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1 & 2 Samuel: A Commentary

Zondervan

Introduction

The books of Samuel are not among the most aptly named in the Old Testament. In the first place, all references to the eponymous hero are confined to 1 Samuel, where he is already being described as an old man in 8:1. After his anointing of David in 16:1-13 he takes little further part in the action. His death is the subject of a short obituary notice in 25:1, and thereafter he makes but a brief posthumous appearance at Endor in 28:12-19. It follows, therefore, that the prophet Samuel can have had very little to do with the recording of the traditions preserved in 1 and 2 Samuel. 1 Chronicles 29:29 does refer us, it is true, to 'the Chronicles of Samuel the seer', but this is for information about the life and times of David, little of which Samuel himself witnessed. In fact, the more interesting point about these 'Chronicles of Samuel the seer' is that they must have stood in the same relationship to the historical Samuel as do the canonical books that bear his name. Quite simply, this is all bound up with the fact that questions of author attribution did not interest the early tradents of the Hebrew scriptures in the way that we may wish they had. A good number of Old Testament books are, properly speaking, anonymous works.

In the Hebrew Bible tradition 1 and 2 Samuel were long reckoned as one book. The third-century Christian scholar Origen, for example, reports the Jewish custom of referring to a single book of Samuel. As we should expect, therefore, the Massoretic notes marking the mid- and end-points of Samuel calculate on the basis of a unified book. A breach was made in this tradition in the fifteenth century, but it was the arrival of the printing-press and the publication of the Bomberg rabbinic Bibles (early sixteenth century) that established the practice of dividing the Hebrew text of Samuel into two separate books. This had long been the convention in Christian circles influenced by the Septuagint and Vulgate. The translators of the Greek Septuagint version of Samuel had divided Samuel-Kings into four 'Books of Reigns' (or 'Kingdoms') more or less corresponding to the divisions with which we are familiar. This catch-all title was modified by Jerome to 'The Books of Kings' - the first books to be translated when he embarked upon his great Vulgate project, as we learn from the preface which he wrote for them, the apologetic Prologus Galeatus ('Helmeted Prologue'). It is thus Jerome's influence that can be detected behind the Authorized Version's 'The First (Second) Book of Samuel, Otherwise Called, The First (Second) Book of the Kings.'

In the Hebrew canon of the Old Testament 1 and 2 Samuel are included among the 'Former Prophets' (i.e. Joshua-2 Kings), a subdivision of the prophetic section of the canon. The title 'Former Prophets' as a canonical term is a late coinage4 and not the most obvious for the books in question,5 if only because 2 Kings seems almost deliberately to pass over the contributions of most of the 'major prophets' of the eighth and seventh centuries BC. (When Zc. 1:4; 7:12 refer to 'former prophets' it is these pre-exilic preachers who are intended.) In the 'Former Prophets' there is, on the other hand, a great emphasis upon the authoritative character of true prophecy, and upon the necessity of the community's submission to the prophetic word as a precondition to enjoying Yahweh's protection in the land. In this sense Israel's history is a 'prophetic history' - which observation perhaps even allows us to convert the liability of the misnamed book(s) of Samuel into an interpretive asset.

The 'Former Prophets' are not quite coterminous with an entity of much more recent vintage (as far as biblical scholarship is concerned), the so-called 'Deuteronomistic History'. This great history-work, comprising Joshua-2 Kings, but also having a specially-augmented book of Deuteronomy for preface, was written, according to its modern advocate Martin Noth, to show how the laws and principles of Deuteronomy applied to Israel's history from the settlement in Canaan until the Babylonian exile. Noth attributed the history to an editor working in Judah in the mid-sixth century BC. For this 'Deuteronomist' the history of Judah as a nation had come to a dead-end, and he wrote principally in vindication of Yahweh's final repudiation of his people. Noth's basic theory, with its rejection of the older view of books individually redacted by the Deuteronomic school, has been enthusiastically received, though his views on such key issues as date, purpose, and provenance have not commanded the same measure of agreement. In general, whereas continental scholars have continued to regard the 'Deuteron omistic History' as essentially an exilic compilation, there is a countervailing tendency in North America to see it as fundamentally a pre-exilic document from the time of Josiah - 'a propaganda work of the Josianic reformation and imperial program', according to the Harvard scholar F. M. Cross. Most would concede, moreover, that at one level or another of the 'Deuteronomistic History' the future of Judah is regarded as at least open-ended: Yahweh has not necessarily cast off his people for ever.

As compared with the other books making up the 'Former Prophets', 1 and 2 Samuel show signs of relatively light Deuteronomistic editing. Some of the more easily recognized 'Deuteronomisms' come in the prophetic speeches in 1 Samuel 7 and 12, and 2 Samuel 7. In the passages from 1 Samuel, for example, the need for, and efficacy of, repentance is stressed in a way which, while not exclusive to the Deuteronomistic school, is suggestive of its influence (1 Sa. 7:3; 12:19-24). This comparative sparseness of Deuteronomistic editorial material may be attributable in part to the circumstance that, in the compilation of Samuel, a number of already-formed narrative blocks were laid end to end - just as was proposed for the Pentateuch a few years ago by the German scholar R. Rendtorff.11 There are three principal candidates here: the 'Ark Narrative' (1 Sa. 4-6, but also including 2 Sa. 6 according to some), the 'History of David's Rise' (1 Sa. 16:14-2 Sa. 5:10), and the 'Succession Narrative' (2 Sa. 9-20 plus 1 Ki. 1-2, with a small amount of material from earlier in 2 Samuel). The precise demarcation of these narratives from the material surrounding them is a matter of some delicacy, as will become apparent in the next section. Whether it is legitimate at all to treat the last two named as if they originally enjoyed independent status is, in the present writer's opinion, a debatable issue.

The books of Samuel cover the period from the last days of the temple at Shiloh until near the end of David's reign, that is, very approximately, from 1050 to 970 BC. Our main uncertainties relate to the duration of the twilight period at Shiloh represented in 1 Samuel 1-4, and to the length of Saul's reign (cf: on 1 Sa. 13:1). The destruction of Shiloh at some point around 1050 BC was until recently a fairly fixed point in discussions of the period. However, despite the doubts that have been raised, there is still good reason to think that a destruction did occur about this time, and that it is to this that Jeremiah is referring in his famous Shiloh sermons (Je. 7:12; 26:6, 9; cf. Ps. 78:60).

Of the changes that overtake Israel between 1 Samuel 1 and 2 Samuel 24 two are especially significant. The first is the eclipse of Shiloh and the eventual transfer of its cultic primacy to Jerusalem, and the second is the conversion of Israel from a tribal league to a unified kingdom capable of exercising imperial power over neighbouring states. These are the tectonic shifts which determine the contours of Judah in particular for the next four centuries.

2 SURVEY

It will now be convenient to highlight some of the main features of I and 2 Samuel, observing the same divisions of the text as in the Commentary.

The Shiloh traditions (1 Sa. 1:1-4:1a)

Two major themes are interwoven in this section: the decline of the Shilonite priesthood and the rise to prominence of the prophet Samuel. Of the oral or literary prehistory of the traditions little can be said with any confidence. While it is possible to disengage elements highlighting Eli and his sons from those focused on Hannah and Samuel, this hardly justifies the proposition that they come from distinct, and possibly even unrelated, sources. The contrastive, chiaroscuro portrayal of Samuel and the sons of Eli in chapters 2-3, with alternating sections on the respective parties (Samuel: 2:11, 18-21, 26; 3:1-10, 19-4:1a; Eli's sons: 2:12-17, 22-25, 27-36; 3:11-18), may as easily be the result of a deliberate narrative technique which, whatever the circumstances of composition, has been most successfully applied.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from 1 & 2 Samuel: A Commentary by Robert P. Gordon Copyright © 1999 by Zondervan. Excerpted by permission.
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