A See-Through Study of 1 Samuel

Trevor Peterson 2003

1 Some Introductory Remarks

1 Samuel is actually half of a complete book. This is an important distinction to keep in mind. Whereas the firsts and seconds of the NT indicate completely distinct textsletters written to the same group or individual at different timesin the OT they indicate that a book has been broken up into smaller sections. The reason for this seems to come from the translation of the OT into Greek. Hebrew uses a very compact writing system called an abjad. It represents only the consonants on the page. A native speaker could quite easily infer the vowels from context, but sometimes more clarity is desirable. The Greeks inherited much the same script used by Hebrew speakers, but they added the regular representation of vowels. Hebrew did add vowels under certain conditions, but this was done by two means that did not appreciably affect the amount of space taken up on a page. Early on, some of the smaller consonants, which could generally be squeezed in between letters, doubled as vowel markers. A more precise system developed much later used very small symbols that could go inside, above, or below the consonants, along with accent markers. But when longer books like Samuel and Kings were translated into Greek, they took up too much writing material to fit conveniently in one scroll. They were divided in half for easier use. Ordinarily, we should probably ignore the division between 1 and 2 Samuel, but because we dont have a lot of time for this study, well limit our investigation to the first part. Just realize that the story doesnt necessarily end with the last chapter of the book. Indeed, Samuel and Kings are often taken together. (In the Greek translation, they are referred to as 1, 2, 3, and 4 Kingdoms.) Today, many scholars view Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and sometimes Deuteronomy as a unique division of the Hebrew Bible. (In the Hebrew Bible, they are referred to as the Formermeaning earlier 1

Prophets.) In our English Bibles, we follow the order of the Greek Bible by placing Ruth between Judges and 1 Samuel. An interesting experiment is to try reading through Judges and Samuel with and without Ruth in between, to see if any different impressions result. Like many books in the Hebrew Bible, Samuel includes several genres (types of literature). It contains some songs and poems, as well as direct speech, lists, and background information. But the skeleton of the book is narrative. Samuel is a storynot in the sense that its contents didnt really happen, but in terms of its literary typea story about the birth of Israels monarchy. It centers around the main characters of the prophet Samuel and the kings Saul and David. All three will appear in 1 Samuel, but we wont actually get to see David become king. When we view 1 Samuel by itself, we could say in one sense that the book is primarily about Saul. Samuel is the prophet who initiates the monarchy, and Saul is the first king. Samuels ministry centers primarily on his interaction with Saul, and David appears as Sauls rival. The book begins with Samuels birth and ends with Sauls death. On the other hand, when we consider the whole book of Samuel, David seems to be the main character, and Saul the foil to our hero. However you choose to slice it, the story has a lot of interesting twists and turns. Throughout this study, well try to pay careful attention to the story elements of 1 Samuel. Well also look at some of the other genres in the book, but mostly well be interested in how we can get more out of our reading by thinking about 1 Samuel as a story. Well work from the English text (whichever translation you wish to use is fineif you want a suggestion, the niv is quite standard at Bethany), but Ill also try to help you understand how the study of Hebrew and other languages makes a difference. Of course, I would like nothing more than for all of you to learn Hebrew yourselves, but if you cant do that, you should still know what language scholars have to offer you and what tools are available. Thats why this is called a see-through study, rather than hands-on. We will do some hands-on stuff as we go along. But I also want you to get a taste of what else is out there. Note: I want to make a few remarks about terms like story as applied to Scripture. Some people are uncomfortable with calling the Bible (or parts of it) a story. It makes them think of remarks like Oh, the Bible is just a bunch of nice stories, which tend to indicate by the term that what it contains is not true or relevant or authoritative or some such thing. One thing that I hope we can work on in this study is careful reading, and I would like to 2

point out that in that sentence above, the word just is important. When we look at the Bible as story, the point is not to say that it is just a story (as if being a story could ever be just anything!), any more than a news anchor referring to our top story tonight means that shes about to feed you a pack of lies. A story is a way of telling about something. Any time we choose to talk about things, we have to expend creativity. We are always selective with what we choose to say and how we choose to say it. What makes something a story is that it is told in a certain way. A news reporter could simply prevent a list of facts, answering the questions who, what, where, when, etc. But by narrating the days events, the reporter subtly gives us a reason to listen and holds our attention. We like to hear stories, usually a lot more than we like listening to lists of facts. Thats not to say that you dont need facts to make a storythe difference is the format of a list vs. a story, not the presence or absence of facts. A list of facts can be entirely untrue, just as a story can be made up. One difference, though, is that a story, like a parable or fable, can be made up but still teach a valid lesson. This is because a story is more than the sum of its parts. It makes a point, it goes somewhere, and it usually takes you along for the ride. Throughout this study, were going to try to pay attention to where this story is taking us, as well as the details of how were getting there.

2 Pronunciation Guide to Biblical Names

One hurdle that a lot of people face in trying to wade through a biblical text, especially in the Old Testament, is how to pronounce all those funny names. Unlike most words in the Bible, names (and a few technical terms) are not generally translated. (It would be possible to translate many of them, since they generally have some identifiable meaning.) To varying degrees, they are normally transliterated, which is what we call it when a word is preserved with essentially the same sound and meaning, but rendered in a foreign script. A German name like Schneider, for instance, can be easily preserved in English, because we use the same Latin-based script. There are some orthographic differences, however. German can represent a double /s/ sound with or a vowel quality that we dont have in English with an umlaut over the vowel (, , ). A name like Schnthal is therefore transliterated, sometimes by dropping the umlaut (Schonthal) and sometimes by creating a false diphthong (Schoenthal). As you can see, there is a problem with standardizing transliterations. If an umlaut is dropped, you really dont know how the name was originally pronounced from look3

ing at its form in English. Other languages use altogether different scripts, with varying degrees of similarity to our own. Greek is quite close and can usually be transliterated without too much difficulty, but Hebrew is much more challenging. Although the Hebrew script (to be more precise, its an Aramaic script) is closely related to Phoenician, which is the ancestor of Greek and Latin writing, the sounds that it represents are quite different. One major difference is that West Semitic languages like Phoenician, Hebrew, and Aramaic do not consistently represent vowels with actual letters. Only the consonants are part of the original orthography, and vowels are sometimes worked into the writing by various means, in some cases as a later stage of a given document. So, in the biblical text, there are letters that represent consonants, some consonant characters that double as vowel markers, and a series of more precise vowel markers that were added much later. This is not an easy writing system to transliterate! Different systems have developed for different purposes. One system may attempt to preserve the signs as accurately as possible, while another may aim primarily at consistent pronunciation. Some systems try to do both (and dont do either very well). Most of the transliterations that we find in biblical names have so much history behind them, that its impossible to establish a consistent system that they all follow. To make matters worse, English is one very late participant in a long tradition of rendering biblical names. The earliest English-speaking Bible readers did not read the Bible in their native languagethey read it, like most of Western Europe, in Latin. This means that many of the biblical names became familiar to English-speakers as they appeared in the Latin Bible. This rendering, in turn, was based largely on the Greek versions. At each step along the way, incompatibilities between the sounds of the languages involved caused further distortion. Most of our English Bibles now exhibit a combination of features from these various stages of transmission. As a result, its anyones guess how to pronounce some of the names. The first and most important principle, then, is not to take any principle of pronunciation too seriously. There will probably always be numerous ways to pronounce the names in the Bible. Having said that, you still may want some suggestions. One strategy is to observe how others say the names. Its fairly random, since you dont really know where their pronunciations come from; but at least its something. Another strategy would be to revert to the spelling of the names in the Hebrew text itself. Unfortunately, youd need to know Hebrew (or at least know something about the writing system, the alphabet, and the 4

way the letters are pronounced) to take that approach. There is also the drawback that some names have multiple spellings in the Hebrew text. Not to mention, there are various traditions of pronunciation for the Hebrew language. Theres a fairly standard system used by many scholars that probably doesnt represent any stage of the language. Theres a system that tries to reconstruct the way the language probably sounded at the time that the later vowels were added. There are two major traditional Jewish systems, one of which is used by Yiddish speakers. The other was popular in the Mediterranean Jewish communities and has become the major element in Modern Israeli Hebrew. The strategy that Im going to suggest here is something of a hybrid. It accepts the constraints of the English text, while trying to conform the names as close as possible to Hebrew (where the relationship is direct enough) or Greek (where it is not). The system is by no means perfect, but its a possible starting point. If you feel uncomfortable trying to apply it, by all means do something different! Many of the consonants can be pronounced more or less as you would naturally expect from English. There are some exceptions, however. J everywhere represents a consonantal /y/ sound, as in German. The combination ch should also mimic German, as the ch in Bach. This sound is produced by holding the mouth as if to say /k/, then relaxing the tongue enough to force air between it and the roof of the mouth. The result is a hissing sound. Move that sound back onto the soft part of the roof, so that it develops more of a rattle. (Its something like the sound of clearing ones throat.) This sound takes some practice, but if you find that you just cant do it, a simple /k/ sound will probably work. The combination th, also like German, should be pronounced as a simple /t/. Other consonants have multiple pronunciations. Often, there is no easy way to distinguish one from the other. Sometimes you can do it by feel, sometimes you wont really know without asking someone who can read Hebrew. B can be pronounced /b/ or /v/. A decent rule of thumb is that it will usually be pronounced /b/ at the beginning of a word, after another consonant, or when doubled; /v/ after a vowel. 5

 G is never pronounced like an English /j/. Sometimes it is a hard /g/ sound, sometimes it is silent. There is no easy way to know which is which. H can be pronounced like ch (see above) or a simple /h/ sound. (When a word ends in ah, h is usually silent.) S can be pronounced /s/ or /sh/. (The main reason for this discrepancy is that Greek has no /sh/ sound. Wherever it appeared in Hebrew, it was simplified to /s/ in Greek. Finally, z can be pronounced /z/ or /ts/. Few of the vowels are straightforward (as should be expected, since in English there is no consistency in their pronunciation). A should almost always be pronounced as in father. O should almost always be pronounced as in more. U should almost always be pronounced as in tune. Y, which can function as a vowel in English, almost always does so in biblical names. (Some Bible versions replace j with y, which would change this feature dramatically, but most of the standard versions use y only as a vowel.) Hebrew vocalic y will generally be represented with i, so y itself is rare in English versions and appears primarily in Greek words, like Egypt. Its pronunciation resembles that of the German (see above), which is formed by shaping your mouth to say a long /u/ and (without moving the lips) instead saying a long /e/. If you cant get it, Modern Greek has collapsed this and several other vowel sounds into (English) long /e/. Two diphthongs that you should know are ai, pronounced as in aisle, and ia, pronounced /ya/. Other vowels have multiple possible pronunciations, which again are hard to choose. E can be pronounced as in bet, as in hey, or as in women. (The component beth, as in Bethlehem, Bethel, or Bethany, is always pronounced like bait.) I can be pronounced as in pin or like an English long /e/. 6

The stress in a Hebrew word usually falls on the last syllable. There are plenty of exceptions, however. One common exception has e in the second-to-last syllable. (This doesnt mean that the accent always retracts when e appears there, but it can.) When a word ends in a vowel followed immediately by a, the stress usually falls on the non-a vowel. Following are the names and technical terms that appear in the opening chapters of 1 Samuel, as spelled in the niv.

Ra-ma-thaim Zuph Eph-raim El-ka-nah J-ro-ham E-li-hu To-hu Han-nah Pnin-nah Shi-loh Hoph-ni Phi-n-has -li Ra-mah Sa-mu-l -phah E-gypt Pha-ra-oh -phod Dan Be-r-she-ba Ph-lis-tine E-be-n-zer A-phk Is-ra-l che-ru-bim Ben-ja-min I-cha-bod Ash-dod Da-gon Gath Ek-ron Bth She-mesh L-vite Ga-za Ash-k-lon Jo-shu-a Kir-iath Je-a-rim A-bi-na-dab El-a-zar

/ts/ /ch/ /ch/ /ch/, /h/ /ch/ /ch/

/b/, /v/ -ine is a European adaptation /v/

/v/

/b/ -ite is a European adaptation (silent)

/v/ 8

3 Getting at the Structure: Scripting Narrative

One of the challenges of narrative is to give it some sort of structure. Part of the difficulty, if you think about it, comes from the way that narrative so easily flows out of us. Just think about a little kid telling you about a recent experience. Every clause gets jammed together with and, sentences are almost nonexistent, and chances are pretty good that they didnt sit down beforehand to think through how theyd present the details. This is not to say that more mature story-tellers cant be more intentional about structure, but the point is that narrative does not require a great deal of structure to work. Now, arguably narrative can (and for some very good reasons should) be read without trying to impose any artificial structure on it. But if we want to get a little bit better sense of whats going on, there are some helpful methods for tightening up the format. The method were going to discuss here is scripting. Narrative and drama generally have a lot in common. The type of material they cover is usually more or less the same, the way they present that material has a lot in common, and the point or theme toward which the material progresses works in much the same way. But because of the different format, material has to be handled a little bit differently. What narrative may describe through extensive word pictures, drama can create to varying degrees of realism through backgrounds, props, etc. Instead of describing actions with words, they are interpreted by actors before the very eyes of the audience. Still, a script has to provide cues for the visual elements. But the primary advantage to scripting a narrative is that it forces us to use a more structured layout. Because the non-dialogue elements have to be cued in plain language, and because drama lacks the range of resources for transition from one scene to another, a more precise structure is required in a script than in a narrative. The attempt to transfer narrative to a script format therefore forces the reader to think through structural features. Most of the elements should be fairly straightforward. Dialogue is converted to the format: speaker1: Speech speaker2: Speech To do a full scripting would require that any indirect speech (Joe said that he was thirsty) be converted to direct (Joe: Im thirsty). Non-dialogic text is converted to various types of cues. Indicators of setting or action can be inserted where appropriate. Some information, like when people 9

enter the scene, will have to be improvised, if it is not explicitly said in the text. The passage should be structured according to scenes and acts. The distinction is mostly relative. Acts divide the play, scenes divide the acts. In looking for boundaries, observe changes of location in the narrative, time transitions, different participants. How is the flow of action working? Look for high and low points. If youre not used to watching plays, try to think in terms of movies. Where would you expect to see the screen go blank, or cut to a new setting, or some other standard transition? Be creative! This sort of activity is not an exact science. Think of it more as a framework for playing with your perceptions. Heres an example with 1 Samuel 1 (using the text of the nrsv). After youve looked through it, try the method yourself on 1 Samuel 3.

3.1 Scene 1
[Temple. Hophni & Phinehas doing priestly stuff. Enter Elkanah.] narrator: There was a certain man of Ramathaim, a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah son of Jeroham son of Elihu son of Tohu son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. He had two wives [Enter Hannah.]; the name of the one was Hannah [Enter Peninnah.], and the name of the other Peninnah. [Enter children.] Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. [Hophni & Phinehas offer Elkanahs sacrifices.] Now this man used to go up year by year from his town to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh, where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the Lord. [Elkanah takes portions of food. Exit all, except Hophni & Phinehas.]

3.2 Scene 2
[Dining Hall. Enter family. Women and children sit; Elkanah begins distributing food to Penninah and children.] narrator: On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters; [Elkanah distributes to Hannah.] but to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the Lord had closed 10

her womb. [Peninah and children mock Hannah.] Her rival used to provoke her severely, to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on year by year; as often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her. [Hannah starts crying.] elkanah: Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons? [Exit Hannah, crying.]

3.3 Scene 3
[Temple. Eli sitting on a seat beside the doorpost. Enter Hannah, crying.] hannah: [praying] O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head. [Continues praying; moves lips silently. Eli watches her.] eli: How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine. hannah: No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time. eli: Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him. hannah: Let your servant find favor in your sight. [Exits.] narrator: Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer. They rose early in the morning and worshiped before the Lord; then they went back to their house at Ramah.

3.4 Scene 4
[Elkanahs House. Hannah sitting with Samuel.]

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narrator: Elkanah knew his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her. In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. She named him Samuel, for she said, I have asked him of the Lord. [Enter Elkanah.] elkanah: Everyone else is ready for the trip to Shiloh. hannah: Im not going this year. elkanah: What? hannah: As soon as the child is weaned, I will bring him, that he may appear in the presence of the Lord, and remain there forever; I will offer him as a nazirite for all time. elkanah: Do what seems best to you, wait until you have weaned him; onlymay the Lord establish his word. [Exits.] narrator: So the woman remained and nursed her son, until she weaned him.

3.5 Scene 5
[Temple. Hophni & Phinehas doing priestly stuff. Enter Elkanah with a bull, flour, and wine, Hannah with Samuel. Hophni & Phinehas offer Elkanahs sacrifices. Enter Eli.] hannah: O my lord! As you live, my lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the Lord. For this child I prayed; and the Lord has granted me the petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives, he is given to the Lord. [Exits with Elkanah.]

4 Some Questions to Ask of a Text

Where is more cultural background needed? Where can we find it (1:11)? What language is obscure? Does the context help any (1:5)? Why is a long genealogy given (1:1)? Does the order of names in a list mean anything (1:2, 5)? Whats the flow of action? Why is it organized this way (2:18)? How do characters actions speak their thoughts (3:15)? Why are people/circumstances mentioned in passing (1:3, 9; 3:1, 2)? 12

 What speech seems out of place or awkward (1:17, 23)? What seems too obvious to bother mentioning? Why is it here (1:22, 24)? Why are people portrayed as ignorant or naive (1:13, 18; 2:23; 3:5, 7)? Where are assumptions made about God (2:25)? What do we see about social (race/gender/class) roles (1:8, 11, 13)?

5 Reading Biblical Poetry

Analyzing Hebrew poetry is one of the more complicated tasks in biblical interpretation. Were not going to spend a great deal of time on it here, but I do want to address some basic issues involved. Some of what we discuss will be within your ability as an English reader; some will not. But its good to know the issues, even if you cant work with them all directly. The first major difficulty facing the English reader is common to any translated poetry. Poetry is notoriously difficult to translate. The difficulty only increases with distance between languages. The first reason for this relationship is that poetic features are part of the language system itself. You may have heard, for instance, that iambic pentametera popular metrical arrangement in English poetryis the most natural meter of normal speech. Each language therefore has its own system for using poetic features. Some features tend to be integral to the structure of the poetry, while others contribute in lesser ways to the poetic effect. In a major category of English poetry, the structure depends upon rhyme and stress meter. In Japanese Haiku, the major feature is syllable count. In addition to this reason, there is also the fact that translation is never perfect. Perfect resemblance would produce texts identical in every way and would cease to be translation. When crossing linguistic boundaries, therefore, something must always be lost in the process. Many translations have a very practical orientationto communicate in one language an idea expressed originally in another. When translating literature, the issues are more complicated. In literature, the way things are said or written can be just as important as their content. Indeed, the form contributes significantly to the function, so that it becomes impossible to divide the two. But reproducing both form and function in translation can be quite difficult, since different languages use different forms to achieve the same function. 13

The second major difficulty is that some major questions remain open about Hebrew poetry. Exactly what constitutes poetic structureeven whether such a thing as poetry exists at all in Biblical Hebrewdespite their fundamental position in the study of poetry are hotly contested. A long-standing view of Hebrew poetry looks to parallelism as the primary structural feature. (Well get into what parallelism means in a bit.) The model theoretically incorporates meter, but most advocates either deny that it is possible to recover the meter from the Hebrew texts or use meter as a basis for all sorts of modifications to what is written. Within the past few decades, this model has been modified by some scholars and rejected by others. Some have expanded the notion of parallelism to better accommodate the data. Others have suggested different structural features. But although suspicion of the standard model has grown, no other model has succeeded in winning many followers. A third difficulty is in the very nature of poetry itself. Because poetry tends to stretch the normal use of language, its grammar and vocabulary are generally less normative and create more opportunities for confusion. Often we find that words in biblical poetry appear only once in the whole Bible (or anywhere else, for that matter), which makes them difficult to define. We also find unusual grammatical constructions that are hard to interpret because of their rarity. Some of these difficulties can be overcome or at least mediated by the knowledge that we currently possess. Others await further study of the Hebrew language and texts. The following are some observations that may prove helpful as you wrestle with biblical poetry: 1. Parallelism. Parallelism generally refers to repetition of features in language. Something as simple as One for me / one for you / one for me / one for you is an example of parallelism. One and for are repeated in every phrase, with the same sequence, and followed by a personal pronoun. A more specific definition used sometimes in linguistics refers to repetition of syntactic configurations, also called matching. Our example shows matching, since each phrase has the same structurea noun modified by a prepositional phrase, and within the prepositional phrase, one object of the preposition. The matching would be preserved if we said, One for me, two for Bob, three for Jane, seven for Mary Even if we said, A truck for Bill, a car for Pam the syntactic structure remains. When people refer to parallelism in relation to biblical poetry, they often mean a different sort, called semantic parallelism. The idea is 14

that biblical poetry builds primarily off of coupletspairs of lines in which the meanings of the poetic lines have a certain relationship. The primary categories usually given are synonymous and antithetic parallelism. Synonymous, as you might expect, means that the lines mean essentially the same thing. Antithetic, as you might guess from the prefix anti-, means that the second line restates the first line negatively. While it is true that this sort of pattern can be observed with some lines of biblical poetry, it does not seem regular enough to be the primary structural feature. But its still worth noting where you find parallelism of various typessometimes complete repetition of words, phrases, or whole lines; sometimes syntactic matching; sometimes semantic parallelismand what it seems to be there for. One insight of more recent studies into biblical parallelism is that it often shows both continuity and discontinuity of meaningnot just a repetition of the same thing, but a heightening of what is meant. 2. Unusual Language. Different translations will preserve the unusual language of biblical poetry to different extents. You probably wont be able to observe most of the unusual grammatical features, but especially watch for words that might be unusual. A good translation may preserve what is obvious to anyone reading poetry its original languagethat the vocabulary is quite a bit different from other types of texts or speech. 3. Poetic Features. Many of the features found in poetry appear in various languages. Just like English poetry, Hebrew poetry can use metaphor, simile, hyperbole, irony, and other figures of speech and sense. The proportions may be different, but you can generally observe these features even in translation. (Sometimes certain translation philosophies can get in the way of figurative language. Because some figures are culturally driven, there is a tendency in translations that are focused more on meaning than on form to interpret a figure literally. For instance, Hebrew often uses horn metaphorically to refer to strength. Some translations simply render it as strength in such instances.) Well, what do you do with these poetic features that you observe? Its unfortunate that more creativity does not normally go into translating biblical poetry. Ideally, poetry should be felt as it is read. But you shouldnt be surprised if translated biblical poetry doesnt feel like much of anything. In place of feeling your way through a poem, its helpful to look a bit more 15

mechanically for some of these features and think about how you might have seen similar features used in English. What difference does it make to speak of something metaphorically rather than literally? What does the rhyme-and-meter structure of a poem do to your perception of its content? Poetry is generally written to evoke a response, and only you the reader can say what your response will be.

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