The Road to Kingship

1–2 Samuel

Johanna W. H. van Wijk-Bos

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780802877444
• eBook ISBN: 9781467458795
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Ancient stories invoking contemporary questions and providing insight for an uncertain future

The Road to Kingship is the second volume in the A People and a Land trilogy and presents a chapter-by-chapter interpretation of 1–2 Samuel, based on the author's translation. Johanna van Wijk-Bos reacquaints readers with familiar stories like David and Goliath while also introducing them to lesser-known biblical personalities like Doeg the Edomite and the wily servant Ziba. She offers guidance along the path taken by the Israelites during the rise of the united monarchy. 

The books of Samuel unfold before us with multiple voices. One voice endorses a spontaneous charismatic form of leadership, alongside another that argues for hereditary kingship. In listening to the different voices, we will prefer some rather than others; we may turn our backs on texts that sing a melody we are no longer able to join. As readers, we enter into the text with our questions and in our very questioning tentatively find a way forward and draw closer to the presence of the Most Holy.

Cycle I: The Last Judge (1 Samuel 1–12)

And Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life. (1 Sam 7:15)

In his role as judge, Samuel bridges the period between the charismatic military and administrative leaders that preceded him and the royal house that will follow him. His role in the community is not confined to that of judge alone, since he also acts as priest and prophet. After him, separate functionaries will fulfill these tasks.¹

I divide the cycle into four acts. Act I, “Where Is the Glory?” (1 Sam 1–4), takes place in or near Shiloh, with one excursion to a battle scene on the plain to the west in the first half of chapter 4. The first two chapters introduce Samuel’s parents, Elkanah and Hannah, as well as the location of the sanctuary and the Ark with their priestly personnel, Eli and his sons, Hofni and Pinhas. Chapter 3 portrays young Samuel ostensibly as priest-in-training in service to Eli, and gradually evolves into a depiction of his prophetic role as he performs his first task as mouthpiece of God. Chapter 4 rounds off the career of Eli in a tragic manner when he dies upon hearing the news that the Ark of the Covenant has been captured by the Philistines.

In Act II, “Who Can Stand before This Holy God?” (1 Sam 5–6), the Ark goes on a journey in Philistia before coming under the care of Israelites again at the end of chapter 6. Almost the entire narrative takes place inside the cities of the Philistines, where the Ark is wreaking havoc among the population; this inside look into enemy territory, shot through with humorous overtones, is unique in Samuel.

Act III, “Samuel’s Word Was to All Israel” (1 Sam 7–8), returns to the career of Samuel and highlights his activity as judge in chapter 7 with emphatic notations of his judgeship in the final three verses. In chapter 8, the wheel of political leadership turns to an explicit demand for kingship on the part of the people; it consists for the most part of dialogue, between the community and Samuel on the one hand and Samuel and God on the other, ending with God’s command to Samuel to find a king.

Act IV, “Everybody’s Looking for Something” (1 Sam 9–12), introduces Saul and the start of his initial kingship and closes the career of Samuel as Israel’s sole leader.

Taken as a whole, the tempo of the narratives is relatively fast, with Samuel yet to be born at the outset and an old man in chapter eight. Within this span of time, many episodes slow down to linger in detail on specifics, such as Hannah’s moment of prayer in the sanctuary at Shiloh, Samuel’s experience of the presence of God near the Ark of the Covenant, the reactions on the battlefield and at home during the fight with the Philistines, and the discussions of the Philistines about the predicament they face while the Ark is in their midst. Overall, the chapters move forward from the moment that only hints at kingship in the opening scenes to the demand of the people to establish central leadership on the model of the people around them: “Now, set up a king over us,/ to judge us like all the peoples” (1 Sam 8:5). At the end of the cycle, leadership that arises spontaneously is a thing of the past, and hereditary kingship has been potentially established, although it will not quite turn out that way with Israel’s first king. Leadership and the proper exercise of authority and power are central to understanding these chapters. The exercise of power, in Hannah´s prayer ascribed to the Most High and thenceforth reflected in human leadership, will guide the people in their national affairs.

Act I: Where Is the Glory? (1 Samuel 1–4)

Four chapters center on Shiloh and its environs. Only the battle scene in 4:1–11 moves us outside the narrow region between Ramah and Shiloh to the coastal plain where the Philistines and Israelites meet one another for the first military encounter of the book. Continuing the themes of Judges, large national questions concerning leadership and the exercise of power are embedded in a narrow focus on family and family ties. There are first Elkanah and the two women, Hannah and Peninnah, who exist in an adversarial relationship. The childless woman, Hannah, comes to the fore as a central character and the mother of Samuel, the first male protagonist of the text. The second family, whose fate is linked to the first through the service of Samuel at the Shiloh sanctuary, is the house of Eli. Prophetic voices make themselves heard already in the second chapter when the collapse of Eli’s house is announced, an event that receives a double notation, as it is repeated in chapter 3 by the word of God to Samuel and then to Eli.

Chapter 4 begins the deportation of the Ark, heretofore residing in Shiloh, first to the battlefield and then to Philistine territory. The downfall of Eli’s house begins at this point with the death of his sons and his own demise at hearing the news about the fate of the Ark. As the episodes began with the birth of a child whose stature among the people appeared to open a way forward, they end similarly, albeit in contrast, with the birth of one who is named after the Ark in exile. The presence of God exhibits itself in the lives of individuals—Hannah, Eli, Samuel—and the issue of appropriate and inappropriate ways of responding to God is woven into the fabric of the narratives that make up these initial chapters.

Act 1, Scene 1: A Family in Shiloh (1 Samuel 1:1–8)

The story of Hannah’s request for a son is intended to introduce, foreshadow, and ideologically comment upon the story of Israel’s request for a king.²

The story begins with a standard introduction of a man and his ancestry, town, and family. The first three verses (1–3) provide all the necessary information to arrive at a detailed picture of the man, Elkanah, and his habits.³ He travels from his residence, which is in the “hill country of Ephraim,” to Shiloh to make the annual sacrifice “year after year.” He is quite well-to-do; not only is he able to provide this substantial contribution to the sanctuary, but his family includes two wives, Hannah and Peninnah, a notation made in the central verse of the unit. While we read frequently about a man having more than one wife in the Bible, the practice of polygyny in this hard-scrabble, self-sustaining agricultural society would have been an option open mostly to those with the means to sustain a larger nuclear household, not one within the reach of ordinary people. Elkanah, then, is clearly a man of substance who regularly fulfills his religious obligations.⁴

The opening lines establish a number of links with other episodes in the Historical Books, both backward and forward. The hill country of Ephraim plays a central role in the final chapters of Judges, and it echoes with the serious disturbances that took place there, which were already anticipated in Joshua 17:15. It will also be the origin of Sheba, the instigator of the last rebellion against David in 2 Samuel 20 (see v. 21). Ramah, which in 1 Samuel is always used in reference to Samuel, is mentioned as a possible lodging for the Levite and his entourage in Judges 19:13.⁵ The territory of Zuf will reappear in the initial episodes about Saul, and, together with other hints in the opening scenes, signals the impending kingship of Saul (1 Sam 9:5). Shiloh, here the place for annual sacrifice, we find in the Historical Books in Joshua as a place for the Tent of Meeting and the location where the lot is cast for the remaining land division. The Levites approach Joshua there to request their assigned towns, and the “entire congregation of Israelites” prepares in Shiloh for battle against the Trans-Jordanian tribes (Josh 18:1; 21:2; 22:12). Most notably, it is the site in Judges from which the Benjaminites steal the young women needed to replenish their tribe (Judg 21:23; see van Wijk-Bos, The End of the Beginning, 310–12). Shiloh, then, is a place for sacrifice with a sanctuary, with priests, and, as we find out later, with the Ark of God (3:3). It is a place with an ambiguous legacy, where the memories of abducted family members may still linger. This is where the Elkanah family treks year after year to fulfill its religious obligations.⁶

Three verses introduce four men by name (eight if we count the ancestors)—all of them important for one reason or another—surrounding the names of the two women, both without antecedents, one of whom carries almost no importance because of her lack of children. While the mention of Eli with his sons Hofni and Pinhas seems out of place, it underlines the cultic significance of Shiloh through the priestly presence and at the same time rings an early bell for subsequent events surrounding these three. We note also that only the sons receive the priestly designation, which raises questions about who is actually in charge. Eli will eventually receive his title (1:9), but here, in Fokkelman’s words, Eli appears to be “pottering along behind.”⁷

The next four verses (4–7) continue to describe habitual actions, with additional information increasing interest in what goes on in this family. First, Elkanah is in charge both of sacrificing and doling out portions to his wives, only one of whom he is said to “love.” Also, we find out that Peninnah has both sons and daughters. Now we see her surrounded by a flock of children next to Hannah, who has none and who receives either a double or a special portion of the sacrifice (5).⁸ Finally, the situation between the two women, already unequal in view of Hannah’s lack of children, is adversarial because Peninnah has made it her business every year to burden Hannah’s life by taunting her with her lack of offspring.

1 SAMUEL 1:6–7

6And her adversary would torment her sorely

for the sake of humiliating her

with the fact that Adonai had shut her womb.

7And so it went, year in, year out,

as often as she went up to the house of Adonai,

so she tormented her,

and she wept and ate not.

The wording identifies Peninnah as her (i.e., Hannah’s) adversary, a strong root that puts the two women at odds with one another. It adds to adversary the verb torment (ka‘as), used only here in Samuel and elsewhere in the Historical Books reserved exclusively for the Israelites’ tormenting Adonai with their idolatry, especially in Kings.⁹ It appears three times in these two verses, with a doubling of the root in verse 6, and is picked up subsequently by Hannah to refer to her state of mind (16). Before the notation about the hostility from one woman to another, we learn that Elkanah “loved” Hannah. For all that the storytellers practice reticence in terms of inner life and feelings, it is not difficult to get an idea of the emotions flying around in this family! There are love, jealousy, and, on Hannah’s side, silence and depression manifested in her abstaining from food and drink.

As expected from the setup for the story, the man is the first to speak:

1 SAMUEL 1:8

And Elkanah, her husband, said to her:

Hannah, why do you weep?

And why do you not eat?

And why is your heart down?

Am I not good to you above ten sons?¹⁰

Elkanah addresses Hannah at the point of her distress with four questions. It’s clear that his words are hardly helpful with their threefold “why?” ending with a rhetorical question about his own worth to her (instead of her worth to him), drawing on her protective feelings toward him (feelings of a mother toward her child), and thus exacerbating the situation.¹¹ At best, his words are a clumsy attempt at comfort, although it is possible that they are meant to reassure her. The family in the ancient world was an absolute necessity for women’s survival, and a childless woman was at risk not only psychologically but also socially and economically, since her husband could set her aside if he was not willing to accept her childless situation. It is thus conceivable that Elkanah’s assurance of his love for her is meant to make clear that he has no intention of making her leave the household. It is worth noting that Hannah is the only woman in this material to be the explicit recipient of her husband’s love and that her husband’s speech is the one illustration of a man attempting to console a woman.

Whatever his intentions were, Hannah does not deign to answer her husband, and while on the face of it her silence could betoken her entering deeper into her depression, this moment is where the story takes a turn. Perhaps Elkanah’s attempt at comfort have had the effect on Hannah of clarifying her need. She is depressed because of her lack of children and the constant reminder of th...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Cycle I: The Last Judge (1 Samuel 1–12)
• Cycle II: A King on His Throne (1 Samuel 13–31)
• Cycle III: Ascent to Kingship (2 Samuel 1–8)
• Cycle IV: A King and His People (2 Samuel 9–20)
• Cycle V: Hazards, Heroes, and Poetry (2 Samuel 21–24)
• Appendix: Hebrew Words in This Volume
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index