Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible: First and Second Samuel

By Graeme Auld

This extract from the Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible provides Auld’s introduction to and concise commentary on First and Second Samuel. The Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible presents, in nontechnical language, the best of modern scholarship on each book of the Bible, including the Apocrypha. Reader-friendly commentary complements succinct summaries of each section of the text and will be valuable to scholars, students, and general readers.
 
Rather than attempt a verse-by-verse analysis, these volumes work from larger sense units, highlighting the place of each passage within the overarching biblical story. Commentators focus on the genre of each text—parable, prophetic oracle, legal code, and so on—interpreting within the historical and literary context.
 
The volumes also address major issues within each biblical book—including the range of possible interpretations—and refer readers to the best resources for further discussions.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Jun 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781467453516

Book preview

1 and 2 Samuel

Graeme Auld

INTRODUCTION

There are two common types of strategy for reading the books of Samuel. They are related to each other, but they must also be distinguished. Literary approaches focus on the text. Since the text is an ancient text, we will need some historical background to help us set it in its time and read it better. However, our main concern is how best to respond to the text’s invitation to enter its own world as created by its author or authors. Historical approaches do require literary awareness but have different interests. They may use the book as evidence for the period in which it was written or completed. If major sources or separable elements can be detected, these may be studied for traces of that earlier time in which they were written. And, of course, they may use the book as evidence for the still earlier period on which it reports. If I come on a twentieth-century textbook which claims to offer a representative selection of eighteenth-century studies of the fifteenth century, I will be interested not only in the twentieth-century choice made and commentary offered but also in the eighteenth-century views of the fifteenth century and what may or may not be learned about the fifteenth century itself.

In the Hebrew Bible (HB), as in most English Bibles, these books are called the two books of Samuel. However, in the Septuagint (LXX) and some other ancient traditions, they are but the first two of four books called Kingdoms; that is, Samuel and Kings are clearly recognized as a connected story. And it is the overlapping fates of the first two kings which dominate these first two books. Though in the Hebrew tradition they bear the name of Samuel, it is David’s story which is the biggest—the biggest in Samuel or Kings—stretching from 1 Samuel 16 to 1 Kings 2. And Saul’s story bulks almost as large and is further spread out: introduced in 1 Samuel 9, he dies in 1 Samuel 31; but his shadow and the shadow of his house remain over the story of David till 2 Samuel 21, or even 1 Kings 2. It is not these two kings, however, but rather Samuel who anointed them, who is remembered in the Hebrew title.

And that title is at home in the wider context of our books, for the HB calls Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings the Former Prophets. Just as Elijah and Elisha, not Solomon and his successors, are the heroes of the books of Kings, so Samuel may be said to edge both Saul and David off center stage even in their own play. Prophecy is an important theme of the books of Samuel. Not only do Nathan and Gad play an important role after Samuel is gone, but a number of significant relationships are probed in scene after scene: of prophet and medium; of prophet and seer; of prophet and prophets; and of prophecy and

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