King Saul. John C. Holbert

platform, just to the left of the prophet, who proceeded to raise the lamb high over his head and to slit its throat so that the blood flowed down Samuel’s thick beard and onto the flaming altar. With a small squeal the lamb died, and with a mighty shout Samuel dropped the carcass onto the roaring fire. As the smell of the lamb rose up, and as the grease popped and crackled in the fire, Samuel shouted again to YHWH.

      “YHWH, we give our best to you, so now do your best for us. We give you this lamb so now return to us the power of a lion so that our enemies may see and all your people may see and all the world may see that you are God alone and that we are your people!”

      Suddenly, there was a scream from the crowd! Several Philistine soldiers had appeared on the top of the cliff behind the enormous shadow of Samuel. Then several more appeared at the sides of the grotto, and the crowd began to panic, rushing here and there in a vain attempt to get out of the space that now was about to become their slaughterhouse. Then there was another sound, much larger than the screams of the people, even larger than the voice of Samuel. It sounded to some like thunder, but of course there were no clouds in the night sky. But at the sound, all the Philistines who had appeared on the top of the cliff suddenly fell off to their bloody deaths on the rocks below. And those other warriors who had appeared to have the Israelites surrounded found themselves attacking one another instead and falling on top of one another in ghastly piles of death. The confusion of the Philistines was complete, as they rushed at one another instead of at Israel. At another command of Samuel, unseen by most of the crowd, several hundred Israelite warriors, who were well-armed and obviously well-prepared for battle, ran after the confused remnant of the Philistine force and pursued them for several days, all the way back to their coastal cities. All who were there that day were astonished and so confused by what they thought they saw that many different tales were told in Israel ever after.

      But all agreed on one thing; Samuel was without doubt God’s special prophet. It was his prayer, his sacrifice, his call to YHWH that had saved the people from a massive slaughter at the hands of the Philistines. To be sure, he had prepared some soldiers before the gathering to engage the enemy, but more happened that day than a battle between Israelite soldiers and Philistine soldiers. No, God was there, too, somehow, and Samuel it was who had called YHWH forth.

      7

      Suddenly, he was back on the dusty street of Ramah in the shade of a building. He shook his aged head to clear it of that astonishing night at Mizpah before he moved again into the square of the city to face the incredulous boy and his servant, both of whom were still waiting for Samuel to say something to them. As he had aged, the prophet noticed how much harder it had become for him to stop his restless mind from sliding back and forth in time, from the present to the past. He spent much more time in the past now than he had ever done before. But in the past Samuel knew that he would find things very important for his present and future; in the events of his life, he could discern the ways YHWH wanted him to turn. Perhaps he could not fully understand just what YHWH had in mind for him and this boy, but he trusted that if he recaptured the right events in his past, if he reflected upon their meanings in the correct ways, he would know what YHWH wanted from him. He needed more time to think.

      “Boy, I cannot speak to you now,” he said commandingly to Saul. “ Meet me here by the well before the sun brushes the mountain.”

      And with that, Samuel headed back to the cool of his room, leaving Saul and his companion with mouths open and questions on their faces. He needed time to think and to grasp the moment. He needed again to search what had brought him to this place.

      He settled on his rugs, lifted the cool beer his servant had brought, and allowed his memory free rein.

      No matter how far his tireless work had taken him, he always had made his way home to his beloved Ramah. He had established an administrative center there for the dispensing of justice in the land. And just before his fortieth summer, he surprisingly took a wife. All thought he was in effect married to Israel, but a rather young maiden, Ziah by name, caught the aging bachelor’s eye, and they married in Ramah and set up a household there. Soon two boys were born to the couple, Samuel called the first Joel—“YHWH is God”—a most fitting name for a child of the prophet, everyone immediately said. And very soon Ziah was pregnant again, and her second son was named Abijah—“YHWH is my father”—and the people were overjoyed to see that Samuel had now two heirs to carry on the work he was doing in Israel.

      As the boys grew, Samuel taught them the ways of YHWH, as he had been led to understand them. Each night there were prayers, the prayers that Hannah, his mother, had taught to him when he was small and had repeated to him each time she had come to Shiloh to bring to him a new tunic. There were prayers of thanksgiving for food and drink and safety and warmth. There were prayers of request when YHWH was needed to protect and guard the people when the enemy drew near, when the harvest failed, when the wasting sicknesses fell on the land, attacking cattle and human alike.

      And there were the sacrifices of many kinds, all of which had to be mastered if real leadership was to be practiced and accepted by the people. Samuel had no doubt at all that his two boys would follow him as leaders in Israel. Who else could possibly have the experience, the training, the authority from God that Samuel had? He was unique, alone in power and reputation. Of course his sons would succeed their father; they had only to be reared up in the right way, the way of YHWH, the way that only Samuel knew fully.

      Sacrificial practice was intricate and subtle. On the surface, it looked quite simple; kill the unblemished beasts in the accepted way and hoist them on the altar to be offered completely to the God who awaited the pleasant odor. Though the pagan Babylonians had foolishly imagined that their gods (who were of course no gods!) actually lived on the sacrifices of their created people, Israel believed no such idiocy. No, YHWH was pleased with the people’s animal gifts and especially enjoyed the rich odors of sheep and goat as they arose into the skies from the faithful altars. Had not YHWH said precisely that when Noah had first sacrificed a clean and pure beast right after the land had dried up from the flood? The very ancient Babylonian story of the flood, a story they told out of their complete ignorance and which the Israelite historians had narrated correctly, claimed that the gods who brought the flood, because they were terrified of their own human creations, had forgotten that without human sacrificial gifts the gods themselves would die of hunger! Samuel loved to tell this ridiculous story to his boys so that they could readily see how nonsensical the pagans were and, in contrast, how glorious were the stories and traditions of Israel.

      But YHWH demanded sacrifices rightly done, so Samuel had spent long hours teaching Joel and Abijah the intricacies of the rites: which knives to use in the ritual slaughter and just where the knives were to be applied to the throats of the beasts; how to tell which animals were truly pure and unblemished and just which sort of spots were and were not acceptable in the search for purity; how grain offerings were done, which grain to use and how much; whether animal or grain sacrifice which motions were done and when, right hand up, left hand down, then reverse. There was so much to learn, but Samuel was eager to teach.

      Unfortunately, Joel and Abijah were neither one eager pupils. When they were young, under the age of ten, they still stood in considerable awe when their aging father, now past fifty, performed the offerings at the temple in Ramah, employing his still thunderous voice to fill the room with the ancient prayers. Their eyes would grow wide as the squalling beast was killed, then heaved onto the rock altar, on the roaring fire, to disappear in smoke up to the ceiling and out the hole in the roof, snaking its way to YHWH, who awaited it with eagerness, as their father had always said.

      But when they grew old enough to wonder, to ask questions about the ancient and hallowed practices, their boldness made the prophet angry.

      “Why not kill the bad creatures, Papa,” asked the 13-year-old Joel “and save the best for yourself? Burnt up beasts smell and taste the same whether they are blemished or not. Who will ever know?”

      “Just how do you know that YHWH wants burnt flesh anyway,” asked Abijah; “does the God eat it? How? Does YHWH have a mouth? How big is it? Why can’t we have the roasted flesh? I’m hungry!”

      Abijah was always hungry, and Joel was always questioning. Samuel would snap out a response.