Prolegomena to the History of Israel

by Julius Wellhausen

This insertion is based on an older account of the breach between Samuel and Saul in 1Samuel xv. Here also the matter of dispute is a sacrifice, and Gilgal is the scene; and this alone serves to explain how Gilgal is adhered to in xiii. 7-15 in spite of all impossibility, as being the right and necessary place for the occurrence. Jehovah, by the mouth of Samuel, commands the king to devote the Amalekites to destruction because of an act of treachery they had committed against Israel in ancient times, and to spare no living thing. Saul accordingly makes war on the Amalekites and defeats them; but he does not carry out the proscription entirely, as he spares the best of their cattle and their king Agag, whom he takes prisoner. At Gilgal, where the victory is celebrated before Jehovah, he is called to account for this by Samuel, and states that he intended the booty for a sacrifice to Jehovah. His statement, however, makes no impression. "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams: behold, rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim. Because thou hast rejected the word of Jehovah, He also hath rejected thee."

The king acknowledges his guilt, and tries to pacify Samuel; but the latter turns from him in anger, and when Saul lays hold of him, his mantle tears.

"Jehovah hath torn the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and given it to one better than thee; and the Truthful One of Israel will not lie nor repent; for He is not a man, that He should repent."

Yet at Saul's entreaty that he would at least not refuse to honour him before the people, Samuel takes part in the sacrifice, and even begins it by hewing Agag in pieces before Jehovah. Then they part, never to see each other again; but Samuel mourns for Saul, that Jehovah had repented of having made him king over Israel. There is another narrative intimately connected with this one in subject and treatment, thought and expression, namely, that of the witch of Endor. When Saul, shortly before the battle in which he fell, surveyed the hostile army, he was seized with anxiety and terror. He inquired of Jehovah, but received no answer, neither by dreams, nor by the ephod, nor by prophets. In his extremity he was driven into the arms of a black art which he had formerly persecuted and sought to extirpate. By night and in disguise, with two companions, he sought out a woman at Endor who practiced the raising of the dead, and after reassuring her with regard to the mortal danger connected with the practice of her art, he bade her call up Samuel. She, on seeing the spirit ascending, at once perceives that the man he had come up to converse with is the king himself; she cries out loud, but allows herself to be reassured, and describes the appearance of the dead person. Saul does not see him, only hears him speak.

"Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? Jehovah doeth to thee as He spake by me: He rends the kingdom out of thy hand, and gives it to another, because thou obeyedst not the voice of Jehovah, nor executedst His fierce wrath upon Amalek; to-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me, and Jehovah also shall deliver the host of Israel into the hands of the Philistines."

At these words Saul falls all his length on the ground. He had eaten nothing all the day before and all night; he is with difficulty induced to take some food: then he rises up with his men to go and meet his fate (1 Samuel xxviii. 3-25).

Comparing with this original the copy in xiii. 7-15, we are struck, in the first place, with the placing of the rupture so much earlier. Scarcely is Saul made king when he is deposed, on the spot, at Gilgal. And for what reason? Samuel has fixed, in a purely arbitrary fashion, the time he is to wait, and Saul waits, and makes arrangements for departure only when the time has run out, although the need is pressing; and for this he is rejected! It is clear that Samuel has from the first felt towards him as a legitimate prince feels to a usurper; he has arranged so as to find an occasion to show unmistakably where they both stand. Strictly speaking he did not find the occasion, Saul having observed the appointed time; but the opinion is present, though unexpressed, that the king was not entitled to sacrifice, either before the expiry of the seven days or at any time: his sacrificing is regarded as sacrilege. And thus the autonomous theocracy stands all at once before our eyes, which no one thought of before Ezekiel. We are reminded of the stories of Joash and Uzziah in the Chronicles. The incidents in 1Samuel xv. xxviii. are similar, but the spirit of the narrative is different and more antique. The rejection does not come here with such mad haste, and we do not get the impression that Samuel is glad of the opportunity to wash his hands of the king. On the contrary, he honours him before the people, he mourns that Jehovah has rejected him; and Saul, who never again sees him alive, turns to him dead in the hour of his extremity, and does not regard him as his implacable enemy. Again, in the former case the king's offence is that he has too low an estimate of the sacredness of sacrifice, and fails to regard the altar as unapproachable to the laity: while in the latter case he is reproached with attaching. to sacrifice far too high a value. In the former case, in fine, the Deity and the representative of the Deity act with absolute caprice, confront men stiffly with commands of incredible smallness, and challenge them to opposition; in the latter, the conduct of Samuel is not (supposing it to have been the custom to devote enemies to destruction) unintelligible, nor his demeanour devoid of natural spirit; he appeals not to an irresponsible position, but to the manifest truth that obedience is better than the fat of rams.

Not that chapters xv. and xxviii. belong to the original growth of the tradition. In the case of xxviii. 3-25 it is easy to show the insertion: the thread of xxviii. 1, 2, coming from chapter xxvii. is continued at xxix. 1. According to xxviii. 4 the Philistines have advanced as far as Shunem in Jezreel; in xxix. 1 they are only at Aphek in Sharon, and they do not go on to Jezreel till xxix. 11. To prove an insertion in the case of chap. xv. we might point to the fact that there is a direct connection between xiv. 52 and xvi. 14; but this must be proved somewhat circumstantially. Let it suffice, then, to say that in the preceding narrative of Saul's history, the war with the Amalekites appears in quite a different light (ix. 1-X. 16, xi. xiii. xiv.; cf. also Numbers xxiv. 7). The occasion of it, according to xiv. 48, lay in the needs of the time, and the object was the very practical one of "saving Israel out of the hands of them that spoiled them." There is nothing here to suggest that the campaign was undertaken in consequence of a religious command, to punish the Amalekites for an offence over which long ages had passed, and information about which could only be gathered from historical books dealing with the age of Moses. Both the narratives, chap. xv. as well as chap. xxviii, are preludes of events afterwards to happen. At chap. xvi. David appears upon the scene; he is thenceforth the principal person of the story, and thrusts Saul on one side. Chapter xv. is the prophetic introduction to this change. The fact had been handed down that Saul was chosen by Jehovah to be king. How was it possible that in spite of this his rule had no continuance? Jehovah, who as a rule does not change His mind, was mistaken in him; and Samuel, who called the king, had now to his great sorrow to pronounce the sentence of rejection against him. The occasion on which he does this is evidently historical, namely, the festival of victory at Gilgal, at which the captured leader of the Amalekites was offered up as the principal victim. The sacrifice of Agag being quite repugnant to later custom, it was sought to account for it by saying that Saul spared the king, but Jehovah required his death, and caused him to be hewn in pieces at the altar by Samuel. The rest could easily be spun out of this; it is superfluous to discuss how. Chapter xxviii., again, is related to chap. xv. as the second step to the first. No proof is wanted to show that this is the prophetic shadow cast before the fall of Saul in his last fight with the Philistines. His turning to the witch to call up to him the departed Samuel suggests in the most powerful way his condition of God-forsakenness since Samuel turned away from him. And, to conclude-the general colouring of the hostile relation between Saul and Samuel is borrowed from the actual relations which must have come to subsist between the prophets and the kings, particularly in the kingdom of Samaria (I Kings xiv. 7). In their treatment of this relation our narratives manifestly take up the prophetic position; and the doctrinal ideas of which they are made the vehicles clearly show them to be prophetic conceptions.

VII.II.4. David is the first hero of Judah whom we meet with; and he at once throws all others into the shade. His acts are narrated to us in two detailed and connected works which are mutually complementary. The first of these is contained in 1Samuel xiv. 52-2 Sam viii 18, and in it we are circumstantially informed how David rose to the throne. There follows his principal achievement as king, the humiliation of the Philistines and the foundation of Jerusalem, the work concluding with a short notice of other remarkable circumstances. This narrative is preserved to us complete, only not in the earliest form, but with many interruptions and alterations. The second work, 2Samuel ix.-2Kings ii. is mutilated at its commencement, but otherwise almost completely intact, if 2Samuel xxi.-xxiv. be removed. It tells chiefly of the occurrences at the court of Jerusalem in the later years of the king, and carefully traces the steps by which Solomon, whose birth, with its attendant circumstances, is narrated at the outset, reached the throne over the heads of his brothers Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah, who stood before him. Both works are marked by an essentially historical character. The treatment is much more detailed, while not nearly so poetical as in the history of Saul (1Samuel ix. seq.). There are no exaggerations, such as xiv. 46 seq. The second is the better work of the two, and frequently affords us a glance into the very heart of events, showing us the natural occasions and human motives which gave rise to the different actions. The point of view is, however, the narrow one of Jerusalem; for example, the real reasons of the revolt of the men of Judah under Absalom are scarcely even hinted at. The leading sentiment of the writer, there can be no doubt, is enthusiasm for David, but his weaknesses are not concealed; the relations prevailing at his court, far from edifying as they are, are faithfully reported, and the palace intrigue which placed Solomon upon the throne is narrated with a naivete which is almost malicious. The first work (1Samuel xvi.- 2Samuel viii.) gives a less circumstantial narrative, but follows the thread of events not less conscientiously, and is based on information little inferior to that of the second. The author's partisanship is more noticeable, as he follows the style of a biographer, and makes David the hero of the history from his very first appearance, although king Saul is the ruling and motive power in it. But Judaistic leanings were unavoidable, and they have not gone so far as to transform the facts, nor indeed operated in a different way or to a greater degree here than local interest in the tribal hero, which is always the earliest motive for narration, has done in other cases. This praise applies to 1Samuel xvi. seq., however, only so far as its original form goes. It is different with the insertions, here very numerous, which have crept into the older connection, or replaced a genuine piece of the old story with a newer edition of it. In these the tendency to idealise the founder of the dynasty of Judah has worked creatively, and here we find rich materials for the history of the tradition, in the rude style in which alone it is possible as yet to construct that history. The beginning of the first work especially is overgrown with later legendary formations.

David, known as a man of courage and prudence, and of a skilful tongue, and recommended, moreover, by his skill on the harp, came to the king's court and became his armour-bearer (xvi. 14-23). He so approved himself in the war with the Philistines that Saul advanced him step after step, and gave him his daughter in marriage (xviii. 6 seq.). But the success and fame of the man of Judah filled Saul with jealousy, and in one of his fits of frenzy (to which x. 10 also shows him to have been subject) he threw his javelin at David, who was seeking to drive away the evil spirit by his playing (xix. 8-10). David agreed with Jonathan that it was advisable for him to absent himself, but this only confirmed the king's suspicions, which prompted him to destroy the priests of Nob, because their head had provided David with food and consulted the oracle for him (xxi 2-7, xxii. 6-23). The fugitive himself Saul failed to lay hands on; he gathered round him his own family and other desperate men, and became their leader in the wilderness of Judah (xxii. 1-5, xxiii. 1-13, xxv. 2 seq.). To escape the repeated persecutions of Saul, he at length passed over to the country of the Philistines, and received the town of Ziklag in Judah as a fief from the hands of the prince Achish (xxvii. 1 seq.).