I & II Samuel: A Commentary

INTRODUCTION

The Book of David

This book is about David; it brings the first king of Israel and his reign in Jerusalem a larger place in the Hebrew Bible story than any other figure. Moses may be mentioned on more pages, but much less is told us about him: his character is much less fully explored. We find David presented and re-presented with and against a very large supporting cast:

David’s predecessor and rival King Saul, his daughter Michal, who becomes David’s wife, and Saul’s son Jonathan, who becomes David’s friend

Saul’s Edomite henchman Doeg; Nabal, Saul’s double; and Abigail, wife of that Fool, who later becomes one of David’s wives

David’s general Joab with brothers Abishai and Asahel, killed by Saul’s general Abner

David’s daughter Tamar, with her half brother Amnon, who rapes her; and with her full brother Absalom, who avenges her and then becomes rival to David

David’s loyal soldier Uriah, and his wife, Bathsheba, who becomes one of David’s wives

Philistines (both foes and friends) from Gath: Goliath, King Achish, and Ittai

Abiathar and Zadok, the priests

Nathan the prophet and Gad, David’s seer; crafty counselors, such as Ahithophel, Hushai, and the (unnamed) wise woman from Tekoa

And this already long list has not mentioned David’s father and brothers, many named warriors, the kings of Ammon and Moab, generous hosts in troubled times such as Barzillai, survivors of Saul’s family and some of their retainers, and many anonymous groups—nor the much smaller cast we meet in the opening chapters before David comes on stage: Eli the old priest and his wicked sons; the Philistine lords; and Hannah with her husband, Elkanah; the rival wife, Peninnah; and Hannah’s son, Samuel—who himself leads Israel before he anoints Saul as king forever, judges Saul and anoints David in his place, and anticipates Elijah, Elisha, and Jeremiah.

This book is about David: all the other personalities are there so that we may see and know David better; but the book is called 1–2 Samuel, or 1–2 Kingdoms (or Reigns). The ancient titles and divisions of the biblical narrative books mask the dominance in the text itself of this one figure. David has one royal predecessor and thirty-nine successors as kings of Israel or kings in Jerusalem. Yet the story of David takes up more than half the space occupied in the books of Samuel and Kings by all these other forty taken together. He occupies more than a third of the pages of what the ancient Greek Bible calls the four books of Kingdoms, or Reigns, and some three-quarters of the first two—better known as 1–2 Samuel. (Thus 1 Kingdoms equals 1 Samuel, 4 Kingdoms equals 2 Kings, and so on.) These could be called the books of David. And yet the familiar titles, 1–2 Samuel and 1–2 Kings, or 1–4 Kingdoms, are not simply ancient: they also reflect important aspects of the contents. In an important sense, all four books belong together: several elements within the opening chapters of 1 Kingdoms deliberately anticipate the end of 4 Kingdoms. As for Samuel, he not only dominates the first half of 1 Samuel, but he also has an important role to play beyond the grave; Samuel anticipates not only Elijah and Elisha at the heart of 1–2 Kings (they like he, and not the kings of the moment, wield real authority in their time), but also the prophetic tradition that outlives the kings.

The books of Samuel invite us into a fascinating world. No other biblical books in such detail take us into the lives of their principal characters and their families. The stories about them have charmed and puzzled their readers in equal measure over more than two thousand years—and have led to the writing of a huge number of commentaries and other studies. The story of the ancient written texts of Samuel, and their family relationships, is hardly less interesting than the story in them. Recent years have seen easier access to the great manuscripts that are our prime witnesses to the books of Samuel; and such access has led to greater understanding of how ancient books were produced.

Few readers have the privilege themselves to handle such manuscripts in Jerusalem, Rome, or Saint Petersburg. But high-quality photographic reproductions are now available of the fragments in Jerusalem of Hebrew manuscripts of Samuel found in caves near the Dead Sea, dating back some two thousand years. And one of these manuscripts (listed anonymously as 4Q51, or more familiarly as 4QSama), though fragmentary, is better preserved than almost any other biblical manuscript from Qumran. Then the Vatican celebrations of the second Christian millennium included the 1999 publication of a magnificent photographic edition of (probably) the most important biblical manuscript in the Vatican Library: a copy of the Bible in Greek made some 1,600 years ago. And a photographic facsimile of similar quality had just been published (1998) of what is still widely called Codex Leningradensis, one of the two oldest and most prestigious copies of the complete Hebrew Bible, some 1,000 years old. Then the Aleppo Codex, now in Jerusalem (and slightly older, though no longer complete) is freely available online. We need no longer depend exclusively on other scholars’ reports of these manuscripts: we can see for ourselves how the ancient scribes arranged their pages, how they wrote, and how they were corrected; after seeing the evidence, we can ask our own questions. But first: a fuller account of the contents.

Reading Samuel from Beginning to End

The first book of Samuel opens in hope and despair (1 Sam 1–8). The stories of his birth and of his vision when he was still a lad identify Samuel as a figure of promise. And this portrait of expectation is heightened against a background of foul behavior by Eli’s priestly family and the loss of the divine ark to the Philistines. The narrative attests to the return of the ark, a success under Samuel, but protests too about his sons, leading to confrontation and dire warnings from the old leader about his people’s request for a king. The next quarter (chs. 9–15) reports the moves that lead to the choice of Saul as king. Though Saul does remain a key character throughout 1 Samuel, there is also a sense in which his short reign is appropriately dispatched in only two chapters (13–14); by the end of this portion, Yahweh has repented ever having made him king, and Samuel has left Saul in grief, never to see him again this side of the grave. The second half of this long book is a much more leisurely account of the rise of David: also anointed by Samuel; victorious over a Philistine giant; in increasingly complicated relationships with Saul, his daughters, and his eldest son Jonathan; and sometimes a refugee among the Philistines. This narrative comes to an interim climax with Saul’s life in David’s hands (ch. 24) and the death of Samuel. However, opportunity is taken to explore some of its themes a second time, before it ends (ch. 31) with Saul dead after battle with the old enemy; and with David at a conveniently safe distance to the south, neither implicated in his death nor able to save him from it.

The second book of Samuel tells the story of David as king. The first four chapters show him dealing with the inheritance of Saul: first publicly lamenting Saul and Jonathan; then, from his base in Hebron in the heartland of Judah, struggling with the late king’s family and supporters. It is in Hebron that Israel’s leaders anoint him as king; but he moves quickly north to take Jerusalem and establish himself there, to defeat the Philistines, and to bring the ark to his new capital (chs. 5–6). Nathan prophesies two houses (ch. 7): a royal dynasty to spring from David, and a house for the Deity’s name, to be built by David’s son. Victories for David in Syria and Transjordan follow (chs. 8; 10); the last of these, in Ammon, provides the background for David’s elimination of Bathsheba’s husband, Nathan’s parable of condemnation, and the eventual birth of Solomon (chs. 11–12). Eight chapters follow, reporting strife within the royal house: the rape of David’s daughter Tamar by her half brother Amnon; rebellion by Tamar’s brother Absalom, driving his father from his capital; and a final, painful return of David to Jerusalem. It is typically ironic that these disruptive chapters should have a leading character whose name (Absalom) may be understood as my father is peace. A final well-structured unit (chs. 21–24) starts by returning to the topic of relations between David and Saul and the Philistines. At its heart are two poems embodying the royal ideology. The book concludes with David’s failing Yahweh’s test over taking a census of the people.

Samuel in Two Main Forms?

We have access to two main forms of the ancient Hebrew book(s) of Samuel. The first of these forms is the more familiar, and the more easily described. As already mentioned, the 1,000-year-old Aleppo Codex can be inspected online, and the Codex Leningradensis can be inspected in a photographic edition; the text of the latter has also been conveniently transcribed in a printed edition: Biblia Hebraica Leningradensia (2001), although with some alteration of the paragraphing. In practice, it is this latter codex that is widely described as the Masoretic Text (MT). This traditional Jewish text (Masorah means tradition) is available in a multitude of manuscripts; these do differ from each other, though only in the tiniest details. The two earliest complete manuscripts we possess were copied (around 1000 C.E.) only a few centuries after this form of the text had been completed. Only after making these qualifications can we say that we have the Hebrew text, as standardized by the Masoretes (MT), available to us.

The other ancient Hebrew form of Samuel (if it is only one) is rather harder to assess, but the main facts are easily stated. We do not have it in anything like its pristine state; but we have four substantial witnesses to it: two in Hebrew and two in Greek. The fragments from the Dead Sea caves represent only some 10 percent of the text; but they are the oldest evidence we have. The other Hebrew evidence is preserved in 1 Chronicles; that alternative biblical history shares the equivalent of about eight chapters of the fifty-five in 1–2 Samuel, but the wording of the shared material is often significantly different from the MT of Samuel. The only complete version of this other ancient Hebrew book of Samuel is the Old Greek (OG) or Septuagint (LXX) version—the earliest translation of biblical books into another language. And the other vital Greek testimony is provided in the first-century C.E. Jewish Antiquities, by Flavius Josephus—the account of his people’s past prepared for his new Roman masters by the former Jewish general. Of these four witnesses, the only complete one is a translation into Greek; 1 Chronicles shares no more than 15 percent of Samuel; and 4QSama is evidence for no more than 10 percent of the text. But the crucial fact is that when these four witnesses do overlap, they are more like each other than any of them is to the traditional Jewish text (MT).

The commonest conclusion drawn from this evidence is that the Chronicler, the Septuagint translator, and Josephus all worked from a version of Samuel rather like 4QSama had been, when still complete. There are several striking agreements between 4QSama and 1 Chronicles, against Samuel MT. And the many agreements between either or both of these Hebrew witnesses and the Old Greek (OG) version confirm the judgment that its translators had provided a quite literal rendering of the Hebrew from which they worked. This group of four witnesses could be compared to siblings, or at least to first cousins—while the MT is related to them more distantly. We shall also review evidence that MT is a younger, more recent form of the text. When we compare it with the OG (the only other witness to the whole book), we find two main sorts of difference: accidental loss and separate development. Broadly, where the MT is shorter, the reason is often accidental damage; and where the MT is different or longer, that is reckoned as scribal decision within one tradition or another. That is the conclusion most commonly drawn from these various bits of evidence. But we have to be careful not to overemphasize the significance of 4QSama. It does contain some surprisingly independent elements of its own; and so it may be safer to characterize it as a descendent of the Hebrew text used by the OG and the Chronicler.

More on the Ancient Texts of Samuel

We have already noted (in the previous section) that there were two ancient groups of texts or text families for the books of Samuel. The translation below presents together the best complete example of each group or family.

1. Not much more needs to be said at this stage about the Masoretic Text (MT). The fully vocalized or pointed version of the traditional Jewish text (in the form we find it in the Aleppo and Leningrad codices copied around 1000 C.E.) may not have been completed till the seventh century C.E. That was when early Islam was spreading to the east and south of the Mediterranean. But this form of the older consonantal text was probably substantially complete around the beginning of the Common (or Christian) Era, by the time the second Jerusalem temple was destroyed (70 C.E.). This Proto-Masoretic Text in unvocalized Hebrew is reflected in three ancient witnesses in other languages. The Aramaic Targums (Tg.) are based on paraphrases of the sacred text used in synagogues where Hebrew was no longer familiar. The Syriac (Eastern Aramaic) Bible (Syr.) was prepared for early Christian communities eastward from the Mediterranean. And what came much later to be recognized as the Latin Vulgate (Vulg.) was translated in Bethlehem by Jerome, who learned his Hebrew there from local rabbis.

2. Only one of the fragmentary Hebrew Samuel manuscripts found by the Dead Sea has been mentioned so far. Much more of the text of 4QSama has been preserved than of the other three manuscripts; the fact 4QSama overlaps more with distinctive readings in 1 Chronicles and Josephus gives it added interest and importance. But evidence from each of the others will also be noted in the commentary: 1QSam (1Q7); 4QSamb (4Q52); and 4QSamc (4Q53).

3. The story of the alternative text family is more complex, and also perhaps more interesting, because in the end this did not become the standard text. We reviewed (Samuel in Two Main Forms?) the fourfold evidence that makes us suspect that the Old Greek (OG) or Septuagint (LXX) was witness to a version of Samuel older than the Proto-Masoretic one. But two factors make evaluating this exactly more difficult. First Chronicles and Josephus only provide evidence for parts of 1–2 Samuel—and that is even truer of the fragmentary Qumran evidence. Then, though the ancient Greek biblical manuscripts are complete, they are far from uniform. For most of 1–2 Samuel, or more properly 1–2 Kingdoms, the best witness to the Old Greek translation (OG) is Codex Vaticanus (B). But starting from 2 Sam 10:1 or 11:2 the text copied in B had been substantially revised toward the emerging Proto-Masoretic Text. From that point, therefore, B loses much of its value as evidence of a text different from and probably earlier than MT; and we take the Lucianic text (LT) as our best evidence for OG. The LT is a less pristine witness than unrevised B (B at its best), but a better witness than revised B. However, LT is not the name of a single ancient codex (like B); it is the reconstructed ancestor of five interrelated Lucianic witnesses. Why they are called this need not concern us here. The Greek text translated below is B in 1 Sam 1–2 Sam 9, and LT in 2 Sam 10–24. But both these Greek texts will be reviewed throughout the commentary. Where B and LT agree, the abbreviation GT is used. It is the Lucianic text that continues 2 Kingdoms beyond the census story, and as far as the death of David (1 Kgs 2:10–12). Quite often these readings differ from those in the widely used Septuaginta, edited by Rahlfs.¹

The OG has important daughter versions in other languages (Armenian, Georgian, Coptic, and Ethiopic). But only one of these is occasionally mentioned below. The Latin translation of the Old Testament in popular and widespread use (vulgata) in the Western church was made from Greek. Jerome’s translation from the Hebrew was almost a thousand years old before it officially supplanted what then became known as the Old Latin (OL). In the provocative but illuminating formulation of Julio Trebolle Barrera, the Old Latin is sometimes witness to an older Greek and thereby witness to the oldest Hebrew.

Translating and Presenting the Books of Samuel

This volume is intended as a study of the traditional text of Samuel. The translation and the way the translation is displayed on the pages below have three main aims:

1. The first is to offer some indication of how the text is presented in the most widely recognized witness to the Masoretic Text (the so-called Leningrad Codex). Following a tradition that reaches back at least as far as the Dead Sea Scrolls, both the methods and the purposes of paragraphing in this codex were rather different from modern ones. It is easier to state what the methods were; and it is important to note that these differ in one important respect from the familiar printed editions, which are based on this ancient codex. BHL, like BHS before it, marks only two types of division: major or open (pĕtû ôt) divisions in the text (as in modern paragraphing), where the new paragraph is started on a fresh line (the end of the previous line being left open); and minor or closed (sĕtûmôt) divisions, marked by leaving a larger than normal space within a line between sentence-end and next sentence-start. This twofold division is based on halakic rules from a date later than the codex.

Except in the case of the Song of David (see below on 2 Sam 22), the text of Samuel in both ancient codices is presented in pages of three columns, and therefore in quite short lines. Their scribes were clearly operating with not two but three categories of text divider. The most important divisions were marked by leaving a complete line blank. And in the three cases in Samuel where a line is left blank at the top or bottom of a column, we find the letter pê ( for pĕtû â) in the middle of the blank line. Less important divisions were marked by a move to the beginning of the next line. However, later Jewish tradition and our printed editions of MT have collapsed this distinction into a single category of pĕtû ôt.

In the Aleppo Codex, there are forty-nine such major pĕtû ôt dividers, and thirty are in Codex Leningradensis (CL); but they share only fourteen: before 1 Sam 3:11; 4:1; 5:1; 10:17; 17:1; 18:17; 28:3; 2 Sam 3:6; 4:1; 6:1; 14:18; 15:7; 17:14; 22:1. The further blanks in the Aleppo Codex occur before 1 Sam 3:1; 4:18; 7:5; 8:7, 22; 10:1; 11:1; 12:6; 13:1; 14:19b, 49; 15:10, 16; 16:12b; 17:12, 17; 19:11; 20:1, 27b; 21:1, 6; 24:17; 26:10, 25; 29:1; 2 Sam 2:8; 5:1, 11; 8:1; 12:1; 14:28; 15:10; 23:1; 24:11b, 18. The further sixteen in the CL precede 1 Sam 2:11; 3:19; 9:1; 10:25; 13:15; 14:17, 36; 18:25; 25:1; 30:26; 2 Sam 3:31; 5:17; 10:1; 13:34; 14:8; 20:20. These ancient divisions within the text often do not correspond to what most modern readers perceive as the start or finish of major sense units or paragraphs. Equally, they do not at all correspond to the familiar chapter divisions, which originated in medieval copies of the Latin Bible. Often what starts a fresh (sub)paragraph is a speech or action of an influential character, such as God or the king, as if the extra space before it is being used to draw attention to the imminence of a significant comment or intervention. However, the blank lines in the codex do indicate a clear strategy for reading the book (see further below at the end Writing Samuel). This translation and commentary do not imitate the ancient practice but do draw attention to it. The 31 major sections are determined by the 30 blank lines in CL. The sections into which these are divided follow the pĕtû ôt, the next major divisions of MT. And the presence of sĕtûmôt within a larger masoretic paragraph is noted by the insertion of a blank line in the translation and in the commentary below.

2. The next aim is to use the printed layout to give some sense of how Hebrew works to readers who may have little knowledge of Hebrew. Each new clause begins on a fresh line (and most clauses are short enough also to end on that line). If the new clause is formally subordinate to the preceding one (most often either introduced by the relative marker šr [as in 1 Sam 1:27], or headed by an explanatory infinitive [1:3, 12, 21, 26]), its start is indented. And the start of direct speech is also indented. But there is one consistent exception to these rules. Direct speech is often immediately preceded by the Hebrew infinitive lē môr (rendered saying), which resumes a previous verb or phrase implying speaking. However, for reasons of space, this particular explanatory infinitive is not given its own line. Such visual display of the text permits ready appreciation of several stylistic features. At a glance we can see when the narrative is galloping on, using only verb after verb; when a clause is unusually long; and when we are dealing with speech within speech (each embedded speech is shown further indented on the page). And we can also more readily notice rhetorical patterns of repetition or balance.

3. A third aspect of the translation invites attention to what is distinctive in the traditional Masoretic Text by means of comparison: by setting it side by side with the Old Greek—the only complete extant version of the alternative ancient Hebrew text (discussed above). The translation is presented in normal (roman) type where the versions agree; where they disagree, readings of GT² are shown in italics and the variant MT’s readings within square brackets: [certain]. In cases of larger divergence, the two texts are translated in full, Greek on the left and Hebrew on the right. Uncertain or supplied text is enclosed in rounded brackets: {became servant}. Textual notes will explain how each version has been reconstructed from the primary manuscript evidence available to us. Versification follows English versions; variant verse numbers in MT (and GT) are supplied in parentheses or brackets following the English reference numbers.

For two reasons, the translation offered is deliberately literal rather than idiomatic. The rhetoric of biblical Hebrew prose makes much greater use of repetition than does idiomatic modern English. Translating Hebrew terms as constantly as possible is intended to help the reader become sensitive to these unfamiliar repetitive rhetorical dynamics. I contrast the literal, word-for-word rendering offered below with translation into more idiomatic English—idiomatic rather than literary. Literary assessment may be more a matter of taste; however, part of the power of some poetry consists in its challenge to contemporary prose idiom. The merits of literal translation from biblical Hebrew have been well described by Alter, and also by Fox, whose translation is modeled on Buber’s German version. I also try to render MT as it is, even where that text is quite problematic and almost certainly wrong.

There is also ancient precedent for such translation, not just in English in the King James (or Authorized) Version of 1611, but also in the most ancient translation known to us—the Old Greek (OG), often called the Septuagint (LXX), made in the closing centuries B.C.E. And that leads to the second reason for offering a literal rendering here: literal translation of both MT and OG makes it easier for us to compare these early texts of Samuel—another of our priorities. The aim of my rendering of the Greek needs to be distinguished from A New English Translation of the Septuagint (2007) in one important respect. When NETS aims to preserve the ‘translationese’ character of Septuagint Greek (xiv), its purpose is to aid the modern English reader to share what the ancient Greek reader would have perceived as rather stilted Greek. My concern is less with the ancient reader of OG, and more with the translators of OG, and how their literalistic and stilted renderings give us access to the Hebrew text in the form in which they read it.

Writing Samuel: From End to Beginning

The books of Samuel are a work of creative genius—not by one great author, but by several. But, though we read them from beginning to end, we have to understand that they were composed from end to beginning—and I mean this in at least two senses. The one is that the story of David is pregnant with the whole succeeding story of monarchy in Israel and Jerusalem: it is told as the first part of what follows—written to help explain it. The other is that we can still identify the single major source of the David story—and since this only told the story of David from the time that he became king, it has determined the shape of 2 Samuel more obviously than of 1 Samuel. The authors of our whole book, as well as adding detail to this inherited story of David as king, also created 1 Samuel as a wholly fresh introduction.

First Chronicles has already been mentioned above (Samuel in Two Main Forms?) as one of the witnesses to the alternative ancient Hebrew text of the books of Samuel. The central chapters (10–21) of that book also give us closer access than the parallel material in Samuel to a more pristine form of the older David story, which has been developed separately in each book. In the same way, 1–2 Kings and 2 Chronicles have been separately expanded from the material they share on the kings in Jerusalem from Solomon till the fall of the city. The Book of Two Houses (BTH) is the name I give to that whole older story of the house of David and the house of Yahweh, from the death of Saul till the fall of Jerusalem.

The order of the shared material appears to have been changed more in Samuel than in Chronicles. It is harder to make a relative judgment about wording because of the greater textual fluidity—that is, the larger amount of rewriting—within the Samuel tradition: how much rewriting of the old source was part and parcel of the creation of the books of Samuel, and how much was due to rewriting the books of Samuel? The following table provides a synoptic overview of this source material.

One certain and one possible exception need to be admitted to the rule that the Chronicles text is normally shorter. The Chronicler’s version of David’s bringing the ark to Jerusalem has been much more extensively rewritten than is the norm elsewhere; and hence, for this topic, the shorter 2 Sam 6:12–20a will undoubtedly be much closer to the source. More open to debate is whether (with Chronicles) the shared source had David start to bring the ark toward Jerusalem before the completion of his establishment there, or only after his successes against the Philistines. Discussion will be found in the commentary.

The authors of 2 Samuel worked from—and to a great extent they were bound by—this older source. They reworded it modestly, but a little more freely than the Chronicler normally did; and they added several blocks of new material, both larger and smaller.

Only one major block of material was moved to a wholly different position: the list of David’s heroes (plus just a few of their exploits)—from 2 Sam 5 (after the taking of Jerusalem) to the end of the book, just before the census. One positive reason for this had been to help construct a balanced coda to the book (2 Sam 21–24), to place material about David’s heroes both before and after the two poems at its heart. A more negative purpose may have been to emphasize David’s own role in Jerusalem by delaying details of his many supporters.

When writing 1 Samuel, the authors were no less indebted to their source; but they related to it differently. Many storytellers or novelists explain how they start each tale with a situation, or with a couple of characters intersecting—and they let that situation or these characters develop and take them where they will. But 1 Samuel is essentially a prequel to the story of David as king: the authors do not start with a fresh beginning, but are working toward a given end. They expand and expound in Samuel in seemingly more authentic detail what is reported in summary form in BTH (David’s house did survive for hundreds of years—Saul’s did not). Much of 1 Samuel was no doubt written by the same authors as those who extended the first (David) part of BTH to produce 2 Samuel. Their extended story of the interconnected houses of David and Saul dominates no less than three-quarters of the two books of Samuel. And according to this fresh presentation, David was a problem for Saul from early in the first king’s reign, just as Saul’s surviving family (for not all of them died with him) and part of Saul’s legacy would haunt King David to the end.

The facts with which the authors of 1–2 Samuel had to deal—not necessarily historical facts, but certainly textual facts—are these: Saul, king of Israel, was killed in battle with Philistines. He was not succeeded by his sons, but by his former, and popular, army commander, David. This David captured Jerusalem, brought the ark to Jerusalem from the borderlands between Israel and Philistines, and was promised by his God a sure royal house and firmly established throne. Against this view of BTH, it is often urged that the death of Saul is an odd place to start the story that follows. But a death is where most royal reigns begin; and the story finishes with a removal (to Babylon)—which eloquently poses the question, Is the royal line finished or not?

First Samuel puts all of these textual facts in a new context. By reconstructing what must have gone before, it answers many of the questions left open in its source. If anointed David started a long royal line, why has that not been true of anointed Saul? Did David have anything to do with Saul’s death? What was the relationship between Saul and David? How did David—and Saul too—become aware of the divine will? Why was the ark where it was, when David had it brought to Jerusalem? What had any or all of these issues to do with the subsequent fate of the houses of Yahweh and David in Babylonian times?

The following two examples, one from each book of Samuel, nicely illustrate the interplay of source (BTH) and imagination that our authors exhibit.

1. The attention of one author had been caught by the strange opening of the report on the campaign against Rabbat-Ammon (preserved in 1 Chr 20:1 and OG, but provocatively modified in the Masoretic Text of 2 Sam 11:1): And it came to be at the turn of the year, at the time when kings ‘go out,’ and David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel … Why did Joab go out when it was time for kings to be going out? our author asked himself. Why not King David himself? What was David doing at the time? In a splendid yet awful answer, this author wrote 2 Sam 11:2–12:25, the tale of David and Bathsheba, Uriah the Hittite, Nathan the prophet, guilt and forgiveness, and the death of a child and the birth of a future king.

2. The attention of the same or another author had been caught by some brief notes in the source about several of David’s heroes killing individual Philistine giants. One of them was called El-Hanan from Bethlehem, and he finished off Goliath from Gath (2 Sam 21:19). I share the long-standing hunch that we have in this brief note the kernel of the much more famous story that our author has attributed to David, and set at the very beginning of his career (1 Sam 17). Whether or not El-Hanan and David were alternative names for one and the same hero from Bethlehem is less important. More significant is how we answer the question whether great narratives in Samuel did grow from such modest seeds.

It seems likely that the first draft of what became 1 Samuel should be looked for within its central half (1 Sam 9:1–25:1). The story of Saul’s becoming king and quickly being rejected by Samuel on Yahweh’s behalf (chs. 9–15), and the story of the meeting of Saul and David and their worsening relationship (chs. 16–24)—these give a first answer to many of the questions we face when we read the account in BTH of the death of Saul and Israel’s choice of David to succeed him.

The first and last quarters of 1 Samuel have the character of supplements to this core. First Samuel 25–30 recapitulates several themes from 1 Sam 21–24—David and Achish of Gath, Saul in David’s power, and the death and burial of Samuel. If the preceding chapters already indicate that David was moving south, away from Saul’s final confrontation with the Philistines, these final chapters prove David’s alibi and establish his innocence of any complicity in Saul’s death. They also anticipate key themes of 2 Sam 1–4: David’s handling of the Amalekites, and his successful cultivation of the leaders of Judah around Hebron. And 1 Sam 1–8 introduces Samuel, the man of God whom Saul had been advised to consult on a domestic matter, but who anointed him king (1 Sam 9–10). This fresh introduction insists that Samuel is no mere clairvoyant, but a mover and shaker of kings. Frolov has also advanced the case that 1 Sam 1–8 was a fresh introduction to a story of Saul and David that had once started with 1 Sam 9: his view is that these opening chapters were a substantial and subversive insert into the primary biblical narrative stretching from Genesis to Kings. While not all points of Frolov’s closely argued case carry equal conviction, it is attractive on several counts to recognize the arrival of Saul on the scene in 1 Sam 9 as the beginning of a major section of the book, and work backward with the consequences.

The final chapters of 1 Samuel repeat and redevelop themes from the central core of this book; the opening chapters offer a fresh anticipation of others. But at the same time a linked rewriting of the central section (chs. 9–24) was being undertaken. The long narrative in 1 Sam 15 about Saul’s failure to complete putting the Amalekites to the ban includes a further declaration by Samuel (one was already issued in 13:13–14) that Saul’s kingship is rejected; and this story of failure also compares unfavorably with the way David will deal with these ancestral foes (1 Sam 30; 2 Sam 1). And Saul’s second encounter with a band of prophets (1 Sam 19:18–24) not only directs our attention back to the first such encounter (10:10–13) and explores puzzles in that shorter scene; it also demonstrates the king’s same lack of power over Samuel that we will witness just before his end, even when he resorts to the black arts (1 Sam 28). There are other elements of apparent duplication within the central core of 1 Samuel, over the election of Saul (chs. 9–11) and his recruitment of David (16–17). Then, just as some of the duplicates within 1 Sam 9–24 link up neatly with themes in the later block at the end (1 Sam 25–30), so too Samuel’s evaluation of the institution of kingship in 1 Sam 12 has several links with the devastating critique at the end of the similarly later block at the beginning (1 Sam 1–8). The ends of chapters 8, 16, and 24 are marked by blank lines in CL. (The remaining blanks will be noted in the introduction to each major section.)

My thesis that the earliest identifiable origins of the stories of Saul and David are to be found in the few chapters that the later books of Samuel and Chronicles share has been presented in other studies and will not be argued again here, ahead of our reading of the text. Many aspects of it will be explored and furthered and tested in our reading of the text; some thematic implications will be reviewed at the end of this volume. But the development of the books of Samuel did not end with the large expansion that included the new introduction in 1 Sam 1–8. That substantial revision had produced an account of kingship in general and of David in particular more critical than its predecessors. The older and more positive tradition, maintained in Psalms and Chronicles, was powerfully reinstated with the addition of four strategically placed and mutually reinforcing poems: the Song of Hannah (1 Sam 2:1–10), David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam 1:19–27), the Song of David (2 Sam 22), and David’s last words (2 Sam 23:1–7).

Samuel in the Bible: Two Canonical Contexts

These books became perceived, or have been received, differently in the Jewish (Hebrew) Scriptures from (what became) Christian (Greek) Scriptures. Jewish tradition recognizes just four narrative books as the Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings—with the latter two of these further subdivided as 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings (exactly as in standard English Bibles). Other narratives such as Ruth and Esther, Ezra and Nehemiah, and 1 and 2 Chronicles, were preserved in a separate Hebrew Bible collection called Writings. However, early biblical codices in Greek copied Joshua to Kings as simply the first among this much larger narrative of historical group of books (as in standard English Bibles).

Ancient Greek tradition agreed with Hebrew tradition over the names Joshua and Judges. We have already noted, however, that it treated 1–2 Samuel and 1–2 Kings together as 1–4 Kingdoms. We could suggest that Hebrew tradition emphasized the prophetic role of Samuel by naming his book(s) separately from Kings among the Former Prophets; and that Greek tradition underscored his role in anointing Saul and David, Israel’s first two kings, whose story alone occupies the first half of 1–4 Kingdoms.

The other related matter is just where our book ends. Samuel–Kings, or 1–4 Kingdoms, are divided into four sections—but differently. The divisions between 1 and 2 Samuel and between 1 and 2 Kings do correspond to those between 1 and 2 Kingdoms and 3 and 4 Kingdoms. Second Samuel comes to an end before David dies. However, in one family of ancient Greek manuscripts (see below on LT), the division between 2 and 3 Kingdoms comes sixty-five verses later in the total story—after rather than before the deathbed scenes where the transfer of power from David to Solomon is reported (1 Kings 1:1–2:12). In these manuscripts, in other words, 2 Kingdoms (like 1 Chronicles) does not come to its end until David is dead.

Samuel as Part of a Larger History of Israel’s Origins

Many scholars now describe the books from Genesis through to Kings (the combined Torah and Former Prophets of the Hebrew Bible) as a Primary History, which they contrast with the Bible’s Secondary History in 1–2 Chronicles and Ezra–Nehemiah. Even more widespread is the view that the books Joshua to Kings, or Deuteronomy to Kings, constitute a Deuteronomistic History—and this includes two main related judgments: that these books were written as a connected and coherent narrative, and that the norms by which the narrator assesses what he reports are closely related to the standards proclaimed in the core of the book of Deuteronomy. And third, some scholars link these two views, holding that the first draft of the narrative in Genesis–Numbers was also Deuteronomistic—which would mean that there was already a first draft of a primary history, from creation to Jerusalem’s fall, before the books from Genesis to Numbers were completed.

Whether or not it is through Deuteronomistic spectacles that they read the books of Samuel and Kings, all who ponder them have to cope with tensions or fault lines relating to the institution of kingship. They find enthusiasm and critique; they find promise and rejection; and there are those who read these as oppositions that had always coexisted, and others who detect an earlier and more positive history, overwritten by disappointed opponents. Martin Noth was the twentieth-century father of this Deuteronomistic History (DH) hypothesis. He located the single Deuteronomist among the disappointed exiles of the mid-sixth century B.C.E., but recognized that much of the source material first assembled in DH had been more positive about monarchy. Many scholars (especially in the English-speaking world) have followed the alternative view proposed by Frank Moore Cross: that a first and more positive draft of Deuteronomy to Kings (DH¹) was written before the fall of Jerusalem in order to endorse and promote the reform by a king of Jerusalem, Josiah; and this was rewritten (DH²) in the disappointment of exile. The thesis that undergirds this commentary—and is being tested in this commentary—accepts what is common to Noth and Cross and a broad consensus of scholarship: that the books of Samuel and Kings as a whole are more disappointed in the institution of kingship than much of the individual materials they contain. But it differs in several important ways: it reckons with much less written source material available to the authors, and much more creative writing done by them; it holds that the most extensive source was the Book of Two Houses; and it notices that that source quietly implies more criticism of the Davidic house than Cross’s DH¹.

The most detailed critique of any king in BTH was of Manasseh (2 Kgs 21:1–9, 17–18). The authors of Kings reinforce this (21:10–16) and link the collapse of Jerusalem explicitly to Manasseh’s misdeeds (23:26–27; 24:3–4). However, they also relate Hezekiah (2 Kgs 20) to the deportation (24:13–17), without mentioning him again by name, despite maintaining the introduction they had inherited from BTH: [Hezekiah] did what was right in the eyes of Yahweh, just as his father David had done. (2 Kgs 18:3).³ And they also add much discreditable material about even proverbially wise Solomon (esp. 1 Kgs 11). The authors of Samuel have much more scope for a revision downward of the BTH reputation of David, father of the dynasty.

The books of Samuel look forward—over and beyond the whole story of kingship in Israel and Jerusalem. There may be some minor differences of emphasis between Samuel and Kings, yet essentially these books belong together as a single history of monarchy. Yet to a much more limited degree, the books of Samuel look backward in time. There are a few brief references to what we know as the exodus traditions, both the deliverance from Egypt (1 Sam 2:27; 10:18; 12:6, 8) and the associated plagues on Pharaoh and his people (4:8; 6:6). The oldest such reference (2 Sam 7:6–7, BTH) talks first about Yahweh’s bringing Israel out, and then an intervening period during which Yahweh and his ark moved about, residing in temporary accommodation. This past is always reported, not by the narrator, but by characters in the story. On Yahweh’s behalf, Nathan (2 Sam 7:6–7), Samuel (1 Sam 10:18; 12:6, 8), and an unnamed man of God (1 Sam 2:27) transmit the memory of the deliverance; and the Philistine enemy is fully aware of how Israel’s God had plagued Egypt (1 Sam 4:8; 6:6).

Only in the most detailed of these few backward references (1 Sam 12:8–11) does Samuel talk of Israel as being settled in this place after their fathers were brought out of Egypt. But Samuel surprisingly credits Moses and Aaron with leadership under Yahweh during the settlement, not just during the liberation from Egypt. Some characters we know from the book of Judges are mentioned next (12:9–11), though in different order from that book. Yet there is complete silence in the books of Samuel about the leadership of Joshua. This is all the more puzzling because, to a much greater degree than Samuel in his book, Joshua is integral to every part of the book that bears his name. That seems to render implausible the widespread view that Joshua to Kings were composed together, from beginning to end, as a connected history. In the commentary, some assessment will be offered of the many links between the books of Samuel and Joshua and Judges, including some clusters of links. If 1 Samuel was already a freshly drafted preface to an older history of King David and his successors (BTH), we should perhaps reckon that Joshua (and Judges too) were still more recent accounts of still earlier stages in the nation’s story.

Footnotes

1. Septuaginta. Id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interpretes, ed. Alfred Rahlfs (Stutt-gart: Württembergische Bibelanstalt, 1935).

2. Often supported by 4QSama.

3. See Schipper (2010) and the response in Auld (2010a).

COMMENTARY

1 Samuel 1–8

A Fresh Introduction

It has already been suggested that all of 1 Samuel but the final chapter was written in stages as a new preface to the story of the house of David in 2 Samuel–2 Kings. Its main source in the Book of Two Houses had simply opened by reporting the death of Saul (1 Sam 31). One of these stages (still a major section of the book) had opened with the arrival on the scene of Saul in 1 Sam 9. The addition of 1 Sam 1–8 had come still later; and in these chapters several very important themes are introduced. The Codex Leningradensis has a blank line before 9:1, and the Aleppo Codex has one just a sentence earlier.

The first section ends the story of Hannah with her song, although she continues to play a role in 1 Sam 2. The second begins (2:11) with the ministry of Samuel under Eli and ends (3:10) with his hearing the divine call. The third reports Yahweh’s informing Samuel of the fate of Eli. And the fourth reports the loss of the ark and the death of Eli. After this, all of 1 Sam 5–8 is to be read together.¹ Chapters 5–7 demonstrate Yahweh’s power, and his preparedness to save Israel. Chapter 8 documents Israel’s rejection of his kingship in favor of human kingship.

The contrast between the young Samuel and Eli’s wicked sons (chs. 1–2) prepares us for the first rejection from office of an established family line. The call of Samuel (ch. 3) does more than legitimate a major character of this book: it also foreshadows the whole following story of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible. Similarly the account of the ark of God in enemy hands (chs. 4–6) both brings on stage the Philistine, one of Israel’s archetypal foes, and foreshadows its eventual loss to the Babylonians. Samuel enjoys success in leadership against the Philistines (ch. 7)—but only briefly, for the controversial question of kingship is quickly raised (ch. 8).

1 Samuel 1:1–2:10 Hannah’s Story

The introductions to Samuel (1:1–2) and Saul (9:1–3) both start in similar terms. We are presented with the family tree of their fathers and told of a problem to be solved. If 1:1–2 was written first, then 9:1–3 signals a new stage by repeating familiar motifs. Equally, if we grant that the first stage in extending forward BTH’s story of (Davidic) kingship had been to offer a fuller account of the earlier king (Saul), who in BTH had merely died without royal successor from his family, Saul’s arrival on the scene (9:1–3) may have been drafted first and in turn provided a model for Samuel’s appearance (1:1–2).²

Comparing chapters 1 and 9 quickly leads to an important contrast. Each does start with a genealogy and a problem to solve—a problem moreover that will be rehearsed before the Deity’s representative, Eli or Samuel. However, while Kish’s son Saul is quickly on the scene in chapter 9, searching for his father’s lost animals, the trouble in chapter 1 is whether Samuel’s mother can have a child at all. Partly because this issue is handled in such detail, and partly because in any case Samuel is often not the principal character in chapters 1–8, it is wise to characterize the opening section (1 Sam 1:1–2:10, or even 2:21) simply as Hannah’s story, not the story of Samuel’s birth.

As Hannah’s story opens formally with her husband’s genealogy, we become quickly aware of distinctive family traits it shares with other biblical stories. The unusual phrase wyhy hywm, which opens the action in 1 Sam 1:4, is repeated in 14:1 and then, three times each, in only two further contexts in the HB: in another woman’s story with a man of God within Samuel–Kings (2 Kgs 4:8, 11, 18), and in the prologue to Job (1:6, 13; 2:1). Hannah’s husband’s claim that he is better for her than ten sons (1:8) resonates with the words of Naomi’s neighbors, who tell her that Ruth is more for her than seven sons (Ruth 4:15), as does the description of Hannah as mārat nāpeš (10) with Mara (Ruth 1:20), the name Naomi thinks more appropriate for herself. Samson’s childless mother is told (Judg 13:5) that no razor should come on his head (1:11). And Hannah’s story continues, like the first half of Jonah’s story ends, with a psalm—and both stories include mention of sacrifice and vows. All of these significant links are common to both ancient texts of Samuel; and we shall observe in more detail below how some of them were further developed in one text or the other. The end of Hannah’s story (2:18–21) is reported within the account of the fall of Eli’s house, to be discussed in our second main section.³

1 Samuel 1:1–28

1There was a [certain] man from Ramathaim Zipha [Zuphim] from Mount Ephraim,

and his name was Elkanah son of Yerahme-el [Yerohama] son of Elihu son of Tohu son of Ziph of Ephraim [Zuphb an Ephrathitec].

2And he had two wives:

one’s name was Hannah, and the name of the second was Peninnah; and Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.

3And the [thata] man went up from time to time from his town from Armathaim

to offer obeisance

and to sacrifice to Lord Yahweh of hosts at Shiloh;

and there Eli and his two sons [the two sons of Eli], Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of Yahweh.

4And thea day came

and Elkanah sacrificed;

and he would give to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons [and her daughters] portions.

5But to Hannah he would givea one choiceb portion, for Hannah he loved,

though Yahweh had closed her womb.

6And her enemya would vex her with utter vexation

in order to enrage her,

for Yahweh had closed about her womb.

7And so he would do year on year:

as often as she went up to Yahweh’s house,

so they vexed her;

and she wept

and would not eat.

8And Elkanah her husband said to her,

"Hannah, why do you weep

and why do you not eat

and why are your thoughts bad?

Am I not better for you than ten sons?"

9And Hannah got up

after [she] they had eaten at Shiloh [and after drinkinga]; and Eli the priest was sittingb on the seat by the doorposts of the temple of Yahweh.

10And she was bitter in spirit;

and she prayed [against] towarda Yahweh

[and wept] and wept.

11And she vowed a vow,

and said,

"Yahweh of hosts,a

if you really do look on the affliction of your maidservant

and remember me

[and do not forgetb your maidservant]

and give your maidservant male seed,

I will give him [to Yahweh all the days of his lifec],

and a razor will not come on his head."

12And it came to be

when she continued long

praying before Yahweh,

and Eli was minding her mouth.

13And [Hannah,] she was speaking in her heart

(only her lips were moving, but her voice could not be heard);

and Eli reckoned her as a drunk.

14And Eli’s lada said to her,

"How long will you make yourself drunk?

Get rid of your wine from you,

and come away from before Yahweh.

15And Hannah answered

and said,

"No, my lord, I am a bad-day woman [a woman hard of spirit]:

wine and strong drink I have not drunk;

but I have poured out my soul before Yahweh.

16Do not put your maidservant to [before] a worthless woman;

for out of the abundance of my complaint [and my vexation] I have

[spoken] been stretched up to here."

17And Eli answered

and said,

"Go in peace.

And the God of Israel—may he grant every [the] asking

you have asked of him.’

18And she said,

"[May] your maid [find] found favor in your eyes."

And the woman went on her way,

and came to her lodging,

and she ate with her husband

and drank;

and her face, it [she] no longer fell [had ita].

19And they rose early in the morning

and did obeisance before Yahweh

and went on their waya [returned]

and Elkanah [they] came to his [their] house in Ramathaim [Ramah];

and [Elkanah] knew Hannah his wife;

and Yahweh remembered her.

20And she conceived

And it came to be at the turn of the days

and [Hannah conceived

and] she bore a son;

and she called his name Samuel,

and she said

"For of Yahweh God of Hostsa I asked him."

21And the man Elkanah went up and all his house

to sacrifice at Shiloh to Yahweh the periodic sacrifice and his vow and all the tithes of his land.a

22But Hannah did not go up,

for she said to her husband,

"Tilla the lad is weaned,

and I bring him

and he appears to the face of Yahweh

and he stays there forever."

23And Elkanah her husband said to her,

"Do what seems good to you.

Stay

till you wean him.

But let Yahweh establish what proceeds from your moutha

[his word]."

And the woman stayed

and nursed her son

till she weaned him.⁴

And they brought him before

Yahweh,

and his father slaughtered

the sacrifice

which he made from time to

time to Yahweh.

And he brought the lad,

26And she said,

"May it please my lord,

as my lord lives,

I am the woman stationed by you [then],

praying to Yahweh.

27Fora this lad I prayed;

and Yahweh granted me the asking

which I asked of him.

28And I too lend him to [have let him be asked of] Yahweh:

all the days that he lives [is], a loan [asked (šā ûl)] for Yahweh."

[And they did obeisance there to Yahweh.a]

1a. Here yr m l and yr m are simply the full and abbreviated forms of the same name.

b. Codex B offers in Naseib, which retroverts to bn yb, while MT has bn wp. This is further if different testimony to the place name being yp (as in Chronicles) not wp, as MT (and codex A and LT) here and in 9:5. Here, and throughout this book, (Codex) B refers to what the first scribe wrote. For that scribe, and presumably also the still earlier translator, Gk. ei in transliterated names corresponded to Heb. vocalic y. By far the commonest example is king Daueid, because the translator had used a Heb. MS which wrote dwyd, as in the Qumran scrolls of Samuel and as in 1 Chronicles, and not dwd as in MT Samuel. B was later corrected by deleting every e from such instances of ei. Rahlfs’s edition (see p. 6, n. 1) uses the adjusted spelling, so losing important evidence.

c. Here prty is used as the adj. for prym, and so there is no material difference between the readings; but it is ambiguous, as it also corresponds to prth in Judah, as in Ruth 1:2; 4:11.

3a. Not only is that plus in MT, and from Armathaim a plus in B, but the word order also is different: MT specifies place before time. On Eli and his sons, see below.

4a. Translating with MT. The Gk. hēmera is not articulated (not preceded by the). Loss of one ēta (η) between two others is eminently possible. Yet it is remarkable that, though unarticulated wyhy ywm is never attested in HB, there is a similar lack of a Gk. art. in all four other instances in Kingdoms (1.14:1; 4.4:8, 11, 18).

5a. An aor. in B corresponds to ytn here, as also to wntn (in v. 4).

b. Apart from the two minuses over against B as tabulated below, the main problem in MT is the obscure pym, which is best understood, not as a description of Hannah’s one portion, but as a corruption of ps.

6a. The table below offers a retroversion of OL and LT alongside the text of MT. Trebolle Barrera has argued that LT is the fullest representative of the conflation of alternative versions of the same material, one of which can still be inspected in OL. As is clear from the parallel renderings