doddering priest. But her prayer welled up and burst into the dank air of the sanctuary, saying much more than even she expected.
My heart exults in YHWH!
My power rises up in YHWH!
My mouth opens wide against my enemies,
as I rejoice in your victory.
There is no Holy One like YHWH,
no one besides you,
no rock like our God!
Warriors’ bows break,
while feeble ones grow strong.
Those who were comfortable have sold themselves for bread,
while hungry ones grow fat with spoil.
Barren ones have borne seven,
while the one with many children fades.
YHWH kills and brings to life,
sends to Sheol and raises up from there.
God protects the feet of the faithful,
while the wicked shall be cut off in darkness;
surely not by strength alone is anyone strong.
The silent priest listened to her prayer in shock. This woman had taken her experience of the birth of her child and had turned it into a claim that YHWH was about to turn the world upside down! The strong are weak; the weak are strong. The warriors’ bows become useless while the unarmed gain strength. The rich grow poor and the poor grow fat. What gives a simple, arrogant female the right to utter such nonsense in the house of YHWH? And why does she wish to saddle me with her brat? She has filled his ears with this twaddle since he was born, I wager, and how am I to train him in the ways of the priests if his mind is so muddled with these revolutionary thoughts?
Eli had half a mind to tell the creature to shove off and to take her sniveling child with her. But she had vowed to leave him, or so she said, so he was trapped. If he refused to raise the boy, he was, at least possibly, denying YHWH’s word, a word that was always mysterious in any case. But if he accepted the child—well, what mischief might he bring? Eli was simply too tired and confused to say no, so when the family left, Elkanah, Peninnah and her many children, and Hannah, Samuel was left behind. Eli felt with his aging hands for the little boy and wondered whether he had made a mistake. Too late! He would have to deal with him now. He grabbed his tiny hand and half led and half followed him to the small priestly quarters at the back of the dark sanctuary. Samuel whimpered a bit, fearful of the terrifying and fat and blind old man, but he did not cry aloud. He sensed, even at his very young age, that crying would do him no good with Eli.
He got to his tiny room and reached for his wooden bear, stroking it with pleasure, feeling its solidity, its certainty, its reality. He lay down on the platform that formed nearly all of the room, and as Eli stumbled his way out of the place, Samuel did not move but lay quietly, impassively, rubbing the bear, gazing at the four clay walls, adjusting his eyes to the dim light. After a time, he slept and dreamt of Ramah and his mother. He felt very small, very alone, completely abandoned, and fear along with a knot of anger welled into his chest. One would expect fear from an abandoned child, but anger was unusual in one so young. Fear was understandable, but the origin of that anger was not at all clear.
4
The look on the old priest’s face those long years ago swam into Samuel’s mind once again, and he smiled a bitter smile as he moved toward the newcomer to Ramah. Eli was certainly not prepared to mentor anyone, the old fool! But, thought Samuel, I suppose he had done his best, given Hannah’s absolute certainty that YHWH wanted the boy to be a priest and a Nazirite. With all these thoughts in his mind, swirling around inside his head, he had awakened that morning fearing that YHWH would present to him the prince he was to anoint. He feared that he, like Eli before him, was about to be forced to mentor his own replacement! He had hoped to get to the sacrifice, perform the rite, eat the sacred meal, and return home in silence. But now he saw the man he did not want to see. He was enormous! He was inordinately good-looking, and he was young, his face unlined and open. Samuel was afraid that he was looking at the first king of Israel. There was no way that he could avoid the duty that YHWH had thrust on him, and he knew that with the thing he must now do, his own family of Israelite leaders would end with his death. When Samuel anointed this extraordinary boy, his sons’ futures were over, and his own memory as a faithful leader of the people was in the most serious jeopardy.
As Samuel deviated from his path toward the high place to meet the boy, YHWH’s voice insinuated itself into his ears once again.
“This is the man of whom I spoke to you yesterday; it is he who will rule over my people.”
Samuel now knew there was no escape. His replacement stood before him; his ruin was walking toward him; the man who had the power to displace him in the hearts of the people he had loved and cherished and protected for fifty seasons of years loomed up like a mountain in his very own city. With all that was within him the mighty prophet of YHWH wanted to shout out for all to hear that he would have no part in anointing a ruler or prince or king over Israel, since only YHWH was king and only Samuel was YHWH’s prophet. But with YHWH’s unequivocal words ringing in the air, he saw no way out; he was going to have to anoint this man prince over Israel. But, he thought, I do not have to like it! Nor do I have to be quietly comfortable with the deed or the man. “Ruler?” “Prince?” “King?” We will see, thought Samuel. We will see what sort of ruler this huge boy may be. We will see.
His reverie was broken by Saul’s first words to him.
“Please tell me exactly where is the house of the seer?”
Was this huge boy so thick as not to know whom he was addressing? Who in Israel did not know Samuel? Had he been born in a cave? Just what sort of fool had YHWH chosen to be prince over Israel? Could it be that YHWH had chosen just such a one to satisfy, on the surface at least, the demands of the people, but at the same time to demonstrate that rulers, kings, were finally no good, that they were incompetent, that they were dangerous? Samuel’s eyes brightened, his mood lightened. YHWH was ever mysterious! Could it be that the great God had chosen just such a fool as this to demonstrate to the people that only YHWH could be king, after all? He thought of all of those years of leading Israel, all of those years of doing the work of YHWH. Who better than he knew the mind of the God? Who better than Samuel, the one who had been uniquely called for leadership of the people, whose words had been God’s word for moons beyond counting? It had begun with that amazing call from his God. He stood mute in the square of Ramah, gazing at the uncomprehending man, and his aging mind wondered back again to a distant time when he was very young, back to that tiny room in Shiloh’s temple.
He had whimpered quietly as he had watched his mother turn her back on him for the first time in his life and to leave him with the smelly old priest whom he had not liked the first time he saw him in the dimness of the temple. His smoky clothes, his straggled hair, dully yellowed by sacrificial fires and cheap lamps, hung in uneven strands down his face and into his eyes. And those eyes! They had once been a green of some sort, but now the cruel march of milky white clouds was invading both so that complete blindness was not far off. The young boy shuddered in terror to look into those eyes that seemed more dead than alive, ghostly, beastly, inhuman. The first few days of his time with Eli, Samuel could not get the look of those eyes out of his thoughts; they followed him as he explored the puny world he had been assigned—the barren, rocky ground around the temple, the temple itself, forever dark and dank and usually silent save the hum of prayers and the
