The Invention of Monotheist Ethics: Exploring the First Book of Samuel (Volume 1) 9780761849223, 9780761849230, 076184922X

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Table of Contents
List of Maps
Foreword and Acknowledgements
Introduction The Road To Samuel
Prologue Breakthrough: A Woman Re-evaluates a Man's World
Act One: The Prophet
1. The Fall of the House of Eli
2. In the Still of the Night
3. Catastrophe
Excursus I: Israel in Canaan: How Did They Get There?
4. Odyssey: The Wanderings of the Lost Ark
Excursus II: How They Lived in Those Days
5. The Road Not Taken
Excursus III: The Problem of the Historian: How Did She Know?
Act Two: The Prophet and The King
6. The Coming of the King: The Anointing
7. The Coming of the King: The Proving
Excursus IV: In What Sort of Houses did Samuel and Saul Live?
8. The Coming of the King: The Second War of Independence
9. The Prophet Armed
Act Three: The King and the Upstart
10. The Boy from Bethlehem
11. The Minefield
12. The Fugitive
13. The Wilderness Years: The Outlaw
14. The Wilderness Years: Search and Destroy
Excursus V: David in the Wilderness
15. The Wilderness Years: Abigail
Excursus VI: Why is there So Much Drinking Going On in the Bible?
16. The Wilderness Years: The Dramatist
17. Bitter Bread: In the Service of the Enemy
18. On a Darkling Plain

Citation preview

THE INVENTION OF MONOTHEIST ETHICS VOLUME I

THE INVENTION OF MONOTHEIST ETHICS VOLUME I

Exploring the First Book of Samuel

The Pursuit of Power as Nemesis

Hillel I. Millgram

University Press of America,® Inc. Lanham· Boulder· New York· Toronto· Plymouth, UK

Copyright © 2010 by University Press of America,® Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard Suite200 Lanham, Maryland 20706 UPA Acquisitions Department (301) 459-3366 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America British Library Cataloging in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Control Number: 2009936612 ISBN: 978-0-7618-4922-3 (paperback: alk. paper) eiSBN: 978-0-7618-4923-0

8,.The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992

For Elijah, Michael and Jeremiah Psalm 127

TABLE OF CONTENTS ix xi

List of Maps Foreword and Acknowledgements

THE ROAD TO SAMUEL PROLOGUE Breakthrough: A Woman Re-evaluates a Man's World

25

ACT ONE: THE PROPHET I. The Fall of the House of Eli 2. In the Still of the Night 3. Catastrophe Excursus 1: Israel in Canaan: How Did They Get There? 4. Odyssey: The Wanderings of the Lost Ark Excursus II: How They Lived in Those Days 5. The Road Not Taken Excursus III: The Problem of the Historian: How Did She Know?

45 53 61 68 71 78 81

90

ACT TWO: THE PROPHET AND THE KING

6. The Coming of the King: The Anointing 7. The Coming of the King: The Proving Excursus IV: In What Sort of Houses did Samuel and Saul Live? 8. The Coming of the King: The Second War of Independence 9. The Prophet Armed

95 109 115 119 139

ACT THREE: THE KING AND THE UPSTART

10. The Boy from Bethlehem 11. The Minefield 12. The Fugitive 13. The Wilderness Years: The Outlaw 14. The Wilderness Years: Search and Destroy Excursus V: David in the Wilderness 15. The Wilderness Years: Abigail Excursus VI: Why is there So Much Drinking Going On in the Bible? 16. The Wilderness Years: The Dramatist 17. Bitter Bread: In the Service of the Enemy 18. On a Darkling Plain

155 169 179 189 197 202 205 213 215 223 235

TABLE OF CONTENTS

viii

VOLUME II ACT FOUR: DAVID THE GREAT 19. The Paths of Glory: The Curtain Rises 20. The Paths of Glory: Brother Against Brother 21. The Paths of Glory: The Making of a King 22. The Paths of Glory: David Triumphant 23. Reaching for Something Higher Excursus VII: The Tent Shrine 24. To Build a House for God 25. The Course of Empire Excursus VIII: David's War Machine 26. Interlude: Keeping Faith With Them That Sleep in the Dust 27. The Course ofEmpire II: The Loosing of the Blood-Dimmed Tide

ACT FIVE: THE FALL OF THE KING 28. The Bathsheba Affair 29. Before the Bar of Justice 30. Rape and Revenge 31. The Fugitive's Return 32. The Man Who Would be King 33. The Day of the Mercenaries 34. The Return of the King: Planting the Seeds 35. The Return of the King: Reaping Bitter Fruit

EPILOGUE: THE ALTERNATIVE VISION 36. The Martyrdom ofthe House of Saul 37. The Sweet Singer oflsrael 38. The Sweet Singer oflsrael: Twenty Years Later 39. David's Heroes: The Halls of Fame 40. The Ancient Sacrifice

CONCLUSIONS Toward a New Conception of Morality Postscript: The Death of the King APPENDIX 1: APPENDIX 2: APPENDIX 3: APPENDIX 4: APPENDIX 5:

Psalm 34 Psalm 51 Who's Who in Samuel: A Listing of the Cast Time line - Keeping Track of When it Happened Timeline- Putting Things in Perspective

Glossary of Terms and Place Names Selected Bibliography Index ofScriptural References General Index About the Author

LIST OF MAPS The maps in these volumes have been designed as aids to understanding the text of Samuel. As such they have been simplified by excluding data unnecessary to elucidating the particular section of the book to which they pertain. Each section has been provided with the maps necessary to its understanding, and they should be considered an integral part of that section. P.l The Central Highlands during the period of Hannah and Elkanah

26

4.1 The Central Highlands, the adjacent Jordan Valley and Philistia during the Age of Samuel

80

7 .I The Relief of Jabesh Gilead

108

8.1

122

Israelite and Philistine moves prior to the Battle of Michmas

8.2 The Battle of Michmas

126

8.3 The emerging Kingdom of Saul

138

9 .I The region of the Amalekite Campaign

143

10.1 David and Goliath

159

12.1 The area of David's wanderings during the Wilderness Years

185

17.1 David in Ziklag

226

18.1 The Philistines Move their Forces into the Valley of Jezreel

237

18.2 The Battle of Gilboa

237

25 .I The Arena of the Wars of Empire

328

27.1 The First Ammonite Campaign, Phase I

352

27.2 The First Ammonite Campaign, Phase 2:

355

27.3 The Battle of Helam

358

33.1 The Rebellion of Absalom

419

35.1 The campaign against Sheba, son ofBichri

441

FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The purpose of this book is to examine in depth, in the form that has come down to us, one of the great works of classical antiquity. The method employed is what is commonly known as "a close reading of the text." This implies a literary approach, and this would appear to be an appropriate method inasmuch as the text involved, beyond being a work of theology, is a work of literature; indeed, I would contend, a great work of literature. On its surface level the Book of Samuel purports to encapsulate in literary form an entire era, and to distill from that turbulent century lessons of permanent import. Thus bringing to bear upon this document the tools of literary criticism, honed to a fine edge in the first half of the twentieth century, would seem to be appropriate. Yet there is another set of disciplines beyond those of literary analysis, which are no less significant to our quest. These are the tools of the historian, who attempts to answer not the question of what does this work have to say to us, but rather to what degree do the facts related in what alleges to be a work of history bear any congruence with the historic reality it claims to portray. That this is indeed a germane question can perhaps be better appreciated after pondering the reasoning of Daniel Atkinson on a related subject: Our position is that, knowing the context in which a document is written - the date, the place, the author - is potentially helpful to those whose sole profession is to interpret documents. The social context of a document's creation, for example, is a small piece of knowledge, but it can make easier for a hermeneuticist to infer what the original creators intended a text to mean, and of how those who shared, or had knowledge of the original context, were apt to interpret the text. Admittedly, in present-day critical theory neither of these items is very much prized, but for old-fashioned readers, anything that helps to discover the original author-editor's intentions has interest ....Every intention has its inventor, and every inventor acts within a specific frame of time. 1 That the attempt to get back into the mind of the author and/or editor of the Book of Samuel, and to the original intent behind its creation, may indeed seem to be a bit old-fashioned in this postmodern age. Yet these two, the attempt to understand the work in and of itself, and in parallel to understand the intent behind its creation, I see as two mutually reinforcing endeavors. That a work, created in a world long gone, still survives today after the passage of almost 3,000 years is in itself miraculous. Being able to place it, however imperfectly, within its generative context, enabling the text to speak to us compellingly, heightens that miracle by several quantum leaps. To be able, in some small fashion, to midwife the rebirth of this product of the distant past to a new life and a new understanding in the present is my aim, and the labor of over a decade. As I have remarked elsewhere, no book is ever written without the author frrst reading the works of many others. Beyond the debt owed to all those mentioned in the Selected Bibliography, and to teachers whom I have publicly acknowledged in my previous book - Professors Hans Kobo, Emery Neff and Shalom Spiegel - I would like to acknowledge a special debt of gratitude to the late Lewis Mumford who, in addition to his brilliance and the wide range of his interests had that rare ability to admit that he was wrong. The courage that enabled him to abandon the labors and accomplishments of half a lifetime and to strike out in radically new directions served as an inspiration, and emboldl. Atkinson, Surpassing Wonder, p. 614-15.

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FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ened me to forsake much of what I had been taught and deemed incontrovertible, and as well as several years of hard effort on this project, to trust where the data led and to begin anew on uncharted waters. I wish at this point to thank several focus groups, both in the United States and Canada, who met to read and discuss early drafts of sections of this book, and whose critiques steered me away from numerous errors in formulation and dead ends in lines of reasoning. A special vote of thanks to Professor Jacob Milgrom for his ground-breaking revision of our understanding of the central expression of formal religion in ancient Israel - sacrifice and the entire complex of ritual and belief that surrounded it - and for the generous allocation of his time to read and critique various sections of the manuscript pertaining to his expertise. I am deeply grateful to Rabbi Yitzhak Rubin, whose careful reading of the full work and his many insightful comments significantly improved the final product. I am especially indebted to my son, Professor Elijah Millgram, an editor of great skill, who helped to impart a conciseness and an elegance of expression to sometimes ungainly formulations, and to whose philosophical erudition I owe much of the specifics in the various forays into this discipline, as well as the avoidance of many of the pitfalls that could have ensnared me. I owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Judith Porter whose guidance and insights in sociology have proved invaluable in the formulation of the conclusions of this book. My especial thanks to Mrs. Leah Stoller and the late Mrs. Muriel Ginsberg who read drafts of the entire manuscript, and whose language and grammar skills led to an improved and more polished work, and to Ms. Maya Wein, whose graphic skills made possible the maps that enhance the book. Lastly, my undying gratitude to my wife, Deborah, out of whose encouragement this project was born, advanced and completed. Her language skills, her editing and her sound judgment have been decisive in making this book what it has become. In many ways this is as much her work as mine. No one in this world is perfect. Any work, especially one as audacious in some of its operating assumptions and conclusions as this, is bound to contain errors. Nothing said above is intended to shift the responsibility for these upon any of those whom I have thanked. To paraphrase the confession of the butler in Pharaoh's court (Genesis 41:9): "I today must acknowledge my faults to be mine." Hillel I. Millgram Jerusalem, June, 2009

For not by power shall man prevail. "The Prayer of Hannah" 1 Samue/2:9

Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, says the Lord of hosts.

Zechariah 4:6

The act of the passing generation is the germ which may and must produce good or evil fruit in a far distant time; that together with the seed of the merely temporary crop, which mortals term expediency, they inevitably sow the acorns of a more enduring growth, which may darkly overshadow their posterity. Nathaniel Hawthorn, The House of the Seven Gables

INTRODUCTION

THE ROAD TO SAMUEL An early experience can be decisive. I could have been no older than three, more probably two and a half, when I first pulled out the big volume, so conveniently situated on the bottom bookcase shelf, and spread it open on the floor before me. It was one of those folio-sized illustrated Bibles so popular during the first half of the last century, the volume containing the Books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. Flipping from picture to picture I stopped, mesmerized by the illustration of David confronting Goliath. By what I now realize as a trick of perspective, minimizing the size of David while expanding Goliath to monstrous proportions, the artist had created a vivid tableau. I couldn't take my eyes off it. When my mother entered the room, I demanded to know what it was about, and she sat down on the floor beside me and told me the story. She was a very good storyteller; the event has never left me and remains one of my earliest memories. I returned to that book repeatedly as a child, learning the stories of many of the arresting illustrations-but always returning to those of Samuel: Saul in the cave of the "Witch of Endor," Samuel anointing the young David, David escaping from Saul's spear, and ever that picture of David confronting Goliath. (Somehow the story of Bathsheba and her inconvenient husband, Uriah, got lost in the shuffle.) A life-long fascination with the Book ofSamuel had been born. Returning to Samuel as an adult failed to diminish the magic, but proved to be a surprise. The tale was as mesmerizing as before-more so because I discovered episodes that my mother had deemed wiser to skip-but now I was able to appreciate dimensions and nuances that were beyond me as a child. It was with a sense of shock that I realized that Samuel was more than a racy tale; it was great literature. More-it had something to say to contemporary life, and to me. It has remained with me. I have read and reread it, first in various English translations, then in the original Hebrew, and have taught it numerous times. And each time it has become richer and more personal. Which brings me to the matter of why I have written this book.

IS THIS BOOK FOR YOU? While the Book of Samuel, as part of the Bible, is one of the forming influences, indeed one of the foundations of Western Civilization, it is not a straightforward book to read. It comes from the distant past; it observes different literary conventions from those with which we are familiar; it is written in an unfamiliar way, and it is written against the background of an unfamiliar society. When you open the Book ofSamuel you probably will have a hard time making head or tail of it. This book is designed to make Samuel readable as a great work of literature (which it is), to open it as a window onto a piece of the distant past, and to make one of the key documents of the major religions ofthe West both understandable and relevant.

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Being a religious person, my approach to the Bible is reverential, not humanist or atheist. Yet I come to the Bible with an open mind, with sound respect for historical fact and for the academic disciplines that impinge upon its study. This work proposes a unified reading of the text of Samuel, takes the Book seriously as an historical document, focuses on the moral insights that pervade it and develops a literary reading in which the work is seen as a tragedy, in the full sense that this term is employed in literary analysis. 1 Being destined for the general public, this book is not composed in a style appropriate to academic writing and strives to be colloquial and jargon-free. I take my task to be offering a helping hand to readers new to the navigation of an ancient Hebrew text. There are many things that the author of Samuel does not feel it necessary to mention, because the readership of that day was fully acquainted with the social and religious customs, the architecture and political institutions of the era and so on. This means that at the beginning of the book you will be seeing a fair amount of explanation of background that the author takes for granted. I will try to take this necessary exposition a step at a time so as to give you, the reader, the breathing space necessary to digest this material. As we go along, I will be telling you what you need to know, when you need to know it. If you wish, you might think of your journey through this book as a sort of voyage in a foreign land with myself as your friendly tour guide, smoothing the way and making the unintelligible understandable.

SAMUEL AND ITS SETTING The Book ofSamuel is part of the Hebrew Bible-so called because most of its books are written in the Hebrew language (a few are written in a sister language, Aramaic). The Hebrew Bible comprises the Holy Scriptures of the Jews. To Christians it is known as the Old Testament, to differentiate it from the New Testament, which is written in Greek. These two separate works, combined, form the Christian Holy Scriptures. The word "Bible" comes from the Greek word biblos, which means "book." Thus by calling this work The Bible we are according it the place of honor, "The Book," among the myriads of books that have seen the light of day-the Book of Books, as it were. The honor may be deserved, but the name is misleading, for the Bible is not one book but a collection of many-in fact a small library. The Hebrew Bible, which is the broader context of Samuel, is comprised of no less than 24 books (by another count 39-this discrepancy in accounting will be explained later). 2 Samuel is just one book among many in the Bible. So why should one, coming to the Bible for the first time, start with Samuel? It might seem more logical to begin at the beginning, with Genesis. And many do just that. Aside from my long-standing love affair with Samuel, I offer the Book as a starting point for two reasons: first, for modem readers it is one of the most accessible books in the Bible. It is a book embedded in the history of a period whose problems and issues in many ways parallel our own. Its characters, brilliantly portrayed, are among the most compelling in Scripture. It is easy for us to identify with them and to understand the . issues that shaped their lives. The action is continuous and there is rarely a dull moment. Secondly, Samuel is a good entree because it has a bit of everything. It has some poetry along with the prose, and it touches upon most of the issues treated in other Books of the Bible. It deals with young and old, the great and the humble, the world of power and the world of spirit, and is one of the few Biblical books that accords a prominent role to women. Once you have finished with Samuel you will be equipped for easy entry into almost any other Book in the Bible.

1. This last is not an unprecedented point of view. W. L. Humphreys, for example, sees the entire saga of the rise and fall of King Saul as based on a preceding "Tragedy of Saul" (Humphreys, "The Tragedy of King Saul" and "From Tragic Hero to Villain: A Study of the Figure of Saul and the Development of 1 Samuel"). I see this tragic estimate of life as extending in large measure to the entire Book. 2. See note 73 below.

THE ROAD TO SAMUEL

3

WHO WROTE THE BOOK OF SAMUEL? It is at this point that we first begin to step on toes, in this case scholarly toes. Until recently, it has been pretty much a scholarly consensus that the Book of Samuel was pieced together from various "sources" and "traditions" by a team of editors, centuries after the events depicted in the Book took place; in other words, that the Book is a patchwork. I strongly disagree. Someone once defined a camel as "a horse designed by a committee." But the Book of Samuel doesn't look to me like a "camel." It is a superb example of narrative style, generally considered some of the best prose in the entire Bible? I intend to show, by presenting a unified reading of Samuel, that the Book is not a patchwork but a carefully structured work, 4 coherently informed by an overarching vision and a unitary point ofview. 5 There is a further general methodological consideration to take into account. In the fourteenth century, William Ockham, the philosopher and political theorist, put forward the argument that where one faces a choice between two or more solutions to a given problem, other things being equal, one should choose the simple solution rather than the complicated and complex ones. This thesis of "economy" has become one of the most basic operating principles of the physical sciences. This principle, called "Ockham's Razor," should also be applied to questions of authorship. 6 Where textual problems can be explained by either assuming one author writing at a specific time, or by postulating

3. David Damrosch goes so far as to say: "1-2 Samuel has become the masterpiece of biblical narrative" (Damrosch, The Narrative Context, p. 260). 4. To give but one example, the author uses poetry to "buttress" the Book: Samuel begins with a section of prose narrative (I Samuel I) followed by a selection of poetry (I Samuel2: 1-10); the Book concludes with the process reversed: a section of poetry (2 Samuel22: 1-23: 7) followed by narrative prose (2 Samuel23: 8-24: 25). The midpoint of the Book is also marked by a poetic selection (2 Samuel I: 17-27). These and other structuring elements are so artistically woven into the narrative sweep as usually to escape notice by the casual reader-but they are there. See also "Introduction to an Epilogue" in Chapter 36. 5. I am not unique in holding to the view of a unified work as opposed to an assemblage of disparate sources. A growing number of serious scholars, especially those approaching the Book with the tools of literary analysis, are coming to this conclusion. To quote but one: David W. Gooding, in his masterly analysis of I Samuel 17-18 (we shall be hearing more from him when we get to the dramatic episode of David and Goliath), has little patience with "a great deal of the (until recently) standard literary criticism of the OT ... [whose proponents] claim to prove irreconcilable discrepancy, and therefore multiple authorship, by selecting a detailed feature from one context, contrasting it with a detailed feature from another context, without carefully examining the place each feature holds and the function it performs in the thought-flow of its own particular movement. ... To understand a narrative from a literary point of view, we must first listen to the narrative as it stands, trying to see where and how each part fits into the thought-flow of the whole. In other words we must first give the narrative the benefit of the doubt; for if we start out with the assumption that the narrative is likely to be composite and discrepant, we shall too easily find imaginary discrepancies that confirm our original assumption. . . . My presupposition would rather be that a biblical (or classical) narrative should be presumed to be a unity unless indisputable evidence is adduced for considering it composite." (Gooding, The Story of David and Goliath: Textual and Literary Criticism, p. 58, I I 7.) 6. The philosopher Alexander Nehamas makes just this move, applying "Ockham's Razor" to the question of literary authorship. In several articles (Nehamas, "The Postulated Author: Critical Monism as a Regulative Ideal," "What an Author Is," "Writer, Text, Work, Author") he argues that the proofofthe pudding is in the eating: if you can find a unified reading of a literary work it ipso facto can be attributed to a single unified author. And as unified readings are to be preferred over fragmented, ad hoc readings, on Ockham's principle one should give preference to a theory of a single author over multiple-author interpretations whenever the option exists.

4

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a composite work, its parts written by different authors at different times and patched together by one or more editors, whose work was in turn redacted one or more times, we should chose the simpler, more "economical" solution. This is my position: I hold that, then as now, great books are written by great authors. This matter will become clearer as we proceed. Starting from this premise the next question becomes-what do we know about the author? And the answer is, not very much. In ancient times it was not the convention to push oneself forward and make sure that one's name was on the cover in large type. Today authors want to take credit for their work, and the public is very interested in who wrote what. But in the ancient world authorship in the modern sense was not quite legitimate-a work was only considered serious or authoritative if it had been passed down from some ancient authority, or came directly from God (or the gods as the case might be). Indeed, it was taken for granted that literary creativity was the product of divine inspiration.7 Consequently, authors tended to be self-effacing. It was the book that was important, not who wrote it. The result was that most authors, including that of the Book of Samuel, never "signed" their works. What we can know about the author we can only know by inference. The Book of Samuel is, in its format, a book of history told largely by means of biography. It is a work examining the transition of Israelite society from a loose tribal confederation into a centralized imperial autocracy, a process that covered about one hundred years. The book ends before the death of David. 8 The simple fact that David is still King of Israel at the book's end implies that the author was David's contemporary. 9 This inference is strengthened by the account of the last several decades ofthis period (covered in 2 Samue/6-20), which reads very much like the report of an eyewitness. 10 We can further hazard the opinion that the author was a member of the inner circle of David's court, or at the very least someone on the outer fringes but with excellent inside sources. The author knows far too much of what is going on to be a complete outsider. The author also seems to have access to the royal archives: they are repeatedly quoted. More than this it is hard to deduce with much certainty.

7. Plato,in his dialogue Ion, articulates what was the virtually unanimous view of antiquity with regard to literary composition: "All good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired or possessed .... They tell us that they bring songs from honeyed fountains, culling them out of the gardens and dells of the Muses .... And this is true. For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing ... and there is no invention in him.... They are simply inspired to utter that to which the muse impels them.... for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine ... God himself is the speaker ... through them he is conversing with us." (Ion 533-534, in The Dialogues ofPlato, I) While it is true that the speaker, Socrates, is being sarcastic, he is nonetheless articulating the commonly accepted view on the matter, which makes it impossible for his opponent in the dialogue, Ion, to contradict him. The ancient Israelites were no exceptions in these sorts of beliefs. If Biblical authors were seen as mere conduits of divine inspiration, and in all probability this is the way they saw themselves, such views would hardly encourage them to publicly assert the uniqueness of their own authorship. 8. David died in approximately 962 BCE, almost 3000 years ago. See Appendices 4 & 5: Time Line for a general orientation to the events related in Samuel and their relation to world history. 9. In the introduction to the Postscript: The Death of the King I will explain why I reject the current belief that the first two chapters of the Book of Kings form one unit with the latter part of Samuel. 10. Baruch Halpern advances a powerful argument to support the notion that 2 Samuel must be largely contemporaneous with David's reign. The Book is defensive about suspicions that David dirtied his hands with unsavory behavior, political and otherwise, and he agrees with Kyle McCarter that all these charges and suspicions would have become dead letters within a generation or so. No one writing twenty years after David's death, much less 50 or 100 years later, would have had the least motive to try to excuse David from charges no one remembered, or cared about even if they did remember. Only a contemporary, writing while the issues were still live, and David still vulnerable to charges of malfeasance, could have reason to defend him and try to clear his name (Halpern, "Text and Artifact: Two Monologues?" p. 315-327). This argument is further elaborated in Halpern, David's Secret Demons, p. 73-103.

THE ROAD TO SAMUEL

5

WAS THE AUTHOR A WOMAN? If I had ever contemplated, years ago, the thoughts I now have about the authorship of Samuel I would have been astounded. I say this because I have become convinced that the author was most probably a woman. In years gone by it was an unquestioned assumption that "of course" all the authors of the Books of the Bible were men. So unthinkable was any alternative that, even when the Biblical text specifically attributes certain poetic sections to specific women authors, most Biblical scholars routinely denied these attributions (we will deal with one specific case-The Prayer of Hannah-in the Prologue). This was a bias that I absorbed unquestioningly. But that was then; it has now come time to question previously unexamined assumptions, and perhaps to think the unthinkable. In the course of writing these volumes questions have forced themselves upon me that have made mandatory a rethinking of the issue of authorship. Samuel stands out in the Bible as one of the very few Books having a large number of women playing prominent roles. Most Books of the Bible contain one, or at the most two notable female figures; some have none. 11 But beyond the matter of the sheer number of women lies a further issue that makes the Book of Samuel unique. This issue will require a bit of explanation. The style of Samuel's author is terse: anything irrelevant to the issue at hand is excluded in order to provide a tight focus on what is essential. Accordingly, despite the subject, a century-long historical drama with thousands of participants, most of the actors have been excluded from the narrative. Only those men absolutely essential to the progression of the historical story line have been retained. Remove any one of them-Jonathan, say, or Joab, or even the pathetic Paltiel-and the narrative won't work. Every male role is critical to our understanding of the history of the period and why things developed as they did. The same cannot be said of the women's roles. Most of the women's roles could be cut out without any damage to the historical dimension of the Book. An example will make this clear. An entire chapter (l Samuel 25) is devoted to Abigail; the circumstances in which she met David and married him. In this same period David also married another woman, Ahinoam of Jezreel. How David met her and in what circumstances he courted her we are not told. To us she is just a name. Yet of the two women, Ahinoam was by far the more important historically. Her son, Amnon, as David's oldest son, was the prime candidate to succeed his father and a key player in the later struggle for the throne. David's romance (if one can call it that) with Abigail led nowhere politically or historically. Her son, Chileab, disappears from the narrative and was never a contender for the throne-perhaps he died young. Abigail, like Ahinoam, could have been disposed of with a mere mention. Yet she is accorded a full chapter, and a long chapter at that. The rules that apply to men-only those who are absolutely essential historically are included-do not seem to apply to women. Their place in the narrative is determined by a different set of rules. We have said that the men who appear in Samuel are essential to the unfolding of the political history of the era while the women are not. The women, on the other hand, are vital to the meaning of the Book. While omitting the women from the narrative would cause no real damage to the Book of Samuel as a work of political history, their omission would make impossible what I am going to show is the moral argument of the Book. The vital role of women in the Book of Samuel is to bear the central message of the Book; so much so that the author has let a woman, Hannah, set the entire agenda.

11. Only in Genesis, Esther and Ruth are the roles of women as significant. We are referring only to "walk-on roles" in which the person has a speaking and acting part, not to persons who are simply named. Samuel presents us with nine: Hannah, Michal, Abigail, Bathsheba, Tamar and Rizpah (who, while she never speaks, acts so eloquently as to have it rate as speech) and three women professionals: the medium of Endor, the Wise Woman of Tekoa, and the Wise Woman of Abel. Genesis, on the other hand, tops Samuel with ten women in "walk-on roles:" Eve, Sarah, Hagar, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Tamar (not the same Tamar as in Samuel), the two daughters of Lot and Potiphar's wife. Esther is the hero of the Book that goes by her name, while Ruth and her stepmother, Naomi, virtually monopolize the small Book of Ruth.

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This strange division of roles raises a number of serious questions. The most pressing is: why did the author assign these different functions to the male and female characters, and why were women cast in the deeper role? 12 That the author chose to introduce an assemblage of women to make the Book's central point is so startling as to demand an explanation. Of the reasons that come to mind, the most compelling may be that the author was herself a woman, and introduced women (all, of course, historic personages) into the narrative as agents of moral change and as the bearers of her vision, perhaps because she felt that women were uniquely suited to the task. Can this thesis be proved? I am going to insist in the coming section (again, against the common view) that authorship by a woman in the Biblical era was certainly possible. This claim will be supported as we go along. I do not believe, however, that it is any longer possible to prove that the author was a woman--or, for that matter, to prove that the author was a man. The data that would have enabled us to pronounce on the matter with certainty have long since vanished. The question thus resolves itself into a balancing of probabilities, and it seems to me that the issues raised above, which I further explicate below, make it more probable than not that a woman is the author of the work. It is encouraging to discover that I am not the only reader to have taken note of some of these anomalies and, from a different perspective, to have come to similar conclusions. 13 The renowned scholars of comparative ancient literatures, H. M. and N. K. Chadwick, analyzed the Book of Samuel in the light of the Icelandic sagas, to which they think it "bears a rather close general resemblance." They remark on the great amount of attention accorded to women throughout Samuel, especially ''the predominantly feminine interest of the story of David," as well as the sparseness of references to the weapons of the heroes. They feel that the most reasonable explanation of these phenomena is that the Book, or at least large parts of it, is of 'feminine provenance.' They explain their use of the phrase 'feminine provenance' as follows: "By 'feminine provenance' we mean that the poems or stories in question have been composed either by women or for the entertainment of women." They conclude: "The intimacy of the picture frequently suggests that it originated in the royal harem; and in view of the intellectual activities attributed to women in early Israel ... the possibility of such an origin cannot be denied." 14 I realize that the hypothesis I am suggesting cannot but raise a storm of opposition from conservative circles in the field of Biblical studies. I can understand this because long established preconceptions, especially if they have been unexamined, are difficult to question and can be changed only slowly. And the implications of authorial strategy that seem persuasive to me may not seem to be so to someone who considers it evident and unquestionable that in Biblical times only men could and did author great works. This certainly is currently the majority, if not the consensus, view. Yet despite the opposition this thesis will probably engender, I nonetheless feel it important enough to advance, even against opposition, and I am going to treat it as my working hypothesis. But is a thesis of this sort at all tenable? Before we can answer this question we must consider the larger issue of the condition of women in the Early Biblical Age, specifically the last century before the establishment of the monarchy and the period of the Early Monarchy.

12. The question becomes even more pointed when we realize that the differentiation is largely arbitrary. It seems clear to me that the author could have written the work in such a way as to give men the burden of being bearers of the Book's meaning as well as carrying the political narrative. 13. I had already come to my conclusions as to the feminine authorship of Samuel before chancing on the monumental study by the Chadwicks in the course of research on a completely different project. 14. Chadwick, The Growth of Literature, Vol. II, pp. 636,649,668,761. It may be worthwhile noting that many of the Icelandic sagas to which the Chadwicks compare Samuel are also, in their opinion, of 'feminine provenance' (p. 649).

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A WOMAN'S ROLE IN ANCIENT ISRAEL Our general impression of life in the days of the Bible tends to be romanticized and rather removed from reality. In addition, having grown up in the waning years of the industrial age, our understanding of the way society is formed and functions has been conditioned by our upbringing. It is therefore only natural that, without reflection, we project this understanding back onto bygone eras. But the Biblical world was pre-industrial. Over ninety-five percent of all people of that era were peasant farmers living in small villages. The principal social unit in Ancient Israel prior to the rise of the centralized State was the clan, that configuration of interrelated extended families all tracing their lineage back to a common original progenitor. Central to the clan structure and basic to it was the nuclear family. A person's identity was defined by the family to which he or she belonged, and to the larger clan of which it was a part. We are told that one day Boaz came to check on how the harvest was progressing in one of his fields, and finding there a strange young woman (Ruth) he asked his foreman: "To whom does this young woman belong?" (Ruth 2:5). 15 The question really meant no more than: "Who is she?" One's family background determined one's identity. A woman was part of her parent's family until she married; then she and her husband founded a new family. The other possibility was that she became part of her husband's already existing family. Polygamy-a man being married to more than one woman at the same time-was accepted practice in the entire Ancient Near East as, indeed, it remains in that region to this day. The entire Moslem world still practices polygamy. A recent study of the Arab Moslem population residing in the Negeb reveals that more than thirty percent of Bedouin men have more than one wife; the Jewish population of Israel is the sole island of monogamy in the region. In Biblical days the Jews followed their neighbors in their marriage practices. Not that multi-wife-families were the norm. After all, despite the fact that in most societies there are more women of marriageable age than men, the imbalance is not all that large. Then, as now, most families were necessarily monogamous. 16 In the Biblical Age, as in virtually all subsistence economies, the family was the primary economic unit, which was for all practical purposes self-sufficient, producing not only the food that was consumed but almost all other necessities of life, such as clothing, housing, and even tools of production. "Providing these essentials involved a carefully orchestrated division of labor among all family members, male and female, young and old. Clearly, the survival of the household as a whole depended upon the contribution of all its members." 17 The family rose with the dawn. Domestic animals had to be watered, fed, and, if taken out to pasture, tended. Goats had to be milked. Food had to be prepared, water drawn from the well or cistern, thread spun, cloth woven, clothing sewn. The list must have seemed endless to the participants; this all in addition to the central job of farming the land. In this kind of economy the more pairs of hands the better; thus large numbers of children were wanted to share the work. All in all, life was hard and there was little time for leisure. More to the present point, women were an integral part of the work force. Carol Meyers estimates that "roughly 40 percent of the productive labor in agrarian communities in the highlands of Palestine was

15. That is, to what family and clan does she belong? In much the same way we will encounter King Saul watching young David going off to fight Goliath and asking his general: "Whose son is that boy, Abner?" (I Samuel 17: 55) The question also only meant: "Who is he?" 16. Reasons for marrying more than one wife included conspicuous consumption, that is, publicly demonstrating one's status, power and wealth-kings were notorious for this. Rulers also acquired multiple wives as a way of forging (or cementing) political and economic alliances. All these reasons, as we shall see, figured prominently in David's life. For commoners, probably the most prevalent reason was to compensate for a sterile wife; rather than divorce her and marry someone else in order to raise a family, the husband would marry a second woman while refusing to part from his often beloved "wife of his youth." 17. Meyers, "Returning Home," p. 98.

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contributed by women." 18 Moreover, "the female's role in the household production system was no less important than the male's. . . . In such situations, households are typically characterized by internal gender balance rather than gender hierarchy." 19 In light of these economic and social realities it becomes necessary for us to radically revise our stereotyped notions of the relations between men and women in those days. This revision will make it easier to accept the assertiveness of the women in the early chapters of the Book ofSamuel. In portraying women as the ones who often determine the course of events in her epic the author is simply reflecting the realities of those days. This social structure, based on the harsh realities of a subsistance economy, was not to persist. When the Book of Samuel was probably written, the early semi-egalitarian world that is depicted in the early chapters was already in an advanced stage of dissolution. 20 David's startling achievement of a unified state and empire, the focus of the second half of the Book, was inevitably to lead to a new socioeconomic configuration: urbanization, a new role for commerce and finance, the rise of a military hierarchy and much more. In this new urban world, which overshadowed and dominated the rural countryside, the labor of wives and daughters of the newly rich elite became superfluous. Deprived of a place in the labor market, woman's role progressively deteriorated from that of a valued economic partner to that of a progenitor of children and a plaything of men. In this social domain, the imported norms of the Ancient Near East increasingly replaced the more egalitarian norms of ancient Israel. 21 By the beginning of the third decade of David's rule we find him unable to recognize by sight the wives and daughters of his general staff. Women have been marginalized, sequestered in special woman's quarters. 22 The dazzling rise in living standards and sophistication engendered by the urban revolution, together with the new leisure status afforded to upper class women, made both high literature and women's authorship possible. These possibilities came, however, at a price: the concomitant increasing irrelevance of women to economic productivity. This in turn brought with it increasing marginalization. In Hannah's days women circulated freely; in Abigail's women managed great estates. By the time of Bathsheba upper class women were no longer part of productive society, except in the narrow sense of producing children. Forbidden by their social status to work, isolated from the mainstream economy and the work world of the governing elite, time hung heavy in the lives of the sequestered wives and daughters of the upper classes. I suppose that the situation was somewhat similar to that of middle class English women in the Victorian Era: suffering an enforced leisure, they became an active reading public. In the Victorian Age, the demand for reading material stimulated supply: a flood of literature of "feminine provenance" emerged to meet the demand. And interestingly, women emerged as authors in response to the new situation. No middle class woman in Victorian England would be permitted to engage in serious professions such as medicine or law. But sitting at home and "scribbling" was not deemed sufficiently threatening to masculine dignity to be entirely forbidden. So women took up their pens, some openly and some covertly using pseudonyms, and found their place among the hordes of authors writing novels or poetry for the new female market. Some of these women-one thinks of Jane Austen, "George Elliot," and the Bronte sisters to mention but a few-proved to be among the best authors of the era. I suggest that a not dissimilar situation prevailed during the early monarchy in Ancient Israel: enforced leisure moved upper class women to fill the empty hours, reading being one of the answers. 18. Meyers, "Women ofthe Neighborhood," p. 110. 19. Meyers, "Returning Home," p. 98-99. 20. Almost one hundred years separate the time of Hannah depicted in the Book from the "Solomonic Enlightenment" that is the probable period in which Samuel was written (Rad, Old Testament Theology, Vol. 1,

p. 48-56). 21. This was far less true of farm life as lived by the overwhelming majority of the population. Rural life proved resistant to change, but even in the countryside the changes in women's status were felt; it is the city that sets the style for the rural hinterland, and not the other way around. 22. See Chapter 28, especially note 7.

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Demand for reading matter led directly to works written to supply this market, and some women found in this opening the opportunity they needed to write and express themselves creatively. In my previous book, Four Biblical Heroines, I suggested that the Book of Ruth was written in this period, stimulated by the new socioeconomic realities. 23 I believe that the Book of Samuel was equally a product of this situation. And I am proposing that both were authored by women. But granting the economic and sociological realities shaping the lives of upper class women in the early Monarchical Age is this proposal even remotely possible considering the state of literacy in those days? Were there even sufficient literate men, not to mention women, at this early period who could form even a minimal reading public? For that matter, could any woman in David's days read, much less write? It therefore becomes necessary to examine whether a female reading public was indeed a possibility in the Ancient Near East. We must ask ourselves whether we are simply being captivated by our current feminist preoccupations and anachronistically projecting them back into the distant past where they have no place.

THE QUESTION OF LITERACY IN ANCIENT ISRAEL24 Before we go into this matter we need to address a prior question: that of literacy in the Ancient World in general, and Ancient Israel in particular. Until recently it has been universally assumed that during the Biblical Age virtually all Israelites were illiterate. Such literacy as did exist (and that mainly only from the eighth century) was believed to have been confined to a very small class of professional scribes who performed such reading and writing activities as were necessary for rulers and the elite. As was the case in other illiterate societies, it was taken as a given that most "compositions" and "traditions" were oral, and were transmitted by bards and "storytellers" who wandered from village to village and from tribe to tribe. 25 Over a century ago, the German scholar Julius Wellhausen advanced the thesis that Israel had its origins in a conglomeration of primitive desert tribes who were, of course, illiterate. 26 As with so many nineteenth century theories constructed in a time when virtually nothing was known of the Ancient Near East, the explosion of knowledge produced by twentieth century discoveries-especially the vast libraries and archives of ancient Ugarit, Mari and Ebla-have rendered most ofthe views of Wellhausen and his school obsolete?7 Ancient Israel did not exist in a vacuum. We now have a picture of the wider environment in which Ancient Israel existed, and as more and more of that larger context is filled in we gain a correspondingly better understanding of what really went on in that small part of the whole that was Israel. The presumption of near total illiteracy in Ancient Israel is a holdover from discredited nineteenth century theories, and can be classed as more a blind faith than an item ofhistorical knowledge based on fact. 28 Or asK. A. Kitchen puts it:

23. Millgram, pp. 25, 213-15. 24. This section was originally written as an appendix to my previous book, Four Biblical Heroines. Because of its importance in establishing the viability of my thesis I am including a modified version of that appendix here. 25. With regard to the classical prophets, "schools" of "disciples" were postulated who memorized the words of their masters, and then passed them down from generation to generation until they were committed to writing sometime in the post-exilic age. 26. Wellhausen categorically dismissed everything the Bible has to say about Israelite origins-specifically almost everything reported from Genesis through Joshua-as fictions invented by post-exilic Jews. "We attain [in Genesis] to no historical knowledge of the patriarchs, but only of the time when the stories about them arose in the Israelite people; this later age is here unconsciously projected, in its inner and its outward features into hoar antiquity, and is reflected there like a glorified mirage." (Wellhausen, Prolegomena, p. 318-19) 27. Wellhausen used primitive pre-Islamic Arab tribes as his models for what the earliest Israelites were like. We now recognize this model as pure anachronism. 28. Wellhausen took it for granted that the invasion of "primitive" Israelite tribes into "civilized" Canaan produced results similar to those of the Doric invasions of Mycenaean Greece at roughly the same time: a dark age of barbarian illiteracy that lasted for centuries. The Dorian conquest of Greece took place at approximately

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[It is] the persistence of long-outdated philosophical and literary theories (especially of the 19th century stamp), and ... wholly inadequate use of first-hand sources in appreciating the earlier periods of the Old Testament story. 29

The earliest form of writing, invented in Sumer in a long series of stages and reaching maturity about five thousand years ago, was a very complicated mixture of hundreds of signs representing whole words (logograms), signs for syllables or parts of words (syllabaries) and unpronounced signs used to indicate to which category of things a phonetic sign belonged (determinatives). 30 As such knowledge of writing was very hard to master, it was mainly confined to professional scribes in the employ of the king or of a temple. Writing was mostly used for clerical purposes: keeping records of goods collected as taxes, rations paid to workers as wages and so on. Only slowly did the writing, by becoming even more complicated, become sufficiently flexible to be able to be used for such purposes as state propaganda and the recording of myths. From the beginning writing was designed to facilitate the functioning of the centralized state (which included the state religion); its effective restriction to state-employed professionals was seen as advantageous. The invention of the alphabet, sometime around 1700 BCE by Canaanites somewhere in Southem Syria-Palestine, changed everything. 31 Using a mere 22 signs to represent the consonants, any word could be constructed. It was so simple that virtually anyone could easily master it. Writing ceased to be the monopoly of professionals. We can get some idea of the revolutionary impact of alphabetic writing from the history of its introduction into Greece. The Greeks got their alphabet from the Phoenicians,32 and from the moment of its appearance it was a private vehicle used for private purposes, thus the first example of Greek alphabetic writing we possess appears scratched onto an Athenian jug from about 740 BCE, and is an announcement of a dancing contest: "Whoever of all the dancers performs most nimbly will win this vase as a prize." The very next example is three lines of poetry scratched onto a drinking cup: "I am Nestor's delicious drinking cup. Whoever drinks from this cup, swiftly will the desire of the fair-crowned Aphrodite seize him."

the midpoint of the Age of the Judges in Israel (about 1100 BCE). The oldest Greek inscriptions date only from the eighth and seventh centuries. Homer flourished in the ninth century; the masterpiece attributed to him, The Iliad, was transmitted orally by wandering bards and by guilds of "rhapsodes" (from raptein, to stitch together, and oide, a song) until finally being reduced to written form in Athens under the dictatorship ofPisistratus (died 527 BCE, and thus a contemporary of the Babylonian Exile). The illiteracy of Greece during almost the entire First Commonwealth period was naively taken as a model for Israelite society just across the Mediterranean. 29. Kitchen, The Bible In Its World, p. 7. 30. Egyptian Hieroglyphic writing, equally complicated, emerged also about 3,000 BCE, but apparently without the long period of experimental development that preceded Sumerian cuneiform. This leads some scholars to conclude that the Egyptians did not invent hieroglyphic writing from scratch, but got the original idea of writing from the Sumerians and then proceeded to develop their own system of writing based on the same principles. 31. The alphabet was the invention of those Semitic-speaking peoples who used what we currently call Western Semitic languages. Hebrew, Phoenician and Aramaic, which are part of this language group and are closely related, were all soon using the alphabet. (By the thirteenth century BCE the original 27 letters representing consonants had been reduced to 22.) To the best of our knowledge, this discovery was unique in human history. All alphabets, past and present, derive from this original alphabet. 32. A Semitic people located in what is now western Lebanon, who specialized in sea-born commerce. They were the Semites with whom the Greeks were in contact, and it is from them that the Greeks borrowed the Phoenician-Hebrew alphabet, even retaining the Semitic names of the letters. 33. Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, p. 236. The Greek examples are also taken from this book.

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The earliest preserved examples of the Etruscan and Roman alphabets are also inscriptions on drinking cups and wine containers. Only later did the alphabet's easily learned vehicle of private communication become co-opted for public and bureaucratic purposes. Thus, the developmental sequence of uses for alphabetic writing was the reverse of that for the earlier systems of logograms and syllabaries. 33

With this background in mind, we now return to that area of the Ancient Near East where the alphabet had been invented more than half a millennium before it was introduced into a Greece just beginning to emerge from its dark age. Even as in Greece, the invention of the alphabet, by simplifying to an amazing extent the art of reading and writing, had the effect of dramatically democratizing literacy in Canaan. The beginning of national existence for Israel coincided with the streamlining of an alphabetic script. Mounting evidence indicates that by the time Hannah flourished (that is, the point in time when the Book of Samuel opens) "writing was clearly part of everyday life and not restricted solely to a special scribal elite."34 K. A. Kitchen has provided numerous examples taken from archeological discoveries in both pre-Israelite Canaan and from Israel's immediate neighbors of a literacy not confined to elite and scribal circles. We have evidence from late thirteenth centu'1 Canaanite Lachish,35 from a ninth century BCE private home in Tell Deir Alia in the Transjordan, 6 and from a late ninth-early eighth century BCE caravanserai, a fortified stopping-off place for caravans and merchants, located at Kuntillet Ajrud near a junction of two international trade routes in the northeast SinaV 7 to name but a few. It is especially significant to our subject that the three earliest Israelite inscriptions yet discovered are

34. The full quotation reads: "With this limited set of simple signs [letters] to spell any word by its consonantal framework, literacy steadily became possible for a far greater number of people .... We have ... private letters (ostraca, Hebrew and Aramaic), some papyri (mostly Aramaic), and innumerable personal stamp-seals bearing the name of their owners (practically all dialects), use of which presupposes that many people could read enough to distinguish between them. There are inscribed arrow heads, notations of person, place, or capacity on jar handles-the list of everyday uses is quite varied. Thus certainly from II 00 BC (and probably rather earlier), writing in Canaan, then in Israel, Phoenicia, and round about was clearly part of everyday life and not restricted solely to a special scribal elite." (Kitchen, The Bible in its World, p. 18. This was written before 1977; since then further data has strengthened this evaluation.) 35. "The locals could write. A splendid two-foot-high ewer was decorated in deep red paint with a series of animals, over which the artist had jotted, very informally, a dedication: Gift (of) an oblation, 0 my [lad]y Goddess [?and Reshe]ph! This is only one of several fragmentary inscriptions from thirteenth-century Lachish, all informal such that any reasonably intelligent Canaanite might have inked them onto bowls and basins-and did." (Kitchen, On theReliability ofthe Old Testament, p. 407.) 36. " ... a remarkable text written out on the white-plastered surface of a wall ... There is nothing 'religious' about this room in a ninth-century dwelling; benches against the other walls may have served readers of the text as seats. The text is titled 'The Book of the Afflictions ofBalaam Son ofBeor,' and has a visionary content. ... The language is West Semitic with Aramaic affinities ... What is it doing here? A question unanswered, and not answerable with certainty." (Kitchen, Ibid., p. 412-13.) Kitchen's assumption is that the seats were for a stream of people who came to read the inscription which was on public display. 37. "The doorway passage from the guardhouse into the fort's inner court was flanked by two narrow side rooms with benches and storage jars (pithoi). The latter bore remarkable sketches ... and some even more remarkable jottings in Hebrew and Phoenician." To summarize Kitchen's lengthy analysis, the jottings were dedications, blessings and graffiti and were undoubtedly scribbled by Phoenician and Israelite travelers, merchants and common soldiers, not by scribes or educated professionals. (Kitchen, Ibid., p. 413-15.) 38. lzbet Sartah is the name of an archaeological site in the foothills of Samaria named after the adjacent Arab village. We currently are unsure what its original Biblical (Hebrew) name was.

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abecedaries (schoolboy pads for practicing the writing of the alphabet); the earliest, from the little farming village of lzet Sartah,38 dates from the twelfth century BCE. If tiny farm towns, some, like lzbet Sarta, numbering less that two dozen houses, had schoolchildren occupied with practicing their a-b-cs, we have evidence for a much wider distribution of literacy at this early period than had previously been suspected. 39 I hope by this point to have established a strong presumption that literacy was sufficiently widespread by the tenth century BCE to allow us to posit a reading public for whom authors could write. 40 Our next task is to dispel the belief that whatever literacy did exist was restricted solely to males. The strongly held conviction that women in the Biblical age were held in ignorance and illiteracy, unquestioned in many circles, needs to be set against what we know of the larger picture of the Ancient Near East. The first point to be made is that the Ancient Near East has a long proven record of female literacy going back to the beginning of writing in ancient Sumer. All through the centuries when the complicated cuneiform system of writing restricted literacy almost wholly to a small professional elite, we possess ample evidence that women were part of this elite. Indeed, the Mesopotamian patron deity of scribes was the goddess Nisaba, "chief scribe of heaven, record-keeper of Enlil, all knowing sage ofthe gods." She was to serve as model to women professionals for well over a millennium. The first scribes to be specifically identified as females are two women in an Ur III text. 41 At Marl, in Old Babylonian times, one text alone names nine female scribes.42 In one site in Sippur, at least a dozen are known by name. 43 In the late Assyrian period, Assurbanipal informs us in two letters addressed to the gods that the scribes writing the letters were women. 44 And as late as neo-Assyrian times there were female scribes employed in the Queen's palace both at Kalab and at Nineveh. 45 Not only were there women who made their living from their scribal ability, but the Ancient Near East had a long tradition of female authors. The first on record was Princess Enheduanna, daughter of King Sargon of Akkad, c. 2360 BCE. Her surviving works include a cycle of short hymns apostrophizing the temples of Sumer and Akkad, and a cycle of three lengthy hymns celebrating the

39. I append here from personal observation an example of my own: a recently discovered tomb from the early monarchic period, cut into bedrock in the Kidron Valley opposite the Temple Mount of Jerusalem, bears an inscription advising potential grave robbers that it will be unprofitable for them to break into the tomb as there is nothing there to take. But should you disregard this advisory, the inscription continues, and do break in, may a curse fall upon you and all your descendents. Just as today we post "Beware of the Dog" signs with the expectation that potential trespassers will be able to read the sign and be warned off, so does the ancient inscription presuppose the ability of the grave robbers of those days to read and so be deterred. 40. This does not in any way imply that one could make a living by writing literature. Writing was an avocation, not a paying proposition. But for one who had something to say, one could write knowing that there were people able and willing to read what one had written. More: the extraordinary levels of sophistication and artistry of Biblical Books (we will repeatedly comment on it even though this will not always be germane to our line of inquiry) implies that there were readers who could appreciate this high level of literature, even demand it. We have no way of estimating the size of the reading public at any given period; we can only suggest that it was sufficiently rooted to have developed good taste. 41. Hallo, Origins, p. 262. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. The scribes are not named, but from analysis of the handwriting we know that both letters were not written by the same woman. 45. Ibid., p. 263. These women scribes were bilingual, being proficient in both cuneiform and alphabetic (Aramaic) writing. Aramaic was used by the neo-Assyrian Empire as their official language in administering their western provinces, while they retained Akkadian (written in cuneiform) for homeland use.

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military triumphs of her father Sargon. 46 We actually have a full figure portrait of her making an offering at an altar (she had her father appoint her priestess to the moon-god ofUr). Because she prefaced one of her hymns with a detailed autobiography we know quite a bit about her. She has the distinction of being not only the first woman author on record, but also the very first author known by name. "On present evidence, Enheduanna is the first non-anonymous, non-fictitious author in world history-and a woman." 47 She was far from the last. There was Watartum, widow of King Ur-Nammu ofUr (c. 2094 BCE), who composed a plaintive lamentation for her husband slain in battle. Then there was Queen Abisimti, wife of Shulgi, who composed a beautiful lullaby for her son Shu-Sin. 48 When Shu-Sin grew up a whole series of erotic love songs were composed for him, one by the priestess Kubatum and one by an anonymous barmaid (a bawdy drinking song), perhaps one Il-ummiya. Finally we have the case of Nin-shatapada, daughter of King Sin-kashid (c. 1800 BCE). When their kingdom was conquered by King Rim-Sin of Larsa, she composed a letter-prayer in poetry to him pleading to spare her and to restore her to her position as high priestess of the city of Durum. It seems that she was successful. 49 Was it only queens and princesses who wrote in ancient Mesopotamia? Hallo suggests that "the answer to this question is complicated by the noted reticence of the sources to identify authors altogether."50 In the days before the invention of the alphabet it was for the most part persons with royal connections whose compositions were preserved along with their names. With a documented long-standing tradition of female literacy in the Ancient Near East, and a tradition of female authorship, we should not be surprised that, as a part of the Ancient Near East, Israel should also have its share of poetic compositions attributed to women authors, "The Song of Deborah" (Judges 5) and "Hannah's Prayer" (1 Samuel2: 1-10) being the outstanding examples. Nor should we find it improbable that, with the creation of narrative prose as the preferred form for biography and historiography in Ancient Israel, women should take a hand in its composition. To sum up, literacy was well established in the Ancient Near East, and especially in the region where Ancient Israel found itself by the tenth century BCE. The socioeconomic situation created by urbanization and a radically rising standard of living created a female leisure class that could become a reading public. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that there was a long tradition of female literacy and female authorship in the Ancient Near East. Ancient Israel was a part of its larger world, and it seems reasonable to assume that what had become common in the surrounding area became common in Israel as well. I have come to feel that the sheer number of women who appear in the Book of Samuel, and the roles that they play in defining the meaning of the Book, raises not only the possibility of a woman having authored the work but makes it seem compelling. More than this neither I, nor anyone, can say with certainty. If we are correct that the Book ofSmaue/'s author was a woman, the fact was probably forgotten within two to three generations (if it was even known beyond the confines of a small literary circle). It was Samuel and its message that lived on. It is only in our era, with its changing and enlarging perspectives, that the gender of the Book's author can be inferred. And it is only in our time that the implications of Samuel's radical message can be fully understood and appreciated in the light of its being the result of a woman's viewpoint. I will leave it up to the reader, after having evaluated Samuel in the light of this hypothesis, to draw whatever conclusions are felt to be appropriate. But either way I strongly hold that the author was a writer of genius, that the Book of Samuel is one of the greatest works that has come down to us 46. These are all stylized and elevated compositions. Several of them are included in the anthologies Women Poets ofthe World, edited by Joanna Bankier and Deirdre Lashgari, and A Book of Women Poetry from Antiquity to Now, edited by Aliki and Willis Barnstone. 47. Hallo, Origins, p. 265-66. I borrow the following list of women authors from Hallo. 48. We are not absolutely certain that Abi-simti was the author. It could have been one of Shugli's other wives. 49. Ibid., p. 267. All the above compositions are in poetry, the sole literary form employed for "literature" in

ancient Sumer and Akkad. Prose in those days was only used for accounting. 50. Ibid.

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from the ancient world, and its message is one of paramount importance whether written by a woman ora man.

HOW DID THE BOOK OF SAMUEL GET TO US?51 Having explored the issue of a woman being the author of the Book of Samuel, we return to more mundane questions, the ftrst of which is: how did it come about that a book, written almost three thousand years ago, comes to be in our possession today? Once having written a book, the next concern of an author, then as now, is to get it into circulation. Millennia before the invention of the printing press, it was a very different matter than today. In the ancient world all books were handwritten. In ancient Israel this meant written with pen and ink on parchment or papyrus. 52 An author would write out one or more copies of the book (or if wealthy could hire a scribe-a kind of professional secretary-to do the copying) and circulate it among friends and acquaintances. These would, in their tum, pass the book on to their friends. If any of these should take a special liking to the book they could have a private copy written out for personal use. No one thought in terms of copyright in those days; a book once circulated was the property of the public. As long as a book remained popular with the reading public it remained "in print," new copies being made as old ones wore out. If not, a book would go "out of print," no new copies replacing the natural attrition of wear and tear, accidents, wars and ftres. Most books in the ancient world suffered this fate; we know only by name, or sometimes from quotes, of a number of very important books that had wide circulation in Biblical times. While accident obviously played an important part in a book's survival, the more copies in circulation, the higher the book's life expectancy. The Book of Samuel seems to have been a runaway bestseller from the start, and to have remained so as century followed century. Through all the vicissitudes of the years, down to the invention of the printing press, enough people and groups cared about the book to ensure its preservation. The laborious hand-copying process ended about 500 years ago with the printing press. In Venice, in 1524-1525, Daniel Bomberg printed what was to become the universally accepted edition of the Hebrew Bible. 53 With one exception, all Hebrew Bibles today are copies ofthis original edition.

THE PERILS OF THE COPYING PROCESS AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT THEM Endless recopying has its dangers. Being human, even the most devoted and careful scribes make mistakes. Sometimes scribes' eyes would wander, and they would skip words, or even entire sentences. Sometimes they would misread a word and replace it with something that looked superficially 51. For those who have read my previous book, Four Biblical Heroines, the next four sections, which are essentially repeats of matter dealt with in the Introduction to that work, can be skipped without loss. 52. Parchment is a form of leather, animal skin cut in strips between one and two feet wide and six to eight feet long, and specially prepared as a base for writing. These strips would be sewed together, end to end, to form a scroll (which was called a sefer or book). Papyrus was a kind of paper made in Egypt from the stems of the papyrus plant. The sheets would be glued together to make a scroll. Menahem Haran has presented compelling reasons to assume that in the period we are discussing papyrus was by far the more commonly used material. Pens in ancient Israel seem to have been made from reeds, split at one end and used as brushes. Ink was charcoal based, dissolved in oil or gum. (Haran, "Scribal Workmanship in Biblical Times," p. 65-87 and "Book-Scrolls in Israel in Pre-Exilic Times," p. 161-173) 53. Actually he published his first Hebrew Bible in the years 1516-17, but it didn't sell. Not being a Jew (Bomberg was a devout Catholic) he hadn't realized that his main market, the Jews, wouldn't buy a Bible without the marginal Masoretic notes (see "Masorite" in the Glossary). Realizing his mistake, he corrected this error in the second (1524-25) edition and had a bestseller.

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similar but was quite different in meaning. Despite the best of precautions and proofreading, errors would slip through. And these errors would be copied in tum. After almost a thousand years of constant recopying, a situation was created in which several versions of the Book of Samuel were in circulation simultaneously. By this time Samuel had been universally accepted as Scripture, that is Holy Writ, and the circumstance of having different versions of a Holy Book became intolerable to the religious authorities in Jerusalem. So taking the best copies available in the Temple Archives, by a process of careful comparison they issued an authorized version of the Book of Samuel, the most error-free edition they could achieve. This is the Masoretic Text (MT), 54 which was canonized and has been standard to this day. 55 But the story does not end here. Good as these efforts were-and they were very goodproblems still remain. There are phrases, and at times whole sentences, that don't seem to make sense. And there are places where quite obviously something is missing. This is where the ancient versions can help us. More than two thousand years ago Jewish communities living in different areas of the world lost their traditional facility with the Hebrew language. No longer speaking Hebrew in their daily lives, more and more Jews lost the ability to read it. And so it became necessary to provide a translation of the Bible into the various languages these communities of Jews spoke and understood. The first such translation, into Greek, was made in Alexandria, Egypt, during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (283-245 BCE). This translation, known as the Septuagint (LXX), 56 is recognized today as an excellent translation, but it was made from a different version of the Book ofSamuel than those used by the Masorites. There are whole sentences in LXX that have vanished from MT! Comparing and editing the Masoretic Text (MT) in the light of LXX can prove an enormous help in clearing up difficulties. Of course the opposite is also true; parts of the account of David and Goliath, for example, are missing from the Greek text, which needs to be corrected in the light ofMT. 57 As the years went by, translations into other languages were made: into Aramaic, called the Targum (Targ.), 58 into Syriac (an Eastern form of Aramaic) called the Peshitta (Syr.), and into Latin, called the Vulgate (Vulg.). 59 All these exhibit differences from the MT and invite comparison. And then there is the remarkable discovery, haifa century ago, ofthe Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran.60 In addition to the famous original seven scrolls, the remains of many other Biblical books were discovered, including the Book of Samuel. These fragments, dating back more than 2,000 years, are 54. See "Masorite" in the Glossary. 55. "The word canon is derived from a Greek word that goes back to the Hebrew word qaneh and eventually to a Sumerian word denoting a reed that served as a measuring rod. The concept of physical measurement came by extention to mean a standard by which something is evaluated. Biblical literature was considered canonical when it 'measured up' to some standards, which cannot be clearly recovered, about what was authentic revelation and should be included in a collection of holy texts." (Meyers, "The Hebrew Bible," p. 4) 56. The Greek word means "seventy," an abbreviation of the full title: The Translation of the Seventy Elders. This refers to the story that seventy-two scholars, summoned from Jerusalem, made the translation of the Torah ("The Five Books of Moses"), the first part of the Hebrew Bible. The remainder of the Hebrew Bible (The Prophets and The Writings) was translated later, in stages. 57. The section in LXX dealing with David and Goliath (l Samuell7-18) is virtually unique in that, unlike most of the Greek translation, this is not a rendition with minor variations of what we have in the Hebrew MT but a radically cut down and truncated version. Unlike the majority of scholars who believe that the Greek preserves the original version of the story (which has been expanded and "beefed-up" in MT), I accept D. W. Gooding's analysis and conclusion that the fuller and more detailed Hebrew version we have in our Bibles is indeed the original version of the story, while what we have in the Greek is an edited revision, and clumsily edited at that. (Gooding, The Story ofDavid and Goliath, p. 145-154) It is LXX that needs to be corrected in the light ofMT. 58. Actually there were several different translations made into Aramaic. Targum is the Aramaic word for translation. 59. We are referring here to the translation made by St. Jerome from the original Hebrew. 60. The original Dead Sea Scrolls are on exhibit in Jerusalem in the Shrine of the Book, a division of the Israel Museum.

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the oldest copies of the Book that we possess (though it must be remembered that these too are copies of copies-the earliest made some 700 years after the book was originally written). These have also proved extremely helpful; for example one of these scrolls restores to us an entire section relating to the early history ofKing Saul's rise to fame, which is missing, between the end of Chapter 10 and the beginning of Chapter 11 from the MT of I Samuel. While one must exercise extreme caution in the use of these alternate versions of the Book, with care they can help us to a better understanding of Samuel. My translation of the Book of Samuel is 98% based on the MT, by far the best version that we have. 61 But in those cases when I feel the ancient versions can be of help, I have not hesitated to proceed on their bases, hoping thereby to come somewhat closer to the author's original intent. In order to play fair with the reader I always indicate in a footnote when I have departed from the Masoretic Text, and on what basis; and I include the MT reading for comparison. That way it is possible for the reader to come to an independent conclusion, deciding whether to go along with me or to stick to the MT. 62

A WORD ON TRANSLATION This volume is a companion to and commentary on the Book of Samuel. As such, it contains the full text of the Biblical Book. You may be used to reading the Bible in the King James Translation, or in one of the more modem versions. While the King James Translation is easily the greatest rendition of the Bible into English, the archaic language of this version no longer facilitates understanding, but instead acts as a barrier to most people.63 On the other hand I feel that many of the modem translations, in striving to be relevant, are too free in their renderings, often imposing contemporary agendas on the text that distort the original meaning. Some modem translations I simply find wooden. All this, in addition to the considerations listed above, has led me to translate the text anew. I have tried to make the translation simple and to keep it in contemporary English. The translation is a literal one in which I have stayed as close to the Hebrew original as possible, avoiding euphemism and paraphrases, while conforming to proper English usage. In a word, I have tried to render just what the text says while avoiding stilted and convoluted English. This not only facilitates ease of reading but also, to my way of thinking, conveys best the feel of the simple and lucid style of the original text.

61. The above amounts to a vast oversimplification of an extremely complex series of issues. For example, there is not just one Greek translation of Samuel (LXX) but several competing versions of it are currently extant. Nor is my opinion as to the intrinsic superiority of MT universally held. Many scholars consider some versions of LXX to be preferable to MT, and to rely on them when differences occur. My position on the matter amounts to this: inasmuch as the Masoretic Text is the canonical version of Samuel accepted by Jews and Western Christianity, and the basis of all major modem English translations of the text, it would seem to me reasonable to make it, rather than some other version of the text, the base of our investigation. As Kierkegaard once remarked, if you want to sew, you first must tie a knot in the thread; one must start somewhere. My choice is to start with MT, modifYing only when absolutely necessary on the basis of alternative ancient versions. 62. Unlike many scholars, I am extremely hesitant to second-guess the received text, substituting my own conviction for what lies before us. As a basic rule I do not approve of emending the text; that is, altering the text on one's own authority in order to make "better sense" of it. My approach is to try to make sense out of what we have, and make no changes except on the authority of alternate versions. Therefore, any alterations that I have made in MT have been on the basis of ancient versions of the text. There are two exceptions to this rule, cases where I could get no meaning from the Hebrew and no help from the ancient versions. In desperation I have been forced to guess, and indicated the guesses as such in the footnotes. 63. Actually, the language used was already archaic in 1611, when the Authorized Version (which is the official title of the "King James Translation") was published. "Thee"s and "thou"s had long since ceased to be used in everyday speech. The Bishops' Committee that was responsible for the translation made the conscious choice to use "old-fashioned" language in order to give its Bible a tone of solemn antiquity. The Committee felt everyday language would cheapen the text.

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Which brings us to two issues, one technical and minor, and one major and central to the way the Book is treated. Let us clear the decks by first dealing with the technical issue: footnoting.

A WORD ABOUT FOOTNOTES We have already mentioned that this book, being designed for the general reader, is not written in the format typical of academic literature. So what is all that small print doing on the bottom of the pages? It is true that footnotes are a scholar's tool, their primary purpose being to facilitate peer review. Meticulously documenting every fact and opinion with its scholarly source allows specialists to check up on each other to see how well they have done their homework, whether they are accurately reflecting the views of those upon whom they rely, and therefore how seriously one can take their results. None of this is appropriate for a work that is not destined for the world of Biblical scholarship, but rather for the intelligent and interested layman. In this book the footnotes serve different purposes entirely. The purposes are three. The first we have already mentioned: to play fair by letting the reader know whenever the translation departs from MT. As most readers will have little or no command of Hebrew, they will have no way of knowing when their guide has departed from the accepted Masoretic Text. These notes are just a way of keeping the translation transparent, and of not relying on different versions without the reader's knowledge. The second purpose is plain common courtesy. Whenever there is a direct quotation from some work it is the polite thing to give the author credit. So whenever an author is mentioned or quoted directly that author is given his or her due. But by far the greatest number of footnotes serves the purpose of optional enrichment. Some readers work on the principle that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Anything extraneous to the matter at hand is an annoyance, to be avoided at all cost. Others, myself included, far from finding digressions distracting, discover in them half the reward of reading: detours open new vistas, expand horizons and deepen understanding. So many of the footnotes, those with more than one or two lines, fall into this category of short side excursions. Assuming that at least some of my readers will have the same kind of temperament as myself, while others will prefer to get on with the task at hand, I have arranged to remove most side issues from the main body of the text and put them into the footnotes (and into a selected series of Appendices and Excursuses). Some of these will give a deeper understanding of the subject under discussion; sometimes they will give a view of some related field or issue. The several footnotes that you have encountered so far are a taste of what you can expect. Those who prefer to stay with the main text will find that it is fully self-contained. But for those inclined to explore side issues, the doors have been left open. And now to the major issue at hand: the background presupposed by the Book of Samuel, and thus the foundation upon which this book is built.

THE EMERGENCE OF ISRAEL The Bible was the product ofthe ancient Israelites, the ancestors of present-day Jews. Sometime between three and four thousand years ago the Israelites emerged on the stage of world history as an identifiable and distinct people. They did not appear in a vacuum, or in a world of primitive peoples. The Ancient Near East was dominated by great civilizations, which were thousands of years old when Israel first saw the light of day. Nor were the Israelites somehow isolated from this world of high culture and accomplishment. They themselves traced their origins to Mesopotamia (the present day Iraq), seat of mighty empires. The pyramids were already ancient when the Israelites resided in Egypt, a sojourn lasting generations. And Canaan, the "Promised Land," where they eventually came to live, was likewise an area with an established and ancient culture. The Israelites were formed and

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grew out of the ancient and sophisticated cultures of the Near East of their era but, by their own choice, became different from all the peoples who surrounded them; indeed, unique.

A PEOPLE WITH A SHAMEFUL PAST In a world in which all peoples claimed at the very least descent from heroes and conquerors many claimed to have their origins in the "affairs" between gods and beautiful women - the Israelites were unique in not inventing a glorious past for themselves. On the contrary, they insisted, and continued to insist, that their beginnings were among the lowest of the low. They would not let themselves, or any one else, forget that they were the descendents of a rabble of escaped sla:ves. 64 This memory of prolonged slavery in Egypt and the experience of subsequent liberation were the overwhelming and formative influences that shaped them as a people. These events, and the interpretations placed upon them by their religious leaders, were to lead them to reject the basic presuppositions and values of the Ancient Near East and to forge a revolutionary new way of looking at the world, with a complete reevaluation of the role of humanity in the cosmos. It was in the Bible that this new outlook and its values were to find their voice. The world has never been the same since.

THE MONOTHEISTIC REVOLUTION To understand the radical nature of this new point of view we must understand something of the world that was being rejected. The religious culture of the Ancient Near East was pagan.65 This meant much more than simply believing in the existence of many gods and the worship of images. It meant the conviction that the natural world (and its rhythms, in which we are embedded) is divine. The sun, the moon, the stars, summer and winter, growing time and dying time-all in themselves are sacred. And because the natural world is divine, that which moves nature-force, power-is the ultimate reality. Individuals are thus trapped, locked into an amoral universe that is indifferent to their strivings and their well being. You might try to influence or bribe the gods, but nature being divine, the gods themselves are part of nature and subject to its limitations. Henri Frankfort sums up the revolutionary change engendered by Israelite monotheism: [everyone] agreed in the fundamental assumptions that the individual is part of society, that society is embedded in nature, and that nature is but the manifestation of the divine. This doctrine was, in fact, universally accepted by the peoples of the ancient world with the single exception of the Hebrews .... [they] held out with a particular stubbornness and insolence against the wisdom of Israel's neighbors . . . . The dominant tenet of Hebrew thought is the absolute transcendence of God. Yahweh66 is not in

64. Yet another shameful memory about their origins persisted among the Israelites. According to their view of human development, early humanity was monotheistic, and paganism and idolatry a later corruption. Yet instead of tracing their origins to the "original primeval monotheists," the Israelites insisted that their ancestors were idolaters. It seems that central to ancient Israel was the concept that one's status in this world depends not on high origins, but on what you have made of yourself; not on noble ancestry, but on how far you have raised yourself from your beginnings. 65. The word pagan comes from the Latin paganus, which means "rural"-someone who lives in the countryside as opposed to city dwellers. Christianity made its great inroads first and foremost in the cities of the Roman Empire. It was in the rural areas that people clung to the "old time religion" and held out against Christianity. So the term paganus-rural dweller--came to mean someone who refused monotheism and continued to worship the old gods, with a:ll that that implied. 66. This is the current attempt to reconstruct the personal name of the God oflsrael as recorded in the Bible. But since Hebrew was written with a consonantal alphabet (there are no vowels), and because we really have no idea how the consonants were pronounced in those days, all reconstructions are, to say the least, highly speculative. Jews ceased pronouncing God's name about two thousand years ago, out of a sense that it was improper to address God by name. Instead they substituted the title Lord, a convention adopted by the Bishops' Committee

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nature. Neither earth nor sun nor heaven is divine; even the most potent natural phenomena are but reflections of God's greatness .... The God of the Hebrews is pure being, unqualified, ineffable. He is holy. That means that he is sui generis67• .•• It means that all values are ultimately attributes of God alone ... .It has been rightly pointed out that the monotheism of the Hebrews is a correlate of their insistence on the unconditional nature of God. Only a God who transcends every phenomenon, who is not conditioned by any mode of manifestation-only an unqualified God can be the one and only ground of all existence. 68

The depth of the disagreement with the pagan Ancient Near East is evident everywhere. Unlike the pagan world, in which the religious impulse supremely manifested itself in the portrayal of the gods, Israelite society rejected images. Any physical representation of a transcendent God Who created the universe and sustains it cannot but be seen as belittling; such a deity could not but be offended, no matter what the good intentions. Unlike the pagan world, which saw nature as divine and worshipped its manifestations, the Israelites, believing that both they and nature were alike the creations of an Omnipotent Deity, saw their natural environment much the way we do--as raw material for human use. 69 Monotheism, anchoring values in the will of one transcendent God, gave to morality the force and urgency of an overriding imperative that radically altered peoples' demands both upon society and themselves, an altered perception that ultimately was to transform the world. And especially, monotheism broke down the coercive and stifling power of the collective, and cleared space for the individual to emerge into the world and stand alone-a phenomenon previously unknown. Once more Henri Frankfort: All this may help to explain the strange poignancy of single individuals in the Old Testament. Nowhere in the literature of Egypt or Babylonia do we meet with the loneliness of the biblical figures, astonishingly real in their mixture of ugliness and beauty, pride and contrition, achievement and failure. There is the tragic figure of Saul, the problematical David; there are countless others. We find single men in terrible isolation facing a transcendent God: Abraham trudging to the place of sacrifice with his son, Jacob in his struggle, and Moses and the prophets. In Egypt and Mesopotamia man was dominated, but also supported, by the great rhythm of nature. If in his dark moments he felt himself caught and held in the net of unfathomable decisions, his involvement in nature had, on the whole, a soothing character. He was gently carried along on the perennial cosmic tides of the seasons. The depth and intimacy of man's relationship with nature found expression in the ancient symbol of the mother-goddess. But Hebrew thought ignored this image entirely. It only recognized the stern Father.70 that issued the Authorized English Translation of the Bible (known as the King James Bible). This convention has been used in most subsequent translations down to the present day. We have continued this tradition in our translation of the text of Samuel. There is a further point to be considered, one succinctly expressed by Norman Podhoretz: "I prefer LORD because YHVH ['Yahweh'] in English willy-nilly makes God seem a tribal deity (which is in fact what some scholars-wrongly, I believe-think He was to the earliest of His Israelite devotees)." (Podhoretz, The Prophets, p. 12). Like him, I only allow this putative reconstruction into this book when I am quoting someone else. 67. I.e. unique. 68. Frankfort, The Intellectual Adventure ofAncient Man, p. 367-369. 69. There is one basic difference between the ecological attitudes of Biblical and modern men. Those living within the Biblical world took as given the position expressed in Psalm 24: The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. Mankind is no more than God's steward. Man is given the use of this world but will be called to account if he abuses it. The clear understanding that mankind does not own the world and is held accountable by the Owner placed severe limitations upon Biblical man. James Bar puts this into the context our modern ecological crisis: "I would say that the great modern exploitation of nature has taken place under the reign of a liberal humanism in which man no longer conceives of himself as living under a creator, and in which therefore his place of dominance in the universe and his right to dispose of nature for his own ends is, unlike the situation in the Bible, unlimited." (Bar, "Man and Nature: The Ecological Controversy and the Old Testament," p. 73) 70. Frankfort, The Intellectual Adventure ofAncient Man, p. 371.

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In freeing the individual from the bonds of nature and granting men and women autonomy, monotheism imposed upon liberated humanity a terrifying burden of moral responsibility. One would be free to choose, but one would have to bear the consequences of one's choice. This leads us to the last topic: the great transition from the pagan world to the world created by Biblical religion, the world that we now know: a shift from mythology to history.

THE DAWN OF HISTORY The intellectual life of the pagan was dominated by mythology, the stories of the gods: their biographies, their genealogies, their struggles, their quarrels and affairs. The focus of the pagan world was the realm of the gods; for the Greeks it was Mount Olympus, for the Norse it was Valhalla, for the Canaanites Mount Tzafon. Our world and its doings were deemed of little importance by comparison. For those reared and educated in the modem West it is often hard to grasp the fact that a concern with history, let alone the writing of history, is not an innate endowment of human civilization. Many cultures past and present have found no particular virtue in the historical, temporal dimension, of human existence.... In the metaphysics and epistemology of some of the most sophisticated of Far Eastern civilizations, both time and history are depreciated as illusory, and to be liberated from such illusions is a condition for true knowledge and ultimate salvation.71 All this was abolished at one stroke with the monotheistic revolution. In abolishing the gods and desacralizing nature, mythology was abolished. The one transcendent God had neither biography nor genealogy. There was nothing to tell about Him except His creative acts and His dealings with humanity. We remember remarking that the experience of the liberation from slavery in Egypt was the defining event in the turning of the Israelites into a people. In that event the Israelites felt they had experienced the redemptive act of their God. This was a God Who cared about human beings, Who liberated them, Who had a purpose for humanity. With the birth of monotheism the focus shifted from heaven to earth, and the concern became to discern God's will by the study of His dealings with people and peoples. History was born. 72 From this point onward the People of Israel were not to seek the meaning of life in philosophy, nor to embed what they felt important in saga (though both these intellectual and literary forms were known to them and, on occasion, flirted with), but in the study of the unfolding of human life as it is lived in this world, in all its complexity. That is why the Bible, unlike the Holy Books of virtually all other peoples and faiths, is largely composed of historical narratives. This became Israel's primary and unique path to fathom ultimate issues.

THE CROSSROADS OF DESTINY The Book ofSamuef3 is one of the finest fruits of the new history born of the monotheistic revolution, and one of the most important. It chronicles the events of a critical century, one that deter71. Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, p. 6-7. 72. "It was ancient Israel that first assigned a decisive significance to history and thus forged a new world-view whose essential premises were eventually appropriated by Christianity and Islam as well. 'The heavens,' in the words of the psalmist, might still 'declare the glory of the Lord,' but it was human history that revealed his will and purpose." (Yerushalmi, Ibid, p. 8). 73. We now know Samuel as two books. 1 Samuel is primarily the Saga of the prophet Samuel and the Tragedy of Saul, first king of Israel (David gets his start in this Book). This is followed by its sequel, 2 Samuel, which is mainly the History of the Rise and Fall of King David. Originally Samuel was written as one book, and after

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mined whether this experiment with a new way of life and thinking would survive or disintegrate. In this critical century (between about I 060 and 960 BCE) all the numerous uncertainties attendant on the new enterprise were to come to a head. Would Israel's tentative foothold in the Land of Canaan be solidified and made permanent, or would Israel be dispossessed and pushed back into the desert from which it had emerged? The Israelites were not lacking in competitors for this small patch of the Ancient Near East. Would Israel's uncertain grasp of monotheism take hold and permanently possess the soul of the people, or would the Israelites prove incapable of shouldering the burden of freedom and moral responsibility, and relapse into paganism? Both the Biblical and the archeological records demonstrate how uncertain the outcome was. And should Israel succeed in overcoming these two challenges-that of physical survival and that of spiritual survival-then the question remained: what forms would this experiment in a new direction for humanity take? What political issues would monotheism raise, what social issues, what religious issues? What would the monotheistic revolution do to the forms taken by the human struggle for power (which is what politics is all about)? How would it affect the way society is structured? How would liturgy, morals, and people's sense of right and wrong be altered? And, as they emerged, what would its Holy Scriptures look like? We know the outcome. We hold the Bible in our hands and live in a world whose very processes of thinking and feeling have been formed by the successful outcome of this revolutionary endeavor. Consequently we must perform a major effort of the imagination to be able to go back to those beginnings, when nothing was certain or decided. These are the underlying issues of our journey through Samuel. Keeping these matters in the forefront of our minds, despite the dramatic action and the vivid personalities that people our Book, will be one of my primary tasks as your guide.

HOW MUCH CAN WE RELY ON WHAT WE ARE BEING TOLD? Having spoken of the dawn of history (Baruch Halpern refers to the Biblical authors as "The First Historians" 74 ) one has the right to ask: can one rely upon the Books of the Bible in general, and on the Book of Samuel in particular, for an accurate recounting of the events described, or are these stories invented (or embellished) for our entertainment or edification, with but uncertain moorings in fact? But this is not really the right question. At issue is the point of view of the Biblical authors. Yes, they seem to have taken very seriously the question of getting their facts right. They are scrupulous with their sources and never write anything that they themselves don't wholeheartedly believe to be the truth. But they are not historians as we nowadays think of historians, for their purposes are different from our purposes. What we have in this great story ... is not merely a report of history but an imagining of history that is analogous to what Shakespeare did with historical figures and events in his history plays. That is, the known general contours of the historical events and of the principal players are not tampered with,

almost a thousand years was divided into two books to make publication and circulation easier. (See also Chapter 19, note 1). The Books of Kings and Chronicles suffered the same fate, being also split in two for the same reasons. On the other hand, a number of smaller Books were combined, for convenience of reading, into larger volumes: the books of the twelve minor prophets were combined into the Book of the Twelve, while for liturgical purposes the books of Canticles (Song of Songs), Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther were combined into the Book of the Five Megilloth. So when we count the number of books in the Hebrew Bible the total depends on whether we count each Samuel, Kings and Chronicles as one book each, or two, and each of the smaller works as independent books, or count the anthologies in which they are grouped as two books. 74. Halpern, The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History.

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THE ROAD TO SAMUEL 75 but the writer brings to bear the resources of his literary art in order to imagine deeply, and critically, the concrete moral and emotional predicaments of living in history, in the political realm. To this end, the writer feels free to invent an inner language for the characters, to give their dialogues revelatory shape, to weave together episodes and characters with a fine mesh of incident, and to define the meaning of events through allusion, metaphor, and symbol. The writer does all this not to fabricate history but in order to understand it. 76

William Dever makes this same point from another perspective: The Biblical writers rarely claim to base themselves solely on factual records, to be totally objective, or to cover the whole story. They are concerned not with the question, "What really happened?" but with the larger question, "What does it mean?" For them and for their original readers the Bible is "His story", the interpretation of certain happenings as seen through the eyes of faith, the story of the sovereign acts of God on behalf of his people. To be sure, the Bible is historical in the sense that it contains an account of particular peoples and occurrences at particular places and times ... but concrete events are important in the Bible only as they illustrate God's actions and their consequences for people here and now. 77 So while I believe we can rely on the data presented by the author of Samuel, we must keep in mind that we are not reading an "objective" history. The author is presenting to us what is important to her, and telling the tale from her point of view. We, in our times, are also retelling this tale from our own point of view, the point of view of the early 21st century. It cannot be otherwise. Try as we may, all of us-scholars, critics and readers alike-are captive to the era in which we dwell. There is another problem to keep in mind, the common prejudice that because the Bible was written so long ago, the times must have been primitive and simplistic. This understandable bias is strengthened by the fact that the authors of the Books of the Bible did not share our interests. They leave out things that we consider important, and focus on issues to which we would often pay little attention. In a word, the Bible reads very differently from the books with which we are familiar. I share with Peter Miscall a basic conviction-the Old Testament is different from Western literature, from classical to modem, but it is just as complex and sophisticated as any Western writing, whether narrative, poetry, philosophy, or theology. I read the Old Testament as on a par with, although different from, Homer, Tacitus, Plato, Augustine, Chaucer, Aquinas, Luther, Shakespeare, Hegel, Nietzsche, Yeats, and RobbeGrillet. I depart from historical criticism and associated methods and disciplines, because they do regard and treat the Old Testament as simplistic and primitive. 78 In sum, I contend that we have before us a very sophisticated work, a Book founded on carefully researched historic fact, but very different from the histories to which we have become accustomed. The author of Samuel was not attempting to justify the existing order or to glorify great personages. The aim of the Book is rather to present a basic criticism of this world as we know it. Like all 75. In Shakespeare's Kings John Norwich underlines this point by establishing how closely Shakespeare kept to the historical data contained in his sources. Even today, with our much greater understanding of the period covered by Shakespeare's English History plays, it is amazing how close he came to what we would currently term historical accuracy. 76. Alter, The David Story, p. xvii-xviii. 77. Dever, Recent Archeological Discoveries and Biblical Research, p. 6. 78. Miscall, 1 Samuel: A Literary Reading, p. vii. Meir Sternberg is even more outspoken in his criticism of many of the presuppositions of current Biblical scholarship: "It is condescending, not to say arrogant, because it still remains to be demonstrated that in matters of art ... the child is always wiser than the parent, that wit correlates with modernity, that a culture which produced the Bible (or the Iliad) was incapable of going below the surface of its own product or referring it to the worthwhile coordinates of meaning." (Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative, p. 10)

THE ROAD TO SAMUEL

23

the authors whose books eventually became part of the Bible, our author is measuring the current order against ethical and religious ideals. The Book does not distort reality, it is not didactic, it does not preach to us. Its way of getting its message across is by indirection. The author selects with consummate care the episodes chosen for unfolding before us, gives us the facts and lets us draw our own conclusions. Having sufficient respect for the intelligence and good sense of her readers, the author feels no need to do more than, at most, obliquely hint at what she is driving at. The biblical narrative's quest [is] for theological understatement ... Only the fact that the biblical narrator does not sanctify the social order but religious and ethical values, enables him to criticize the protagonist ... For the basic intention of biblical storytelling is not to glorify exalted persons and institutions not even to intensify adherence to lofty beliefs and concepts, but to present us with fleshand-blood persons serving as models and warnings in their rises and falls. 79

In this sense the readers are co-opted as the author's partners, being left with the task of working things out for themselves and coming to their own conclusions as to the right and the wrong of things, and to what extent these examples apply to themselves.

IN CONCLUSION The partnership between Bible reader and Biblical author still applies today. As we walk through this book together much will be clarified, mainly with regard to the background of the period and the religious world view of the Biblical age. Yet much will remain of necessity unresolved. You, the reader, are invited to enter into this open area to engage in a dialogue with the text of the Biblical Book and with its central figures. They were remarkable people. Their lives leave an imprint that transcends the ink on the page and stirs our hearts and our minds, even as they stirred countless others before us. My task is to open the door, to make Samuel and David, Michal and Rizpah accessible. The extent to which they have an impact upon you, the reader, and upon your life depends upon you. And now, having set the scene, we begin our journey by making the acquaintance of one of the most remarkable women in the entire Bible, to whom our author has assigned the task of setting the itinerary for our journey.

79. Simon, "Minor Characters in Biblical Narrative," p. 18.

PROLOGUE BREAKTHROUGH: A WOMAN RE-EVALUATES A MAN'S WORLD

OGod! OGod! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, I

Out ofmy distress I called upon the Lord; He answered me and set me free.

Psalm 118:5

She is blessed with a husband who loves her tenderly, yet she is in deep depression. She weeps uncontrollably and refuses to eat. She cannot enjoy her husband's love. The author describes her as having a bitter soul. She is quoted, describing herself, as one "hardened in spirit," "complaining," "angry." And, as so often happens, she is the author of her own misery. She, of course, would not agree; she has her excuses. She blames her sterility-she can't have children. She blames Peninnah, rival for her husband's love. But we, who are looking at her life objectively, see these as mere excuses, not causes. She has won the contest with her rival; it is she her husband loves. And since the beginning of time there have been women who have been barren and yet led rich and fulfilling lives, not allowing this disability to destroy them. Yet Hannah (for that is our subject's name) won't let this, her "failure," alone. She keeps gnawing on this bone of her contention. And as the years go by she digs herself in ever deeper. Why, one might reasonably ask, begin a political-historical work, concerned with the transition of a society from a loose tribal democracy into a centralized imperial autocracy, with so inappropriate a

MAPP.l THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS DURING THE PERIOD OF HANNAH AND ELKANAH

N

cD

e

Gibeon

•

e

Shiloh

Ramah

e Gibeah of Benjamin

e

JEBUS (JERUSALEM)

0 . _ I_

2

4

6

8

10

_,!.____.!_ ___,_!_--'-!_....~!

This map has been simplified so as to exclude many sites not necessary to the understanding of the PROLOGUE

miles

PROLOGUE: A WOMAN RE-EVALUATES A MAN'S WORLD

27

theme as a woman's story, 1 one moreover of an embittered woman of no political or societal significance? Worse, the tale is so common as to be almost banal. I would wager that most of us are acquainted with people having all the advantages, having everything to live for, who nonetheless allow one disability or failure to wreck their lives. What is more, this woman, Hannah, does not become a protagonist in the unfolding drama that is the theme of the book. After the first two chapters she disappears, apparently leaving no lasting influence upon the unfolding events. Why then begin the book with Hannah? "One moment," someone might protest. "Hannah was the mother of Samuel the prophet, the central, outstanding figure of the next generation. This alone can explain the preeminence given to her and to the events surrounding his birth." 2 But I would contend that this argument has little weight. To get a bit ahead of ourselves, the author of the Book of Samuel does not see fit to tell us anything about the mothers of the two other heroes of the book, Saul and David. Not even the names of the mothers of the frrst two kings of Israel are recorded. Neither are the circumstances of their births related. I therefore suggest the likelihood that Hannah's significance probably lies in herself, not as an appendage, as it were, to her illustrious son. It is much more likely that the author's decision to begin her book with a woman's story apparently irrelevant to her larger theme was a carefully taken decision, central to her intention. It therefore behooves us to note carefully this embittered woman, and how she manages to handle her life. With this preamble we begin our analysis ofthe text.

A FRACTURED FAMILY MAKES A PILGRIMAGE Now there was a certain man of Ramathaim-zophim, of the hill country of Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah, 3 the son ofJeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephriamite. And he had two wives: the name of the one was Hannah and the name of the other Peninnah; now Peninnah had children but Hannah had no children. And this man went up from his town from year to year to worship and to sacrifice unto the Lord of hosts in Shiloh. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests unto the Lord there. Now it came to pass upon the day when Elkanah would sacrifice, that he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and daughters, but to Hannah he would give a double portion, because he loved her, but the Lord had shut up her womb. ( l: l-5) In a few deft sentences our author sketches an extremely complex situation. But before we begin to explore its inner dynamics, let us pause and make certain that we understand the outward circumstances that frame and channel these dynamics. We are told that Elkanah, who emerges from the context as a prosperous farmer, lives in "Ramataim-zophim," a hilltop town more commonly known siml. The definition of the first chapter and a half of Samuel as a "woman's story" is by Carol Meyers. She points out that Hannah's name is mentioned no less than 14 times in this short nan:ative of33 verses, as often as all the other members of her family combined. Moreover, breaking the Biblical norm where women are as often objects of verbs as subjects, Hannah is the subject three times as often as she is the object. All this merely underlines the obvious: Hannah is the central actor in this narrative, dominating the plot and initiating all the action. (Meyers, "Hannah and Her Sacrifice: Reclaiming Female Agency," p. 96-99.) 2. It is not unknown for events surrounding the birth of a hero to be related in the Bible. The cases of Moses and Samson spring to mind. But once we have disposed of Hannah and these two examples, we are hard pressed to find many more. "Birth-tales" are so infrequent in the Bible that it is their rare presence that demands explanation. 3. Most names in the Biblical period were given for their meanings: some denoted natural objects, such as Tamar (palm tree), Deborah {bee) and Peninnah (pearl), some for a hoped-for attribute such as Hannah (grace, elegance) and David (beloved), while many referred to the deity in whom one placed one's faith. Thus the name of prince Jonathan, son of the first king of Israel, means "the Lord has given" or "the gift of the Lord," while the name of Joab, David's nephew, means, "the Lord is father." Elkanah's name falls into this last category; his name, in the archaic Hebrew of the time, means, "God is the Creator."

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PROLOGUE: A WOMAN RE-EVALUATES A MAN'S WORLD

ply as Ramah. 4 (The town is identified by scholars with the modem er-Ram, about four and a half miles north of Jerusalem.i We are further told that Elkanah was in the practice of making an annual pilgrimage, with his entire family, to the town of Shiloh-a distance amounting to about a day's journey. In those days Shiloh was the holiest site in the land, for it was here that Moses' successor, Joshua, had deposited the Ark of the Covenant containing the Ten Commandments, the original stone tablets that Moses had brought down from Mount Sinai. This was the religious center of all the tribes oflsrael.6 Here the High Priest Eli officiates, as well as his sons Hophni and Phinehas (who will figure prominently in the main narrative of the book). 7 So it is to the sanctuary of Shiloh that Elkanah and his family travel annually. 8 We are informed that their purpose is to worship God (literally to bow down, to prostrate themselves) and to sacrifice. While personal prayer played a prominent part in the religious life of the worshipers, the ritual form that worship took in ancient Israel was sacrifice. When we modems hear the term sacrifice, the picture that forms in our minds is that of animals being burnt entire upon altars. This picture is remote from the actuality. There were many kinds of sacrifice, and the type in which the animal was totally consumed by the flames was far from being the most common. The Hebrew word used here, that we have translated by the generic term "sacrifice," is Zevach. This is the term used for an animal sacrifice whose meat is eaten by the offerer. These were free will offerings of cattle, sheep, or goats that were brought to the sanctuary and presented to the priest for consecration as a sacrifice. After slaughter by the offerer, small segments of the animal (fat, kidneys, and a lobe of the liver) were burnt on the altar. A part of the animal was reserved for the priest's personal use (more on this later). The offerer, his family, and sometimes invited guests consumed most of the animal as a communion meal "before the Lord" in the sanctuary precincts. The feast could last as long as two days. 9 And now to the family itself: we are informed that Elkanah has two wives. 10 In those days this was not unusual. Male fantasies' notwithstanding, having more than one wife is no joyride. The tensions and the conflicts could be severe. We are told now Peninnah had children but Hannah had no children. This is the first and the main source of conflict in the family. The second is that Elkanah is in

4. As there were several towns so named, it is here specifically identified as that Ramah in the district of Zuph in the part of the hill country of Israel that belonged to the tribe of Ephraim. 5. The exact location of many Biblical towns is currently a matter of debate. While some locations seem certain (Jerusalem, Hebron, Ashkelon and Shiloh for example), other sites are the subjects of serious, and at times acrimonious, disagreement. Examples in this latter category are Gibeah, Geba and Gilgal. Ramah can be added to this group. Not so long ago it was thought to be the current Nebi-Samwi/ (Arabic for "The Prophet Samuel") a couple of miles NW of Jerusalem, because for centuries a prominent burial site there was believed to be the tomb of the prophet Samuel. It is still regarded as a holy site and a destination for pilgrims. Now, while most scholars are fairly certain that er-Ram is the site of the Biblical Ramah of our text, there is no agreement as to what NebiSamwil was called in Biblical times. I will always offer what seem to me the most reasonable of scholarly identifications, but we must bear in mind that new discoveries may, and probably will, upset the current picture. 6. In those days the hill country of Ephraim was very densely populated, at least 22 villages situated within a mere three and one half-mile radius of Shiloh. Shiloh served as a regional shrine for these villages as well as the national religious center of the country. 7.1t should be noted, parenthetically, that the priesthood was hereditary. Most priests (Cohanim in Hebrew) were direct descendents of the first High Priest, Aaron, the elder brother of Moses, while some (primarily the priests of Dan) may have been descendents of Moses. 8. This pilgrimage has nothing to do with the three Pilgrim Festivals (Passover, Pentecost and TabernaclesPesah, Shavuot and Sukkot in the original Hebrew) that were so central to public religious practice in Ancient Israel; this is a manifestation of family religion that belonged to the private sphere. More on this later. 9. It is instructive to note that the generic term for sacrifice in Hebrew, Korban derives from the word lwrob, which means near. Thus, offering a Korban, and consuming it in the sanctuary "before the Lord" was meant, among other things, to make the worshiper feel near to God. 10. It would seem by the order in which they are named, Hannah is the first wife and Peninnah the second. Was Hannah's sterility the reason for Elkanah taking a second wife? See Introduction: The Road to Samuel, note 16.

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29

love with Hannah, and therefore Peninnah is left out in the cold. She is the mother; Hannah is the beloved. The result: two very jealous and unhappy women. In one brief picture the whole story of the family is laid bare before us:

Now it came to pass upon the day when Elkanah would sacrifice, that he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and daughters, but to Hannah he would give a double portion, because he loved her, but the Lord had shut up her womb. (I :4-5) Elkanah and his family are sitting around the table in the sanctuary annex. 11 He is carving and distributing the cuts of meat. Peninnah and each of her children (there are at least four) get their servings, but for Hannah he cuts a serving twice the size of anyone else's (and probably a prime cut as well). This is Elkanah's way of demonstrating his love for Hannah and also trying to compensate her for her childlessness by extra attention. One can well imagine the reaction of Peninnah, not to mention how the children feel at the slighting of their mother. And this is not a one-time event. This takes place every year on a regular basis. Peninnah does not take this lying down. She takes her humiliation out on Hannah, having long since discovered her rival's sore spot. Hannah, like most women of her time, sees her purpose and fulfillment in the bearing and raising of children. She wants her dignity and, as she sees it, the only way that she can achieve this is through motherhood. Not that other avenues are closed to women; not so long before the events of our narrative, the political leader of all the tribes of Israel was the prophet Deborah. Abigail, whom we shall meet later in the book, is the de facto executive manager of her husband's large estate. The examples could be multiplied. 12 But the fact remains that, to most women of that era, the primary form that fulfillment took was motherhood. 13 Hannah is childless, and without motherhood she has no worth-she is nothing. This, to her, is an endless misery, and it is on this point that Peninnah focuses. She won't let her alone, and is constantly needling and jabbing at her.

And her co-wifeu [that is Peninnah], to make her miserable, would taunt her that the Lord had shut up her womb. So it went on, year by year; as often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her. Therefore she [Hannah] wept and would not eat. And Elkanah her husband said to her: "Hannah, why do you weep? Why don't you eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not better to you than ten sons?" (I :6-8) Hannah does not respond. What is there to say? Despite the best of intentions, Elkanah's remark reveals that he has simply no conception of the depths of Hannah's misery. Only in God, she now

II. The existence of an annex (Hebrew lishkah) serving as a dining hall at Shiloh is not only attested by LXX (the Septuagint-the earliest Greek translation of the Bible, made in Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE) on verse 18 (see note 23 below), but also by the archaeological remains of many outbuildings in close proximity to the shrine. 12. Proverbs 31: l 0-31 can give us some idea of the occupations of Biblical women, but the list is far from comprehensive. We shall meet with several women in the course of this book whose "professions" are not included in this summary. 13. This was largely due to the economic pressures of a subsistance agrarian society which was labor intensive. "Bearing children was clearly and critically related to the labor needs within a household unit. ... Labor needs are determining influences in the formation of extended families and are clearly applicable to ancient Israel. Agrarian environments in general tend to produce large families, and the specific conditions of early Israel certainly mandated large family size." (Meyers, Discovering Eve, p. 165, 137-8) Hannah could not help but feel that she had failed her husband by not bearing the children needed to make the family a viable economic unit, and that she was therefore a failure. 14. The Hebrew term for co-wife, Tzarah, usually rendered as rival, means literally "trouble." It would seem that the inherent problems of polygamy were sufficiently evident to become embedded in the language itself!

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PROLOGUE: A WOMAN RE-EVALUATES A MAN'S WORLD

realizes, can she find understanding. This vivid table scene, with the failure of Elkanah's wellintentioned attempts to mediate and pacify, has set the stage for what is to come. 15

HANNAH TAKES MATTERS INTO HER OWN HANDS So Hannah got up, after they had eaten at Shiloh, and after they had drunk-now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat by the doorpost of the sanctuary of the Lord. 16 Now her soul was bitter, and she prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly. And she vowed a vow, saying: "0 Lord of hosts, if you will look upon the affliction of your maidservant, and remember me, and not forget your maidservant, and will give to your maidservant a son, 17 I will give him to the Lord all the days ofhis life, and no razor shall touch his head." (1:9-11) The scene at the table is the last straw. The feast is coming to its conclusion. Everyone, with the exception of Hannah, has eaten and imbibed (ancient Israel was a major wine-producing country; wine was as much a part of the feast as the meat from the sacrifice). She cannot touch the rich food before her. As soon as she can decently get away she leaves the table and the dining hall, and approaches the main sanctuary. She does not enter but simply remains standing at the entrance, or perhaps she kneels. There, with tears streaming from her eyes, out of the pain of her embittered life she pours forth her heart to her God, begging for a son. And in her heart she makes a vow: should God grant her prayer; should she give birth to a son, she will not keep him but will devote him to God. By Biblical law, all first-born males, man and beast, are devoted to God; the animals for sacrifice, the humans to serve in God's sanctuary. But parents have the option to "redeem" their sons by giving to the priests a set sum in lieu of the value of the work that the sons would perform in the sanctuary and its precincts. 18 Hannah is vowing that she will not avail herself of this option to keep her son. To God he will remain devoted for all his life, and as a sign of this devotion his hair will remain forever uncut. This was the outward sign of the nazir, the Nazarite, one who takes a vow devoting himself or herself to the service of God. 19 This is an unusual, even remarkable vow. We shall shortly explore its significance in depth. 15. Actually, for its time, Elkanah's statement is extraordinary. The culture of the time tended, beyond their economic contribution as part of the workforce, to value women to the extent that they could produce children. Elkanah is saying that he values Hannah, not as an instrument, but simply for who she is, for her intrinsic personhood. "What Elkanah-a feminist hero-has discovered in himself is the first principle of feminism: the ethical passion that expresses itself against instrumentality, against woman-as-instrument, against woman-as-instrument of societal policy." (Ozick, "Hannah and Elkanah: Torah as the Matrix for Feminism," p. 90) 16. Some scholars, basing themselves on 2 Samuel7:6 (and I Samuel2:22), contend that the sanctuary at Shiloh was the Tent of the Tabernacle dating from the days of the wilderness. Due to religious conservatism the portable sanctuary had never been replaced with a permanent structure. Yet the text here and in I Samuel 3:15 clearly indicate a building. Furthermore, archaeological excavations indicate that there was a temple in the first part of the lith century BCE that was destroyed about I 050 BCE (for the events that led to the destruction see Chapter 3). I think the archaeological evidence tips the scales in favor of a full-fledged building, complete with annexes. It is possible that, due to the above-mentioned religious conservatism, the inner curtains of the original tent were maintained, and the Temple built around them, replacing the original outer coverings of goat's hair and dolphin skin. The sages of the Talmud (see Glossary) seem to have come to a somewhat similar conclusion when they give as their opinion that the sanctuary of Shiloh was built "of stones below and of curtains above" (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Zebahim, 112b, liSa). For further discussion see Excursus VII: The Tent Shrine following Chapter 23. 17. Literally male-seed. 18. Leviticus 27:6 sets the ransom for the first born male at five shekels of silver. Among pious Jews this custom of redeeming the first-born, called Pidyon Ha-ben, is still observed today: the money is given to a Cohen, a direct descendant of the ancient priests, and usually given by him to charity. 19. W. F. Albright goes further, insisting that "Samuel was a Nazarite .... the Masoretic Hebrew text says that Samuel was never to cut his hair or beard, and the Greek translation not only repeats this prohibition but adds

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31

In her anguish, Hannah may not have noticed that the seat by the doorpost is occupied. On it sits the old High Priest, Eli, who has been silently observing her.

And it came to pass, as she prayed long before the Lord, that Eli watched her mouth. Now Hannah, she spoke in her heart; only her lips moved but her voice could not be heard; and Eli thought she was drunk. (I: 12-13) Knowing the drinking that is going on in the annex, Eli jumps to the conclusion that she is inebriated. And at the very entrance to the sanctuary no less! He is outraged.

And Eli said to her: "How long will you be drunk? Put away your wine from you!" And Hannah answered, saying: "No, my lord, I am a woman hardened in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I poured out my soul before the Lord 20 Do not count your maidservant for a worthless woman, for out of the abundance ofmy complaint and my anger have I spoken up to now. " (I: 14-16) From her sober response Eli realizes that he has mistaken inner anguish for intoxication. How easy it is to leap to mistaken conclusions from external appearances. Admitting his error, 21 the now abashed priest tries to make amends.

And Eli answered and said: "Go in peace. May the God of Israel grant your petition that you asked of Him. " 22 And she said: "May your maid-servant find favor in your sight. " So the woman went her way. 23 She ate, and her face was no longer hers. (I: 17-18) Something remarkable has happened-something easily overlooked. In nine words (in the original Hebrew) we are introduced to a new woman! She went her way we are told, that is she returns to her family in the sanctuary annex. And this woman who has previously refused to eat now sits down to partake of the portion her husband had cut for her. And she looks different. She is no longer weeping and bitter. The last five words of the sentence are usually rendered as her face was no longer sad or she was no longer downcast. I have preferred to render the Hebrew literally: her face was no longer hers, i.e. one has to look twice to recognize her. Hannah was a bitter woman and her face reflected her bitterness; the change of her expression, of the set of her face marks an inner transformation. The that he was not to drink alcoholic beverages. Were there any remaining doubt, it should be removed by the words preserved in a fragmentary Hebrew manuscript of Samuel found in Cave IV at Qumran ... 'he shall become a nazir for ever,' (I Sam. 1:22)" (Albright, Samuel and the Beginnings of the Prophetic Movement, p. 12). For Nazarite see Glossary. For Qumran see Dead Sea Documents in the Glossary. 20. Moshe Greenberg, in his highly perceptive monograph Biblical Prose Prayer (p. 49), compares Hannah's description of herself "pouring olit her soul before the Lord" with our modern expression "pouring out our guts" to someone. Both, he claims, mean the same thing: "to expose one's innermost being, revealing its secret concerns without reservations, without withholding anything-to speak all that is within one's mind with utter sincerity and candor." 21. Why did Eli make this mistake? The sanctuary of Shiloh was a place of high ritual, of incense and sacrifice: public, representative and communal. Prayer was normally part of the private realm; "household religion" and not part of sanctuary ritual. As such pmyer was totally unexpected in this setting. More, in those days prayer was always verbal-one prayed out loud-that is why Eli did not realize that she was praying. We are involved here in a redefinition of prayer: true pmyer is not merely words but that which issues from the heart. For a discussion of pmyer in the Biblical world see Chapter 24. For an analysis of drinking, see the Excursus VI at the end of Chapter 15: Why is there So Much Drinking going on in the Bible? 22. The force of this remark is the equivalent of"Good luck; I hope it all works out for you." It has no liturgical or intercessory significance. For the use of blessings in ancient Israel see Chapter 24, subsection "The Service of the Heart". 23. LXX adds and she came to the annex.

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woman who left for the sanctuary weeping and embittered has returned a different person, at peace with herself and with the world. What could be the cause of this transformation? It certainly is not that she shortly becomes pregnant. The text is clear that this revolutionary character change takes place before she becomes pregnant:

Now they rose up in the morning early and worshiped [prostrated themselves] before the Lord and returned and came to their house in Ramah. And Elkanah knew his wife, and the Lord remembered her. And Hannah conceived, and at the turn of the year she gave birth to ason. (1:19-20) Moreover, Eli's apologetic farewell would hardly have that kind of deep effect upon her. We are forced back to Hannah's prayer and her vow if we are to understand the change that comes over her. Our author writes sparingly, assuming we will be able to flesh out the skeleton with our imaginations. Has Hannah been passive all these years? Hardly. Hers, as we shall see, is a take-charge personality. I picture her as having tried every remedy, every charm, and every nostrum for her barrenness. Is this the first time that she has prayed? Very unlikely. Year after year, on this very spot, she must have petitioned God for a son, and nothing has happened; eventually she was reduced to the state in which we found her. What new factor can explain the change? I see her as praying, year after year, for God to give her a son. Now, for the first time, instead of just asking to get, she herself is willing to give-to give any son she may get to something bigger than herself, to the service of her God and her people. For the first time, as I envision it, is she able to enlarge her horizons to more than herself, and this transforms her personality. The great sage, Rabbi Hillel the Elder, is quoted as asking rhetorically: If I am only for myself, what am I? 24 Something less than fully human, we could answer. Only when one can transcend one's own interests for a greater good does one become fully human. And thus does Hannah find an inner tranquility and an inner peace. And behold, she becomes pregnant. It would seem that the author is suggesting that what we have here is cause and effect. How often have we heard of cases of women unable to conceive surrendering to the inevitable and adopting a child, only to find themselves pregnant shortly thereafter. The emotional inner transformation brought on by motherhood makes them capable of conceiving. I think the author is postulating something similar here. Hannah's coming to terms with herself being the factor that makes it possible, physiologically, to conceive. And what makes her able to come to terms with herself is her emotional breakthrough, overcoming her selfcenteredness and enabling her to reach out to others. And Elkanah knew his wife, and the Lord remembered her. Perhaps for the first time, the author is hinting, she is worth remembering.

And Hannah conceived and gave birth to a son; and shi5 called his name Samuel; "because from the Lord I have asked for him. " (I: 20) The name Samuel literally means something like "He over whom the name of God has been said" or "The one who is God-Named." But Hannah is still thinking of her vow. The Hebrew verb shaa/, ''to ask," which sounds similar to part of the Hebrew name Shemuel (Samuel), also has the sense of ''to borrow." 26 Hannah has made a commitment. She will not go back on it.

24. Pirke Avot (The Sayings ofthe Fathers) 1:14. 25. "His given name was traditionally selected by the mother, less commonly by the father, who could choose to alter the mother's suggestion. Such names were often symbolic, embodying some birth-portent." (Francis I. Anderson, "Israelite Kinship Terminology and Social Structure", p. 30) 26. According to Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi-see Glossary) we have here a play on two words, shaul (asked) and me-El (of God). This is also a reflection of Eli's parting words (verse 17 above). There is a great deal of wordplay going on in the Hebrew that does not come through in translation.

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HANNAH MAKES GOOD HER VOW And the man Elkanah, and all his house, went up to offer to the Lord the annual offering and pay his vow. 27 But Hannah did not go up, for she said to her husband: "When the child is weaned I will bring him, for when he appears before the Lord he will remain there forever. " And Elkanah her husband said to her: "Do what is good in your eyes. Remain until you wean him. May the Lord establish the utterance ofyour mouth. "28 ( 1:21-23) Hannah's argument is that once she takes Samuel to the sanctuary she must fulfill her vow and leave him there. Therefore she proposes passing up the annual pilgrimage and remaining at home with her son until he is old enough to do without her. When he is weaned (that is, taken off the breast) that will be time enough. Of course all children were breast fed. Children were weaned late, usually between the age three and five. Elkanah agrees.

So the woman remained and nursed her son until she weaned him. And when he was weaned, she took him up to the house of the Lord at Shiloh, and with him she brought three bulls, 29 and one ephah offlour 30 and a jar ofwine; and the child was still very young. Then they slew the bulls, 31 and brought the child to Eli. 32 And she said: "Please, my lord, as your sou/lives, my lord, I am the woman that stood here by you, praying to the Lord. For this child I prayed, and the Lord granted my petition for which I asked of Him. Therefore 27. I. e., an offering in payment of a vow; not Hannah's but a separate vow made by Elkanah. Possibly Elkanah had vowed an offering to God should Hannah deliver safely. Childbearing was a risky business in those days: see the concluding section of Chapter 3. 28. Reading with LXX and Q (Dead Sea document-in our case, one of the Hebrew copies of the Book of Samuel whose fragments were found at Qumran with the Dead Sea Scrolls); MT (the Masoretic Text-the traditional Hebrew text) reads: His mouth. 29. LXX, Q and Syr. (the Peshitta, a translation of the Bible into Syriac, a late form of the Aramaic language, possibly dating as early as the l st century CE) read a three-year-old bull. But Robert Ratner has argued convincingly that MT is to be preferred. ("Three Bulls or One? A Reappraisal of I Samuel I :24", p. 98-1 02) 30. Ephah: a dry measure roughly equivalent to a half bushel. 31. "it has been demonstrated that sacrificial slaughter in Israel was done by the lay offerer and that some words passed between the offerer and the officiating priest to determine which sacrifice corresponded to the offerer's needs." (Milgram, The Anchor Bible: Leviticus; p. 1427) 32. LXX portrays Hannah as accompanying her husband, who brings the bull(s) and offers the sacrifice. Then they both bring the child to Eli. This version of the episode excludes Hannah from any part of the ritual of the sacrfice and reduces her to a subsidiary position, one for which the entire narrative gives no warrant. Hannah is everywhere the prime actor and mover. MT is superior by far in its consistancy. Carol Meyers is of the opinion that LXX introduced Elkanah into this episode so as to harmonize the ritual practice it depicts with that current at the time that the Greek translation was made (about a thousand years later). But in the early Biblical Era all evidence indicates that women routinely made vows and fulfilled them, brought sacrifices and, within the ambit of personal worship, performed all ritual acts with the sole exception of serving as priests. "Indeed, there has been a [recent] tendency to view male and female roles as being virtually the same [in Israelite ceremonial life] except for the matter of priestly eligibility" (Meyers, "The Hannah Narrative in Feminist Perspective", p. 123-4) Hannah was the one who made the vow and it is she who has to fulfill it. It is she who brings the bulls to the priests as her offering, and the child to Eli. Elkanah, if he was present, may have performed the actual slaughter of the bulls (see note 31 above), a task that probably required a man's strength. In all other matters he was a passive bystander. Most of the Biblical record concerns itself with public religious practice which was male dominated. In our narrative a rare window has been opened onto the practice of religion in the private/family sphere. What we begin to glimpse is that in the family sphere women were coequal with men; and in their private religious lives women could be largely autonomous.

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have I lent him, even I, to the Lord; as long as he lives33 is he lent to the Lord. " And he [Samuel] bowed down there to the Lord. (1 :23-28) So she went to Ramah, 34 and the child did minister to the Lord in the presence of Eli the priest. (2: II) It may seem a very hard thing to us for a mother to tum her son over to a shrine and part from him voluntarily. Few of us could bring ourselves to do it, and few in those days did. But Hannah was not the usual run of women. There are modem parallels. It is a tradition among Tibetan Buddhists that at least one member of every family becomes a monk, and children tend to be given to the monasteries young. This has become increasingly difficult since the Chinese communist takeover of Tibet, and especially since 1959 when the Dalai Lama fled from communist persecution to India. I have been told of the case of a woman who walked with her child for several months, in the dead of winter, across the Himalayan Mountains to India to give her son to the Dalai Lama. There he could be trained as a monk at the school that the Dalai Lama maintains. Then she walked all the way back to her home in Tibet; had she not returned reprisals would have been taken against her family. The Bible has no monopoly on women of deep conviction and courage. What more can we learn about Hannah and her family before we come to the climax of the narrative? Now Samuel ministered before the Lord, a child girded with a linen ephod. Moreover, his mother would make him a little robe and would bring it to him from year to year when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. And Eli would bless E/kanah and his wife, saying: "May the Lord repay you with offspring by this woman in place ofthe loan that was lent to the Lord. "35 And they would return to his place. And the Lord remembered Hannah, 36 and she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters. And the child Samuel grew up in the service of the Lord. (2: 18-21) With this touching picture of Hannah settled among her growing family, sewing a new little robe for her son and bringing it to him each year, Hannah fades from the view of history. And were this all there is to the story, the mystery of the author's reason for opening the book with Hannah would remain unsolved. But this is not all. Besides her great act of commitment and renunciation, she has left us another legacy, commonly known as "Hannah's Prayer."

WAS HANNAH THE AUTHOR OF "HANNAH'S PRAYER"? Before we can tum to the "Prayer" itself(actually a psalm in praise of God's providence) we will have to deal with the widespread opinion among modem scholars that denies to Hannah its authorship. The scholars are far from unanimous as to whom to attribute it, or even when it was composed. But in one thing they largely agree-it wasn't Hannah. 37 The arguments are many: the style is too advanced

33. Reading with LXX, Syr. and Targum (a Jewish translation of the Bible into Aramaic, once the lingua franca of the Near East). MT reads all the days ofhis existence. 34. Reading with LXX; MT reads So Elkanah went to Ramah, to his house. 35. Reading with LXX and Q. MT reads may the Lord give you offspring. 36. Reading with LXX, Q and Syr. MT reads For the Lord remembered. 37. Lyle Eslinger, in a survey of the literature on the subject (The Kingship of God in Crisis, p. 99), writes: "The majority of critical studies on the song of Hannah have concluded that it is secondary to its present context." In other words, the song was written elsewhere and in some other era, then artificially tacked on to the story of Hannah and wrongly attributed to her.

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for such a primitive period; it doesn't fit Hannah's experience; as an illiterate she could not have written it, and so on. These arguments are far from conclusive. Indeed other scholars, with their own axes to grind, refute most of these arguments. One substratum seems to underlie the basic rejection of Hannah as author: the scholars are virtually all men who seem to find it inconceivable that a woman could author such a superb literary and spiritual work. The suggestion that what underlies this kind of conclusion is little more than bias has been made explicit in a recent blistering critique of much of current scholarship on the foundations of Israelite religion. In a paper delivered at the 2005 annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), Professor Beth Alpert Nakhai charges that Virtually every consideration of Israelite religion, whether textual or archaeological, focuses on men's roles ... Space for women? Interest in women? Not really ... Why is it that so little effort has been put into documenting ritual and belief as experienced by women? One answer is found by looking at those who have been the scholars of Israelite religion ... men who owe their intellectual heritage to a long line of male scholars who began to study sacred texts in the Iron Age and who have done so ever since. [As of2000] the ASOR Annual Meetin~s had seen more papers on pigs in Israel and Philistia than on women in all of the ancient Near East? Whatever disagreements there may be among the scholars as to dating and interpretation of the contents of"Hannah's Prayer," it seems to be an unwritten assumption that the candidate for the title of author, whoever it may be, must be a man. I can find little justification for such an attitude. In recent times women have proved far from incompetent as authors. Nor do I see any reason to suppose that women were any less naturally talented 3,000 years ago. I have already alluded in passing to Deborah, a prophet and temporal leader of the tribes of Israel a generation or two before Hannah was born. To her the Bible attributes the magnificent Ode of Triumph (Judges 5) usually referred to as the "Song of Deborah." And once again I see no reason to doubt the attribution, although here too many scholars find great difficulty in giving her the credit. Unless we want to assume, ex cathedra, that no woman could compose any poetry, much less great poetry, in Biblical times, then the survival of the poetry of one woman argues for the probability of another woman also having authored the work attributed to her. As to the claim that Hannah, being illiterate, could not have composed the psalm-one finds it hard in the current state of our knowledge to take such a claim seriously. In the Introduction we have made a case for literacy being far more widespread than previously recognized, even in the eleventh century, and for its not being restricted to men. 39 Naturally, literacy was an accomplishment of only a minority of the Israelites. But the illiterate majority was hardly excluded from the world of literature, and especially that of poetry. In preliterate times all poetry was composed and disseminated orally, by bards and singers; only much later were the poems committed to writing. The Iliad of Homer existed for at least two centuries in oral form, and was reduced to the written form we know today only in the sixth century BCE (in Athens during the rule of the tyrant Pisistratus). In the same way much of early Hebrew poetry must have existed for some time in unwritten form, only to be reduced to writing in the age of the Davidic monarchy. But an unwritten poem, memorized and regularly performed (they were probably sung to an instrumental accompaniment) is no less an accomplished composition for being unwritten. In sum, I see no compelling reason not to take seriously the assertion that, originally either in oral or in written form, it was Hannah who composed the "Prayer." Our author had no reason to 38. Nakhai, "Why Are We Ignoring Women?" 39. "The common assumption that Israelite women were not literate and could not have produced documents is . . . being contested.... the Israelites used an alphabetic script, which made reading and writing much easier and thus more widely accessible than in other parts of the ancient Near East. ... there is no reason not to assume that some elite women, along with elite men, were quite literate." (Meyers, "The Hebrew Bible," p. 10.) See the Introduction: The Road to Samuel, "The Question of Literacy in Ancient Israel," for a fuller treatment of the subject.

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invent the claim. Indeed, I feel that precisely because she believed Hannah to be its author that she penned her story to.introduce the book. 40 Before we proceed to the "Prayer" itself, let us review the argument to this point. We have pointed out that the entire story of Hannah is nonessential to the body of the Book of Samuel; you can leave it out without any effect on the rest of the Book. If the tale of Hannah were omitted, all that would be necessary would be to explain Samuel's presence at the sanctuary of Shiloh by inserting some such comment as "Now the lad, Samuel, had been devoted, while yet a child, to the service of the Lord." The story could proceed without any loss. The same cannot be said of "Hannah's Prayer." As we shall attempt to demonstrate in the course of our analysis of the Book of Samuel, this psalm provides the theme of the entire Book; in placing the psalm at the head of the book the author is stating her thesis. This leads me to the conclusion that, believing Hannah to be its composer, the author wanted to provide the context of the psalm's genesis. These two together-the story of the turning point of Hannah's life, and the psalm that emerged from it-are combined by the author into a Prologue for the entire work. This said, let us now turn our attention to the psalm itself.

WHAT MEANS THIS LIFE OF OURS? Hannah's "Prayer" or psalm was composed over the three or four years between the birth of her son and his dedication at Shiloh. It was meant to be spoken when she made good on her vow. I picture her in the quiet hours as she nurses her child, turning over the stanzas in her head, polishing the phrases, getting it just right for the day when she will articulate her considered conclusions on what life has come to mean to her. There, on that very spot where, frantic and almost inarticulate, she had made her great commitment, she will make her public proclamation. And her conclusions have weight; for, clothed in the rhetoric and the conventional similes of her time, Hannah composed one of the great statements of faith; a summary of central principles of the Israelite religion. Let us walk through it and follow her line of argument. Hannah, let us never forget, is not a literary primitive. She is the heir of a poetic tradition, more than a thousand years old, stretching back to the early civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia. 41 So, in accepted style, she begins with a traditional formal introduction, stating her theme: My heart exults in the Lord; My horn is exalted in the Lord. My mouth derides 42 my enemies Because I rejoice in Your salvation. (2: 1)

Her theme is gratitude to God, her Savior, for His redemption. The phrases are traditional. The emotion is personal and intense. A meaningless existence has been infused with purpose and significance. This is a cry of living joy. 40. It is important to note that while the majority of modern scholars reject Hannah's authorship there are those who, while not affirming that she was the author, do admit that she could have been. For example: F. M. Cross and D. N. Freedman (Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry, p. 128ft) conclude on the basis of their detailed linguistic study that the Hebrew of the "Song" exhibits sufficient anachronisms to enable us to date it to the time of Hannah. W. F. Albright, on the basis of the archaic language, claims "It is highly probable that it [the Song of Hannah] does go back to the time of Samuel." (Yahweh and The Gods of Canaan, p. 18) 41. "The very fact that biblical poetry belongs to the larger complex of Canaanite and Northwest Semitic verse .. . shows that Hebrew poetry is the end-product of a long process of development, rather than springing de novo from the Wilderness of Sin [Zin], or the village culture of the hill country of Israel and Judah." (Cross and Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry, p. 128) See the Introduction: The Road to Samuel, Op. Cit., and the opening pages of Chapter 13 for fuller treatments of the subject. 42. Literally is wide (with boasting) over.

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Now Hannah begins her argument: since God is supreme let people not imagine that they are selfsufficient. This is no less than arrogance. Know that you live under Divine Judgment. To reverse a popular motto of the Victorian age-you are not the master of your fate, not the captain of your soul. There is none holy as the Lord; For there is no one beside You; There is no rock like our God 43 Talk no more so very proudly, 44 Let not arrogance come out ofyour mouth. For the Lord is a God of knowledge, And by Him actions are weighed The bows ofthe mighty men are broken, And they that stumbled are girded with strength. They that were full have hired themselves out for bread, But those that were hungry are fattened on food 45 The barren has born seven, While the mother ofmany is forlorn. (2:2-5)

Hannah insists that human life is unpredictable, that however you plan the only certainty is that surprises are waiting. Her view will be recapitulated, centuries later, by the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes: I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of learning, for time and chance happen to them all. 46 (Ecc/. 9:11)

This is the key: time and chance happen to us all. No matter how heavily the odds seem to be weighted, nothing is certain. Those who were at the bottom can suddenly find themselves at the top of the heap, while those at the top can suddenly have the bottom drop out from under them. Hannah expresses the idea in a series of word pictures illustrating the radical reversals that life can impose: proud soldiers finding themselves weaponless, their weak adversaries having the upper hand; the wealthy gourmet diner reduced to taking menial employment just to put bread on the table, while the formerly destitute is now fat with gorging. The once childless woman now has a large family (seven being a nice round number) while the recently proud mother is now in mourning for her lost children47 Now Hannah draws the conclusion from her series of examples: man proposes but God disposes. 43. Both the terms kadosh (holy) and tzur (rock, mountain) are pre-Israelite synonyms for deity; what Hannah is emphasizing is God's uniqueness, that there are no other gods to compete with Him. 44. Literally Don't keep on talking [so] high, [so] high 45. This verse is translated in accordance with the suggestion of P. Kyle McCarter in Anchor Bible: I Samuel, p. 72. Beginning with the well established meaning of hadelu as "to become fat," he connects it with the following word ad on the basis of parallel use in Job 14:6 and Judges 5:7, and then deduces its meaning of"food" from the parallelism with "bread" in the first line of the verse. 46. While Hannah, and later the author of Ecclesiastes (Koheleth in the Hebrew), agree as to life's unpredictability, they come to very different conclusions. Koheleth 's approach to life being fundamentally pessimistic, he counsels cutting one's losses; starting from the standpoint of her personal experience, Hannah expounds a buoyantly optimistic view of life, trusting in the benevolence ofthe God Who rules this earth. 47. Only in this last juxtaposition does Hannah obliquely hint at her own experience.

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The Lord kills and gives life, Sends down to Sheor'8 and raises up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich; Abases yea, and exalts. (2:6-7) At this point the focus shifts. Up to now the treatment has been evenhanded; some go up and some go down. This is life as we experience it. But behind the fa~ade of the obvious, Hannah insists, lies a deeper reality: God's salvation. Life may seem pure chance, but there is plan and purpose to it, because God is behind everything that happens. From this point the psalm becomes unreservedly positive.

He raises up the poor from the dust; From the ash heap He lifts up the needy, To make them sit with princes, And inherit a seat of honor; For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, And on them has He set the world. 49 (2:8) Since God created and sustains the world, He has the power to rearrange the people's fortunes, redeeming even the lowest of the low and raising them to acceptance and honor. So her message up to this point amounts to this: "You on the top of the world, be humble; The bigger you are the harder you fall. You on the bottom of the heap, don't despair; The earth is the Lord's, and He can raise you up." This leads directly to the climax, and in which Hannah cuts directly to the central tenet of Biblical faith that organizes the Book of Samuel. Humility and morality are the true goods in this, our world, while wickedness, arrogance, and a reliance on power are self-defeating.

He will keep the feet of His faithful ones, (That is, guard them from stumbling on life's path) But the wicked will be put to silence in darkness; For not by power shall man prevail. (2:9)

48. The netherworld; the realm of the dead. Remember this term. We will meet with it dramatically in Chapter

18. 49. Psalm 113 arises from a similar context - the thanksgiving of a barren woman who has, at long last, given birth-and the language, up to a point, is strikingly similar: He raises up the poor from the dust; He lifts up the needy from the ash heap, To make them sit with princes, With the princes of his people. He makes the barren woman dwell in her house As a joyful mother of children! Hallelujah. (Psalm 113:7-9) D. N. Freedman, in his study of the two works, gives his opinion: "As they stand, they are independent compositions," and neither is a copy of the other. He posits a lost composition that served as a model for both. ("Psalm 113 and the Song of Hannah," p. 243) His contention that Psalm 113 is the earlier of the two, while possibly correct, is irrelevant to our argument. What for us is crucial is that the psalm ends with thanksgiving, and does not proceed to the universal generalization that serves as the conclusion Hannah's Prayer.

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Paganism amounts to a philosophy of life: the world is composed of natural forces, and there is nothing other than-behind, or above-the world. Consequently outcomes are determined solely by the balance of forces: in the social and political world, by power. This understanding, once again familiar to the secular and scientific West since the Renaissance, is being rejected in favor of a position in which a God, external to and above the world, manages and intervenes in it. In the Biblical view, outcomes are determined not by force or power, but by God's concerns with spiritual matters: by humility, compassion and morality. This is not merely a theoretical matter; one must (and we all do, explicitly or implicitly) take a stand in one's life on which view is correct. Samuel is an argument in narrative form, that the spiritual life is the right stand to take, because the life devoted to power-the life that paganism instructs us to lead-inevitably leads to tragedy. Napoleon Bonaparte knew where he stood. One of his favorite maxims was the remark of Voltaire: "God is on the side of the heaviest battalions" 50---one of the most graphic expressions of the pagan view that strength determines all. Yet even he, true believer though he was, had his moments of doubt. He is quoted as having once remarked to his Minister of Education: "Do you know, Fontanes, what astonishes me the most in the world? The inability of force to create anything. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the spirit." 51 Napoleon was here, unknowingly, paying homage to Hannah's insight of almost 3000 years before. It was Hannah's classic formulation of this fundamental principle that raised her little composition from the ranks of a pious poem, comparable with some of the psalms in the Psalter, to one of the great expressions of faith in the literature of monotheism. In a world in which politics (which is just a name we give to the human struggle for power) reigns supreme, she dared to shatter the consensus and proclaim an alternative vision. And through the prism of her conviction the entire world appears in a different light; the same, yet with the perspective changed. And the possibility of a new way of life began to open to humanity. It should be made clear that Hannah did not invent this principle. It was implicit from the beginning in Biblical religion. But there is greatness in the person who can formulate a principle in words that make evident to all what should have been self-evident, but wasn't. This was Hannah's great contribution to the millennium-long attempt of the Bible to devise a new answer to the question: What is one to do with the life we have been given? What is the good that one should pursue? Her answer was: don't think that you can elbow your way to success in life. What you achieve by force is not success at all; not so can a human being find fulfillment. Having made her point, Hannah ends her psalm the way all psalms ended, with a formal conclusion in which she expresses her now boundless optimism. This, she insists, is the way the world is; anyone who tries to fight it will be broken by life. God rules and His will rules all.

The Lord breaks His adversaries, 52 The Exalted One thunders in the Heavens. 53 The Lord judges the ends of the earth, Giving strength to His Kingdom, And lifting up the horn of His anointed one. 5 4 (2: 10)

50. This is actually a rephrasing of Voltaire's remark: "It is said that God is always for the big battalions." 51. Herold, The Mind ofNapoleon, p. 76. 52. Reading with Q (Dead Sea Documents); MS reads Lord, Your adversaries are broken. 53. The first word in the Hebrew, often misread as a defective form of the word ai/ov, "against them," is an archaic appellation of God, "the Exalted One," which was inherited from the Canaanites and is also to be found elsewhere in the Bible. 54. "The last word in the fourth colon must be vocalized molko, 'his kingdom,' as often elsewhere in the Bible as well as in Ugaritic and Phoenician" (Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, p. 21 and note 52). The final verse has been translated in accordance with the suggestions of W. F. Albright (above) based on ancient Ugaritic and Phoenician precedents.

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The final words of the psalm are unclear and have been variously interpreted. They have been taken in a political sense, as expressing the yearning for a centralized state that would bring order, prosperity, and security in the place of current chaos; a yearning that is to grow over the years until it becomes an irresistible popular consensus. They have alternately been taken in a religious sense as expressing the yearning for the Messiah who would bring salvation to mankind. 55 Neither interpretation alters the message of the psalm. What is clear is that to Hannah, kingship belongs to God, and only to God, which is why Hannah ends her psalm on a note of optimism. The true path of life, once discovered, leads inexorably to a better future. And now, having analyzed Hannah's Prayer in some depth, section by section, let us now look at the psalm as a unified composition in all its poetic power. As is so often the case, the whole proves greater by far than the sum of its parts.

HANNAH'S PRAYER And Hannah prayed and said: "My heart exults in the Lord; My horn is exalted in the Lord My mouth derides my enemies Because I rejoice in Your salvation. There is none holy as the Lord; For there is no one beside You; There is no rock like our God Talk no more so very proudly, Let not arrogance come from your mouth. For the Lord is a God of knowledge, And by Him actions are weighed The bows ofthe mighty men are broken, And they that stumbled are girded with strength. They that were full have hired themselves out for bread, But those that were hungry are fattened on food The barren has born seven, While the mother of many is forlorn. The Lord kills and gives life, Sends down to Sheol and raises up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich; Abases, yea, and exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; From the ash heap He lifts up the needy, To make them sit with princes, And inherit a seat ofhonor; For the pillars ofthe earth are the Lord's, And on them has He set the world 55. The Hebrew term meshiho, "His anointed one," probably refers to a King (for the practice of anointing see Chapter 6, especially note 26) but the term also has the meaning of "His Messiah."

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He will keep the feet ofHis faithful ones, But the wicked will be put to silence in darkness; For not by power shall man prevail. The Lord breaks His adversaries, The Exalted One thunders in the Heavens. The Lordjudges the ends ofthe earth, Giving strength to His Kingdom, And lifting up the horn ofHis anointed one. " (2: 1-1 0)

THEFOCUSOFTHEBOOK Speaking out of her own experience, Hannah composed a psalm able to act as a guide for all human beings, expressing her discovery that the way to fulfillment, which she terms "salvation," is not through domination but through selflessness. She composed in the tradition of psalm literature, where explicit biographical reference is excluded. Truths reached by personal experience are phrased in general, stereo-typical terms, thus enabling others to read their situations into the words, to find a framework that enables them to express their deepest feelings and yearnings. 56 And thus she provided future generations with a means of making her newfound faith, her basic optimism about the human condition and the human potential to rise above all life's shocks, a part of their own lives. It has remained so to this day. 57 This, I think, is why the author of our book saw fit to begin with a story of Hannah and her prayer. It sets the agenda and forms the framework of the book. For the author's purpose is not merely to write a political history. She is concerned with revealing, using the medium of events that people have actually experienced, what is the good that one should seek in life. She wants to demonstrate the true meaning of success and how it is achieved. By way of contrast, for those who may be acquainted with the Greek philosophical tradition, the divergence with Hannah's position can be illuminating. The Greeks tended to equate success in life with happiness, and in the Sophist point of view success in life is achieved by attaining a position of dominance over others. The route to success lies through power. 58 Aristotle, in his Nichomachean Ethics, modifies this view by taking virtue into account, along with power, both being the central ingredients of success. 59 Yet even so only a tiny percentage of the population ever has a chance of achievinW success according to Aristotle. Women are excluded on biological grounds, as are "natural slaves. "6 Enslaved men and the poor are deemed ineligible a priori, as only free men of substantial independent means can be candidates. Thus we are left with elite males, a small fraction of the population for whom success and happiness is possible. Those who actually achieve this condition are only a tiny fraction of this fraction. The contrast is stark between this "enlightened" philosophical view and the position proposed by Hannah, wherein success in life is defined in such a way as to be a viable possibility for every human being. 56. For a fuller treatment of poetic prayer and its conventions in ancient Israel, see Appendix: Psalm 51. 57. And it is no accident that, more than a thousand years after its composition, the Fathers of the Synagogue (see Glossary) still found Hannah's story and prayer so relevant as to impel them to choose it as the prophetic reading for the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. 58. See the positions ofGorgias and Thrasymach (in Plato, Gorgias, The Republic, 1). 59. His point was that those natural attributes such as courage, friendliness, generosity and so on that are accounted virtues, have the effect of generating the social support that enables one to rise to the top of the pyramid. 60. That is, persons born defective in their "decision-making capabilities," attributes that Aristotle considered essential to a fully human being. This category includes most non-Greeks, the duller part of the Greek population, and women.

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The author elaborates on the keys to success in the lessons that Hannah learned in her own life: that living means to care and to give of oneself; that the path of power is tragic, and not a viable road to success in life. To reiterate what was said in the Introduction: The Road to Samuel, not only are the paths of power not the road to human fulfillment, she insists, but they are self-defeating: a world ordered on the basis of power is a world fatally flawed. This is a radical re-evaluation of human affairs. The world that the author knew (like the one we know today) has always been run on the basis of power and dominance. To question the universal experience of humanity will require more than Hannah's say-so. This is a thesis that can only be convincingly proposed on an empirical basis. So the author chooses the history of her turbulent and critical century to put her thesis to the test. This appears to be the real purpose of the stirring century-long saga that forms the main body of Samuel: to serve as a reality check on Hannah's thesis and the author's generalization of it into a universal principle governing the conduct of human affairs. Only if this thesis can stand the test of real events over an extended period will people be willing to consider reorienting their lives and restructuring society on new and uncharted lines. In setting up this test the author plays fair. It is not difficult to discredit any given system by attacking its worst examples. Only if you can show that even at its best it is a failure can you build a credible case against it. So our author chooses only the best as her subjects; persons of remarkable natural abilities and outstanding promise, persons who initially succeed brilliantly and reshape their era, only to falter and fail. This, the author insists, is the bottom line: lives based on the pursuit of power and the struggle for dominance, are lives condemned to failure. It is the pattern of rise and fall, of brilliant beginnings that peter out in dismal endings, that gives the Book of Samuel its tragic tone. For the lives of its heroes-the Prophet Samuel, King Saul and King David-are, one and all, portrayed as tragedies. If, the author is implying, they can not make a success of their lives, with all that they had going for them, then what chance have we? It is on the lives of these historical persons-their struggles, their achievements and their ultimate failures-that the author rests her case. The further implications of her position we will leave to be developed as the book progresses. Thus far the Prologue. The Book itself, as I read it, is an expansion and a demonstration of how these principles that Hannah presents unfold in real life. We will have to wait and see how the author proceeds. But of one thing we can be certain: Hannah's Prayer is the way she chose to begin her magnum opus, encapsulating the issues she wished to raise at the start, and it was with Hannah herself that she chose to begin this tale. It is her son who now becomes the first focus of the book proper.

ACT ONE

THE PROPHET

Then He said to me: "Son of man, I send you to the children of Israel, to a nation of rebels that have rebelled against Me: they and their fathers have transgressed against Me till this very day, and their children are brazen-faced and stiff-hearted I send you to them and you shall say unto them: 'Thus says the Lord God ' And they, whether they will hear, or whether they will refuse (for they are a rebellious house), yet shall they know that there has been a prophet among them!" Ezekiel2:3-5

CHAPTER I

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF ELI And moreover I saw under the sun: In the place ofjustice there was wickedness; Yea, in the place ofrighteousness, wickedness was there! Ecclesiastes 3: 16 Those whom God wishes to destroy, He first makes mad Euripides, Fragment

The Prologue has presented us with an idyllic picture of religious life at Shiloh: families making pilgrimage and partaking in communion meals, prayers of petition and praise, vows being made, spiritual transformation and a fatherly priest overseeing it all. From Hannah's point of view that is the way things were. Now the author shifts perspective. The veil is ripped aside and we are made privy to the inside story-a tale of gross corruption. Now the sons of Eli were base men; they knew not the Lord And the custom of the priests with the people was, that when any man offered sacrifice, while the flesh was cooking, the priest's servant would come with a three-pronged fork in his hand; and he would strike it into the pan, or the kettle, or cauldron or pot/ whatever the fork brought up the priest took. So they did to all the Israelites that came there to Shiloh. Even before the fat was made to smoke [on the Altar] the priest's servant would come and say to the man who sacrificed: "Give meat to grill for the priest; he won't take stewed meat from you but rare!" And if the man would say to him: 2 "First let the fat smoke on the Altar, then take as much as your soul desires, " then he (the servant) would say: "No!3 You give it to me now, if not I will take it by force!" And the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord, for the men dealt contemptuously with the offering of the Lord (2: 12-17)

1. The "pan" (Hebrew kiyor) was a shallow, wide-mouth vessel; the "kettle" (dud) was a deep, round-bottomed, two-handled cooking pot; the "cauldron" (ka/ahat) was a one-handled cooking jug; while the "pot" (parur) seems to have been similar to the kalahat. As this was a shrine the vessels were probably made of metal. (King & Stager, Life in Ancient Israel, p. 65) 2. Reading with LXX; MT reads And the man said to him. 3. Reading with the Qeri, LXX and Q; the Ketib (see Glossary for Qeri nd Ketib) ofMT reads then he would say

to him: "You give."

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To readers in the Biblical age this paragraph told it all. To us, to whom the necessary context is not part of our daily lives, a word of explanation is in order. As we have already noted, only rarely, and in special circumstances, was a sacrifice burnt entire on the altar. In most cases only a small portion was actually burnt; most of the animal was consumed as a communion meal "before the Lord." The Cohen, or priest, who performed the ritual, was not a salaried employee. Priests were supported by getting a "cut" of each animal sacrifice: specifically the breast and right thigh; the former to be divided among all the priests serving the sanctuary, the latter being the portion of the officiating Cohen alone. Furthermore the sequence of events was prescribed: first the sacrifice (burning of the fat, kidneys, and liver lobe on the Altar), and only then the distribution of the portions: i.e. first God is served, and then the priest. In light of this the actions of Eli's sons is abuse of the grossest nature. They burst all legislated boundaries, refusing to limit themselves to their prescribed share, and adding insult to injury, they insist on serving themselves before God. This indeed is the crux of the matter; men dedicated to the service of God are using their office to serve themselves. In all ages it is unfortunately true that many people dedicated to a calling of service, be it elective, appointive, or hereditary, show a tendency to become self-serving. We are all familiar with instances of this failing. To some extent we even expect it of certain classes, such as politicians. Our indignation tends to grow, however, as the office rises and as the ideal served grows more exalted. A High Court judge accepting bribes to pervert justice horrifies us far more than the case of a traffic cop accepting a few bills folded into a driver's license. And when it comes to the guardians of religion fattening themselves in the name of God, one can empathize with the fury of the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes when he cries: And moreover I saw under the sun, in the place of justice, there was wickedness; yea, in the place of righteousness, wickedness was there! (Eccl. 3: 16). Moreover, the phenomenon of the layman being more concerned than the religious professional, the priest, with putting first things first, of honoring God before man, is also unfortunately not limited to the age of Samuel. Things do not stop here. They rarely do. We soon learn that the sons of Eli use the opportunities of their office to lay with the women that served at the door of the Tent of Meeting. 4 (2:22) The picture is one of total corruption; immoral, self-serving and exhibiting a contempt for God. 5

THEY KNEW NOT THE LORD Why do intelligent and well-educated persons (as Eli's sons undoubtedly were) act in ways so debasing to themselves and their calling? The author starts by defining them as base men, 6 and explains their debasement by observing that they knew not the Lord. To us, knowledge is a matter of the intellect and we would think that the reference is, perhaps, to faulty schooling or an incorrect understanding of religious dogma: in a word, faulty philosophy. But this is not the Biblical view. Knowledge of the Lord is a central Biblical concept. The prophet Jeremiah gives one of the best definitions:

4. In other words, they were sexually abusing the female employees of the shrine who were under their supervision. Exodus 38: 8 also refers to the phenomenon of women serving at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. "The Hebrew term for 'serve' is related to the word describing the Levitical men who performed menial labor (for example, Num 4:23). The women who served likely performed maintenance tasks as well. (Temple service in the ancient Near East involved a range of activities from exalted sacred acts to routine manual labor.)" Meyers, "Women at the Entrance to the Tent of Meeting," p. 202. 5. This is technically termed in Hebrew Hi/lui HaShem, the profaning of God's Name: persons representing God, by their behavior, dragging God's Name in the mud. 6. This term is one of extreme contempt and denigration. To get an idea of the vileness implied by this charge one has to look no further than Judges 19:22. Another way of rendering the Hebrew term would be "men destined for hell." For further discussion of this phrase see Chapter 38, note 16.

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Thus says the Lord: "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Neither let the mighty man glory in his might, Nor let the rich man glory in his riches; But let him who glories glory in this: That he understands and knows Me, For I am the Lord Who acts with loving kindness, Justice and righteousness in the earth; For these things do I desire, " Says the Lord (Jeremiah 9:22-23)

Knowing the Lord has nothing to do with intelligence or intellectual attainment. Knowing the Lord, the prophet says, is a question of values. It is a matter of giving loving-kindness, justice and righteousness pride of place in one's life while relegating all other values to lesser, subsidiary positions. But knowing the Lord means far more than an intellectual ordering of values: it means acting upon them. It implies a way of life of loving-kindness toward one's fellows, treating one's associates justly, and making honesty and fair play the touchstone of one's daily activity. "Knowing the Lord" does not mean believing correctly but rather acting correctly. It is only fair to note that Jeremiah, while rejecting intellectual achievement, power and wealth as the prime values in which we should glory, does not repudiate them. He is not idealizing asceticism. These values have their place, but it is a subsidiary one. In a stinging denunciation of the despot Jehoiakim, the prophet Jeremiah compares him to his noble father: Woe to him that builds his house by unrighteousness, And his chambers by injustice; That works his neighbor without wages, And gives him not his salary; That says: "I will build myself a huge house With spacious upper chambers, And cut out big windows. Its ceiling will be paneled with cedar Painted vermilion. " Do you think you are a king Because you compete in cedar? Did not your father eat and drink, And do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; Then it was well. Is not this to know Me? Says the Lord (Jeremiah 22: 13-16)

The issue is not Jehoiakim's fancy building; his father also lived well; he ate and drank. It is that Jehoiakim is building with forced labor, refusing to pay his worker's wages. Wealth and ostentatious display to him are all, justice and righteousness negligible. His father, on the other hand, lived well but put justice and righteousness first: he championed the cause of the poor and the needy. And the prophet sums up: this is what it means to know the Lord: i.e. putting first things first.

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THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF ELI

Now we can understand our author's comment on the sons of Eli, that they knew not the Lord. Their values are skewed and their lives as priests a travesty. Instead of living just and righteous lives they are arrogant and selfish. Their dealing contemptuously with the offering of the Lord is but a symptom of their basic failing. Their sin was very great before the Lord. They, of all people, know not Him!

A FATHER'S FAILURE The author of our book is far from being non-judgmental. As the authors of all the Books of the Bible, she is the champion of a value systemshe measures everything by that scale. She insists on apportioning blame where she feels blame is due. And she believes in cause and effect. The sons of Eli must bear their guilt, but they are not alone. We are now treated to the opening of an issue, first presented, by inference, in the Prologue, an issue that weaves itself as a sub-theme throughout the book: the responsibility of parents for what their children become. The spotlight shifts from Hophni and Phinehas to their father Eli, the High Priest.

Now Eli was very old; and he heard all that his sons did unto all Israel, and how that they lay with the women that assembled at the door of the Tent of Meeting. 7 And he said to them: "Why do you do such things? For I hear evil reports concerning you from all this people. No, my sons; for it is not a good report that I hear the Lord's people spreading about. If one man sin against another, God may intervene for him; but if a man sin against the Lord, who is there to intercede for him?" But they did not listen to the voice of their father, because the Lord would slay them. (2:22-25) Their father Eli cannot claim ignorance. As High Priest all reports and complaints come directly to him. He knows exactly what is going on, yet he cannot bring himself to confront his sons with their appalling behavior. He who rebuked where he should not (Hannah at the entrance to the Shrine), never succeeds in rebuking where he should. The closest he can get is an oblique reference to "such things." For the rest he makes do with such empty phrases as "evil reports" and "not a good report," as though the issue is not so much their behavior as the bad publicity they are engendering. Instead of putting his foot down he tries to reason with them. If someone wrongs another, he or she can always tum to God in the hope that an impartial Judge will right the wrong. But if the offense is against God Himself, where can one tum for impartial adjudication? Needless to say, Hophni and Phinehas pay no attention to the bleating of the "old man." They have undoubtedly heard such tut-tutting before and nothing has ever come of it. They are set in their ways and no mere words will now sway them from a path of a self-indulgence that has led to utter moral depravity. This is what the author means when she remarks that they would not listen to their father because the Lord would slay them. They have passed the point of no return on the path that will lead them to destruction, and no mere words can now deflect them from that path. The author, as we shall see, lays heavy blame upon Eli for his sons' behavior and for what they have become. But what could he have done? Here we need to remember that Eli is not only their father but, as High Priest, their boss. He has the responsibility, both as father and as boss, to take action and rectify the situation. Instead of setting behavioral norms and enforcing them he has taken the easy path of indulgence. As a parent Eli is judged a total failure. He can summon up neither the strength nor the conviction to discipline his children. No wonder God holds him responsible for their criminal7. Temple or Tent? For a discussion of whether the shrine at Shiloh was a Temple or the Tent Shrine of the Wilderness period see Prologue, note 16. For a description of the original Tent of Meeting (or Tabernacle) see Excursus VII: The Tent Shrine, immediately following Chapter 23.

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49

ity. The charge that he honors his sons above God is a just verdict upon his behavior, as he himself will ultimately acknowledge. And then came a man of God to Eli, and said to him: "Thus says the Lord: '/ revealetf Myself unto the House of your father, when they were in Egypt, slaves to the House of Pharaoh. 9 And I chose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be My priest, to go up to My altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before Me. And I gave unto the House ofyour father all the offerings of the children of Israel made by fire. Why then do you look with a greedy eye 10 at My sacrifice and at My offering which I have commanded in My habitation, and honor your sons above Me, to make yourselves fat with the chiefest of all the offerings of Israel My people?' Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: '/said indeed that your House, and the House ofyour father, should walk before Me forever; but now the Lord says: 'Be itfar from Me; for them that honor Me will/ honor, and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed"' (2:27-30)

THE MAN OF GOD As this is the first appearance of a prophet in this Book, it becomes necessary to pause and understand with whom and with what we are dealing. There were two religious institutions in ancient Israel, quite distinct though sometimes overlapping, and mutually supportive though sometimes in conflict: the Priesthood and Prophecy. The priest (Cohen) has already been briefly introduced in the Prologue. Now it is the turn of the prophet (Nabi). 11 In the first place, it is necessary to dispose of a common misapprehension, namely, that the primary function of the prophet was to foretell the future. This may have been true in the popular mind with regard to the institution which preceded prophecy, and out of which prophecy developed (more on this in Chapter 6). But the prophet to whom we are here introduced, and those that we shall meet in the course of this book, had nothing to do with crystal ball gazing. Their function was to act as spokesmen and spokeswomen of God. They acted as God's messengers, speaking in His name. The paradigm is established with Moses, the first and indeed the greatest ofthe prophets. When first commissioned as a prophet at the Burning Bush, Moses tries to get out of the calling being laid upon him by protesting his unfitness as a speaker due to a speech impediment. 12 God answers him: "Is there not Aaron your brother the Levite? I know that he can speak well ... And you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth ... and he shall be your spokesman to the people; and it shall come to pass that he shall be to you a mouth, and you shall be to him like God" (Exodus 4:14-16) And the Lord said to Moses: "See, I have set you in God's stead to Pharaoh: and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet. You shall speak to him [Aaron] all that I command you, and Aaron your brother shall speak to Pharaoh. (Exodus 7: 1-2)

8. Reading with LXX and Targ.; MT reads Did I not reveal Myself? 9. Reading with LXX and Q; MT lacks slaves. I 0. Reading with LXX; MT reads kick at. II. The term Nabi comes from the Hebrew word whose basic meaning is "to call." The nabi is thus one who has been specially called by God for a purpose, one who has a call or vocation from God. Huehnergard, "On the Etymology and Meaning of the Hebrew Nabi," p. 88-93. 12. Or possibly he simply claimed that he was a poor speaker and not an orator; the Hebrew is not clear.

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THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF ELI

The analogy is plain: just as God speaks to a prophet, puts His words into the prophet's mouth, the prophet then delivering His message, so will Moses tell Aaron what to say. Moses will play God's role to Aaron, and Aaron, acting as Moses' prophet, will speak the words to Pharaoh. Thus the prophet or Nabi is first, last and always a messenger of God, delivering His Word. This does not preclude outlining the future consequences of current behavior, but only to the extent that we do the same. The prophets believe implicitly, no less than we, in cause and effect. Current behavior has inevitable, and often predictable, consequences. But over and beyond this, they believe totally in a just God and in a moral order as absolutely as we believe in natural law. Cause and effect to them are as binding and irrevocable in the moral realm as in the physical. So their world-view enables them to project the future outcomes of moral and immoral behavior with the same confidence as the world-view oftoday's scientist enables him to predict the outcomes of chemical reactions or the movement of stellar bodies. This is the human side of the equation. But to the extent that we are willing to entertain the notion that the prophets were the actual messengers of God then we must be willing to accept that woven within their words were elements that cannot be explained in purely human terms. This was their claim; that through their words God made His will known to humanity. The consensus of the Jewish People, based on the thousand-year experience with prophecy and almost 2500 years of subsequent reflection on this experience, is that they were indeed the spokesmen of the Almighty. The prophets believed, as did most of their contemporaries, that through them God actually spoke. Certainly so believed the prophet who arrived on that fateful day to confront Eli and his house with their sins. And so did Eli. The man of God begins with the statement: Thus says the Lord, the signature of prophecy, proclaiming that the words to be delivered are not the personal opinion of the individual uttering them but rather a Divine message. 13 Speaking in God's name the prophet reminds Eli how God chose his ancestor Aaron to be the first Cohen while still in Egypt, and granted the office of the priesthood, with its exclusive rights and privileges, to him and to his direct male descendants in perpetuity. Then comes the accusation, the charge of malfeasance in office, an issue of rank ingratitude, and its underlying cause: you honor your sons above Me! This is the real charge. Life involves choices. Eli continues to let his sons do as they please, and by his actions makes clear where his priorities lie between his sons and God. What is more, not only is Eli indulging the arrogance and moral turpitude of his sons at the expense of the honor due to God-in effect showing contempt for God-but he is personally profiting from it. And here the prophet becomes bitingly personal. Eli, as we later learn, is a very fat man. 14 Being old, Eli no longer officiates on a daily basis at the altar. The operative side of the priesthood has been turned over to his sons. So the food that he is eating, by which he is making himselffat upon all the choicest offerings of Israel, to quote the prophet, are those very choice cuts his sons are arrogantly extorting from the people. By his indulgence Eli is an accomplice to his son's crimes; an accomplice both before and after the fact.

THE CURSE The charge has been made: gross ingratitude to God, holding God in contempt, putting the indulgence of his sons before his duty as High Priest and personally profiting from their crimes. In sum, flagrant dereliction of duty while in office. Now the punishment: Eli might think that, because the position is hereditary, an integral component of the Sinai Covenant between God and the Children of 13. An alternative signature is to conclude with the phrase "an utterance of the Lord'' or "a pronouncement of the Lord."

14. See Chapter 3.

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Israel, he and his House (that is his children and their descendants) will hold the office in perpetuity. 15 He is informed that this is far from the case. The position is conditional upon proper behavior while in office: them that honor Me will I honor, and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed 16 (2:30) "Behold, the days come, that I will cut offyour descendants, and the descendants ofyour father's House, 17 that there shall not be an old man in your House. Then, in distress, you shall behold with envious eye18 all the good which shall be done to Israel; and there shall not be an old man in your House forever. And the man ofyou that I shall not cut offfrom My altar, shall weep out his eyes and grieve his heart; and all the increase ofyour House shall die by the sword " 19 (2:31-33) The curse that has been pronounced on Eli is one that will rest not only upon him but upon his descendants to all time: he thinks the office and its privileges, its pomp and prestige, its security and endowments are his in perpetuity. Now will he learn the backside of that perpetuity: his descendants will all die young-there shall not be an old man in your house forever. The day will come when they will see the prosperity of Israel, yet know that they have but few years to live, and be unable to enjoy it. 20 Worse, the House of Eli will be deposed from office and the High Priesthood will be bestowed upon another branch of the family. And this shall be the sign to you, 21 that which shall come upon your two sons, on Hophni and Phinehas: in one day both of them shall die. And I will raise Me up a faithful priest that shall act according to that which is in My heart and My mind; and I will build him a firm house; and he shall walk before My anointed forever. And it shall come to pass, that everyone that is left ofyour House shall come and bow low to him for a piece of silver and a loaf of bread, and shall say: 'Please put me into one of the priest's offices so that I may eat a bit ofbread"' (2:34-36)

15. See Exodus 29:9 and 40:15 where, at the foot of Sinai, Aaron and his sons are promised the priesthood in perpetuity. The House of Eli traced it's ancestry to lthamar, Aaron's fourth son (1 Chronicles 24: 3, 6). 16. This passage explicitly refutes the notion currently held in some scholarly circles that the Sinai Covenant was between God and the people of Israel as a collective, and that in early Israel the religious/social reality was that the individual was subsumed within the whole and experienced, for good or ill, the fate of the collective whole. This view misses the point that the Covenant (Hebrew Brit} was made both with the corporate body of the People of Israel as a whole, and with each individual therein. "Each of the Ten Commandments is of a nature that it can be fulfilled, or transgressed, only by an individual. None of them requires a collective effort. . . . Moreover, we see that within the Decalogue, God distinguishes between those who adhere to his covenant and those who do not. He pledges to visit the guilt of the fathers unto the third and fourth generations of 'those who hate' him, while showing kindness unto the thousandth generation of 'those who love' him. When God, as the sovereign, bestows honor, he does so selectively, upon individuals, and not collectively. In I Samuel God says 'those who honor me, I will honor, and as for those who despise me, they will be diminished, or dishonored."' (Berman, "God's Alliance with Man," p. 98.) 17. Literally seed, reading with LXX; MT reads your arm, and the arm ofyour father's House. 18. Reading with LXX; the meaning ofMT is uncertain. 19. Reading with LXX; MT reads shall die men. 20. There is a further implication: status and respect were age-linked in the Ancient Near East. The term for community leader, a person usually possessing judicial authority, was Zaken, usually rendered as "elder." Thus early death would prevent one from ascending the ladder of leadership. In effect the curse laid upon the House of Eli also amounted to a permanent decree that the family would never again have any status or influence in Israel. 21. That is, the event that will authenticate to you that the judgment you now hear will indeed be executed.

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You and your family have been tried and found wanting. Your office will be given to your betters, and your descendants will be reduced to destitution, begging from your replacements part-time employment to enable them to eke out a miserable existence! 22 We are not informed of Eli's reply to this terrible judgment. Perhaps he makes no reply, just sits there stunned. Perhaps there is no reply to give. Some years later the curse is confirmed in Samuel's call to prophecy: On that day I will perform against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his House, from the beginning unto the end For I have told him that I will judge his House forever for the iniquity, for knowing that his sons did curse Mi 3 and yet he rebuked them not. Therefore I have sworn unto the House of Eli that neither sacrifice nor offering will expiate the iniquity the House ofEliforever. (3:12-14) By now Eli has had time to brood upon his indulgence of his children's behavior and the justice of its terrible fruits. He is now resigned: He said: "It is the Lord; He will do that which is right in His eyes." (3:18)

22. This all sounds terribly unfair. Punish Eli and his two sons-they deserve it-but why "his House?" What have the unborn generations done to deserve truncated lifespan, dishonor and penury everlasting? This aspect of the sentence is rooted in the conviction that actions have consequences which live on beyond us and which shape the lives of our children and children's children. When these consequences are negative we feel this very unfair, but we never seem to notice the unfairness when the consequences are positive. After all, what did Eli and his sons ever do to deserve their exalted positions and privileges? They simply inherited them due to the merits of their ancestors (Aaron and his grandson Phinehas). This is what Judaism calls "The Merit of the Fathers:" we live off the interest on the capital invested by our fathers. But if the ancestors dissipate their capital then the result is penury for their descendents. These are two sides of the coin in a universe in which actions have consequences. 23. Tikun Sofrim: A censored text (see Glossary). The text is here rendered as in the original. The censored version, which is the basis for most translations (AV, ASV, JPS 1917 etc.) reads: for knowing that his sons did bring a curse upon themselves ...

CHAPTER2

IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT And the word ofthe Lord came unto me, saying: "Before I formed you in the belly I knew you, And before you came out of the womb I sanctified you; A prophet unto the nations have I appointed you. " Then said I: "Ah. Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, For I am but a child" But the Lord said to me: "Do not say 'I am a child; ' For to whomsoever I send you, you shall go, And whatever I command you, you shall speak. " Jeremiah 1: 4-7

The curse laid on the House of Eli had implications that went far beyond the priestly family itself. In retrospect we can see that the fall of the House of Eli doomed an entire way of life: the old order of things that we know as "The Age of the Judges." For Eli was more than a priest, he was also a "Judge," that is, the political figurehead of all Israel. 1 The weakness, corruption and lack of firm purpose that doomed his House also doomed the order he represented. The tale that now unfolds in the next several chapters is one of increasing disintegration and demoralization-but it is also the story of the growth of a new order of things born out of the rubble of the old.

THE CALL OF SAMUEL The previous chapter has taught us much about Shiloh and its religious establishment. Mainly we have learned about its sanctimonious facade and the rottenness at its core. We have learned little of Samuel, the child that, with the best of intentions, has been abandoned in this house of corruption. In our age people are held to be the products of their environment, and by environment we often mean the dominant trends of the times. It is therefore easy to assume that Samuel will grow up to become just like Hophni and Phinehas. We could not be more in error. What we fail to recognize is the force that ideals can exercise on the minds of the young, despite corruption and hypocrisy surrounding them. We fail to give credence to the power of human integrity

I. His epitaph, given in chapter 4:18, specifically records that he had judged Israel for forty years. See Chapter 5, for a description of this form of government and how it worked.

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to reject majority views and practices, and to stand alone against the temper of the times-and to prevail over it. Yet this miracle-that of the human spirit, against all odds, rising above the common level -is a miracle that repeats itself continually in the history of human affairs. Just as the fierce artistic integrity of a Michelangelo could be nurtured in the midst of "that sink of all iniquity" that was the Renaissance Rome of his day (to quote the father of the future Pope Leo X), and, despite all, fly to dazzling heights, so did the boy Samuel manage to maintain his purity and integrity despite what he saw and heard daily. Out of a cursed House rose the towering spirit of the age, who was to redirect and channel the destiny of his people. What do we learn of his upbringing that can help explain this anomaly? Very little. We are told:

Now Samuel ministered before the Lord; a child girded with a linen ephod 2 (2: 18) And the child grew with the Lord (2:21) And the child Samuel continued to grow, and increased in favor, both with the Lord and also with men. (2:26) Now the child Samuel ministered to the Lord before Eli... (3: 1) Mere snippets juxtaposed to a background of corruption. And then, suddenly, the bud blossoms and its full flower emerges into view. How old was this adopted son of Eli at the turning point of his life? The text gives us little help. The term used of him repeatedly, naar (which we have rendered as "child"), can refer to anything from infancy to late teens or even early twenties. Josephus 3 quotes an ancient tradition claiming that Samuel had just turned 13, i.e. "Bar Mitzvah age." The story we are about to read tends to support this; Samuel's behavior, as portrayed in the text, is appropriate to someone of this age. We are first prepared for the uniqueness of what is to come:

Now the word ofthe Lord was precious in those days; there was no frequent vision. (3:1) Time has passed since that fateful visit when the man of God laid his curse upon the House of Eli, perhaps years. Life goes on as before, and the memory of his terrible words of denunciation and curse has faded. Nothing has changed except that prophecy seems to have become increasingly rare. The well has dried up-perhaps a reflection of the spiritual degeneracy of the age. 4 This is the background to the call of Samuel to prophecy.

Now it came to pass on a certain day that the Lord called Samuel. Eli had lain down in his place (his eyes had begun to wax dim so that he could not see). The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the Lord's sanctuary where the Ark of God was. And the Lord called to Samuel; and he said: "Here am l " He ran to Eli and said: "Here am /, for you called me. " And he said: "/ did not call. Go and lie down. " And he went and lay down. And the Lord called again: "Samuel. " So Samuel arose and went to Eli and said: "Here am /,for you called me. " And he said: "/didn't call, my son; go and lie

2. An ephod was a distinctive white linen garment worn by priests and, at times, by laymen when performing sacred duties. In the last days ofthe second Temple period Josephus, himself a Cohen, described the ephod as a sort of waistcoat with shoulder straps and sleeves. It seems that it was quite short, terminating above the knees. 3. See the Glossary for a brief description of the man and his works. 4. "The cessation ofthe word of God is one of the calamities with which Israel is threatened for its sins." (Kaufmann, The Religion ofIsrael, p. 87.) See Amos 8: 11-12; Hosea 3:4; Micah 3:6-7; &ekie/7:26.

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down. " Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed to him. (3 :2-7) The narrative is illuminating. The old priest is going blind. He has gone to sleep in his bedroom off the main sanctuary. Samuel, as an acolyte, sleeps in the sanctuary proper close to the Ark of the Covenant, in which repose the Ten Commandments-the most sacred possession of Israel. 5 Before the ark burns the lamp of God, the gold seven branched candelabrum. From Exodus 30:8 we know that the "Eternal Light" was lit at sunset. 6 It was part of Samuel's duties to ensure that the flames did not gutter, nor that the lamps run short of oil. Also it was he who was responsible for shutting up the sanctuary at night and reopening the doors in the morning. And in the pre-dawn silence he hears himself called.

"HEARING" THE WORD OF GOD What is the author trying to tell us in this touching and deceptively simple narrative? On the surface it is clear that the boy is awakened, perceives himself called, and assumes that his adoptive father, Eli, is calling him. From this it is evident that he reacts as to spoken words. But are they? Eli, in the next room hears nothing. Here we begin to enter into and explore the mystery ofthe phenomenon of prophecy. We have said that the prophet was essentially a messenger of God. How the messenger delivered his message is clear. But how did he get it in the first place? There are many theories, one of the most recent being that hi.unans are neurologically "hard-wired" to be able to "hear the voice of heaven." 7 But theories aside, Biblical religion has always accepted that some men and women have been uniquely touched by the divine. They have come away from that confrontation imbued with the conviction that God made them privy to some part of His will, and has given them the mandate to transmit His word to His people and to all humanity. The prophets are never recorded as seeking God, trying to reach Him through meditation or other spiritual exercises. The tradition is uniform: it is always God Who initiates the confrontation. Indeed, 5. The Ark reposed in the innermost part of the sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, which only the High Priest, Eli, was permitted to enter. This was separated from the main sanctuary by a curtain (Hebrew Parochet). It was in the main sanctuary, outside the Parochet, that Samuel had his pallet. 6. Josephus reports that during the days of the Second Temple matters were so arranged that, of the seven lamps of the Candelabrum, four would burn out at the end of the night and three would continue to burn through the day (Antiquities 3:199). If this was the practice at Shiloh it would mean that the term lamp (Hebrew ner) is used as a collective noun, referring to the entire Candelabrum. In all events, this places the incident at the end of the night, towards dawn. 7. (These quotes, as well as the ones following, are taken from a paper presented at a conference of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans on October 28, 1997 by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, Director of the Center for the Brain and Cognition of the University of California at San Diego. He claims, on the basis of carefully designed experiments by his team, "there may be neural circuits in the temporal lobe that are part of the machinery of the brain that is involved in mystical experiences and God." These scientists have dubbed the brain's temporal lobe the "God module." "It is not clear," the paper continues, "why such dedicated machinery ... for religion may have evolved.") Recent years have witnessed a radical shift in the attitude of parts of the scientific community to the biological aspects of religion. Psychology has teamed up with neuro-biology to create what amounts to a new discipline, "neuro-theology." Using the technique of neuro-imaging of living, active brains scientists working in this field are engaged in identifYing the brain circuits that surge with activity when we think we have encountered the divine. The results of numerous studies all tend to the conclusion that human brains are constructed in such a way as to be receptive to religious and mystical experiences. From this some have postulated that we all have built-in "receivers" capable of picking up God's "transmissions." One possible conclusion could be that the neural circuits of the ancient prophets were simply more finely tuned than those of most of us.

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we know that some who were called didn't want the "honor," feared what it would do to their lives, and did everything in their power to get out of it. 8 Others, when called, took their mission as a challenge, and forged ahead with all their heart, making the sacrifice of a normal life willingly. 9 But willing or unwilling, the unanimous testimony of the prophets is that, once called the person went. Most of the prophets, like Samuel, perceived God's call as speech; that is, just as we think in words, so did they render in their minds as coherent speech what, to humans, must be essentially inconceivable. That is why God's "messages" are so commonly referred to as God's Word. Some prophets tell of perceiving God's call in visual, as well as auditory form. They then often refer to their "Vision." In all cases, what they "saw" or "heard" no other person could see or hear; their experience was not physical and thus was unavailable to others. In order to make sense of his spiritual experience the Nabi had to transpose it into human verbal form. This became the message. The prophets that move and speak in the pages of the Bible did not appear out of the blue. For a thousand years prior to the emergence of the prophets of Israel the Ancient Near East was acquainted with clairvoyants, men and women who were possessed by deities and spoke in their name. Ecstatic behavior, frenzy and trances (often self-induced through music, dancing, self-mutilation and drugs) characterized these persons. 10 This phenomenon had its echoes in the earliest days of ancient Israel: the "man of God" that suddenly appeared in Shiloh-and just as sudden!~ disappeared-is but one example. The term used for such a person was a roeh (seer, clairvoyant). 1 We shall meet with this term in Chapter 6 where we will be witnesses to the transition from primitive antecedents to what we know as the Biblical prophet, the Nabi. In what we call true prophecy an element of ecstatic behavior remains, but artificially induced trances have become a thing of the past. The deity does not possess the prophet. The Biblical prophet is not an unconscious vehicle mouthing obscure oracles that he or she may not even comprehend. The prophets that we meet are conscious, they speak with their Creator, and the final message that they deliver, filtered through the personality of the prophet, emerges as a composite: the divine and the human inexorably intertwined. This will become clearer as we proceed. It was the Israelites, the precursors of the Jewish people that, historically, produced the prophets whose words we read in the Bible. But this does not mean that prophecy was restricted to the Jewish people alone. Judaism has insisted, from its beginning, that God is the Lord of all humanity and thus speaks to all His children. Not only has Judaism insisted that the words of Israel's prophets are intended for all humanity, but also that God has spoken through non-Jews. The Bible records the words of the non-Jewish prophet Balaam, insisting that he was a true prophet of God. Indeed, it is with the words of one of his prophetic utterances: How goodly are your tents, 0 Jacob, Your dwelling places, 0 Israel. (Numbers 24:5) that Jews traditionally have begun many of their worship services.

12

8. Moses and Jeremiah are two classic examples of the reluctant prophet who is called to prophecy against his will, is unable to resist, and spends the rest of his life decrying his fate. Jonah, of course, is the best known example of this phenomenon. 9. Isaiah and Ezekiel are examples. 10. One of the most dramatic of the antecedents of Biblical prophecy has been discovered in tablets unearthed at the site of ancient Mari, dating from the last decade before the destruction of the city by Hammurabi of Babylon (around 1700 BCE). Persons, referred to by the Akkadian term muhhum (''frenzied," "mad," "ecstatic"), appeared before the king claiming to bear messages directly communicated to them by the gods. These messages were uniformly demands for an increase in the number of sacrifices and other rituals (though one message seems to have moral content as well). II. Another term was Hozeh, which also means "seer," "clairvoyant." This term continued in use for some time in Israel, apparently exclusively to describe a prophet attached to a royal court; a "prophet in residence." 12. Balaam is known not only from the Bible. In 1967, an archeological expedition, digging at Deir 'Alia in the Kingdom of Jordan, discovered an inscription in the ruins of an ancient structure, apparently a private dwelling,

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One last thought: what was to prevent a person from claiming that his message was God's word when in reality it was his own? Nothing. Even more to the point, what of emotionally disturbed persons whose "divine messages" are in fact nothing more than delusions? Both problems were well known in ancient Israel. Almost half a millennium after the age of Samuel one Shemaiah, a member of the Judean upper class, dismissed the prophet Jeremiah with the words, "One of those madmen who go around prophesying" (Jeremiah 29:26) and demanded that he be put under restraint. It was not always simple to distinguish between true prophets of God and the category that came to be known as "false prophets:" charlatans and disturbed individuals. 13 It was often only after years had passed, after long weighing of a person's words and deeds-and their congruence with reality-that a consensus would develop as to who was in truth a prophet of God. This proved to be the case with Samuel.

THE BURDEN OF PROPHECY The charming picture of the boy Samuel, time after time, mistaking the call of God for a summons by his beloved foster father Eli, is explained with the words:

Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, Neither was the word ofthe Lord yet revealed to him. (3 :7) We understand this to mean that, having never previously encountered God's presence, he did what we do-interpret the new in the light of past experience. To the boy, immersed in the daily ritual of worship, this is the totality of religion. To have a spiritual encounter with God is something beyond his comprehension. So once, and then again, he wakes up the old man, only to be sent back to his place.

And the Lord called Samuel again the third time. And he rose and went to Eli, and said: "Here I am; for you called me." (3:8) The patience of the old man is astounding. How many of us, being awakened three times in one night, would not lose our tempers? And more: not only keep our tempers but be sufficiently concerned as to ask ourselves what is moving the boy to keep waking us up? Yet for all his age and his blindness, Eli has the insight of love and real concern:

And Eli grasped that it was the Lord that was calling the child So Eli said to Samuel: "Go and lie down. And ifyou are called, say: 'Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.'" 14 So Samuel went and lay down in his place. And the Lord came and appeared, and called as in the previous times: "Samuel, Samuel. " Then Samuel said: "Speak, for your servant is listening. " (3 :8-1 0)

telling how the seer Balaam intervened to end a drought. It is significant that the term used for him in the inscription, Hozeh, is the same term used by the Bible for early Israelite prophets. This matter will be discussed in Chapter 6. See also note II above, and Chapter 40, note 46. 13. Legislation addressing this problem is to be found in Deuteronomy 18:20-22 and 13:2-6. The prophet Jeremiah devoted an entire chapter of his book (chap. 23) to an attempt to develop criteria by which an onlooker could determine if a "prophet" was genuine or not. The attempt was only partially successful. 14. Uriel Simon, in an unusually perceptive lecture tape (Samuel's Call: A Youth Becomes a Prophet) focuses on Eli's greatness of spirit. Instead of feeling jealousy that he, the High Priest-the chief representative of religion-has been passed over by God in favor of a mere boy (and a non-priest at that!), he acts as a mentor to the boy, helping him to overcome his natural fear of the impending confrontation with God. Simon calls this being "a midwife to prophecy."

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It is instructive of the frame of mind of Samuel that, despite the respect that he has for Eli, he cannot bring himself to follow his instructions to the letter. Eli tells him to respond, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. " Samuel cannot bring himself to believe that it is God who is speaking to him, a mere boy. So he temporizes by emending his instructions and replies: "Speak, for your servant is listening. " Then comes the revelation: And the Lord said to Samuel: "Behold, I will do a thing in Israel which will cause both ears of everyone who hears it to ring. In that day I will perform against Eli all that I have spoken against his House, even from the beginning to the end For I declare to him that I will judge his House forever, for the iniquity that he knew that his sons did curse Me 15 and he rebuked them not. Therefore I have sworn unto the House of Eli that neither sacrifice nor offering will expiate the iniquity ofthe House of Eli forever. (3:11-14)

We have already learned the significance of this message. This is a confirmation of that halfforgotten curse delivered, years ago, by the man of God. We must, however, consider what a shock this first revelation must be for the boy. Eli is a revered father to him. He may not even know of the curse. And now he must deliver this message to his "father!" We shall see how hard it is for him. A prophet is not only one who receives the word of God, but also one who has the courage to deliver it. It does not take Samuel long to learn that prophecy is no bed of roses. There is a further item to consider, a message that probably doesn't fully register with Samuel at first. Religious people have a clear tendency to focus on ritual. They mistakenly think that if you do the rituals and do them right it will cover all sins. This is as true today as it was then: attend services, pray and fast on Yom Kippur and you have squared your accounts with God. Prophecy's central message is that God demands moral living, not ritual. Ritual has religious validity only to the extent that it mirrors a moral life. Ritual can never take the place of, or compensate for, immorality. This message became the all-consuming passion of the prophets. One example, among many, will suffice. The prophet Isaiah sets the tone for his entire book with these words, addressed to his contemporaries: "Why do I need all your sacrifices?" Says the Lord "I have had My fill of offerings oframs, And the fat ofsleek beasts; I don't want the blood ofbulls, Or lambs, or goats. When you come to appear before MeWho asked you to trample My courtyards? Bring Me no more vain offerings; It is an abomination to Me. New Moon, and Sabbath and Holidays/ cannot endure iniquity along with solemn assembly. And when you spread out your hands [in prayer], I will hide My eyes from you; Even when you make many prayers I will not hear:

15. Tilam Sofrim: censored text. The text is here rendered as in the original. The censored version reads: that his sons did bring a curse upon themselves. See Glossary.

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Your hands are full ofblood! Wash! Clean yourselves! Put away the evil ofyour doings From before My eyes; Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, relieve the oppressed, Judge the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. " (Isaiah I: 11-17) Substitute modern rituals for ancient ones, and the message is as pertinent today as it was 2800 years ago. This is the message that Samuel has to deliver: the sin is the indulgence of moral corruption, a sin that neither sacrifice nor offering will expiate . .. forever. (3:14) Sacrifice and burnt offerings were the main rituals of that age. Eli, the priest, might have hoped that a sufficient number of sacrifices would square things with God. In much the same way someone today might try to compensate for his or her moral lapses by rigorously keeping the rules of observing the Sabbath or meticulously praying three times a day. Samuel is being directed to deny this common misconception. Ritual can never take the place of ethical living. Rites cannot atone for ethical sins; only a total transformation of one's life for the better can do that. 16

And Samuel lay till morning [it does not say he slept] and opened the doors of the house of the Lord Now Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. Then Eli called Samuel, and said: "Samuel, my son." And he said: "Here I am." And he said: "What is the word that He spoke to you? I beg you, do not hide it from me. May God so do to you, and more also, if you hide from me anything of all the words that He spoke to you. " 17And Samuel told him all the words and hid nothing from him. 18 And he said: "It is the Lord; He will do what is right in His eyes." (3:15-18)

EPILOGUE This may be the end of the House of Eli; it is the beginning of the age of Samuel: 16. This principle totally assimilated and understood, Samuel, a generation later, will deliver the first unforgettable prophetic pronouncement on this theme (15:22-23). See Chapter 9. 17. This was a common form of oath in Biblical times. It is used as an adjuration, invoking God to perform some sort of punishment (the phrase possibly being accompanied by a gesture indicating what sort of punishment), and asking Him to repeat it an unspecified number of times, if a specific action is not performed. Here Eli is adjuring Samuel to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This phrasing is more often used as an oath, calling down God's punishment on oneself, if he or she does not fulfill a certain commitment: i.e. Ruth to Naomi-if I ever leave you (Ruth I: 12), David-if I eat before sundown (2 Samuel 3 :35), etc. It seems that this form of oath was common among the pagans of the region as well, except that they would not invoke God, but rather "the gods." Thus Jezebel to Elijah-"May the gods do so (to me), and more also" if you are still alive twenty-four hours from now. (I Kings 19:2). 18. Once again the old man comes to the rescue of the lad. He realizes from Samuel's behavior that God has revealed to him something that he is afraid to tell; Samuel, instead of running to Eli to tell him what has occurred, is going about his daily activities as though nothing has happened. So he calls Samuel over and virtually forces him to take the plunge and become a prophet; that is, to deliver the message; to speak God's word. That it was bad news Eli already knows, else why was the boy afraid to tell him? But his concern for the boy and his future, that he should become what he had it in him to become, overrode any personal concern (Simon, "Samuel's Call to Prophecy," p. 129). A bad parent and a derelict High Priest Eli may have been; in his relations with his foster-son, Samuel, Eli emerges as a saint.

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And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and did not let any of his words to fall to the ground And all Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was a faithful prophet of the Lord And the Lord continued to apgear in Shiloh, for the Lord revealed Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the Lord 9 (3:19-21) We know, and all Israel knew, how corrupt Shiloh was. Yet amidst this corruption Samuel shines forth like a beacon, and as the years pass, as Samuel grows to manhood, the word spreads that there is, once again, a true prophet in Israel. The long drought has ended. From Dan to Beersheba-from northern border to southern-the consensus crystallizes: through Samuel, God's Will is once again being made known to His people. And the word ofSamuel came to a// Israel. (4:1)

19. LXX adds: Now Eli was very old, and his sons continued in their ways, going from bad to worse.

CHAPTER3

CATASTROPHE The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And Godfulfills himself in many ways.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Idylls ofthe King

The focus shifts once again. Up to the present the narrative has been intensely personal. Now the author draws back to allow us to encompass the national crisis that has been coming to a head; the crisis that will provide the framework for the life dramas of all the protagonists that we will henceforth encounter. It is this crisis that will set in motion the forces that will determine much of what is to take place in the coming five centuries, the heart of the Biblical Age.

THEPEOPLESOFTHESEA Now it came to pass in those days that the Philistines mobilized for war against Israel, and Israel went out to battle against the Philistines, and encamped besides Eben-ezer; and the Philistines encamped at Aphek. 1 (4: 1)

Who are these Philistines, and why does Israel go out to battle them? At roughly the same time that the Israelite tribes had poured out of the Eastern desert to invade the land of Canaan and to establish themselves in the central highlands ofthe country/ the Philistines had invaded Canaan from the Western seas. They were part of a great upheaval that ravaged the Eastern Mediterranean and all its surrounding lands. To understand the coming of the "Peoples of the Sea," we ourselves need to step back and enlarge the scope of our vision to encompass the age that preceded the events of our tale. For centuries the Eastern Mediterranean, from Sicily in the West to the Syrian coast in the East, had been under the sway of a great civilization centered on the island of Crete. Known to history as the Minoan Empire, and with a level of civilization comparable to the high cultures of Egypt and l. Reading with (LXX); MT reads: "Now israel went out to battle against the Philistines and encamped besides Eben-ezer; and the Philistines encamped at Aphek. " (For the location of the sites connected with the Battle of Eben-ezer, as well as the location of the cities of the Philistine Pentapolis, see the map at the beginning of Chapter 5.) 2. For a discussion of alternative theories to the Biblical account of the origins of the Israelites see Excursus I at the end of this chapter: Israel in Canaan: How did they Get There?

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Mesopotamia, it dominated the seas, islands and coastlands through its powerful navy. The dramatic collapse of this empire-the destruction of its capital by earthquake, fire and subsequent pillage; the disintegration of its fleets-created a power vacuum. Chaos erupted; a free-for-all in which remnants of Imperial forces, subject peoples now unshackled, and more distant semi-barbarian nations struggled for dominance, loot and new homes. 3 As the arena of contention was the Eastern Mediterranean, the contenders are known as "The Peoples of the Sea." Vast migrations and fierce battles took place, cities were sacked and destroyed, never to be rebuilt; ancient empires crumbled before the assault as the Peoples of the Sea redrew in blood the ethnic and political boundaries of the region. This wave of chaos peaked with assaults upon Egypt itself. The last and greatest of these took place during the eighth year of the reign of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses III (1177 BCE is the date currently assigned). Egypt just barely managed to beat the invaders off, an effort that so weakened it that its hold over its Middle Eastern Empire (including Canaan) disintegrated. On the walls ofthe mortuary temple ofRamses III at Medinat Habu, facing the ancient Egyptian capital of Thebes, are inscribed the details of this decisive struggle, including a list of the various components ofthe Peoples of the Sea that endeavored to conquer the Land of the Nile. Among these appear the Philistines. Failing to conquer Egypt, and with the subsequent breakup of the coalition that had been formed for this purpose, the Philistines settled for second best: they occupied the southern part of the coast of Canaan. This had been part of the Egyptian Empire-but now Egypt was powerless to prevent the conquest. 4 The Bible asserts that the Philistines came from Caphtor, that is, Crete. 5 What evidence there is indicates a Greek origin. 6 Perhaps the Philistines were one of the Greek Aegean peoples that sacked and pillaged Crete after the collapse of the Minoan Empire and then, after an indeterminate stay, left to join in the assault upon Egypt. At any rate, it is they who ushered the Iron Age into Canaan, their iron weapons outclassing the bronze weapons of the Canaanites. 7 They were certainly very proficient militarily, and they quickly reduced the native Canaanite population to serfdom, establishing themselves as a ruling military caste. They organized themselves as a Pentapo/is, a confederation of five

3. It has been suggested that a long-term drought affecting the Eastern Mediterranean region contributed to this age of chaos. 4. The term "Pieset" is well known from the Bible. Its common form, Plishti (i.e. one of the Pleset people) was Anglicized into "Philistine." Canaan is an Egyptian term. It is the name they gave to this province of their "New Empire" during its glory days. The name stuck and the inhabitants generally came to be known as Canaanites. 5. Note the references in Deuteronomy 2:23, Jeremiah 47:4, Ezekie/25:16 and especially Amos 9:7. 6. Their background is Aegean Greek. The boats of the Sea Peoples, as they are painstakingly rendered on the wall of Medinat Habu, are clearly Aegean-type vessels. Extensive excavations of the Philistine city of Ekron reveal a city plan and building style similar to that of Greek cities of the Mycenaean Age. They are nothing at all like Canaanite cities. The Philistine diet resembled that of Aegean Greece and was nothing like that of the Canaanites (like the Aegean Greeks they were heavy consumers of pork-in Canaanite sites only five percent of the bones are pig bones-and unlike the Canaanites they ate dog meat). Their weapons were typically Greek. And most decisively, the pottery they manufactured in Philistia was almost identical in shape and decoration to Mycenaean Greek pottery. 7. Of far greater import than its military application was the impact of iron upon agriculture. The long range effects were revolutionary. "The introduction of iron into the hills ... opened whole new areas for cultivation. It must have led to an explosion in agriculture, and ... to a population increase as well. Ultimately these factors ... produced an accumulation of capital-human and financial-whose reinvestment was to produce the expansion of the next fifty years." (Halpern, "The Uneasy Compromise: Israel Between League and Monarchy," p. 85) Actually iron is softer than bronze; only carbonized iron (that is, steel) is harder than cold-worked tin-bronze. Carbonization involves the absorption of carbon into the metal, thereby creating an alloy. This was the great innovation introduced by the Philistines; archaeological evidence clearly indicates that steel was being produced in Israel by the lOth century BCE. I am indebted to Morris Silver's book Prophets and Markets (p. 8-9) for his economic and technical information. In his opinion the term "Iron Age" is a misnomer; we should call it The

Steel Age.

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city-states: Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gath. A Seren, 8 or Tyrant, who was an absolute ruler, governed the city and its surrounding territories and towns. In this they were little different, except in scale, from the petty Canaanite kings they had supplanted. But in one aspect they were unique. In matters of "National Security," which included all military affairs and issues of foreign policy, they acted as one. The five Seranim (plural of Seren) formed a council. A majority vote was binding on all. Thus the Philistine Pentapolis, despite the relatively small numbers of its ruling military caste (the serfs of course were kept unarmed and downtrodden) was, because of its unity and professionalism, a force to be reckoned with. The issue as to who was to inherit the land of Canaan, the Philistines or the Israelites, was now joined. 9 The Philistines were, by tradition and current condition, military expansionists. Within half a century they succeeded in enlarging their dominion from a narrow coastal enclave to include the Shephelah (the plain lying between the coastlands and the central hill country) and the Negeb (the Southland). 10 Despite the heroic guerrilla campaign of Samson, Philistine pressure proved overwhelming. Samson's tribe, Dan, was forced to pull up stakes, migrate, and ultimately to become the northernmost of the tribes. 11 At the time that our Book opens Judah, the southernmost of the tribes, has become, for all practical purposes, a vassal of Philistia. Now it is the tum of the central tribes, who block the access to Syria and the rich trade with the East. The Philistines have made their move and the Israelite tribes mobilize to meet them. The issue is joined.

THE FORLORN HOPE And The Philistines put themselves in array against Israel, and when the battle spread Israel was smitten before the Philistines, and they slew about four thousand of the army in the field. Now when the people had come into the camp the elders of Israel said: "Why has the Lord smitten us today before the Philistines? Let us fetch the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord from Shiloh, and He will be present among us and will save us from our enemies." So the people sent to Shiloh, and they carriedfrom there the Ark ofthe Covenant of the Lord of Hosts Enthroned upon the Cherubim; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the Ark of the Covenant of God. And when the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel burst into a mighty shout so that the earth resounded. (4:2-5) The first clash between the two armies is indecisive. The Israelite forces are bloodied but not broken. They retire in good order to their camp. The text refers to the Israelite troops not as "soldiers" but as "the people." This reflects a very real distinction. As opposed to the Philistines, who are all

8. The fading hold their former culture had on them can be seen in the fact that, within two to three generations, the Philistines seem to have mostly forgotten their original language (both its spoken and written forms) and have adopted the language of their serfs-Hebrew. Their term for the ruler of a Philistine city, Seren, is one of the few remnants, in addition to some personal names, that we can identify, with any degree of certainty, as being a part of their former language. It has been equated with the word turannos, a term of Asiatic origin, which supplied the Greeks with the word tyrannos or tyrant; hence our rendering. 9. Because the Philistines lived on the coast, and continued to do so for centuries, in the period of Greek commercial expansion they were the first people encountered by Greek merchants, who thereafter called the country "Palestine" i.e. the land of the Philistines. Thus, for Herodotus in the 5th century BCE, the term Palestine refers to the region between Phoenicia (see Glossary) and Egypt, while Jews are referred to as "circumcised Syrians" of Palestine. 10. The territorial boundaries of Philistia proper, as opposed to the territories they conquered or dominated, stretched from the Yarkon River in the north (in present day North Tel Aviv) to the Wadi Besor (currently known as the Wadi Ghazzeh) in the south. The eastern border ran no more than 20 miles inland from the coast. II. The tribe of Dan was originally situated in the lowlands, in the region of Beth Shemesh, bordering on Philistia. A dramatic tale of the migration northward is to be found at the close of the Book ofJudges, Chapter 17-18.

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professional soldiers, the Israelites are, to a man, militia, that is, civilians who have taken up arms. In all probability the Israelites vastly outnumber the Philistines but lack the discipline, organization, weaponry and long training of their enemies. Their strength lies, above all else, in their enthusiasm; a fervor that, in times past, has carried all before it. Their fundamental weakness is that setbacks can breed disastrous discouragement. Morale is everything, and should morale break, the army could disintegrate. The elders 12 (that is, the civilian leaders of the various tribal units who are now serving as their officers pro-tem) are more than aware of this danger. They must, at all costs, bolster morale and restore confidence. Their solution: to bring Israel's most sacred possession, the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, from Shiloh into the midst of the army. 13 The Ark is referred to as the Ark of the Covenant ofthe Lord ofHosts Enthroned upon the Cherubim. The Ark was an oblong box, made of wood overlaid with gold (containing, as we have said, the original Ten Commandments), and was designed for carrying. The cover was surmounted by gold figures of winged Cherubim, representations of two mythological creatures with bodies of lions and human faces, whose outstretched wings cover the Ark from above. 14 In popular imagination these wings form a support upon which the Invisible God sits enthroned. Thus, bringing the Ark into the camp is tantamount to bringing God Himself into the midst of the army. The troops respond with wild enthusiasm. Do the elders, as opposed to the simple peasants who make up the militia, believe that they are physically conveying God into the camp, and thus virtually forcing Him to guarantee the victory of the army? Or is this simply the cynical manipulation of religious symbolism to boost morale and military effectiveness? At this distance it is impossible to be certain; I would think that, on balance, it is a bit of both. Any way you look at it, however, the elders are using the sacred symbols of religion for political and military ends. 15 It is doubtful if the elders ever considered the question of whether the ends justify the means, but the author implicitly raises it. Not only can religion be prostituted for personal advantage (as in the case ofHophni and Phinehas), it also can be prostituted in the service of state policy and even for worthy national aims. The results of expediency, as we shall see, are often disastrous to the secular ends being served; they are uniformly disastrous to religion. Now when the Philistines heard the noise of the great shout they said, "What is the meaning of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews?" And when they learned that the Ark of the Lord had come into the camp the Philistines were afraid, for they said, "The gods have come into the camp. " 16 And they said, "Woe unto us! Nothing like this has happened be-

12. See Chapter 1, note 20. 13. Hophni and Phinehas are brought along to oversee the treatment of the Ark and also to give priestly sanction to what was being done. 14. See Chapter 23 for a fuller description. 15. It was standard operating procedure for pagan nations to bring images of their gods onto the battlefield (note 2 Samuel 5:21; see Chapter 22). This has led some scholars to assume that the Israelites routinely did the same with the Ark. Yet the only previously recorded instance of this is that of the Israelites carrying the Ark around Jericho during Joshua's siege of the city (Joshua 6). A subsequent presence of the Ark in a military camp is recorded only once (2 Samuel 11: II). This would tend to indicate that, unlike pagan practice, the presence of the Ark in military campaigns was a rare and unusual occurrence. 16. The Philistines, being polytheists, believed in many gods, and projected their beliefs onto the Israelites. Thus they believed that not only the Lord, God of Israel (Whom they recognized as a powerful deity) had arrived in the camp, but also all the lesser gods that they assumed must be part of the Israelite pantheon. Note that the Philistines were aware of the general outlines oflsraelite history, even as the Israelites were cognizant of the general background of the Philistines (see footnote 6 above).

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fore. Woe unto us! Who shall deliver us out ofthe hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with every sort ofplague in the wilderness." (4:6-8) Not only does the presence of the Ark have an immediate positive effect upon Israelite morale, it simultaneously delivers a serious blow to the morale of their enemies. But unlike the Israelites, the Philistines are professionals. Discipline holds and professional pride asserts itself: "Be strong and be men, 0 Philistines, lest you become slaves of the Israelites even as they have been slaves to you. Be men and fight!" And the Philistines fought, and Israel was routed, and they fled, every man to his tent; and there was a very great slaughter for there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers. And the Ark of God was captured, and the two sons ofEli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain. (4:9-11)

EPILOGUE TO AN ERA And a man of[the tribe of] Benjamin ran from the battle line and arrived that same day in Shiloh, his clothing torn and earth upon his head And when he arrived, there was Eli sitting on the seat on the arm [of the gate], overlooking the road, 17 for his heart trembled for theArkofGod (4:12-13) The remnants of the army scatter. Late that afternoon one of the fugitives arrives in Shiloh, which was not all that far from the battlefield. His battle dress is torn and earth is upon his head (not wear and tear from the battle but rather the traditional signs of mourning-in this case mourning the defeat and the death of comrades). 18 As he enters the city he passes an old man sitting on the outer wall, just above the level of his head-old Eli. The aged priest is in a panic over the safety of the Ark. One wonders whether he approved of taking the Ark to battle or whether he opposed the move and was overruled by popular pressure and the younger generation. The fugitive doesn't stop but passes on into the city, leaving the old man sitting. When the man came into the city and told the news, all the city cried out. And Eli heard the sound ofthe outcry and he said: "What is the meaning ofthis uproar?" And the man hastened and came and told Eli. Now Eli was 98 years old; his eyes were set so that he could not see. And the man said to Eli: "I am he who has come from the army, and I fled today out of the army. " And he said: "How went the matter, my son?" And he who brought the tidings answered and said: "Israel has fled before the Philistines, and also there has been a great slaughter among the people; also your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas are dead, and the Ark of God has been captured!" And when he mentioned the Ark of God, he [Eli] fell backwards off his seat, down from the arm of the gate, his neck broke and he died; for he was an old man and heavy, and he judged Israel forty years. 19 ( 4: 14-18) 17. The entrance to a walled city being the weakest point in its defense system, the gate was built as a highly fortified complex. This included flanking towers and an angled approach to the gate, usually branching to the right as one faced the city. This forced any attacking troops to expose their unshielded sides (shields were held in the left hand) when attempting entrance. A low outer wall enclosed this approach-way, with the main city gate at one end and an outer gate at the other. Baruch Halpern, has convincingly demonstrated that this outer wall, enclosing the area between the two gates, was called the Yad of the gate, which we have rendered in English with the term "arm." (Halpern, "Eli's Death and the Israelite Gate") It was on this "arm" that Eli sat, facing outward toward the road with his back to the enclosed approach-way (which was called "between the gates"). 18. For mourning customs in ancient Israel see Chapter 21, note 12. 19. We have translated the Hebrew phrase vehu shafat et yisrael as it has been usually rendered, but with the proviso that the term "judged" really has the sense of "governed" (which included judicial functions). More on

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Eli's seat is perched on the low wall connecting the two gates of the city. He probably hears the man pass beneath him but, being by this time blind, he has no way of knowing who he is or evaluating his condition. The uproar in the city, however, causes him urgently to seek its cause. The man is directed to him and doesn't pull his punches. Directly, almost brutally, he delivers his tidings: defeat; massive slaughter; your two sons dead; the Ark captured by the Philistines. Eli reels under the hammer blows. He can take even the death of his two sons with relative equanimity (he had written them off long ago). It is the loss of the Holy Ark that finishes the old priest. He faints at the news, falling off the wall into the enclosed gate complex and dying of a broken neck. For 40 years the High Priest Eli has been the dominating figure ofhis age. His death marks the end of an era. 20 The calamity is national, and the results are appalling. Yet the author, instead of enlarging on the broad canvas focuses on the effects upon individuals. And thus we learn that the real disaster in their eyes is not military defeat and personal subjugation to the Philistines but rather the loss of the Sacred Ark of the Lord. The taking of the Ark into the battle camp, that superstitious act, has boomeranged catastrophically. For if, in the popular mind, God is enthroned upon the Cherubim over the Ark, then with the Philistines carrying off the Ark captive, God has also been carried off into captivity and exile. It is the horror of this thought that prostrates old Eli and kills him. Now this same horror finishes his daughter-in-law.

Now his daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was with child, close to being delivered And when she heard the tidings of the capture of the Ark ofGod, and that her father-in-law and husband were dead, she bowed herself and gave birth, for her labor pangs came suddenly upon her. And at the time of her death the women attending her said: "Fear not, for you have given birth to a son. " But she did not answer nor gave she any heed And she named the child Jchabod saying "Glory is exiled from Israel, " because ofthe capture ofthe Ark of God, and because of her father-in-law and her husband She said: "Glory is exiled from Israel for the Ark ofGod is captured" (4: 19-22) The shock of the news sends her into premature labor. She begins to hemorrhage uncontrollably. The author insists that it is the news of the death of her father-in-law and of her husband, as well as that of the capture of the Ark, that kills her. Her own statements belie this. She mentions neither Eli nor Phinehas. Her thoughts center exclusively on the loss of the Ark. As life drains out of her she refuses to be comforted by the tidings that she has born a healthy son. Her mind is fixed elsewhere, upon the spiritual catastrophe that has befallen Israel. She names her son (it was customary for a mother to name her child) lchabod, which means something like No-glory or Dishonor. Her dying words are: "Glory (or honor) is exiled from Israel because the Ark ofthe Lord is captured." With this scene, approximating in pathos and horror a scene from a Greek tragedy, the author mercifully lowers the curtain. We are spared a description of the arrival of the victorious Philistine troops in Shiloh, the massacre of all who do not succeed in fleeing, the looting and burning of the this subject in Chapter 5, note 21. Another way of putting it would be to say that Eli had been the titular head of the Israelite confederacy for the previous forty years. 20. Note that the death of Hophni and Phinehas on the same day fulfills the condition laid down by the prophet, thus validating the curse upon the House of Eli. See Chapter 2. 21. While the pennanent destruction of the sanctuary appears certain, the town seems to have been rebuilt, albeit in the fonn of a poor village adjacent to the ruins of the Sanctuary complex. It is only in Roman times that Shiloh once again became a prosperous town. In the post-Roman era it once again suffered depopulation and sunk into deprivation. In recent decades a modem town has risen on the site. It has been argued by Israel Finkelstein and others that, at the time of its destruction by the Philistines, Shiloh, despite its well-developed architecture and hints of very advanced planning, was an open, unfortified city. This is far from certain, but if it is indeed true that the Israelites did not continue to use the massive walls and towers that fortified Shiloh in the Middle Bronze Age, then the author, writing some 80 years after the destruction made unwarranted assumptions. In those days Shiloh was a mound of ruins approximately twelve dunams (see Glossary) in area (with possibly several dozen

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city, the devastation of the countryside, the horrors of the occupation. Of these we know from other sources. From archeological evidence we know that the sanctuary of Shiloh was totally destroyed around the year 1050 BCE, never to be rebuilt. 21 Psalm 78 contains a dramatic description ofthe fate of Shiloh: God heard 22 and was enraged He utterly rejected Israel. He forsook the tabernacle ofShiloh, The tent where He dwelt among men. And delivered His strength 23 into captivity, And His glory to the hand of the foe. He gave His people over to the sword; He was enraged with His inheritance. Fire devoured their young men; And their maidens had no marriage song. Their priests fell by the sword; And their widows made no lamentation. (Psalm 78:59-64)

This psalm is not contemporaneous with the event. 24 But despite the passage of time and the poetic stylization, the horror of what happened comes through clearly. Indeed, the sack of Shiloh was to become a synonym for total destruction. When, over 400 years later, the prophet Jeremiah wishes to shock his generation into repentance, he can find no more compelling argument than to tell them that what had happened to Shiloh and its Holy Tabernacle can happen to Jerusalem and its Holy Temple: For go now to My place which was in Shiloh, Where I caused My name to dwell at first, And see what I did to it for the wickedness of My people Israel. (Jeremiah 7: 12)

When our author wrote, the memory was still fresh, the wound only beginning to heal. She has no heart to further pry open the scabs. Instead she diverts our attention to what was uppermost in the minds of all those who survived: what was to be the fate of the Holy Ark of the Lord?

peasant families subsisting on the periphery). Visiting the site one could see the remains of the massive Bronze Age fortifications, and one might naturally assume that these walls had enclosed the Shiloh of Eli. The sources available to the author contained nothing to contradict the assumption. 22. Unlike the author of Samuel, who ascribes the disaster to moral turpitude, the psalmist attributes the sack of Shiloh to widespread idolatry. 23. The Ark. Note Psalm 132:8. 24. Albright dates the psalm from the reign of David, or possibly that of Solomon (Albright, Samuel and the

Beginnings ofthe Prophetic Movement, p. 25).

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EXCURSUS I ISRAEL IN CANAAN: HOW DID THEY GET THERE? From Egyptian evidence we know that the Israelites were in central Canaan toward the end of the thirteenth century BCE. The Mamiptah stele, 25 a triumphalist account ofthe campaign ofthe Pharaoh Memeptah in Canaan, boasts that he "annihilated" the People of Israel26 along with various other peoples, kingdoms and city-states who found themselves in the path of the Egyptian steamroller. But how did the Israelites that he found in Canaan get there in the first place? For over 3,000 years the answer seemed clear: the Israelites, after an extended stay in Egypt which included their enslavement, exited Egypt and, after a semi-nomadic period in the wilderness, invaded Canaan and settled there. (This process of conquest and settlement is recorded in the Biblical Books of Numbers, Joshua and Judges.) It is only in recent decades that this previously universally accepted account has been questioned. If one rejects the Biblical record of the Israelite conquest and settlement, one must have an alternative scenario to account for the Israelite presence in Canaan at the end of the thirteenth century. Three theories have been proposed. The first is that desert tribes peacefully infiltrated into Canaan, took root in unsettled areas and, intermingling with the local population, eventually produced the people history knows as "the Israelites." The second, a sociological theory, is that "the Israelites" are the products of a "proletarian revolution" of downtrodden Canaanite peasants against their oppressive aristocracy. These, upon victory, spread into the highlands and settled there becoming "the Israelites." The third, a variation of the second, also claims that ''the Israelites" are Canaanites-that they stem from the indigenous population of Canaan-but dispenses with the Marxist revolution. None of these theories can stand the test posed by analysis of the finds of recent archaeology, especially the evidence of the West Bank Archaeological Surveys. The sparsely settled hill country of Canaan in which ancient Israel took root has been shown to have experienced a sudden and dramatic wave of new settlements in the beginning of the Iron Age (the twelfth and eleventh centuries BCE). Over 300 have been found to date. The population is estimated to have increased by some 500 percent within a generation or two! From where did this population come? The American archaeologist, William Dever, points out: "Such a dramatic 'population explosion' simply cannot be accounted for by natural increase alone, much less by positing small groups of pastoral nomads settling down. Large numbers of people migrated here from somewhere else, strongly motivated to colonize an under-populated fringe area of urban Canaan, now in decline at the end of the Late Bronze Age." 27 Dever and Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University both insist that these new settlements exhibit a configuration of distinctive features radically different from late Bronze Age Canaanite culture: 28 a special architectural style (the so-called "Pillared House" or "Four-Room House,") 29 the absence of communal storage areas (in their place are multitudes of individual family silos), new technologies best suited to subsistence agriculture and small-scale stock breeding such as terraced hillsides and inhouse accommodation of domestic animals, 30 and most distinctively-a lack ofpig bones (all Bronze 25. The stela is currently dated approximately 1208 BCE, though it may be earlier. 26. "Israel is laid waste, his seed is not [i.e. is destroyed]." The term "Israel" is followed by the Egyptian determinative sign for "peoples," to indicate that "Israel" is not a city-state or a kingdom (such as Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam that immediately precede it in the inscription), but rather an ethnic group. 27. Dever, What Did The Biblical Writers Know & When Did They Know It? p. 110. 28. Dever, "The Identity of Early Israel: A Rejoinder to Keith W. Whitelam", p. 14-17. All these features Dever considers clear "ethnic markers." Also see Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, pp. 27-33, 250-259. 29. See the Excursus IV following Chapter 7: In What Sort of Houses did Samuel and Saul Live? 30. See the Excursus II following Chapter 4: How They Lived in Those Days.

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Age sites have pig bones, as do all non-Israelite sites in the Iron Age; for example, Philistine sites). 31 To be compelling any theory must not only explain from where this population came but also demonstrate the origins of these distinctive cultural traits. As opposed to the theory of a "Marxist revolution" Finkelstein points out that the rural component of late Bronze Age society was extremely limited, and thus lacked the population to colonize the highlands. To this he adds that there is absolutely no undisputed archaeological evidence for a significant shift of population from the lowlands to the hill country at this period (the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age). As against the theory of infiltration and settlement of nomadic desert tribes he insists that at this time the "inner deserts" of the Southern Levant were also very sparsely settled and so could not have been the source of the Iron Age I population in the hill country. 32 Which brings us to the third theory, that of Israel Finkelstein himself. Having demonstrated that neither Canaan nor the surrounding regions could have provided the population that peopled the central highlands at the beginning of the Iron Age, Finkelstein finds his answer to the origins of "the Israelites" by turning back the clock three hundred years. His claim is that as the Middle Bronze culture declined during the sixteenth century BCE large segments of the population became nomadic. Later, toward the end of the Late Bronze period, a process of "resedentarization" took place. In plain language: a large part of the Canaanite population left their settled life and became nomads (where?) in the sixteenth century only to settle down once again in the thirteenth century in the hill country of Ephraim. 33 The basic problems with this picture are, first, the lack of any real evidence to support the thesis (as Finkelstein himselfadmits), 34 and second, the fact that the theory does not address the issue of why a population whose origins are indigenous Canaanites display so very different cultural traits from those people of their supposed source. The purpose of this appendix is not to provide an exhaustive treatment of the question oflsraelite origins, but rather to briefly explain why I am content to stay with the main lines of the Biblical account of an Exodus from Egypt and an Israelite conquest and settlement of Canaan. The failure of almost a century of effort to provide a credible alternative to the Biblical account would seem to shift the burden of proof from the Bible to some of the assumptions underlying the scholarly skepticism that has fueled this effort. Perhaps the best summery of my approach is that ofK. A. Kitchen: The sudden increase in settlement in twelfth century Canaan is best explained by an influx of new people ... That they had ultimately come from Egypt is not proven but (in light of the long and pervasive biblical tradition and good comparative data) is by far the most logical and sensible solution. 35 When one considers the shortcomings of the alternative theories perhaps the Biblical account begins to seem more persuasive.

31. "[The pig] seems to have been intentionally neglected in Iron Age I. This animal was apparently ejected from the economic systems ... (Rosen, "Subsistence Economy in Iron Age 1", p. 341. See also Hesse & Wapnish, "Can Pig Remains Be Used for Ethnic Diagnosis in the Ancient Near East?" 32. Finkelstein, "The Great Transformation: The 'Conquest' of the Highlands Frontiers and the Rise of the Territorial States," p. 349-365. 33. Finkelstein, The Archaeology ofIsraelite Settlement, p. 338-348. 34. "it is just that the archaeological evidence to support this view is vague, if existent at all." Ibid, p. 348. 35. Kitchen, "The Exodus," p. 707.

CHAPTER4

ODYSSEY: THE WANDERINGS OF THE LOST ARK Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born. Matthew Arnold, The Grand Chartreuse

Now the Philistines had captured the Ark of God, and they brought it from Eben-ezer to Ashdod And the Philistines took the Ark of God and brought it into the temple of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon. (5:1-2) One can well imagine with what feelings the Philistines triumphantly carry their greatest trophy of victory into Ashdod. Unlike most of the Israelites who should know, despite their superstitions, that God is universal and unique, that He can be neither defeated nor captured, the Philistines believe exactly the opposite. Being polytheists, that is, believers in the existence of many gods, they do not disbelieve in the God of Israel. As we have already observed, they take the God of Israel, His power and His past acts of redemption for His people, extremely seriously} To the Philistines, as to all polytheistic peoples, war between nations necessarily involves combat between the respective gods of those nations. National victory is proof to both sides that the god of the victor has triumphed over the god of the vanquished. So to the Philistine soldiers marching into Ashdod, as well as to the delirious crowds receiving them, the Ark borne on the shoulders of the victors is proof that Dagon, their god, has defeated the God of Israel. There is no question as to what to do with the Ark. They bring it into the temple of their god, and set it up (albeit on a lower pedestal) next to the representation of their chief deity. Thus they graphically demonstrate that the defeated God of the Israelites has been annexed to the pantheon of minor deities serving their god Dagon. 2 The God oflsrael has been humbled and put in His place, just like His people Israel. l. See Chapter 3, note 16. 2. It is a modem superstition that ancient idolaters worshiped the statues of their gods. Nothing could be further from the truth. The belief that the representation of the god is the god is· called fetishism, which is a very primitive form of religion. The Philistines were far from being primitives. To them, as to their Near Eastern neighbors, the gods dwelt far away and far above them. Their idols were mere representations of their distant gods. Their worship was not directed to the representation, usually a statue, but to the god that it represented. Not unnaturally, the Philistines assumed that the Israelites thought as they did. They took for granted that the Ark was some form of representation ofthe God of Israel, on a par with their statue ofDagon.

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THE HOT POTATO If the narrative now begins to have distant overtones of having been scripted by Steven Spielberg, we should begin by realizing where Spielberg got a number of his ideas. In some ways the film Raiders of the Lost Ark is an updated, hi-tech adaptation of our narrative, one underlying idea being that the One True and Only God of the universe does not take kindly to misrepresentation of His true nature. The Philistines are in for some nasty surprises.

And when the Ashdodites arose, early the next day, behold, Dagon was fallen, face down upon the ground before the Ark of the Lord So they picked up Dagon and put him back in his place. But when they rose, early the next morning, behold Dagon was fallen, face down upon the ground before the Ark of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both of his hands were lying cut off on the threshold Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him. (That is why neither the priests of Dagon, nor any that come into the temple of Dagon, tread on the threshold ofDagon in Ashdod until this day./ (5:3-5) The picture is appealing: the heathen idol fallen face down, doing obeisance before the Ark of the Lord. But let us look at the matter through the eyes of the Philistines. Ashdod, indeed the entire Eastern Mediterranean, is an earthquake zone. Earth tremors are frequent. I have observed in Greek museums statues placed in sandboxes so that, should an earth tremor topple the statue, the sand would be there to break the fall. That, on the morrow following the grand ceremony of placing the Ark of the Lord in the Temple, the statue of Dagon should be found toppled from its pedestal could be taken as pure coincidence, and probably was so taken. Our author does not here overtly attribute this occurrence to divine intervention. Nor do the Philistines. They simply replace their idol on its pedestal. The second day things are worse. The idol is not only fallen but also broken. Again there is no overt suggestion of a divine act. Only a mention of the Philistines' superstitious reaction: since the broken parts of the idol were found on the threshold of the temple, from that time onward it becomes bad luck to step on that spot. But life goes on as usual. It is only with a third event that it begins to dawn on all concerned that something significant is taking place.

And the hand of the Lord lay heavy on the people of Ashdod and He devastated them: He afJlicted them with swellings, both Ashdod and its territory.~ And when the people of Ashdod saw how things were they said: "The Ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us, for His hand has dealt harshly with us and with Dagon our god " So they sent and assembled all the Philistine Tyrants 5 and said: "What shall we do with the Ark of the God of Israel?" They answered: "Let the Ark of the God of Israel be carried around to Gath. " So they carried the Ark there. And it came to pass, after they had carried it there, that the hand of the Lord was against the city, causing a huge panic; He smote the people of the city, young and old alike, so that swellings broke out upon them. 6 So they sent the Ark of God to Ekron. But when the Ark of God came to Ekron, the people of Ekron cried out, saying: "They have brought around to us the Ark of the God of Israel to slay us and our people. " (5:6-10) Ian Fleming, in his book Goldfinger, popularized the expression, "Once is a coincidence, twice is happenstance, three times is enemy action!" This, it would seem, sums up the reactions of the Philis3. LXX adds but they leap over it. 4. LXX adds: and mice came up in the midst oftheir land. 5. The text uses the Philistine term "Seren," the native title of the rulers of each of the five Philistine cities. For the rendering of this term as "Tyrant," see Chapter 3, note 8. 6. LXX continues: and mice invaded their fields.

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tines. That after placing the Ark of God in their temple the idol of their god Dagon should be found toppled from its pedestal was a mere coincidence; that shortly thereafter it should topple and breakwell, these things happen; but with the consequent outbreak of an epidemic-this was too much, this is enemy action! The consensus forms: this is a causal relationship. The God oflsrael is to blame. This reaction should not surprise us. Before the discovery of the existence of microorganisms and their role in disease, people had no idea of the causes of their recurrent afflictions. The well-nigh universal belief was that illness was a divine punishment for individual wrongdoing, while plague was a collective punishment visited upon a society for widespread offenses against the gods. Even in relatively recent times, "writers as diverse as Boccaccio, Chaucer, and William Langland all treated the plague as a routine crisis of human life-an act of God, like the weather." 7 Unusually virulent outbreaks tended to produce hysteria and extreme, even ugly reactions. Describing the hysteria that accompanied the "Black Death" in the fourteenth century William McNeill writes: "In Germany and some adjacent parts of Europe companies of Flagellants aimed at propitiating God's wrath by beating each other bloody and attacking Jews, who were commonly accused of spreading the pestilence.... if accounts are to be believed, their rituals were well-nigh suicidal for the participants."8 Because of the paucity of records from the ancient world it is easier to draw upon accounts of attitudes and reactions to plague from the late medieval and pre-modem eras, but all evidence tends to confirm that from earliest times human reactions to epidemic disease was largely uniform. Only with the emergence of the germ-theory of disease in the nineteenth century, the subsequent introduction of modem public hygiene measures and the invention of antibiotics-all of which gave mankind increasing mastery over previously uncontrollable afflictions--did these beliefs and behaviors begin to lose their hold over the human mind. What sort of epidemic devastated Ashdod? Various modem medical authorities have identified these "swellings" with the swelling of the lymph glands (buboes) that typify bubonic plague. 9 This dread illness is primarily a rodent's disease. The bacillus (Yersinia pestis) is transmitted to humans through the bites of fleas originally inhabiting the infected rodents, and which have deserted their normal host after its death. There are two forms of bubonic plague in humans: bubonic and pneumonic. In its milder, or bubonic, form (so named because of the typical swellings that appear upon the body) the bubo appears early in the illness, on the first or second day, and is usually very painful and tender. In patients who live long enough or survive, it breaks down and discharges pus. In about five per cent of the cases of bubonic plague, before the victim dies, the bacterium reaches his lungs and if the patient lives long enough he coughs out the bacterium in his sputum. Anyone who is in close contact may inhale it and get pneumonic plague. From then on, one patient can directly infect another with pneumonic plague in the same way without the intervention of a flea. The onset is abrupt and severe and the victim dies on about the third and never later than the sixth day. Without modem medical treatment pneumonic plague is inevitably fatal. No wonder total panic breaks out. In the minds of the desperate population, the falling and breaking of their idol, the plague epidemic, the Ark and the heavy hand of the God of Israel are equated. The panic focuses on the Ark. The coming of the Ark caused the disaster. The removal of the Ark will mitigate it. 10 But Ashdod 7. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, p. 193. 8. Ibid., p. 192. 9. "Many experts believe, because of the characteristics of the disease in man and the extent of the mortality in mice, that it was true plague that afflicted the Philistines in the lith century BC (I Sam. 5 and 6)." (Meyer, "Plague," p. 1140b). I 0. This is a common human reaction, jumping to the conclusion that a given event must be the consequence of a previous event. This universal logical fallacy is known by the name post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for "after this, therefore because of this"); it is a particularly tempting error because temporal sequence appears to be integral to causality. The fallacy lies in coming to a conclusion based only on the order of events without taking into account other factors that might rule out the connection. The Ashdodians did not believe that it was the Ark per se that caused the plague, but rather that the appropriation of something properly belonging to the God of Israel had angered Him, and the plague was His punishment for their presumption.

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cannot act alone. The possession of the Ark is a pan-Philistine matter (one can only speculate on the politics and lobbying that led to the original decision to give Ashdod the prize of possession). The supreme council of the five Seranim or Tyrants of the city-states is convened, but the lords are not ready to jump to a conclusion. Perhaps the problem is a localized one, and to calm the population they agree to move the Ark to another city-to Gath. But to no avail; the plague spreads with the Ark to engulf Gath as well. So the Ark is ejected from Gath and sent to Ekron. But Ekron refuses to accept it. It is rejected with the cry (in the Hebrew original it is stated in the singular; perhaps the statement of the Seren of Ekron): "They have brought around to us the Ark of the God ofIsrael to slay me and my people!" And, as I shall shortly argue, it is possible that they slammed the gates of the city in the faces of the Ark-bearers.

So they sent and assembled all the Philistine Tyrants and said: "Send the Ark of the God of Israel away, and let it return to its own place, that it may not slay us and our people; "for the panic of death pervaded the entire city. The hand of God was very heavy there; the people who did not die were stricken with swellings and the cry of the city went up to heaven. (5:11-12)

THE TEST Now the Ark ofthe Lord was in Philistine fields seven months.

11

(6:1)

The construction is unusual. The normal formulation would be "in the land of the Philistines." Why does the author insist on the word "fields?" Does she mean to imply that after Ekron's rejection no one will take the Ark, and that perforce it has to be lodged in the open countryside outside Ekron? At any rate it is a hot potato. The rulers are loath to give up their chief trophy of victory, but the panicked populace won't let them keep it. The Tyrants, however, are far from convinced that the Ark and the wrath oflsrael's God are the cause of the disaster. After all, epidemics do happen. How can they decide? They conclude to seek guidance.

And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners, saying: "What shall we do with the Ark ofthe Lord? Tell us with what we shall send it to its place." They answered: "Ifyou send away the Ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty, but by all means return Him a guilt offering. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why His hand is not turned away from you. " (6:2-3) The question posed to their religious and occult authorities is twofold: shall we keep the Ark or send it back? If we do send it back, in what manner shall we send it? The priests and diviners answer the second question first: if you send the Ark away it is only because you accept that the God of Israel is doing these things to you. Then you can't simply renounce the possession of the Ark. This would be an insult to the God. You must also make public acknowledgement to Him-you must accompany the Ark with a guilt offering. 12

II. LXX adds: and their land swarmed with mice. 12. Common to all the peoples of the Ancient Near East was a fear of sacrilege and its devastating consequences. One of the forms that sacrilege could take was the misappropriation of sancta; that is sacred objects. This trespass would provoke the consuming wrath of the offended deity against the sinners, their families and the community. It is dawning upon the Philistines that, in appropriating as war booty the Ark, an object sacred to the God oflsrael (recognized by the Philistines as a powerful deity, as noted in Chapter 3), they have committed the awful sin of sacrilege and are being punished accordingly. The remedy for this sin is twofold: restitution and a guilt offering. Restitution means that, where possible, the sacred object must be returned to its proper place. The guilt offering (Hebrew asham) was a reparation offering given to the deity to rectify the wrong done. In Israel

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They said: "What is the guilt offering that we should return to Him?" And they said: "Five swellings of gold and five golden mice corresponding to the number of the Tyrants of the Philistines; because one plague was upon all of you and your Tyrants. So you must make images ofyour swellings and images ofyour mice that ravage the land, and you shall give honor to the God of Israel; perhaps He will lighten His hand from off you, and from off your gods and from offyour land Why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? After He made a mockery of them did they not let them go, and they departed?" (6:4-6) The fonn the guilt offering is to take is interesting: five gold representations of swellings, the characteristic symptom of the disease, and five gold mice. It seems that the Philistines are aware that there is a connection between the mice and the plague. Don't be pig-headed and dig in your heels in dealing with the God of Israel, the advisors adjure. Pharaoh and the Egyptians tried it and look where it got them. Don't repeat their mistakes. But the first question remains. Is this really the doing of the God of Israel? The advisors now turn to this question, proposing a test:

"Now then, take and prepare a new cart, and two nursing cows 13 upon which there has never come a yoke; yoke the cows to the cart but take their calves home, away from them. And take the Ark of the Lord and place it upon the cart, and place by its side a box containing the gold figures you are returning to Him as a guilt offering. Then send it off, and let it go its way. And watch; if it goes up the road to Beth-shemesh, to His own territory, then it is He that has done us this great evil. But if not, then we shall know that it was not His hand that struck us, it just happened to us by chance. (6:7-9) The test proposed is ingenious. The Ark and a box containing the guilt offering are to be placed on a wagon. The wagon is to be set on the road leading to Beth-shemesh, just across the Israelite border. Two cows, which have no prior experience in pulling carts and which have recently given birth, are to be hitched to the wagon. Their calves are to be separated from them and shut in the bam. The natural reaction of the cows would be to go after their young. If this is what they do, it can be assumed that there are no supernatural forces involved. But if the cows, despite their natural maternal desires, tum their backs on their calves and pull the cart to Israelite territory it must be God Who is driving them back to where the Ark belongs. In this case one can be sure that the original assumption, that the God oflsrael is the cause of the disaster, has been confinned. 14

The men did so. They took two nursing cows and hitched them to the cart, and shut up their calves at home. And they placed the Ark of the Lord on the cart, and the box with the gold mice and the images of the swellings. And the cows went straight in the direction of Bethshemesh along the highway, lowing as they went. They turned off neither to the right nor the left. And the Philistine Tyrants walked after them till the border of Beth-shemesh. Now the people of Beth Shemesh were reaping the wheat harvest in the valley, and they lifted their eyes and saw the Ark, and they rejoiced to see it. And the cart came to the field of

the asham took the form of an animal sacrifice. The Philistine guilt offering takes the form of golden objects whose forms assert acknowledgement of guilt and desire for forgiveness. 13. I.e. cows that have recently given birth and are still suckling their calves. 14. As noted at the beginning of the chapter, from the viewpoint of the Philistines their defeat of the Israelite army meant that their god Dagon had defeated the God of Israel. It was this that led the Philistines to think that they could get away with appropriating the Ark of a defeated deity. The Philistines are loath to believe that the defeated deity can still visit punishment upon them for sacrilege; this test will determine once and for all if the God oflsrael still has the power to protect His sacred objects.

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Joshua ofBeth-shemesh and stopped there. A great stone was there. They split up the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord Now the Levites had taken down the Ark of the Lord and the box that was with it, containing the gold objects and placed them on the great stone. The men ofBeth-shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices to the Lord on that day. And when the fiVe Tyrants of the Philistines saw this, they returned that day to Ekron. (6:10-16) The test works. The cows, bellowing their dismay, are forced away from their calves along the road to Beth-shemesh. A discreet distance behind follow the Philistine rulers to observe the outcome. The cart crosses the border and fetches up on a field belonging to one Joshua. Most of the adult population is there in the valley bringing in the wheat harvest. The sensation is immense. Levites 15 among them move the Ark and chest from the wagon onto the large boulder by which the cart has halted. The cart is broken up for firewood and the cows are slaughtered and offered as sacrifices in celebration of the Ark's homecoming. From a distance the Philistine Tyrants observe and, satisfied with the steps they have taken, return to Ekron. The author now sums up the episode. It would seem that the number of gold mice included in the guilt offering was much larger than originally proposed.

Now these are the gold swellings that the Philistines returned as a guilt offering to the Lord: one for Ashdod, one for Gaza, one for Ashkelon, one for Gath, one for Ekron; as for the gold mice, their number was according to all the Philistine cities belonging to the five Tyrants, both fortified cities and unwalled villages. The great stone, on which they set down the Ark of the Lord, is a witness to this day in the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh. 16 (6: 17-

18) We have to note that, unlike the superstitious masses, the Philistine ruling class is an extremely hardheaded lot. Far from being swept up by superstitious panic, they can only be brought to some level of belief in the supernatural by the most extreme pressures. Statues falling off pedestals, as we have noted, are taken as natural phenomena. Even in the face of an outbreak of plague they refuse to panic. Their initial reactions are designed solely to appease the popular hysteria. Only an empirical test, what we might call "the scientific method," brings them to some sort of grudging recognition that the hand of God is involved-and this only to the extent of effecting propitiatory gestures. What is truly remarkable about the narrative is that it is related by an Israelite to whom divine intervention in human affairs is a given, a part of her world outlook. That the author could reflect so faithfully what, to her, was a totally alien pragmatic worldview is really extraordinary. The author obviously had a genius for putting herself into other people's shoes. It is certainly not a tale that, by any stretch of the imagination, she could have been expected to invent. The tradition was there, and she faithfully and imaginatively reflected it, managing, in the process, to get under the skins of protagonists of another culture. That she is obviously enjoying herself in the retelling of the tale only heightens the anomaly.

15. The tribe of Levi was the tribe devoted to the religious service of the Sanctuary. They would be the only persons pennitted to handle the Sacred Ark. (The priests-Cohanim-were a subdivision of the tribe of Levi). As Beth-shemesh had been designated as a Levitical city, it is hardly surprising to find Levites there. 16. Reading with LXX; MT reads until Abel, the great (stone), on which they set down the Ark ofthe Lord, until this day in the field ofJoshua the Beth-shemeshite.

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THE ARK FINDS A HOME If modem authorities are correct in their identification of the Philistine epidemic as Bubonic Plague, then we are dealing with a disease that is notorious for its disrespect of all boundaries. So we should hardly be surprised that the Israelite border poses no barrier to the plague.

And He smote the people of Beth-shemesh because they looked into the Ark of God, He smote of the people seventy men [and]fifiy thousand men, and the people mourned because the Lord had made a great slaughter among the people. 17 (6: 19) This raises a severe problem for the author. In her eyes, the plague originates with God's anger with the Philistines for their disrespectful treatment of His Ark. But why should the Israelites suffer? The text here is not clear. She seems to be saying that the plague spread to Beth-shemesh because curious Israelites opened the Ark and looked inside, i.e. gross disrespect for the Holy Object. This, at best, is very weak as a reason. It looks as though she is grasping at straws. Of course, writing, as she was two or three generations later, she may simply be repeating popular superstition for want of anything better. Assuming that the number seventy refers to the dead of Beth-shemesh, for a small village the mortality is catastrophic. Like the Philistines, they too perceive the Ark to be a potato too hot to hold.

And the people of Beth-shemesh said: "Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? And to whom shall it [the Ark] go up away from us?" And they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kiriath-jearim saying: "The Philistines have returned the Ark of the Lord. Come down and take it up to you. " And the men ofKiriath-jearim came and took up the Ark of the Lord, and brought it into the house of Abinadab on the hill; and they consecrated Eleazer his son to guard the Ark of the Lord Now from the day that the Ark was lodged in Kiriath-jearim the days stretched out into twenty years. 18 (6:20-7:2a) 17. The text seventy men [and] fifty thousand men is frankly difficult. One way of interpreting it is to conjecture that the first figure refers to Beth-shemesh alone, and the fifty thousand to an estimate of the total Israelite casualties before the plague ultimately burned itself out (obviously the epidemic did not stop with Beth Shemesh). Alternately, seeing that several Hebrew manuscripts omit the phrase and fifty thousand men we might simply ignore it. 18. Two very perplexing problems here face us: How could the Philistines permit an item such as the Ark, with the proven ability to act as a focus of national resistance, to rest on Israelite territory? Equally perplexing is the fact that, for more than fifty years, the Ark vanishes as if into a black hole, with no mention of it whatsoever in our text (with the exception ofMT 1 Samue/14:18, which seems obviously an error; we have followed LXX). If we call to mind the fact that Kiriath-jearim was part of the Gibeonite Tetrapolis (a union of four Canaanite cities whose non-Israelite populations had not been expelled by Joshua in the days of the Conquest-see Chapter 21, note 21), we may have a possible explanation of these puzzling circumstances. Being a Canaanite enclave in Israelite territory, they were natural allies of the Philistines. The indications are that they were Philistine dependencies till David finally broke, once and for all, the Philistine power. This might explain the Philistine willingness to allow the Ark to be domiciled long term in Kiriath-jearim. It was on Israelite territory, for the Tetrapolis was, by treaty, part of Israel; this satisfied the Philistine's superstitious requirements. Yet, on the other hand, it was being left for safekeeping within a pagan jurisdiction, thus insulating it from Israelite contact. Needless to say, the agreement would have provided that no Cohen (a priest who was descended from Aaron, the first High Priest) could serve the Ark, that no sacrifices be offered in its proximity and that no pilgrims be allowed access to it. Thus the Ark was effectively quarantined and neutralized. Being "removed from circulation," it ceased to be a factor in Israelite life for over half a century. This reading would imply that Abinadab's household (obviously Israelite) was an isolated family living in the territory ofKiriath-jearim (not in the town itself but "on the hill") and was kept under close supervision. Eleazer, his son, was not a priest but a layman consecrated to sacred service, which in this case consisted simply of guarding the Ark and making sure

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The Philistine triumph is total. The question as to who will inherit the Land of Canaan seems permanently decided. Israel and its God have been brought low. In less than a year the proud Israelite tribes have fallen from independence to the state of a subject people, from prosperity to destitution. Their central shrine is now rubble, their priests dead or fugitive. The sole ray of light in the allpervading darkness is the fact that their most sacred possession, the Ark of God, is no longer a trophy in a foreign pagan temple. It has been returned to sacred soil but now can serve neither as a focus of sacred worship nor as a symbol of national unity. The Philistines have made certain of that. It resides isolated and forlorn, in a private home on a remote hilltop. The years of the grim occupation follow one another with a monotonous sameness. Two decades pass.

EXCURSUS II: HOW THEY LIVED IN THOSE DAYS Before we proceed, it is appropriate at this point to pause briefly and consider the question of how the ancient Israelites lived in the days before the monarchy. It first must be stressed that well over ninety-five percent of the population lived off the land: as farmers raising crops, as herdsmen raising livestock, or both. When we get around to discussing architecture we will see that the standard four-room house was suited to the stabling of a number of animals. 19 These tended to be farm animals that could contribute their labor to that of the family: oxen for plowing and donkeys for transport (to ride on and also for the transport of goods). 20 Most families also kept a few goats, and sometimes sheep, for their milk-milk products, especially cheese, being important parts of the daily diet. Sheep and goats were the main source of meat along with cows and oxen. Bovines seem to have been bred chiefly for their meat and for their farm labor, not so much for milk. But meat was reserved only for special occasions and involved sacrifice. 21 The daily diet consisted of various forms of bread, milk products, some fruit and vegetables, olives (and olive oil) and of course wine. The chief sweetener was honey. 22 In the frrst phase of settlement in the highlands of the country (in the twelfth century BCE), the Israelites naturally chose the best pockets of agricultural land. These were mostly in the central highlands and on the eastern slopes of the central mountain ridge. Here they built their villages and towns in dense concentrations. Some of them we already know: Ramah, Shiloh and Gibeah. The conditions favored a mixed economy of subsistence farming with a bit of small-scale livestock breeding. As the population grew, however, the Israelites were forced to expand into less favorable areas- the western slopes of the highlands, southward into the Judean hills and the Negev Southlands. The western slopes were quite inhospitable until one reached the plains, which were grain country; we have met the farmers of Beth Shemesh reaping the wheat harvest in their fields. But settlement possibilities in the plains were limited; the Philistines were pushing in from the other direction. This left no alternative but to settle the western slopes of the highlands.

no harm came to it. It involved no religious or worship duties, which he would not have been qualified to perform and to which, anyway, the Philistines could hardly have been sympathetic. 19. See the Excursus IV at the conclusion of Chapter 7. 20. Horses were used mainly for military purposes in those days (pulling chariots) and were not to be found on the farm; mules were reserved for royal use exclusively. 21. Chickens were introduced from South East Asia at about this time, but only became an integral part of the local economy in the period of the monarchy. Dogs, while universally present, seem to have been held in low esteem. 22. Of all the domesticated animals of the Ancient Near East one is conspicuously absent-the pig. Indeed, along with the presence of the ubiquitous four-room house, one of the chief ways many archaeologists identity a town or village as Israelite is by the absence of pig bones in the garbage dumps.

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The only way this could be accomplished was to terrace the hills, building a series of steps that could hold the soil and the limited amounts of water available. This involved backbreaking labor. It also meant that the mixed agriculture that was the basis of subsistence farming was impossible. The only crops that could be economically grown on these terraces were olives and grapes. So these Israelites were forced by the terrain to specialize in cash crops; trading their olives and grapes (largely in the processed forms of oil and wine) for the grain they could not grow. This, in turn, led the older settlement areas to specialize in grain production, trading their surpluses for the olive and grape products ofthe western areas. By the time of Samuel, this evolution from subsistence farming to specialization in cash crops was well under way, and the resultant trade networks, along with the necessary middlemen, were well developed. The main economic unit was the family farm. Unlike the Canaanite city states of the Bronze Age, which operated centralized command economies with large estates worked by landless laborers (serfs), and where the storage and distribution of produce was centralized in the hands ofthe State, in the Iron Age every Israelite family worked its own land, relying on its own labor and that of resident relatives. It stored its own produce on the premises, consuming some and trading (or selling) its surpluses as the circumstances warranted. To this account must be added a scattering of artisans to supply the necessary specialized equipment that could not be manufactured easily on the farms (wagon makers, blacksmiths, stone masons etc.). Add further a small number of persons who provided less material services (priests, musicians, scribes etc.}--though many of these were also part-time farmers or pastoralists-and the picture of Israelite society at the time of the transition to the monarchy emerges to our view. Through all the changes and vicissitudes of the more than four centuries that were to elapse until the end of the first Biblical Age, the nuclear family was to continue to be the essential production unit in an overwhelmingly peasant society which, while containing wealth differentiation, remained basically egalitarian to the end.

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