Jeremy Rosen
Samuel: the First Religious Politician

Jeremy Rosen - Samuel: The First Religious Politician

- [Host] Miriam says that she is waving Hello from Atlanta.

• How nice. Hi, Miriam.

• [Host] And I think with that wonderful hello and welcome, I think we can get started. So hello and welcome to everyone, and Jeremy, whenever you’re ready, over to you.

• Okey dokey. So Samuel, the “Book of Samuel” is interesting for two overriding reasons. Number one, it begins the in-detailed characterization of biblical figures, much more in much greater depth than we’ve had up to now. And in addition to that, it is also the first book that seriously deals with political issues, and questions of governance, and the distinction between, if you like, the secular powers and the religious powers. The “Book of Samuel” starts off with what looks like a repeat of certain earlier biblical themes. A wife can’t have children, she is distraught. The husband tries to comfort her, but fails. In this story, Hannah, her name is, has a loving husband who cares about her. And when she says to him, “I can’t have children, what’s my life worth?” He says, “Well, what am I worth, aren’t I enough?” Typical male Chauvinist response, I suppose. And she is desolate. She has a competing other wife who Elkanah, her husband, doesn’t love as much as he loves her. So it’s a repeat of the Jacob, Rachel, and Leah situation. And she goes and she prays, and she goes to the tabernacle at Shiloh, where the high priest is a man called Eli. And Eli has two questionable sons, Hophni and Phinehas. And here she is pouring her heart out, and Eli observes her and he sees that she’s crying and no words are coming out, and he thinks she’s drunk. And he begins to rebuke her, and she replies and says, “No, I’m not drunk, I’m just in so much pain because I don’t have a child, and I’m here in order to pray for one.”

Then Eli understands, he calms down a bit, he gives her a blessing and sends her home with her husband. Lo and behold, she has a baby. And this baby she calls Samuel, Shmuel, God has listened to me, and she’s taken a vow. And her vow is that if she does have a son, she will dedicate him to the temple. Now, or no temple at the moment, the tabernacle, but it’s the same sort of thing. And then she delivers herself, in the second chapter of the “Book of Samuel”, a beautiful poem, a beautiful prayer, which in fact is the foundation of all ritual liturgical prayers that come from this moment. So all references in the “Talmud” and the “Oral Law” to what constitutes prayer? Do you have to express words, or is it feelings? What kind of feelings all come back to this second chapter of Samuel and the prayer of Hannah. So after a year, she comes back to the tabernacle, or waits rather, I’m sorry. It’s not a year, she waits for the child to be weaned, brings him to the tabernacle, presents him to Eli, and leaves him there. Now, this raises an interesting question. What then is his role? Is he just an ordinary serving boy working to clean up the tabernacle or to do odd jobs, or is he sent for some sort of training? In which case, since the only work that was done in the tabernacle was by priests with assistance from Levites, was he a priest or not? It’s not in the first phase at all clear whether Samuel is going to emerge as a religious leader or as a political leader.

But what is clear is that there is trouble. Following on from the period of the judges, the Israelites are misbehaving. They’re coming under constant attack from the prophets, from the Philistines, from the enemy. The text says that at this moment there’s no prophecy anymore in Israel, the spiritual leadership of the prophet has disappeared. The role of the priest simply seems to be a functional one, but the inspirational role seems to be that of the priest. And so although this doesn’t appear to be a book that’s much interested in religion, religion does run beneath the surface right through. So in a fact, Samuel is described as a priest, but not in the “Book of Samuel”. Not until the much later book of the Chronicles, which was written many, many years later and is a recap of the whole of the development of the Jewish people from Moses through to the destruction of the Judean state in 586. Samuel kind of sleeps near to Eli. Eli regards him as a kind of a protege. Meanwhile, his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are running things in the tabernacle in a corrupt, decadent way, both in the way they mistreat the women and in the way they take bribes or they select things they shouldn’t be selecting from the sacrifices to keep for themselves. But they’re not nice people, and yet, they, together with Eli, are the leadership of the Jewish people at this moment. Things have reached a low end. Samuel is asleep one night when he hears a voice saying, “Samuel,” and he thinks it’s Eli speaking to him. He gets out of bed and he goes to Eli and he says, “Eli, you called me,” and Eli says, “No, I didn’t call you, go back to sleep.”

He goes back to sleep and another voice comes and says, “Samuel.” And he goes back to Eli and says, “I heard you call,” and Eli said, “No, I didn’t. But if the voice calls again, reply, "Here I am.”“ And of course the voice calls again, and here is God. And just as in a way God called to Adam right at the beginning in the Garden of Eden and said, "I echo, where are you?” Now God is calling on Samuel, and Samuel says, “I am here, do whatever you want to do with me.” And essentially this is his appointment by God to be the leader of the Jewish people, both spiritually and politically. As soon as he reaches a position of responsibility, the Philistines attack. And so Hophni and Phinehas take the Ark of the Covenant of God and they go out to fight the Philistines. These corrupt guys in charge of the battle. They lose, they are killed. And when the news comes back to Eli that actually not that they are killed, but the tabernacle has been taken and captured by the Philistines, he falls back off his chair and dies. And that leaves Samuel now all of a sudden in charge of the Jewish people, both in terms of spirituality and in terms of practical, political leadership. Obviously a gifted young man accepted by everybody. There’s no hint that there’s any difficulty about his position. He’s got it, and not only that, but he shows himself capable by leading the army back to attack the Philistines and drive them out. But meanwhile, of course, the Ark has been captured.

And here we have an interesting narrative in the “Book of Samuel” about what happens when the Ark is captured and taken down by the Philistines. The Philistines are all of a sudden stricken with kind of diseases, illnesses, and they believe that the Ark is trying to tell them, “I shouldn’t be here, leave me alone.” They try moving the Ark from one place to another, and it’s a trophy after all, but wherever they move it, there’s trouble. And so finally they decide to send the Ark back home with appropriate golden gifts, and they let it go on a cart with inexperienced oxen to carry it and they let it wander, and the oxen start carrying it up towards the Israelites up in the hill country. And wherever the Ark goes, there’s trouble. Trouble if you touch it, trouble if you mistreat it. And eventually, it finds a spot of a good man and stays there in this good man’s property for a long period of time. For 20 years in the home of a good guy, and there aren’t many good guys around here. But what is interesting is that this Ark is treated as some sort of dangerous magic. The Philistines are frightened of it, even some of the Israelites are frightened of it. And the big question is, what is the Ark supposed to symbolise? Is it supposed to symbolise the presence of God, and therefore when God is being ignored, the Ark kind of causes anxiety? And when God is being worshipped , the Ark all of a sudden brings stability? This idea of stability and location are very important as this book begins to open up. Now, Samuel sees once the Ark has returned to the land of Israel, still in this place, the Kiriath Jearim, and he starts travelling around as a judge.

He does a circuit around the country, he deals with problems that arise, he is regarded as the wisest man, he is in this strong position. But interestingly enough, despite this, there seems to be a strong undercurrent of superstition and idolatry, so that every time, for example, the Philistines are defeated, they put up a little idle, a little stone as a record, but this stone becomes something then that is worshipped . And then we have something also unusual. The unusual thing is there is something called an ephod. Now, an ephod is used in the “Torah” simply as a garment that the priest wears. But here the ephod has two meanings. One meaning is that it is the oracle, the stones, the 12 stones, the 12 tribes on the breastplate of the high priest, which was an oracle that you turned to when you didn’t know what to do and you wanted to divine assistance. So that seems to be the important thing. And was the ephod this kind of oracle, or was the ephod, as we see in the “Book of Samuel”, just anything that people worship? A generic term for what people worship and don’t behave rightly, but when they have problems, turn to this ephod to solve their problems for them. Sounds a bit like some Hasidic rebbes whose task is to alleviate people’s guilt, and functioning to some extent as a substitute, as an intermediary, and as very many people regard their effigies, whether they are effigies in terms of bodies of important saints, or whether it’s terms of icons. But anyway, we have a period where Samuel is remarkably successful.

The trouble is he’s now getting old, and as he gets old, his two sons who he has appointed as judge substitutes in the South in Beersheba, are also getting up to monkey business in the same way that Eli’s two sons got into monkey business. And this is just following through a tradition, a tradition of great leaders whose sons just don’t have it. Interestingly enough, the first person that could be said of is Moses, whose two sons, Gershom and Eliezer, disappear off the face of the earth only to emerge through a grandson who’s an idol worshipper. And now Eli’s two sons are corrupt, Samuel’s two sons are corrupt, and the people gather around and they come to sell Samuel, and say, “Samuel, we want a king.” And they ask for a king in a very strange way. They say, “We want a king to be like the other nations around us.” Now, the whole of the “Bible” reiterates this idea that you’re not supposed to be like the people around you. Why do you want to imitate the people around you? Their record isn’t that good. The trouble with that is that in the “Book of Deuteronomy”, there is a chapter which says, “If you were to say, "I want to appoint a king because I want to be like the nations around me,”“ this very phrase that is repeated here word for word in the "Book of Samuel”. “I want a king to be like everybody around me.” Surely that’s going against everything the “Torah” has said about not being like the people around you. Not only that, but the “Torah” then goes on to say, “If you want to appoint a king, then there are certain restrictions you must place on this king.

You mustn’t allow him to go to war just for the sake of making, taking booty, and you mustn’t allow him to go down to Egypt in pursuit of horses,” which means chariots, which means arms, “and you mustn’t let him have too many wives. And there’s a danger that this king will get up to monkey business, but you should know for as long as he sits on the throne, he has to be subject to the laws of the "Torah”. The king can never be above the law. The ruler always has to be subject to the law.“ That’s what the "Torah” says. There’s going to be some fiddling with this later on, but that’s another story. So here we have a situation where Samuel is being approached by the people, and the people said, “We want a king to be like every other nation,” which clearly is not a good idea, and yet that’s what the “Torah” says you’re allowed to do. And Samuel then is distraught, as if, “I have done something terrible.” And here once again, he echoes the words that are written in the “Torah” when Moses is being challenged. Moses is being challenged by Korah, who says, “Listen, you’re keeping all the top jobs for you and your family hereon, we’ve had enough of you. Who the hell do you think you are?” And he turns around and says, “Have I ever done anything for me personally? Have I taken one ass from any of you? Have I taken anything I shouldn’t have taken? No.” And this is what Samuel now says, he echoes Moses. So you are seeing, actually, literally, literarily speaking, the continuity of the biblical narrative through this Samuel narrative on the issue of king and leadership.

And what Samuel then does is to call, go back to God and say, “God, what should I do?” And God replies to him and says, “Go ahead if that’s what they want, because it’s not you they are rejecting. it’s me they are rejecting.” Now, this, interestingly enough, raises the whole issue of the role of the king. Because in the ancient world, the king was God. The king was God on earth, and it was God who deputised him, so to speak, to be in that position. And the role of the priests was always subservient to the king, who at the same time as being king, was also the high priest. So throughout the ancient world, the king and the high priest fulfilled one single role. And this role is now being challenged here. But there’s another point to this. The other point to this is that the “Torah” is very, very strict on not following the non-Jewish nations on the basis of idolatry. That they shouldn’t be idle worshipers like them. And it’s very specific in the rules that it gives. And yet when it comes to governance, the “Torah” is, I think, intentionally vague, very vague, and vague because it gives all these different models of leadership. There’s a model of Moses, who you might say is a theocratic leader. You’ve got the model of the judge, who is both the administrator and the tribal leader. You have the role of the priest and the Levite, who is the authority in terms of the sanctuary and also in terms of education, that was their role too.

And so what the “Torah” seems to be saying by adding on the king and saying that when it comes to a king, this is the only area where you may follow what the non-Jews are doing. Seems to be saying that when it comes to politics, politics is not necessarily restricted or confined by the “Torah”. That you can look for whatever system of governance happens to be appropriate at one particular moment. And although that system of government has to accept the moral authority of God, it can vary. And that’s a very important principle, because people very often ask, “Well, is Judaism in favour of Marxism? Is Judaism in favour of capitalism? Is Judaism in favour of democracy?” And the answer is, what really matters is how a person behaves. Are you behaving in a moral, ethical, spiritual way? But beyond that, whatever works, works, and you may switch from one to another, which is why we as a people, we’ve had our kings, and we’ve had our judges, and we’ve had our different kinds of leadership throughout the history of our development. So this is the challenge that Samuel faces, and despite the fact that he can get God to thunder and reign to show that he is right, nevertheless, he is given permission to appoint a king. And God says, “I’m going to help you find the right guy,” which given that he ends up finding the wrong guy is also problematic. Maybe like Abraham, he didn’t hear, or understand, or get the message properly. But either wise, either way, now Samuel has to find a king. Meanwhile, there is another trend here, and that is the trend of the prophet. The prophet has not yet been mentioned on a personal level other than to say at the beginning of this book, so far there’s been no prophecy.

What, there’s no prophecy up to now? Is Samuel, therefore, the first prophet? Maybe so, we shall see. So back to the text, and halfway through the “Book of Samuel,” there are two Samuels, Samuel one and Samuel two. Samuel gets a message that the man who’s going to be king is going to appear to you and he is the one who you should appoint. And then the narrative switches to a man called Saul. Saul, son of Kish, is a bit of a lad, is a shepherd. There’s nothing notable about him other than he is very tall. He’s head and shoulders taller than anybody else. He’s a strong guy and he belongs to the Tribe of Benjamin, which is one of the smallest tribes. So it seems the idea initially is to find a leader from a small tribe rather than try to find one from the biggest tribe, for example, the Tribe of Judah, which is the dominant one. And he goes to the Tribe of Benjamin, and Saul has been sent out by his father to find some lost asses. The donkeys, they’re lost. And he and his assistant are wandering around the country looking for this, and they can’t find the donkeys. And his assistant, meeting a young lady on the way, let’s ask no questions about that, says, “Look, the man of God is in town. Why don’t you go and ask a man of God where your asses are?” And so they go into town and they eventually discover the man of God, that is to say Samuel. Samuel sees this guy and he says to himself, “God, this can’t be the man. I mean this surely can’t be, and certainly not for the tribe.” And God turns around and says, “Listen, I’m telling, you this is the man. I want you to anoint him.” And so initially he manages to persuade Saul, against his better judgement , to accept the position, to accept the role. On the way, to get the approval of everybody else, Saul is wandering around through the countryside, and he comes across a bunch of prophets.

And these bunch of prophets sound like happy-clappys, or sound like Hare Krishnas wandering through the countryside with tambourines, and music, and clapping and happy, and excited, and high on something or other. And Saul joins in with them, and he starts dancing, and he starts prophesying. And the reaction of everybody around is, “Hello. Suddenly this guy Saul has got God, we don’t what he’s up to.” But you can see several things from this. First of all, you can see from this that religious life at the time was not confined to the tabernacle. The tabernacle were the priests, but there were these other guys, the ordinary guys out in the countryside, and they were religious guys too in their own way. So religious life was much more complex, rather like it is nowadays with our Kabbalah Centre and all these weirdos thinking they found God in magical hocus-pocus ways. And on the other hand, you have the established Rebbe, who are boring and interested in politics and power. So life has not changed very much. The problem now Samuel has, is to get everybody else, the other tribes, to accept Saul as their king. And this is not a very easy thing to do. And indeed, Saul himself doesn’t want the job, and just as they’re about publicly in the theatre to crown him as king, he’s hiding behind the stage and doesn’t want to come out until Samuel brings him out and he faces the music. And they look at him and they say, “Look, ooh, we’re not so happy, but look.

But we’ve got a problem at the moment, the Philistines are attacking us. If he’s prepared to lead us out, by all means.” And for some reason they are prepared to let him go out. And he does. He goes out, and at this first encounter, he wins over their hearts. But it’s a small encounter before they go out to face the main Philistine army, as the Ammonites, who basically live in Transjordan, have threatened one of the cities, Jabesh Gilead, and have threatened it that, you know, so they’re going to kill ‘em. And Jabesh Gilead say, “Look, look, we’ll make peace, we’ll make peace.” He says, “Okay, you make peace as long as you put out the eye, the right eye of everybody there.” So no peace offer. Saul managers to gather a group of people around together, they attack the Ammonites, they kill 'em, they manage to save Jabesh Gilead. And everybody says, “Okay, this guy clearly is capable up to a point.” So he is then taken to Gilgal, and at Gilgal, everybody gathers around the tribes and they appoint him. And Saul anoints him for a second time. And now finally, after all this, “Well, can we trust him, is he good enough?” He gets the job and Saul becomes the king. Still, Samuel is not happy. He still warns them, “ Listen, I want you to know what kings do. They’ll take your sons and they’ll make them join your army. They’ll take your daughters and use them as maid servants,” and whatever it is. “They’re going to take your trots, they’re going to tax you, there’s going to be taxation and all kinds of problems, but you asked for it, you got it. Now you’re going to have to live with it.” Interestingly, at this particular moment, the “Book of Samuel” says, you know, there were no arms in Israel at this time. The Philistines hadn’t let them have blacksmiths, so they had no arms. All they had was sticks and stones or whatever is was, like David’s slings.

So the odds are heavily stacked against them, and yet for one reason or another, they feel strong enough to win the battle. And what happens is that Saul and Jonathan manage to defeat the Philistines at a place called Geba. It’s a small little outward crop, and it’s a small little raiding party that they manage to defeat. But they actually manage to defeat some Philistines for the first time. And that looks like it’s a good sign for the future. But then they have to face the total army of the Philistines at Michmash. And really at this moment, Saul is really disturbed about what we can do. And what he does is ask for Samuel’s approval to go out to war. And Samuel says to him, “Yes I do, but on the other hand, I want you to wait until I come to join you, and then we will worship God together as an act of worship and then you can go out to war.” Saul agrees, and he waits, but Samuel is delayed. And so Saul decides by himself, because he could see people are leaving the field of battle, they’ve got to go back to their homes to till their ground, the crops, to look after their parents, whatever it is. And so they’re scaring away and he’s worried about it. And so he decides to go to war. And he goes to war, he gets ready to go to war, and he’s on the way when Samuel arrives, and he’s absolutely furious with him. He says, “You are subject to me. I’m your religious leader, I’m the prophet.

God gives the orders. You have to obey the orders. If you think you can ignore me, then you’re not fit to be king. And I’m telling you now, right at the beginning, your dynasty will not survive. You are not the type of man we need.” Bit unfair, poor guy. But at this moment, Saul doesn’t seem to be too much bothered about it. And he, together with his son, Jonathan, go to war and they manage to overcome the Philistines, largely by psychological warfare. Jonathan goes out ahead without officially permission with his scout. They manage to deceive a Philistine outpost, catch them off guard, kill them, and that terrifies the main camp because the main camp think that these Israelites have got some magic that’s working against us. And as they go forward to march, the king takes them forward to march, Saul. He warns everybody that this is so serious, nobody should eat until we’ve finished this fight. Jonathan, meanwhile, who’s been out on his own mission, hasn’t heard this. And as he’s travelling through the forest in order to get back to join the main army, he and his men come across some honey and they help themselves to this honey, and it strengthens them, and revives them, and gives them the power to go on, join the army, and help totally defeat the enemy. But then as they’re celebrating, word gets back to Saul that Jonathan has been eating this honey.

And Jonathan is brought before Saul, and Saul says to Jonathan, “I took an oath and I said, "Whoever eats this day before we finish the victory is going to be put to death.” You have ignored me, you have eaten, and therefore I’m going to put you to death.“ Remember, we had something a bit like this, not quite like this, when we were talking in the "Book of Judges” of Jephthah, Yiftach, who took an oath before battle, whatever comes out of my house first is going to be sacrificed. And it was his daughter, and we had to find a way around it. And I mentioned at the time this doesn’t make sense, because in Jewish law, if you take a vow and there’s something comes that makes you realise it wasn’t appropriate or you wouldn’t have done it did you know then what you know now, you are allowed to cancel the vow. But here what happens is the soldiers and everybody else gathered round Saul and says, “No, you can’t, you mustn’t. He’s our man, he’s our boy, and look what he did. You must not put him to death.” And Saul Capitulates. So you already begin to see in the character of Saul, again, there’s something unstable. There’s first of all, a stupid vow to take. Secondly to then, despite having taken it, think you’re going to kill your own son. What kind of father would do that?

It doesn’t make any sense at all. So we’re also seeing one of the themes that’s going to emerge throughout this book, as it did before, the failure of a parent with a child. The failure of the king to rope in his children. This theme keeps on coming through, and it’s going to get even worse when we get to King David. So this is what happens. But nevertheless, then the arms are called, and this time we have to go out to fight Agag the Amalekite. Agag, by the way, interesting name, Agag the Amalekite, because Haman in the “Book of Esther” is called Haman Agagi, the Agagite. And Agag was king of the Amalekites. He was an evil, cruel man. He tortured unremittingly, when he captured pregnant women, he cut the children out of their wombs. He was awful. Anyway, Saul and Jonathan together are going to go to fight him. And Samuel appears and he says, “Listen, a message from God, Agag is so bad, you must kill the lot of them.” Doesn’t sound very nice to us. “Not only must you kill a lot of them, but you must also dedicate all the spoils of war to God. You must take nothing for yourself.” And again, horrible as it sounds, it does sound terrible to our 21st century ears. But remember, all the evidence we have from that time is that everybody in the Middle East, when they won a battle, they slaughtered people. And if they kept anybody alive, they kept them alive only to be slaves, to be humiliated, to be sold into prostitution, whatever it was.

It was a horrible time, everybody was doing it. And to some extent, as with a nuclear bomb, you have to use deterrence. You use the bomb to frighten off the other side. One of the ways of frightening off the other side is saying, “Don’t mess with me. If you mess with me, I’m going to come on you very heavily.” And it’s an interesting theory of war, and of politics, and not a totally ridiculous one. Anyway, Saul and Jonathan go to war. They destroy the Amalekites, they capture King Agag, and they choose all the best animal, cattles and everything else, ostensibly to offer to God, but in practise, for their own purposes. And then Samuel turns up. And he turns up and Saul says, “Congratulate me, look what I’ve done!” And Samuel says, “Really? So how come I hear sound of sheep? How come I hear the sound of what you’ve captured when you’re supposed to have killed it all? And not only that, here’s King Agag, he’s still alive. You have disobeyed God, you’ve disobeyed me.” And at that moment, Saul breaks down and he says, “Look, the people wanted it.” Once again, he’s being influenced by the people, by the polls, by the votes, not by what the right thing is to do. And Samuel turns to him and he said, “Saul, this is the second time you have shown you are not fit to be king. Your kingdom will be taken away from you. And whether it is the same story, but repeated twice, or two different stories, at this stage, Samuel turns to go, Saul grabs hold of his cloak and it tears. Samuel turns around and he says to him, "Just as this cloak has been torn, so your kingdom, your position, your role will be torn from you.”

And he walks away in disgust, but not before he personally takes a sword and kills Agag. Samuel does, the prophet, the man of God, the political leader. But what he’s trying to convey is that kingship needs to be strong, not to listen to what other people tell, and also to accept that there is a higher authority. And not only rely on yourself, but to rely on this other and this higher authority. So this has already, if you like, described the end of the Saul dynasty, which shortly is going to come to an end, but not before, while Saul is still alive, not before Samuel already appoints his successor. Now, this is also a problem of sequence in the “Book of Samuel”. So once again, he turns to God and God says him, “Yes, I know, you’ve got to find a successor. So I’m telling you I want to go this time to the biggest tribe. We tried the smallest tribe and that didn’t work. So this time, go to the biggest tribe. I want you to go to Judah, and I want you to go to a particular house, the house of Yishai, of Jesse, and he’s got a lot of sons. And I’m going to tell you which one you are going to anoint as king.” And so all the sons of Jesse are presented to Samuel, big, powerful men. And he looks at each one of them and he says, “Nope, that’s not him. Nope, that’s not him. No, that’s not him, that’s not him. That’s not him. Look, there’s nobody else?” To which Jesse says, “Yeah, yeah, the youngest one, David, is still a young man, and he’s out in the stables.” He says, “Bring him to me.” David appears, Samuel takes one look at him and he says, “This is the man.”

Ecce homo if you’re a Christian, which was applied to somebody else at a later date. “This is the man.” And he takes out the oil and he anoints it. But as with Saul when he was anointed, he’s not yet king. There’s a long, long, long way to go before he’s going to be king, and meanwhile, Saul is still alive and chomping at the bit. The language now switches, the book switches to Saul, who now sits in his palace, depressed. He’s been humiliated by Samuel, he’s uncertain about his own future. And in this state of depression, goes into these fits. And his young men say, “Look, you need some music.” And down there, just South of Jerusalem, there’s this young harpist, he’s the rock and roll star. Well, probably rock and roll wouldn’t have calmed him down very much, probably excited him more. But he was a great musician, he plays beautifully. Why don’t we bring him? And when you feel depressed, he’ll play the music for you. And then they invite David. Now, is this before he was anointed or after he was anointed? Either way, he brings David, and David plays the harp, and Saul feels better, and he’s very, very fond of him. So clearly there is this relationship beginning between David and Saul without any, if you like, animosity of any kind. And at this moment, the story switches to the famous battle of the Philistine’s and Goliath. The Philistines have now come forward, and they are in their might. And with all their chariots, they are facing the Israelites. And as was common throughout European history, in the mediaeval period, they had a champion, Goliath the giant. And the idea was pitch my champion against yours. Of course, this is the story also at the time of the Greeks, the time of Achilles, the siege of Troy.

Your man against my man, and we’ll see which one wins first. Goliath comes forward, and every day, the two camps face each other on different hills. And he comes forward and he says, “Where’s your champion, you bunch of no good, useless Jews. You weedy cowards, not able to fight. Give me your champion,” and curses them. Nobody wants to go and fight, nobody’s willing to. And Saul says, “I’ll give my daughter to whoever can conquer this guy.” Again, that sort of statement recurs throughout history one way or another. David has been sent by his father to take provisions to his seven brothers who are out in the field. And as he’s taking provisions to them, he sees Goliath come out and everybody trembling and frightened. And he goes up to the king and he says, “King, I want to have a go.” Saul, who seems not to know him, Saul says, “Look, what’s your credibility? You fought in the army?” “No,” says David, “I’ve dealt with lions, I’ve dealt with tigers, I’ve dealt with this, that, and the other. And you know, gimme a chance. I want a chance, I want a chance to prove myself.” Okay, so Saul went, “Let me give you some armour, some protection.” Tries the the armour on, much too heavy. Which is interesting, because if it was Saul’s armour and this was a young boy, it’s a bit strange that big armor’s going to fit the young boy. But maybe he’d grown, he was getting bigger.

But anyway, tries everything and in the end said, “No, leave it to me, me and my stones, my sling, I’ll deal with it.” And obviously without having other forms of arms, the sling is something he’s skilled in. Goes down to the brook, gets some small pebbles, stands out there to meet Goliath, and Goliath laughs at this, sending this dog to try and attack me. Steps forward, David gets a sling, picks a stone, swings it, and right into Goliath’s head, stuns him, Goliath falls back, David jumps on him, gets a sword, chops off his head, holds it up, and, “Yay, hey we win,” and the Philistines flea. David then is the hero. He’s brought before the king. And in the words of the “Book of Samuel”, then Saul says, “Hey, who is this guy? What’s his name?” But hello, I thought this guy is supposed to be playing the harp before you. And again, there are several possible explanations of this anomaly. One of them is that maybe when he was playing him the harp he was depressed and didn’t know or didn’t recognise, or maybe these are two different versions of the same story that were put together because we didn’t want to lose any record in case one was right and the other was wrong, so let’s include them all. But either way, there’s this anomaly. And meanwhile, David is welcomed in. And not only is he welcomed in, he’s put in charge of the armed forces. And very soon he goes out to have another fight, and he wins the enemy, and everybody, all the girls have made him the hero and they’re singing, “If Saul has killed thousands, King David has killed tens of thousands.” And they’re so delighted, and David becomes the hero. And at this moment, two things happen.

One thing that happens is that Saul gets envious. And so when David is playing his harp, all of a sudden, Saul decides to throw his spear at him to try and get him. And David manages to duck and miss the sword. And the second thing is that David has immediately built up a profound friendship with Jonathan, the son of King Saul. And they are really bosom buddies, very, very close. There’s absolutely no evidence or even likelihood that they were homosexual, gay. This was a genuine meeting of souls of two guys who got on well. And although I’m not saying it might not be a possibility, and you might argue, that some people do, that all males and all females have possibilities of making profound relationships with people of the same or other sex. So I’m not going to pass any judgement on that whatsoever. But here we have this close relationship in which Jonathan sees that Saul is mistreating David and he helps him escape. He helps him get on with his life. And this relationship is the most important relationship in David’s career. And it’s a tragic one, as we’re going to see in due course. So we now go through this period of cat and mouse between Saul and David. Saul, after all, initially offered his eldest daughter, Merab, to David, because he said whoever defeats Goliath is going to marry my son. But meanwhile he says, “You know, I want you to prove you’re worthy.

And you know how you prove you’re worthy? Bring me 104 skins of the Philistines, and then I’ll know you’re worthy.” But as the text said, he assumed that David would never be able to do that, and he’d be killed, he’d be out of the way, and the problem was over. In fact, so much so that while David was out fighting, he betrothed Merab to somebody else. David comes back, 104 skins, got to have a daughter, he managed to survive. “Oh, dammit,” said Saul. “Okay, you can have my second daughter.” And in fact, second daughter, Michal, had already fallen in love with David, and David was very fond of her. And he was very happy to take Michal as the daughter. But this constant fear of David specifically, of a challenge to his authority or of somebody more popular than he was, ate away more and more at the soul of Saul. I won’t go into the whole detail of the next few chapters, which involve Saul running after David, trying to catch him, David escaping, sometimes hiding in caves, then appearing on a hilltop and saying, “Saul, why are you doing this to me? I’ve never harmed you, you’re my king, I want you to be my king.” And Saul saying, “Oh yes, I dunno why. Come back and we’ll be friends,” and David not trusting him. Or another occasion when Saul was asleep in a cave, David managed to sneak in, cut part of his garment. Another occasion, he took a pitcher and a spear. All the time coming out and then saying to Saul, “Look,” from a safe vantage, “Here I am, I’m okay,

I don’t want to hurt you.” And yet every time that he is persuaded by Jonathan to come back and to see the king, the king ends up throwing a spear at him, trying to kill him, and it doesn’t work, and David has to escape. And slowly, slowly, he decides, there’s no way I can stay here. I have to go and I have to allow myself with some non-Jewish kings, Philistine kings, Achish of Gath, and maybe I can stay with him. And initially he has to pretend that he’s mad because he knows there’s a booty on his head, a bounty on his head rather. And he doesn’t want to be a threat to Achish in some way. But this whole process of David having to survive, and survive by gathering around him supporters, young men who are themselves either victims or aliens, is an important part of the character of who he is. And unfortunately, when Saul gets hold of anybody who has helped him, he kills them. The one exception of course is Michal, the wife, who managed to help him escape through the window. He didn’t do anything to her except to say, “You don’t realise what you’ve done.” And David then escapes to a group of priests, the Priests of Nob, and he doesn’t tell them that he’s running away. He says, “I’m here on a message from the king,” and they have no reason to not believe him. And he says, “Have you got any food for me and my men? Have you got any arms?” And quite innocently, the Priests of Nob gave him the sword of Goliath, which they’d obviously been keeping, and gave him bread and provisions, and he went on his way. And for that, when a shepherd there called Doeg betrays David to the king, the prophets of Nob to the king, the king sends him there to massacre the lot of them, which is what he does. It’s a messy, messy story, this interaction between them.

But again, coming to the question of what are the lessons that we learn from this? Why is this such an important book in the “Bible”? And I think there are a series of important lessons. One of them is that religion can be good and bad. Religion can be betrayed by bad priests, by bad judges. Kings can betray religion. Everybody can betray the religious values. The religion is there, most people don’t know how to use it properly. And there are different expressions of religion, whether it’s the prophetic expression or the priestly expression of religion. There is variety, there is choice. There isn’t only one party line. Then you have the issue of prophecy itself. What is prophecy? Is it just people having visions and going wild and berserk? Or is it some non-rational, non-governmental form of religious expression that gets you closer to God, because you can get closer to God sometimes when you are freed of the constraints of religious control? And then you have the question of relationships. Relationships between fathers and sons, relationships between a king and his son, between kings and rivals. How is good government? Is government based on a king who is easily jealous? Is government based on a king who has bad moods, George III maybe? Is government based on a king being able to kill anybody at random when he feels depressed? Is it based on any kind of, let’s call it, sense that I am above the law? And yet, clearly kingship has certain advantages.

It centralises, it can stop, if possible, the conflicts within. But all these issues are going to continue through the second “Book of Samuel”, where we are going to explore the character of David. We’re going to see the end of Saul and Jonathan. We’re going to explore how David manages to improve the political system on what went before, and yet still manages to screw things up time and time again. Human nature, my dears. And with that, I will end for today and see what we do for questions and answers if anybody has some. Don’t be shy.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Elliot, “Traditionally Samuel is identified as the last of the judges and the first of the prophets. But isn’t that epithet a slight of Moses, since the last four parshiot of the "Torah” are essentially one of extended prophecy delivered by Moses and addressed to the Israelites?“

A: That’s a very good question. I understand this to mean after Moses. Moses, everybody was. Law can be Sahel, commercial, ordinary. There never was, in Israel, any prophet, any leader like Moses. So this phrase that Samuel being the last of the judges and the first of the prophets is saying, "Yeah, after Moses.” Nobody competes with Moses on this one.

Q: Cohen, “Where does the Witch of Endor come in?”

A: Witch of Endor is going to come in next time, w hen Samuel dies. Samuel hasn’t died yet. When Samuel dies, Saul has to face his doom, knows his doom is coming, and then turns to the Witch of Endor, which is of course going to also raise the issue of religion.

Q: What was religion at the time of Saul?

A: But again, I’m leaving that for next time because I don’t want to do too much in one go.

“I’ve heard that Goliath had large stature because of glandular illness.” Possibly, I’ve heard he was descended from the cyclops. Maybe he was descended from the Neanderthals. All kinds of possibilities. We don’t know, we just know he was big. But then also Saul was big as well. And maybe this affected, the illness affected his eyesight and his reactions, as then you have a sick, young, athletic person. It’s perfectly possible,

Lawrence, your guess is as good as mine. Either way, this big guy lost and David won.

Q: “Why is the "Book of Samuel” an important component of the “Hebrew Bible”? Arguably a stunning example of Hebrew Bible coagulate literature.“

A: Well, Elliot, I think it is because it talks about, all the "Bible” talks about the struggle between good and bad. Between good solutions and bad solutions, between good decisions and bad decisions, between good relationships and bad relationships, between good forms of governance and bad. And it’s all there in the book, and it’s just showing how we grope towards a solution. And here we are, thousands of years later, and we’re still groping. We still haven’t got the perfect form of government. We still haven’t got good relationships. We’re still killing each other. It’s not changed that much, despite the advances of technology.

Thank you Arlene. Thank you Jerry C. Jennifer, thank you very much, that’s really nice. Thank you very much Carla from Holland. Thank you very much, Stroma.

Q: Janice, “Do you think the bubonic plague was what killed the Philistines when they’d captured the tabernacle?”

A: Well, that’s a very good question. Of course there were plagues all the time. But then if it were a plague, surely a plague would affect anybody everywhere. Plagues don’t differentiate between good guys and bad guys. You might argue they differentiate between those people who wash their hands before meals and those who don’t, but not necessarily. And so you also have the problem then, well, why did the plague, which struck both Philistines and early Israelites, not trouble anybody for 20 years when it was lying in the field of the son, Eliezer? So it’s very difficult to guess. We could speculate all kinds of reasons, whether it was the plague or some other kind of disease, I don’t know. But we do know that there were occasions later on in the “Book of Kings” where plagues are struck at certain moments in time. There is a time when the Assyrians were defeated by a plague of mice, and lice, and all kinds of creepy crawly things. So yes, plagues played a part. Whether we consider them acts of God or acts of nature, they did sometimes play a part and might have done here too.

Q: Thank you, Mira. “Could this apply to a modern rabbi who follows woke?”

A: Well, it depends how you follow woke, and it depends what you mean by woke. If you mean by woke, trying to clear away prejudice, then I’m a hundred percent for it. But if you mean by woke, trying to stop somebody who has a different opinion, expressing that opinion, either by refusing to let them to speak, or shouting them down, or attacking them, or cancelling them, then I don’t think that makes much sense. However, in life, there are so many different ways of looking at how we deal with problems. And so this is an example of different kinds of approaches. If you take, let’s say, Black Lives Matter as a case in point, of course black lives matter without any question, and of course we must remove prejudice. But when Black Lives Matter turn in their leadership to be anti-Semitic and anti-Israel on the basis of lack of historical knowledge and false information, then I’m against the Black Lives Matter. So, similarly, it depends what definition of woke you want to use.

Q: Why do we name our names after King Saul when he was not such a stellar person?

A: That’s an excellent question. And in fact, many biblical names of kings who were terrible kings, let’s take Manasseh. Now, he was named after one of the sons of Jacob, but King Manasseh was a ghastly king who reigned for 40 corrupt years, and plenty of others. We have names of a man like Abner. Abner, which is quite a nice religious name, but Abner was a murderous guy. Of course he was murdered back, but nevertheless, they… Reason simply is this. The idea of naming, as you can see from the earlier books of the “Bible”, was often repeating earlier names as a tribute to them, even if they weren’t all that good. And sometimes even a bad man like Cain has somebody called Canaan mentioned after him in the “Bible”. And so there is a tradition of naming people after names mentioned in the “Bible” as a tribute to history, rather than as an indication of whether they were perfect. But also the fact is Saul was the first king. He was anointed, he was appointed by God. The fact that he made mistakes, every king made mistakes.

Q: David, how many Jews are called David? Well, does that mean they’re adulterers?

A: I don’t think so. People are called Solomon, Shlomo, with his 700 wives and 300 concubines. Not such a very good example. So it’s an interesting question. And interestingly enough, we seem to have ignored it. And many of the names that are popular in Israel today are popular because, intentionally, many of the secular Zionists wanted to name their children on obviously non-religious people in order to differentiate themselves from the God squad. That was Shoshana.

Abigail, “I know a Jewish person who has the name Hagar.” Yes, Hagar is an interesting Jewish name. Again, the rabbi’s whitewash Hagar. The rabbis say she was wonderful. Her real name was Keturah, 'cause she smelt like incense. And not only that, she was such a good person that she was madly in love with Abraham, but dare not speak the love for as long as Sarah was alive. And that’s why when Sarah died, Abraham married Hagar, because Keturah, when married, was called Hagar because of the incense. So the rabbis also whitewash many of these biblical characters for good reason, because the rabbis lived at the time of Christianity. When the Christians were saying, “You Jews, you have betrayed your heritage. You’ve betrayed the biblical characters of the written law. You’re inventing now a new religion called Rabbinic Judaism, with all your new laws that’s come from nowhere, and therefore we are the legitimate heirs and you are not.” And therefore they set about reinventing the biblical characters to be different, but to fit in with the rabbinic agenda. And so they whitewashed David and said, “David, he never committed adultery. What you don’t know is there was already a bill of divorce in the wings. And Solomon didn’t betray God in what he did. He did everything according to the book. And his heart wasn’t really turned, it’s just that he felt the need to be kind to people.” And so there is this tradition of whitewashing characters. The only one who is never whitewashed, and I think deserves some measure of whitewash is Esau. And the reason is because Esau became identified with Rome. And Rome at the time was torturing the Jews, and killing them, and massacring them, and they didn’t want to embarrass the Romans by calling the Romans. And they didn’t want to embarrass the Christians by calling the Christians. So they called the Christians Edom and they called the Christians Esau too. So they played with names according to the circumstances and the situation. Valerie, thank you very much.

Marion, “Using names of not good people, I haven’t heard of anyone named Herod in recent times.” No, neither have I. But then Herod wasn’t a Jewish name to begin with, whereas some of the others, other Maccabees were not so good. And there are Hebrew names, So you had John Hyrcanus, who’s called Yohanan. Hyrcanus was his Greek name. Herod didn’t have a Jewish name. Well, if he did, he didn’t want to mention it too much. Clara, thank you.

Nobody else? No, I think that’s it. And so that I will say goodbye to you all, and look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you.