SAMUEL 1 שמואל א

David was proclaimed king in Hebron, according to the biblical account. He struggled for a few years against the contending claim and forces of Ishbaal, Saul’s surviving son, who had also been crowned king, but the civil war ended with the murder of Ishbaal by his own courtiers and the anointing of David as king over all of Israel. He conquered the Jebusite-held town of Jerusalem, which he made the capital of the new united kingdom and to which he moved the sacred Ark of the Covenant, the supreme symbol of Israelite religion. 

He defeated the Philistines so thoroughly that they were never again a serious threat to the Israelites’ security, and he annexed the coastal region. He went on to establish an empire by becoming the overlord of many small kingdoms bordering on Israel, including Edom, Moab, and Ammon.

David’s great success as a warrior and empire builder was marred by interconnected family dissensions and political revolts. To tie together the various groups that constituted his kingdom, David took wives from them and created a harem. The resultant family was an extreme departure from the family in the consanguineal context, the traditional clan structure.

David’s wives were mostly completely alien to one another, and his children were without the direct support of established social patterns that provided precedents for the resolution of conflict or for establishing the rights of succession.

The request for a king constituted a denial of their covenant relationship to the Lord, who was their King. Moreover, the Lord not only had promised to be their protector but had also repeatedly demonstrated his power in their behalf, most recently in the ark narratives (chs. 4 – 6), as well as in the great victory won over the Philistines under the leadership of Samuel (ch. 7).

Nevertheless, the Lord instructed Samuel to give the people a king. By divine appointment, Saul was brought into contact with Samuel, and Samuel was directed to anoint him privately as king (9:1 — 10:16). Subsequently, Samuel gathered the people at Mizpah, where, after again admonishing them concerning their sin in desiring a king (10:18-19), he presided over the selection of a king by lot. 

The lot fell on Saul and publicly designated him as the one whom God had chosen (10:24). Saul did not immediately assume his royal office, but returned home to work his fields (11:5,7). When the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead were threatened by Nahash the Ammonite, Saul rose to the challenge, gathered an army and led Israel to victory in battle. His success placed a final seal of divine approval on Saul’s selection to be king (cf. 10:24; 11:12-13) and occasioned the inauguration of his reign at Gilgal (11:14 — 12:25).

Samuel gave a king to Israel by calling the people to repentance and renewal of their allegiance to the Lord on the very occasion of the inauguration of Saul as king (see note on 10:25). By establishing kingship in the context of covenant renewal, Samuel placed the monarchy in Israel on a radically different footing from that in surrounding nations. 

The king in Israel was not to be autonomous in his authority and power; rather, he was to be subject to the law of the Lord and the word of the prophet (10:25; 12:23). This was to be true not only for Saul but also for all the kings who would occupy the throne in Israel in the future. The king was to be an instrument of the Lord’s rule over his people, and the people as well as the king were to continue to recognize the Lord as their ultimate Sovereign (12:14-15).

Saul soon demonstrated that he was unwilling to submit to the requirements of his theocratic office (chs. 13 – 15). When he disobeyed the instructions of the prophet Samuel in preparation for battle against the Philistines (13:13), and when he refused to totally destroy the Amalekites as he had been commanded to do by the word of the Lord through Samuel (ch. 15), he ceased to be an instrument of the Lord’s rule over his people. These abrogations of the requirements of his theocratic office led to his rejection as king (15:23).

Back in Ziklag, three days after Saul’s death, David receives news that Saul and his sons are dead. It transpires that the messenger is an Amalekite who, at Saul’s insistence, had killed Saul to speed his death along, and brought his crown to David. David orders his death for having killed God’s anointed. At this point, David offers a majestic eulogy, where he praises the bravery and magnificence of both his friend Jonathan and King Saul.

David returns to Hebron at God’s instruction. The elders of Judah anoint David as king, and as his first act he offers a reward to the people of Jabesh Gilead for performing Saul’s funerary rites. Meanwhile, in the north, Saul’s son Ish-bosheth, supported by Abner, has taken control of the northern tribes. David and Ish-bosheth’s armies meet at the Pool of Gibeon, and Abner and Joab, another son of Zeruiah and David’s general, agree to have soldiers fight in one-on-one combat. 

All this achieves is twelve men on each side killing each other, but a battle follows and David wins. During the Benjaminites’ retreat, Joab’s brother Asahel chases Abner and Abner kills him, shocking everyone. Joab and Abishai continue Asahel’s pursuit. A truce is declared when they reach a hill to avoid further bloodshed, and Abner and his men are able to cross the Jordan.

The war continues as David builds a family. Meanwhile, the House of Saul is getting weaker. When Ish-bosheth accuses Abner of sleeping with Saul’s concubine Rizpah, Abner offers to join David, which David accepts as long as he brings Michal with him. At the same time, David sends a petition to Ish-bosheth for the return of Michal, which Ish-bosheth agrees to. 

Patiel follows her crying until he is told to return home. Following the return of Michal, Abner agrees to get the elders of Israel to agree to make David king. However, Joab believes Abner was lying in his purpose of coming to David and, after recalling him to Hebron, kills him in revenge for Asahel. David curses Joab’s family to always contain a leper, someone disabled or someone hungry. He then holds a funeral for Abner.

By this point, the only other surviving member of Ish-bosheth’s family is Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s disabled son, who was dropped by his nurse as she attempted to escape the palace after the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. Ish-bosheth is murdered by Rechab and Baanah, two of his captains who hope for a reward from David, who stab him and cut off his head. They bring his head to David, but David has them killed for killing an innocent man. They are hanged by the pool of Hebron and Ish-bosheth’s head is buried in Abner’s tomb. David is then anointed king of all Israel.

David’s reign went against all odds, when he captured Jerusalem from the Jebusites. He takes over the fortress of Zion and builds up the area around it. Hiram I, king of Tyre, sends craftsmen to build David a palace. Meanwhile, David’s family continues to grow. The Philistines decide to attack Israel now that David is king, but God allows David to defeat them in two battles, first in Baal Perizim and next in the Valley of Rephaim.

The Ark is currently still in Baalah (another name for Kiriath Jearim), but David wants to bring it to Jerusalem. He puts it on a cart and employs the priests Uzzah and Ahio, both sons of Abinadab and brothers of Eleazar, to accompany it. A grand procession with musical instruments is organized, but comes to a sudden halt when the oxen stumble, causing Uzzah to touch the Ark and die. 

David is afraid to take it any further and stores it in the house of a man named Obed-Edom. When, after three months, Obed-Edom and his family have received nothing but blessings, David takes the Ark to Jerusalem. As part of the ceremony bringing the Ark into the city, David dances in front of it wearing nothing but an ephod. Michal sees this and is annoyed, but David says it was for the Lord, and thus it was not undignified. Michal never has any children.

David wishes to build a temple, because he was arguing that he should not be living in a palace while God lives in a tent. Nathan, a prophet, agrees. However, that night Nathan has a dream in which God informs him that David should not build him a temple for three reasons.

Firstly, God has not commanded it, and has never complained about living in a tent before. Secondly, God is still working to build David and his house up and establish the Israelites in the Promised Land. Thirdly, God will establish one of David’s sons as king; he will build the temple, and his house will never be out of power. 

When Nathan reports this to David, David prays to God, thanking him for these revelations. David defeats the enemies of Israel, slaughtering Philistines, Moabites, Edomites, Syrians, and Arameans. He then appoints a cabinet.

David forgot the House of Saul by asking if anyone from there was still alive so that he can show kindness to them in memory of Jonathan. Ziba, one of Saul’s servants, tells him about Mephibosheth. David informs Meshibosheth that he will live in his household and eat at his table, and Mephibosheth moves to Jerusalem.

Nahash, king of Ammon dies and his son Hanun succeeds him. David sends condolences, but the Ammonites suspect his ambassadors are spies and humiliate them before sending them back to David. When they realize their mistake, they fear retaliation from David and amass an army from the surrounding tribes. When he hears that they are doing this, he sends Joab to lead his own army to their city gates, where the Ammonites are in battle formation. 

Joab decides to split the army in two: he will lead an elite force to attack the Aramean faction, while the rest of the army, led by Abisai, will focus on the Ammonites. If either enemy force turns out to be too strong, the other Israelite force will come to help their comrades. As it turns out, the Arameans flee from Joab, causing the Ammonites to also flee from Abishai.

The Israelite army returns to Jerusalem. The Arameans regroup and cross the Euphrates, and this time David himself wins a decisive victory at Helam. The Arameans realize they cannot win, make peace with Israel and refuse to help the Ammonites again. The following spring, Joab destroys the Ammonites.

The book of Samuel 1 relates God’s establishment of a political system in Israel headed by a human king. Before its described, this momentous change in the structure of the theocracy (God’s kingly rule over his people), he effectively depicts the complexity of its context.

The birth, youth, and call of Samuel (chs. 1–3). In a book dealing for the most part with the reigns of Israel’s first two kings, Saul and David, it is significant that it chose not to include a birth narrative of either of these men, but to describe the birth of their forerunner and anointer, the prophet Samuel. This in itself accentuates the importance the attached to Samuel’s role in the events that follow.

He seems to be saying in a subtle way that flesh and blood are to be subordinated to word and Spirit in the process of the establishment of kingship. For this reason chs. 1–3 should be viewed as integrally related to what follows, not as a more likely component of the book of Judges or as a loosely attached prefix to the rest of 1,2 Samuel. Kingship is given its birth and then nurtured by the prophetic word and work of the prophet Samuel. Moreover, the events of Samuel’s nativity thematically anticipate the story of God’s working that is narrated in the rest of the book.

The “ark narratives” (chs. 4–6). This section describes how the ark of God was captured by the Philistines and then, after God wreaked havoc on several Philistine cities, how it was returned to Israel. These narratives reveal the folly of Israel’s notion that possession of the ark automatically guaranteed victory over her enemies. They also display the awesome power of the Lord (Yahweh, the God of Israel) and his superiority over the Philistine god Dagon.

The Philistines were forced to confess openly their helplessness against God’s power by their return of the ark to Israel. The entire ark episode performs a vital function in placing Israel’s subsequent sinful desire for a human king in proper perspective.

Samuel as a judge and deliverer (ch. 7). When Samuel called Israel to repentance and renewed dedication to the Lord, the Lord intervened mightily in Israel’s behalf and gave victory over the Philistines. This narrative reaffirms the authority of Samuel as a divinely ordained leader; at the same time it provides evidence of divine protection and blessing for God’s people when they place their confidence in the Lord and live in obedience to their covenant obligations.

All the material in chs. 1–7 serves as a necessary preface for the narratives of chs. 8–12, which describe the rise and establishment of kingship in Israel. The book has masterfully arranged the stories in chs. 8–12 in order to accentuate the serious theological conflict surrounding the historical events.

In the study of these chapters, scholars have often noted the presence of a tension or ambivalence in the attitude toward the monarchy: On the one hand, Samuel is commanded by the Lord to give the people a king (8:7,9,22; 9:16–17; 10:24; 12:13); on the other hand, their request for a king is considered a sinful rejection of the Lord (8:7; 10:19; 12:12,17,19–20). These seemingly conflicting attitudes toward the monarchy must be understood in the context of Israel’s covenant relationship with the Lord.