1 Samuel 23 - 31: The Many Moods of Young King David

So, to bring us up to date: After centuries of loose rulership by "Judges," the Israelites asked the religious leader Samuel to appoint them a king. Samuel picked Saul, who has proven to be a good military and administrative leader, but who has fallen out of God's favor for neglecting the details of His instructions. Samuel has privately annointed David as a replacement king, and although nobody knows about that he's the king-in-waiting David has become very popular after his colorful dispatching of the Philistine champion Goliath. Saul sees David as a rival to the peoples' affection, accurately enough, and has made several attempts on his life. Because of this, David has fled out into the desert, where he has begun to attract a band of followers.

It's an unstable political situation that all this is going down in, and things don't get any more stable in the final chapters of 1 Samuel. Here's what happens:

1 Samuel 23 -- David, the Heroic!

David hears that an Israelite city called Keilah is under siege by the Philistines, and rides down to save the town. He is victorious, but Saul, hoping to trip David inside the walled city, then leads the army toward the site. David escapes into the countryside, but the locals tell Saul (who is the King, after all) where David is hiding. We're on the verge of a showdown when Saul has to move his army elsewhere to deal with a fresh Philistine incursion. David establishes a secure hideout in caves near the Crags of the Wild Goats.

1 Samuel 24 -- David, the Merciful!

With the Philistines taken care of, Saul continues the search for David up in the hills. One day, Saul steps into a cave to take a leak, unaware that the cave is crawling with David and his well-armed henchmen. However, David merely cuts off a little scrap of Saul's robe; the king never even realizes there are other people in the cave.

After Saul leaves, David goes out and shouts at him. See, my father, look at this piece of your robe in my hand! he says. I cut off the corner of your robe but did not kill you. (11) David claims that he is not a rebel, and just wants to be back in the king's good graces. Ashamed of his behavior, Saul admits he has been being a jerk, and says may the Lord reward you well for the way you treated me today. I know that you will surely be king and that the kingdom of Israel will be established in your hands (19-20) David is reassured, but is nervous enough to stay in the caves rather than going back home.

1 Samuel 25 -- David, the Thug!

Samuel dies. I guess we won't be seeing any more of him. OR WILL WE.....?

Meanwhile, David moves into the Desert of Maon. There is a household living nearby headed by a couple named Nabal and Abigail. She was an intelligent and beautiful woman, we learn, but her husband... was surly and mean in his dealings (3), not unlike the situation here at Castle5000. David's gang has been providing protection for the area, making sure that nothing gets stolen, but when he sends the boys around to ask for food, Nabal tells them to get lost. David, keen to find a workable solution to the standoff, decides to kill Nabal and everyone in his household for this injustice.

Word of this gets to Abigail, who leaps into action, puts together as much food as she can scrounge up, and meets David and his death squad en route. She eloquently offers up the food, and David is grateful both for being fed and for being deterred from making the hit, which he realizes -- a bit belatedly, it seems to me -- would have been a sin. He is so grateful, in fact, that after Nabal dies of natural causes a few weeks later, he takes Abigail as his third wife. Hmmm....

1 Samuel 26 -- David, Who Doesn't Believe in Regicide!

Saul saddles up his army and rides out against David again. This is presented as duplicity or malice, but one notes that David has been running something of a protection racket out in the hills, so this might also be interpreted as the kind of legitimate anti-briggandage activity you want from your king. Whatever. David sneaks into Saul's camp at night and takes the spear and water jug from beside him as he sleeps. Having left the camp, he scolds the king's men at a distance for not having given their master adequate protection, and lets Saul know that his life has been spared a second time. The Lord delivered you into my hands today, but I would not lay a hand on the Lord's annointed, he yells. (23) Saul is again moved, gets choked up, blesses David and predicts that great triumphs are in the young man's future.

1 Samuel 27 -- David, Slayer of the Innocent!

David sees the writing on the wall, however -- to use a Biblical reference we haven't got to yet -- and determines to leave Saul's lands before the king changes his mind again. He sets up household in the land of the Philistines, where his band makes their living by looting and killing. Whenever David attacked an area, he did not leave a man or woman alive, but took sheep and cattle, donkeys and camels, and clothes. (8) This is not, I might add, because of any special instructions from God. Instead, David is just killing anyone who might inform on him to the Philistine authority. (11)

I hadn't known much about David before this reading, but had always had an impression of him as a heroic and morally upright figure. I am surprised to see that, here in his adult life, he is so far a minor warlord noteworthy mostly as an extortionist and a murderer. You learn a lot when you read the Bible.

1 Samuel 28 -- The Witch of Endor

Saul is fighting with the Philistines again, and he's nervous that God will no longer talk to him. He disguises himself and goes to a witch in Endor, who raises Samuel from the dead. Samuel tells Saul that he is doomed and will die in battle against the Philistines the next day.

This chapter is so downright weird that I looked into it a little bit. Apparently, this little black-magic ghost story was always seen through the ages as a fairly obvious example of how you can't take the Bible literally, before the big 20th Century boom in fundamentalism. Also, it's the probable source of the name of Endora, in Bewitched. Again, you learn a lot....

1 Samuel 29 -- David, Traitor to His People!

The King of the Philistines leads his army against Saul, and David enlists himself and his men... on the Philistine side! The Philistine generals don't trust him, though, so the Philistine king sends him packing home, grumbling.

1 Samuel 30 -- David suffers a setback, but comes out smelling like a rose

When David and the men get back to the settlement where he has been living, he finds that Amalekites have raided it while they were gone, burned it, and abducted all of the women and children. After having wept aloud until they had no more strength to weep, David and the guys take off in pursuit. Through a lucky break or two, they find the Amelekites a few days later, and fight a day-long pitched battle, after which they recover not only their wives and children and property, but also the phat loot that the raiders had been stealing from everyone else in Judah. There is great rejoicing as David splits the bounty with great fairness among his men, sending portions also to various local rulers and political connections.

1 Samuel 31 -- Saul's Unhappy End

The Philistines turn out not to have needed David and his men anyway. They triumph easily over the Israelites. All of Saul's sons -- including David's buddy Jonathan -- are killed in the fighting, and recognizing his situation as hopeless, Saul falls on his own sword. The Philistines lop off his head when they find his body, then tack his headless corpse up on a city wall to advertise their triumph. Bad form. No one likes a gloating winner.

...and that brings us to the end of 1 Samuel. With Samuel having died -- although we can't really say he's been resting comfortably in his grave, what with the necromancy -- it is a little surprising that the next book is called 2 Samuel. Maybe we'll find out why! Or maybe it's just a random naming convention.


Next Time: We start 2 Samuel!

1 Samuel 17-22: Underdog Makes Good!

The story of David and Goliath, told in 1 Samuel 17, is remarkable in being exactly what I remembered from Sunday school. Young David is sent to the battlefield to bring bread to his older brothers, who are serving in the army, and there he sees how terrified the troops are of the Philistine champion, Goliath. I'd be terrified too. Goliath is 9 feet tall, wears 125 pounds of armor, and wields a spear with a 15 pound tip. This is not a small man. But the little shephard beans him in the forehead with one shot from his sling, and down he goes.

Interestingly, this clash of champions only kicks off the battle, rather than serving as a way of avoiding it. The whole idea of a battle between champions is that the side whose champion wins will get the privileges of winning without the necessary bloodshed, but when David saws off Goliath's head to finish him off, the Philistines run in panic and the Israelites make chase and attack them. So, although David taking out Goliath swings morale and initiative to the Israelites, it can't really be seen as decisive to the battle. After all, he only killed one guy out of a whole army.


Anyway, after his high-profile triumph, David is a real hero. The people become increasingly fond of him, and he befriend's King Saul's son Jonathan. But Saul himself grows jealous of the young boy. He gives David increasingly dangerous military missions, hoping that he'll die in action, but David always prevails. Raising the stakes, Saul promises his daughter Michal (no relation) in marriage to David if he will produce 100 Philistine foreskins. Never one to shrink from a challenge, David goes out and kills 200 Philistines, cuts off their... well, you get the idea. Not only does David survive the mission, Saul has exchanged the princess for a bucket of foreskins. He could have done better.

Note: The battle of David and Goliath are a popular subject for children's tales, but they never mention the bucket of foreskins. Why do you suppose that is?

The Psyche of Psaul

It's hard to diagnose people who lived thousands of years ago -- especially since, technically, I'm not qualified to diagnose anybody -- but you have to wonder is Saul has some organic mental health issues. He needs David around to soother him during his frequent bouts of possession by evil spirits, but he's also so jealous that he's trying to have the boy killed. Saul also has extreme anger-management issues, on two occasions attracking David with a spear and completely freaking out on his son when the young man intervenes on David's behalf.

It's a bad scene, and after the second spear incident David gets the heck out of Dodge. Jonathan and his wife Michal help him escape. Saul, however, has really lost it at this point, and he goes chasing David into the wilderness. Learning that a priest has innocently given David some bread and Goliath's old sword, Saul explodes with rage. The priest had no reason to think that David was not still in the king's favor, but no matter. The hapless guy is executed, along with 85 other priests, all of their families, the entire population of their town, and all of the livestock.

David, meanwhile, has been keeping himself scarce, hanging out in such places as the Cave of Adullam, the court of the Moabite king, the Forest of Hereth, and Bag End in the Shire. No, just kidding with that last one. Saul's increasingly erratic and draconian reign is increasingly alienating and displacing more and more people, and many of them find their way to David's hideouts. By the end of today's reading, he seems to have a small rebel army in the making.


Next time: Usually, when there's a rebel army gathering, rebellion is a safe bet.

1 Samuel 13-16: Where Saul Goes Wrong

Saul does not seem to be working out as king of the Israelites. Remember Samuel's long list of terrible problems that will befall Israel if they take a king? Well, none of these things actually happen. In fact, Kind Saul is a pretty effective ruler as far as we can tell. We don't know much about his domestic policies, but his military adventures all seem to turn out quite well.

Where Saul fails is in attention to the fine print of Mosaic law. He is not impious, and he certainly doesn't get into trouble with the whole Baal/Asgeroth sort of thing, but he forgets or neglects the details, and this really makes God mad.

In Chapter 13, for instance, Saul is trying to defend a strategic area against a powerful Philistine army with only a handful of frightened and inadequately armed men. He figures it might be a good time to make a sacrifice to God. At the the end of the ceremony, though, old Samuel shows up and chews him out, prophesying that Saul's kingship will now fall because of his foolish action. I had to read this passage three times, trying to understand what Saul had done wrong. I think I've figured it out; have you? (answer below)

In Chapter 14, Saul's son Jonathon heroically attacks the Phillistine force and puts them to rout almost single-handedly. It is an amazing victory. After a full day of iron-age combat -- a hell of a workout, by any standard -- Jonathon comes across a honeycomb, and takes a taste. Unbeknownst to him, his father had earlier placed a curse on any man who ate during the daytime before the battle was won. Why? Hard to say. But he did.

In camp that night, God won't talk to Saul, and by casting lots they determine that it is Jonathon's fault. When the honey story comes out, Saul wants to kill Jonathon, but he is disuaded from killing his son, the hero of the hour, when the troops get testy about the idea. So again, he is resisting God's commands.

Next, in Chapter 15, Saul is sent against the Amelekites with the kind of jolly instructions we have become used to:

3Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to
them. Do not spare them: put to death men and women, children and infants,
cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.

Saul takes care of the men, women, children, infants, donkeys, and camels thoroughly enough, but he lets the soldiers hang on to the best specimans of the cattle and sheep so that they can make a great sacrifice. Samuel shows up to tell him that he has blown it again; there were not supposed to be any deviations from his instructions. Keeping the cows and sheep was sinful, says Samuel:

Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
23For rebellion is like the sin of divination
and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
he has rejected you as king.

(Keeping in mind that Samuel claims to be essentially the sole conduit for communications from God at this point, incidentally, there are at least two possible interpretations of his increasing irritation with Saul. Be we shall not dwell on this.)

God sends Samuel to Bethlehem to find a better king. He's told to select among the sons of Jesse, but after looking at all seven of Jesse's boys God still hasn't given him a signal. Then he learns that there is an eighth, youngest son out back with the sheep, and of course this underdog child turns out to be The One. Samuel annoints him in a private ceremony. His name is David. You know. David:



David is an excellent harp player. Without knowing that the lad has been annointed by Samuel, Saul's handlers recruit him to play for Saul and help him chill out whenever he is visited by an "evil spirit from God" -- that strange concept again -- which seems to be a kind of depressive episode that started happening after the Amelekite debacle. Saul likes David, and makes him one of his armor-bearers. So, unbeknownst to Saul, he has the guy who has been set up to replace him as one of his closest attendents. Oh, the irony!

Next Week: David... Philistines... I sense an archetypal story coming!


Answer: I think the problem is that Saul has conducted a sacrifice outside of the Tabernacle. All sacrifices are supposed to happen there, overseen by the priests, and by conducting a "field sacrifice" Saul has offended God.

1 Samuel 8-12: The Israelites Get Government

So here we are, 1 Samuel 8, and our title character has already grown old. He faces the same problem that his mentor Eli did: his sons are no damn good. He has put them in leadership positions, but they are corrupt and show poor judgement. The people, seeing this and noting also the increasing strength of the hostile Ammonites, ask Samuel to appoint a king.

This really pisses Samuel off. The text doesn’t explain why he’s made, so at first you assume it’s because his sons are being bypassed. But that’s not it. Eventually, you figure out that Samuel is upset because Israelites aren’t supposed to have a king; only God is supposed to be the king. It’s a little hard to wrap your head around this, because the “Judges” have often acted a lot like kings anyway, so what’s the difference? But obviously, there was a clear and important distinction to the writer and original audience of 1 Samuel.

Samuel brings the issue to God, who tells him to warn the people what kings are like. He cuts loose with a fiery speech that anticipates the Declaration of Independence, not to mention talk-radio anti-government scree:

11 He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."

But the people are not persuaded by this analysis, so Samuel says fine, OK, God will help me pick a king for you.

The person turns out to be Saul, an extremely tall young man from a small clan in Benjamin, which for reasons discussed earlier is the smallest and most marginal of the twelve tribes. He runs into Samuel while out looking for some runaway donkeys; Samuel recognizes him immediately as the king-to-be, invites him to dinner, and anoints him king in private. Later, there is a public ceremony in front of the entire assembly, but Saul can’t be found at first because he is hiding in the luggage. They eventually find him and fish him out to be coronated, and this bizarre behavior is not explained or mentioned again.

Saul, Rex

At this point, the Ammonites make their move. They besiege the city of Jabesh Gilead, and when the city elders try to negotiate a treaty, they agree on the condition that they can gouge one eye out of everyone in the town, “and so bring disgrace to all Israel.” (11:2)

When Saul hears about this, he gets very angry. He cuts a pair of oxen into little chunks, and sends the chunks out with a message that all Israelite men are to muster for battle, and that any slackers will have their oxen carved into similarly-sized pieces. This generates an excellent turnout, and Saul breaks the siege of Jabesh Gilead, routing and scattering the Ammonite army in an all-day battle.

There is a reaffirmation of Saul’s kingship at this point, with much sacrificing and celebrating, but then Samuel stands up to lay down some serious Old Testament preaching. He reminds the Israelites of all the times that God has saved their nation, and then rebukes them for having asked for a king. It’s a rebuke with teeth:

16 "Now then, stand still and see this great thing the LORD is about to do
before your eyes! 17 Is it not wheat harvest now? I will call upon the LORD to
send thunder and rain. And you will realize what an evil thing you did in the
eyes of the LORD when you asked for a king."

It is interesting to craft analogues for this conception of behavior and punishment, where you give somewhat what they want and then punish them for having wanted it. I imagine a parent telling her child that he was supposed to eat his veggies, but since he wanted candy she gave him candy instead -- but now she’s going to break his favorite toy to teach him a lesson.

Samuel finishes his speech with an exhortation for the Israelites to be more dedicated to God, and to stop being so evil. You wonder if maybe some of the people in the audience were distracted at this point by wondering how they would survive, the food supply for the coming year having just been destroyed.


Next Week: Saul takes on the Philistines

1 Samuel 1-7: The Life of Samuel, Although Perhaps Not in its Entirety

We pass now from Ruth into 1 Samuel, moving beyond the eight books that I had previously memorized the order of. Knowing nothing about the new territory, really, I nevertheless had an expectation that it would be either a) a formal biography of someone named Samuel or b) a dynastic history that began, ended, or peaked with someone named Samuel.

Samuel: The Early Years

Well, the Bible is full of surprises, and as the book begins it sounds very much like a folk tale. We are introduced to a man, Elkanah, and the wife that he loves very much, Hannah. Oh, and also the wife he doesn't like as well, Peninnah. Peninnah has all of the children in this plural marriage, and picks on poor barren Hannah. Hannah prays so fervently for a child that the old priest Eli thinks she's drunk, and she promises God that if she has a child it will be devoted to the priesthood. Within the year, baby Samuel is born, and soon he is taken to Eli to become a Nazzarite. Hannah sings a long hymn (2:1-10) and then exits the story, except for annual visits when she brings Samuel little robes she has sewn him (2:19). Isn't that a sweet detail?

But meanwhile, there's trouble down at the Tabernacle. Eli's sons are corrupt, distaining the proper sacrifice procedures and sleeping with the temple maidens. Eli is not able to bring them under control, and a mystic brings him a message that he and his sons will therefore be punished by God.

One night Samuel is lying in bed and hears Eli call him, but when he goes to the priest he's told to go back to bed, nobody said anything. This happens three times, at which point Eli realizes that it's God talking to the boy. After a quick lesson in receiving divine visions, Samuel goes back to bed; this time, when God calls, he stays put and listens. The message is just a reaffirmation that yes, Eli and his family are doomed, but it is only the first of many revelations and so Samuel is an increasingly important religious figure as he grows up. "The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up," says the text in an especially nice passage, "and he let none of his words fall to the ground" (3:19).

Enter the Philistines

At this point, the Philistines attack Israel, and they are winning. The elders decide to send the Ark of the Covenant out with the troops, in hope of a dramatic divine intervention a la Joshua at Jericho. This turns out to be a bad idea. The Philistines are freaked out at first by the presence of the Ark, but after a rousing pep talk (4:7-9) they rally themselves, win the battle, kill Eli's two sons, and bring the Ark home in triumph. Informed of the losses, Eli passes out and breaks his neck in the fall.

The Philistines, much like the fictional Nazis of a much later adventure movie, find the Ark of the Covenant too hot to handle. They put it in the main temple of their main god, Dagon, but they keep waking up to find that Dagon -- who is basically a big rock idol -- has prostrated himself before the Ark during the night. Totally embarassing, if you are a priest or worshiper of Dagon. As if this wasn't bad enough, the city also begins suffering a plague of rats and, um, groin tumors. They try shipping the Ark around to other cities, but wherever it goes, rats and groin tumors follow. You can't blame the Philistine on the street for starting to have a bit of a "Not In My Backyard" attitude toward the Ark.

This is all very unsettling, so the Philistines put together a blue-ribbon panel of priests and oracles to advise on the situation. Following the recommendation of the committee, they put the Ark on a wagon drawn by two specially-selected cows, along with an offering of golden rats and tumors (great gift idea: golden tumor!). The cows make a beeline for Israel, keeping on the road and lowing all the way; they did not turn to the right or to the left. (6:12) The Philistines just let it go.

At the Israelite town that the cows take the Ark to, the townsfolk make the mistake of opening it up to look inside. This is fairly normal behavior when you get back a stolen container, but it is of course a big no-no with the Ark, and 70 people are struck down for it. Or maybe 50,700; manuscripts differ on this point. It's a small town, so 70 seems a little more realistic to me. Anyhoo, to avoid a recurrence, the Ark is taken to a secure location and put under guard.

Samuel Triumphant

While the Ark is packed away, the Israelites have something of a religious revival under Samuel. Once again, the Israelites put away their Baals and Ashtoreths, and served the Lord only. (7:4) Who knows! Maybe it will stick this time! Anyway, Samuel calls a great meeting at a place called Mizpah, and the Israelites gather to fast and repent. As Samuel is conducting the sacrifice, though, the wiley Philistines attack! But God sends them into a panic, and at the battle becomes the first of many in which the Israelites under Samuel are able to oust the Philistines from their territory.

Phew! What a lot of narrative! We are only through Chapter 7, and already we're being told that Samuel continued as judge over Israel all the days of his life. But there must be more to it than that; we've still got 24 more chapters in 1 Samuel, and then of course there's 2 Samuel. I guess we'll see what happens.

I Was Predestined to Write the Following

As a sidebar, I want to mention the idea of predestination. I know that a lot of theological ink has been spent on the profoundly arid question of whether humans have free will. It is an abundantly pointless question, since human beings experience life as if they did and can't do much about it if they don't, but there are sections of the Bible that do kind of provoke a reader to think about such stuff.

When Eli tries to talk his sons out of being such jerks, for instance, we're told that they did not listen to their father's rebuke, for it was the Lord's will to put them to death. (2:25) So, THEY certainly don't have free will; they are just puppets of God's plan. But only a paragraph later, God makes a change in his plan: I promised that your house and your father's house would minister before me forever. But now the Lord declares: 'Far be it from me! Those who honor me I will honor, but those who despise me will be distained. The time is coming when I will cut short your strength and the strength of your father's house...." (2:30-31) Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that humans DO have free will, but it pretty much shoots down the idea that they can't have free will because God has everything figured out in advance. Sometimes, even God apparently needs to come up with a Plan B.

I'm just glad John Calvin isn't still around to see me dismantle his theology with such elegant and sophisticated reasoning.


Next Week: For some reason I thought that "Saul" and "Paul" were the same guy, but here Saul is in the Old Testament so I must have been wrong.