Of Mice and Tumors (I Samuel 1-6)

When we were first assigned our presentation groups, I must admit I was a little disheartened to be dumped with First and Second Samuel. Being unfamiliar with Samuel, the books seemed to form a dark, unknown behemoth, a giant of scripture I knew would take a lot of effort to conquer, especially given the amount of difficulty I was having at the time just getting through Genesis.

After taking the plunge, however, let it be known that there's nothing scary about the Book of Samuel. While it is certainly long, with its share of boring parts, Samuel presents numerous compelling narratives and an interesting account of a changing worldview amongst the Israelites - the transition from a system of judges to monarchy.

In our group, we divvied up First and Second Samuel into sections to specialize in based around actual stories, so as not to start and end arbitrarily. My section covers chapters 11 to 17 in First Samuel, so I took pretty detailed notes up until chapter 17, afterwards forcing myself to take fewer so I could finish sometime before the end of my lifetime. Since my sleep-deprived mind is not in the right frame to post a long, coherent essay based on my scribbled notations, (Exhibit A: my rambling thus far) I've decided to post an embellished version of my notes instead, in installments.

1st Samuel 1-6, an outline:

-Ch.1: Hannah, being barren, asks God to give her a son, in exchange she'll offer up the child to serve God for the entirety of his life. Samuel is born, Hannah makes good on her promise and brings him to the Shilonite priests, reciting an ancient poetic prayer of thanksgiving most likely absent from the original story (1 Samuel 2:1-10, footnotes p. 392).

-Ch.2: The sons of Eli, chief priest of Shiloh, are corrupt, taking the meat offered to the Lord, refusing to allow worshippers to burn the fat of the meat before taking it (2:12-17), laying with women who "served at the entrance to the tent of meeting" (2:22), et cetera. By transgressing against cultic sacrifice, they show themselves unfit to succeed their father. A critique of hereditary priesthood.

• Eli, "If one person sins against another, someone can intercede for the sinner with the Lord, but if someone sins against the Lord; who can make intercession?" Eli's sons do not listen, "for it was the will of the Lord to kill them." (2:25)
• An anonymous holy man visits Eli and tells him of the harsh destruction of the Shilonite priesthood, that the Lord declares: "I promised that your family and the family of your ancestor should go in and out before me forever," but now "those who despise me shall be treated with contempt" (2:30). According to the anonymous man, God will cut off Eli's family's strength, prevent them from reaching old age, cause members of his household to die by the sword, with both he and his sons dying on the same day, and survivors being relegated to serve under God's new priest just to earn a morsel of bread (2:31-36).
• The Harper-Collins footnotes describe this section as being written by the Deuteronomistic Historian, "chiefly concerned with establishing the ascendancy of the Zadokite priesthood" (p. 394).

-Ch. 3: Samuel ministers "to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread" (3:1). God calls to Samuel, telling him, "I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear ... that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever" (3:12-14). Eli asks Samuel the next morning what it was God told him, ordering him not to hide anything. After Samuel tells him everything, Eli simply replies, "It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him" (3:18).

• Samuel's vision confirms the oracle of the anonymous man, establishing him officially as a prophet who goes on to be known by all of Israel.

-Ch. 4: After being defeated by the Philistines, the Israelites bring out the Ark of the Covenant from Shiloh, in an attempt to sway the outcome of their next battle. This scares the Philistines, who fear the mighty "gods who struck the Egyptians with every sort of plague in the wilderness" (4:8). Interestingly, they seem to think Israel worships multiple gods. Regardless of the panic, the Philistines win yet again and capture the ark. Eli's sons, who accompanied the ark, are killed.

• When Eli hears the news, he falls back, breaks his neck, and dies.
• Eli's pregnant daughter-in-law goes into labor upon hearing the news, dying after birth. Before dying, she names her new son Ichabod, meaning "'The glory has departed from Israel,' because the ark of God had been captured" and her relatives killed (4:22).

-Ch. 5: Wherein God goes to town on the Philistines, making them completely regret ever laying hands on the Ark of the Covenant.

• Placing the ark in the temple to Dagon (originally a Syrian god) in Ashdod, they wake up to find the idol of Dagon toppled over. Putting the statue back upright, the next morning they find Dagon fallen over again, with his severed head and hands lying on the threshold of the temple. This story is used to create an etiological account of the then-contemporary taboo of stepping on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod.
• God inflicts "tumors" upon the people of Ashdod (5:9). The footnotes describe these tumors as probably being the result of bubonic plague, common in coastal cities (p. 397). Plotz, on the other, seems to think of them as hemorrhoids (125). Makes me wonder if the translation he read translates the original word as "hemorrhoids" instead of the more generic "tumors", or if he's taking some journalistic license for the sake of being humorous.
• Spooked, the Philistine leaders gather to decide what to do. The residents of Gath volunteer to take it. Big mistake. They're inflicted with tumors too. They send the ark off to Ekron, who, you guessed it, become tumor-ridden and start dying off in a "deathly panic" (5:11).

-Ch. 6: The Philistines finally send the ark away for good, with a guilt offering of five gold tumors and five gold mice, mirroring the number of Philistine lords. "Tumors and mice are characteristic of the plague" (footnotes p. 397). Plotz cites an article in Biblical Archaeology Review that speculates the gold tumors were actually phalluses, "and that the real affliction ... was not hemorrhoids but erectile dysfunction" (125). I know phalluses were widespread throughout antiquity, but it seems like a stretch to me, something Frye might deem a result of being blinded by historicity.

• Sent away on a cow-drawn cart, the ark makes its way to Beth-shemesh. Upon seeing the ark, the residents rejoice and make offerings.
• At least seventy of the "descendants of Jeconiah" are killed for not rejoicing with the rest of Beth-shemesh, although the Harper-Collins Study Bible includes a translation note denoting the Hebrew words as meaning "seventy men, fifty thousand men," without further explanation, leaving me confused. Seventy or fifty thousand - that's a huge disparity. Does it mean seventy died out of fifty thousand or that fifty thousand and seventy died? Fifty thousand seems like too large a population for one town in ancient Israel, then again the Bible is hardly married to numerical accuracy.
• Either way, God's slaughter leads the people of Beth-shemesh to ask, "Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? To whom shall he go so that we may be rid of him?" (6:20). I find this passage extremely interesting. The people of Beth-shemesh go from rejoicing over being in the presence of God through the ark to wanting to be rid of him. God is like a big, spoiled bully of a child that Beth-shemesh at first welcomes with open arms, but soon tires of his "holy" temper tantrums, opting to ship him off to the next gullible town.

To be continued...