1 Samuel

Now, we start getting into slightly more familiar territory. The kingdom is formed, though in fits and starts. Saul comes first, followed by David. Neither is much of a prize in terms of conscientious leadership. I have no clue why Samuel gets 2 books named after him, when he dies in the first book. Go figure!

1 Sam 2:8 - He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, 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 he has set the world.
The first statements are pretty problematic. Exactly how often are the poor raised to places of honor? Not often enough to make it appear that it's God's sign of favor. But check out the last bit - Yahweh has set the world on pillars! A favorite concept of cosmology back then, but hardly a good science lesson.

1 Sam 2:25 - "If one person sins against another, someone can intercede for the sinner with the LORD; but if someone sins against the LORD, who can make intercession?" But they would not listen to the voice of their father; for it was the will of the LORD to kill them.
There's some pretty heavy stuff here. We start with a basic justification for Christianity, the need for some peacemaker between God and the people who sin against him. A curious point is the idea that when one person offends another, it looks like God gets into the mix somehow, and the offending party needs help making peace with God. But I think it's more interesting that the last sentence says that Eli's sons wouldn't listen to him, because God wanted an excuse to kill them.

1 Sam 3:13-14 - "For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever."
So much for individual responsibility. Punishment for unlimited descendants of this priest is promised, regardless of what they might try to do to get back on God's good side. Also note that God blames Eli for not restraining his sons, in spite of the fact that in the verse quoted just above, Eli did make an effort to curb them, but God kept them from changing their ways. I also assume that this means that even the sacrifice of Jesus could not help with this punishment. Is this justice?

1 Sam 5:6,7 - The hand of the LORD was heavy upon the people of Ashdod, and he terrified and struck them with tumors, both in Ashdod and in its territory. And when the inhabitants of Ashdod saw how things were, they said, "The ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us; for his hand is heavy on us and on our god Dagon."
Amusingly, the word "tumors" come from the Hebrew word "tekhore" and can also be translated as hemorrhoids or constipation. So the people of Ashdod stole the ark of the covenant, and God punished them with hemorrhoids. No wonder they decided to send it on to the Philistines!

1 Sam 6:19 - The descendants of Jechoniah did not rejoice with the people of Beth-shemesh when they greeted the ark of the LORD; and he killed seventy men of them. The people mourned because the LORD had made a great slaughter among the people.
So the ark of the covenant is on a triumphant homeward tour after giving hemorrhoids to all the neighboring countries (where some of those people even made little gold statues of their hemorrhoids!), and some folks don't jump for joy as it's carried through their town. So God kills these people. Nice. This is a point where the KJV texts of this book differ from those of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The above came from the Scrolls. The texts used by the King James translators claim that 50,070 people were snuffed because some idiots looked into the box God was supposed to be living in.

1 Sam 13:13-14 - Samuel said to Saul, "You have done foolishly; you have not kept the commandment of the LORD your God, which he commanded you. The LORD would have established your kingdom over Israel forever, but now your kingdom will not continue; the LORD has sought out a man after his own heart; and the LORD has appointed him to be ruler over his people, because you have not kept what the LORD commanded you."
Saul really fouled up, here! One mistake and he's out of a job! So what did Saul do that cost him the kingdom? He made an offering to God! That's right! In vs. 9, Saul made a burnt offering to God, because Samuel didn't show up on time to do the honors himself. He stepped on Samuel's territory a little, and it got him fired. This was a good passage for priests to use in asserting their prerogatives over kings.

1 Sam 15:33 - But Samuel said, "As your sword has made women childless, so your mother shall be childless among women." And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the LORD in Gilgal.
So here's how a man of God relates to the king of a defeated enemy: slice and dice!

1 Sam 15:35 - Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the LORD was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.
God made a mistake? He was sorry over something he did? This is not what one would expect to see in a being that's omniscient!

1 Sam 16:14,15 - Now the spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him. And Saul's servants said to him, "See now, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you."
It appears here that God is in the business of creating evil ghosts, and ordering them around. This does not sound like something a "good" entity would do! It is, however, what the stories about God say, at least before the Jews went into captivity and learned about the myths of gods of evil and made up the myth of Satan to explain evil.

1 Sam 21:1-6 - David came to Nob to the priest Ahimelech. Ahimelech came trembling to meet David and said to him, "Why are you alone, and no one with you?" David said to the priest Ahimelech, "The king has charged me with a matter, and said to me, 'No one must know anything of the matter about which I send you and with which I have charged you.' I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. Now then, what have you at hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here." The priest answered David, "I have no ordinary bread at hand, only holy bread - provided that the young men have kept themselves from women." David answered the priest, "Indeed women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition; the vessels of the young men are holy even when it is a common journey; how much more today will their vessels be holy?" So the priest gave him the holy bread; for there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the LORD, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.
Here, David is lying his way to get some bread to eat. He's on the run from Saul, who has decided to kill David as a competitor for power, and he is alone, and he has no one with him. This is important to know, because in the New Testament, Jesus refers to this passage, saying that David and his companions took the holy bread from a different priest. This is the only passage in the OT where David takes bread from anyone, so Jesus can't have been referring to another passage. What does this tell you about Jesus' knowledge of the Bible?

1 Sam 25:37-39 - In the morning, when the wine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things, and his heart died within him; he became like a stone. About ten days later the LORD struck Nabal, and he died. When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, "Blessed be the LORD who has judged the case of Nabal's insult to me and has kept back his servant from evil; the LORD has returned the evildoing of Nabal upon his own head." Then David sent and wooed Abigail, to make her his wife.
This is a fun passage. God apparently acted as David's hit man! When David hears about the hit, he celebrated by taking the dead man's wife. Now, where else have we heard about David doing something like this?