Samuel: Chapter 10
On what is given, what is taken, and what the heart chooses
Are you a seeker,
or are you saught?
And who do you find
deep down, within?
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This chapter seamlessly continues the last, carrying on its fable-like pattern of trees (3 signs, 3 actions, 3 men, 3 kids, 3 loaves of bread), and its leitworts of “seek” (ב’ק’ש)and “find” (מ’צ’א). The Saul who set out in quest for the asses is now sought by his father, and later by the entire nation, as he hides away from Samuel’s declaration. Yet now that “God is with him“, his hands can do all that they “seek”--he is seeker and saught at once.
Saul hides because he fundamentally doubts. Running beneath the surface is a submered questioning, a bordreline panic, as indicated by Samuel’s series of signs to prove the kingship. These signs revolve around a series of give (נ’ת’נ) and take (ל’ק’ח)--echoing Samuel’s warning to the people about the royal right to confiscate at will.
The placement of Saul’s fateful encounters by “the burial place of Rachel“ further scopes us back to the primal story of Joseph and his brothers, which began with a similar search (“It is my brothers I search for”) that splits into a bifurcation between Joseph’s receiving and Judah’s taking. Samuel’s signs are not passive proofs, but transformative experiences, forcing Saul to wrest with the issues of kinship: you will become a different man.
In the central sign, God takes over Saul’s very body in prophetic ecstasy: he is mitnabeh, in a reflexive form that echoes Hanna’s discovery of a new level of prayer at the opening of this book. This sign is not only an exercise in transformative submission, but also raises one of the book’s thematic concerns: the relation of fathers and sons, and its impact on the question of hereditary leadership. Eli’s sons did not follow in his footprints; Samuel’s sons did not follow in his. In both cases, this disjunction is juxtaposed to the question of kingship. Here, Saul’s prophecy raises the question “What’s happened to the son of Kish? Is Saul too among the prophets?” prompting the riposte: “And who are their fathers?”
Some gifts are sui generis, with no relation to antecedents. The prophets prophesize without relation to their fathers, and Saul prophesizes without relation to Kish. And if that is the case, what is the function of kingship, with its focus on fathers and sons, and why the placement of Saul within the context of his foremother Rachel,and within the context of his tribe, Benjamin?
The story is placed within the boundaries of Benjamin, and as it continues, the echoes of Benjamin’s story become more insistent. Benhamin is the “smallest of tribes” because they were nearly annihilated in the civil war triggered by the incident that took place at Geva--Saul’s own hometown. Saul is appointed king in a lottery that echoes the lottery that accompanied the war on Geva, while he is attacked by bnei Bliyaal--rabble--the same word used to describe the guilty parties in the incident at Geva.
The individual and his family in a fraught, tension-filled dance. Saul is head and shoulders above the rest of the nation, a perfect individual--and very much Kish’s son, a Benjaminite. A leader is a person--yet can perhaps become a dynasty. The story is both Samuel’s and Saul’s, shifting between the two, as Samuel’s latest convocation at Mitzpah places the fairytale interlude back within the larger story of the state, and Samuel’s negative view of kingship. At stake is the issue of the heart--another leitword of this chapter--as Saul’s heart is transformed, and those “with heart” accompany him home.