Hear, 0 Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Deut. 6:4 f.
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By whatever means, through whatever channels, and to whatever degree, Israel clearly borrowed laws from other Near Eastern cultures. That some of her laws were taken over from the Canaanites cannot be denied. But that Old Testament law was, judged by moral and religious standards, prevailingly on a higher level than that of contemporary and neighboring peoples is also beyond dispute. Bentzen defines the distinction as due to a qualitative difference in religion.1 Eichrodt puts it more sharply when he speaks of the sincerity and energy with which Israel referred all of her laws to God, in distinction to the shallow formality of the same trait in the laws of other nations.2 Indeed, the divine reference, explicit or implicit, is so direct and so profound as virtually to erase any real distinction between the sacred and the profane in the Old Testament legal apparatus. Law in the Old Testament is regarded in very fact as the articulation of divine will for the community under covenant.
This is to say, of course, that we deal in the Old Testament with theological law. But can we distinguish more specifically the particular theological presuppositions that give rise to and shape the law? To this end we must first survey, necessarily briefly, the major codes of law in the Old Testament, their superficial characteristics, the general qualities which they hold in common particularly as against other extrabiblical codes, points of difference among the three major earlier codes, the ethical qualities and content of these three, and finally the central theological motivation of all Old Testament law. We may then attempt, from this assessment of the law, to distinguish its primary theological presuppositions.
A. Characteristics of the Major Codes
The first code of laws in the Old Testament appears in the block of chapters, Exod. 20-23. The first part of 20 (1-17) contains the Ten Commandments, given also in Deut. 5:6-21; and what follows through 23 is generally termed the Covenant Code.3 Several verses in 22 and 23 having to do with ritual requirements 4 constitute a single code and are closely paralleled in Exod. 34. Both codes are referred to as the Ritual Decalogue.5 Besides these there are three other major codes: the Deuteronomic Code in Deut. 12-26; the Holiness Code, Lev. 17-26; and the Priestly Code in the rest of Leviticus and in parts of Exodus and Numbers.6
Several superficial phenomena are commonly observed. It is interesting to note that according to the multiple-source hypothesis the later documents give increasingly more space to law.7 J has only the ritual Decalogue in Exod. 34.8 The E document has only the four chapters in Exodus. D and H, presumably from the seventh and sixth centuries respectively, have a very considerable section; and of course it is law which is the dominant interest of P. Yet such a scheme, regardless of the merits of the now traditional source theories, can be and sometimes has been badly misinterpreted. It does not follow that law and the importance of law in Israel is of relatively late origin. It is increasingly clear that Deuteronomy and the Priestly writings contain at least some material much older than is indicated by the usual dating of the documents.9 Increasingly, too, it would appear that scholars are disposed to accept the substantial reliability of the persistent tradition which sees Moses as a lawgiver.10 That law was an early and significant aspect of Israelite culture is further attested not only by ancient Near Eastern parallels but even more strikingly in the life, the work and the character of the first three great names in Israel’s national history: Moses, Samuel and Elijah. In all three the types of prophet and priest are combined.
In this connection we may add here briefly a note to which we shall return. The prophetic and the legal are not, as is sometimes alleged, consistently and inimically opposed in the Old Testament. There is, to be sure, a great difference between classical Hebrew prophecy and the ultimate development of legalistic Judaism; but for centuries and beginning with Israel’s beginnings prophecy and law developed in close parallel and affinity.
A second obvious phenomenon is that all these major law codes of the Pentateuch are attributed to Moses. To be sure, the priestly point of view sees at least two laws antedating Moses: Sabbath and circumcision; and in later Judaism this tendency grew stronger under the demands of apologetics. Law had been given to all men (as witness the covenant with Noah and the neutral location of Sinai) but only the Jews had observed it.11 But for the greater span of Old Testament history, Moses was seen as the author, or better, the mediator of law; and as many have pointed out, this unquestionably contributed to the conservative tendency in the handling of the whole legal corpus. Even more significantly, this persistent Mosaic tradition in law also would appear as partially responsible for the high ethical presuppositions which, by and large, pervade the legal framework.
A third characteristic -- not unique since it is shared at least superficially by other ancient law codes -- is, of course, that all the law is seen as, in very fact, the law of God. God, not Moses, is the author of the law. These are the requirements, not of man, but of God.12
Finally, we may note the inseparable relationship of law and covenant. Since virtually all Pentateuchal law is attributed to Moses, it is all seen as stemming originally from the great confederacy bound together under divine covenant at Sinai. If the identification of D with the reform of Josiah is correct, this code represents in the Old Testament a fresh beginning in and a reaffirmation of the Mosaic covenant. And again if tradition is correct, the same is true, much later, in the postexilic community, of the law of Ezra. Examples, early and late, of this inseparable relationship of law and covenant may be cited; such as, the covenant with Abraham in circumcision or, significantly, the prophet Jeremiah and the New Covenant:
This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says Yahweh: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts. [31:33]
While there are inconsistencies in the contents of the various codes of law and while, as we shall see, one code may differ from another in emphasis and in the degree of ethical, social and moral consciousness, there are certain generalities which may be affirmed.
As compared with non-Israelite codes of law, and particularly the Code of Hammurabi, the death penalty is less frequently exacted. There is one notable exception in a series of laws now scattered through Exod. 21 (12, 15-17) , 22 (19 f.) , and 31 (15b) but thought to be an original and ancient unit, in which series the death penalty is assigned when comparable offenses in other codes are less drastically punished.13 But the death penalty in these cases serves generally to underline the moral and religious seriousness of the covenant community, and in the Israelite scale it in no wise conflicts with the pattern of law which places human life above all other values save two: the sacredness of family and the integrity of Yahweh.
Israel retained the Lex Talionis (Exod. 21:22-25) ; but while it is harshly in conflict with the measure of mercy evident in much of the later legislation, it clearly represented in an early stage an ethical advance in placing a limit upon damages. And again generally speaking, as compared with other ancient Near Eastern codes of law, brutality in punishment is strikingly absent. Torture is not a weapon of Old Testament law.14
Further, the law of Israel knows no class distinctions. Power, whether religious or civil or economic, has no privilege under the law. The slave, of course, remains a slave; but the same judicial principles apply. Indeed, if the law knows any partiality it is toward the weak, the powerless and the dispossessed.
Some have argued for Israelite superiority in laws regulating the relationship of the sexes. This, it seems, is debatable unless one accept in toto the circumscribed position of the female in the Hebrew family. But in any case, such laws again reflect the stern moral nature of the Israelite against what appears in contrast as the extreme laxity of the Babylonian or the Canaanite.
If now we compare the Covenant, Deuteronomic and Holiness Codes, accepting them in this conventional chronological order,15 it is apparent that they reflect in general an increasingly sensitive social and moral conscience and at the same time an increasing interest in cult. The central code of law, largely civil law, in Deut. 12-26 and 28 gives in a considerably expanded and sometimes significantly modified form virtually the full contents of the Book of the Covenant, and in addition a number of laws not paralleled at all in Exod. 20-23. One cannot well escape the conviction that the fundamental difference between the Covenant and Deuteronomic Codes is in very fact the more developed and consistent prophetic note in the later code. Repeatedly and pointedly the older laws of the Covenant Code are restated in Deuteronomy in terms which inescapably suggest the influence of Amos, Hosea and Isaiah. The difference between the two codes may be summarized as follows: (1) Justice is further tempered in behalf of the offender. (2) A still more merciful view is especially pronounced with respect to the weak. The law of Deuteronomy seems methodically to provide legal compensation for those who are victimized by the inequities and brutalities that inhere in the social system. (3) Unmistakably, Deuteronomy reflects in comparison with the Book of the Covenant a deeper and more spiritual religious foundation.
The code of Lev. 17-26 is termed "Holiness" because of its peculiar stress, unparalleled elsewhere in Hebrew law, upon the holiness of Yahweh. As a code, it is even more heterogeneous than the Book of Covenant or Deuteronomy; and much more than either of the other two, it of course strongly emphasizes ritual law. Most strikingly, however, it prescribes with the ritual requirements for meeting the restrictions created by Yahweh’s holiness an even higher moral, social and ethical demand than is found in either of the other codes. Yahweh’s holiness makes exacting demands in cult and ritual; it also requires a sweeping righteousness in his people. The notable chapter, Lev. 19, often referred to as the highest development of ethics in the Old Testament, begins: "You shall be holy, for I, Yahweh your God am holy"; and for the most part throughout the chapter the terms of holiness are moral and ethical.
There is one other point of interesting distinction among the three codes. After an appropriate introduction relating all laws to God, the Book of the Covenant proceeds to state its laws and regulations for the most part without further reference to the deity, and omitting any clause as to why the law shall be observed or what will result from its infraction (other than the legal penalty) or its observance. Such statements, however, occur frequently in Deuteronomy: "That it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days"; or "that you do not defile your land ; or so that you put away the evil. . . ." In Lev. 19 (and less frequently elsewhere in the Holiness Code) the law is concluded with two or three Hebrew words, as a rule: ’ani YHWH, "I (am) Yahweh," or ’aniYHWH ’elohekem "I (am) Yahweh your God."
On the other hand, too much ought not be made of the distinction. In very truth, the fact of divine being is the raison d’être of all Old Testament law, whether so stated or not. And it is, in fact, so stated although not in the sharply punctuated fashion of Lev. 19. The Book of the Covenant is in its present form introduced with the Ten Commandments which begin, "I am Yahweh, your God" (Exod. 20:2) And the laws of Deuteronomy are appropriately introduced with the Shema’ (Deut. 6:4) , "Hear, 0 Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone." 16
To point up the nature and disposition of the laws as suggested in what has preceded, we may now briefly summarize their emphatic ethical and social content. To begin with the elemental ethical level, the words of Amos denouncing those who would "make the ephah small and the shekel great, and dealing falsely with balances of deceit" (8:5) are set in formal legal language in both D and H.17 All three codes under discussion have general laws against the perversion of justice.18 The principle of sympathy and consideration for the weak is expressed with astonishing variety. There are numerous duplicate and some triplicate laws which buttress the rights of all dependent classes -- servants, slaves,19 captives, the defenseless, the maimed and the handicapped, and of course the poor. Widows, orphans and sojourners, all deprived of the crucial support of intimate male kin, are regarded in the law with full appreciation of this handicap. This is best illustrated in one of the most remarkable single features of the law -- its prescribed treatment of the alien. The term in Hebrew, ger, certainly does not apply exclusively to the resident alien, the foreigner in permanent residence, although to be sure this is the sense of Exod. 23:9 (quoted below) Possibly, as Herbert G. May has recently reminded us, the term applies in postexilic times primarily to the resident alien or the proselyte.20 But that even then this was by no means exclusively the sense is attested by the parallelism of Job. 3 1:32: "The ger has not lodged in the street; I have opened my doors to the wayfarer." The ger may be a foreigner in permanent or semipermanent residence; but he is also any stranger who happens into the community on a peaceful, friendly and legitimate errand.21
This feature of the law is illustrated in Exod. 22:21 and 23:9. Deuteronomy puts it with great vigor as one of the twelve curses in 27: 19. In more gentle tones, with a reach of inspired compassion rarely matched in the Old Testament, it occurs again in the Holiness Code, Lev. 19:33 f., and in Deut. 10:18b f. And the Priestly Code, having apparently in mind primarily the resident alien and potential proselyte, nevertheless specifically defends the equality of the ger before the Lord in Num. 15:14 ff., 29 and 9:14. Perhaps it should be added here that contradictions apparently failed to disturb the Old Testament editorial mind. Like the narrative and prophetic literature, the law has its stated or sharply implied contradictions. For example, and in this connection, Deut. 23:3 declares that neither an Ammonite nor a Moabite shall be permitted to come ceremonially before the Lord. And a foreigner (from a root nakar meaning "strange’ or unknown") is sharply distinguished in the law from the ger whose association with the people of the law whether for a longer or shorter time is seen as cordial and constructive. Even where the law distinguished between the home-born and the ger, as it sometimes inconsistently does, this friendly alien fares better than the foreigner, the ben nekar. Recall, for example, the statement of Deut. 14:21:
You shall not eat anything that dies of itself; you may give it to the ger. . . or you may sell it to a foreigner.
For all of this, if one accept the limitations of Israelite law, it is characterized on the whole by a rather phenomenal gentleness spirit. The well-known and repeated law on gleaning is a case in point, where, incidentally, the ger is especially cited.22 Indeed, the tenderness of the law reaches even to the lower creatures. Here one recalls the law prohibiting the muzzling of the ox as it treads the grain (Deut. 25:4) ; the fact that compassion for the work animal is one of the reasons listed for Sabbath observance (Exod. 23:12) ; the regulation respecting the mother bird and her young (Deut. 22:6 f.) ; and of course that familiar ancient cult law prohibiting the seething of a kid in its mother’s milk (Exod. 23: 19)23 The principle of compassion is expounded in the law with remarkable variety and flexibility. We have not yet begun to exhaust the sources in which it is directly or indirectly implied, as witness, for example, the law against keeping overnight the garment taken as security (Deut. 24:12 f.) ; or that against accepting a millstone as a pledge ("for he would be taking a life in pledge" [Deut. 24:6]) ; or even the law prescribing the roof parapet (Deut. 22:8) This last, and many other laws, can easily be grist for the cynic’s mill. There is enough of the purely or even shrewdly practical in the law to invite a rebuttal. The ger and the ben nekar obviously did provide, in practice, an ambiguity highly convenient for the cruel and the merciless. And, one may repeat, Old Testament laws in their totality are not consistently upon a single high moral, ethical and social plane. But on the other hand, one can evaluate and assess the various codes only upon what is clearly the predominant motivation, the usual attitude, the prevailing spirit.
Nowhere does the law of Israel reach such heights as in those laws which attempt to prescribe what one shall be inwardly. The implications for the inward man were hardly lost on the legal mind even in some laws ostensibly regulating only overt conduct; as, for example, the law of Exod. 23:4 f. respecting one’s obligation when confronted with one’s enemy’s straying ox or overburdened ass. Inward motivation is more pronounced in one of the laws cited above:
A ger shall you not oppress; for as for you [plural, emphatic], you know the heart [nephesh] of a ger because you were gerim [plural] in the land of Egypt. [Exod. 23:9, literally translated]
To love as one loves oneself is of course implicit in this commandment with respect to the ger. It is explicitly formulated, again with the ger as the object, in Lev. 19:34, also cited above: "You shall love him as yourself." And earlier in the same chapter in Leviticus, v. 18, the word "neighbor" is substituted for ger in a context which in penetrating moral sensitivity is quite unsurpassed in the Old Testament:
You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbor, lest you bear sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am Yahweh. [Lev. 19:17 f.]
So much, in brief survey, of the ethical quality of three of the major codes -- the Covenant Code, the Deuteronomic Code, and the Holiness Code. It is certainly in some measure true that the fire of the free prophetic word is lost in the very attempt to legislate the intrinsically unlegislatable. This is precisely what Jeremiah recognized when lie promulgated a new covenant in law written upon the individual heart. There is some evidence that the editors and codifiers of the law themselves were also aware of this. Nevertheless, law though it be, it is in its present form law constructed upon the foundation of prophetic religion.
Now, as the prophets were not primarily motivated, so the law is not primarily motivated by the urge to build the good society, or to construct the social vehicle for the proper and appropriate presentation and defense of the dignity of man; not primarily to defend the weak. These are, to be sure, worthy ideals both of the law and of the prophets; but they are in the nature of by-products. This is for the most part law conceived out of the experienced reality of a merciful God, who himself took a victimized nation from among the society of nations and treated it with unparalleled and undeserved gentleness and mercy. It is law that is created and has its being in these words: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. This is the essence of the law, an essence eloquently articulated in Deut. 10:12 ff.:
And now, Israel, what does Yahweh your God require of you, but to fear Yahweh your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve Yahweh your God with all your heart. . . . to Yahweh your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. . . . For Yahweh your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, the terrible God, who is not partial and takes no bribes. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the ger. . . . You shall serve him and cleave to him, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise; he is your God. . . .
B. Law and the Faith Of Israel
Having surveyed thus briefly the nature of Old Testament law, and particularly those portions of the law having to do with ethics and morality, we may now ask: What appear to be the central theological presuppositions of the law in its dominant emphases and in the form in which it finally entered the canon? In underlining the fact that Yahweh is both the source and the motivation of the law, the survey above implicitly affirms the general theological unity of law and prophecy; and in distinguishing now three primary presuppositions underlying the law, we submit that, obvious exceptions notwithstanding, the Old Testament literature attains therein a general and significant unity.
Israelite law, in its present total impression, has its deepest roots in the creation faith. We recognize, of course, the relatively late emergence in the Old Testament of a positively and precisely articulated belief in Yahweh’s universal creation, and that it is not, indeed, until the time of Second Isaiah that such a belief is taken for granted.24 On the other hand, the J story of creation in Gen. 2 reflects an early if imprecise creation faith25 while the eighth-century prophets clearly stand upon a thoroughly practical though untheoretical belief in Yahweh’s creative function. In any case, we are concerned here with the presuppositions of Old Testament law in its developed, codified form; and by creation faith we mean not merely the explanation of ultimate origins. We mean rather to suggest by the term three inseparable functions of deity as deity is biblically understood creation, conservation and transformation;26 or, in other terms, creation, maintenance and redemption. In the Old Testament, God is known as Creator only because he is first known as Sustainer-Redeemer.27 The creation faith of the Old Testament nowhere gives the impression that its Primary interest is in origins as origins; rather is it a faith that speaks from, and back to, historical human existence and in its articulation is concerned to say what man is and what in that faith his existence means. The thrust, so to speak, of the creation faith is never toward the past, but directly to the present and, with profound significance, the future.
It is in this sense that we understand the creation faith as it is expressed in Ps. 24, for example:
The earth is Yahweh’s and the fullness thereof
the world and those who dwell therein.
The profane and the sacred, the civil and the religious, are by and large distinctions which we read into the Old Testament. Land, people and property -- territory, life and possessions -- these are Yahweh’s through the indisputable, incontestable right of ownership through creation and conservation.
A second fundamental theological presupposition is in reality parent of the first. The creation faith is not chronologically primary but is itself derived from the conviction that God acts in history;28 and this faith in Yahweh’s presence and activity in the movement of time and history lends to Israelite law a unique compulsion. The codes insist upon mercy, certainly not for mercy’s sake, nor alone because God is by nature merciful; but much more because he has been merciful to us. Mercy it must be because we know his mercy. Love the ger, not because you ought to love the ger, or because it makes for peace all around, nor yet alone even because you were once a ger; but much more because you were once a ger befriended and redeemed by Yahweh. As you know God to be out of your own experience in history, so shall you be. And preexilic law, at least, never lost the sense of Yahweh’s contemporaneousness, his immediacy in history. This is remarkably illustrated, for example, in the law on defecation (Deut. 23:12 ff.) , where the reason for cleanliness is simply stated: "Yahweh your God walks in the camp."
In its matured theology, the Old Testament betrays little consciousness of the order in which it attained its affirmations of faith in history and in creation. Being and event, substance and time, creation and history are equally his. In this faith-full interpretation of existence, Yahweh’s claim to ownership through creation and conservation of land, life and substance is never an old claim, but a claim incessantly renewed in historical and timely event. So, consistently, Mosaic law is represented as having a divine validity enhanced by the immediately preceding and freshly experienced encounter with Yahweh in the events of the Exodus. Hence, too, the historical summary in the beginning of Deuteronomy.
Faith in creation and history are joined, in the third basic theological presupposition, by the covenant faith. For the law itself at its own legal level, this is the dominant and most characteristic trait, although obviously it rests upon the interpretation of history in terms of divine activity. If the creation faith has a single primary reference, God; and faith in history a double reference and relationship, God-man; the third, the faith in covenant, is the three-pointed relationship, God-man-man.
Law and covenant are inseparable. The keeping of the law is man’s covenant obligation; and while the records pointedly represent Israel’s acceptance of covenant as voluntary, they make it equally clear that the nation’s redemption -- Yahweh’s covenant duty -- is to be gained in no other way. In the Old Testament faith in creation and history, there can be no other way.29 From the human side, then, law is the covenant, representing Yahweh’s requirements for the covenant community respecting both the relationship of man to man and man to God. The covenant, the law, is God’s will for the covenant community in its totality. All members of the community are covenant persons, and no part of their activity -- none whatsoever -- is exempt from covenant obligation. The command, "Love your neighbor as yourself," appears then as an inescapable development of the covenant scheme. Covenant law is law in Yahweh’s perspective; and in Yahweh’s sight you and your neighbor are essentially the same -- both covenant men. So the commandment also to love the ger as oneself. The sojourner too is a covenant man for the length of his sojourn.
It is then, the covenant concept which explains the so-called, one might almost say the mis-called, democratic ideals of the Old Testament. The essence of human being is an essence derived from the covenant. The essential quality of life within the covenant community, far outweighing all others, is the covenant quality. The law, then, cannot be partial to power; this is a nonessential and irrevelant distinction. Those whose status is relatively unhappy or unfortunate through no circumstance of their own creation are to receive compensation from the law and the community: they are covenant persons. And in the final word, of course no one is exempt from covenant definition, not even the king.30 The influence of the covenant concept upon the ideal structure of the community is illustrated in the Decalogue, which rests upon and is unified by the covenant principle: its negatives are an effort to guarantee with a minimum a community in which the man-man relationship and the man-God relationship conform to Yahweh’s will. Man will find the fulfillment of his life, and participation in true community, when his only object of worship is God, and when he and his fellows hold in mutual inviolable respect the totality of the neighbors’ life.31
C. The Priestly Legislation And Yahweh’s Mercy
While postexilic priestly law appears to be increasingly concerned with ritual -- a concern perhaps inescapably induced by general environmental and ideological changes -- it is essential to remember that all of the major codes of law in the Old Testament were preserved, transmitted, and of course edited, by the postexilic priests who, in the very act of incorporating so-called prophetic law in the total legal corpus, place their approval upon it.
In a more austere and formalized concept, the creation faith was retained and given magnificent expression in the first chapter of Genesis. With undiminished significance, the faith in creation also underlies the later priestly legislation. With respect to the second theological presupposition of the earlier codes, faith in the Yahweh of history, there can be no doubt that much of the vigor and vividness of the concept is lost. God’s historical activity tends increasingly to be seen as a kind of past dispensation; and the presence of God in the congregation both past and contemporary is represented with an increasingly numinous aspect. It is the covenant faith that appears to be most seriously modified, although again one must bear in mind the fact that the Holiness Code, for example, was incorporated with editorial additions in an otherwise consistently legalistic priestly writing. But in cult-centered law, the relationship is no longer the God-man-man pattern of prophetic law, but must now be put in the pattern God-man-God. And yet, concern for the faithful community, for the persons in its devoted membership, is undiminished. Postexilic law just as ardently sought the well-being, the fulfillment, the salvation of the community as did the earlier law. But the dual emphasis has given way to a single primary stress: fulfillment lies in consuming devotion to cult and ritual. Yet we are justified in assuming that to the priestly mind the righteous relationship of man and neighbor was already sufficiently stressed in legal tradition and would inevitably follow (insofar as it could) the keeping of the ritual law.
If the later legislation thus modifies and narrows the covenant faith, at the same time and for the same reasons it adds to the concept a new dimension and suggests again that legalism’s silence on social issues is by no means indifference but rather a sober and deeply concerned pessimism. Malachi, probably to be dated in the first half of the fifth century B.C., is written by a man who stands between the era of legalism and the older epoch dominated by the prophet. Mal. 2:10 asks the question which introduces the new dimension; and it is interesting to note that the question is itself preceded by two rhetorical questions which at once are addressed to and define the covenant community: "Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us?" Then -- and this is the question thrown out in anguish my then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?" Postexilic priestly symbolism sharply underlines the sense of the centrality of sin, and certainly it cannot be exclusively cult sins. In the priestly writings, the holiest symbol, above all other holy, is the mercy seat. It is the footstool of God, the most sacred symbol within the veil, within the Holy-of-Holies. At the center of the center, the nucleus of the nucleus -- the seat of God’s mercy.
Lev. 16 describes the appropriate rites to be observed on the Day of Atonement. Details of the postexilic observance wanting here may be filled in from the tractate "Yoma" in the Mishnah, where the prayer of the priest, pronounced with his two hands upon the scapegoat, is given as follows:
O God, thy people, the House of Israel, have committed iniquity, transgressed, and sinned before thee. 0 God, forgive, I pray, the iniquities and transgressions and sins which thy people, the House of Israel, have committed and transgressed and sinned before thee. . . .32
At various points throughout the ceremony the people gave a response: "Blessed be the name of the glory of his kingdom for ever and ever." The goat was then taken to a place called Zok, about twelve miles from Jerusalem. The people followed in sober procession; and arriving there, the goat was pushed backward off the edge of a cliff so, too, in Lev. 16 (whatever the interpretation of Azazel) the symbolism is at least in part that of the complete penitence for sin and God’s equally complete removal of sin.
As far as the East is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.34
Guilt is gone. This is transformation. This is redemption. It is in a sense redemption achieved through the grace of God, a mediated grace, grace -- if the term may be used -- that is given through the efficacious cult, the effective and appropriate ceremony and ritual. Purification, justification, redemption this is the gift of God claimed in the priestly prescriptions
Old Testament law in its totality results from the influence both of prophecy and priesthood, and the two are hardly so disparate as is sometimes alleged. Underlying both schemes are the presuppositions that the God who is present and acts in history is also the God of creation. And for both, albeit with differing interpretation and emphasis on covenant obligation, the believing community is in process of purification and redemption, for the ultimate fulfillment of Yahweh’s covenant purpose.
Footnotes:
1 Op. cit., p. 219.
2 W. Eichrodt, Theologie des Alten Testaments (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrich, Vol. I, 1938) , p. 28. Cf. the following statement by Gunnar Ostborn, in Tora in the Old Testament (Lund: H. Ohlssons, 1945) , p. 149: "If we now ask . . . what is the particular characteristic of Israelite religion in this respect [ethics], the answer would appear to be that it is precisely the energy and consistency with which the moral issue is harped upon in the religions of the OT which constitutes its distinguishing factor, as against the analogous utterances to be found in other oriental religions,"
3 the section 23:20-33 is commonly regarded as an appendix,
4 22:29b-30 and 23:12, 14, 19.
5 The form in Exod, 22-23 is generally regarded as earlier, in part on the grounds that 22:29b still requires human sacrifice.
6 This totals six codes. Pfeiifer, op. cit., p. 210, adds a seventh, the Twelve Curses of Deut. 27:14-26; and one might of course include Ezek. 40-48 as being somewhat in the category of law.
7 Since for our purposes here the question is not of crucial moment, we shall accept in general, as we have in the preceding essays, the now conventional view of the entity and relative dating of the documents in the order J, E, D, H, P. recognizing with Bentzen, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 23, that "the present situation concerning the question of the Pentateuch . . . is rather in suspense. Especially among scholars of the younger generation there exists a definite skepticism towards the Documentary Hypothesis."
8 Its inclusion in the J document is questioned by some scholars.
9 See, e.g., Bentzen, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 62 ff.
10 Bentzen, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 218.
11 See G. F. Moore, Judaism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927) , Vol. I, pp. 274 ff.
12 Daube, op. cit., apparently doubts the accuracy of this general interpretation. "Why we should infer. . . that law sprang from religion rather than that religion sprang from law, it is hard to see" (p. 3) Daube does agree, however, that in its present form the Old Testament represents all law as of divine origin; so pp. f.
13 And in Deuteronomy adultery, 22:22-27, man-stealing, 24:7, and obstinate disobedience of parents, 21:18-21, all receive the death penalty with, of course, murder, 19:11ff. For Deuteronomy, the most heinous offense, always punishable by death, is idolatry, the worship of other gods.
14 With overtones remarkably revealing of the concept of community, this is illustrated in the law, Deut. 25:2 f., limiting stripes to forty in number and stipulating that they be applied in the presence of the judge. No more than forty, because the punished man will lose his rightful status of dignity and respect in the community.
15 See above, note 7 in this Chapter. Precise dating of the major documents in their present form is impossible. All incorporate older material and in varying degree all have suffered later intrusion and revision. Conventionally, they have been dated in the order Covenant (ninth century) , Deuteronomic (seventh) , Holiness (sixth) , and Priestly (fifth) See the Introductions
16 Or, as the English versions, "Yahweh our God is one Yahweh"
17 Deut. 25:13 ff. and Lev. 19:35 ff.
18 Exod. 23:1 ff., Deut. 16:19 ff., and Lev. 19:15.
19 See, for example, the increasingly sensitive and generous legal provisions for the Hebrew slave, Exod. 21:2, Deut. 15:12 ff. and Lev. 25:39.
20 Journal of Biblical Literature, xvi, no. 2, pp. l00 f.
21 See J. Pedersen, Israel, Vol. I-II (London: Oxford University Press, 1926) , p. 40.
22 See Deut. 24:19 ff. and Lev. 19:9 f.
23 Cf. Lev. 22:28. But many would question any element of compassion in this old taboo.
24 Isa. 40:26 and 44:24. Cf. H. Wheeler Robinson, op.cit., p. 22.
25 O. Procksch, Die Genesis (Leipzig: Deichert, 1924) , p. 19; and on the antiquity of the faith in creation, see also Eichrodt, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 47.
26 The terms are Robinson’s, op. cit., pp. 17 ff.
27 See Eichrodt, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 49 ff. Cf. also my discussion in Chap. I, above.
28 Eichrodt, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 48 ff.
29 See Deut. 30:15 ff.
30 So Deut. 17:18 ff.
31 Cf. Pedersen, op. cit., p. 354.
32 "Yoma" vi 2, tr. by H. Danby, The Mishnah (New Haven: University Press. 1933) , p. 169.
33 Ibid.
34 Ps. 103:12
Chapter 4: Prophecy. <I>In the Days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah (Isaiah 1-11, 17-22, 28-33)</I>
We have seen something of the covenant faith of Israel as it is expressed in Old Testament myth, legend and history. That faith finds its most dynamic articulation in the prophets.
In the strict sense of the word, there is no "typical" prophet. In the Hebrew canon of prophecy (the Latter Prophets) there are four "books" comprising fifteen names -- Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the twelve "minor" prophets (the last twelve writings of our Old Testament, Hosea to Malachi) These fifteen writings vary in length, were written over a span of centuries from the eighth probably to the third B.C., are addressed to radically different historical situations, and certainly in their present form represent far more than fifteen writers. The creators of this literature do not always speak with one voice even on comparable points and the statement of one may sometimes stand in contradiction to that of another.
This is a study of Isaiah of Jerusalem whose prophetic ministry was performed in the latter half of the eighth century B.C. during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah (Isa. 1:1) He, no more than any other prophet, is typical. Indeed, one suspects that the phrase "typical prophet" is a contradiction in terms. In the very nature of his being a prophet, a spokesman for Yahweh, he does not and cannot conform to a type. But Isaiah is central to Old Testament prophecy, perhaps as no other. How and why this is so will, we hope, become apparent.
The word of the prophet is characteristically addressed to the life and problems of the prophet’s own community. It may involve (as it sometimes does) a process of extrapolation from the present scene, whereby divine commitment to the future is proclaimed in divine judgment or in redemption, or in both; or it may sweep backward in time to bring past events forcefully into the present with incisive relevance. But any reference to the past or the future is directly related to, or contingent upon, the present and it is intended primarily for the contemporary community.
The terms of the prophet’s own existence and of his own immediate historical environment are of the essence. The prophet has no abstract word. What he passionately believes to be the revelation of Yahweh he sees in historical event and understands from the Word of Yahweh. There is no prophecy without history, and no understanding of the prophetic message apart from the history that calls it forth.
A. Survey of Judah’s History Through the Eighth Century B.C. (See I Kings 12 -- II Kings 20; Isa. 36-39)
The one Kingdom of Israel was severed immediately following the death of Solomon about 922 B.C.1 With the bitter cry,
To your tents, 0 Israel!
Look now to your own house, David.
[I Kings 12:16]
the northern tribes known collectively as Ephraim seceded from the union. Jeroboam became king in the North and Rehoboam, son of Solomon, ruled in Judah. Of the two resultant kingdoms, Judah was in territory and population much the smaller. Palestine’s mountainous backbone running north and south between the Mediterranean and the Jordan valley is higher and more rugged in the south; and the city of Jerusalem, well fortified by nature against ancient methods of attack, stands at an elevation of about 2,700 feet. The routes of commerce between Egypt and the west crossed Israel (as the Northern Kingdom of Ephraim is called) , not Judah. Judah was relatively isolated.
In part for these reasons, the Southern Kingdom was always culturally and religiously more homogeneous and conservative than Israel, and the continuity, with one brief interruption, of the Davidic rule provided a political stability never known in Israel.
But this is not to say that in the South every man sat peacefully under his own vine and his own fig tree contemplating in gratitude and thanksgiving the mercies of Yahweh. The riches of Judah were repeatedly plundered by Egypt, Edom and Assyria; life was threatened and harassed by Israel and Syria; the head that wore the crown in Judah often lay uneasy; and Yahwism had its apostasies and perversions.
Asa (c. 913-873) , the second son of Rehoboam to occupy the throne, instituted a sweeping reform, the description of which in I Kings 15:9 ff. is convincing testimony of the influence upon Judah of the fertility cult of the Canaanite goddess Asherah. His son and successor, Jehoshaphat (c. 873-849) , also remained a faithful Yahwist. During these two reigns, Judah gained a considerable degree of political stability, despite first her friction and later her costly alliance as junior partner with Israel.
The alliance was formed between Ahab and Jehoshaphat and was sealed with the marriage of Ahab and Jezebel’s daughter Athaliah to Jehoshaphat’s son Jehoram. Athaliah had a Yahweh name (Athali-yah ="Yahweh is strong") ; but like her mother, she was an ardent protagonist of the cult of the Phoenician Baal, Melcarth. Following Jehoram’s death, she exercised the influence of the queen mother upon her son Ahaziah until his violent death at the hands of Jehu in Israel (II Kings 9:21-28) , when, shades of mother Jezebel, she proceeded to wipe out the royal family, including, of course, her own grandsons, and make herself queen. Thanks, however, to a counterscheme involving chiefly a sister of Ahaziah and her husband, Jehoiada, priest of Yahweh, one of Ahaziah’s sons named Joash was hidden and, seven years later, successfully enthroned in a revolution that was at once political and religious. Jehoiada’s role was decisive. Athaliah was slain and
Jehoiada made a covenant between Yahweh and the king and people, that they should be Yahweh’s people; and also between the king and the people. Then all the people . went to the house of Baal, and tore it down; his altars and his images they broke in pieces, and they slew Mattan the priest of Baal before the altars. [II Kings 11:17 f.]
The revolution of Jehu in Israel had its related counterpart in Judah, but Jehoiada’s action on behalf of Yahwism in Judah was never condemned in later prophecy as Jehu’s was, and with good reason. It was engineered with purposive restraint:
All the people of the land rejoiced; and the city was quiet after Athaliah had been slain. . . . [II Kings 11:20]
Joash reigned, unfortunately without distinction, to the end of the century (c. 837-800) Like Jehu and Jehoahaz, in Israel, he suffered bitterly from the ruthless aggression of Hazael of Syria. His successor, Amaziah (c. 800-783) , "killed ten thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt" (II Kings 14:7) but, in an exchange of words heard in substance every day on elementary school playgrounds, provoked war with Israel that ended in Judah’s disastrous defeat (14:8-14) Popular disaffection with the reigns both of Joash and Amaziah culminated in assassination. The Davidic line continued, now with some real distinction, under the grandson and son, respectively, Uzziah (or Azariah C. 783-742)
The Kings account of Uzziah’s reign is one brief paragraph in length (Azariah, II Kings 15:1-7) ; but from Chronicles (II, ch. 26), from archaeological finds, and indirectly from the Southern prophets, Micah and Isaiah, we learn that Uzziah’s reign was a period in Judah of vast expansion in territory, in commerce and in power, corresponding to the brilliance of the reign of Jeroboam II (c. 786-746) in the North. The Chronicler cites the restoration to Judah of Eloth (II Chron. 26:2) far to the south on the shore of the Red Sea. Eloth was near Ezion-geber, the site of a commercial enterprise of Solomon, whose facilities for refining copper in the area have been excavated. According to the Chronicler, Uzziah also conquered the Philistine territory on the Mediterranean coast (26:6) , exacted tribute from Ammon (v. 8) , built up the fortifications of Jerusalem (v. 9) , and, among other accomplishments including activity in Arabia, developed the Negeb, the desert region to the south of Judah (v. 10) Archaeology provides some strong confirmation of the Chronicler’s record. All indications point to the eighth century as one of unparalleled activity in the Negeb; and a seal of Jotham, Uzziah’s son, has been recently excavated at Eziongeber.2
There can be no doubt that the wealth and power of the crown in Judah under Uzziah was exceeded only by Solomon’s reign at its peak. And the Chronicler, who sees only the glories of Solomon’s rule, informs us that Uzziah’s greatness was the reward of faithfulness to Yahweh (v. 5) Be that as it may, at least two Yahweh prophets, Isaiah and Micah, look out upon the life of Judah in the decades following Uzziah’s reign with bitter reproach and with condemnations that must fall, in part, upon Uzziah. We are forced to conclude that, as in Solomon’s day, Yahwists believed that the power, prestige, wealth and apparent security of the crown and the nation were bought at a price too dear -- widening economic disparity between rich and poor, the ruthless exploitation of society’s weaker members, a deepening acquisitiveness and an inevitably accompanying disregard of the justice and righteousness of Yahweh, the meaning of covenant, and the true practice of the Yahweh cult.
Before the end of his life Uzziah contracted leprosy, perhaps about 750 B.C. In all matters involving the public, his son Jotham acted in his place and, of course, succeeded to the throne when Uzziah died, about 742. II Kings 15 alludes to his accession only in passing (v. 7) and to his reign briefly (vv. 32 ff.) In terse fashion it describes the chaotic succession of kings in Israel following the death of Jeroboam II (c. 746) -- Zechariah (six months) , Shallum (one month), Menahem (ten years by the Kings count, but probably less; mentioned in an Assyrian inscription dated 738 B.C., confirming the notice of 15:19 that Menahem paid tribute to Assyria) , Pekahiah (parts of two years) , and finally Pekah, with a reign not of twenty years (so v. 27) but hardly more than two.3 This violent program of royal succession was, in fact, a part of Israel’s death throes.
In 745 B.C. the throne of Assyria fell to Tiglath-pileser III. Himself an able and aggressive ruler, he was followed in kind by Shalmaneser V (727-722) and Sargon II (722-705). Sargon was succeeded by Sennacherib, considerably less able than his predecessors, who reigned in Assyria until 681. The second half of the eighth century, however, saw Assyrian power at its peak. The "Pul" of II Kings 15:19 is Tiglathpileser, who exacted tribute in 738 not only from Menahem of Israel but from other small western states including Syria. There is no indication that Judah was among them.
About 735 B.C., Ahaz succeeded his father Jotham on the throne of Judah (II Kings 16:1) Pekah, king of Israel, and Rezin, king of Syria, both facing the immediate threat of the return of Assyrian armies, at once sought alliance with Ahaz and Judah, now the most stable, and probably the most powerful of the small western states. When Ahaz refused, they lay siege to Jerusalem in the obvious hope of deposing him and, with Judah under a ruler of their own choice, forming an allied army to meet Assyria. Ahaz found himself in a desperate situation. The notice of 16:3 that he sacrificed his own son probably refers to this time. But, folly of follies, he also sent to Tiglath-pileser requesting help. He did so against the advice of the prophet Isaiah (see Isa. 7) , rightly given: Ahaz obligated himself unnecessarily, since Tiglathpileser would certainly have dispatched his armies anyway. This independent action on the part of two vassal kings was obviously mutinous in intent.
So, in 734 B.C., Assyria was back in the west again with bitter vengeance. Damascus, the capital of Syria, and north Israel were plundered, and for the first time Assyria put in practice her policy of deportation of the potentially influential elements of conquered populations from whom leadership for revolt might subsequently be drawn. These were settled in other parts of the empire, their places taken by persons similarly uprooted elsewhere.
Judah was not invaded. But Ahaz was called to Damascus in the role of a vassal and, in partial token of subservience, arranged to have a pagan altar constructed in Jerusalem (II Kings 16:10 ff.) The prophetic protest against political alliances was religiously motivated: it meant the compromise of Yahwism and the worship of alien deities.
By 732 B.C., Assyria had efficiently organized Syria and Israel, north of Samaria, into provinces and had replaced Pekah with Hoshea, who proved to be Israel’s last king. Israel’s end came quickly in 722 or 721 B.C.
In Judah, whose history is resumed in II Kings 18, Jotham is succeeded by Hezekiah about 725. This is a round number: the date remains uncertain. But one thing is very clear: from the time of Assyria’s resurgence of power in the eighth century to the setting of her sun in the closing decades of the seventh, Hezekiab was the only king of Judah seriously to contest the domination of Assyria. He expressed his defiance in two ways. He instituted a vigorous religious reform, always in the ancient Near East a gesture of independence under such circumstances; and he undertook elaborate defense measures, including the strengthening of the outer fortifications of Jerusalem and the construction of the Siloam tunnel. II Kings 20:20 alludes to the tunnel briefly; a more detailed account is given in II Chron. 32. Jerusalem’s chief source of water was the Gihon spring outside the city wall. The spring was made inaccessible to attackers and its waters were channeled in a subterranean tunnel cut through the soft limestone rock into the city. Workers, beginning at opposite ends, met in the middle; and someone, at the point of meeting, placed this inscription in the wall of the tunnel, now excavated:
The boring through is completed. And this is the story of the boring through: while yet they plied the drill, each toward his fellow, and while yet there were three cubits to be bored through, there was heard the voice of one calling to another, for there was a crevice in the rock on the right hand. And on the day of the boring through the stone-cutters struck, each to meet his fellow, drill upon drill; and the water flowed from the source to the pool for a thousand and two hundred cubits, and a hundred cubits was the height of the rock above the heads of the stone-cutters.
The tunnel is more than 1,700 feet in length. The workmen failed to meet precisely head-on, but it was for the time a superior feat of engineering.
In view of Hezekiah’s show of defiance, it is remarkable that he escaped Assyrian chastisement and humiliation for so long a time. In 711 he was in all probability party to a rebellious coalition of states including, as we know from Assyrian records, Egypt and the Philistine city-state of Ashdod. Merodach-baladan, king of Babylon from 721-710, and again for six months in 705-704, may also have been involved. His embassy to Hezekiah described in II Kings 20:12 ff. must have been sent either in 711 or in 705: and it therefore preceded the devastating invasion of the west by Sennacherib in 701 (II Kings 18:13-19:36)
Assyrian wrath was poured mercilessly on the western states, including Egypt and Ethiopia, in 701. The co-operative effort at resistance was futile. Sennacherib, whose annals were recorded on clay cylinders now recovered by archaeologists, wrote in part of this campaign as follows:
As for Hezekiab, the Jew, who did not submit to my yoke, 46 of his strong, walled cities, as well as the small cities in their neighborhood, which were without number, -- by escalade and by bringing up siege engines, by attacking and storming on foot, by mines, tunnels and breaches, I besieged and took. 200,150 people, great and small, male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels, cattle and sheep, without number, I brought away from them and counted as spoil. Himself, like a caged bird, I shut up in Jerusalem, his royal city. Earthworks I threw up against him, -- the one coming out of his city gate I turned back to his misery. The cities of his which I had despoiled I cut off from his land and to Mitinti, king of Ashdod, Padi, king of Ekron, and Sillibel, king of Gaza, I gave them. And thus I diminished his land. I added to the former tribute, and laid upon him as their yearly payment, a tax in the form of gifts for my majesty. As for Hezekiah, the terrifying splendor of my majesty overcame him, and the Urbi and his mercenary troops which he had brought in to strengthen Jerusalem, his royal city, deserted him. In addition to 30 talents of gold and 800 talents of silver, there were gems, antimony, jewels, large sandstones, couches of ivory, maple, boxwood, all kinds of valuable treasures, as well as his daughters, his harem, his male and female musicians, which he had them bring after me to Nineveh, my royal city. To pay tribute and to accept servitude he dispatched his messengers.
The Kings account of the siege agrees substantially, although not in all details, with that of Sennacherib, who, be it noted, does not claim the actual fall of Jerusalem. Three possible reasons for the lifting of the siege appear. The first is the payment of tribute. But according to II Kings 18: 14-16, this was before the siege of Jerusalem and if in fact so, it hardly constitutes a reason for the lifting of the siege. After its payment, according to this biblical account, and before joining battle with the Egyptians at Eltekeh in southern Judah, Sennacherib expressed his continuing distrust of Hezekiah in a note of sharp warning which Hezekiah interpreted as a threat to return and destroy the city of Jerusalem. If such were the true circumstances, it is remarkable that the Assyrian siege was abandoned short of the actual capitulation of Jerusalem. It would appear that the collapse of Judah’s capital could have been accomplished then as easily as at any time in the period of Assyrian ascendancy. Morale in Jerusalem was at a near-record low. On every hand, surrounding city-states and nations were prostrate. In Judah itself, forty-six cities had been destroyed. No pride remained in Jerusalem: Hezekiah had stripped the temple, exhausted all wealth, and surrendered members of his own family in tribute.
Perhaps, as the Sennacherib inscription might imply, the besieging Assyrian forces were bought off with the tribute. The Kings account sees it differently.
A second possible reason for the abandonment of the siege is the notice of II Kings 19:7 -- the call of critical Assyrian military business elsewhere, a "rumor" of trouble in another part of the empire. A third possible reason is the sudden toll of death among the Assyrian forces by plague (the angel of the Lord, 19:35) The sequence and detail of events may now be irrecoverable and we do not doubt the influence of popular legend in the third possible explanation. But one fact is clear. Some who suffered through the siege -- king Hezekiah and prophet Isaiah among them -- believed that Assyria’s departure, by whatever visible causes induced, was a Yahweh deed on behalf of his covenant people, in accordance with his own covenant purpose. The remarkable oracle (19:20-28) attributed to Isaiah (and if not from him certainly from a contemporary) states this faith with explosive force (cf. Isa. 10:5 ff.) Yahweh to Assyria:
. . . I know your sitting down
and your going out and coming in,
and your raging against me.
Because you have raged against me
and your arrogance has come into my ears,
I will put my hook in your nose
and my bit in your mouth,
and I will turn you back on the way
by which you came.
[19:27 f.]
Hezekiah survived to recoup some of his losses before his death about 686. He is one of only two kings of Judah (with Josiah, C. 640-609) to receive the unqualified endorsement of the Deuteronomic historians (II Kings 18:1-8) The evaluation is well made. If Isaiah found occasion, as certainly he did, to protest aspects of Judah’s life during Hezekiah’s long reign, prophet and king enjoyed for the most part a relationship of mutual respect, as witness Hezekiah’s dependence upon Isaiah during the fearful days of Sennacherib’s siege, and the story, augmented by legend, of Hezekiah’s illness in II Kings 20.
Hezekiah’s son and successor, Manasseh, was a man of totally different character. Biblical tradition records of him that he "shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another" (II Kings 21: i6) Extra-biblical tradition tells of the death of the aged Isaiah at Manasseh’s instigation.
B. The Book of Isaiah
There are 66 chapters in Isaiah, as the book now stands in the Old Testament canon. As long ago as the 1780’s scholars recognized that chapters 40-66 could not be the work of Isaiah of Jerusalem because they deal with, and reflect an intimate knowledge of, events in the sixth century B.C.
In chapters 1-39, chapters 36-39 are closely paralleled by II Kings 18-20, which we have just surveyed. While the prophet is prominently figured, these historical narratives are hardly from Isaiah and may well have been added to the book of Isaiah from Kings.
Chapters 34-35 are on a number of counts suspect. The per-spective appears almost certainly to be later than Isaiah and it is possible and even probable that the two chapters were an original introduction to chapters 40 ff.
This leaves us with the first 33 chapters of the book. The precise analysis of this section is exceedingly complicated and fraught with controversy, but three general observations may be drawn. (a) The block of chapters, 1-33, does not constitute an original unit, but results from the compilation of several older collections of material, each of which was gathered at a different time and by different hands. Roughly, four such collections are represented:
1-12. In large part authentically Isaianic; and mainly from the prophet’s earlier ministry.
13-23. Oracles for the most part against foreign nations with non-Isaianic material predominating.
24-27. An apocalyptic section, considerably later than Isaiah.
28-33. Isaianic material again predominating; and mainly from Isaiah’s later years.
(b) The present order of oracle and incident within these collections is not chronological. It is sometimes impossible to date a given passage, and prophetic utterances separated in time, and even in reverse order, may sometimes be found side by side.4
(c) The teachings of Isaiah of Jerusalem were preserved, altered and augmented, and reapplied to the changing historical scene for at least the next several centuries by a continuing and self-perpetuating circle of disciples.5 It is our judgment that in the present book of Isaiah much of the material admittedly not from Isaiah of Jerusalem is in a profound sense "Isaianic" in that it faithfully represents the essential theology of the eighth-century prophet.
C. The Man Isaiah
What do we know, significantly, of the person of Isaiah?
(a) He was an urbanite. Isaiah knows best the life of the city -- Jerusalem. Everything in his life that reflects his own personal experience supports this. Any intimate knowledge of his of the kingdom of Judah is confined to the city; his interest is always concentrated there. Indeed, his very language -- the similes, metaphors and illustrations that he uses -- betrays him as a man of urban mind and outlook.
(b) It is commonly assumed that Isaiah was a man of noble birth, related by blood to the wider royal family of Judah. We are reminded that he spoke unequivocally with men in high authority, from the king (e.g., Isa. 7) to the chief steward of the royal household (22:15 ff.) Isaiah’s great freedom of movement is called in evidence, his air of assurance, his apparent escape from any serious form of persecution. Perhaps Isaiah was of Jerusalem’s nobility; but if there is nothing to deny it there is, on the other hand, nothing to confirm it. We remember other prophets, before and after Isaiah, who spoke with courage and integrity in the face of the king. Other prophets were granted or fearlessly exercised freedom of movement. The forceful declaration, "Thus saith Yahweh," is of the essence of prophecy. And in the long history of Old Testament prophecy there is no recorded instance of the successful silencing of a major prophet. Some certainly suffered more public abuse than others or firmer opposition from the royal house; but Isaiah’s counsel was on occasion categorically rejected by the king (so again Isa. 7) , and he must have suffered more than once the cutting public derision to which he refers in 28:9 f. In the case of at least one prophet an apparent effort is made in an unusually extended genealogical introduction to establish royal lineage (Zeph. 1:1) Isaiah appears simply as "the son of Amoz." If he was of royal blood, canonical tradition evidently did not regard the matter as of any great consequence.
(c) He was married to a woman whom he refers to only once as "the prophetess" (8:3) He does not apparently mean a female prophet (although the term is later so used in the Old Testament of Huldah, II Kings 22:14) , but simply the wife of a prophet (cf. Duke-Duchess) In Amos’ day only a few decades earlier the term "prophet" was in disrepute in the Northern Kingdom and Amos disclaimed the title (Amos 7:14). Isaiah’s use of the term in this way suggests perhaps that prophecy in Judah had fared better; or perhaps that the work and stature of an Amos had helped to restore the term to a place of respect.
(d) The prophet and prophetess, Isaiah and wife, had to our knowledge two sons, both named, as were Hosea’s children, symbolically. The name of the first, Shear-jashub (7:3) , means "a remnant shall turn" (that is, turn back again to Yahweh) or "a remnant shall return" (for the fulfillment of the covenant, and inferentially perhaps, from exile) It is a two-sided symbol, negative and positive. "Remnant" unmistakably implies divine judgment upon the nation and, at least as interpreted by Isaiah’s disciples, catastrophic judgment falling upon the whole nation, Jerusalem included. We think Isaiah himself also envisioned it so. But on the other side, the symbol expresses the unquenchable biblical faith in divine redemption. Judgment is meted out, not vindictively nor as a merely punitive measure:
I will turn my hand against you
and will smelt away your dross as with lye
and remove all your alloy.
Judgment is a purifying fire necessitated by gross unfaithfulness in the covenant community, but positive in ultimate purpose. Yahweh is working redemptively in history: a remnant will return.
The second son is born and named when Ahaz and Judah are threatened by the Rezin-Pekah alliance, to which crisis the name (8: 1-3) has immediate and positive reference. Mahershalalhashbaz is symbolically predictive of the overthrow of Judah’s enemies: Damascus (Syria) and Samaria (Israel) will quickly become the spoil and prey of Assyria -- "the spoil speeds, the prey hastes" is the meaning of the name. On the assumption that little Mahershalalhashbaz survived (quite an assumption, with such a name) we cannot but wonder whether Isaiah may not later have referred the name in a now negative symbolism to Judah herself. The name is not mentioned again -- understandably. Our own private tradition has it that a number of the lad’s playmates in Jerusalem became incurable stutterers.
This, then, we know about the man Isaiah -- an urbanite prophet, at home in, and on intimate terms with, the life of Jerusalem, counselor (if not relative) of kings, married, the father of at least two children; and, certainly we ought to add, a man of passing eloquence. We doubt that Old Testament history ever produced a man more gifted in the use of language. Some of Isaiah’s recorded oracles must be ranked with the most beautiful and majestic passages in the world’s literature. But this is emphatically not the most significant measure of the stature of Isaiah.
D. The Prophet Isaiah
The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning
Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and
Hezekiah, kings of Judah. . . . [Isa. 1:1]
The true measure of Isaiah’s stature is his mind and faith. With phenomenal sensitivity and what we may describe only as inspired judgment, he extracts from Israel’s total heritage her truest and most enduring insights, the unique qualities of her understanding of history, and the essence of her historical faith. We venture the claim not only that Isaiah is central to prophecy hut that no prophet stands more nearly in the center of biblical theology nor anticipates in such comprehensive fashion many of the affirmations of the New Testament community. Isaiah’s influence upon subsequent Old Testament theology and ultimately upon Christianity is incalculable.
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up. . . [6:1]
So begins the account of Isaiah’s call and commission to prophecy. So begins a description of the nearly indescribable -- one man’s sense of direct confrontation by Him whose glory fills the whole earth (v. 3). Chapter 6 has been appropriately called Isaiah’s "most revealing page." In thirteen verses the prophet lays bare the totality of his faith. Every significant affirmation, elaborated elsewhere, is at least inferentially here.
This is not to say that Isaiah presents here -- or in the sum of his oracles -- a systematic theology. He does not think systematically; indeed, the Old Testament prophet never sees himself as thinker at all, but rather as responder. He is, in the bare, plain, nonphilosophical sense of the term, an existentialist. He responds pointedly and often passionately to the specific realities of his own existence -- realities which in his understanding embrace without significant differentiation what we would call spiritual and physical phenomena. Isaiah’s call is to him just as concrete an event as his meeting with Ahaz in the next chapter and for that very reason incomparably more intense: Ahaz is only a king; Yahweh is The King, Yahweh of hosts! (6:5) The one experience is as "historical" as the other. As he meets Ahaz when Rezin and Pekah "came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it" (7:1) so he sees the Lord "in the year that King Uzziah died." Both are events, dated and located. As he confronts Ahaz "at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Fuller’s Field" (7:3) so he is confronted by Yahweh in "the temple" (6:1)
In the formal sense of the word, then, there can be no prophetic "theology." The prophet does not draw abstractions from the concrete, generalizations from the specific. His theology is practical, never theoretical. It is articulated in relation and response to particular events in his particular existence; and when the response is made, the prophet is usually so intensely and totally absorbed that he does not concern himself with the relationship between this and some other response. His theology, then, is not only not systematic: it may appear to us to be at points inconsistent.
Chapter 6 records perhaps the most significant moment, the most influential event, in Isaiah’s life. If it is the first episode (c. 742 B.C.) in a long prophetic career, we suspect that the present account of it was created much later. We think it must represent Isaiah’s recollection of his call from the vantage point of a prophetic career long in process, although there are many who would disagree with our judgment.
The only real problem in understanding and interpreting Isa. 6 is in vv. 9 ff., Yahweh’s commission to the new prophet. It is clear that Isaiah did not know to what he would be assigned when he answered with his emphatic "Here am I! Send me" (v. 8) But in what follows it is equally clear, we think, that he recalls, early or late in his ministry, a Yahweh who speaks in bitter irony:
Go, and say to this people:
"Hear and hear, but do not understand;
see and see, but do not perceive."
Make the heart of this people fat,
and their ears heavy,
and shut their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn again and be healed.
[v. 9 f.]
His is a prophetic ministry doomed from the outset to futility and, worse, to the intensification of the very attitudes which the prophetic mission would correct. If we could have asked Isaiah, when he came thus to understand his prophetic task, early or late, "Why go on with it at all?" we are sure he would have given answer in the words of Amos (3:8) , "The Lord Yahweh has spoken; who can but prophesy?"
It is also clear from the call that Isaiah believed Judah’s historical judgment to be inescapable. The prophet asks how long the perversity of Judah will continue, how long this people will remain fat of heart, heavy of ear, and blind of eye. Yahweh replies:
Until cities lie waste
without inhabitant,
and houses without men,
and the land is utterly desolate,
and Yahweh removes men far away,
and the forsaken places are many
in the midst of the land.
And though a tenth remain in it
It will be burned again. . . .
[6:11 ff.]
We seriously doubt that Isaiah regarded this threat as fulfilled by Sennacherib’s invasion in 701 B.C. We are forced to conclude, from this and other references, that Isaiah, like Amos, was a prophet of doom.
We cannot systematize the theology of Isaiah; but we can easily see his strongest emphases, his dominant prophetic themes. We may list them as follows, recognizing that they are by no means mutually exclusive, that all are to some degree implicit in any one: The Covenant, the Holiness of Yahweh, the Pride and Perversity of Judah (and others), Historical Judgment, Historical Redemption, the Messianic Hope, and the Quality of Faith.
1. The Covenant
Let me sing for my beloved
a love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill. . . .
the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah
are his pleasant planting.
[5:1, 7]
Almost every recorded utterance of the eighth-century prophets (Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah) takes its meaning and relevance from the concept of covenant. It is everywhere presupposed. And yet the specific Hebrew term for covenant, berith (as in B’nai B’rith = "children of the covenant") is not once employed in a passage of undisputed authenticity for the covenant between Yahweh and Israel ("Israel" now in the sense in which Isaiah commonly uses it, for the total covenant community)
Why, when the concept of covenant is crucial to all they say, do they apparently deliberately avoid the term? We can only guess that in the eighth century, these four prophets, at least, believed that the term as commonly employed was misused, abused, distorted in meaning. Amos gives us a brilliant example of the diametric difference between popular :and prophetic interpretation in what he has to say about the Day of Yahweh (Amos 5:18-20) From Isaiah we read:
Woe to those. . . who say: "Let him [Yahweh] make haste,
let him speed his work
that we may see it;
let the purpose of the Holy One of Israel draw near, and let it come, that we may know it!" [5:19]
This may well refer to the same Day of Yahweh; and it may at the same time answer our question. In the popular understanding of the covenant, Israel is unqualifiedly guaranteed a happy and speedy issue out of all her difficulties. The prophets apprehend a vaster and more profound covenant purpose and covenant obligation. The covenant will ultimately issue in Yahweh’s, not Israel’s, glory; and if Israel is oblivious to her own obligations under covenant, she will come under a historical judgment the more severe because of her peculiarly intimate relationship with Yahweh (so Amos 3:2) Isaiah may well have in mind, in part, the popular perversion of the covenant concept when he cries of his own generation:
They are a rebellious people, lying sons,
sons who will not hear
the instruction of Yahweh;
who say to the seers, "See not";
and to the prophets, "Prophesy
not to us what is right;
speak to us smooth things,
prophesy illusions
[30:9 f.]
Give us a smooth covenant. Leave us with our illusion that all is well; that Yahweh is ours, and not we his!
Isaiah eschews the term; but he renders the prophetic understanding of the covenant unforgettable in all that he says, and most eloquently, in the Song of the Vineyard (5:1-7) The covenant between Yahweh and Israel is likened to the relationship between a man and his vineyard. When he is lavish in his care of it, it yields not the good grapes he has every right to expect, but, literally (at the end of v. 2) vile-smelling grapes. Now Isaiah drops the third person and speaks for Yahweh in the prophetic first person:
Judge, I pray you, between me
and my vineyard.
What more was there to do for my vineyard
that I have not done in it?
What more could Yahweh do for Israel than he has done? Life, land and possessions she owes to him. And he?
He looked for justice [mish pat],
but behold, bloodshed [mishpah];
for righteousness [sedaqah],
but behold, a cry [seeaqah]!
[5:7]
The "inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah" (v. 3) have themselves vitiated the covenant. And Isaiah defies, as he does repeatedly, the common plea that he speak smooth things. Yahweh will remove his care from this perverse vineyard -- nay, he will destroy it!
I will remove its hedge. . . .
I will break down its wall. . . .
I will make it a waste.
This must be; for Yahweh is the Holy One of Israel.
2. The Holiness of Yahweh
Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.
[6:3]
Yahweh of hosts is exalted in justice [mish pat],
and the Holy God shows himself
holy in righteousness [seda qah].
[5:16, cf.5:7 quoted above]
The phrase, "the Holy One of Israel" (or of Jacob, or, simply, "the Holy One") , appears some thirty times in the book of Isaiah, and about twelve times in oracles of Isaiah of Jerusalem. Elsewhere in the Old Testament it appears only about ten times, and possibly earlier than Isaiah only once (Hos. 11:9) Yahweh as the Holy One is distinctly and characteristically Isaianic.
What does Isaiah mean to convey by the Holiness of Yahweh? Why do his hearers come at length to cry in exasperation, "Let us hear no more of the Holy One of Israel!" (30:11b) ? "Holy" was an ancient term in Canaan, a primitive term long current in fertility religions. The holy was the separate -- that which was set apart as pertaining exclusively to the deity. The same Hebrew root was used in the designation of the sacred prostitutes attached to the Canaanite shrines.
Isaiah’s characteristic employment of the term represents a phenomenal subsuming and refinement of the primitive idea of holiness. It is common to say that Isaiah gives an ethical content to the term. Obviously he does: justice and righteousness belong to the Holiness of Yahweh (so 5:16, quoted above) But for Isaiah the term embraces vastly more than Yahweh’s ethical attributes. Yahweh is holy. Holiness is Yahweh. It is that without which Yahweh would be not Yahweh -- without which Yahweh would not be. The holiness of Yahweh conveys Isaiah’s intense practical monotheism: in his call he hears the attendant seraphim (presumably -- we are not certain -- images of winged creatures with serpentine bodies) praising the holiness of Yahweh as glory filling the whole earth. The covenant is always implicit in the term: it is repeatedly the Holy One of Israel; it is for Isaiah as it is put in Hosea (11:9) "the Holy One in your midst." But if holiness is the sum total of deity, it is never deity contemplated mystically, exclusively transcendent, totally "other." Holiness does convey transcendence and otherness but, paradoxically, it forcefully implies at the same time the full impingement of the "Other" upon the life of the world and, with particular purpose in a unique relationship, upon Israel. Martin Buber has aptly called this quality of holiness "radiation."6 For Isaiah and the prophets there is no god but God-in-life-and-history. Yahweh’s holiness alone explains the meaning of existence. As Holy One he is Judge in human history. As Holy One he is also Redeemer.
3. The Pride and Perversity of Judah
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;
for Yahweh has spoken:
"Sons have I reared and brought up
but they have rebelled against me.
The ox knows its owner,
and the ass its master’s crib;
but Israel does not know,
my people does not understand."
[1:2-3]
They have despised the Holy One of Israel,
they are utterly alienated!
In metered lines, and employing the parallelism characteristic of Hebrew poetry, Isaiah decries the perversity of the covenant people. To allege that this is exclusively or even primarily an ethical protest on the part of the prophet is a woeful misapprehension. The Holiness of Yahweh does involve the divine demand for justice and righteousness; and Isaiah follows Amos in the categorical condemnation of Israel’s social sins (see, e.g., 1:16-17, 21-23: 3:14 f. -- "grinding the face of the poor" ! -- and 5:23) Indeed, Isaiah literally damns the total structure of the formal Yahweh cult not for the cult itself but because the ceremonial practice is accompanied, in the grossest hypocrisy, by a corporate life of injustice, oppression and violence. Thus saith Yahweh: "I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly." [1: 13c].
This people draw near with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
while their hearts are far from me,
and their fear of me is a commandment of
men learned by rote.
[29:13]
Nevertheless, Isaiah clearly understands that social iniqiuity is only symptomatic of a deep and (as we think Isaiah means it) fatal malignancy. Isaiah sees in Judah a willful and total rebellion of covenant man against covenant God. It is unmitigated, uncompromised, unrelieved -- and scandalous -- alienation.
The whole head is sick,
and the whole heart faint.
From the sole of the foot even to the head,
there is no soundness in it. . . .
[1:5 f.]
The malignancy is, in a word, pride, and Isaiah repeatedly probes it out in a variety of approaches.
You turn things upside down!
Shall the potter be regarded as the clay;
that the thing made should say of its maker,
"He did not make me";
or the thing formed say of him who formed it,
"He has no understanding"?
[29:16]7
Their land [the land of Yahweh’s people] is filled
with silver and gold,
and there is no end to their treasures;
their land is filled with horses,
and there is no end to their chariots.
Their land is filled with idols;
they bow down to the work of their hands,
to what their own fingers have made.
[2:7 f.]
"Woe to the rebellious children," says Yahweh,
"who carry out a plan, but not mine;
and who make a league, but not of my spirit. . . ."
[30:1]
All this is covenant man pridefully denying the covenant God -- assuming autonomy, creating gods; and putting trust in alliances (Egypt in this case) , in a covenant made with men.
In one of Isaiah’s oracles, his prophetic ire against pride in every form sweeps up for condemnation an astonishing category of objects:
For Yahweh of hosts has a day
against all that is proud and lofty,
against all that is lifted up and high;
against all the cedars of Lebanon,
lofty and lifted up;
and against all the oaks of Bashan;
against all the high mountains,
and against all the lofty hills;
against every high tower,
and against every fortified wall;
against all the ships of Tarshish,
and against all the beautiful craft.
But hear the climax!
And the haughtiness of man shall be humbled,
and the pride of men shall be brought low;
and Yahweh alone will be exalted in that day.
[2:12-17]
We think Isaiah comes very close here to a "doctrine" of man. We are not forgetting what we have called the existential reference -- the sharp, specific allusion to the concrete realities of Isaiah’s existence; but here, on wings of furious prophetic indignation, Isaiah moves north to Lebanon, west across the Jordan to Bashan, on somewhere, anywhere, to the mountains -- and then to the symbols of human pride, the high towers, the fortified cities, and the proud, frail craft that sail the seas. The pride that renders Judah sick unto dying is the more critical because it is shared -- by all men!
No, Isaiah would not have said this. He approaches, but only approaches, a theological doctrine of man. He does so also when the pride of Assyria is condemned, a pride that says,
My hand has found like a nest
the wealth of the peoples;
and as men gather eggs that have been forsaken
so I have gathered all the earth;
and there was none that moved a wing,
or opened the mouth, or chirped. [10:14]
Assyria is prey to the same pride, and subject to the same prophetic condemnation. She did not do this by the strength of her own hand, as she boasts (10:13) but as the rod of Yahweh’s anger (10:14)
Shall the ax vaunt itself over him who hews with it,
or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it?
As if a rod should wield him who lifts it,
or as if a staff should lift him who is not wood!
[10:15]
If we are not sure how far Isaiah consciously carried his indictment of human pride, we know he saw it as a sickness that would ultimately bring ruin upon Assyria (10:12, 16-18) as well as Judah. Yahweh, Author of the covenant, the Holy One of Israel, visits historical judgment upon human pride and perversity.
4. Historical Judgment
Thus says the Holy One of Israel,
"Because you despise this word,
and trust in oppression and perverseness,
and rely on them;
therefore this iniquity shall be to you
like a break in a high wall, bulging out, and
about to collapse,
whose crash comes suddenly, in an instant;
and its breaking is like that of a potter’s vessel
which is smashed so ruthlessly
that among its fragments not a sherd is found
with which to take fire from the hearth,
or to dip up water out of the cistern."
[30:13]
The city of Jerusalem was twice put to siege during the ministry of Isaiah; first in 735 or 734 by Rezin and Pekah, and again in 701 by Sennacherib. On both occasions Isaiah apparently predicted the lifting of the siege. Of the conspiracy between Syria and Ephraim, Isaiah declared to Ahaz, "Thus says the Lord God: It shall not stand . . . (7:7) ; and in a recorded oracle already quoted (the authenticity of which has sometimes been questioned) , the prophet directs this word of Yahweh to the besieging Assyrians:
Because you have raged against me
and your arrogance has come to my ears,
I will put my hook in your nose
and my bit in your mouth,
and I will turn you back on the way
by which you came.
[Isa. 37_29=11 Kings 19:28]
And yet Isaiah, for all that Jerusalem and the Temple meant to him, apparently remained convinced throughout his ministry that judgment would ultimately fall upon Judah and Jerusalem. In the first crisis he confronted Ahaz with a son symbolically named "A remnant shall return"; and he stated an article of faith fundamental to his whole ministry:
If you will not believe,
surely you shall not be established
[7:9b]
Probably shortly after Sennacherib’s siege he delivered an oracle to his own people far more severe than that directed against Assyria. The threatened population had not been humbled by that historical chastisement. Bitterly and with finality Isaiah spoke:
In that day the Lord Yahweh of hosts,
called to weeping and mourning,
to baldness and girding with sackcloth;
and behold, joy and gladness,
slaying oxen and killing sheep,
eating flesh and drinking wine. .
Yahweh of hosts has revealed himself in my ears:
"Surely this iniquity will not be forgiven you
till you die,"
says the Lord Yahweh of hosts. [22:12-14]
And as we saw earlier in the present discussion, Isaiah expresses in the account of his call (ch. 6) his conviction that the nation will suffer judgment. "How long, O Lord," he asks -- how long will her perversity endure? "Until cities lie waste. . . and Yahweh removes men far away." We observe the probability, of course, that the prophetic word of doom is nearly always implicitly qualified by contingency -- that is, the fulfillment of the dire expectation is contingent upon the continuation of the conditions which call it forth. Hope is often implicit in the most passionate prophetic denunciations: in the midst of an extended indictment, Isaiah cries,
Come now, let us reason together,
says Yahweh:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.
[1:18]
Nevertheless, Isaiah quite apparently believes that the covenant rebellion of the nation -- this people, this people of unclean lips -- is so obdurate, so deep, so firmly established, so pervertedly willed that there will be no turning, no repentance and therefore no redemption until the nation has passed catastrophically under the judgment of Yahweh. So far as the prophet himself is concerned, the contingent possibility of quiet salvation through repentance is an impossible possibility: Israel’s redemption, and the ultimate fulfillment of Yahweh’s covenant purpose -- these lie now only beyond judgment. "If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established" (7:9)
For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel,
"In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength."
And you would not, but you said, "No!" [30:15]
5. Historical Redemption
Immanuel = With Us is -- God!
Shear.jashub = A Remnant -- will Return!
Isaiah = Yahweh -- Saves!
The final prophetic word is not judgment but redemption. Judgment is the wrath of Yahweh, but it is a purposive and constructive wrath, not a vindictive wrath. Judgment is not an end in itself, is not merely punitive. Judgment is the divine extremity to make redemption possible.
I will turn my hand against you
and will smelt away your dross...
and remove all your alloy. [1:25]
In the bitterly controverted "Immanuel" section (7:10-17; see also 8:8) we simply do not know -- and cannot know -- the identity of the child to be so named. It does not matter: the name is symbolic -- With Us is God. It is God who is with us, the Holy One of Israel in our midst. His declared purpose from of old is to bless, through Abraham and Israel, all the families of the earth (see Gen. 12:3, an expression, probably of the faith of the J writer in the tenth century B.C.) It is his purpose in history to redeem, to reconcile rebellious man with himself. But it is God who is with us. It is redemption on his terms -- terms which Isaiah understands as quietness, confidence, trust, belief in Yahweh. If Israel will not submit to his terms, then he will bring her to submission in judgment, in fire, in purge. His purpose will be fulfilled in history: with us is God!
Only a remnant will survive; but a remnant will continue in history, fulfilling the purposes of Yahweh. It is God who is with us. Beyond tragedy there is always hope. It is the nature of God to forgive and redeem. The salvation that Isaiah himself experienced in the symbol of fire, the remnant will know beyond the fire of death and destruction.
Then flew one of the seraphim to me, having in his hand a burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth, and said, "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven." [6:6 f.]
Nearly two centuries later, Isaiah’s most distinguished disciple understood his own mission to the survivors of Israel in these terms:
Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her
that her warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned. . . .
[Isa. 40:1]
As the purged and forgiven Isaiah is charged with a mission to his own nation, so the same disciple sees the purged and forgiven nation charged with a mission to the world:
It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the preserved [the remnant] of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.
[Isa. 49:6]
Israel (now Judah and Jerusalem) is understood and interpreted in the faith of Isaiah in terms of the covenant relationship with Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel. Her total violation of the covenant in pride and perversity renders her incapable of fulfilling Yahweh’s covenant purpose. She will be brought under a tragic divine judgment from which only a remnant will emerge -- but a purified remnant, reestablished in the covenant and capable again of glorifying Yahweh. God is with us. A remnant shall return. Yahweh saves.
6. The Messianic Hope
Bind up the testimony, seal the teaching among my disciples. I will wait for Yahweh, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him. Behold, I and the children whom Yahweh has given me are signs and portents in Israel from Yahweh of hosts. . . .
[8:16-18]
It is the message of hope and redemption that is sealed, not on lifeless parchment but in the living faith of Isaiah’s disciples. The full message of Yahweh’s grace, forgiveness and continued covenant activity must await the judgment, lest its proclamation further fatten the already fat hearts and dull the already insensitive faculties of this people. This message in full is released by Second Isaiah in the latter half of the sixth century, following Judah’s destruction at the hands of Babylon.
But by one means or another, as we believe, the living seal failed to seal utterly. Isaiah himself may have broken it. Perhaps some of his disciples, earlier than Second Isaiah, were unable for whatever reasons to hold back the message of redemption. In any case we find in the earliest collection of Isaianic material two oracles eloquently proclaiming a redemptive faith. We think 9:2-7 and 11:1-9 are authentic and indeed that the tide of critical judgment against the passages is turning.
We shall not quote them, but we urge their careful rereading, mindful of our discussion here. There is nothing in either incompatible with what we understand elsewhere about the faith of Isaiah. Both are Messianic -- that is, simply, both look forward to the coming of a Messiah, an "anointed one. But this projection into the future is in full continuity with the present. Somewhere beyond the judgment of Yahweh upon the nation, the Davidic rule, which Isaiah never protests as such, will be re-established and the covenant purpose fulfilled. This is historical redemption, to be effected by the continuation of Yahweh’s mighty deeds -- "the zeal of Yahweh of hosts will do this" (9:7) -- but in and through and out of the very real exigencies of history. If Isaiah’s Messianism has an eschatological flavor, that is, if it anticipates a growing concern in subsequent centuries with the "last things," we may remark that this is, for Isaiah, the goal of history; that Isaiah may indeed be the father of Jewish and Christian eschatology; but that for Isaiah it is a "natural" and consistent development of a very real covenant history.
7. The Quality of Faith
Isaiah to the king (Hezekiah?) :
In that day you looked to the weapons of the house of the forest [Lebanon -- the reference is to Judah’s arsenal], and you saw that the breaches of the city of David were many, and you collected the waters of the lower pool, and you counted the houses of Jerusalem, and you broke down the houses to fortify the wall. You made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you did not look to him who did it, or have regard for him [Yahweh] who planned it long ago. [22:8-11]
For Isaiah, there is only one alternative to frustration, defeat and death, and that is absolute faith in Yahweh. We almost hear him say, He that would save his life must lose it.8 He does say, If you will not believe you shall not be established. We think Isaiah is misread as a pacifist. Certainly he is misread as a "quietist" if the term connotes the deprecation of human effort. Isaiah never condemns human effort per se, but the attitude in which human effort is undertaken. Trust in the work of human hands -- any kind of work -- is iniquitous when that work is conceived as itself the ultimate end. In the words quoted above, Isaiah says in effect, What you have done is in fact what Yahweh would have had you do, but is it brought to nought because you have put your faith, your trust, in what you have done and not in him in whose wisdom and for whose purposes all must be done.
And this brings to a head the essential point in the inter-pretation of the prophets, the so-called ethical prophets. But we can say it better in the categories of social ethics of our own time. In terms, then, of our own time, human effort, social reform, slum clearance, decent wages and working hours and living standards, racial understanding, human brotherhood, world government, adequate medical care, the alleviation of human suffering, the promotion of human rights, the establishment of personal security -- all of this, to be sure, we acknowledge as "good" and, hopefully, we work, we expend effort, toward these ends. But if these are ends in themselves -- if the "good" society becomes God -- then the unqualified prophetic word (right or wrong, and this we are not arguing) pronounces upon them the sentence of damnation. Good in themselves, these efforts become diabolical and doomed to defeat when they are themselves the end, and man is made God. "You did not have regard for him who planned it long ago."
If Isaiah does not say, as a creed of the Christian church puts it, The end of man is to glorify God, he does say with his sharp existential reference to Judah that it is the sole end of covenant man to glorify Yahweh!
We think the faith of Isaiah anticipates remarkably a quality of the faith of Paul, that great Christian apostle to the nations. Paul makes explicit what is always centrally implicit in Isaiah: "Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23b) This declaration, implicit or explicit, that whatever man does is accursed except it be done to the glory of God appears to us to be either the revelation of God himself or, as some would say, the excretion of a diseased mind.
Footnotes:
1 This, and all subsequent dates in this chapter, are after pp. 29 ff.
2Ibid., pp. 39 f.
3The introductory formula (supplied by the Deuteron of Kings) usually correlates the reign of the king in question ruling king in the sister kingdom (see, e.g., I Kings 15:1 exclusively internal synchronism makes absolute dating difficult if not impossible. In most instances, scholars have been able only to approximate the dates of accession and death. For a discussion of the nature of the problem, see T. H. Robinson, op. cit., "The Chronology of the Regal Period." pp 454 ff.
4 For treatment of the literary problem of Isaiah, see Peake (ed.) op. cit. p. 436; more exhaustively Pfeiffer, op. cit., pp. 416-21; more conservatively, with the literary problem placed sensitively in the context of theology and history, John Bright, The Kingdom of God (Nashville and New York: Abingdon Press, 1953) , pp. 71 ff.
5 Isa. 8:16; and see Martin Buber (tr. Carlyle Witton-Davies, from the Hebrew) , The Prophetic Faith (New York: Macmillan, 1949), pp. 147 and 202 ff. Aage Bentzen also speaks of Isaiah’s "circle of disciples" in Introduction to the Old Testament (Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gad, 2nd, and two-vol. ed., 1952), II, p. l08..
6 Op. cit., p. 136.
7 Some scholars question the authenticity of this passage. Granting that the verses which immediately follow (Isa. 29:17-24 are probably "Deutero-Isaianic milieu" (Buber, op. cit., p. 208), the case against 29:16 is, in my judgment, quite inconclusive.
8 Mark 8:35, Matt. 10:39, Luke 9:24; cf. John 12:25.
Chapter 3: History. <I>The King Walks before You ( I Sam. 12 — I Kings 11)</I>
We shall not elaborate evidence of a double or multiple source tradition underlying Samuel and Kings. Inconsistencies in fact and point of view and the duplication of episodes are apparent even to the casual reader; and detailed analysis of the text is easily accessible in any standard Introduction to the Old Testament.1 We are skeptical of some of the common criteria of literary priority, however; and we reject the view that the "later" sources (often late only editorially, not in substance) are necessarily less accurate, less dependable. If the "later" sources are interpretative, as they are, so are the earlier. We do not think there is anywhere in the Bible a purely objective, detached account of sequential events. If we have such an account anywhere in the Old Testament, it is II Sam. 9-20; but even here we are given an interpretation of human events through the eyes of profound faith. We have also to remember what we have emphasized before, that the later "documents" used in the compilation of the Pentateuch and the historical writings have obviously made use of older and, on the whole, factually reliable sources.
Early and late, Israel’s historians are better understood in Aristotle’s definition of a poet. Aristotle’s historian was a mere chronicler of sequential events; his poet was one who distilled from the chronological catalogue its essence, its universal judgment and meaning.2 This is not to say that the writers of history in Israel are unconcerned with matters of fact. They are profoundly concerned with the visible structure of the event precisely because they regard the ultimate function of historical writing to be the communication of meaning in history. If absolute precision in detail is of secondary importance, the essential structure of what in fact occurred is crucial because the meaning is always in terms of divine nature, divine will and divine intention. The essence of history, which must of course be extracted from. the actual event, is the revelation, the self-disclosure, of God.
What we term earlier and later sources do sometimes differ in detail; but we suspect that they differ in the representation of a given event not always because they were compiled in different centuries, but because the two sources reflect opposing contemporaneous interpretations. For example, we think it reasonable to suppose that the establishment of the monarchy was viewed, at the time,3 in the two different and opposing interpretations now combined in I Samuel. Many in Israel, perhaps most, looked on the innovation favorably, as reflected in the "A" or earlier source; but we do not doubt that even at the time the step was regarded with disapproval among conservative Yahweh loyalists. Certainly some of these regarded the monarchy as an affront to Yahweh and as an easy road to apostasy, and this is the point of view of the later "B" source. Israel’s historians who stand further from the event will of course use the records at their disposal in such a way as to emphasize their own disillusionment with a monarchy that has failed to realize the high hopes of its founding; but we are hardly therefore justified in dismissing the B source as inaccurate or unhistorical. And in any interpretation of Old Testament history compiled from a plurality of sources, it is important to recognize the essential unity commonly underlying differences in representation of both detail and point of view. Old Testament history is always understood as history in which (1) Yahweh acts (2) toward the fulfillment of his own purposes. Thus, the two conflicting narrative strands both understand that the institution of monarchy results at Yahweh’s instigation, through the instrumentality of Samuel. This is no less true of B (see I Sam. 8:4-9) than of A (I Sam. 9:15 if.)
We are therefore unwilling always and automatically to accord higher historical validity to the "older" source, or superiority of interpretation to the "prior" source. In modern as well as ancient times we understand history to be more than the accurate record of event. It is also the interpretation of the event, an interpretation to be sure requiring knowledge of the contemporary understanding of the event, but never complete until set in the perspective which only time can give. We must record and interpret the Stalin-Roosevelt-Churchill era knowing not only the limitations of the interpretation but indeed of the record itself! Both the record and the interpretation will ultimately be determined by future generations of historians and writers. The essence which we extract, the meaning which we read, may or may not be theirs; but the history of this era remains incomplete until it is rerecorded and reinterpreted in the perspective of the future. And this is to speak of the wholeness of history, as true of ancient history as it is of modern history. The Old Testament possesses this wholeness in marked degree, and to devaluate the later material is to prefer a partial history, and even a distorted history, to a whole history.
And Samuel said to all Israel, ". . . behold, the king walks before you; and I am old and gray.., stand still, that I may plead with you before the Lord concerning all the saving deeds of the Lord which he performed for you and for your fathers. When Jacob went into Egypt. . . . [I Sam. 12:2, 7 f.]
The speech that follows, placed upon the lips of Samuel as a farewell address, suggests some kinship in point of view with that which characterizes much of the book of Deuteronomy. In its present form substantially from the seventh century but embodying older material, Deuteronomy proclaims an absolute correlation between the faithfulness of Israel and her national security. So does the speech before us in I Sam. 12:
If you will fear the Lord and serve him and hearken to his voice and not rebel against the commandment of the Lord, it will be well; but if you will not. . . . [12:14 f.]
Do we therefore conclude that the speech actually dates from the seventh century? Possibly -- in its present form. But the content of the historical summary, if not the form (vv. 8-13) , has the ring of authentic antiquity and may well have been drawn from a source similar to the cultic credos which we find in Deut. 26:5-9, 6:20-24 and Josh. 24:2-13.4
In any case, editorial design here conforms to a consistent pattern, a pattern which reflects the faith of the community of Israel: at every decisive transition in her recorded history she hears from the lips of the preceding period’s most influential figure a summary of her past precisely in terms of "the saving deeds of the Lord." We are, she affirms repeatedly, where we are and what we are because of what Yahweh has done. This is the import and function of the postexilic prayer of Ezra (Neh. 9), in which the long centuries are remembered and interpreted as God’s activity in history. But several centuries earlier, Israel reads the whole book of Deuteronomy with its repeated emphasis upon what God has done as "the words that Moses spoke to all Israel" (Deut. 1:1) at the close of his life. And similarly, when possession is taken of the land and Joshua’s work is done, we read as if from his lips that magnificent confessional recital of past events in Josh. 24:2 ff.
So, in transition from tribal confederation to monarchy, Israel appropriately hears on the lips of Samuel a summary of the past as essentially the story of "the saving deeds of the Lord."
A. Saul (I Sam. 13-15)
We do not know the length of Saul’s reign. As the Revised Standard Version indicates in I Sam. 13:1, two crucial facts are missing -- Saul’s age when he began to reign, and the duration of his reign. Nor can we fix exactly his dates in history. We may guess that he reigned for not less than twenty years, and that he died about 1000 B.C.
In the brief section now under discussion, little comment is needed on chapter 14. Israel, outnumbered and out-equipped by the Philistines, wins a victory made possible by the personal courage, daring and combat skill of Saul’s son Jonathan and his loyal aide (14:7). It is an account which richly informs us of the mind and temper of the age. We note especially Saul’s ban upon eating (v. 24) ; Jonathan’s innocent violation of the prohibition and his remarkable protest against its woeful inexpediency (vv. 27 ff.) ; Saul’s religious scruples in his insistence that the sacrificial procedure be properly carried out; his apparent assumption of the role of priest (vv. 31-35) ; the clear indication of the nature of the Urim and Thummim as sacred lots cast to determine divine will (v. 41) ; and finally, the incidental insight we are given into the profoundly democratic nature of Israel’s early monarchy in the effective popular protest to Saul’s sentence of death upon Jonathan (vv. 43-45).
Chapters 13 and 15 may best be considered together because the two stories say essentially the same thing. In both, Israel is interpreting the reign of Saul: Saul transgresses the commandment of God, made known through Samuel, and is divinely judged, again through Samuel, with loss of the kingship.
The two stories concern different events, to be sure. In chapter 13 (as in 14:31 ff.) , Saul takes upon himself the priestly function of Samuel (vv. 11 and 12) In chapter 15, he violates the explicit commandment of Samuel, which is tantamount to the commandment of Yahweh: he fails to observe the ancient practice known among the Hebrews as the herem, by which the defeated enemy is totally destroyed on the spot as an act of devotion to the deity. The fact that this is in our eyes an appallingly brutal concept is irrelevant to our understanding of Israel’s interpretation of the event. This is Israel under Saul in the eleventh century B.C., not the Western nations of the twentieth century A.D. At a later time Israel herself would have repudiated the practice. But Saul, a child of his own age, believed with Samuel and with ancient Israel that the herem was the will of God.
We may add here, therefore, parenthetically, that whatever else we may mean when we speak of inspiration and revelation in the Old Testament, we certainly do not mean any radical or miraculous emancipation from the general mores, perspectives and knowledge of the age. The vitality of the Old Testament literature and the vigorous communication of its faith are primarily due to the intimacy of its relationship to historical reality.
The circumstances of the two stories in I Sam. 13 and 15 differ, but they express the same understanding of Saul’s reign. Israel reads and records history, as it does myth and legend, through the eyes of faith. Saul’s failure to establish himself and his descendants at the head of the monarchy is due to his disobedience and the consequent divine judgment upon it. In these two narratives, we have the turning point of Saul’s reign. In the covenant community he has violated the terms of kingship -- obedience to Yahweh. The judgment is expulsion. To be sure, Saul continues in nominal rule until his death; but from this point on in the records of his reign he not only is in process of losing the kingdom, but stands in tragic awareness that it is already lost (see, e.g., I Sam. 23:17)
We cannot know to what degree Israel identifies her own life with that of the king. Certainly she sees herself and all men in the story of the Garden (Gen. 2-3) , which is strikingly similar in structure to the story of Saul. A comparison of the two stories will give us a better understanding of Israel’s interpretation of the reign of Saul. The correspondence is due, of course, not to any conscious literary dependence of one narrative upon the other, but to a consistent and unifying quality of faith in Israel: human sin and divine judgment are regarded as fundamental and formative realities in experience and history.
It is Yahweh who places man in the garden and Saul in the kingdom -- both under the most propitious circumstances. The one condition that both must observe is obedience to Yahweh. But this condition is willfully violated by both, and on the same grounds -- the reasonableness of the disobedient act. There is even an effort on the part of both man and king to shift the blame to someone else. After Samuel’s brilliant retort to Saul’s overeager, guilt-betraying protest of obedience (I Sam. 15:13-14) , and his indictment of the king, Saul attempts at once to clear himself and to justify his action:
. . . I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.[See vv. 21-22; cf. 13:11 f.]
In just the same way is man’s disobedience in the garden rationalized:
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she gave some to her husband, and he ate. [Gen. 3:6]
And when he is indicted, man too attempts to shift the blame:
The woman whom thou gayest to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate. [Gen. 3:12]
Samuel’s answer to Saul, coming as it does in a context of eleventh-century superstition and brutality (the herem) , is all the more to be appreciated as a shaft of clear inspiration. Despite the particular comparative (sacrifice) employed, Samuel enunciates a central quality of the faith of Israel that is also implicit in the story of the garden: the universal condition of life is obedience of God. Certainly Samuel’s specific words are not only addressed to the king but to all Israel:
To obey is better than sacrifice
and to hearken than the fat of rams.
[I Sam. 1:22b]
The comparison between man in the Garden and Saul in the kingdom does not stop here. In both narratives, when the condition of tenure is violated, appropriate judgment is announced and executed. The judgment is expulsion! It might be argued from the analogy of Gen. 2-3 that in the faith of Israel the sin of Saul is essentially the sin of all men. In any case, Israel knew in the story of Saul her own disobedience; and she came to know in the sixth century the same judgment upon it -- the expulsion of the Exile.
It will become apparent as we move on in the narratives of Saul and David that we cannot but regard Saul with sympathy. He stands as a profoundly tragic figure on the pages of Israel’s history. His public life begins with the highest promise. He possesses the physical and moral attributes of a king -- physique, initiative and courage. He is elevated to prominence as a result of a combination of personal qualities, all contributing to his stature as a leader (I Sam. 11) Among these, we note what has been called the "charismatic" quality which the historical narratives refer to in this way: "And the spirit of God came mightily upon Saul . . ." (11:6) We remember these attributes. But we remember, too, the odds against him -- the critically low ebb of the life of the Israelite confederacy; the steady depletion of life and goods under the incessant raids of neighboring states to the east and south; and the multiple group and tribal loyalties offering obstinate resistance against efforts toward unity. And always there were the Philistines! Here is an eloquent description of Israel’s impotence under Philistine domination:
Now there was no smith to be found throughout all the land of Israel; for the Philistines said, "Lest the Hebrews make themselves swords or spears"; but every one of the Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen his plowshare, his mattock, his axe, or his sickle. . . . So on the day of the battle there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people with Saul and Jonathan. . . . [I Sam. 13:19, 20, 22]
We speak of odds: Saul not only begins without army -- he began without weapons!
Even a highly endowed personality like Saul’s could hardly hold out against such odds, and under such tensions. The remainder of Saul’s life as king is one of increasing emotional agony, plagued with a steadily advancing sickness of spirit and a deepening sense of persecution at the hands not only of subjects and friends, but even of daughter and son.
We remember, too, that in some quarters in Israel that tragic life continued to command respect. David, Saul’s successor, consistently refused to violate either the person or the office of Saul and composed at his death a deeply moving lament (II Sam. 1:19-27) And one of Israel’s historians records this estimate of Saul’s accomplishments:
When Saul had taken the kingship over Israel, lie fought against all his enemies on every side. . . . And he did valiantly. . . and delivered Israel out of the hands of those who plundered them. [I Sam. 14:47f.]
B. Saul and David (I Sam. 16 -- II Sam. 8)
It is obvious that Samuel’s farewell address in I Sam. 12 is somewhat premature. Saul’s failure to observe the herem in chapter 15 is corrected in person by the prophet-priest Samuel "before the Lord in Gilgal" (15:32 ff.) The gruesome details hardly suggest an old man on the brink of the grave. And now Samuel, who has been Yahweh’s instrument in making one king, proceeds at once with the making of another (16:1-13)
We find it difficult to accept at face value all the details of the narratives about Samuel. We observe an abnormally wide range in character. In the most primitive representation Samuel is a "seer" possessing and exercising on a fee basis certain occult powers (so, in the main, I Sam. 9:1-10: 16, and ch. 11 from the earliest, or A, source) But he is also repeatedly cast directly or inferentially in the role of priest; or stress is placed upon his function as a prophet (in the sense, simply, of a spokesman for Yahweh; so, e.g., ch. 15) ; or he is represented as the Judge of all Israel (so, e.g., 8, 10:17-27, and ch. 12, in the main from a later, or B, source) These later narrative strands have tended to "modernize" Samuel’s role as prophet and seventh-century Deuteronomic editing has doubtless idealized his function as judge. On the other hand, we see little reason to doubt that Samuel did exercise a multiple function in Israel; that he did in fact combine in himself certain qualities of seer, priest, prophet and judge, consistent, to be sure, with his age and time; and that he performed substantially as represented the function of king-maker in early Israel.
So now in a narrative placing heavy stress upon Yahweh’s election, Yahweh’s choice, David, the youngest son of Jesse, is anointed king by Samuel. As with Saul, the narrative imputes at once the "charismatic" quality to David, the free "gift," the "endowment" of the spirit of Yahweh:
Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brothers; and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. [16:13]
If, as scholars in textual analysis believe, this narrative (16: 1-13) is from the B complex and that which follows (vv. 14-23) is a part of the A source, we must remark the editorial skill that combined them; for immediately we read:
Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. [16:14]
The charisma (a Greek term that literally means "gift" or "endowment") has passed from Saul to David! The memory of early Israel, standing very close to Saul, is preserved here. This contemporaneous or nearly contemporaneous view of the tragic king explains the phenomenon of his emotional instability in its own terms: the positive character of the younger Saul ("the Spirit of Yahweh . . . ." i m:6) is not now merely neutralized, it is negativized! The history states it very simply: "an evil spirit from Yahweh tormented him" (16:1 4b) And tragedy is compounded for Saul, although he does not yet know it, in this bitter irony: the man to whom the charismatic quality has been transferred, the one to whom the kingdom is to be given -- this same son of Jesse alone has gifts to soothe Saul’s tormented spirit. David is brought into the service of Saul -- and (v. 22 ) "Saul loved him greatly."
And whenever the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand; so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him. [16:23]
If the young Saul was possessed of kingly attributes, Israel’s historians would have us understand that David is the kingly man par excellence. The popular -- and no doubt at points contemporary -- estimate of David is repeated throughout the history:
Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. [16:12]
[He is] skilful in playing, a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence; and the Lord is with him. [16:18]
Saul has slain his thousands,
And David his ten thousands.
[18:7, 21:11, 29:5]
The words of Abigail addressed directly to David also reflect the popular estimate:
. . . my lord [David] is fighting the battles of Yahweh; and evil shall not be found in you so long as you live [but this, as we shall see, is extreme hyperbole!] . . . the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living in the care of the Lord your God. [I Sam. 25:28 f.]
. . . everything that the king did pleased all the people. [II Sam. 3:36]
David administered justice and equity to all his people. [II Sam. 8:15]
So, too, these two statements to David from the wise woman of Tekoa:
. . . my lord the king is like the angel of God to discern good and evil . . . my lord has wisdom like the wisdom of the angel of God to know all things that are on the earth. [II Sam. 14:17, 20]
Early and late in Israel, David is remembered as the king and the hopes of subsequent generations for the fulfillment of the covenant promises always tend to center in the re-establishment of the Davidic era under another David, a son of David, "a shoot from the stump of Jesse. . . a branch . . . out of his roots" (Isa. 11: 1)
There is hardly a literate person in the Western world who does not know the outline of the story of David’s conquest of the giant Philistine, Goliath (I Sam. 17) In its present form it is a relatively late narrative which duplicates (vv. 55-58) the episode of David’s introduction to Saul already recounted under different circumstances in the preceding chapter. Furthermore, the actual feat of the slaughter of Goliath is attributed to one Elhanan in II Sam. 21:19.
And there was again war with the Philistines at Gob; and Elhanan, the son of Jaareoregim, the Bethlehemite, slew Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.
Whatever the explanation of the contradiction, it is remarkable that this notice remained in the text of the books of Samuel; and its very presence testifies to the integrity of the process of transmitting the text. As a general critical principle we must acknowledge the probability that the heroic deed was performed by the lesser man and subsequently transferred in tradition to the greater man. It is almost impossible to conceive of the transfer in reverse.
What, then, of the historicity of David’s feat, if Elhanan, one of David’s mighty warriors, and not David himself, slew "Goliath, of Gath [= the Gittite] . . . the shaft of [whose] spear was like a weaver’s beam" (I Sam. 17:4, 7, in part) ? It is clearly the same Philistine champion in both accounts, and we can hardly accept the effort of the writer of Chronicles to remove the contradiction as he does with an augmented sentence:
And there was again war with the Philistines; and Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft . . . [I Chron. 20:5]
There is evidence that the story of I Sam. 17 may originally have been considerably shorter than in its present form. The Greek translation of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint, and completed in the closing centuries of the preChristian era, omits vv. 17-31 and 55-59 in one of its best extant manuscripts. This removes not only the duplication of David’s introduction to Saul (16:19 ff. and 17:55 ff.) but the discrepancy within chapter 7 between Saul and David’s meeting before the fight with Goliath (vv. 32 ff.) and Saul’s question to Abner after the slaying of Goliath, "whose son is this youth?" (v.55). We can hardly accuse the Greek translators of deliberately curtailing the text for these reasons. It is much more probable that they translated exactly what they found in the Hebrew manuscript before them and that literary tradition had preserved a shorter and perhaps the original form of the story.
This leaves us, nevertheless, with the problem of Goliath. We think it is a problem which inheres in the name of the Philistine champion, not in the feat. David’s performance of such an act of personal heroism is quite consistent with the general portrayal of the younger David: indeed, such a deed as this goes far in explaining the ease and speed with which he gained such prominence and popularity in Israel. But we are inclined to think that the Philistine giant named Goliath was in fact dispatched by Elhanan and not by David. If we are right in these assumptions, the best explanation is that only the name of Goliath is an essential error of the present story and that it is a later addition to the narrative in the only place where it appeared in the original story, namely, at 17:4. We are not, therefore, inclined to refute the substance of the story of David and Goliath, but only the name of David’s antagonist.5
A new motif is now introduced, chapter 18, with startling abruptness -- the love between Jonathan and David. These first five verses also appear to be from a later source (they are omitted too in the same manuscript of the Greek translation) , but the information imparted, though premature and out of sequence, is certainly in essence true, as subsequent narratives testify.
Saul’s jealousy takes form at once and in extreme degree, not only because of David’s great popularity (18:7) but also because Saul recognizes that David now possesses the charismatic quality, the peculiar endowment of Yahweh which Saul himself had previously possessed.
Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him but had departed from Saul. [18:12]
Saul’s torment appears to be a deep emotional illness. Twice he makes an attempt on David’s life. Failing each time, and driven to further demonic measures by the love of Michal, his own daughter, for David, he sets what he hopes will be a fatal price on Michal’s hand -- the foreskins of a hundred Philistines. There is a note of brutal, ironic humor here. The Philistines did not, as the Israelites, practice circumcision and all Israel must have felt delight and a certain rough amusement in the feat of David and his men circumcising in death not merely a hundred, but two hundred, of the uncircumcised enemy! The chapter concludes, appropriately, with this notice:
Saul gave him his daughter Michal for a wife. But when Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David, and that all Israel loved him, Saul was still more afraid. So Saul was David’s enemy continually. [18:28 ff.]
The relationship between Jonathan and David is introduced again in chapter19, with Jonathan interceding with his father on David’s behalf. We are given insight into the real sickness of Saul: here, and again later, Saul renounces his jealousy, only to be seized by it again, irresistibly. Again Saul makes an attempt on David’s life, while David is playing before him. Again Saul follows up his person-to-person attempt with a carefully planned scheme, only to be foiled this time by the deception of his own daughter.
The account of David’s taking refuge with Samuel at Naioth is intimately revealing of the psychological complexion of the religious beliefs and practices of the time, even though we are unable to explain the situation completely. This time Saul’s efforts to take David are frustrated by a religious phenomenon known among the Canaanites and common in early Israel.
Saul sent messengers to take David; and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as head over them, the Spirit of God came upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied. [19:20]
Two sets of messengers, and finally Saul himself, undergo the same seizure, all in explanation, apparently, of a kind of proverb about Saul -- " Is Saul also among the prophets?" (See the duplicate and differing explanation of time same proverb in I Sam. 10:10-12.)
This kind of ecstatic prophecy differs radically from that of the great prophets of Israel who appear later, from the eighth to the sixth centuries. What is described here is an observable psychic phenomenon, an uninhibited ecstasy that culminated, at least on occasion (as with Saul) , in a state of trance. The seizure was induced by group participation, and was obviously contagious. Apparently both the participants and the observers explained the phenomenon as a temporary seizure by "the Spirit of God." Significantly, the word used for deity here is not Yahweh, a term peculiar to Israel, but the widespread general designation elohim. This seizure is not the same as the more permanent endowment with the Spirit of Yahweh, the charismatic gift, that Saul and David experienced. Rather, it is a momentary and sporadic "possession" by unseen powers, induced by primitive group dynamics, and expressed in ecstatic behavior. The same phenomenon is known to have existed among Israel’s neighbors and it has persisted in the history of religion down to our own time, when, even in certain contemporary Christian sects, it may still be observed.
Now, chapter 20, David finds Jonathan:
What have I done? What is my guilt? And what is my sin before your father, that he seeks my life? . . . truly, as the Lord lives and as your soul lives, there is but a step between me and death. [20:1, 3, in part]
This history offers an incomparable study in relationships -- David and Jonathan, David and Saul, Saul and Jonathan. It is also a penetrating study of character. The narrative and the dialogue are marked by subtlety, and an exceedingly deft, though simple, appeal is made to the full range of emotional response. Saul, already a tragic figure, now suffers the anguish of alienation from his own son and David learns that if he is to live at all, he must live in exile.
In what follows we want merely to underline, as it were, certain points of the text. From I Sam. 20 through II Sam. 6 the narrative thread is coherent and, with the exception of I Sam. 24, the great bulk of the material is drawn, apparently, from the same early source.
Take special note of the following:
The portrayal of the despicable Doeg, the Edomite, chief of Saul’s herdsmen (I Sam. 21-22)
The colorful four-verse episode of David before Achish, king of Gath, one of the five Philistine cities, with Achish’s retort to his retinue in angry humor (21:12 if.)
The nature and character of David’s outlaw band (22:2)
David’s cordial relationship with the kingdom of Moab (more often a bitter foe of Israel) , and the sinister implications of his parents’ refuge there (22:3 f.)
Saul, suffering now the ravages of a deep sense of persecution (22:6-8 and cf. 23:21 quoted below)
Saul’s torment reflected in his unwarranted and unmerciful slaughter of the priests of Nob (22:11 ff.) ; the lone escape of Abiathar (v. 20 f.) ; David’s profoundly sensitive, deeply revealing response to Abiathar; and the classical simplicity and dignity of the language:
I knew on that day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul. I have occasioned the death of all the persons of your father’s house. Stay with me, fear not; for he that seeks my life seeks your life; with me you shall be in safekeeping. [22:22 f.]
David’s faithfulness to Yahweh, tinged perhaps with expediency, but devoted and uncompromised; the implicit reminder that the Spirit of Yahweh continued to rest upon David; and the historian’s (and Israel’s) conviction that David is peculiarly Yahweh’s man (23:2, 8 ff., 14b).
Jonathan’s words to David, potently suggestive (in) of the now thoroughly desperate character of Saul’s continuing jealousy and (2) of the total eclipse of any personal ambition in Jonathan by his love and admiration for David:
Fear not; for the hand of Saul my father shall not find you; you shall be king over Israel, and I shall be next to you; Saul my father also knows this. [23:17]
Saul, now a pathetic figure, fighting a battle already lost in his own mind, persuaded that from the narrow circle of family out to the broad circle of the world, everyone is against him; seizing gratefully upon the offer of the Ziphites to surrender David to him:
May you be blessed by the Lord; for you have had compassion on me. [23:21].
Saul, in spite of everything, still the courageous defender of Israel against the Philistines (23:27 f.).
The death of Samuel (25:1).
The charming story, intimately reflecting the times, of David, Nabal and Abigail (ch. 25) , concluded, appropriately, with the succinct notice of David’s loss (?) of Michal (25:44).
The stunning account of David’s refusal to take matters of the kingdom and the covenant -- Yahweh’s kingdom, Yahweh’s covenant -- into his own hands in his refusal to take the life of Saul, Yahweh’s anointed (ch. 26, compare the duplicate account, ch. 24) ; David’s magnificent speech, fraught with implications for the story of Israel’s faith (26:17-20, cf. 24:8-15) ; and Saul’s response eloquently portraying not only the deep sickness that possessed him, but the stark tragedy of Israel’s first king who would -- but could not -- realize his intrinsic greatness (26:21-25, cf. 24:16-22)
David’s flight (again? -- see 21:12 ff.) to Achish of Gath, his occupation of Ziklag, his activities there and his relationship with Achish (ch. 27)
The tragic Saul again, unable to elicit any response from Yahweh (28:6) and knowing therefore (always in the faith of Israel) the most extreme aloneness and alienation, a living death; Saul turning to the dead (28:7 ff.) in the person of a medium of Endor, in an action which he himself had at some earlier time prohibited (28:3b) ; Saul hearing (as he and Israel apparently believed) the sentence of death from the dead Samuel (28:15 ff.) as earlier he had heard the sentence of expulsion from the living Samuel.
David’s release (it must have been to him a reprieve) from the Philistines en route to the battle against Israel in which Saul and Jonathan lose their lives (ch. 29) ; the sack of Ziklag by Amalekites in his absence (30: 1 ff., and note especially vv. 6-8) ; the successful pursuit (the Amalekites do not significantly appear again on the pages of Old Testament history) ; and the highly judicious decision arrived at (30:21 ff.)
Saul’s death -- hardly suicide; Israel’s total defeat; and the brave act of gratitude by the men of Jabesh-gilead (ch. 31)
The stray Amalekite (!) reporting (falsely?) the death of Saul and Jonathan to David (II Sam. 1:6-10) ; David’s violent response (1:15) ; David’s deep sorrow and sense of bereavement not only in the loss of Jonathan, but of Saul (1:11 f., 17) ; and David’s lament, unsurpassed in world literature, acknowledged on every hand to be the original composition of David himself (1:19 ff.)
David’s establishment at Hebron as king over Judah, the southern confederation of tribes, probably with the consent of the Philistines, even their approval (2:1-4) ; David’s generous and unimpeachably sincere (albeit politically astute) message of appreciation to Jabesh-gilead vv. 4b-7)
The re-establishment of the house of Saul (2:8 ff.) in the territory of Gilead to the east of the Jordan by Saul’s commander, Abner, in the person of the weak Ishbosheth (better, Ishbaal or Eshbaal, the bosheth, meaning "shame," being a later editorial substitution in names compounded with baa1, the most common Canaanite term for deity) ; the tentative "game" of war (2:14) between the troops of Abner and those of Joab, David’s commander, and the vivid description of the circumstances of Asahel’s death at Abner’s hands; and finally the concluding notice:
There was a long war between the house of Saul and the house of David; and David grew stronger and stronger, while the house of Saul grew weaker and weaker. [3:1]
David’s insistence (difficult to understand in view of the portrayal of Michal’s character) that Michal he returned to him (3: 13 ff.): is it possible that David wants Michal, the daughter of Saul, as a reinforcement to his kingship?
The confirmation of Abner’s expressed apprehension at having to kill Asahel (2:22) : deserting to David, he himself dies under the binding custom of blood revenge at the hands of Asahel’s brothers (3:30)
David’s sincere (but again, astute) lament over Abner, reflecting not only David’s continuing loyalty to the house of Saul, but his concern to unite the kingdom by winning over the adherents of Saul (3:31-39)
The same act of loyalty to Saul and Jonathan in the violent recompense of men who take the life of Eshbaal (Ishbosheth. 4:12)
The request that David rule over the northern tribes of Israel (5:1 ff.) ; the remarkable feat of the capture of the city of Jerusalem, in Canaanite (Jebusite) hands until now, and the stratagem by which this was accomplished (vv. 6-10) 6
David, the historian, and Israel’s understanding of the meaning of these events culminating in David’s rule over the united kingdom:
David perceived that Yahweh had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for the sake of his people Israel. [5: 12]
The Philistines’ discovery, apparently for the first time, that David is no vassal! (5:17-22)
The revealing story, in intimate touch with the religious mind and practice of the times, of the bringing of the ark of the covenant into the capital city of Jerusalem (6: 1-16) ; Michal’s bitter scorn of David (vv. 16, 20) ; and the implication of divine judgment upon her (v. 23).
II Sam. 7 represents a later source than the bulk of what we have just outlined; but if we are concerned with Old Testament history, we are also concerned with the faith of Israel reflected in her historical writings, regardless of when the particular historical narrative assumed its present form. This chapter frankly represents the prophet Nathan as being in the wrong when he renders a decision on his own (vv. 1-3). His own word to the king is premature, and in error. The "Word of Yahweh" countermands Nathan’s word (vv. 4 ff.) The account reflects the view that the truth spoken by a prophet, if it is the truth, does not come from the prophet himself, as a result of his own insight and genius, but from Yahweh, and by His Word.
We ought also to note that while the words of David’s prayer (vv. 18 ff.) are hardly his in a literal sense, the general quality of the prayer is an accurate testimony to the inestimable significance of David for the life, vitality and spread of Yahwism.7 Indeed, if any credence at all is to be given to the parallel account of the history of David in Chronicles -- and we think it is -- David had considerably more to do with the ultimate erection of the Temple than the Kings account would indicate (see I Chron. 28:11-19)
The notice of II Sam. 8:15 stands as an appropriate conclusion to the first phase of David’s life and history:
So David reigned over all Israel; and David administered
justice and equity to all his people.
C. David (II Sam. 9-20; I Kings 1-2)
II Sam. 9-20 has been described as "the unsurpassed prose masterpiece of the Hebrew Bible."8 Together with I Kings 1-2, certainly by the same author, it is written, if not by an eyewitness, by one who stands very close and in intimate relationship to the events described.
Chapter 9 recounts David’s kindness to the last surviving member of the house of Saul, the lame son of Jonathan (see II Sam. 4:4) , here named Mephibosheth, but more accurately called Meribbaal (as in I Chron. 8: ~ and 9:40) David’s goodness here must be weighed against the tragic execution -- to be sure, "justified" in the ancient scheme of blood revenge -- of other surviving members of the line of Saul in II Sam. 21, an episode almost certainly occurring in the earlier years of David’s reign. Chapter in 10 gives a vivid picture of Joab’s (and David’s -- see 10:15 ff.) remarkable generalship in battle. It shows us too a surprising dimension in the character of David’s loyal and competent commander-in-chief, Joab, who says, when the battle is set against him,
Be of good courage, and let us play the man for our people,
and for the cities of our God; and may Yahweh do what seems
good to him. [10: 12}
1.Late one Afternoon . . . (II Sam. 11-12)
In the spring of the year, the time when kings go forth to battle, David sent Joab. . . . It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch . . . . [11:1-2]
Our historian not only knows the ways of David; he also knows the ways of language, and how to use it economically. As a comparable example of the writer’s sensitive portrayal of the David-Joab relationship we cite now his notice that when the Ammonite city of Rabbah is ready for the ax the ever-loyal Joab sends for the king to strike the final blow and take the credit (12:26 ff.) !
Any attempt to adorn this story would be the rankest literary sacrilege. No word, no phrase, no subtle implication relieves the character of the king as adulterer and murderer. Correspondingly, there is not a whisper to diminish the man Uriah. He is a Hittite; but so far from employing this notice in derogation, the narrator assumes that his readers will understand the significance of Uriah’s name: in token of "naturalization," he has taken a Yahweh-name, Uri-yah ("Yahweh is my light," or, perhaps, simply "Yahweh is light") His loyalty to David, to Joab and to Israel, his integrity, and his great stature as a man are forcefully portrayed here; the inclusion of his name in one of the lists of David’s most renowned warriors attests to his achievement in Israel’s military establishment (see II Sam. 23:39)
Nathan, who replaces Samuel as prophetic spokesman in the story, is precisely and courageously in the line of Israel’s unique prophetic succession. The prophetic act is divinely motivated, if not impelled (12: 1) The prophet speaks not his own but the given word -- "thus says the Lord . . ." (12:7) The prophetic condemnation is based not alone on the violation of a man-to-man relationship, but, since all life is judged by the righteousness of God, upon the violation of the divine-human relationship -- "Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight?" (12:9) And the judgment of God is unequivocally declared (12:10 ff.)
The judgment on David is strikingly appropriate. Again in the literature of Israel the "punishment fits the crime.
You have smitten Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife [12:9]. . . . Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house [v. 10]. . . . I will raise up evil against you out of your own house [v. 11].
We recall something of the same appropriateness of judgment upon Saul. His sin was disobedience; his judgment, expulsion from the kingship and separation from Yahweh. David’s sin of violence is judged with violence (the sword does not depart from his house) ; and for his sin in the intimacy of sex, David is plagued with evil out of his own house, by tragedy within his own family.
If the story of Saul recalls to mind man’s sin of disobedience in the Garden, his expulsion from it, and his separation from Yahweh (Gen. 3) , the story of David bears an imprecise but suggestive resemblance to the Cain-Abel narrative of Gen. 4. There is no valid external reason for the sin of either Cain (see Gen. 4:6, 7a) or David. Neither acts under provocation -- or rather, both commit the act of violence under provocation from within themselves. To David as well as to Cain, Yahweh might have said, "Sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it" (Gen. 4:7b) Neither Cain nor David does master it, and the sins of both lead to violence. Both commit a violent act within the existing community, which both understand as derived from Yahweh, as owing its very existence to him. David’s sin is also against his brother, his covenant brother "Uri-yah." If Cain is his brother’s keeper, certainly King David, of all people in the community of Israel, is the keeper of Bathsheba and Uriah. Both Cain and David admit their guilt -- Cain, to be sure, by implication (Gen. 4:13) The judgments against the two are essentially the same. David soon suffers evil out of his own house. He becomes a fugitive, driven out (in a very real sense from the face of Yahweh; so, II Sam. 15:24-26) by his own son, Absalom. And, in both cases, the same limitation is set upon the judgment: both Cain and David are assured that their lives will be divinely protected (Gen. 4:15, II Sam. 12:13)
This general similarity between the two stories does not necessarily mean that one story was derived from the other, although it seems likely that both written accounts originated in the tenth century. Nor does it mean that the facts in the David story have been distorted in order to make it conform with the Cain-Abel myth. The similarity does, however, point up the coherence and the unity of the faith of Israel, a faith that preserves myths and records history with a consistent perspective and understanding. As in faith Israel sees the broken human community (both God-man, Gen. 3, and man-man, Gen. 4) in the Genesis myths, so in faith Israel surely sees the brokenness of her own community in Saul (God-man) and David (man-man) Of course, in Israel the king is never merely an individual. He is Israel. In his sin Israel sins; in his judgment Israel is judged. At the same time, the king is also himself, an individual man, a covenant person. Israel does not see this as an either/or proposition. The king is both one and many, bearing in himself the totality of the nation just as the three principle characters in Gen. 3-4 are at once themselves and all men.
Recall these lines of T. S. Eliot:
What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of GOD.9
It happened late one afternoon. It has happened in human history on repeated afternoons. David or Cain or any one of countless others said to a brother, "Let us go out into the field." And when they were in the field, he rose up against his brother and killed him. Then God said, "The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me. . . .
David and Cain. Israel and mankind. In the faith of Israel, Yahweh is Judge in history.
2. Absalom had a Beautiful Sister. . . (II Sam. 13-14)
Nathan said to David, ". . . Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. . . .’" [II Sam. 12:7, 11]
As Saul’s historian sees the king’s sin of disobedience as the turning point of his reign (I Sam. 13 and is) , so David’s historian understands that the life and career of the king turn upon his sin with Bathsheba. Up to this point, David’s life has been, on the whole, singularly blessed, emphatically triumphant. But from this point on the days of his years are lived under unremitting harassment. Formerly, David’s life had been "bound in the bundle of the living" (I Sam. 25:29) ; now it is bound in the bundle of the suffering.
In Nathan’s incisive parable (II Sam. 12:1-5) , David has been brought to see clearly his own shameful part in the conventional triangle of David-Bathsheba-Uriah. He must now witness a grotesquely modified re-enactment of the situation, in which his role of adulterer is played by his son Amnon, his role of murderer by his son Absalom, and the role of the violated woman by his daughter Tamar. The murdered member of the triangle is, again, his son Amnon. The life of David is in truth now bound in the bundle of the suffering, the anguished, the tormented!
The historian rightly leaves the reader to his own devices in assessing Absalom’s motives for murdering his brother; but we wonder if it is only the indignation of the full brother over his sister’s shame that leads him to violence. Looking ahead to Absalom’s arrogant rebellion against his father, so soon to follow, we wonder if this is not also, and perhaps chiefly, a convenient excuse for removing the king’s oldest son Amnon, who might have proved an obstacle to Absalom’s own consuming ambition. Then, too, although marriage with a half-sister is expressly forbidden in later legislation (see Lev. 18:9), it is clear that in David’s time Amnon might have married Tamar, had he wished. And apparently it would have been with Tamar’s consent, since she herself suggests it in remarkably gentle words (II Sam. 13:12 f.)
We note, too, that the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) includes a line at the end of II Sam. 13:21 that may well be authentic. The Hebrew text reads:
When King David heard all these things [i.e., what had happened between Amnon and Tamar], he was very angry. [II Sam. 13:21]
The Septuagint adds:
Yet he did not vex the spirit of Amnon his son, for he loved him because he was his first-born.
The author might have added -- King David remembered the shame of his own guilt. If the Septuagint is authentic, it suggests how remarkably indulgent David was toward Amnon, and, apparently, toward all his children.
Following his murder of his brother Amnon, Absalom goes into exile for three years. He is given refuge by his mother’s father, the king of Geshur (probably a district of Bashan east of the Jordan) What of the king during these years? The historian compresses three years of David’s life into a single verse:
And the spirit of the king longed to go forth to Absalom; for he was comforted about Amnon. [II Sam. 1339]
David’s historian never insults the perceptiveness of his readers. His only commentary lies in his incomparably deft and skillful use of language. He is a member of the community of Israel. He writes about that community. He writes for that community. He and the Yahwist employ essentially the same techniques in imparting form, coherence and interpretation to their literary works. Both remain faithful to what is "given" -- the Yahwist to the traditions which he employs, and the historian to the events which he records. Both narrators bring to bear a literary and interpretative artistry by the primary means of a highly perceptive selectivity and arrangement of material.
Chapter 14 concludes what the narrator obviously regards as the most significant episode in a seven-year span of David’s mature reign (see 13:23, "after two full years"; 13:38, "Absalom [was in Geshur] three years"; 14:28, "Absalom dwelt two full years in Jerusalem, without coming into the king’s presence") These seven years have been compressed and unified into a single event. It is announced in 13:1 with the words,
Now Absalom, David’s son, had a beautiful sister. . . .
It is concluded with the last verse of chapter 14, with the statement that Absalom
came to the king, and bowed himself on his face to the ground before the king; and the king kissed Absalom.
We may remark in chapter 14 the reflection of Joab’s deep devotion to David (14:1); the implication of the king’s accessibility to his subjects (v. 4) ; the stratagem which Joab and the wise woman of Tekoa employ, strongly reminiscent of Nathan’s parable (vv. 5 ff.) ; the brilliantly vivid and authentic quality in the description of the interview; David’s intimate understanding of Joab (v. 18 f.) ; the name Absalom gives to his daughter (! v. 27) ; the spoiled Absalom’s wantonly rude treatment of Joab and Joab’s docile (now, but not later!) acceptance of it (vv. 28 ff.)
3. Absalom got Himself a Chariot. . . . (II Sam. 15-20)
The complexities of government in Israel increased with David’s years; and now, obviously, he is unable to give his subjects the personal attention that they had enjoyed during the period of the early monarchy. Absalom capitalizes on this easiest of all popular criticisms of the king, and works quietly for four years at gaining popular support for himself (15:1-6).
It is difficult to believe that David was unaware of Absalom’s rebellious intentions. In fact, the historian later records the anonymous, but certainly accurate, testimony that "there is nothing hidden from the king" (18:13) David always had the support of a large group of intimate and intensely loyal friends, even in the days, soon to come, of his greatest danger. It is even doubtful that David was fooled by Absalom’s pretext for going to Hebron (15:7-9) One suspects that David simply refused to face the seditious implications of his son’s actions.
Absalom’s choice of Hebron as headquarters for launching his rebellion was shrewd indeed. Hebron was an ancient and venerated religious center, but, even more important, it had been David’s capital for more than seven years. Even David, with all his political astuteness, would not have been able to move the seat of Israel’s government to Jerusalem without leaving behind some disaffection in Hebron. Absalom must have doubted, too, that David could ever bring himself to attack Hebron.
Absalom was an arrogant man, consumed with ambition; but he was no fool. He set about winning over Ahithophel, a court counselor of David whom the narrator regards as the personification of wisdom:
Now in those days the counsel which Ahithophel gave was as if one consulted the oracle of God; so was all the counsel of Ahithophel esteemed, both by David and by Absalom.
[II Sam. 16:23]
Obviously David could have launched a successful attack on Hebron at once. Although "the people with Absalom kept increasing" (15:12) , David’s military organization under Joab was intact, and it was a trained and seasoned unit. But there are two obvious reasons why David could not bring himself to crush the rebellion: (1) his loving indulgence of his son -- he could not himself force the attack; (2) his tenderness toward Hebron, its inhabitants and its sanctuary.
No other episode is more profoundly revealing of the man himself than David’s evacuation of Jerusalem. This same episode also reveals the consummate personal loyalty of those who knew David best and who served him most intimately. The exchange between David and Ittai is all the more moving when we remember that Ittai is a foreigner, a Philistine, apparently in command of "the six hundred Gittites who had followed [David] from Gath" (II Sam. 15:18)
Then the king said to Ittai . . . ,"Why do you also go with us? Go back, and stay with the king [Absalom!]; for you are a foreigner, and also an exile from your home. You came only yesterday [not, of course, to be taken literally], and shall I today make you wander about with us, seeing I go I know not where? Go back, and take your brethren with you; and may Yahweh show steadfast love and faithfulness to you."
But Ittai answered the king, "As Yahweh lives, and as my lord
the king lives, wherever my lord the king shall be, whether for
death or for life, there also will your servant be."
[II Sam. 15:19-21]
Again, the narrative itself, as read by the sympathetic and sensitive reader, constitutes its own best commentary; and again, therefore, we call brief attention to points in the biblical text which, in our judgment, ought to be specially noted:
The maturity and depth of David’s faith. He will not hold the
ark as a personal talisman. He sends it back, with these words:
If I find favor in the eyes of Yahweh, he will bring me hack. . . but if he says, "I have no pleasure in you," behold, here I am, let him do to me what seems good to him. [15:25 f.]
The priests Abiathar and Zadok, loyal to David, return to Jerusalem with the ark (15:27 f.) to be joined soon by Hushai, "David’s friend" (a court title for an official adviser -- 15:32 ff.) If David’s spirit is broken (note 15:30) he is still able to exercise the astute powers of strategy always characteristic of him.
Which is the liar, Ziba, the servant of Meribbaal (Mephibosheth,16:1-4), or Meribbaal (see now 19:24-30) ?
David and Shimei, Scene I: the stature of David, the man, portrayed under the despicable Shimei’s abuse (16:5-14) The depth of David’s faith is again evident (16:12) ; and the gentleness of David is all the more remarkable when we remember that these are his most miserable hours. In some respects, these are also his most valiant hours.
What ought we to make of Absalom’s remark upon meeting Hushai (16: 16 f.) ? Is it possible that the statement carries the inference of concern on the part of the son for his father? Does this suggest some relief (perhaps with 14:27) in the callousness of the character of Absalom?
Absalom’s irrevocable commitment to the act of rebellion. Upon Ahithophel’s shrewd advice, he "goes in" to his father’s concubines. This is the final gesture of rebellion. Absalom has taken the place of his father -- "in the sight of all Israel" (16:20-22)
The outcome of David’s strategy. Absalom accepts the false counsel of Hushai against the strategically sound counsel of Ahithophel. And Ahithophel, knowing that the plan cannot succeed and that the rebellion is doomed, plays the role not of the spoiled child but of the unqualified realist. He takes his own life (17:1-23)
David at Mahanaim, in the east Jordan territory of Gilead. It is significant that David is given refuge, and cordial refuge, in the place where earlier Abner had set up the throne of Saul’s house for Eshbaal (Ishbosheth). The notice here (17:27-29) is an eloquent commentary on the thorough way in which David won by gentleness and kindness the allegiance of Saul’s supporters.
David in anguish for the safety of Absalom (18:1-5). It is not a king, not the mighty David of old, who stands alone at the side of the gate pleading with Joab, Abishai and Ittai, "Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom." It is the pathetic figure of a father who loves even the son who would take his life.
The battle is joined (18:6 ff.) Absalom is fast caught in a tree, not by his hair, as artists (?) persistently portray it, but by his head (18:9) Joab is -- Joab! His loyalty to David is absolutely unimpeachable. But he is tough and practical, and he sometimes, as here, makes his own decisions as to what is best for the king (18:10-15).
A difficult text in 18: 18. The Septuagint reading differs from ours, giving support to the sense that David had the Absalom memorial erected. And the notice that Absalom had no sons is in conflict with II Sam. 14:27, which may be a late addition. But the present verse is not above suspicion and its text has suffered some abuse in transmission.
Ahimaaz and the Cushite (probably Egyptian) and the bearing of the report of Absaloin’s death to David (18:19-32) Here again is the vivid, intimate character portrayal, the subtle inferences, the effective dialogue which the narrator draws with such skill. Joab and (almost too late) Ahimaaz fear the old David who more than once struck down in wrath the bearer of tragic news. But that David is no more.
The description of the broken David:
And the king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said,
"O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!" [18:33]
Joab is -- Joab. When victory is turned by the king’s grief into mourning, it is Joab -- surely no one else could have done so -- who shocks the king back into a state of responsibility and self-control, back into reality (19:1-7) And here the narrator betrays his genius in what he does not say. When the rebuke is administered, we read,
Then the king arose and took his seat in the gate. [19:8a]
The self-abuse of those among the northern tribes who have participated in or countenanced the rebellion of Absalom (19:8 cf.) In effect they say, "What fools we have been! Let us escort the king back to the capital!"
The betrayal of David’s partiality to the South, where no such spontaneous demonstration has yet appeared, in David’s words to Zadok and Abiathar:
Say to the elders of Judah, "Why should you be the last to bring the king back to his house, when the word of all Israel has come to the king?" [19:11]
David and Shimei, scene II (19:16-23) : the stature of David the man portrayed no less than in the first scene (16:5-14) Here the stature of David the king is also portrayed, as it is in the two episodes which immediately follow (the settlement of the Ziba-Meribbaal controversy, vv. 24-29; and the good Barzillai’s farewell of David, vv. 31-40.)
Sheba’s short-lived rebellion. Obviously David has not succeeded in fully unifying North and South (19:41-43) His partiality to Judah angers some in Israel, and Sheba, a Benjaminite representing one of the northern tribes, enlists these malcontents in an act of secession (20:1 f.) , although hardly on the scale suggested in the phrase "all the men of Israel" (v. 2) Now David demotes Joab and makes Amasa, Absalom’s former general, commander-in-chief (so, almost certainly, the import of 20:4) And again, Joab is -- Joab (20:4-10) If the notice of I Chron. 2:16 f. is correct, David had two sisters (perhaps only half-sisters but presumably daughters of Jesse) : one, Zeruiah, was the mother of Joab, Abishai and Asahel; the other, Abigail, was the mother of Amasa. This would mean not only a close relationship between David and Joab (and the same relationship between David and Amasa) but an even closer kinship between Joab and Amasa. It may be that the narrator acknowledged the close blood ties between Joab and Amasa in 20:9. But it is strange indeed that in such a patently well-informed history as we have in II Sam. 9-20 and I Kings 1-2, there is nothing that reflects the narrator’s awareness of Joab and David’s close blood relationship. II Sam. 17:25, the only other notice which gives us any clue as to the identity of Zeruiah, also sees her as the mother of Joab and the sister of Abigail (Amasa’s mother -- not to be confused with Nahal’s widow and David’s wife, I Sam. 25) ; but both women are daughters, not of Jesse (David’s father) but of one Nahash, presumably David’s friend the king of Ammon (see our comment above on II Sam. 10) Should we substitute the name "Jesse" for "Nahash" in II Sam. 17:25, or is I Chron. 2:16 f. in error? Whatever the answer to the question of David’s relationship to Joab and Amasa, Joab’s cold-blooded murder of Amasa is the brutal and repugnant violence of one grandson against another -- whether the grandfather be Nahash or Jesse! It is certainly not our intention to "improve" the character of Joab. His adroit, if nasty, dispatch of Amasa does not even have the justification of blood revenge which obtained in his murder of Abner, who, we recall, had under some real compulsion taken the life of Joab’s brother Asahel (II Sam. 2: 18 ff.) Yet the murder of Amasa "fits" the consistent Joabian role! If Joab is personally ambitious, he is also convinced that he himself is David’s best and most loyal commander. The decisive factor in crushing Sheba is speed -- and Amasa has proved his incompetence (20:5). To the eminently practical Joab, there is only one solution. He effects it at once!
This is the most appropriate place for us to make another comment on the relationship of David to the sons of Zeruiah, a relationship involving tension. At least three times in the narratives about David, he speaks out in anger, annoyance and even frustration at their violent ways. Upon the death of Abner, Saul’s commander, David composes a dirge which ends with the line
as one falls before the wicked [Joab!] you have fallen. [II Sam. 3:34b]
And the deeply disturbed king then says to his servants:
Do you not know that a prince and a great man has fallen this day in Israel? And I am this day weak, though anointed king; these men the sons of Zeruiah are too hard for me. Yahweh requite the evildoer according to his wickedness! [II Sam. 3:38 f.]
And twice, in the scenes with Shimei (II Sam. 16:10 and 19:22), when Abishai counsels violence, David bitterly deplores the spirit that longs to resolve every problem by force in the words
What have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah!
David himself would build and unify the kingdom quietly and slowly by kindness, mercy, love and forgiveness. The sons of Zeruiah would build and unify the kingdom by purge and violence. One can hardly escape the implications of an antithetical relationship between David the king and the sons of Zeruiah. The Chronicler, rewriting the history centuries later, either fails to see, or ignores, the tension. The sons of Zeruiah are never once reprimanded in the Chronicler’s history (see I Chron. 11, 18, 26 and 27)
4. Now King David was Old . - . (I Kings 1-2)
As happened in the case of a number of books in the Old Testament, material which the editors could not appropriately insert elsewhere, they placed at the end of the book. I and II Sam. were originally a single book and in the closing chapters (II Sam. 21-24) we have a miscellaneous collection of writings, some old and reliable (21:1-14, 21:15-22 and 23:8-39, and ch. 24) , some (22:1-23:7) relatively late.
The remarkable historical narrative of II Sam. 9-20 is continued and concluded in I Kings 1-2, with an account of David’s last days, Adonijah’s abortive attempt to take the throne, and Solomon’s accession.
To class Adonijah as a pretender and to compare him with Absalom, as some interpreters would do, is hardly warranted. He is next in line for the throne (I Kings 1:6 and 2:22) ; and it is a fair inference from the narratives that until David’s senile period, Adonijah was his father’s choice. If he had strong and influential opposition (including Nathan the prophet, 1:8) , we also note that two of his supporters are Joab and Abiathar, both intensely loyal to David. Abiathar was the sole survivor of the priestly family of Eli and, like Joab, played a very important role in David’s career. It is hard to believe that either man would have supported any aspirant to the throne not approved by David.
Since David is obviously in his dotage, one strongly suspects that the chief conspirators, Nathan and Bathsheba (Solomon’s mother) , are putting words into David’s mouth which he never spoke:
Nathan said to Bathsheba ... "Go in at once to King David, and say to him, ‘Did you not, my lord the king, swear to your maidservant, saying, "Solomon your son shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne"? Why then is Adonijah king?’ Then while you are still speaking with the king, I also will come in after you and confirm your words." [I Kings 1:11-14]
And it is certainly significant that the narrator never suggests that Nathan’s actions in this case are in response to the prophetic word of Yahweh. This is again (as in II Sam. 7:1 ff.) a Nathan acting on his own. If an illegitimate claim is made and substantiated it is not that of Adonijah, but Solomon.
I Kings 1 is a busy and trying day for an old man tottering on the edge of the grave.
So Bathsheba went to the king into his chamber [v. 15]. While she was still speaking with the king, Nathan the prophet came in [v. 22]. Then King David answered "Call Bathsheba to me." So she came [28]. King David said, "Call to me Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah. . . ." So they came before the king [v. 32].
It is no wonder that David dies in the next chapter!
The plot is successful. The conspirators elicit the authoritative word from the lips of the senile king, and Solomon reigns in David’s stead. I Kings 2 must also be read in the light of the narrator’s deft art and impartial description and in awareness that vv. 3-4, 10-12 and 27 are editorial (Deuteronomic) additions -- as they obviously are. If David’s charge to Solomon with respect to Joab and Shimei (vv. 4-9) actually represents a communication from David, one strongly suspects it to be an act of senility again contrived by Nathan and Bathsheba; for it is totally out of character with the king as we have known him. We understand very well, however, that Nathan and Bathsheba and Solomon would go to any lengths to secure David’s authority for the purge; nor do we doubt that, if they failed to secure it, they alleged that it was given.
Solomon’s first official acts are the expulsion of Abiathar and the brutal, unwarranted execution of Joab and Shimei. Those are the first of a number of conspicuous reversals of the policies of David and they symbolize in a deeply sinister way the tyrannical reign of Solomon.10
This section, II Sam. 9-20, I Kings 1-2, is the masterpiece of Old Testament history. It is intimately informed of the events and circumstances and persons which it treats; it is given phenomenally impartial expression; and it is wrought in literary form with unparalleled skill. But contrary to some," we do not hold that this is a superlative prose masterpiece because of its "objectivity." Consonant with all biblical history, this is an interpretation of history, history interpreted in the strong perspectives of the covenant community.
In succeeding centuries this community increasingly remembers David not as a king but as the king, the Person in whom the fulfillment of the covenant hope is promised again, peculiarly symbolized, meaningfully previewed. The memory of David irresistibly shapes the images in which the faith of the community is projected. The day of covenant fulfillment will center in another "anointed one" (Messiah) of the type of David, the seed of David, the throne of David, the son of David.
Such is the image of hope in succeeding generations. But something of the hope is already conveyed in this early historian’s work! Something of the hope is already implicit in his interpretation. David is a man who at his best is a Yahweh man, Yahweh’s anointed. Here is one who at his best is an instrument of Yahweh’s self-disclosure, possessed of Yahweh, revealing Yahweh; one on whom, peculiarly, the spirit of Yahweh rests,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of Yahweh.
[Isa. 11:2]
A thousand years later a "new" covenant community read this story of David and interpreted and understood its own cent
ral covenant Person as "son of David."
5. David and the "Son of David"
Repeatedly the writers of the New Testament endorse and reaffirm the relationship. Jesus is David’s son -- so in the Gospels, Acts and Romans; and so in II Timothy, Hebrews and Revelation.
Their use of this term of relationship reflects their interpretation of Old Testament history and prophecy: David is regally, royally, the prototype of Christ. They also believe it literally, genetically: Jesus is of the seed of David. It may well be also that they meant it in a sympathetic sense: Jesus is David’s son emotionally, spiritually, experientially -- in the positive meaning of the semitic idiom, like father, like son. If David is the royal prototype, if he is the physical ancestor, he is also the personal prototype of Jesus.
It is written:
Now [David] was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. And Yahweh said [to Samuel], "Arise, anoint him; for this is he." Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brothers; and the spirit of Yahweh came mightily upon David from that day forward. [I Sam. 16:12 f.]
It is written of Jesus, the Son of David, that he
increased. . . in favor with God and man [Luke 2:52]
and that he
came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, "Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased." [Mark 1:9 ff.]
Like father, like son. Both refused the temptation to use their divinely given authority to alter the nature and design of the kingdom which both acknowledged to be God’s kingdom. In the case of David, the theme is twice repeated. With Saul at his mercy, he refuses the immediate satisfaction of his own ambition and declines to take the matters of the kingdom out of the hands of God and into his own hands. The temptation of Jesus, son of David, is appropriately on an infinitely grander scale, but the appeal of the temptation is the same; and its conclusion might without sacrilege be added at the close of the stories of David’s temptation to take the life of Saul:
And behold, angels came and ministered to him. [Matt. 4:11]
Like father, like son. Both take the city of Jerusalem in a full measure of triumph perhaps never known by any other conquerors. We have no record of David’s actual entry into the city; but that it was truly a singular triumph is attested in all that subsequently transpired there. Jesus, the Son of David, moves into the city a thousand years later with ultimate consequences far more revolutionary. As the populace spread their garments in the way, Matthew appropriately records that they cried,
Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed be he who comes in the name of the Lord! [Matt. 21:9]
Like father, like son. At both extremes of this millennium, the shouting dies, the praises cease. Sweetness is turned bitter; devotion is become rebellion. David easily can, but will not, quench the little flame; for it is his son Absalom who revolts. He chooses, rather, voluntarily to quit the throne and the capital. It is written:
David went up the ascent of the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went. . . . [II Sam. 15:30]
Jesus, the Son of David, has only quietly to turn about, shake off from his feet the dust of the streets of Jerusalem and return to his own Galilee. Instead, we read that when the disciples and Jesus had sung their last hymn together, they went out to the mount of Olives to a place which was called Gethsemane (Mark 14:26, 32)
Like father, like son. David commits the uncertain future to divine will. Refusing to take the ark with him, he says simply,
If I find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me back. . .; but if he says, "I have no pleasure in you," behold, here I am, let him do to me what seems good to him. [II Sam. 15:25 f.]
Jesus, the Son of David, dreading the immediate future like any other son of man, prays,
. . . nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. [Matt. 26:39]
Like father, like son. David goes forth to his Gethsemane and to emotional crucifixion driven by a rebellious son.
O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son! [II Sam. 18:33]
Jesus, the Son of David, suffers Gethsemane and crucifixion by other men equally in rebellion against their father. There was even a trial for both David and Jesus, the Son of David. As David evacuated the city of Jerusalem, a man of the house of Saul, named Shimei, cursed and threw stones at David as he and his men went along the way from the city. David forbade that any should touch him and later forgave him. Jesus, the Son of David, after formal trial, is brought before the whole battalion of soldiers, who, kneeling before him, mocked him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" They spat upon him. They stripped him twice in the mocking exchange of garments and then, at last, led him forth (Matt. 27:27 if.) His only response was given later: "Father, forgive them . . ." (Luke 23:34)
The community of the New Testament understood and accepted the interpretation of David as the king of ancient Israel, as peculiarly the Yahweh-man, as uniquely foreshadowing the fulfillment of the covenant purpose; and from that interpretation, already given in the history of David, they understood and interpreted the work and mission of Jesus.
Biblical history is often very good history, accurate history, sensitive history. It is also always interpreted history, whose direction and meaning is drawn directly from Israel’s faith in the reality of the Yahweh covenant.
D. Solomon (I Kings 3-11)
The actual dissolution of the united monarchy followed immediately upon the death of Solomon, but the process of the North’s disaffection clearly began before David’s death and continued throughout Solomon’s reign with a steadily increasing intensity. The ultimate blame for the total alienation of Northern Israel falls directly upon Solomon.
At the conclusion of the Kings account of Solomon’s reign, one of Israel’s historians records the conviction that the tragedy of division was the direct judgment of God upon the apostasy of Solomon.
And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord. . . . Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, "Since this has been your mind . . . I will surely tear the kingdom from you. . . . [I Kings 11:9, 11]
This judgment is immediately mitigated "for the sake of David" in two respects: (1) it will not be accomplished until after Solomon’s death and (2) one tribe will be left to Solomon’s son.
In view of this sweeping theological deprecation of Solomon, it may appear remarkable that the history retains the fabulous estimate accorded the king by tradition. In I Kings 3 we read a highly idealized and pious account of Solomon’s humility and wisdom. Following the story of his thoroughly brutal purge in chapter 2, his prayer in 3:7-9 is, to say the least, out of character. Even more out of character are the words of Yahweh in vv. 12-14. In view of our own realistic appraisal of Solomon we are bound to read v. 15a with an emphasis hardly intended originally. "And Solomon awoke, and behold, it was a dream!" Appropriately to this build-up of Solomon, there follows at once that popular tale of the two harlots, intended to illustrate not only the great wisdom of the king, but also his accessibility to the meanest of the population. This about a king whose pride and ostentation are unparalleled in biblical history!
Chapter 4 makes the modest claim that Solomon "was wiser than all other men" (v. 31) It asserts in v. 20 that under Solomon "Judah and Israel were as many as the sand by the sea: they ate and drank and were happy." Elsewhere, however, it describes the elaboration of the structure of Israelite government (cf. 4:1 ff. with the relatively simple structure of officialdom under David in II Sam. 8:15 ff.) , including the sinister notice that one Adoniram "was in charge of the forced labor" (v. 6) We also read of the division of the kingdom into twelve districts (shrewdly violating tribal divisions in a well-calculated effort to break down tribal loyalties) each with its overseer charged with the responsibility of providing sustenance for the royal establishment -- a simple daily diet (v. 22 f.) conservatively estimated as sufficient to feed between four and five thousand persons!
This same Solomon, allegedly wisest of the wise, "raised a levy of forced labor out of all Israel; . . . thirty thousand men" (5:13). Even if the draft was executed impartially, the bulk of the labor force was drawn from the North, with four or five times the population of Judah, and employed in the main in Solomon’s ambitious building program in Jerusalem.
Chapter 6 describes the building of the temple. The temple area was no doubt considerable but the structure itself was small -- sixty by twenty cubits, that is, probably, about ninety by thirty feet. It was used for individual, not congregational, worship and comprised two rooms; one -- we might call it the main sanctuary -- 40 x 20 x 20 cubits (a double cube) , and the other, the holy of holies, a perfect cube, 20 x 20 x 20 cubits,12 containing the ark with its guard of two cherubim described very precisely in 6:23 ff. The temple was in reality not an Israelite but a Phoenician creation, achieved by virtue of Solomon’s alliance with Hiram, king of Tyre and ruler of Phoenicia (ch. 5), and designed and executed by Phoenician architects and skilled craftsmen.13
There follows in chapter 7 the account of the building of Solomon’s own royal palace, also Phoenician in design and execution, and a far more ambitious undertaking than the temple. Solomon’s vast building program further included strategic fortifications at Jerusalem, Hazor, Meggido and Gezer (9:15 ff.) ; and the wealth, the splendor and the extensive commercial enterprise of Solomon are all reflected in the story of the Queen of Sheba’s visit in chapter 10. There is no doubt that Solomon’s was a dazzling reign and our composite record of that reign reflects his adulation by some in his own and subsequent generations.
But it was a magnificence bought at a terrific price and in defiance of Yahwism. The present text of Kings, drawn from many sources, is the editorial achievement of Deuteronomic historians of the sixth century B.C. who, though regarding Solomon with nostalgic admiration, nevertheless incorporate material reflecting the perspective of stanch Yahweh loyalists. Of such is chapter 11, with the exception of certain Deuteronomic qualifications intended hopefully to mitigate the judgment of Solomon: so, e.g., v. 4, "when Solomon was old," and v. 6, "did not wholly follow Yahweh" (!)
Chapter in is comparable to the narratives of sin and judgment upon which the accounts of Saul and David turn (I Sam. 13 and 15, and I Kings 11) We are presented with three kings of the united monarchy -- Saul, David and Solomon. Three sins are seen as ultimately determining the structures of the reigns -- disobedience (Saul) , violence (David) , and now apostasy (Solomon) Three prophets proclaim the divine judgment -- Samuel, Nathan and Ahijah. Saul’s disobedience ends in his expulsion (cf. the story of Eden in Gen. 3) ; David’s violence in tragic alienation within his own family (cf. the Cain-Abel narrative of Gen. 4) ; and Solomon’s arrogant disregard of Yahweh in the disruption and confusion of the Israelite community (cf. the Babel account, Gen.11)
It is Solomon who is judged in I Kings 11 -- but not Solomon alone, as it is also not Saul and David who alone are judged. In that ancient binding concept of community it is king and people who are judged. It is Solomon’s but at once also all men’s sins of apostasy, idolatry, the turning away of the human heart from God that brings the judgment of disruption, cleavage and tragic disunity.
And Yahweh said, . . . "Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech." So. . . they left off building the city [of God].
The essential language of Solomon and his prideful supporters in Judah became unintelligible to Northern Israel. The covenant community was broken asunder and two centuries later, the prophet Isaiah recalls the day of separation as an event of singular tragedy (Isa. 7:17)
Footnotes:
1 E.g., Pfeiffer, op. cit., pp. 340 if.
2 As discussed by R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1946) , p. 24.
3 In support of this view see John Bright, The Kingdom of God (Nashville and New York: Abingdon Press, 1953) , p. 33, n. 24.
4 See further von Rad, op. cit., pp. 8 if.
5 See the extended footnote in T. H. Robinson, A History of Israel, Vol. 1 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1932) , pp. 287 f.
6 The present text is unsatisfactory. See T. H. Robinson, op.
7 See Albright, op. cit., p. 25.
8 Pfeiffer. op. cit., p. 341.
9 From "The Rock,’ Collected Poems, by T. S. Eliot, p. 188. Copyright, 1934, by Harcourt, Brace & Co. Used by permission of Harcourt, Brace & Co. and Faber & Faber, Ltd.
10 We are in substantial agreement with the interpretation of son, op. cit., pp. 239 if.
11 See R. H. Pfeiffer, "Facts and Faith in Biblical History" Journal of Biblical Literature Vol.70, no.1 (March, 1951), p.5
12 The text of I Kings 6 is obscure at points and an exact reconstruction of the temple is hardly possible, although many have attempted it. Ezekiel’s description of the restored temple in Ezek. 40-48 and Josephus’ detailed outline of Herod’s temple are of some help. Perhaps the most satisfactory attempt at reconstruction is that of Garber and Howland: see "Reconstucting Solomon’s Temple" by Paul L. Garber, The Biblical Archaeologist Vol. xiv, no. 1 (Feb., 1951)
13 Fertility symbols apparently adorned the temple in profusion (see I Kings 6:29) Around the outside of the temple side chambers were built, for what purpose we do not precisely know. At times they may have been used for representations or images of other deities. Solomon himself certainly made provision for the worship of many other gods than Yahweh.
Chapter 2: Legend. <I>Covenant with the Fathers (Genesis 12-50) </I>
He is Yahweh our God;
his judgments are in all the earth
He is mindful of his covenant for ever,
of the word that he commanded, for a thousand
generations,
the covenant which he made with Abraham,
his sworn promise to Isaac,
which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute,
to Israel as an everlasting covenant. . . .
Ps. 105:7-10