Samuel: Chapter 13
When newness fractures
Fractures. Learn to stand fast--
or you will not stand.
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The kingship has only just been established, and hairline cracks are already spreading and widening.
Saul was a year old when he was crowned, shiny-new as a child. Yet the Saul introduced as a dutiful son is suddenly a father, and it is his son Jonathan who uses the fateful Geva as a springboard to attack the Philistines--whilst Saul gets the credit. We are once again in the Oedipal expanse between fathers and sons (be they Eli with Chofni and Pinchas, or Samuel with his unnamed children), returning us to the central tension animating the Book of Judges.
Now Geva, locus of civil war, is the launchpad for a war against external foes--yet the Israelites join this war far less willingly than they joined the war against their kin. Some join because they have no choice in the face of Philistine anger, others hide in caves, tunnels, cisterns, while others flee across the Jordan.
The people’s fear is reflected in their king’s irresolution. Here he is, back in Gilgal--site of the joyful celebration of the kingship, recreating the meeting that Samuel anounced back when he gave Saul a series of signs that God is with you (10:7): After that, you are to go down to Gilgal ahead of me, and I will come down to you to present burnt offerings and offer sacrifices of well-being. Wait seven days until I come. Yet now the man who stood head and shoulders above Israel is unable to stand and wait. After holding on for seven days, he cracks, and brings the sacrifices just before Samuel appears.
In a recreation of their first meeting, he meets the prophet just as he arrives, with the same evocative use of ve-hineh, “and behold.” What is beheld this time is dissolution rather than establishment. GOD would have established your dynasty over Israel forever, but now it will not stand. If Saul’s heart was once transformed, as he drew the true-hearted in his wake, now he is no longer chosen by God’s heart, his heart insuffincently willing.
The doubled pair of Saul and Samuel splits--and with it the triangulation between Saul-Samuel-God and Saul-Samuel-the people. The monarchy is falling before it fully stood, disintegrating from its very core.