What are the qualities that make for a monarch?
A young man, tall, handsome, a good boy from a good and wealthy family, is searching for the female donkeys of his father, gone lost in the land. Along with his unnamed young servant boy, he almost gives up when the young servant suggests they consult a local ‘Man of God’ who’ll help them locate the missing donkeys and go home.
This is the opening scene that introduces Saul, of the tribe of Benjamin, who in these earliest sketches exhibits tenderness and consideration for his father’s needs, as well as indecisive and worried attitudes towards life.
The next scene is at the local well, where the young women supply the information - in great length - there is a man of god in town, in fact, The Se’er is in today and about to preside over a sacrificial ritual.
Saul doesn’t know it yet but the Seer is of course Samuel, who just the day before heard YHWH’s voice whisper to him - tomorrow the young man who will be king will be shown to you.
What the proper, common title for what Samuel’s role is and how he goes about it is a minor fact, but significant enough for the author of this book to pause here for a moment with a historical gloss:
לְפָנִ֣ים ׀ בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל כֹּֽה־אָמַ֤ר הָאִישׁ֙ בְּלֶכְתּוֹ֙ לִדְר֣וֹשׁ אֱלֹהִ֔ים לְכ֥וּ וְנֵלְכָ֖ה עַד־הָרֹאֶ֑ה כִּ֤י לַנָּבִיא֙ הַיּ֔וֹם יִקָּרֵ֥א לְפָנִ֖ים הָרֹאֶֽה׃
"Formerly in Israel, when a person went to inquire of God, one would say, “Come, let us go to the Seer,” for the prophet of today was formerly called a Seer.”
Whoever wrote this verse is looking at history with sufficient distance to recognize patterns and shifts, including the methods, titles and roles of spiritual leaders. The Seers were those who often offered oracular help in seeing the future, dealing with divination, lost stuff, like donkeys, giving advice, with guidance channeled from beyond. The prophets would be more focused on the moral fabric of society, poets with a cause, and often respected religious leaders. Our own history of signs and portents, guidance and wisdom, keeps shifting, as this offhand remark makes clear.
Samuel seems to hold both positions and titles.
In this chapter, and some later ones, he is referred to as Ha’Roeh -- the One who Sees. But interestingly, his mode of communication with the Divine - from the very first time as a child - is through the act of listening. This chapter specifically mentions YHWH’s ‘revealing the news in Samuel’s ear’ the day before, but not giving him any details as to who the young man is or what he looks like. The ‘seeing’ is Samuel’s task. And as soon as he sees Saul - he knows he is the one.
‘Excuse me’, Saul asks the old man he sees at the site of the sacrifice, ‘We are looking for the Se’er’.
Samuel looks at him and knows at once. A voice whispers in his ear: Bingo.
‘I am the Se’er’ he says to the tall man who by tomorrow will be changed forever.
But what if he’s wrong? What if ‘seeing is not believing’ but an optical illusion that will turn out to be a big mistake? What if ‘listening’ is a deeper sense of knowing who or what is right, and Samuel - the Seer, the Prophet - got this one wrong? What if even with that whisper in his ear he picked the wrong man to save Israel from their woes?
In future chapters it will seem like these questions may have kept the old man up all night. The boy he tapped for power would turn out to be a man with a mind of his own - and a challenge to the norms that Samuel, the prophet, seer and shrewd political leader that he was - tried to maintain.
Maybe Saul was exactly what Samuel hoped he would be - a handsome, tall, impressive looking man with little in the inner makings of decision making, a leader who exhibits king-like looks on the outside but can be molded - by Samuel - to walk the talk of YHWH, and of Samuel himself? Is that why YHWH chose him?
It’s important to note that Saul is of the tribe of Benjamin, that tribe responsible for the first civil war in Israel’s history, closing the book of Judges, just a few chapters ago. This detail will also prove crucial as the first king’s career will rise, and fall, echoing the alternative views found in this book, that support or negate the need for kingship.
“Saul did not covet power. Power coveted him.” Write Halbertal and Holme in
The Beginning of Politics: Power in the Biblical Book of Samuel.
“Saul had the physical statue of a leader, but the sequence of events that follows makes clear that he was anything but an ambitious young man craving power and political authority..It is no accident that the narrative of Saul’s journey away from home - a journey that leads to his anointing by Samuel as the future king - began with Saul seeking something trivial.. Stung by what he apparently felt was a personal betrayal, Samuel initially took no action to fulfill the people’s demand for a king. Indeed, a hapless Saul, singled out for the throne by God, had to be brought before the prophet.“
And so they meet, and, at first, it seems that Samuel is delighted.
Saul, clueless, still unaware of the big shift, is ushered on to the main table where Samuel makes sure he gets the best portion of the offering, and is then invited to sleep at the Seer’s home.
They talk at night, on the roof.
The relationship between these two men, the titles they hold, and the meaning of the bonds will be the bulk of what is up ahead in these carefully crafted chapters.
The first of three coronation moments happens early the following day.
What did Samuel see, hear, dream, think that fateful night? Did Saul already know his destiny will reach far beyond lost donkeys?
Image: Saul and Samuel, by @Adi Nes
Better ask Saul?
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A couple of things come to mind. One is that there is something comical in this story, and in fact Saul's life has more than a little farce in it. I mean lost donkey's...a long way from Joseph looking for his brothers encountering the angelic "ish".
The other thing relates to hearing. We speak of the "third eye" as the seeing organ of the Seer. What about the "third ear"? Wilhelm Reik, a famous follower of Freud, wrote a book about psychoanalytic attention called, "Listening with the Third Ear".