1st Samuel - An Introduction

As a short introduction to the next book of 1st Samuel, TB notes that the books of 1st and 2nd Samuel, as well as 1st and 2nd Kings used to only be one book. It wasn’t until I think he said the Septuagint was compiled that the books of Samuel and Kings were separated and then again in the 1600s, Samuel was split into 1st and 2nd Samuel and Kings was split into 1st and 2nd Kings. I guess this make sense because all these books have a lot of chapters in them, so this makes for a nice ease of use. The way he does his lectures, I think, is that they do one lecture per week and each lecture can contain one chapter and that one chapter can be stretched out into multiple lectures, like I think chapter 2 takes 4 lectures to cover. So when he said that he was going to take the next two years covering just these four books, it made sense timing wise, but I hope it doesn’t take me that long.

TB also notes that a main issue that arises with these 4 books is the translation issues and that there’s a lot of fuss made about meaning and word choices, etc and that arises here in these books a lot. I think this brings up a topic that I’ve been dealing with a lot recently which is what the gospel really is, especially when relating to the scriptures. I saw a video last night that talked about the concept of God hardening Pharoah’s heart and the video said that the Greek word used for “hardened” could also be interpreted as “strengthened” which reaffirms the meaning that we’ve discussed previously, that God can take our natural tendencies or previous decisions and make them even more resolved if it serves his purposes. I’ve seen this happen in my own life, which was a surprise to me when I saw it, but was also a full circle moment for me, because it made sense then. But in this case, interpretation matters.

I also saw another video a couple of months ago that went through parts of the KJV translation of the Bible and the original Greek and showed in places where King James at the time had instructed the translators to change some of the phrases to indicate that kingship is a divine right, and changed some of the phrases concerning women because he had a certain agenda. All these are in line with what TB talked about in his introduction lecture. It was pretty good, very in depth, much more than I can go into here today, but the jist of it that variations between translations and interpretations can be attributed to the individual translators personal beliefs of what the writers meant, how they interpreted the teachings, how they spoke at the time, how they pronounced words, etc.

This concept also goes in line with the moment of faith crisis that I had when I was listening to the Great Lectures series on how we got the Bible and the lecturing professor said that the story of Noah and the flood is also found in the Gilgamesh epoch and almost certainly the Hebrews took that story from Gilgamesh and I was thrown through a loop for about 2 weeks because I also understood the story of Noah to be literal, that the whole entire earth was flooded and the only people remained were Noah and his family and that this was a true, literal story recorded in the Bible. And then the professor said something to the effect of “we don’t know if it actually happened, if it was a small localized flood, or if it was just an illustrative parable used as a teaching tool.” It took me 2 weeks to come out of that because I felt lied to, I had to ask myself if I was wrong about the flood, what else was I wrong about, what else was a lie? I think I finally came out of it because the professor who said those things was an active Christian herself, even knowing all the things that she said and I was able to take that and say, ok my testimony of Jesus Christ is not based on whether or not the flood actually happened. If it didn’t literally happen, or if it was different then I thought previously, the account is still profitable and the prophets considered the Bible to be the word of God, not a recorded history. So the story was in there because God found it to be instructive to the people, He didn’t promise that it was a historical record. That’s how I’m coming to these next four books, or really any of the Bible. I’m not promised a historically accurate record, but I am promised the word of God so my job is to figure out why it’s instructive from God’s perspective.

I think that I’ve going to start confronting anything from the view point of who I know God to be and then interpret everything through that lens and I think that will be the most constructive for me. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what we’ve learned, especially so far in the Old Testament, and asked myself, How did Moses know to hit the rock and make water come out? Did God tell him to do it? Did he ask God to make that the solution like with the brother of Jared and the stones? I know I can go look it up and see, but either way I have questions. If God told him to do it, was Moses just so used to hearing God’s voice that he heard it, understood, and then did it? Did Moses pray and ask for a solution first? How does that work in the context of Jesus saying “It is not meet that I command in all things”? And if Moses came up with the solution on his own, how did he know that God would honor what he decided to do? Because even just in that one event, it all seems like a game, how do I handle this problem when only a miracle will solve it? Do I have to pray first, do I make the decision on my own, do I wait for God to tell me? Like there has to be a formula because, again, it feels like a game, like there is no right answer, but I know that God it not a God of confusion, I know that He’s not a God of games and I think what I’m going to do is start with the foundation of God is not confusion, he does not play games, and then try to build everything off of that.

Anyway, the book of 1st Samuel opens at the end of the era of the judges where Israel has descended into moral decay and idolatry with the subsequent bondage and destruction that comes with that. The Levitical priesthood was completely corrupt and defunct, and TB says, “If Israel was going to be salvaged from its current dismal state of bondage to sin and idolatry it would need yet another new beginning of sorts and it would be necessarily for God to start at His own earthly sanctuary at Shiloh; but such a rescue could not possibly be accomplished using those corrupt men who were priest-pretenders.” The IM says that Samuel is the last judge of Israel, so we’ll see how that goes, I’m excited for this next part.