Professor Christine
Hayes: One thing that kept
cropping up ,
and it is something that crops
up every time I teach this
course, and I should always say
something about it preemptively,
is just a terminological issue.
Israelites are not Israelis.
 
The word "Israeli," term
"Israeli," refers to a citizen
of the modern state of Israel.
 
So there are no Israelis before
the year 1948.
Okay.
And we use Israelite to refer
to the ancient inhabitants of
the ancient kingdom of Israel.
So that is an important
distinction.
I know you hear "Israelis" and
so that is just a term that
people thought would apply to
anyone who inhabited a place
called Israel.
But Israeli and Israelite are
used precisely in order to make
that distinction between the
ancient and the modern period.
 
Okay.
So we are talking about
Israelites.
And while we are on the
subject, we are not talking
about Jews yet,
either.
We cannot really use the term
"Jew."
It is not historically accurate
for the period that we have been
dealing with in the Bible.
When we get towards the very
end of the biblical period,
we'll see that when Persia
conquers and reconstitutes this
area,
or designates as a province,
this area as Yehud (so the
Persians are going to be the
ones to create a province called
Yehud in this area,
including Jerusalem) they will
allow the Israelites who are in
exile to go back and live there,
and they will become Yehudites.
And this is going to be where
the word Jew comes from.
But that is not going to be
historically accurate before the
end of the sixth century.
 
And even then it is still a
technical term having to do with
living in the Province of Yehud.
 
It is not an ethnic term.
 
The word "Yehud" or "Jew" does
not become an ethnic term for
quite some time.
So "Israelites" is the correct
term for the group that we are
dealing with here.
Hebrew is not bad,
either, it basically is a
linguistic term that refers to
people who speak Hebrew.
And so the Hebrews--it is
something of a social-ethnic
term, but based mainly on the
linguistic feature of speaking
Hebrew.
Okay.
So no Israelis,
only Israelites.
All right.
We were reaching the end of
Joshua, and we are going to be
moving on to Judges today.
And the Bible describes the
early Israelite socio-political
unit as the tribe.
 
And this is what is going to be
featured in the last part of the
Book of Joshua.
We are going to see that tribes
are territorial units.
 
A tribe is attached to a
territory.
Within the tribe you have clan
elders, and the clan elders are
the ones who dispense justice.
 
They make decisions regarding
the general welfare of the
tribe.
So the second half of the Book
of Joshua--so the first half
recounts the conquest,
and then the second half
recounts the division of the
land among the 12 tribes,
who, it is claimed,
were descended from the 12 sons
of Jacob.
We have a couple of different
lists of the tribes in the
Bible, so if you take a look
some time,
you might want to compare the
list that is in Genesis 29 or
30.
It is pretty much the same list
that is in Genesis 49.
 
These are in blessings.
 
Patriarchs will very often give
blessings of all their children,
so you look at the names of the
children and you will see the
list of twelve.
You have the six sons of Leah.
You have the four sons of the
two concubines,
Bilhah and Zilpah,
and the two sons of Rachel,
Joseph and Benjamin.
 
And that is probably the oldest
list that we have.
But if you compare it to
Numbers 26 and the list that is
in Joshua with the distribution
of the land,
you will see that Levi or Levi
is not included,
presumably because the Levites,
who were to function as a
priestly class in Israel,
they have no land allotment.
They are supported through the
cultic practices and the
perquisites that come from the
sacrifices.
And so instead of the Levites,
we find that there are tribes
named for the two sons of
Joseph.
So there is no Joseph tribe per
se.
Joseph's two sons are Ephraim
and Manasseh,
and this is how we then reach
the Number 12.
So there is no Levi in the
later lists, but the Joseph
tribes have been split into
Ephraim and Manasseh,
if you will,
who are said to be the two sons
of Joseph.
So the consensus is,
the scholarly consensus is,
that what you have in Canaan is
an alliance of tribes,
perhaps not precisely twelve,
you know.
At different times there might
have been a different number and
different groups that came
together at different times.
 
But you have these tribes who
are worshiping Yahweh,
perhaps not exclusively as we
have seen.
And they have some loose
obligations of mutual defense in
these different alliances.
 
The Book of Joshua presents
this very idealized portrait of
these twelve tribes who are
preexistent.
They come into the Land of
Canaan already formed basically
as twelve tribes.
 
They are united with one
another by their covenant with
Yahweh, and they conquer the
land in concert.
But there are other elements of
the biblical narrative,
as we have already begun to
talk about,
and will continue to talk about
today as we move into Judges,
which really suggest there was
much more sporadic cooperation
among the tribes.
 
You never have more than one or
two really acting in concert
until the very end of the Book
of Judges.
And so this suggests that there
really was no super-tribal
government or coordination at
this early stage.
The Ark is said to have
circulated among the different
tribal territories,
it did not rest permanently in
the territory of one tribe until
somewhat late in the period--it
comes to rest at a place called
Shiloh.
Shiloh.
And it seems that only in
extraordinary cases would you
have the tribes acting together,
perhaps by decision of the
tribal elders.
But superimposed upon the
authority of the elders is the
authority of certain inspired
individuals.
And these are known as judges,
and it is the exploits of these
individuals that are recorded in
the Book of Judges.
And we will turn to the Book of
Judges now.
The Book of Judges is set in
that transitional period between
the death of Joshua and the
establishment of a monarchic
system.
It is about a 200-year period,
from about 1200 to 1000 or so.
 
It is an imaginative and
embellished reconstruction of
that period of transition.
 
We'll also see it is a very
ideologically laden
reconstruction.
So the stories depict local
tribal skirmishes,
rather than confrontations
between nations.
You have pretty much skirmishes
with groups around the country.
 
And that makes a lot of sense
for this 200-year period,
when Canaan is making a
transition.
A transition from city-states
in the Bronze Age to the
emerging nation of what will be
Israel, next to it Philistia,
on the east side,
Aram.
So we have--nations are going
to be coming into being by the
end of this period,
but there is this 200-year
transitional period before you
get the formation of these
independent states.
 
Like Joshua,
the Book of Judges consists of
various sources that were fused
together in a Deuteronomistic
framework.
I will come back to that.
In fact, it is really a
collection of individual stories
that center on local heroes,
several of whom are,
interestingly enough,
socially marginal.
These are pretty scrappy
characters.
You've got the illegitimate son
of a prostitute.
You've got a bandit.
 
You've got very interesting,
colorful, and as I say,
socially marginal people.
 
And these stories have a real
folkloristic flavor to them.
They're full of drama and a lot
of local color,
local references to places and
customs and so on.
So if you were to list the
stories of the various judges,
the major judges--we have six
major and six minor judges;
the minor judge is just simply
a reference to the fact that
they judged for a certain period
of time.
So there are 12 listed in all,
I believe) and there are six
major judges for whom there is a
lengthy story,
beginning with Ehud in chapter
3.
It is a very funny story.
 
Ehud leads the Israelites
against the Moabites;
a lot of sort of bathroom humor
in that one.
In chapters 4 and 5,
you have Deborah,
who helps the Israelites in
battle against certain Canaanite
groups.
You have three chapters,
four chapters,
chapters 6-9,
recording the adventures of
Gideon.
Gideon fights against the
Midianites.
Gideon is interesting.
 
There are signs in his story
that he is divinely chosen.
There is some evidence of the
annunciation of his birth,
and some signal that he is
divinely chosen.
Then in 11 and into a little
bit of chapter 12,
you have the story of Yiftah or
Jephthah,
who fights against the
Ammonites--very interesting and
tragic story of his daughter,
which echoes similar sorts of
stories in Greek legend.
 
You also have in chapters
13-16, Samson who,
of course, fights against the
Philistines.
Samson is somewhat atypical.
 
He also has a tremendous and
fatal weakness for foreign
women, and that is a strong
theme throughout the Samson
stories.
We will come back to some of
that.
Then towards the end:
you have some interesting
chapters at the end.
17 and 18 tell the story of
Micah or Micah,
and his idolatrous shrine.
 
And then finally,
the quite horrifying and
gruesome tale,
beginning in chapter 19,
going on through 20 and 21--
the story of the Levite's
concubine and the civil war.
 
We will come back and talk
about some of these in a little
more detail.
But that is just to give you a
sense of the different units
that are in the story,
that are in the book.
 
And these stories have then
been embedded in a
Deuteronomistic framework.
 
This framework provides the
editor's view and pronouncement
on and judgment of the period.
 
Some of the stories seem to
have been left pretty much
intact themselves.
 
There isn't in many cases,
a lot of interference inside
the story, only a few
interpolations that express the
editor's theology of history.
 
But the editor's theology of
history is best seen in the
preface to the book,
which is why I sort of stuck
these over to the side,
this preface that frames the
book.
And chapter 1 gives a detailed
summary of the situation at the
end of Joshua's conquest--taking
stock,
listing the extensive areas
that Joshua had failed to take
from the Canaanites,
despite the impression that is
given by the Book of Joshua
(certainly the first part of it)
that they did everything they
were supposed to have done and
fulfilled the commandments to
Moses and so on.
But here, we get a list of all
the places they failed to take
from the Canaanites,
starting in Judah and moving
northward.
They tend to always start in
the southern area,
in Judah, and then list things
in a northward direction.
Then in Judges 2:1-5,
an angel appears before
Joshua's death,
and the angel recounts God's
redemption of the Israelites
from Egypt and then quotes God
as follows: "I will never break
my covenant with you.
And you, for your part,
must make no covenant with the
inhabitants of this land;
you must tear down their
altars."
That is a phrase that is found
in Deuteronomy 12:
again, one of those phrases
that makes us link Deuteronomy
with all of these subsequent
books,
and we refer to it all as a
school, the Deuteronomistic
School, because we have these
phrases from Deuteronomy that
will be peppered throughout the
rest of these books.
 
God will be faithful to his
covenant, in other words.
But it is a two-way street.
 
And if Israel does not do her
part, she will be punished.
The editor is setting us up
with that expectation before we
even begin to read an account of
what happens.
The angel then relates that
Israel has already not been
obedient, so God has
resolved--this is a fait
accompli at this point--God
has resolved that He will no
longer drive the Canaanites out
before the Israelites.
He will leave them as a snare
and a trap to test their resolve
and their loyalty.
 
So it is a very far cry from
the idealized portrait that we
had in the first half of the
Book of Joshua.
So that opening announcement
listing all of the ways in which
they had failed to take the
land,
and the visit by the angel who
tells them: you have already
failed in so many ways,
and so God is not even going to
help you to rout the Canaanites
any longer--that is followed
then in a section from chapter
2:11 through chapter 3:6.
And this is a kind of
prospective summary,
a summary before the fact of
the nation's troubles.
And this is a passage that
expresses the editor's judgment
on the nation of this period.
 
"Another generation arose after
them, which had not experienced
the Lord, or the deeds that He
had wrought for Israel.
And the Israelites did what was
offensive to the Lord,"
literally what was evil in the
eyes of the lord.
An important phrase:
what was evil in the eyes of
the Lord.
…They followed other
gods, from among the gods of the
peoples around them,
and bowed down to them;
they provoked the Lord….Then
the Lord was incensed at Israel,
and He handed them over to foes
who plundered them…as the Lord
had declared and as the Lord had
sworn to them;
and they were in great distress.
Then the Lord raised up leaders
[see note 1]
who delivered them from those
who plundered them.
But they did not heed their
leaders either;
they went astray after other
gods and bowed down to
them…
I am sort of skipping, right?
I am condensing all of this.
 
…When the Lord raised
up leaders for them,
the Lord would be with the
leader and would save them from
their enemies during the
leader's lifetime;
for the Lord would be moved to
pity by their moanings because
of those who oppressed and
crushed them.
But when the leader died,
they would again act basely,
even more than the preceding
generation--following other
gods,
worshiping them,
and bowing down to them;
they omitted none of their
practices and stubborn
ways.
So in short,
it is the view of the
Deuteronomistic historian
expressed here in Judges,
that Israel's crises are caused
by her infidelity to Yahweh,
through the worship of
Canaanite gods,
and for this sin,
God sells the Israelites to
their enemies and then,
moved to pity when they cry out
under the oppression,
He raises leaders to deliver
Israel.
This pattern of sin,
punishment, repentance and
deliverance through leaders is
the recurring pattern throughout
the book.
It punctuates the transition
from each of these leaders that
God will raise up.
 
So it is this recurring pattern.
 
This Deuteronomistic
perspective, as well as
Deuteronomistic ideology,
generally,
isn't always apparent within
the individual stories
themselves, as I stressed.
 
Some of them seem to be
pre-Deuteronomistic folktales
about the exploits of these
local heroes.
They were popular stories.
 
So Gideon, we'll see,
builds an altar despite the
fact that we know Deuteronomy
insisted on centralized worship
and prohibited outlying altars
or multiple altars.
He is also known,
his other name,
if you will,
is Jerubbaal.
It is a name that is made with
Baal, meaning Baal will strive,
or Baal will contend.
 
So this is an alternate name
for Gideon.
He erects an idol.
 
The people of Shechem,
where he is--after his death
they continue to worship Baal
Berit,
the Baal of the covenant,
which is an interesting sort of
merger of Baalism and covenantal
religion.
So you have a lot of these
elements that presumably the
Deuteronomist would disapprove.
 
The story of Samson also
appears to be largely
pre-Deuteronomistic.
 
It was again probably a very
popular, entertaining folktale
about a legendary strong man.
 
You know, he can lift up the
gates of the city.
He can tie the tails of 300
foxes with torches and so on.
But this great strong man is
undone by his one weakness,
which is a weakness for foreign
women,
particularly Philistine women
(at least we think Delilah was
Philistine).
And that proves to be his
downfall.
So you can see in a way how
these stories were fodder for
the Deuteronomistic editor.
The Deuteronomistic editor
insists that foreign gods often
accessed through marriage to
foreign women,
exercised a fatal attraction
for Israel.
And it was the inability to
resist the snare of idolatry
that would ultimately lead to
ruin.
You have to remember that the
final editing of this narrative
history is happening in exile.
 
Right?
It is happening for people for
whom all of this is ultimately
leading towards a tragedy.
All right.
So the leaders who are raised
by God are called judges.
 
That is the term that is used
in other Semitic texts to refer
to leaders in the second
millennium, sometimes human and
sometimes divine.
 
So the term is used here in the
biblical text.
It refers always to a human
leader, and one who exercises
many different powers or
functions, not merely judicial.
We think of the word "judge"
really in a judicial context,
but that was not the extent of
the function of the judge.
The Israelite judge was
actually primarily a military
leader, commissioned with a
specific task,
and only in times of national
crisis.
The judge had a charismatic
quality, which in several cases
is expressed by the phrase,
"the spirit of the Lord came
upon him."
God would raise up the judge to
deliver the people from a
specific crisis.
The judge might muster troops
from two tribes,
or three tribes,
sometimes only a clan or two,
which suggests that there was
no real national entity at this
particular time.
We never see more than one or
two tribes acting together or
some clans of a tribe.
But the institution of judges
never created fixed political
forms.
And each judge differed from
the last in background,
in class, and even gender.
We do have one female judge,
Deborah, who did exercise
judicial functions evidently,
according to the text.
The judges are not chosen
necessarily for their virtue.
Many of them seem to fall into
the literary type of the
trickster, a bit like Jacob.
 
Some of them.
They are crafty,
tricky types.
Gideon is explicitly chosen for
his weakness,
and not because of his
strength.
It turns out that he is quite a
ruthless fighter,
and he is clearly not a devout
Yahwist.
Jepthah is an outlaw.
Samson is hardly a moral
exemplar.
So these are not meant to be
idealized heroes,
but popular heroes.
 
There is a very interesting
tension in the Book of Judges
that will continue beyond into
the Book of Samuel,
as well, but a tension
regarding kingship.
The individual stories seem to
suggest a very deep-seated
distrust of kingship.
 
So in Judges 8,
the people ask one of the
judges, Gideon at that time,
to become king.
And he responds this way:
"I shall not rule over you,
nor shall my sons rule over
you.
Yahweh shall rule over you".
 
That is 8:23.
And indeed, the short reign of
Gideon's ruthless son Abimelekh,
which means "my father is king"
ironically, is a complete
disaster.
The position of judge is
temporary.
God was viewed as the permanent
king in Israel.
The temporary authority of the
judge derived from the kingship
of God.
So the judge's position could
not become absolute or
permanent.
That would be a rejection of
God's leadership.
The Book of Judges seems to be
squarely against the notion of
kingship in Israel.
 
But the book as a whole seems
to suggest a certain progression
towards kingship,
and this emerges from some of
the editorial elements and
interpolations.
The final chapters of Judges
document Israel's slow slide
into disorder and ultimately
into civil war.
Chapter 18 opens with an
ominous statement or phrase that
recurs throughout the final
chapters.
"In those days,
there was no king in Israel."
That happens again in chapter
19:1, chapter 21:25.
"And in addition it is said
that everyone did as he pleased,
or everyone did what was right
in his own eyes."
It is in chapter 21:25.
 
By the end of the book,
the Israelites find themselves
spiraling out of control in an
orgy of violence and rape,
and in the final chapter,
all out civil war.
A Levite's concubine is raped
by a gang, murdered by the tribe
of Benjamin.
And this is an atrocity that is
to be avenged by all the other
tribes.
The Levite takes her body,
cuts it into 12 parts,
sends a part to each of the
tribes as a call to war,
to join together in a war of
extermination against Benjamin.
And many scholars have observed
that it is ironic and tragic
that the one time the tribes do
all act in concert is against
one of their own.
 
This is the only time all 12
tribes, or the other 11 tribes,
come out against a common enemy
and it is the tribe of Benjamin.
At a certain point,
however, they realize with some
regret that the tribe of
Benjamin is near extinction.
This is not a good thing,
so the other tribes then
arrange to kidnap women from
Shiloh as mates for the
remaining Benjaminites.
 
So as a final comment on this
horrible symphony of barbarity,
of rape, murder,
civil war, kidnapping,
forced marriage,
the Deuteronomistic historian
concludes the Book of Judges
with this refrain:
"In those days there was no
king in Israel,
and every man did as he
pleased."
It is a wonderfully polysemic
phrase, no king in Israel,
no human king,
perhaps also given their
behavior no divine king.
 
So again I see that as sort of
an ominous refrain throughout.
There was no king in Israel.
 
Every man is doing as he
pleases, and look at the
situation we have reached by the
end of the Book of Judges.
The Deuteronomist's explanation
for the moral and social
bankruptcy of Israel at the end
of the period of the judges at
the dawn,
or on the eve,
of the monarchy,
is Israel's continued
infidelity.
And the prescription for this
situation at some level in the
text is a king.
This sits uneasily with an
anti-monarchic trend in some of
these stories.
But according to the
Deuteronomistic historian,
the institutional structure of
a kingdom of God--right,
a sort of "theocracy" is how a
later Jewish historian would
describe this period--a kingdom
in which God is the king and the
community is led by inspired
judges in times of crisis--that
structure,
that institutional structure
failed to establish stability,
a stable continuous government.
 
It failed to provide leadership
against Israel's enemies within
and without.
You have Ammon and Moab to the
east.
You have the Philistines to the
west, and they soon manage to
subjugate the entire land.
So the tribes seem to be
conscious of the need for a
centralized authority,
a strong central authority;
and the demand for a king
arises.
In their search for a new
political order,
the people turn to the prophet
Samuel.
Samuel is the last in a line of
prophet judges,
and they ask him to anoint a
king for them.
So we are moving now into the
Book of Samuel.
And the Book of Samuel deals
with the transition from the
period of the judges to the
period of the monarchy.
In the first Book of Samuel,
you have the opening chapters
that record the birth and career
of Israel's last judge,
Samuel.
So that is chapters 1-4.
The next few chapters through
chapter 7 deal with the
Philistine crisis,
and at this time the Ark of the
Covenant itself is captured and
taken into Philistine territory.
Chapters 8-15 give us a story
of Samuel and Saul,
who will be Israel's first
king.
And then the last half of the
book, 16 on to 31,
are going to give us the story
of Saul and David.
So 1 Samuel opens with the
story of Samuel's birth to
Hannah, and her dedication of
her son to the service of God at
Shiloh,
at the sanctuary at Shiloh.
So Shiloh appears to have been
the most important shrine in the
period before the monarchy.
 
The prophet,
Jeremiah, is going to refer to
Shiloh as the place where God
first made his name to dwell.
You remember the Deuteronomist
is always speaking about
centralization around a place
where God will cause his name to
dwell.
At first that was Shiloh.
It has been noted that after
the birth of Samuel,
the text conveys a sense of
three crises,
and I have listed them on the
far side of the board over
there.
The first crisis is a religious
crisis.
The priest of the time,
Eli--he is also described as a
judge, but perhaps that is just
to fit him literarily into the
pattern of leadership that
predominates in this section of
the Bible--he is said to be
aging,
and his sons are quite corrupt.
As a result,
the text says,
"The word of Yahweh is rare in
those days."
So there is a crisis in
religious leadership.
There is also a crisis in
political leadership,
or political succession to some
degree.
Judges 2 tells us that Eli's
two sons are clearly not worthy.
They dishonor the sacrifices,
and according to one reading
they lie with the women at the
door of the shrine.
God says he will cut off the
power of Eli's house.
His two sons will die in one
day.
And God will find and raise up
a faithful priest.
But in the meantime,
no leader is apparent.
So we have a crisis in
succession, if you will.
The third crisis is a military
crisis.
In Judges 4-7,
the Israelites suffer a defeat
at the hands of the Philistines.
 
I'm sorry, in 1 Samuel!
 
They suffer defeat at the hands
of the Philistines.
The Ark is captured.
 
Eli's two sons are killed and
the news of all of this kills
Eli, as well.
So when we first meet Samuel we
wonder: is he going to be the
answer to all of these crises,
these problems?
Chapter 3 says that the word of
God comes to Israel through
Samuel.
In contrast to the statement
that the word of God was rare in
those days, we hear that the
word of God is now coming to
Israel through Samuel.
 
It raises some hope.
 
In chapter 7,
Samuel exhorts the people to
stop serving alien gods and
Ashteroth and to serve God,
and only then will God deliver
them.
So the people do this,
and Samuel leads them.
He employs--his military
tactics mostly include prayer
and confession and sacrifice,
but he manages to lead them to
victory over the Philistines.
 
God thunders and the
Philistines flee in fear.
So Samuel seems to be combining
in one person several functions.
He is a priest.
He is in the shrine.
He offers sacrifices.
 
He builds altars.
 
He is also a seer and a prophet.
 
He receives the word of the
Lord and, like a prophet,
he will be anointing kings.
 
And he is also a judge in the
sense that he leads Israel to
military victory.
 
But he also travels a circuit
acting as a judge in a judicial
sense--it says throughout
Israel,
but really most of the places
we hear about are within the
confines of Benjamin.
 
So this story seems to mostly
be focused in the southern
region in the tribe of Benjamin.
 
But even he is unable to
provide Israel with the kind of
leadership that the text
suggests is required.
The Philistine threat is going
to reemerge, and the crisis of
succession will remain,
obviously.
And so the representatives of
the twelve tribes come together
to Samuel to ask for a king.
 
Samuel is therefore a kind of a
transition figure between
Israel, the semi-democratic
confederation,
and Israel, the nation and
monarchy.
It is going to be a huge
transformation,
as we will see.
But he is going to be the one
to bridge the gap to this new
kind of leadership.
Now as in Judges,
the historical account that we
have in 1 Samuel contains many
contradictions,
many duplicates,
so scholars take these as
evidence of the existence of
various conflicting sources and
traditions that have been put
together in a larger framework.
So for example,
we have three different
accounts of the choice of Saul
as king.
We have two accounts of his
being rejected ultimately by
God.
We have different accounts of
how David came to know Saul and
how David entered Saul's
service.
We have more than one account
of David's escape into
Philistine territory,
of his sparing Saul's life.
 
That happens twice.
 
Twice he has the opportunity to
kill him.
Twice he spares his life,
and so on.
Goliath is killed twice.
 
Only one of those occasions is
by David.
On the other occasion he is
killed by some other hero.
So most important for us,
however, is the existence of
sources that hold opposing views
of the institution of kingship.
This makes for an interesting
and complicated structure in the
book.
Some of the passages are
clearly anti-monarchic and some
are clearly pro-monarchic.
And I have put them up here,
the anti-monarchic passages:
1 Samuel 8.
There is a passage in 10.
There is a passage in 12.
 
The pro-monarchic passages are
sandwiched in between these,
right, in 9 and 11.
 
So you have this alternating
sequence of anti,
pro, anti, pro,
anti.
1 Samuel 8 is a classic example
of the anti-monarchic
perspective.
Samuel is initially opposed to
the whole idea.
He apparently resents the
usurpation of his own power.
 
Until God says,
Heed the demand of the
people in everything they say to
you.
For it is not you they have
rejected;
it is Me they have rejected as
their king… .Heed their
demand;
but warn them solemnly,
and tell them about the
practices of any king who will
rule over them.
[1 Sam 8:7-9]
And so Samuel does that.
 
He does that in verses 11-18.
 
He warns of the tyranny of
kings, the rapaciousness of
kings, the service and the
sacrifice they will require of
the people in order to support
their luxurious court life and
their large harem,
their bureaucracy and their
army.
"The day will come",
Samuel warns,
"when you cry out because of
the king whom you yourselves
have chosen;
and the Lord will not answer
you on that day"--a very
anti-monarchic passage.
 
The people won't listen to him,
and they say quite
significantly,
"No… We must have a king over
us,
that we may be like all the
other nations:
Let our king rule over us and
go out at our head and fight our
battles" .
So this is an explicit and
ominous rejection,
not only of Yahweh,
but of Israel's distinctiveness
from other nations.
 
And what, after all,
does it mean to be a holy
nation, but to be a nation
separated out from,
observing different rules from,
other nations.
In Samuel 12,
Samuel retires,
and he says as he does so,
"See, it is the king who leads
you now.
I am old and gray" .
And he, again,
outlines what is required of a
good king, and then again
chastises the people for even
having asked for a king,
warning that really God must be
served wholeheartedly.
 
A king should not interpose
himself.
Some have argued that the
editors who compiled the text
preserved the pro-monarchic
perspective of their sources,
but they chose to frame the
pro-monarchic passages with
their own anti-monarchic
passages,
with the result that the
anti-monarchic passages really
provide a stronger
interpretative framework and are
dominant.
The implication is that despite
positive contemporary
evaluations of Israel's kings,
from the perspective of the
later period,
from the perspective of the
editors and perhaps those
sitting in exile,
the institution of kingship was
a disaster for Israel.
 
And that negative assessment is
introduced by the
Deuteronomistic redactor into
his account of the origin of the
institution: that God,
himself, warned at the time
that this transition was being
made and this request was being
made--God himself,
warned that this had the
potential to be quite
disastrous.
Others feel that the
pro-monarchic and anti-monarchic
views were contemporaneous and
both ancient,
and we see that simply
reflected in these dueling
sources.
So whether one view is older
and one more recent,
whether both are ancient views
or both are recent or later
views,
the end result is a very
complex narrative.
As you read it you feel thrown
back and forth between these
positive and negative
assessments of kingship.
And we feel these,
and see these very different
views of monarchy in ancient
Israel.
So these views really defy
categorization in the end.
They are one of the things that
give the book such complexity
and sophistication.
 
Not only is there ambivalence,
however, about the institution
of kingship or monarchy,
there is also a great deal of
ambivalence about the first
inhabitant of the office,
the first king,
King Saul, himself.
Judges has three different
accounts of Saul's appointment
as king.
In chapter 9,1 Samuel 9,
it is a private affair.
 
It is just between Saul and the
prophet Samuel.
Samuel anoints Saul as king
with oil in a kind of a private
encounter.
The anointing of kings is also
found among other ancient Near
Eastern groups,
the Hittites,
for example.
In Israel, it seems to be a
rite of dedication or
consecration,
making sacred to God,
("con-secration," making
sacred).
And it is done not just for
kings.
It is also done for high
priests.
They are also anointed with
sacred oil.
Then in 1 Samuel 10,
you have Saul's appointment
represented as being effected by
a lottery.
It is a lottery that is
presided over by Samuel,
but there is a lottery system
and the lot falls to Samuel to
be appointed king.
 
In the next chapter,
in 1 Samuel 11,
we have Saul victorious in a
battle over the Ammonites and so
he is elected by popular
acclaim, if you will.
These could all be
complementary ways of his slowly
securing the position.
 
They could be seen as competing
accounts.
But he is an important and a
striking figure.
Nevertheless there seems to
have been some controversy about
Saul and it is preserved within
our sources.
On the one hand,
he is described in very
positive terms.
He is tall.
He is handsome.
He is winning.
He is charismatic.
 
In fact, he is associated with
ecstatic prophecy:
the spirit of the Lord comes
upon him and he prophesies in a
sort of raving and dancing and
ecstatic mode.
He defends his own tribe.
 
He is from the tribe of
Benjamin, and he defends them
from Ammonite raids.
 
And he is hailed by the tribes
as a leader in time of war.
As king he did enjoy some
initial military victories.
He drove the Philistines from
their garrisons,
and he was such a popular and
natural leader that even Samuel,
who at first resented Saul and
resented the idea of a king,
came to appreciate him and was
said to really grieve for him
upon his death.
But once David enters the
story, which is about halfway
through the Book of 1 Samuel
(it's 1 Samuel 16),
then we begin to see clearly
negative assessments of Saul,
perhaps because the sources
about David stem from circles
that were loyal to the House of
David,
and David is going to succeed
Saul, obviously,
as the second king of Israel.
Perhaps the negative assessment
is because of Saul's ultimate
failure and suicide.
 
That had to be accounted for by
identifying some fatal flaw in
him.
So now his ecstatic prophecies
are presented as irrational fits
of mad behavior.
So where once the spirit of the
Lord was said to come upon him,
now he is said to be seized by
an evil spirit from the Lord
that rushes upon him suddenly
causing him to rave in his
house.
Elsewhere he commits errors.
He doesn't obey Samuel's
instructions to the letter,
and that is going to cost him
the support of Samuel and
ultimately God.
We have two stories of
disobedience related in 1
Samuel.
One is in chapter 13.
 
He sees that the morale of his
men is sagging and so to rally
them together he officiates at a
sacrifice.
He was supposed to wait for
Samuel to arrive and do it,
but he sees that it needs to
happen now, and so he officiates
at the sacrifice himself.
 
And this appropriation of a
priestly function enrages
Samuel, and this is Samuel's
first pronouncement or
prediction that God will not
establish Saul's dynasty over
Israel,
despite the fact,
by the way, that other kings at
other times will sacrifice with
impunity.
So it is interesting because
David and others will sacrifice
and it doesn't seem to be a
problem.
But here it is given as the
occasion for Samuel's fury and
his first pronouncement that the
dynasty of Saul will not be
established.
In chapter 15,
we have a second instance of
disobedience that earns Samuel's
disapproval.
Again, against Samuel's order,
he spares the life of an enemy
king.
This is King Agag.
He spares his life and
otherwise violates the terms of
herem:
this notion of total
destruction or devotion of booty
and enemies to God through total
destruction.
And, again, when he violates
the order of herem,
Samuel again announces that God
regrets having made Saul king.
 
"The Lord has this day torn the
kingship over Israel away from
you and has given it to another
who is worthier than you."
That is chapter 15:28.
 
In any event,
with his support eroding,
Saul seems to sink into a deep
depression and paranoia.
And toward the end of his life,
he is depicted as being
completely obsessed with David
and the threat that David poses
to Saul himself,
but also his dynasty.
Saul is angry that his own son,
Jonathan, who presumably should
succeed him to the throne,
has a deep friendship with
David and, in fact,
throws his support over to
David instead of himself.
 
In several jealous rages Saul
attempts to kill David or to
have him and his supporters
killed.
In one particularly violent
incident he kills 85 priests
whom he believes have given
shelter to David and his
supporters.
So in these encounters between
Saul and David,
the sources portray Saul as
this raving,
obsessed paranoid person,
and David is seen as a sort of
innocent victim,
and he protests his loyalty and
his support for Saul.
He does not seem to understand
why Saul should view him as a
threat.
And twice he passes up the
opportunity to do away with Saul
himself.
He says, I will not raise my
hand against the Lord's
anointed.
So the portrayal of Saul as a
raving and paranoid man who is
obsessed with David probably
reflects the views of later
writers who were apologists for
the House of David.
 
Positive views of Saul's
character weren't entirely
extinguished by the biblical
writer.
David's own lament,
when he hears of Saul's death
by suicide, and Jonathan's
death, also, may reflect Saul's
tremendous popularity.
 
David orders the Judahites to
sing what is called the Song of
the Bow in praise of Saul.
 
Your glory, O Israel,
Lies slain on your heights;
How have the mighty fallen!
 
...
Saul and Jonathan,
Beloved and cherished,
Never parted
In life or in death!
 
They were swifter than eagles,
They were stronger than lions!
Daughters of Israel,
Weep over Saul,
Who clothed you in crimson and
finery,
Who decked your robes with
jewels of gold.
How have the mighty fallen
In the thick of battle--
Jonathan, slain on your heights!
 
I grieve for you,
My brother Jonathan,
You were most dear to me.
 
Your love was wonderful to me
More than the love of women.
How have the mighty fallen,
The weapons of war perished!
[2 Sam 1:19,23-27]
Of course, representing David
as bewailing Saul and Jonathan
in these terms,
would have served an apologetic
function, as well.
And David is cleared of any
part in or even desire for the
death of Saul.
So half way through the Book of
Samuel then, is the first part
of the story of David and his
encounters with Saul,
running through to the end of 1
Samuel and the first few
chapters of 2 Samuel--about
Second Samuel 5.
And this whole section,
this first part of the story of
David, has the feel of a
historical novel,
or narrative.
There is a lot of direct speech
and lots of dialogue.
So it has the feel of fiction,
of a novel.
Given that the ruling family in
Judah was referred to as the
House of David for several
centuries,
and given a wonderful
archaeological find dating from
the ninth century--it's a Syrian
inscription that refers to the
House of David dating to the
ninth century--so given those
two pieces of evidence,
I think most scholars would see
David as a real person.
 
None of the details of the
biblical account can really be
confirmed, of course,
but I think the consensus is
that David was a real person.
 
There are obviously some who do
not hold that and believe this
is a much later retrojection.
 
But David is,
surprisingly enough,
presented as very human.
 
He is not a divine character,
and he is certainly not even a
highly virtuous character.
 
The first installment of his
story through about 2 Samuel 5,
is clearly sympathetic to David
and favorable to David.
But it is not entirely
obsequious or flattering,
which is the sort of genre that
we very often have coming out of
ancient Near Eastern texts
dealing with royalty.
This part of the story may be
an apology for David,
but it is also subtly critical
of him.
Certainly David is a hero,
but if you read between the
lines, he is also an
opportunist.
He is an outlaw.
He serves as a mercenary for
the Philistines for some of the
time, and he can act pretty
unscrupulously.
So this isn't royal propaganda
in the simple sense,
even though to some degree it
may be an apology for David.
 
As we are going to see in a
minute, David will fare much,
much worse in the second
installment of his story,
and this is the story that
takes up the bulk of 2 Samuel.
So moving now into the Book of
2 Samuel and the latter part of
David's story.
Actually, no, I lied!
We are going to back up for one
minute just to talk about the
different accounts of David's
emergence--the three different
stories,
if you will,
of David's discovery,
because in the first,
Samuel, again,
secretly anoints him king of
Judah.
So it is a private affair.
He anoints him as the king of
Judah, which is just the
southern region.
He does this in Saul's lifetime.
David is the youngest of his
father's sons,
so this anointment is another
reversal of primogeniture,
the exaltation of the lowly
that we see so often in the
Bible.
In the second account we first
meet David when he is summoned
to play music for a disturbed
Saul who,
of course, is suffering from
these irrational fits.
 
And then in the third account,
David is introduced as the
98-pound weakling who takes on
the legendary Goliath.
Later, after the death of Saul,
David will be anointed king in
Hebron over his own tribe,
Judah.
He then manages to either win
over or kill off the rest of
Saul's household,
anyone else who could make a
dynastic claim to the throne
based on descent from Saul,
anyone who might be a threat to
his claim to kingship in the
more northern region.
 
And eventually the northern
tribes will also elect him king.
And so the united kingship of
the northern parts of Israel and
the Tribe of Judah is finally
formed.
Once his reign seems secure,
and the nation is consolidated
behind him, David then captures
Jerusalem and launches attacks
against Israel's neighbors.
 
And the text says that the Lord
gives him victory.
This is in 2 Samuel 8 now,
verses 6 and 14.
God gives him victory.
 
The biblical narrative depicts
him as the master of a huge
empire that stretches from the
desert to the sea.
There is very little evidence
that Israel actually established
lasting control over all of the
states in this region.
It's likely that David was able
to take advantage of a power
vacuum.
Egypt's hold on Canaan was
crumbling.
Again, the migration of these
"peoples of the seas" throughout
this region and other peoples
pressing in from the desert had
really upset the two major
powers in Mesopotamia and in
Egypt,
and they really had lost
control of the central region.
And so David was--and the
Israelites were able to take
advantage of this and establish
an independent state.
And David's independent state
was probably able to dominate
the area for a little while,
ending the Philistine threat,
for example,
and possibly even collecting
tribute from some of the
surrounding or neighboring
states,
Ammon and Moab and Edom.
But it is the prophet Nathan,
who transmits God's promise to
David, a promise that will
become the basis for the faith
in the eternity of the Davidic
kingdom.
And that happens in 2 Samuel,
chapter 7:8-17,
a very important passage and
very important in the
construction of what we will see
is a royal ideology;
a royal ideology that comes to
contest some of the basic
ideology of the nation.
 
"Thus says the Lord of hosts."
 
This is Nathan speaking now,
quoting God:
"Thus says the Lord of
hosts, I took you from the
pasture, from following the
sheep,
that you should be prince over
my people Israel,
and I have been with you
wherever you went and have cut
off all your enemies from before
you,
and I will make for you a great
name like the name of the great
ones of the earth.
 
And I will appoint a place for
my people Israel,
and will plant them,
that they may dwell in their
own place, and be disturbed no
more;
and violent men shall afflict
them no more,
as formerly,
from the time that I appointed
judges over my people Israel;
and I will give you rest from
all your enemies.
 
Moreover the Lord declares to
you that the Lord will make you
a house."
[meaning here dynasty]
"When your days are fulfilled
and you lie down with your
fathers, I will raise up your
offspring after you,
who shall come forth from your
body, and I will establish his
kingdom.
He shall build a house [meaning
now a temple]
for my name,
and I will establish the throne
of his kingdom forever.
I will be his father,
and he shall be my son.
When he commits iniquity,
I will chasten him with the rod
of men, with the stripes of the
sons of men;
but I will not take my
steadfast love from him,
as I took it from Saul,
whom I put away from before
you.
And your house and your kingdom
shall be made sure forever
before me;
your throne shall be
established forever.
In accordance with all these
words, and in accordance with
all this vision,
Nathan spoke to David." [RSV;
see note 3]
It's a very important passage,
and it's with this passage that
you have the idea of an eternal
and unconditional covenant
between God and the House of
David,
or the dynasty of David.
And this is now the fourth
covenant that we have met:
the Noahide covenant,
the patriarchical Covenant,
the Sinaitic Covenant,
and now the Davidic covenant.
Note that God says that David
and his descendants may be
punished for sin.
 
They certainly will be punished
for sin, but he will not take
the kingdom away from them as he
did from Saul.
So God's oath to preserve the
Davidic dynasty and,
by implication we will see
later,
next time, Jerusalem as well,
would lead eventually to a
popular belief in the
invincibility of the Holy City.
In addition,
the belief in Israel's ultimate
deliverance from enemies became
bound up with David and his
dynasty.
David was idealized by later
biblical and post-biblical
tradition, and became the
paradigmatic king.
 
So even when the kingdom fell
finally to the Babylonians in
586, the promise to David's
House was believed to be
eternal.
The community looked to the
future for a restoration of the
Davidic line or Davidic king,
or a messiah.
Now the Hebrew word
messiah simply means
anointed, one who is
"meshiach" is anointed
with the holy oil.
That is a reference to the fact
that the king was initiated into
office by means of holy oil
being poured on his head.
So King David was the messiah
of God, the king anointed by or
to God.
And in the exile,
Israelites would pray for
another messiah,
meaning another king from the
House of David appointed and
anointed by God to rescue them
from enemies and reestablish
them as a nation at peace in
their land as David had done.
So the Jewish hope for a
messiah, speaking now in the
post-biblical where it is
correct to say Jewish,
the Jewish hope for a messiah
was thus always political and
national.
It involved the restoration of
the nation in its land under a
Davidic king.
We are going to talk next time
about the royal ideology that
begins to emerge and challenge
the older Sinaitic and
covenantal ideology.
 
But that is too much to get
into now.
So we will deal with that on
Wednesday and then move on
through the rest of the
Deuteronomistic history.
