Saul

[marcialou]

Does anyone know anything about Saul? Why does God send evil spirits to torment him?

Marcia

[Rahel]

Hi, Marcia.
Your question raises so many important questions about Saul -- Why does God turn against Saul? Why did God pick Saul to begin with? What are the evil spirits?

Some of these questions will be addressed as you continue reading
The Life of David, and the Bible offers some answers, as well, if you do have a chance to look at the early chapter of the book of I Samuel. I'd love to hear from you and other book club members what answers come up in your reading, and what you think of them.

[BGreen3001]

I think the short answer is that Saul didn't obey God's command to destroy every last Amalekite. Saul spared the king, thereby incurring God's wrath and bringing down every possible punishment on his own head. Barbara

[marcialou]

Your question raises so many important questions about Saul-Rahel

I think the short answer is that Saul didn't obey God's command to destroy every last Amalekite. - Barbara

So God turned against Saul because he didn't follow through on a command to commit genocide. This raises important questions about God. Is this a loving, just God or one who demands blind obedience without regard to conscience? Can we discuss God as a literary character without it becoming a religious debate?

[Robert_Pinsky]

Marcialou,in THE LIFE OF DAVID my interest in Saul was in the story of his character versus that of David: a big, earnest man, unwilling to lead, trying to do a good solid job, insecure about people's affection for him versus a small, quick man, quite willing to lead, able to apply his imagination to any job, secure in the knowledge that people like him, sometimes against their own judgment or despite his failings.

So in my understanding Saul's torment by evil spirits, the Lord's apparent lack of sympathy for him, has no good answer. In this it resembles life: torment and fortune do not appear to be distributed according to reason or justice. The story of these two men, both sympathetic and appealing but in quite different names, dramatizes that.

They are two kinds of hero, and the story reveals their heroic character, in relation to communities and to one another, in compelling ways, at once surprising and recognizable.

[mildone]

Saul, when annointed by the Prophet Samuel to be king of Israel, hid himself among the luggage rather than be pointed out as their new king. His early behavior as king demonstrate his confusion. He certainly felt inadequate but to his credit he had no model of how a king should act. Certainly his early action was successful and nothing beats inadequate feeling than success. But he does have many failings and these failings bring disaster to Israel and that brings up a major problem--Why was he selected to be King of Israel?

[Robert_Pinsky]

Mildone, the narrative seems to answer your question by showing Saul's energy, insight and skill in organizing the loosely-connected, initially reluctant people into an effective fighting force. His method is dramatic, violent and effective. As I try to convey in the book, his physical size--"head and shoulders" above the others-- has a counterpart in his heroic largeness of mind and moral force.

Saul's misfortune, I try to point out, is the appearance of another hero: quicker, more many-minded, more loveable in a way that seems unfair.

In short, I think he is chosen as king for his qualities.

[marcialou]

So in my understanding Saul's torment by evil spirits, the Lord's apparent lack of sympathy for him, has no good answer. In this it resembles life: torment and fortune do not appear to be distributed according to reason or justice. – RP

Robert_Pinsky

For me, Saul is a tragic figure for the reasons you state above. David may have his ups and downs, but Saul is doomed from the start. God, speaking through Samuel, thrusts the responsibility upon him but gives him no respect. God sets Saul up as a way to punish the Israelites for wanting a king. Samuel tells them “When the day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen.” No wonder some troublemakers don’t trust him.

As you have written, Saul lives in a world where the ruling forces are violence and God’s capricious will. He fights hard and with considerable success to save his people from the Philistines to the west and the Ammonites to the east, and the Moabites and Edomites to the south. He wants to please God, too.

How proud he is when he defeats the Amalekites, killing almost everyone and everything in sight. He saves only the best animals, which he plans to sacrifice to God, and the Amalekite king, whom he has in captivity. Rather than give him credit for a job well done, God rejects him for not completely annihilating the Amalekites, as ordered. Saul is confused, then contrite. When he is refused forgiveness, he goes mad.

As you say, life is not fair. What makes me so sympathetic to Saul, is not only does he have bad luck, but he is viewed as deserving/having caused his bad luck because of a few paltry sins. Reading Saul’s story makes me want to tell him, “You were a good king. Those who came after you stood on your shoulders.” And then I’d have him read Why Bad Things Happen to Good People.

Marcia

Message Edited by marcialou on 09-04-2007 11:45 PM

[mildone]

Robert Pinsky,
Thank you for your reply to my question. You are right and your reply was a clear answer to my question. I like to wrestle with scripture to obtain its deeper meaning. I am not always successful but it does aide in keeping me focused. I undertand that Saul did not head God's voice nor invoke God in his battles and governing problems.
Thank you for your prompt reply.
mildone

[Robert_Pinsky]

The conversation with Mildone and Marcialou makes me realize again how powerful a contrast there is between two heroes, in Samuel I & II. As in the Iliad or War and Peace, the differences between oversize, awesomely _large_ figures like David and Saul seem to reflect central human mysteries.

The moral, political, sexual, artistic, psychological differences-- even how and when and why David and Saul dance!-- also reflect metaphysical and, yes, theological ideas worth thinking about forever.

Writing the book, I felt guided by my sense that the David I behold reflects layers of thinking and story-telling over many generations -- that the David I see and try to write about is necessarily partial, never the entire story. Of all human lives, his seems abobr all to embody that principle, that ongoing continuity and multiplicity.

In that sense, the story of Saul and David continues, it is still taking place.

[Len]

In my imagination the difference between the two characters is that Saul represents a Mosaically reluctant earnest, if at times despairing (Linclonesque?) leader and David a more ironic paradoxical one. A poet murderer.

[mildone]

I am rather reluctant to make any comment since I do not have your book to read. I ordered the book last week and I am waiting for its arrival. But I do have questions and one of my questions deals with the Witch of Endor. Saul and Jewish law bands the actions of the Witch of Endor yet Saul visits her and request that she communicate with Samuel the Prophet who is dead. She does so. Here Saul openly disobeys God's command and in doing so finds further information from Samuel that he has been rejected as King of Israel. It is a strange story. I need help in understanding this episode in the life of Saul and its meaning.

Since I do not have your book at present and you may have answered my question in your book I apologize if this is so but in lieu of the book would you help me with this question.
mildone

[marcialou]

---

Len wrote:
In my imagination the difference between the two characters is that Saul represents a Mosaically reluctant earnest, if at times despairing (Linclonesque?) leader and David a more ironic paradoxical one. A poet murderer.

---

I can see Lincolnesque for Saul, with their both suffering from depression, leadership in war, and untimely deaths.

My own personal image based on modern leaders is Saul cast as a combination of Bush senior towards the end of his term with some Nixon paranoia thrown in. Bush was also depressed (war-weary) and could see a younger, nimbler, more charismatic man nipping at his heels. Nixon thought everyone was out to get him, and both suffered untimely political deaths.

That casts David as Clinton: "quite willing to lead, able to apply his imagination to any job, secure in the knowledge that people like him, sometimes against their own judgment or despite his failings," as Robert Pinsky describes David. They both were musical(harp/clarinet), they both loved women with Monica as Bathsheba, and Hilary as Michal, perhaps? They were both popular with the masses, and defeated their predecessors.

What was Bush's "sin" that he should lose such favor with "God"? For the sake of comparison it's tempting to say it was not completing the Iraq War (as in not killing all the Amalekites.) But my own political judgement tells me that would be stretching the point too far.

Marcia

[Rahel]

---

mildone wrote:
I am rather reluctant to make any comment since I do not have your book to read. I ordered the book last week and I am waiting for its arrival. But I do have questions and one of my questions deals with the Witch of Endor. Saul and Jewish law bands the actions of the Witch of Endor yet Saul visits her and request that she communicate with Samuel the Prophet who is dead. She does so. Here Saul openly disobeys God's command and in doing so finds further information from Samuel that he has been rejected as King of Israel. It is a strange story. I need help in understanding this episode in the life of Saul and its meaning.

Since I do not have your book at present and you may have answered my question in your book I apologize if this is so but in lieu of the book would you help me with this question.
mildone

---

Mildone, this is indeed a strange story. I do think that you'll find Robert Pinsky's discussion of the Witch of Endor episode helpful once you have the book, and I don't want to try to summarize it for you before you have the chance to read it. In the meantime though, it may be useful to think of what might drive Saul to pursue an encounter of a sort that he himself has outlawed -- what does it say about Saul's emotional and spiritual condition?

I hope your book arrives soon!

[Robert_Pinsky]

Saul consulting a "witch"; her successful summoning of a dead soul; that soul's intransigent, to me unappealing rejection of Saul-- and resembling these surprising elements, the successful offering of graven images (rats, tumors) by Philistine wise men to the Jewish deity; the names of two sons of Saul ending in "Bal" . . . this Endor incident is another suggestion to me of how deeply layered, how deeply strange, these powerful stories are.

[LynnSomerstein]

What a magical mixing of pestilential religious offerings- golden tumors and rats, transmogrifications of the golden calf!

I almost see visions myself as I picture Samuel dragged up from the Dead. Then we read about Nahash. Nahash means snake in Hebrew, I believe. Nahash calls for men's eyes and and Saul slices up oxen.

Old gods had better be powerful when they had to deal with these guys.

Of course, contemporary villains are equally vicious, but often manage to keep their hands looking clean.

[marcialou]

---

mildone wrote:
Saul and Jewish law bands the actions of the Witch of Endor yet Saul visits her and request that she communicate with Samuel the Prophet who is dead. She does so. Here Saul openly disobeys God's command and in doing so finds further information from Samuel that he has been rejected as King of Israel. It is a strange story.

---

1 Sam 28:5,6 reports When Saul saw the Philistine army, he was afraid; terror filled his heart. He inquired of the LORD, but the LORD did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets.

God has abandoned him. He is desperate. He has nothing to lose by consulting the witch of Endor. The passage underscores Saul's bad luck and his unwitting propensity to invoke the Lord's displeasure.

The whole story has a feel of something you'd tell around a campfire to wide-eyed children. The raising of the dead is enough to make your skin prickle, but Samuel's cranky response is enough to make you laugh. It's a precautionary tale: You never know when you are going to invoke God's wrath, so you better be careful and comic relief, all in one.

Marcia

[mildone]

Marcialou,
I have been enlighten and edifyied by the writings in the Hebrew Scriptures. I am presently 77 years of age and am still deeply moved by the Prophets, Psalms,Wisdom writings, and the historical parts of the bible. But David leaves me with conflicting feelings and emotions. I am both lifted up by the story and distressed by his bad behaviour (so to speak). I know David has strong convictions and has the courage to live by these convictions and also to take the consequences for his actions. In this I feel he is a hero. Most of us live a rather flat life but not David. His life is not flat but full of adventure and the fullness of life.
Saul I feel was a loser from the beginning.
I just received the book "The Life of David" but sinced I ordered it during Labor Day weekend it took a little longer for me to receive it. It is very enjoyable to read and their is a wealth of new information for me to digest. Robert Pinsky is an excellent writer who knows how to keep his readers glued to the book. I have read the Witch of Endor over four times trying to unravel my confusion and the same with Saul. Maybe its my age or maybe I have never faced other thoughts about David and Saul before and a new insight into their story is hard for me to accept. But like David I shall take the path of adventure and excitement.
mildone

[Robert_Pinsky]

Dear Mildone,

In my understanding of this material, your responses--distress, confusion, liking David and feeling distressed by much that he does-- seem entirely appropriate and on target to me.

I feel the same.

I find it helpful to think of David (and Saul) as a "hero" in a way like the Homeric heroes: admirable, but far from perfect. The word "hero" refers partly to matters of scale, a kind of largeness that may overlap with many virtues, but is not the same as "good" or "virtuous."

At a certain scale, one who fights or struggles for the good of a community becomes heroic. That is why, in the book,I compare David to Joan of Arc, Beowulf, and other heroes of many different kinds and cultures.

A second helpful idea for me, that also guided THE LIFE OF DAVID, is that the life of David is still happening. That is, each reading and understanding and midrash, yours and mine and Marcia's and Lynn's, embodies a new moment or movement in David and his career. When we read Samuel I & II and Kings, we are reading many layers of writing, thinking, editing. To me, this makes what we read greater: it is a mighty chorus of authors and editors and thinkers and rabbis, all contributing to the story of this extraordinary and essential life.

So: your responses make sense to me, in relation to this distressing, magnetic, enigmatic, still-evolving hero.

[LynnSomerstein]

Idealizing the character of someone like David makes him unavailable for conversation- he can't be touched. Since David was a poet, he probably only enjoyed being heroized some of the time.
The idealizing "reader's" feelings and imagination are likewise stilled, if he relates to an untouchable David.