The Hebrew historian who put together the books of Samuel was no longer embarrassed, like the compiler of the book of Judges, by a want of materials. His embarrassment arose from a contrary cause. The documents before him relating to the history of the seer, to the rise of the monarchy and the adventures of David, were numerous, and the same event was sometimes recorded in different forms. He was called upon to harmonise and combine them together, and he doubtless experienced the same difficulty in doing so that the Assyriologists at present experience in reconciling the various accounts they have of the history of Babylonia in the thirteenth century B.C. That the latter can be reconciled, if only we knew a little more, we cannot doubt; but for the present the chronological inconsistencies seem irreconcilable. All that can be done is to set them side by side.
The compiler of the books of Samuel treated his materials in the same way. The result is that the picture of the Hebrew prophet which is presented to us is not always uniform in its colours. Sometimes he is a priest, sometimes the judge of all Israel, sometimes a mere local seer whose very name appears to be unknown to Saul.[[372]] Throughout the greater part of the narrative the Philistines are represented as the irresistible masters of the country; once, however, we hear that the cities they had captured were restored to Israel.[[373]] But it does not follow that because the colours of the picture are not uniform, a fuller knowledge of the history would not show that they are in harmony with one another. European critics are apt to forget that in the East, and more especially in the ancient East, conditions of life and society which are incompatible in Europe may exist side by side. John, the hermit of Lykopolis in Upper Egypt, was nevertheless on more than one occasion the arbiter of the destinies of the Roman Empire. And in the border warfare of Canaan cities passed backwards and forwards from one side to the other with a rapidity which it is difficult for the modern historian to realise.
Whether Samuel was a Levite or an Ephraimite by descent has been disputed. His father came from the village of Ramathaim-zophim in Mount Ephraim, and was descended from a certain Zuph, who is called ‘an Ephrathite.’[[374]] ‘Ephrathite’ signifies ‘a man of Ephraim’ (as in 1 Kings xi. 26). But it also signifies a native of Ephratah or Bethlehem in Judah (Ruth i. 2, 1 Sam. xvii. 12), and could therefore signify any other place of the same name. That there were other places of the name, the very name of Ephraim, ‘the two Ephras,’ is a witness,[[375]] and we might therefore see in the ‘Ephrathite’ merely a native of one of them. The Chronicler (1 Chron. vi. 26, 27, 33-38) definitely makes Samuel a Levite, and traces his genealogy back to Kohath. It is true that in the age of Samuel the priests, in spite of the Mosaic law, were not always of the family of Levi—the fact that David’s sons were ‘priests’ is a sufficient proof of this,[[376]]—but it seems hard to believe that such an infringement of the Levitical tradition would have been permitted at Shiloh. Nor is it likely that the genealogy given by the Chronicler was an invention. Samuel had been in a special manner the gift of Yahveh. His mother Hannah had borne no children to her husband Elkanah, and was accordingly exposed to the taunts of a second and more fortunate wife. Once each year did the whole family ‘go up’ to Shiloh, ‘to worship and to sacrifice unto the Lord of Hosts.’ On one of these occasions Hannah besought Yahveh with tears that He would grant her a son, promising to dedicate him to the service of the sanctuary should he be born. A Babylonian tablet, dated in the fifth year of Kambyses, records a similar dedication by a Babylonian mother of her three sons to the service of the sun-god at Sippara.[[377]] In this case, however, the sons did not leave their mother’s house until they were grown up, when they entered the temple, where part of their duty was to attend the daily service.
Hannah’s prayer was granted, and a son was born. The name which he received has no relation to the circumstances of his birth, in spite of the etymology suggested for it in 1 Sam. i. 20, so long as we look only to its Hebrew spelling. But if this spelling has been derived from a cuneiform original all becomes clear. Samû-il in Assyrian would mean ‘God hears,’ and there would thus be a fitting connection between the name and the story of the prophet’s birth. The fact is noteworthy, as it suggests that the history of Samuel was first written in the cuneiform characters of Babylonia; and that the cuneiform syllabary was used in Israel up to the time of the fall of Shiloh.[[378]]
As soon as the child was weaned he was brought to the sanctuary along with other gifts. These consisted of meal and wine, and three bullocks, one of which was slain at the time of the dedication. ‘The priest’ who presided over the services of the temple was old and infirm, and the management of the sanctuary was really in the hands of his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas. His own name was Eli. But he comes before us without introduction; we know nothing of his parentage and descent, and even the Chronicler found no record of his genealogy. That he was a lineal descendant of Aaron, however, admits of no doubt. This, indeed, is plainly stated not only in the prediction of the destruction that should overtake Eli’s house (1 Sam. iii. 14), but also in the opening words of the prophecy of ‘the man of God’ (1 Sam. ii. 27, 28).[[379]] The very name of Phinehas, given to Eli’s son, connects him with the line of Aaron and the long bondage of the Israelites in Egypt. Phinehas is not Hebrew, but the Egyptian Pi-Nehasi ‘the Negro,’ and could have no sense or meaning in the Israel of the age of Samuel except as an old family name.
Samuel was clad in the linen ephod, the sacred vestment and symbol of the priest, and ‘ministered unto Yahveh before Eli.’ One night, before ‘the lamp of God’ had gone out which burned before the ark of the covenant,[[380]] ‘the word of the Lord’ came to the boy in his sleep. Three times did it call to him, and then came the revelation of the punishment which Yahveh was about to bring on the house of the high priest.[[381]] His sons had been unfaithful to their office; not only had they lain ‘with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation,’ they had made men abhor the offering of the Lord, and the weak old man had restrained them not. The law had ordained that the fat of the sacrifice belonged to Yahveh, and that before it was burned upon the altar neither priest nor offerer could receive anything of the victim. Unless the law was complied with, the sacrifice was useless; Yahveh had been robbed of His portion, and no blessing could follow upon the offering. But the sons of Eli persistently set at naught the strict injunctions of the law. Before the fat was burned, their servant came and struck his three-pronged fork into the flesh that had been placed in the caldron, demanding that it should be given to him raw. God’s priests thus mutilated the sacrifices that were made to Him, and compelled His worshippers to defraud Him of His due. The Israelites began to shrink from bringing their yearly offerings to Shiloh, and the downward course of the religion of Israel was hastened by the cynical greed of its priests.[[382]]
Eli had already been warned by ‘a man of God’ of the coming vengeance of Yahveh. The prophet destined to play so important a part in the history of Israel now appears almost for the first time upon the scene. Deborah, indeed, had been a prophetess, and a prophet had denounced the idolatry of his countrymen during the period of Midianitish oppression; but the spirit of Yahveh, which, in later days, revealed itself in the form of prophecy, had hitherto rather inspired those upon whom it had fallen to become leaders in war and ‘judges’ of their people. Now it assumed a new shape. Out of the misery and confusion produced by the Philistine raids sprang the first great outburst of Hebrew prophecy. Those who still believed Israel was the chosen people of Yahveh, and that He alone was God over all the earth, were profoundly stirred by the triumph of the uncircumcised. There was an outbreak of that religious enthusiasm, degenerating at times into fanaticism, which has occurred again and again in the East. The ‘seer’ took the place of the ‘judge.’ The waking visions which he beheld revealed the future, and declared to him and the people the will of Yahveh. The arms of flesh had failed; all that was left was the ‘open vision,’ where the events of the future were pictured beforehand, and men learned how to escape disaster.
Around the seer there gathered bands of disciples, closely resembling the dervishes of to-day. They, too, received a part of the prophetic spirit, and at times, under the influence of strong emotions, passed, as it were, out of the body into an ecstatic state. Like the modern dervishes, however, they were completely under the control of the seer. At a word from him their ecstasy would cease, and they would once more become ordinary citizens of the world. But the spirit that moved in them was easily communicated to religious or excitable natures. The messengers sent by Saul to arrest David at Ramah were themselves arrested by the spirit of prophecy which permeated the home of Samuel, and when Saul himself followed in his wrath, he, too, was suddenly overcome by the same divine influence. ‘The spirit of God was upon him also; and he went on and prophesied, until he came to Naioth (the convent) in Ramah. And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that night.’
But this ecstatic excitement was not of the essence of Hebrew prophecy, and the latter soon divested itself of it. The dervish element, indeed, remained almost to the last; Elijah is a proof of it, and even Hosea and Isaiah still recur at times to symbolic action. But it became subordinate and purely symbolical, while the seer himself became a prophet. The conception that gathered round him was no longer that of a seer of visions, a revealer of the future, but of an interpreter of the will of God to man. Prediction there might be in his prophecies; but it was accidental only, and dependent on conditions which were clearly expressed. If the people repented of their sins, God’s anger would be turned away from them; if, on the contrary, they persisted in their evil ways, disaster and destruction would fall upon them. The message of Yahveh was conditional; it did not contain the revelation of an inevitable future.
In this respect the Hebrew prophet was unique. His name nâbî is found in Babylonian, where it takes the form of nabium or nabu, ‘the speaker.’ It was the name of the prophet-god of Babylon, Nebo, the interpreter of the will of Bel-Merodach, the supreme deity of the city. Nebo declared to mankind the wishes and commands of Merodach; he was, too, the patron of literature, the inventor, it may be, of writing itself. The name of the mountain whereon Moses died is a testimony that the worship of Nebo had been carried to the West in the old days of Babylonian dominion in Canaan, and we need not wonder that the word nâbî, with all that it implied, had been carried to the West at the same time. But it was not until after the age of Samuel that it made its way successfully into the Hebrew language. Samuel was still the roeh or ‘Seer,’[[383]] though the Babylonian word in the form of a verb (hithnabbê) was already applied to his ecstatic companions who prophesied around him.[[384]] But the word answered to a need. As the Hebrew prophet ceased more and more to be a seer, it became necessary to find some new title for him which should express more accurately his true nature, and the word nâbî was already at hand. The ‘seer,’ accordingly, fell into the background; the ‘prophet’ occupied his place.