I and II Samuel (1965)

A Commentary

Hans Wilhelm Hertzberg

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 1965
• ISBN:
  9781611645828
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

This volume, a part of the Old Testament Library series, explores the books of I and II Samuel.

The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

I

ELI AND SAMUEL

I. 1–3

1. THE CHILD ASKED OF GOD: 1.1–20

1 ¹There was a certain man of Ramathaim,^a of (the) Zuphites,^b of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah the son of Jeroham, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zuph, an Ephrathite. ²He had two wives; the name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. And Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.

3 Now this man used^c to go up year by year from his city to worship and to sacrifice to the LORD of hosts at Shiloh, where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the LORD. ⁴Now there was a day when Elkanah sacrificed.^d And he used to give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and daughters, ⁵but he would give Hannah one portion, (the portion) of the face,^e for he loved Hannah, although the LORD had closed her womb. ⁶And her rival used to provoke her sorely, to humiliate her,^f because the LORD had closed her womb. ⁷So it went on^g year by year; as often as she went up to the house of the LORD, she used to provoke her. Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. ⁸And Elkanah, her husband, said to her, ‘Hannah,^h why do you weep? And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?’

9 But Hannah rose, after they had eaten the boiled meat^a and had drunk, and went before the LORD.^b Now Eli the priest was sitting on his seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the LORD. ¹⁰She was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD, and wept bitterly. ¹¹And she vowed a vow and said, ‘O LORD of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thy maidservant, and remember me, and not forget thy maidservant, but wilt give to thy maidservant a son, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.’

12 As she continued praying before the LORD, Eli observed her mouth. ¹³Hannah was speaking in her heart; only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard; therefore Eli took her to be a drunken woman. ¹⁴And Eli said to her, ‘How long will you be drunken? Put away your wine from you.’ ¹⁵But Hannah answered, ‘No my lord, I am only^c a woman sorely troubled;^d I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the LORD. ¹⁶Do not regard^e your maidservant as a base woman, for all along I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation.’ ¹⁷Then Eli answered, ‘Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition which you have made to him.’ ¹⁸And she said, ‘Let your maidservant find favour in your eyes.’ Then the woman went her way and ate with her husband and drank,^f and her countenance was no longer sad.

19 They rose early in the morning and worshipped before the LORD; then they went back to their house at Ramah. And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife, and the LORD remembered her; ²⁰and Hannah conceived, and in due time bore a son,^g and she called his name Samuel, for she said, ‘I have asked him of the LORD.’

[1] The history of the beginnings of the time of the kings opens with a narrative which bears all the external characteristics of an idyll. It does not, however, resemble the folk tale, with anonymous figures, as we are told the names of everyone involved, including the second wife, who is not essential to the story. In this way the beginnings of the time of Samuel (and hence of the kings) are fixed quite definitely in certain people at a certain place. Elkanah, whose genealogy is given as far back as his great-great-grandfather—the sign of a noble and well-known family—is described as an Ephrathite. Here the word is meant to indicate the Ephraimite descent of the family and not, as in Ruth 1.2 (cf. Micah 5.2), to describe a clan of Bethlehem. In I Chron. 6.1ff., Samuel is given a Levitical ancestry, a change understandable in the light of later ideas. Otherwise the names of the ancestors in I Chron. 6.11f. are similar to those mentioned in I Sam. 1. Zuph, the last named of these ancestors, not only stands behind the word ‘Zuphite’, but evidently also gave his name to a definite area, the ‘land of Zuph’, I Sam. 9.5.^a Here the family are said to live at Ramathaim; elsewhere Haramah (Ramah) is taken to be Samuel’s home and native place (1.19, etc.). In English it means ‘the height’, an understandable name in Palestine and one which occurs frequently. The mention of the ‘twofold Ramah’ here and later—in the LXX, also I Macc. 11.34 and Matt. 27.57—shows that the tradition distinguished the place from Ramah of Benjamin (Judg; 4.5; 19.13, etc.). Evidently two places (at least) of the same or a similar name were claimed as the home of Samuel. The bulk of the tradition associates Samuel with the well-known Ramah of Benjamin (now er-ram). According to Judg. 4.5, this was counted as part of the ‘hill country of Ephraim’, near the boundaries of the tribes of Joseph and Benjamin (I Sam. 10.2; Jer. 31.15). At a later time, however, the present rentis, a long way north-west of er-ram, was regarded as the biblical ‘Arimathea’ and so as the abode of Samuel.^b

[2–3] Elkanah has two wives; polygamy is thus unquestionably practised. The close association of wives is particularly likely to lead to discord if one of the two is childless, the most bitter misfortune possible for an Eastern woman.^c The hostility between the wives comes clearly to light on the pilgrimage which Elkanah used to make each year with all his family, and which shows that he was ‘not only a pious man, but, as we should now say, a churchman’ (Ketter). The place of pilgrimage is Shiloh, the present selun, lying between Bethel and Shechem. Danish excavations have established the site beyond question.^d The sanctuary there was of considerable importance as the resting-place of the ark. Men went up ‘to Shiloh, to Yahweh, the Lord of hosts’.^a This is the technical term for a pilgrimage (cf. Luke 18.31, etc.). Why Elkanah went up to Shiloh in particular, and not to other equally famous sanctuaries which perhaps lay nearer to his home, such as Bethel, Mizpah or Shechem, is not explained. The fact that he goes to the shrine of the ark is meant on the one hand to show that Elkanah means to serve the true God at the legitimate place and on the other hand to provide an ‘historical’ confirmation of Samuel’s association with Shiloh, which is well known elsewhere. Hophni and Phinehas, the sons of Eli, function as priests—according to the LXX the father still continues in his priestly office; a son of Eleazar is also known under the name of Phinehas, and ‘Gibeah of Phinehas’, with the grave of Eleazar, lies in the hill country of Ephraim (Josh. 24.33), in all probability not a great way from Shiloh, so that the same figure was evidently included at different points in the tradition.

[4–7a] The climax of the pilgrimage is a sacrificial meal at which the pilgrims rejoice before Yahweh with eating and drinking. The portions, of the sacrifice, of course, are divided by the head of the household, and it is emphatically stressed that even the women and children receive appropriate portions from him. This is a particularly kind gesture, as the women and children usually remained in the background during a feast and waited until the mealtime proper was over. Hannah, Elkanah’s favourite wife, is evidently singled out for special attention. The text, however, is obscure: ‘He used to give her one (the word is stressed) portion, (the) face (?) . . . for he loved Hannah . . .’ The word ’appāyim, properly ‘nose’ (and sometimes ‘wrath’), frequently means ‘face’, especially in the context of bowing down before God or before men in high positions. Perhaps ‘portion of the face’ signifies a particularly large piece, a portion of honour: earlier exegetes suggested a portion for two people (cf. Gen. 43.34, where Benjamin receives portions five times as large as those of his brothers). In any case, Hannah must have been treated by her husband in some special way to explain the taunts which Peninnah used to fling on such an occasion.

[7b–18] The description of the present visit begins again in v. 7b. Hannah, who cannot eat for grief, is addressed by her husband with exceptionally loving words of consolation. Nevertheless, she leaves the family meal—the text here is again obscure—as soon as possible^a to ‘pour out her heart’ before the Lord, i.e. at the entrance to the temple. Her prayer is wholly concerned with her own distress, and, like that of Jacob in Gen. 28.20f., is bound up with a vow. It is completely in accordance with Eastern custom that Hannah asks not for a child, or children, but for a son. All the stories in the Bible which describe the events leading up to the birth of a child are concerned with boy children. Her pledge to consecrate the longed-for boy to the service of the sanctuary is meant to make the Lord willing to fulfil her request; there is no later mention that the boy, like Samson, was placed under Nazirite vows. This feature may possibly have been taken over from the Samson story, to which the narrative bears a certain similarity in other respects as well. During her long prayer Hannah has been watched by the old priest Eli, whose seat is outside at the temple gate. The silent prayer, in which only her lips move, seems to him so unusual that he takes her to be drunk; it is clear from this that drinking was quite customary at sacrificial meals (cf. vv. 9 and 18). Hannah’s modest reply so obviously bears the stamp of truth that Eli believes her completely and not only makes the salutation of peace—still regularly used in the Arabian East to those departing on a journey—but also consoles her, wishing or promising (both are grammatically possible) the fulfilment of her request. Hannah’s thanks are expressed in a formula which is again meant to show her humble bearing, and she goes away comforted.

[19–20] The sequel to the story is as we would imagine and expect. Hannah has not appealed in vain to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh. God blesses her womb, as the Fathers would put it; the phrase ‘and she conceived’, which has by mis...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the First German Edition
• Preface to the English Edition
• Translator’s Preface
• Bibliography
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• I. Eli and Samuel I. 1–3
• II. The History of the Ark I. 4–6
• III. Samuel and Saul I. 7–15
• IV. Saul and David I. 16–II. 1
• V. King David II. 2–8
• VI. The Succession to the Throne of David II. 9–20
• VII. Appendices II. 21–24