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The Four: A Survey of the Gospels
Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom
From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John
Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture
1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary
The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter
A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons
Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature
Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen
The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism
A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel
From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution
Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy
Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper
A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament
Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature
Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays
Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life
The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church
My oldest son Woelke pointed out to me that 1-2 Samuel refer several times to David’s two wives – Ahinoam and Abigail (cf. 1 Sam 25:43). They are named – complete with their places of origin – when David goes to live with Achish (1 Sam 27:3), when the Amalekites attack Ziklag (1 Sam 30:5), when when David goes up to Hebron to receive the kingdom of Judah.
Why the repetition? There may be several things going on here.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, October 1, 2007 at 8:28 am
Saul sends three sets of men to capture David. As they approach, the Spirit falls on them and they prophesy. Mission unaccomplished.
Ahaziah sends three sets of men to capture Elijah. As they approach, fire falls on them and they burn up – until the captain of the last group gets the hint and shows some deference to Elijah.
Spirit-baptism is royal; fire-baptism is prophetic.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, August 24, 2007 at 7:17 am
Near the end of his prayer in 2 Samuel 7, David confesses his confidence in Yahweh’s promises concerning David’s house, saying “Thy words are truth” (v. 28). Jesus echoes this words in John 17:17. The connection seems to be a fruitful one, and perhaps there are more verbal links than this. At least we can suggest that Jesus prays for the ultimate fulfillment of the Davidic covenant. The establishment of a house for David is fulfilled in the unity of the disciples and in their mission in the world.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, January 5, 2007 at 9:42 am
Jeffrey Geoghegan examines the OT events that take place during sheep-shearing festivals in an article in Biblica. He tries to discern the common themes in the four passages set during sheep-shearing: Gen 31, 38; 1 Sam 25; 2 Sam 13. He argues that sheep-shearing was a “significant celebration, characterized by feasting, drunkenness and the settling of old scores.” It thus serves as an “ideal backdrop” for the Davidic dynasty; David and Absalom both “took advantage of sheephearing” to settle wrongs and thus “sheephearing became intimately associated with the establishment of the Davidic dynasty.”
While Geoghegan conclusions are not compelling, the parallels he finds between the passages are striking and he makes some intriguing observations along the way:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, July 10, 2006 at 8:15 am
When Jesus promises to send the Spirit, he describes the Spirit as the “Paraclete.” This word is often translated as “Comforter,” but the Greek word has a legal connotation and is actually closer to “Advocate” or even “Defense Attorney.” A Paraclete doesn’t “soothe” so much as “defend.”
That’s a good thing, because everyone who receives the Spirit in Scripture needs a good bit of defending. The Spirit clothes judges like Gideon and Samson so they can slaughter Midianites and Philistines. When the Spirit comes upon Saul, He takes his army to deliver Jabesh-gilead from the Ammonites.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, July 9, 2006 at 9:10 am
Samuel anointed David with oil to designate him as the crown-prince, the successor of Saul. But why oil?
Oil is food. It is one of the main ingredients of bread in Scripture, and a food in its own right. With grapes and grain, oil is one of the main products of the promised land. Oil is the fat of the land. By his anointing, David is designated as the one who will lead Israel from Philistine threat to a land flowing with milk and honey, dripping with wine and oil.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, July 9, 2006 at 8:30 am
Commentators in recent years have often opted for a homoerotic interpretation of David’s relation with Jonathan. Yaron Peleg of George Washington University has another explanation: Jonathan was a “woman” (JSOT 30.2). Oh, so now we know!
Goofy as it may sound, Peleg’s article is not so easily dismissed. He points not only to “he loved him as his own soul” (1 Sam 18:1), but also to the fact that covenant relations are often described in marital terms (David and Jonathan “cut covenant” in 18:3-4) and the fact that David was “taken from his father’s house” to live with Saul’s family (18:2), language sometimes used for taking a bride (Gen 38:11; Lev 22:13); and the clear parallels between Jonathan’s devotion to David and Michal’s. To this point in the story, Jonathan is the senior partner, and David is his little buddy.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, May 10, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Robert Pinsky, The Life of David. New York: Schocken, 2005. 209 pp.
I was prepared to dislike Pinsky’s book, and the howler on the first page of the text was not encouraging (“David and the Witch of Endor”!?). My dislike deepened as the book progressed: Pinsky, a widely admired poet who teaches in Boston University’s creative writing program, plays source critic for a few pages, gossips inconclusively that Jonathan and David might have been homosexual lovers (thus missing the point of Jonathan’s disrobing before David – namely, Jonathan abdicates as crown prince), passes on the bizarre legend that Goliath and David were cousins. Yet, the book has its strengths, as Pinsky captures the drama and passion of the David story, as well as the complex piety of the man after God’s own heart, that is missing from most commentaries on 1-2 Samuel.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, December 16, 2005 at 1:54 pm
Baruch Halpern argues in his 2001 biography of David, David’s Secret Demons, that David was the first individualist, the first modern man. Part of his evidence is that David so often violates conventions in surprising ways. He offers David’s battle with Goliath as an example. Contrary to the popular presentation, David is not an underdog in his fight with Goliath, since he uses surprise tactics and attacks from “outside the ring.” He concedes that “David WOULD be the underdog, had he accepted combat on traditional terms,” but goes on to say that David uses “the element of surprise, the ruse” as a method for “leveraging skills into victory.” Halpern points to Mark Twain’s views, as expressed in the Connecticut Yankee, that “David is modern man, rejecting the mindless, medieval ritualized combat of the PHilistines: the fates of nations cannot depend on single combat, but the fates of nations are too important to scruple about the rules of sport. Combat is not a matter of personal honor, but of national destiny.” Further, “David begins his career as a musician playing the lyre for Saul. In the Goliath episode, he moves on to reject the etiquette of social relations shared by all around him. This is the pattern that will persist throughout his history. He is not just Yahweh’s elect: he is Yahweh’s avenger. He is not just destined for greatness: he shapes his greatness by a complete disregard for orthodoxy.”
With Halpern’s larger methodological and substantive theses, I have no sympathy whatever. He claims that 1-2 Samuel gives us a cleaned-up version of David’s life, from which the skilled interpeter can extract the true story of a David whose agendais “systematically to root out Saul’s family.” But on the unorthodoxy of David’s fight with Goliath, Halpern is right on target. Contrary to the heroisms of the ancient world ?EANE and Greek ?Eone’s goal in battle is victory, not personal glory and reputation. If glory and honor are at stake, they are Yahweh’s. And this means that the “honorable” rules of ancient combat have no moral claim upon David or Israel’s armies.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 at 2:10 pm
Mark Biddle of the Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond examines some of the intertextual connections between 1 Sam 25 and the Jacob narratives in Genesis (JBL 121/4 [2002]). He discovers analogies between Nabal and Laban, Saul and Laban, and of course Nabal and Saul. Abigail is comparable to Rebekah and, intriguingly, Jacob. The latter parallel is particularly worth noting: Jacob and Abigail both send servants ahead to meet a threatening force (Gen 32:17; 1 Sam 25:19), and the servants in both cases are bearing gifts to pacify the attacker. Gen 32-33 employs the verb “pass on ahead” (‘abar) several times, as does 1 Sam 25:19. Gen 32-33 uses the word PANIM, face, in a clearly thematic fashion, and Abigail bows with her face to the ground.
Of course, what this does is place David in the position of Esau, the attacker coming against a “Jacob.” The parallels with Esau are clear: Esau comes out to Jacob with 400 men, the same number as David uses to attack Nabal (Gen 32:7; 1 Sam 25:13). The Hebrew verb PAGASH (meet, encounter, especially in a threatening way) is also used in both passage (Gen 32:18; 33:8; 1 Sam 25:20).
In the light of the consistent portrayal of David as a new Jacob (see my A Son for Me), this inversion is very striking, all the more so since 1 Sam 25 is the central chapter in the latter section of 1 Sam. At this one point, David/Jacob turns into his opposite, an Esau, intent on killing a brother, and has to be overcome by a shrewd and cunning female Jacob, a true Israelite.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, June 16, 2004 at 4:25 pm
Several interesting articles in the current issue of JSOT:
1) Yairah Amit of Tel Aviv University writes on “Progression as a Rhetorical Device in Biblical Literature.” The concept is fairly simple: He’s pointing to places where, in narrative or speech, the biblical writers list a series of events or points, which progress toward a climax (or a nadir). Progression arranges the elements of the text in “an ascending or descending order: from the general to the particular, or vice verse; from minor to major, or the reverse; from the expected to the unexpected; the impersonal to the personal, and so on. Often the final step in the progression is the climactic one, while each of the preceding steps plays its part in expanding or narrowing the sequence, and thereby shedding more light on the subject” (p 9).
Some of Amit’s examples are particularly illuminating. He points out, for example, the sequence in the account of the results of the battle of Aphek in 1 Sam 4: Israel is routed, many die, the ark is taken, and Eli’s sons are killed (vv 10-11). This follows the same order as the introduction to the battle in vv 2-4, which records another defeat of Israel, the fact that many were killed, and then indicates that the ark was brought by the priests (vv 2-4). Thus, these two progressions form an inclusio around the account of the battle. But within that inclusion, there is a sharp contrast between expectation and result, particularly in the last two elements of the sequence: the arrival of the ark and priests in vv 2-3 evokes hope of victory, but the climax of the story shows the ark in captivity and the priests dead. The same events are found in the announcement to Eli later in the account, but the order of the last two elements is changed: Israel fled, a great slaughter, sons dead, ark taken. And it is the last element that causes Eli to topple from his seat and break his neck.
Another interesting example is the story of Delilah and Samson (Judg 16:4-21). There is no progression apparent in Samson’s lies about the source of his strength, but there is an increasingly manipulative and aggressive response from Delilah. At first, she asks politely to know her lover’s secret; then she complains, but still politely; the third response is more aggressive and vigorous, and lacks the polite touches Delilah deployed earlier; finally, she questions Samson’s love for her, which causes him finally to give in.
2) Ronald Bergey traces the intertextual links between the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 and the prophecy of Isaiah, particularly chapters 1, 5, 28, 30. He is excruciatingly careful about assessing the verbal parallels, and makes a good case that Deuteronomy 32 plays a “compositional role” in Isaiah’s prophecy and that Deuteronomy influenced Isaiah rather than the reverse. This has important implications for the dating of Deuteronomy, the hinge of the documentary hypothesis (which still, astonishingly, has wide acceptance). It may also have a number of interesting implications for NT theology. NT Wright has argued that the latter chapters of Deuteronomy provide a narrative subtext for much of Paul’s theology, and showing that Isaiah is expanding on Deuteronomy (at least at some points) could enrich the background of Paul’s teaching. Working in the opposite direction: Baker is publishing a series of volumes examining the influence of Isaiah’s “new exodus” theme on the gospels and Acts, and noting the links with Deuteronomy 32 would enrich our understanding of the gospels. Putting these two together, seeing the links between the two OT texts might be an important aspect of an effort to show the continuity between the gospels and Paul.
3) Keith Bodner offers what in my judgment is an unsuccessful treatment of the role of Eliab, David’s older brother, in 1 Sam. Eliab is the brother who appears before Samuel, and is also the brother who rebukes David when the latter inquires about the reward for defeating Goliath. Bodner says that Eliab’s narrative role is to reveal (to the reader) complexities and dark corners of other characters. In particular, his harsh rebuke to David, that he has an “evil heart,” is partly true, or at least a warning to us that David is not so squeaky clean as he might appear. I’m not at all persuaded, partly because this interpretation relies on recent work that presents a much more negative picture of David than the Bible itself does (“David’s secret demons,” and all that). When a scholar finds things troubling in David’s actions that the biblical writers do NOT find troubling, we seem to have reason to suspect that the scholar is bringing his own sensibilities to the text rather than explaining what the ancient writer wanted to convey. Some modern scholars don’t like David, and find him unnerving; but they shouldn’t pretend that the biblical writers thought the same. Further, Bodner’s treatment misses a crucial element of the typology in this section of Samuel. David is being presented as a new Joseph: the youngest son in a family dominated by males; he is successful and “acts wisely” in his service to Saul (ch 18), but is persecuted unjustly; and, his brother attacks him when he offers to take care of the giant, as Joseph’s brothers resented and attacked him. Bodner perhaps would respond by defending Reuben, Simeon, and the rest, or be suggesting that the character of Joseph is as “artfully complex” as David’s. It’s far more plausible that the writer of Samuel surrounded David with an aura of Joseph-ness to commend the young hero, and to present him as a “savior” of Israel. Bodner’s article is a good example of how literary-critical treatments of the Bible can go astray, mainly by assessing biblical narratives as if the writers had the same literary interests as modern novelists.
4) L. Daniel Hawk has a fascinating article on the parallels between the Oresteia and the account of the rise of Israel’s monarchy. I want to read this one more carefully before summarizing it, however.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, October 29, 2003 at 7:26 am
In 1 Samuel 12, Samuel gives his farewell speech to the people. He claims that he has not abused his position in any way, and asks the people to confirm this, citing Yahweh and “His anointed” as witnesses in his defense. Who is the “anointed”? Clearly, it is someone distinct from Yahweh, for Samuel is calling on a “double witness” to support his claim. Possibly Saul the Lord’s anointed, since he is already king. But how could Saul confirm Samuel’s claims? How could he know whether or not Samuel has abused his position as judge? I suspect that “His anointed” in 1 Samuel 12 is the same as the “Anointed” of 1 Samuel 2:35, where the “anointed” is one before whom a priest “walks.” This is not the king, but a personage that both is and is not identified with Yahweh, a person whom a priest serves but who is distinct from Yahweh. He is the archetype of anointed king. Psalm 132:10, where David calls on God to “turn not away the face of thine anointed,” may be speaking of the same person. In short, the distinction between “Yahweh” and “His anointed” is an OT hint of plurality within the life of God.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, August 28, 2003 at 1:19 pm
In 1 Samuel 12, Samuel gives his farewell speech to the people. He claims that he has not abused his position in any way, and asks the people to confirm this, citing Yahweh and “His anointed” as witnesses in his defense. Who is the “anointed”? Clearly, it is someone distinct from Yahweh, for Samuel is calling on a “double witness” to support his claim. Possibly Saul the Lord’s anointed, since he is already king. But how could Saul confirm Samuel’s claims? How could he know whether or not Samuel has abused his position as judge? I suspect that “His anointed” in 1 Samuel 12 is the same as the “Anointed” of 1 Samuel 2:35, where the “anointed” is one before whom a priest “walks.” This is not the king, but a personage that both is and is not identified with Yahweh, a person whom a priest serves but who is distinct from Yahweh. He is the archetype of anointed king. Psalm 132:10, where David calls on God to “turn not away the face of thine anointed,” may be speaking of the same person. In short, the distinction between “Yahweh” and “His anointed” is an OT hint of plurality within the life of God.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, August 28, 2003 at 1:18 pm
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