul raises the question, Would Saul, too, have found blessing by releasing his grip on his kingdom at the intimation of his rejection? Does Saul picture for us the failure that follows a man\u2019s clinging to what is no longer his through the free gift of others? One cautionary point, however: it is noticeable that the people who asked for a king in the first place do not demand his removal. On the contrary, as was observed in the course of the analysis of the story, they remain remarkably loyal to Saul through thick and thin (contrast David\u2019s problem with the rebellion of Absalom and its aftermath, in 2 Samuel). Inasmuch as the kingdom is the gift of the people the gift is never revoked. It is only inasmuch as it is indeed Yahweh\u2019s gift that Saul can be said to grasp what, after the Amalekite war, is no longer his.
\nBut if Saul\u2019s \u201crefusal to accept\u201d can function as an indication of culpability it can also, paradoxically, function with precisely the opposite effect. For the element of struggle is one of the important elements in the composition of the tragic stereotype. It is what sustains our interest in Saul himself through the greater part of the story. See from this perspective, the reader might ask, Why should the king be browbeaten by the fulminations of a religious functionary and the dictates of his inscrutable God?
\nHere, then, we have an important element in the story which is plainly ambiguous in value. Its moral\/theological evaluation depends ultimately not on the text, for the text offers no independent evaluative judgements, but on the stance of the reader. Is struggle against God (or \u201cFate\u201d), in such circumstances, positive or negative according to one\u2019s own set of values? The phrase \u201cin such circumstances\u201d is important to my point; for, as we have seen, the story makes clear that Saul operates not in some theological vacuum where simple and abstract questions may be met with simple and abstract answers, but in \u201creal-life\u201d situations of moral complexity and theological obscurity. The story allows a range of responses to Saul\u2019s \u201crefusal to accept\u201d, including a significant degree of positive identification (by the reader) with Saul in his struggle. This is not just because human beings have so often had a soft spot for the underdog but because the story in chapters 13\u20135 has opened up the possibility of viewing Saul as essentially an innocent victim of God, and thus of seeing God in negative as well as in positive terms.
\nAgain we have come back to the nature of Yahweh in the story. It is now time to look more closely at this subject.<\/p>\n
Yahweh<\/p>\n
The story of Saul is about kings and kingship: the people want a king, their God grants them their wish and chooses one (we might remind ourselves again that the name Saul means something like \u201casked for\u201d); the king, however, is subsequently rejected by God and, after a struggle, a new king acceptable to him is established. In the process the attitude of God to the institution of kingship appears to have moved from, at the outset, open hostility or at least reluctant acquiescence, to, at the close, acceptance and a commitment which is seen at its best in God\u2019s wholehearted identification with the cause of the new king, David. It seems to me that Saul\u2019s fate is bound up with this transition in attitude.
\nWhat are we to make of Saul\u2019s relationship to God? He is not God\u2019s enemy through his own choosing. His role as king is thrust upon him by Yahweh. He ascribes what success he has to Yahweh. He is remarkably attentive (almost to the end) to the ritual acknowledgement of Yahweh. Indeed both times he is found guilty of breaking a commandment of God he has done what he has done in order to honour him by sacrifice. He is prepared to acknowledge his error (whether comprehendingly or not), and even in rejection, worship him. Saul is not disloyal to Yahweh.
\nIn Chapter Four (above), in the discussion of Saul\u2019s rejection in chapter 15, I drew attention to the theme of Yahweh\u2019s \u201crepentance\u201d and observed that the text invites us to consider that the story of Saul\u2019s failure is as much a story of Yahweh\u2019s \u201crepentance\u201d (which term, in context, clearly carries with it the implication of \u201cchange of mind\u201d) as it is of Saul\u2019s \u201csin\u201d. I also suggested that the nature of this \u201crepentance\u201d seemed to be complex and to reach deeper than the surface of Yahweh\u2019s stated justification in 15:11. \u201cI have repented that I made Saul king\u201d, he says to Samuel, \u201cbecause he has turned back from following me, and has not performed my commandments\u201d.
\nTo be sure, Saul can be said to have broken Yahweh\u2019s commandments, at least on Yahweh\u2019s terms. But we have also seen that Saul\u2019s culpability is more technical than of moral substance. His condemnation (rejection) is radically out of balance with the nature of his \u201ccrimes\u201d. His explanations and the evidence of his \u201cgood faith\u201d are conspicuously ignored. For a God who looks \u201cnot on the outward appearance\u201d but \u201con the heart\u201d (16:7), Yahweh takes a surprisingly superficial look at Saul\u2019s actions before \u201crepenting\u201d and rejecting him. Saul\u2019s rejection is not intrinsically and inevitably the outcome of his actions. Rather, God, given the opportunity (or perhaps better, having provided it for himself?), chooses to find Saul guilty. He is, so to speak, predisposed to reject him as king.
\nWe observed above indications that Saul refuses to \u201cknow\u201d (accept) his rejection. Here in Yahweh\u2019s pronouncement about his repenting of having made Saul king we seem to have a comparable phenomenon in mirror-image, so to speak. Yahweh is only too willing to \u201crepent\u201d. He is over-eager to condemn Saul. It is as though, deep down (so to speak), he has \u201crepented\u201d already; now he is simply looking for the formal occasion to give expression to this attitude. Saul knows (formally) but does not wish to know (in actuality). Yahweh has rejected Saul (in actuality) but must seek an occasion to reject him (formally). The formal reason for the \u201crepentance\u201d is unconvincing, as we have seen. Is there a deeper reason?
\nI believe that the story does hint powerfully at an answer, and it is one that I have already raised in the course of the analysis of the story. We noted that there is a formal link in the text between the people\u2019s rejection (m\u2019s) of Yahweh and Yahweh\u2019s rejection (m\u2019s) of Saul. This is a useful clue. It leads me to make the following suggestion.
\nAt the very outset Yahweh is depicted as a jealous God (a theme, incidentally, that is widespread in Old Testament literature). He resents the people\u2019s cry for a king which he interprets in terms of disloyalty to himself. Yet the status quo is clearly unsatisfactory. Saul, therefore, is kingship\u2019s scapegoat. Yahweh responds to the people\u2019s cry, but through Saul he \u201cdemonstrates\u201d (perhaps to himself as much as to the people) the weakness of human kingship (about which he has warned): through Saul\u2019s \u201cdisobedience\u201d the people, temporarily delivered from their enemies, are once again reduced to enslavement (which is the outcome of the battle of Gilboa in chapter 31). Thus God\u2019s initial hostility is vindicated and the way is open for him, freely now and out of his own gracious benevolence, to bestow kingship anew and on new terms (with a David, not a Saul, as king). The people ask for a king; Yahweh instructs Samuel (8:22):<\/p>\n
\u201cHearken to their voice, and make a king for them\u201d.<\/p>\n
With Saul formally rejected, Yahweh says to his prophet (16:1):<\/p>\n
\u201cHow long will you mourn over Saul, seeing that I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided (\u201cseen\u201d), among his sons, a king for myself\u201d.<\/p>\n
First the people\u2019s king, then Yahweh\u2019s! Saul, on these terms, has no chance at all. Yahweh\u2019s \u201crepentance\u201d, then, could be said to be rooted, from the very outset of the story, in his reluctant acquiescence in the institution of kingship. Saul vindicates God\u2019s hostility to the demand for kingship; David will justify the \u201crepentance\u201d.
\nMcCarthy has argued that chapters 8\u201312 are centred around the theological problem posed by the institution of a monarchy: if Yahweh is Israel\u2019s king how can Israel have at the same time a human king? The answer offered by chapters 8\u201312, according to this understanding, is that while the desire for a human king is \u201csinful\u201d, Yahweh is prepared to meet it, though he demands in return the repentance of the people, the expiation of the \u201csin\u201d (chapter 12).
\nJobling sees the succeeding chapters (13\u201331) as taking up a new problem connected with the institution of the monarchy, namely the question of dynastic succession (1978:6):<\/p>\n
Yahweh swore unto David an eternal covenant (2 Sam 7) that one of his descendants would always sit on his throne.\u2026 Did Yahweh swear such a covenant with Saul [i.e. did he consciously choose Saul?]? If so, how could it be annulled [why was Saul rejected?]? If not, was Saul\u2019s kingship real, was Yahweh \u201cfor real\u201d in approving it?<\/p>\n
He offers an explanation of the way the story deals with this problem in terms of its structure and the symbolic transference of role or status from Saul to David, via the \u201cmediating\u201d figure of Jonathan (cf. p. 11).<\/p>\n
In relation to Saul, he [Jonathan] moves between close identification and an independence which frequently suggests his replacing Saul. In relation to David, he moves between close identification and a self-emptying into David, a readiness to be replaced by him.<\/p>\n
In effect, Jonathan, David\u2019s intimate friend, becomes a kind of substitute for his father, so that when he openly acknowledges David\u2019s kingship, he can be seen to be renouncing not only his own claim to the throne but that of the whole house of Saul. In Jonathan the house of Saul signifies its readiness to accept the legitimacy of David. Theologically speaking, we could say that in this way it is Jonathan who \u201cjustifies\u201d Yahweh\u2019s action.
\nWhat I am arguing in the present book seems to be not incongruous with these analyses of the story in terms of particular \u201ctheological problems\u201d, though I would doubt that these problems in themselves are more than subsidiary themes (of more interest, no doubt, to monarchical Israelites than to us today) in a story which has achieved more genuinely universal dimensions. I have certain qualifications to make, however.
\nMcCarthy suggests that the conflict between people and Yahweh over the institution of human kingship is finally resolved through the repentance of the people in chapter 12. My own suggestion is that if the story is read beyond chapter 12 then the tension can be seen to still remain. The people\u2019s repentance is only part of the quid pro quo demanded by Yahweh in return for his approval of the \u201csinful\u201d demand; Saul\u2019s rejection (which can also be expressed as a function of Yahweh\u2019s \u201crepentance\u201d) is the other part. Only when the people\u2019s king has failed completely is the process of expiation (the people\u2019s and Yahweh\u2019s) complete.
\nJobling\u2019s analysis works well at its chosen, symbolic\/structural, level, but I would suggest that character motivation (as opposed to structure or \u201cplot\u201d) has a larger role to play than I think he has allowed. He comments (p. 19f.) that in this story, \u201cthe rejected is bad, the elected is good, and to ask after cause and effect is pointless\u201d. From Yahweh\u2019s point of view (in the story) that might well be said, as we have seen. I am not so sure that it need be the case as far as the reader is concerned. For it seems to me that it is when we ask after the causes and effects that the story becomes most alive. Assume this programme of inevitable goodness and badness and the tale is no more than a theological tract for the times. I agree that Jonathan functions as a mediator, just as Jobling describes. But I would also argue that the transference of status from Saul to David is not just a matter of the symbolic resolution of a theological problem (the transference of dynasty from one divinely appointed house to another); rather the story does offer clues to an explanation of the transference in terms of cause and effect; that is to say, it offers an explanation in terms of the motivation and action of the key characters, amongst whom is Yahweh.
\nOn my reading of the story, moreover, the \u201cdynastic\u201d theme is closely integrated with McCarthy\u2019s theme of the institution of the monarchy (conflict between divine and human kingship), for the rejection of Saul\u2019s house, the fresh start with David, is readily seen as the outworking of that initial conflict over the institution of the monarchy.
\nWith these qualifications, then, I would argue that the theological programmes McCarthy and Jobling discover are indeed there to be read in the text. But then I would want to say that these programmes can be read (translated?) in different ways. That is to say, in one set of (theological) terms, Saul\u2019s fall can be seen as part and parcel of the expiation of a sin, namely the people\u2019s demand for a king construed as the rejection of their \u201ctrue\u201d king, Yahweh. Expressed in terms of a story of character and action, however, Saul falls victim to Yahweh\u2019s resentment at an imagined insult (the \u201csin\u201d) and becomes the pawn (or scapegoat) in a process (the \u201cexpiation\u201d) whereby Yahweh vindicates his shift of attitude towards the monarchy and buttresses his shaken self-esteem. When we express Saul\u2019s fall in this latter way we may also observe that if it is jealousy that marks Yahweh\u2019s underlying attitude to the monarchy and consequently to Saul his (so to speak) supplanter, it is certainly the activation of Saul\u2019s jealousy against his supplanter, David, that facilitates Saul\u2019s replacement. The narrative hints here at an interesting continuum linking the divine and the human.
\nRead thus, the narrative poses its own \u201ctheological\u201d questions\u2014questions, for example, of rationality and morality in the divine sphere. At the level of plot, characters are confronted with decisions which involve the assessment of the relative importance of religious demands and duties over demands and duties of other kinds (cf. Saul, the military leader, in chapter 13). The judgements against Saul, startling in their severity, are made in the face of his avowal that his action had been taken in good faith. In the face of the repeated assertions of Yahweh\u2019s representative that he had sinned Saul acknowledges error and asks for pardon. But the text shows him reiterating his incomprehension and whether his repentance is also the expression of comprehension is doubtful. To Saul the judgements of Yahweh must have appeared as outbreaks of irrationality.
\nAt the level of the reader\u2019s \u201coverview\u201d, questions about the moral basis of Yahweh\u2019s action are inescapable. If we are to condemn Saul for his jealous persecution of David, how much more is Yahweh to be condemned for his jealous persecution of Saul! And the question is one that lies before us in the story not only in our puzzlement (not to speak of Saul\u2019s!) at the judgement scenes but repeatedly, from then on, in the striking disparity of treatment between Saul and David. Yahweh manipulates Saul mercilessly, and he does so for what, on most people\u2019s terms, must count as less than honourable motives. He is insulted, feels jealous, is anxious to justify himself. It is tempting to say that this is the human face of God\u2014but to say that would be perhaps to denigrate humankind, which is not something this Old Testament story does; rather we might say that here we see the dark side of God.
\nThe disparate treatment of Saul and David directs our attention also to the fact that, according to the story, good and evil are equally at Yahweh\u2019s disposal. The story makes it absolutely clear that Saul\u2019s moodiness, his rancour, jealousy, and violence, are all provoked deliberately by Yahweh through the medium of an \u201cevil spirit\u201d, just as earlier Saul\u2019s initiative in summoning Israel to Jabesh-Gilead (chapter 11) is shown to be at Yahweh\u2019s instigation through the medium of another (presumably good?) spirit. If the story is to be assessed in moral or theological terms then it is beside the point to dispose of the evil spirit by explaining it as a primitive way of speaking of mental illness (cf., for example, Mauchline, 130.). The evil spirit points unambiguously to Yahweh\u2019s manipulation of Saul.
\nCommentators can be surprisingly coy when it comes to facing this unpalatable datum in the story. Hertzberg (p. 141), for example, rightly observes that \u201cSaul\u2019s suffering is described theologically, not psychopathetically or psychologically\u201d, but the only theological conclusion he draws is that \u201cin an obscure way the hand of God invades the life of this man who, as can be seen often, exerts himself so much for Yahweh\u201d; a little later, even the theological dimension is forgotten: \u201cSaul is by nature extremely susceptible to such attacks in one way or another\u201d.
\nAckroyd (1971:135) comments more aptly, observing that<\/p>\n
what comes to a man, good or ill, is seen as from God.\u2026 This raises difficult questions about the nature of God, questions which appear acutely in the story of Micaiah in 1 Kings 22, for there one of the heavenly beings is described as deliberately misleading the prophets to bring doom on Ahab (verses 20\u20133). These passages are not precise definitions but descriptions of human experience in terms of the will of God, attempts at setting out an understanding of what happens to man as being under God\u2019s ultimate control.<\/p>\n
But his last sentence, in my view, unnecessarily blurs the sharp edges of the problem. We may wish these stories to be about, vaguely, \u201cmen as being under God\u2019s ultimate control\u201d, but on the contrary the Micaiah story says something quite specific about Yahweh, namely that he deliberately lies to Ahab through his prophets (at least the irony is choice, even if the morality is doubtful!). Likewise we are faced with a sharply defined difficulty in the story of Job where God tests, by afflicting in a most terrible way, an innocent man\u2014and why? Because God cannot resist a wager and the temptation (by the Satan, no less) to justify himself, to be \u201cvindicated\u201d. The parallel with the story of Saul is striking. Again, as in the story of Micaiah, there is another, positive, side to the story, for Job and God do not part company despite the harrowing experience, but there is no escaping the problem of the indefensible morality that assents to the test in the first place. To be sure, the scene between God and the Satan is \u201conly a story\u201d, and it may be argued that it is \u201cmerely\u201d a literary device to set in motion an account of faith in adversity, an exploration of the meaning of suffering. Yet there it remains, a picture of the dark side of God, so reminiscent of the picture we glimpse in the story of Saul.
\nWe could go on. Crenshaw, in his stimulating discussion of the Samson story finds there a God who is a warrior, and one who delights in ritual purity (1978:133):<\/p>\n
\u2026 ethical behaviour is irrelevant to this God, whose sole interest concerns external matters. Samson can murder and fornicate, and God will continue to bless him. But let him cut off his hair [a ritual matter], and God will depart from him.<\/p>\n
It is no accident that Milton in his Samson Agonistes has Manoah questioning God\u2019s fairness (cf. Crenshaw, 145):<\/p>\n
He [Manoah] cannot understand why God punished Samson for a single error, when his positive deeds were multiple. Such dark thoughts are accompanied by radical questioning of the wisdom of praying for good things.<\/p>\n
It is tempting for Christians to read the Old Testament in terms of what I might call the \u201coptimistic\u201d God of Christian theology\u2014the God who is the embodiment of the absolute and the abstract, the all-good, all-just. The problem of evil has always been something of an embarassment in this tradition. Of course the Old Testament is itself one direct ancestor of this view of God. But the Old Testament affords us, through the Saul story and others, glimpses of God in other forms. In the story of Saul, as in that of Job, we are at some distance from the innocuous God of the ethical absolutes: God can pour out his favour upon Israel, upon David, and even upon Saul; but he can also be unpredictably terrible, jealous of his own status, quick to anger and impatient of the complexities of human action and motivation.
\nPerhaps in the final analysis, even in this story, the \u201clight side\u201d may be seen as dominating the picture\u2014Yahweh is early portrayed as the God who, in long-suffering loyalty, stands by his people and delivers them from their enemies; who is a shepherd, a bulwark and a refuge for his servant, David; whose hall-mark is good, not evil. This picture of God, familiar from readings which focus primarily on David (much of our story of Saul being widely known as the Story of David\u2019s Rise), is familiar to us all, and for that reason I have chosen not to elaborate upon it here. But the \u201cStory of the Fate of King Saul\u201d shows that God does have a dark side. David knows only one side of his God. Saul experiences the other.<\/p>\n
title The fate of King Saul: An Interpretation of a Biblical Story
\nauthor Gunn, David<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Introduction BIBLICAL STORY AND LITERARY CRITIC It is my belief that much Old Testament narrative belongs naturally to the life-sphere of art and entertainment and that to approach this material as a literary critic might an epic poem, a novel or a play, can be helpful to the modern reader. Well to say that is … <\/p>\n