I Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (
God’s Reign outlasts human kings, the death
of mortals, and plunders the house of the Strong
This part of the Lectionary
year.
When we reach the Second Sunday after
Pentecost, we begin the long stretch of “ordinary time” between the end of the
Easter season and the coming of Advent in November – about half the year.
The Revised Common Lectionary follows a
custom of making this a period of “continuous
reading,” reading major parts of scripture in sequence Sunday by
Sunday. Thus the Gospel readings of this
period follow the sequence in the Gospel for each year, Matthew in year A, Mark
in year B, and Luke in year C.
Similarly, the Epistle readings in Year B are little digests of II
Corinthians, Ephesians, and Hebrews.
The readings from the Hebrew scriptures during
this season are designed to sample the whole scriptures in three years, Genesis
to Joshua in year A; the historical books, Samuel to Solomon, in year B; and
the prophets from Elijah to Malachi in year C.
Thus we now begin hearing the historical
books of Samuel, Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, and the Gospel
according to Mark.
I Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15),
16-20, (
All of the books of Samuel and Kings are
about kingship in
·
how kingship itself emerged in
·
how the particular kingship of David and his dynasty was selected,
·
how the one kingdom split into two, and (at great length)
·
how those smaller kingdoms struggled until each was destroyed by great
empires of the east – understood as God’s judgment on the unfaithful Israelite rulers
and their realms.
In the macro-vision spanning all scripture,
the kingdoms of
If
Our reading. The selections from I Samuel present the first stage of that Theocratic viewpoint.
The Israelites demand a
king, “so that we also may be like other nations” (verse 20). The Israelites are, of course, rejecting the
leadership of Samuel in this request, and when Samuel consults Yahweh, Yahweh
says, in effect, “Don’t take it to heart.
They have been rejecting me like this for generations, ever since I
brought them out of
(On the various Biblical presentations of
Samuel, see below, Special Note: Samuel and the Theocracy.)
However, this is the moment in history when
Yahweh is going to let the Israelites go their own way: Let them have their kingship, only be sure
you tell them how oppressive it is going to be, so later they will know they
brought this misery on themselves (the gist of verses 9 and 18).
In these verses we are hearing only one side
of the argument, of course. Throughout
Israelite history, till at least the time of Ezra, there seems to have been two
views on kingship: For it, and
against it. The “against” voice is heard
in I Samuel 8 and some verses of 10 and 12; in later readings we will also hear
the voice “for” kingship!
Psalm 138.
The psalm reading is unrestrained praise of
Yahweh, whose reputation extends throughout the world (known to “the gods,” as
well as to “all the kings of the earth,” verses 1 and 4).
Even though the psalm heading says “of
David,” given our reading above we may fancy that this psalm is Samuel’s
speech, raising high his swan song with Yahweh:
We (You, Yahweh, and I) have done well; when
I called you answered (verse 3).
We know these rebellious Israelites are in
for a bad run, and we know the theocracy was a good thing for them. For what has been, I greatly thank you, and
celebrate your world-wide reputation – even if the unwise Israelites do not
recognize what a good thing they have had!
II Corinthians
4:13-5:1.
The Epistle reading is about personal resurrection -- the greatest
change in God’s rule over the faithful from the glory times of
The reading starts out in the middle of some
arguments, but soon moves to a very powerful focus: we hear a couple of the strongest
affirmations in the New Testament of the future resurrected life of the
believer!
"We know that the one who raised the Lord
Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his
presence.... For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we
have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." (Verses 14 and 5:1, NRSV.)
It is not often acknowledged in Christian
writings, but this emphatic and very confident faith in the resurrection was
the result of Paul’s rearing and faith as a Pharisee!
The Pharisees were the first religious party
to insist as a basic doctrine of faith that the faithful would be resurrected
to a future life. Paul, and eventually
all other Jesus followers, accepted that doctrine as a basic presupposition of
the religious life. (See the words of Jesus in Luke 12:4-5, = Matthew 10:28.)
It was, however, a new thing in the
religious universe of the Judaism of the Roman period. (The Sadducees, for example, did not believe
in the resurrection.) The belief in the resurrection was the gift
of the Pharisees to all later Judaism and Christianity!
All Christian Biblical scholars, who think
the doctrine of the personal resurrection of the believer is an important
matter, should read a chapter in Ellis Rivkin’s book, The Shaping of Jewish History (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971; reissued,
with expansions, under the title, The Unity Principle, by Behrman House, 2003). The
chapter to read is, “The Pharisaic Revolution:
A Decisive Mutation” (pp. 42-83 in Scribner’s ed., pp. 49-99 in Behrman
ed.).
Here is one critical quotation from that
chapter:
For this was the essence of the Pharisaic
revolution: God offered the individual,
through the system of the twofold Law, eternal life in the world to come, and
eventually bodily resurrection; this was the reward for loyalty to the twofold
Law. By this shift in sanctions the
Pharisees transformed Judaism [from a priestly religion of temple and rituals] into
a religion of personal, individual salvation.
(Page 53, Scribner’s ed.)
Long before he met Jesus, Paul learned of
the resurrection from his Pharisee teachers.
Mark 3:20-35.
The Gospel reading presents two moments when
the Reign of God appears among people.
The people (even Jesus’ family) think Jesus, the bearer of God’s power,
is either crazy or demon-possessed!
This is a long passage with two main
parts: the framing narrative about
Jesus’ family (verses 21, 31-35), and the confrontation with the
Jesus’
family. The passage says Jesus went “home” (verse
19b, NRSV). This is probably Peter’s
house in
Being relatives of a Messiah could be a very
trying experience!
Beelzebul
(Satan). But the main message of the passage is about
the new power Jesus brings. Confronted
with amazing healings and exorcisms of demonic powers, the authorities of
Judaism up in
“Beelzebul” was already an old title. An Elijah story going back seven hundred
years before Jesus refers to “Ba‘al-zebub,” Lord of the Flies (II Kings
1:2). That version of the name was a
deliberate Israelite distortion of the title “Ba‘al-zebul,” Lord of the
Boundary (Realm), an honorable name of a god of healing in the Philistine city
of
It may be noted that Mark says Jesus replied
to these accusers “in parables” (verse 23).
Jesus says, in effect, If you are going to use the language of mythology
to talk about my power and the demonic world, I will also use figurative
language to answer you.
Jesus’ reply is probably more famous because
Abraham Lincoln quoted it than because it is scripture: “If a house is divided against itself, that
house will not be able to stand. And if
Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end
has come” (verses 25-26, NRSV).
The point is that Satan’s “house” has been
assaulted. “No one can enter a strong
man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man;
then indeed the house can be plundered” (verse 27). An escape of prisoners from the house of the
Evil One has begun, and a procession of escapees is following Jesus in great
joy and thankfulness (see verse 20) – even if his family does think he is
crazy!
People may say they are waiting for God’s
reign instead of for human rulers, but do they really know what to expect?
Special Note: Samuel and the Theocracy
Those who wish to read the scriptures as consistent
and harmonious in their several parts have a special challenge with
Samuel. He simply acts differently and
reflects quite different viewpoints in different parts of I Samuel. He does not hang together as a consistent
historical agent, much less as a comprehensible personality.
There are in fact about five Samuels,
each with his own strand of traditional material in the book of First
Samuel.
First there is Samuel the “seer” or “man of god” who is locally famous for
giving divine guidance on human problems, such as finding lost donkeys (I
Samuel 9:5-10:7). The reciter of this
strand of tradition carefully explains, “for the one who is now called a
prophet was formerly called a seer” (I Samuel 9:9). This Samuel can be directed by God to anoint
future kings, though always secretly (I Samuel 10:1 and 16:1-13), and he may be
associated with guilds of “prophets” noted for their ecstatic outbursts
(besides I Samuel 10:5-6, see especially
The Second Samuel is the priest,
trained at the prominent sanctuary of
Third is Samuel the prophet. In one
sense the Seer is a prophet (as the first reciter told us), but in I Samuel 3
we get Samuel as a prophet distinguished from others and given a special
message from Yahweh. (Like most
prophetic “calls” in Israelite tradition, this “call narrative” is in fact a
divine sanction of a particular message, not simply of special powers for the
prophet.) The message Samuel was impelled
to deliver from the night-speaking God was that the “house” of Eli the priest
was doomed (I Samuel
While the Prophetic Samuel starts at Shiloh
in continuity with the old priesthood, the mature prophet Samuel is associated
with Ramah and a circuit of towns related to it, all of which are in the
territory of Benjamin (I Samuel 7:15-17).
This prophetic Samuel is on his way to being the king-maker of the rest
of I Samuel, though the Deuteronomistic traditionists (collectors of the
traditions in Joshua to II Kings) undoubtedly built upon an older prophetic
image of Samuel.
The Fourth Samuel is the construction
of the Deuteronomistic traditionists.
This is the figure of the king-maker who was guided by Yahweh in detail
in conceding that Israel could have kings and in sanctioning the new kings by
anointing them, as well as in dooming the disobedient Saul and his dynasty (I
Samuel 8, 10:17-25; 12, and 15).
This is Samuel the agent of the
Theocracy.
Probably related to this king-maker Samuel,
and definitely a Deuteronomistic construction, is the Fifth Samuel, the
“judge” as presented in I Samuel 7. That
chapter presents Samuel as a perfect (and final) “judge” in line with the
Deuteronomistic theory of judges (Judges
This Samuel delivers the Israelites from the
Philistines (by doing the liturgy, not by leading in battle) and they have
perfect peace for twenty years. (There
may have been older views of Samuel as an actual judge for the local people,
with a judicial circuit and sons expected to succeed him, I Samuel
7:16-8:3. This, however, was no more
than a hook for the fully blown “judge” of the finished chapter 7.)
This is the final exaltation of the
Theocracy – of rule by God instead of by humans. On this view, all that
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