Does every rip deserve repair?
When it comes to celebrity bad guys in the Jewish hall of fame, Haman, from the Purim story, is a VIP. As told in the biblical Book of Queen Esther, and brought out each year on this complex holiday, this Persian courtier’s plot to kill the Jews is prevented by the brave Jewish queen and her uncle/consort Mordechai. Countless generations reenact this doubtful historical drama when Purim comes around on the full moon of early spring but few know that at the heart of this bawdy bloody tale of salvation is a political polemic that seeks, among other goals, to redeem the tarnished legacy of King Saul.
Haman’s ancestry leads back to Agag, king of Amalek, nomadic people that descend from Esau, brother of Jacob, son of Isaac and Rebecca.
Mordechai and Esther are from the tribe of Benjamin, direct descendants of Jonathan, son of Saul, from the line from Jacob. Haman and Mordechai represent Jacob and Esau, brothers turned others, also manifested mythically as Agag and Saul.
Agag and Saul meet on the battlefield in this chapter, as Saul follows the cruel command of YHWH, delivered by Samuel, to travel down south, wage war on the nation of Amalek in retribution for their attack on the people of Israel back in the day when they left Egypt. Unlike the other skirmishes with Ammonites and Philistines, this is not a necessary war of survival. Samuel commands Saul to follow YHWH’s strict order of genocide: Not a single soul of Amalek is to be left alive and no booty is to be taken. It all has to be eliminated.
Saul follows the orders in a fierce fury, but with a twist.
He spares some of the sheep, to be sacrificed in Gilgal, as gratitude for victory. And he keeps King Agag alive, brought back in chains to witness the ritual that celebrates his people’s annihilation.
Samuel arrives on the scene, furious at Saul for not fully obeying the divine demand. “What is the sound of sheep?” He taunts the king before accusing him of failure.
When Saul tries to apologize and explain he holds on to Samuel’s coat, the famous garment that defines his public role, the mantle that the prophet has been wearing since his mother dedicated him to public service, altering it each year as he was growing into his size and role:
וַיִּסֹּ֥ב שְׁמוּאֵ֖ל לָלֶ֑כֶת וַיַּחֲזֵ֥ק בִּכְנַף־מְעִיל֖וֹ וַיִּקָּרַֽע׃ וַיֹּ֤אמֶר אֵלָיו֙ שְׁמוּאֵ֔ל קָרַ֨ע יְהֹוָ֜ה אֶֽת־מַמְלְכ֧וּת יִשְׂרָאֵ֛ל מֵעָלֶ֖יךָ הַיּ֑וֹם וּנְתָנָ֕הּ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ הַטּ֥וֹב מִמֶּֽךָּ׃
As Samuel turned to leave, Saul seized the corner of his coat, and it tore in two.
And Samuel said to him, “YHWH has this day torn the kingship over Israel away from you and has given it to another who is worthier than you.
The torn garment is a loud, defining moment in the relationship between the two men, who will never see each other again while alive, and the final nail in Saul’s regal coffin. Like the Jewish mourning ritual of K’riaa, ripping one’s shirt when learning of loss, this ripping will not be repaired.
Before taking off in a huff, Samuel mocks Agag, the imprisoned king of Amalek, and slashes off his head with a sword, following YHWH’s command.
But the battle between Amalek and Israel is not over. Whoever wrote the Book of Esther, likely during the Second Temple period, with Persian influence, picks the plot up where it stops here.
Agag and Saul meet again as Haman and Mordechai. And this time, Saul’s descendant does not hesitate, satisfying YHWH’s will and making sure that Agag’s next in line, along with his ten sons, is now longer a threat.
Several scholars, among them Prof.Marc Zvi Brettler, suggest that Esther was written under the influence of powerful voices in post first temple exile Jerusalem who were pro-Benjamin and persistent fans of Saul. There is some evidence that while Judah was destroyed, the territory where Benjamin had lived for centuries was not, and it’s people, along with their alternative traditions and loyalties, stayed strong. Their increasingly less popular stance, in defiance of David’s regal claim and the Davidic authors who would edit the Bible, found its way into the Bible, anyway, semi disguised through the heroic saga of Esther and Mordechai.
Bretttler writes: “It is likely that the Benjaminites had alternative traditions that did not make it into the book of Samuel about their great king Saul—traditions that were much more positive than those that found their way into the canonical text...the book of Esther is the reversal of the fate of the house of Saul, whose descendent saves the Jews—a reversal fostered by the new power the people affiliated with Benjamin attained in Jerusalem after 586 BCE”
The Saul-David tension is about to begin in the next chapter. But before this complicated battle kings and traditions begins, we return to the morally challenging moment in which Samuel completes YHWH’s cruel command and kills Agag. What do we do with this fanaticism? Maybe Saul’s compassion actually stands for another kinder ideology that was violently erased from our history?
Martin Buber, in writing about this theological challenges in his essay Samuel and Agag, leaves us with this big question, stemming from “that section of the Book of Samuel in which it is told how Samuel delivered to King Saul the message that his dynastic rule would be taken from him because he had spared the life of the conquered prince of the Amalekites...how dreadful it had been to me, even as a boy, to read this as the message of God.. even in my boyhood it had horrified me to read or to recall how the heathen king went up to the prophet with the words on his lips, “Surely the bitterness of death is past,” and was hewn to pieces by him. I have never been able to believe that this is a message of God. I do not believe it.. I believe that Samuel had misunderstood God...
..What is involved here is, ultimately, not the fact that this or that form of Biblical historical narrative has misunderstood God; what is involved is the fact that in the work of throats and pens out of which the text of the “Old Testament” has arisen, misunderstanding has again and again attached itself to understanding, the manufactured been mixed with the received.”
Buber’s pro-peace stance is echoed here as he prefers Saul’s compassion to Samuel’s religious rage. Was this alternative version why Saul’s legacy was negated, ridiculed and replaced? Is the hanging of Haman a vindication of Saul by later biblical writers - or a cruel joke at his expense?
The mutilated mantle hints at conflicts and layers, repressed rage and muted mythic memories, hidden traumas and poetic retellings of ruptures that echo the deepest dilemmas found in our historical records and fast beating hearts.
What’s next? A boy from Bethlehem, his father’s eighth. A star is born.
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Amichai: You continue to find the crucial verse about which your essay pivots with wonderful twists of thought and brilliant references to commentary. The torn coat reminds me of the torn coat of Joseph whose cloak is perhaps the first instance of what might be called a "garment of signnificance" i the Bible. Is it?
Also, what do all the hashtags at the end of every essay mean?