{"id":57480,"date":"2019-06-14T17:23:46","date_gmt":"2019-06-14T14:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=57480"},"modified":"2023-01-08T14:20:15","modified_gmt":"2023-01-08T12:20:15","slug":"samuel-and-saul-the-seer-and-the-seen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/samuel-and-saul-the-seer-and-the-seen\/","title":{"rendered":"Samuel And Saul: The Seer And The Seen"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/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":[551,839,885],"acf":{"old_id":"57480","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":34243,"related_cahpter":"241","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Were they both loaned from - or to - \u00a0God?","content":"

Some years ago, I started a public lecture on 1 Samuel by stating that Samuel and Saul were switched at birth. It caught the audience\u2019s attention, as I had expected, but then I had to elaborate. I drew their attention to chapter one verses 27-28, in which Hannah explained to Eli:<\/span><\/p>\n

I prayed for this child. God granted me the request I asked of him. So I have put him on loan to God; all the days of his being he will be on loan to God.<\/span><\/p>\n

The verbal root <\/span>SH-\u2018-L<\/span><\/i>, to request or to borrow, repeats itself no fewer than four times in these two verses, most prominently in the concluding phrase which, taken quite literally, actually says \u201call the days of his being he will be <\/span>sha\u2019ul<\/span><\/em> to God.\u201d There you have it: Hannah\u2019s son was intended to be Shaul\/Saul; since he turned out, instead, to be Samuel, they must have been switched at birth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let us look at the circumstances in which Samuel and Saul first met. Saul\u2019s father had lost some donkeys and dispatched Saul and one of his servants to seek them. Just as Saul was about to give up, the servant suggested a visit to Samuel. At first glance, this appears odd. Samuel was a circuit judge and a prophet, but not a lost and found. The servant, however, knew otherwise; he referred to Samuel as \u201cthe man of God\u201d (6), and even produced what seems to have been the price of admission for an audience with him: a silver quarter (8).<\/span><\/p>\n

The critical verse follows: \u201cAforetime in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, he would say: ‘Come and let us go to the seer’; for he that is now called a prophet was aforetime called a seer\u201d (9). The association of prophecy (<\/span>navi<\/span><\/em>) with seeing (<\/span>ro\u2019eh<\/span><\/em>) is reinforced by our observation that prophetic communication is oftentimes called a sight (<\/span>mar\u2019eh<\/span><\/em>) and, otherwise, a vision (<\/span>hazon<\/span><\/em>).<\/span><\/p>\n

But whose words are these? Rashi inferred that they were not spoken by Saul\u2019s servant but were interpolated by \u201cthe scribe (<\/span>sofer<\/span><\/em>) who wrote the Book of Samuel.\u201d Radak elaborated on the seeming incongruity of \u201caforetime\u201d when this encounter occurred shortly before the deaths of both protagonists, and explained that \u201caforetime\u201d refers to an earlier era in which prophets were known for the ability to foretell events or disclose hidden things. By the era of Samuel, however, the definition had evolved to identify a <\/span>navi<\/span><\/em> as an interlocutor (<\/span>niv sefatayim<\/span><\/em>): one who bore divine messages to the people.<\/span><\/p>\n

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