Samuel and His God

Chapter 5: A Sequential Reading of Samuel

chapter 5 A Sequential Reading of Samuel Chapters 2 through 4 examined some probable layers in the composition of the book of 1 Samuel, the roles commonly ascribed to the character Samuel, and how God is depicted in the Samuel stories. With this as background, we turn at last to the most obvious strategy for understanding Samuel: a sequential journey through his story. Three themes are worthy of particular attention: the relationship of Samuel’s word to Lord’s, the question of who (if anyone) can intercede with Lord, and points at which there is tension between Samuel and Lord. Earlier I mentioned students of mine who had compared Samuel to very powerful pastors. Like those students, I want to approach Samuel with both a “hermeneutic of suspicion” and a “hermeneutic of charity.”1 On the one hand, what power games are Samuel and the storytellers who present him to us playing, and how do those games affect other people? On the other, what positive purposes do Samuel and the tellers have in mind, and how might all this feel to the Samuel we meet in the story? Samuel’s Earliest Years (1 Samuel 1–2) Samuel comes, it appears, from a troubled family. His father has two wives, and they do not get along well together. It would be inappropriate to attempt too detailed a speculation on the family dynamics from the very limited information we get in 1 Samuel 1, but Elkanah may be contributing to the strife between his wives by favoritism, if he is indeed giving Hannah a double portion (1:5, but as NRSV’s note indicates, the meaning here is uncertain). Polzin hears a tone of “loving understanding” in Elkanah’s words to Hannah (1:8; 1989, 23), but one could also hear impatience (Fewell and Gunn 1993, 137). Elkanah’s focus is not on Hannah’s grief but on questioning her love for him: “Am I not more to you than ten sons?” (1:8; Falk 1994, 62). If these commentators are correct that Elkanah sounds a bit narcissistic, then Polzin’s contention that Elkanah’s tone prefigures God’s (1:8 and 8:8) implies a different conclusion than the one Polzin himself draws (1989, 86). While children were important in the ancient world in part because their parents depended on them for care in old age, the emphasis in 1 Samuel 1 on rivalry between the wives suggests that for Hannah the issue is status, not simply survival . Jobling asks if she might be an “ambitious woman” who “wants . . . a son in the service of Yhwh ” (1998, 132, Jobling’s italics). Whatever Hannah’s reasons for 74 samuel and his god wanting a child, they do not include keeping him, and they do include establishing certain constraints for his life before he is even born: no razor, probably no alcoholic beverages, and “given to the Lord.”2 Hannah delivers the child to Eli as soon as he is weaned. Children typically nurse longer in agrarian cultures than in our own, so Samuel is probably about three years old when he is brought to Eli—the same age as the bull that his parents slaughter (1:24–25).3 While this is beyond the crucial period for attachment formation, it is nonetheless a very early age for a child to leave his own family to live with a stranger in a different town. For all our desire to attribute piety to Samuel, can we really believe that at this young age he wants to leave his family to serve Lord? Surely he asks, “Why do you have to leave me at Shiloh?” Hannah presumably answers, “Because that is what I vowed to do.” “Why do you have to keep the vow?” “Because Lord will not tolerate turning back.” What kind of world does this establish for Samuel? If he has been told the circumstances of his own remarkable birth, he may have a special sense of importance and destiny. But if the story told to him has included the family’s belief that it was Lord who initially prevented Hannah from having a child, Samuel may also feel that his existence is precarious, dependent on a not-always-benevolent power. It will also be apparent to the young Samuel as he is taken to Shiloh that Lord’s demands upon devotees take priority over even the most fundamental human relationships. How does he feel when his mother’s parting prayer ends...