{"id":56752,"date":"2019-06-03T19:21:15","date_gmt":"2019-06-03T16:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=56752"},"modified":"2022-12-26T18:18:16","modified_gmt":"2022-12-26T16:18:16","slug":"the-beginnings-of-samuel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-beginnings-of-samuel\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beginnings Of Samuel"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"56752","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":54356,"related_cahpter":"233","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"The all too human sides of the prophet and his parents","content":"<p>From the Introduction to the Book of Samuel:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The prophet Samuel may have God on his side, but he is also an implacable, irascible man, and often a palpably self-interested one as well\u2026 It would be misleading, I think to imagine that any of this intended to discredit the idea of prophetic authority. Samuel is invested with prophetic power by an act of God. But the writer understands that he is also a man, all too human, and that any kind of power, including spiritual power, can lead to abuse. Samuel toys with the idea of creating a kind of prophetic dynasty through his two sons, even though they are just as corrupt as the two sons of Eli; whose immoral behavior seals the doom of their father\u2019s priestly line, Is Samuel\u2019s choice of Saul really dictated by God, or rather by his own human preconceptions? (He is on the point of making the same mistake twice when he is ready to anoint David\u2019s eldest brother, Eliab, another strapping young man who seems to stand out from the crowd.) When he insists it is God\u2019s will that the entire population and all the livestock of Amalek should be slaughtered, and then offers King Agag as a kind of human sacrifice to the Lord, does he act with divinely authorized prophetic rightness, or as Martin Buber thought, is he confusing his own human impulses with God\u2019s will? The story of Samuel, then, far from being a simple promotion of prophetic ideology, enormously complicates the notion of prophecy by concretely imagining what may become of the imperfect stuff of humanity when the mantle of prophecy is cast over it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Samuel 1<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Verse 8 &#8211; &#8220;And Elkanah her husband said to her, &#8216;Hannah, why do you weep and why do you not eat and why is your heart afflicted? Am I not better to you than ten sons?&#8217;\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Commentary: <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Am I not better to you than ten sons?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The double-edged poignancy of these words is that they at once express Elkanah\u2019s deep and solicitous love for Hannah and his inability to understand how inconsolable she feels about her affliction of barrenness. All the annunciation stories must be understood on light of the prevalent ancient Near Eastern view that a woman\u2019s great avenue to fulfillment in life was through the bearing of sons. It is noteworthy that Hannah does not respond to Elkanah. When she does at last speak it is to God.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From: Robert Alter, <\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Hebrew Bible<\/span><\/em><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">vol. 2: Prophets, W. W. Norton &amp; Co., 2019, ad loc.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":54890,"id":54890,"title":"Alter-Cover","filename":"Alter-Cover.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/welcome-to-the-book-of-judges-unbridled-lust-implacable-hostility-mutual-mayhem\/alter-cover\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"alter-cover","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":54889,"date":"2019-05-05 07:18:18","modified":"2022-01-31 16:15:48","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1200,"height":693,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover-150x150.jpg","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover-300x173.jpg","medium-width":300,"medium-height":173,"medium_large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover-768x444.jpg","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":444,"large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover-1024x591.jpg","large-width":1024,"large-height":591,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover.jpg","1536x1536-width":1200,"1536x1536-height":693,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover.jpg","2048x2048-width":1200,"2048x2048-height":693,"post_full_size":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover-1200x693.jpg","post_full_size-width":1200,"post_full_size-height":693,"home_baner":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Alter-Cover-727x420.jpg","home_baner-width":727,"home_baner-height":420}},"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"From 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