Attacking the Philistines - 1st Samuel 4

Now that Samuel was recognized as a prophet throughout all of Israel, which had not been united for a while, “the word of Samuel came to all Israel.” We don’t know what the word was nor do we know what God said to Samuel beforehand to cause him to put this word out. The result of Samuel’s word, though, was that “Israel went out against the Philistines to battle.” Presumably Samuel told Israel to go to battle against the Philistines because presumably the Lord told Samuel to tell them to do that. TB reminds us that the Philistines were seafaring people so the fact that they had a military presence so far into Israel’s territory was proof that Israel had not only lost significant territory to them but just how entrenched the Philistines were in Israelite society. He also reminded us that the Philistines had a professional, skilled military whereas the Israelite army was most goat herders and farmers, so militarily, without God, it was going to be a bloodbath and the only reason why the Hebrews could have been persuaded to go to battle against the Philistines was that they believed that God had their back.

What’s really interesting about all of this though was that God didn’t have their back because they were wicked, and when they first went to battle against the Philistines, 4,000 of them were killed. Now this is the part where we have to stop and question some of our assumptions. I don’t think that Samuel would have told the Hebrews to go to battle against a far superior force unless told to do so by the Lord, and I’m not even sure that Samuel knew how it was going to play out, that they were going to lose. So this begs the question, why would God set up His people for defeat and slaughter? This is a question that I’ve been asking myself for more than the last year, why would God set up circumstances that resulted in ruin and catastrophe? Why would he set up his people to fail? It seems so unfair and really feeds into the whole narrative that I’ve had in my head about God since childhood, that he’s not nice, that he’s just a power hungry jerk who delighted to see me suffer.

That’s been my experience with people in authority over me since I was a small child, so naturally I viewed God the same way. It wasn’t until I started this blog back in 2013 when I learned differently. There was a day when it suddenly hit me who God was and who I was to Him, and it changed my life and I lived in that truth since then. But now with this tragedy within my family, and spending the last year asking God why he didn’t intervene in our behalf, I’ve kind of been stuck in this place of, which is it? Have I been deceived and if God exists, is he actually this monster of a man like I believed previously and if so then my whole life has been a lie? Or is God actually the man I discovered Him to be back in 2013 and if so then my world view that I’ve built over my lifetime is true, but I have to accept that He set us up for failure, and if that’s true, then I have to accept that He did it for our own good as is promised in the scriptures. And that’s so counterintuitive, to have deep and immense failure work for your good, but I have to either accept that or accept that I was wrong about who God is and the purpose and meaning of the gospel.

The elders of the Israel saw this massive loss and asked the same question I did, “Wherefore hath the Lord smitten us to day before the Philistines?” They want to know the same thing, and TB notes that they recognize that it was God who defeated them in battle, not the Philistines. What TB said they should have done at that point was to consult God for what He wanted them to do. Of course they didn’t do that but it’s interesting to speculate what God’s answer to them would have been if they had. I think that God would have told them to repent and become righteous, reject all things from the Philistines and all other pagan Canaanites and then He would give them victory. But they didn’t ask God, they figured out that they lost because they didn’t take the ark of the covenant with them. Interesting that they didn’t think about that beforehand, and also a commentary on their idolatry, thinking that the ark would save them. So they send for the ark, and Eli’s two sons bring it down to the battle ground with some other priests presumably.

The Hebrews have a huge morale boost when the ark shows up and “shouted with a great shout, so that the earth rang again.” TB notes that this most likely meant that they blew into shofars and made a tremendous noise. The noise was so loud that it rattled the Philistines’ professional army, they had to be given a pep talk from their leadership. The pep talk worked and the Philistines killed 30,000 Israelites and captured the ark of the covenant. Not only that but fulfilling God’s promise to Eli, his two sons were both killed that day. Why? Why would God tell Israel to do something that was going to kill so many of them, get the ark taken, and result in complete defeat? I think hindsight here is the only way we can make any sense of this. TB said something that was comforting to me, he said, “Interestingly although we’re not told what God’s oracle was to Samuel that precipitated this particular battle, we can see form what proceeded that sometimes God’s directions to us don’t wind up accomplishing what we might hope for or expect. There is no way this Hebrew militia of farmers and herdsmen would have banded together and fought if they though the outcome would be anything other than victory. But as Job and so many others have discovered in their journey with Yehoveh, God usually gives us information on a ‘need to know’ basis; and apparently Israel didn’t need to know anymore than that they were to take on the Philistines… which (to their credit) they did. The outcome was obviously beyond their wildest nightmares.”

This was comforting to me because that’s been my exact experience, especially recently, that I did and do what I think God wants me to do and the outcome is my worst nightmare. And I think it’s hard too because I hear all these general conference talks about how God will intervene on our behalf and protect our children and things like that, but my response is always, “yeah, except when He doesn’t.” And I know that is cynical of me and all that but I’m still grieving, and I do feel betrayed and I am trying to square who I believe God to be with the view point of Him feeding my family to the wolves, especially when I look around and seemingly everyone around me has healthy, happy, well-adjusted lives and families and children. But my little family gets crushed repeatedly, all the time and it’s just so maddening and heartbreaking because why? Like in my ward I look around and God coddled all these white boys but fed my son to the wolves. Why didn’t my son get the protection and positive intervention that all these other boys did? I’ve never asked why before, with everything that I’ve suffered, but now I am. Apparently I’m on a need to know basis, and I guess I don’t need to know.

I think one of the reasons why the “why” matters so much to me is because, like here God destroyed this part of Israel because they were wicked, and maybe my biggest fear is that all this has happened to me because I’m bad too, maybe all this happened because my son is bad. And maybe that’s true. I look at church leaders and think they haven’t suffered even a tenth of the things that I have, so if it’s just spiritual development and growth then why did they not have to experience the depth of suffering that I did, but I do have to? And I guess my fear is that the answer is that I am so much a worse person then them that I had to be broken down more, that I deserved punishment and they didn’t. Logically, I don’t think that’s true but emotionally I think it might be, that I’m naturally such a bad person that I need to be broken more than most other people in order to achieve the same spiritual results. And what’s hard with that is that I’ve genuinely tried my best to be a good person my whole life, I’ve clearly failed a lot just like everyone else, but if my best still results in me having a worse character than everyone else, then is it even possible to get to be “good enough”? I’ve never believed in God punishing us. Correcting, disciplining, rehabilitating, sure I believe that but the God that I love would never be punitive without a rehabilitation factor, that’s repentance, right? So again, logically, I don’t think that I’m being punished, and I don’t think that my hardships are because I’m bad. Logically I believe that any and all suffering has to be justified by a loving God as serving some type of purpose in His will that He will use for our good, our salvation. Logically, I believe that the pain and suffering is for a purpose and that just because I don’t understand the plan doesn’t mean that it’s not real and that it’s not important.

Then why wouldn’t God just tell us why He’s working things the way that He is, or requiring us to suffer in the ways that we are? Why not just tell us? I asked that question and then went to see a patient, and when I was gone, I had the thought that there’s probably levels of spirituality ranging from “I won’t do or believe anything I can’t see with my eyes and completely understand.” This is an understandable line of thinking. I was talking to a friend at work the other day and we were talking about how management had tried to implement these policies that didn’t make any sense so we weren’t going to do them and one of the lines she said was, “if you want me to make changes to what I’m doing that works then you need to explain to me the purpose of your changes and why I need to do them. You need to get my buy in before I’ll do it.” Even in the book “Extreme Ownership” one of the principles of leadership that Jocko Wilinks talks about is explaining the reasons for policies and changes and get people to understand the purposes and get them to buy into it. These are great human leadership qualities, and I guess the point is that it’s because humans are flawed and suspectable to error and failure and ego and everything else that goes into why we fail and mistrust each other.

The difference is that God is not human, He’s perfect, He’s incapable to making decisions that aren’t for our ultimate benefit even if they are painful at the time. We deal with only humans all day, even the good ones are flawed, so it makes sense that we would take the same attributes of humans and deal with God in the same mistrustful manner, that’s understandable. The problem is that when we take that approach with God, there is very little that He can do in our hearts and with our lives because we won’t let Him because we don’t understand.

The opposite end of that extreme is “You don’t have to explain anything to me, I’ll do whatever you want, and even if I experience pain, I will trust in you because I know that you only allow the pain that is absolutely necessary.” That’s the opposite end of that spectrum and this is where God can fully work in our lives because we are completely open. If God were to explain every reason for everything that happens in our lives, there wouldn’t be any time for us to do anything ever because it would be all explanations all the time, like that’s all our time would be, and it’s a slippery slope. If we expected Him to explain the whys and what fors of all the big painful events, then eventually it would get to the point where we would want to know the reason for every stubbed toe and red light, it would escalate to the point of being paralyzing, no one would ever do anything because all our time would be spent in this endless explanation. And even if He did explain everything, a lot of people probably wouldn’t believe Him anyway, constantly debating that there was a different and better way, so it wouldn’t be an effective teach tool anyway because people would resist that just as much as they would resist not being told anything. Completely ineffective as a management tool on the cosmic scale of God’s actions. And there are times I’ve had in my own life when I’ve been able to look back and see “oh that’s why that happened,” and that’s probably a tender mercy where He explains Himself in hindsight, and honestly I’m sure that’s what will happen with my current struggle, at some point I’ll look back and it will all make sense, but man it’s painful until then.

I guess the point is that everyone is somewhere on the spectrum from “no way” to “I’ll do whatever you want” and the further we get down that spectrum the more useful and steadfast our lives can be. It’s the king Noah versus Abinadi scale. They both died the same way, being burned to death, but the difference was the power and confidence that Abinadi had that his suffering had purpose and meaning, the relationship that he had with God and he made a huge difference in the lives of a lot of people bringing them to God. Noah on the other hand was selfish, self-serving, scared, and didn’t have the power that Abinadi had. Maybe the whole point is what do I want to do? Do I want to tantrum until God explains everything to me, which He won’t do for the reasons that we discussed earlier? Or do I want to just choose to say “ok I trust you, I’ll do whatever you want,” and let my life work that way? I think I keep waiting for the feeling to come of letting go and accepting it the higher way, because it’s worked like that before, my feelings just change. But I think that this time it’s going to have to be a choice, I’m going to have to choose to accept that the answers that I want aren’t coming and that I will move forward anyway with them. Wow, that was a lot to process, I think writing it out like that has been helpful.

Anyway, when the runner came to tell Eli the outcome of the battle, that there was a slaughter, that his two sons were dead and that the ark of the covenant was taken, Eli was so distraught that he fell out of his chair, hit his head and died. Additionally, when Eli’s son’s wife heard the news, she went into labor, delivered a baby boy and then died from shock. The loss of the ark of the covenant was so devastating to the people of Israel, and it makes sense in the context that they were at their core an idolatrous people, meaning that physical objects used to symbolize God was what was most important to the religiously and spiritually. And that’s what was normal for those people so it’s not to be that surprising. TB notes that the loss of the ark meant that God was no longer with the people of Israel, which again makes sense in the idolatrous way, God is with an object and now that that object is gone, God is also gone. It’s also interesting to consider that they thought that their God could be powerless against mortal men if they were able to carry Him away. TB says that the loss of the ark, “is thought of as on par with the destruction of Jerusalem and exile into Babylon… (and now) all rights to their land inheritance on Canaan ceased. Calamity is simply not a big enough word… God has taken drastic action to change the course of redemptive history in Israel. All in the same day the people of Israel were punished for centuries of ever-increasing lawlessness and apostasy by losing 30,000 of their men in battle. The Priesthood was emptied out and those in charge, from the High Priest to the next two most senior priests were also dead. The power behind the priesthood (the glory of God) and the Ark (the sign of God’s Glory) were entirely removed from Israel’s possession. The Tabernacle no longer had purpose or meaning because the one who used to dwell there and gave it purpose and meaning has abandoned it.”

Looking back, it seems like God told Samuel to tell the Hebrews to go to war against the Philistines so that they could have a complete reset, realize how important what God gave them way, and build back a new society that was dedicated to Him. I wonder what the Hebrew’s motivation was for agreeing to go to war against the Philistines was in the first place. I bet the spoils of war was a big motivator. They probably thought that because God commanded them to attack the Philistines, they would win and be able to take all their stuff. I bet that’s what it was because it seems unlikely that they would be willing to risk their lives for God’s glory. Interesting.