1 Samuel 15 – Samuel
tells Saul that God is sending him to destroy the Amalekites for opposing the
Israelites when they came up out of the desert on the way from Egypt years
earlier. Now all the Amalekites are to
be destroyed or put under “the ban.”
Saul
goes out with a huge force (200,000 soldiers, 10,000 from Judah). The Kenites
(living amongst the Amalekites) are warned to remove themselves (the Kenites
had helped Israel).
Saul
defeats the Amalekites and takes the king (Agag) captive. They also spare “the best of the sheep and of
the cattle and of the fatlings, and the lambs and all that was valuable, and
would not utterly destroy them; all that was despised and worthless they
utterly destroyed” (18:9).
This
makes Samuel very unhappy with Saul.
When Saul meets Samuel, he explains that he spared the best in order to
offer them up to the Lord in sacrifice. Samuel sees the matter as Saul not obeying
the voice of the Lord (15:19). Then there is this very important speech by
Samuel:
“Has the Lord
as great delight in burnt offering and sacrifices, as in obedience to the voice
of the Lord? Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat
of rams. For rebellion is no less a sin
than divination, and stubbornness is like iniquity and idolatry. Because you
have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king
(15:22).
I always thought that the call for obedience over sacrifice was
from the later prophets, Isaiah and others. But
here it is in Samuel’s mouth, and the act of obedience desired is not care for
the orphan and widow, but the destruction of the Amalekites. Surely
this is where Isaiah got the concept from.
Saul
admits his fault and admits that the
reason he preserved the “best” was not for the Lord but out of fear of his
people. Instead of obeying the Lord, he obeyed “their voice” (15:24). He
asks for forgiveness, but Samuel will not. Saul catches hold of Samuel’s robe
and tears it (pleading? threatening? I think pleading, but it does not really
say). Samuel says, “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this very
day, and has given it to a neighbor of yours, who is better than you. Moreover the Glory of Israel will not recant
or change his mind; for he is not a mortal, that he should change his mind” (15:29).
Then Samuel orders Agag be brought to him and he “hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal” (15:33).
Tough
passages these. The Jerusalem
Bible note says the criticism directed at Saul here is different from the
anti-monarchy tirades. It is
directed toward him as an individual for his individual disobedience. The anointing is removed from him and given
to David, but the office of king is not at issue. After this,
Samuel goes home and does not see Saul again until his death, “but Samuel
grieved over Saul” (15:34).
I have to say I have trouble with the moral arch of this story –
both the demand that every man, woman and child among the Amalekites be
slaughtered is rough; but the turning on Saul is also difficult for me. And the
man who will replace him wasn’t flawless either.
Proverbs 15 – More
proverbs:
“A gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make
tempers flare” (15:1) “Gentle words are a tree of life; a deceitful tongue
crushes the spirit” (15:4).
“A glad heart makes a happy face; a broken heart crushes the
spirit. A wise person s hungry for knowledge, while the fool feeds on trash”
(15:13-14).
“Better to have little, with fear for the Lord, than to have
great treasure and inner turmoil. A bowl of vegetables with someone you love is
better than steak with someone you hate” (15:16-17).
“Plans go wrong for lack of advice; many advisers bring
success” (15:22)
“A kindly glance
gives joy to the heart, good news lends strength to the bones” (15:30).
Proverbs 16 – These
stand out to me:
“The Lord has made everything for his own purposes, even the
wicked for a day of disaster” (16:4).
“Unfailing love and faithfulness make atonement for sin, by
fearing the Lord, people avoid evil” (16:6).
“Better to have little, with godliness than to be rich and
dishonest” (16:8).
On the powers and importance of the king: “A king detests
wrongdoing, for his rule is built on justice . . . The anger of the king is a
deadly threat; the wise will try to appease it. When the king smiles, there is
life; his favor refreshes like a spring rain” (16:12-15). Sounds like he’s seeing himself as God in a way – I guess
God is meant to be the model for what a king should be.
“Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a
fall” (16:18).
“From a wise mind comes wise speech; the words of the wise
are persuasive. Kind words are like honey—sweet to the soul and healthy for the
body” (16:23-24).
“Better to be patient than powerful; better to have
self-control than to conquer a city” (16:31-32).
“We may throw the dice, but the Lord determines how they
fall” (16:33).
Augustine (354-439)
Confessions
22 - But now, O
my God, cry unto my soul; and let your Truth say unto me, "It is not so;
it is not so; better much was that first teaching." For behold, I would rather forget the wanderings of
Æneas, and all such things, than how to write and read. But it is true that
over the entrance of the grammar school there hangs a veil; but this is not so
much a sign of the majesty of the mystery, as of a covering for error. Let not
them exclaim against me of whom I am no longer in fear, while I confess to you,
my God, that which my soul desires, and acquiesce in reprehending my evil ways,
that I may love your good ways. Neither let those cry out against me who buy or
sell grammar-learning. For if I ask them whether it be true, as the poet says,
that Æneas once came to Carthage, the unlearned will reply that they do not
know, the learned will deny it to be true. But if I ask with what letters the
name Æneas is written, all who have learned this will answer truly, in
accordance with the conventional understanding men have arrived at as to these
signs. Again, if I should ask which, if
forgotten, would cause the greatest inconvenience in our life, reading and
writing, or these poetical fictions, who does not see what every one would
answer who had not entirely forgotten himself? I erred, then, when as a boy
I preferred those vain studies to those more profitable ones, or rather loved
the one and hated the other. "One and one are two, two and two are
four," this was then in truth a hateful song to me; while the wooden horse
full of armed men, and the burning of
Troy, and the "spectral image" of Creusa were a most pleasant
spectacle of vanity.
It seems to me here that Augustine has fallen into a common
human mind-trap: feeling that the significance of one aspect of human life must
involve the denigration of some related aspect. No doubt the words and numbers that form the foundation of
human thinking and communication are important – they are foundational. But the
castles built with those tools are also of great value. We cannot forget that
the biblical narrative is a construction very like the construction of a
brilliant author to plumb the depths of human experience and the meaningfulness
of human ideas and human lives. I think it is our capacity to create these
“narrative castles” that makes us know we are more than the other animals
around us.
There are many “castles” [ideas,
narratives] built with the words we learn: personal identity, communal
narratives, theories that shape the narratives we learn and modify or build
from scratch. The ones that drew me growing up were the political narratives –
my grandfather’s admiration for FDR, the communal [American] narrative that
gave meaning to all the social norms I grew up with. Robert Bellah, who just
passed away this week, was very influential in my later life for giving me the
“narrative” language I feel best captures the way we humans build those
“castles” of thought.
