I. SAMUEL. as having long protected. The people during the latter years of King Saul's reign were terribly exposed, not only to the Philistine encroachments, but also to the repeated and destructive forays of the powerful nomadic tribes bordering on the "Land of Promise." Another reason which seems to have induced the selection of this episode of Nabal and Abigail is supplied by the character of Abigail, who represents evidently a type of the Hebrew woman of the higher classes of that period. The influence of the schools of the prophets instituted by Samuel and of the prophetic order had already begun to be felt, and the result was that a loftier tone of morality and nobler and higher views of life began to be cultivated through the people. Abigail had doubtless learned her beautiful creed, her implicit trust in the Eternal Friend of Israel, her clear perception of truth and honour, from the Ramah schools of Samuel the seer. But if we read carefully between the lines of the seemingly simple, almost childish, story, there is yet another reason for its having been selected by the Divinely helped compiler as a portion of the book which is to endure for ever. The question of the future lifethe life, after death has dissolved the union between soul and body-is but little dwelt on in the earlier of the Divine records. God's revelation here was gradual. It is true that from the earliest chapters of Genesis the glorious hope of an endless life with God casts its bright light upon the present dark and shadowed existence; but still, comparatively little information seems to have been given even to the patriarchs on this subject. It was there certainly; a glorious hereafter lay in the far background of the present life, but no more seems to have been taught. In the words of Abigail to David there is, however, an indication that already a distinct advance had been made in Divine revelation on this subject. In the Notes on verse 29 of this chapter, the bearing of Abigail's words on the future of the human soul and on the question of the eternal life are discussed. It is more than strange how modern Christian commentators have missed the momentous teaching of the words in question. They would have done wisely had they searched a little among the great Hebrew commentators, who, as might be expected, in a passage where their eyes were not blinded by any false national prejudices, have caught the true meaning, and seen something of the extraordinary beauty of the teaching, scarcely veiled by the homeliness of the imagery. The presence of this passage (in verse 29) especially, I venture to think, influenced the compiler of the Books of Samuel to insert the Nabal and Abigail episode in his history. EXCURSUS K: ON THE WORK OF SAMUEL (chap. xxv.). After the death of Eli, the capture of the Ark, and the sack of Shiloh-the old religious capital of the land, and the residence for many years of the high priest and judge the fortunes of Israel were at their lowest ebb. There was no Sanctuary, no religious life among the people. The Law of Moses was, save by a few scattered families, almost forgotten. Its precepts, as well as its moral ceremonies, were wholly ignored, and with the religious life the national life was quickly dying altogether out of Israel. It appeared to be the destiny of the people soon to be swallowed up among the Philistines and other native peoples. From this abyss of degradation Samuel raised the tribes. (1) He kept alive and fanned the dying spark of the old love of Israel for their God. (2) Instead of restoring the fallen Sanctuary and the elaborate system of ceremonial religion, he created the Prophetic Schools, whose work was to teach Israel who and what they really were the chosen people-and for what high ends they had been so strangely favoured and assisted; and so he led the people back to God. (3) As the old religious life was slowly awakened out of its deadly torpor, the old national life seemed at the same time also to awaken. In Israel the latter was necessarily inseparable from the former. Then Samuel gave them a king to consolidate their national life, which had almost ceased to exist. The scattered tribes, as they awoke to the knowledge of that mighty God who loved them so well, were taught by the presence of a king that they were one nation, and that from Dan to Beersheba they had one common interest, one common work. The restoration of the Sanctuary and the ceremonial religion was also necessary, but it must be a later work, and one which could only follow the national and religious restoration of Samuel. This was accomplished by Samuel's pupil, David. EXCURSUS L: ON WHAT HAPPENED AT EN-DOR? (chap. xxviii.). In all times the question taken as the title of this Excursus has excited deep interest-What happened at En-dor? We will divide our general question into three parts. (1) Did Samuel, the prophet of the Lord, really appear? and if so, what power brought him up from the realm of departed spirits ? (2) Granting that something did appear and speak, can we assume that the appearance was not Samuel, but a demon or evil spirit assuming Samuel's name? (3) Is it possible that there was no appearance at all, and that the whole scene was a well-played piece of jugglery on the part of the woman? or, in other words, that the whole scene was merely a delusion produced by the woman, without any background at all. On the last (No. 3), which assumes the whole scene at En-dor to have been a piece of jugglery on the part of the woman, we may observe that it is an hypothesis adopted by some great names, apparently by the illustrious Jewish commentator, Maimonides, who wrote in the twelfth century after Christ; by the majority of the less orthodox modern writers from the seventeenth century downwards, and even by such true divines and scholars as the present Dean of Canterbury. It is, however, a purely modern hypothesis, and receives no support from the early Church writers. Dean Payne Smith admirably puts forth the best arguments employed by the defenders of this supposition in these words: "We cannot believe that the Bible would set before us an instance of witchcraft employed by the Divine sanction for holy purposes; but we can clearly I. SAMUEL. believe that the woman would gladly take a bitter revenge on the man who had cruelly put to death all persons reported to have such powers as those to which she laid claim . . . . She reproached him for these crimes, announced to him what now all were convinced of, that David was to be his successor, and foretold his defeat and death."-Dean Payne Smith, in Pulpit Commentary on 1 Sam. xxviii. 17-19. No. 2 assumes that there was an apparition, but that what appeared was not Samuel, but an evil spirit, which showed itself in the character of Samuel. Not a few of the fathers, with the great Protestant reformers, such as Luther and Calvin, have preferred this view. Ephrem Syrus explains the phenomenon by stating that "an apparent image of Samuel was presented to the eye of Saul through demoniacal arts." Luther plainly writes: "The raising of Samuel by a soothsayer, or witch, in 1 Sam. xxviii. 11, 12, was certainly merely a spectre of the devil . . . for who could believe that the souls of believers which are in the hand of God (Eccles. iii. 1), and in the bosom of Abraham (Luke xvi. 23), were under the power of the devil and of simple men?"-Luther, Abuses of the Mass, 1522. Calvin similarly tells us: "It is certain that it was not really Samuel, for God would never have allowed His prophets to be subject to such diabolical conjuring. For here is a sorceress calling up the dead from the grave.”—Calvin, Hom. 100, in 1 Sam. No. 1 still remains. Did the spirit of Samuel the prophet himself really appear in the witch of En-dor's house to Saul? Now, without doubt, the ordinary reader would so understand the history. Everything before and after the incident is simple and natural. The woman herself is appalled at the sight, whatever it was, and describes it as resembling the dead seer. Whether or not Saul saw the spectre is uncertain, but he certainly heard the voice, which spoke a too true and mournful prophecy: nothing fierce or vindictive, as we have noticed in our comments on the scene-rather the contrary. The words, so simple and gentle, and yet unutterably sad, were no mere words of a juggling old woman; still less were they the utterances of an evil or malicious spirit. We thus confess our full belief that the shade of Samuel was seen by the woman (perhaps by Saul; but this is uncertain from the narrative), and that his voice was certainly heard by King Saul; and this has been the common belief in all times. Bishop Wordsworth's note here is most learned and exhaustive, and he fully endorses this view (here styled No. 1). The bishop marshals an array of witnesses who support this, which I venture to call the plain, common sense interpretation of the history. He begins with the ancient Hebrew Church, and quotes Ecclus. xlvi. 20. The writer of that book evidently believed that Samuel himself appeared; and so did the LXX., who plainly express the belief in their addendum to the Hebrew text at 1 Chron. x. 13. Josephus affirms the same in Antt. vi., 14, 2. Among the early Christian fathers, Justin Martyr, Trypho, § 105; Origen, tom. II., 490-495; St. Ambrose in Luc, chap. i.; St. Basil, Ep. 80; St. Gregory Naz., Orat. III.; Theodoret, Qu. 63, hold the same belief that the shade of Samuel appeared at En-dor and spoke to Saul. Among the famous mediæval writers holding the same view, we may instance Cajetan, Lyra, and à Lapide; later, Waterland may be added to the list; in our own days, Bishop Hervey, in the Speaker's Commentary, and Bishop Wordsworth and the German writers, O. von Gerlach and Keil. Assum ing, then, that the soul of Samuel did appear on earth that night at En-dor, we have still to deal with the question: By what power was he brought up from the realm of departed spirits? Here the narrative, if carefully read, will supply us with the correct answer. Far from having herself, by any incantation she had used, brought Samuel back again to earth, the witch is represented as crying with a loud voice from very terror when the shade of the prophet appeared, so little apparently was she prepared for what she saw. We may, therefore, with Theodoret, dismiss the idea as unholy, and even impious, that the witch of En-dor, by any power or incantation of which she was mistress, conjured up the prophet Samuel; and we may affirm with considerable certainty that it was by the special command of God that he came that night to speak with King Saul at En-dor. Keil and Bishops Hervey and Wordsworth all agree in the main with this theory. The above conclusions respecting the reality of the circumstance detailed in this remarkable episode in the history of Saul being, as we have seen, in strict harmony with the judgment of the ancient Hebrew Church (comp. the passage referred to above from Ecclus. xlvi. 20; the LXX. addition to 1 Chron. x. 13; Jos. Antt. vi. 14, § 2, besides the general sense of the more mysterious comments in the Talmud), are a most important contribution to our knowledge of the ancient Hebrew teaching concerning the state of the soul after death in the earliest Prophetic Schools, as early as the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon. We gather, then, that these old Hebrews held that after death the soul continued in a state of self-conscious existence; that it was capable of feeling and expressing grief and sorrow; that it retained the memory of transactions in which it had taken part when on earth; that it was-at least, in the case of a servant of God like Samuel-in a state of rest, from which it evidently had no wish to be summoned to share again in the fret and fever of this life-" Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?" Of the abode of the souls of the departed we can gather but little from this passage. It was evidently not Heaven-the Heaven where is the throne of God, and where dwell the heavenly powers. The language used, though popular, and adapted to the ordinary conception of Sheol, or Hades, the unseen place or lodging of the disembodied souls of men, clearly distinguishes between the abode of souls like Samuel and the abode of the heavenly powers. Throughout the history the soul of Samuel is represented as coming up, instead of coming down or descending, which would be the popular language used of an angel of God. The testimony which this history gives to the ancient Jewish belief in the existence of the soul after death fully accounts for the prominence which the compiler of the book has given to this episode. It is, besides, an important contribution to our knowledge of the complex character of the first great Hebrew monarch, so splendidly endowed by God, tried, and, alas! found wanting. The En-dor incident, besides, clearly and incisively gives us God's judgment on necromancy, and generally on all attempts to hold converse with the souls of the departed. In every age these attempts have had an extraordinary fascination for men. In our own day necromancy, unfortunately, is not a lost art among ourselves. Men and women of education, as Dr. Fraser well observes in the Pulpit Commentary, are not ashamed or afraid I. SAMUEL. to practise arts and consult "mediums" that are referred to in the Old Testament as abhorrent to God, and utterly forbidden to His people. "How pure in heart and sound in head, Should be the man whose thought would hold, "In vain shalt thou on any call The spirits from their golden day, "They haunt the silence of the breast, The memory like a cloudless air, The conscience as a sea at rest."-TENNYSON. EXCURSUS M: ON THE URIM AND THUMMIM (chap. xxx.). 66 دو We read in the description of the high priest's official vestments (Exod. xxviii. 2-32), that over the ephod there was to be a breastplate of judgment,' of gold, scarlet, purple, and fine linen, folded square and doubled, a span in length and width. In it were to be set four rows of precious stones, each stone with the name of a tribe of Israel engraved on it, that Aaron might "bear them upon his heart." Inside the breastplate were to be placed the Urim and Thummim (the Light and the Perfection), and they, too, were to be on Aaron's heart as he went in before the Lord. What, now, were these mysterious gems ? for that they were precious stones of some kind nearly all tradition seems agreed. Among the best supported traditional notices-quoted by Dean Plumptre in his learned article in Smith's Dictionary of the Biblethe following are the usually accepted ones. (a) The Urim and Thummim "were identical with the twelve stones on which the names of the tribes of Israel were engraved, and the mode in which an oracle was given was by the illumination, simultaneous or successive, of the letters which were to make up the answer" (Jalkut Sifre, Zohar, in Exod., f. 105; Maimonides, R. ben Nachman, in Buxtorf, l.c.). Josephus (Antiq. iii. 7, § 5) adopts another form of the same story, and, apparently identifying the Urim and Thummim with the sardonyxes on the shoulders of the ephod, says that they were bright before a victory or when the sacrifice was acceptable, dark when any disaster was impending. Epiphanius (de xii. gemm.) and the writer quoted by Suidas present the same thought in yet another form. A single diamond placed in the centre of the breastplate prognosticated peace when it was bright, war when it was red, death when it was dusky. (b) In the middle of the ephod, or within its folds, there was a stone or plate of gold, on which was engraved the sacred name of Jehovah, the Shem-hammephorash of Jewish cabbalists; and by virtue of this, the High Priest, fixing his gaze on it, or reading an invocation which was also engraved with the name, or standing in his ephod before the mercy-seat, or, at least, before the veil of the Sanctuary, became capable of prophesying, hearing the Divine voice within, or listening to it as it proceeded, in articulated sounds, from the glory of the Shechinah (Buxtorf, l.c., 7; Lightfoot, vi. 278; Braunius, de Vestitu Hebr., ii.; Saalschütz, Archäolog., ii. 363). That mighty storehouse of learning and tradition, the Babylonian Talmud, suggests, however, another and quite a different explanation of this mysterious and sacred possession of the Israelites in the earlier days of their existence as a people. (See note on verse 7 of chapter xxx.) The Talmud begins by explaining why the oracle Iwas called Urim and Thummim. It is called Urim because it gave explanatory light to its utterances; and it is called Thummim because it made perfect and complete its declarations. How did the Urim and Thummim indicate or manifest its utterances ? Rabbi Yochanan saith: Boltoth (by means of) projection. Resh Lakish saith: Mitztaphoth (by means of) transposition. (1) Boltoth (by means of projection).—The several letters that were intended by the oracle to form the word or words in reply to an enquiry were raised from concave to convex (as the engraved letters on a seal were to become raised letters, as on a coin), and the priest, uniting these projected letters, thus ascertained the proper meaning of the intended answer, which he delivered to the enquirer. For instance: in the reply to David, aleh"go;" the ayin in Simeon, the lamedh in Levi, and the he in Judah become prominently raised, and thus the answer was unmistakable. (2) Mitztaphoth (by means of transposition).—The letters composing the names of the twelve tribes transposed themselves into words, which indicated the oracle's reply. But it is objected: How could the oracle express 1 Sam. xxx. 8 (i.e., "Thou shalt without fail recover all "), since the letter tsadde, for instance, is not to be found in any of the names of the tribes ? nor is the letter teth to be found there either. To this it is responded that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were engraved on the gems, as also the Hebrew words signifying "the tribes of Jeshurun." Thus the Hebrew alphabet in the Urim and Thummim is made complete.-Treatise Yoma, fol. 73, cols. 1 and 2. |