{"id":57397,"date":"2019-06-14T15:14:46","date_gmt":"2019-06-14T12:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=57397"},"modified":"2023-01-08T14:15:00","modified_gmt":"2023-01-08T12:15:00","slug":"an-expectation-left-unfulfilled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/an-expectation-left-unfulfilled\/","title":{"rendered":"An Expectation Left Unfulfilled"},"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":[373,522,885,721],"acf":{"old_id":"57397","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":56490,"related_cahpter":"241","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"And thus becomes a foreshadowing of unfulfilled promises to come","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Robert Alter (University of California, Berkeley), is the world\u2019s leading scholar of the literary approach to the Bible. All of us who engage in this aspect of Biblical Studies, the present writer included, have learned much from his penetrating studies and analyses beginning in the late 1970s and continuing until the present day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of Alter\u2019s most brilliant discoveries during the course of his research is the typescene. \u00a0This term, borrowed from Homeric scholarship, refers to the manner in which ancient Israelite authors would use the same ingredients over and over again to create a recurrent scene, albeit with different characters. The best example is: the Israelite bachelor in a foreign land encounters an eligible woman drawing water at the well. The reader does not need to read further, for he\/she knows simply through these ingredients that the two characters will marry. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The standard examples are: Jacob\u2019s encountering Rachel at the well in the land of Aram (Genesis 29), and Moses\u2019 encountering Zipporah (amongst the seven daughters of Jethro) in the land of Midian (Exod 2:15-22). A variation on the theme occurs in Genesis 24, where the unnamed servant of Abraham (serving as surrogate for Isaac) encounters Rebekah at the well in the land of Aram. All three of these result in the marriage of the principal characters. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alter further identified the inverted typescene in the book of Ruth. In this story, all is inverted, so that an eligible non-Israelite woman (Ruth) encounters her intended (Boaz) at a well in the land of Israel (see Ruth 2:9 especially) \u2013 and they too become married.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When we read of Saul\u2019s encounter with the young women in 1 Sam 9:11, accordingly, we are primed to anticipate the marriage of Saul with one of the lasses. This helps explain the geographical details presented in v. 5, with the reference to \u201cthe district of Zuph\u201d serving to inform the reader that Saul had traversed the boundary of his home territory of Benjamin, and had arrived in the \u201cforeign\u201d territory of Ephraim \u2013 which is to say, Saul is now an eligible bachelor in a \u201cforeign\u201d land, who encounters the young women leaving the city to draw water at the well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the expectation of the reader is dashed. \u00a0For, instead of marrying one of the young women, they have only a brief encounter and conversation and then go their separate ways. \u00a0As Alter astutely observes, the typescene is aborted, as an adumbration of (spoiler alert!) Saul\u2019s aborted kingship.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>image:<em>\u00a0The Daughters of Jethro<\/em>,\u00a0Th\u00e9ophile Hamel, ca 1850 \/ wikimedia<\/p>\n","image":{"ID":57398,"id":57398,"title":"isam9-women at well","filename":"isam9-women-at-well.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/isam9-women-at-well.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/an-expectation-left-unfulfilled\/isam9-women-at-well\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"isam9-women-at-well","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":57397,"date":"2019-06-14 12:14:07","modified":"2019-06-14 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