Samuel knew that he would find things very important for his present and future; in the events of his life, he could discern the ways YHWH wanted him to turn. Perhaps he could not fully understand just what YHWH had in mind for him and this boy, but he trusted that if he recaptured the right events in his past, if he reflected upon their meanings in the correct ways, he would know what YHWH wanted from him. He needed more time to think.
“Boy, I cannot speak to you now,” he said commandingly to Saul. “ Meet me here by the well before the sun brushes the mountain.”
And with that, Samuel headed back to the cool of his room, leaving Saul and his companion with mouths open and questions on their faces. He needed time to think and to grasp the moment. He needed again to search what had brought him to this place.
He settled on his rugs, lifted the cool beer his servant had brought, and allowed his memory free rein.
No matter how far his tireless work had taken him, he always had made his way home to his beloved Ramah. He had established an administrative center there for the dispensing of justice in the land. And just before his fortieth summer, he surprisingly took a wife. All thought he was in effect married to Israel, but a rather young maiden, Ziah by name, caught the aging bachelor’s eye, and they married in Ramah and set up a household there. Soon two boys were born to the couple, Samuel called the first Joel—“YHWH is God”—a most fitting name for a child of the prophet, everyone immediately said. And very soon Ziah was pregnant again, and her second son was named Abijah—“YHWH is my father”—and the people were overjoyed to see that Samuel had now two heirs to carry on the work he was doing in Israel.
As the boys grew, Samuel taught them the ways of YHWH, as he had been led to understand them. Each night there were prayers, the prayers that Hannah, his mother, had taught to him when he was small and had repeated to him each time she had come to Shiloh to bring to him a new tunic. There were prayers of thanksgiving for food and drink and safety and warmth. There were prayers of request when YHWH was needed to protect and guard the people when the enemy drew near, when the harvest failed, when the wasting sicknesses fell on the land, attacking cattle and human alike.
And there were the sacrifices of many kinds, all of which had to be mastered if real leadership was to be practiced and accepted by the people. Samuel had no doubt at all that his two boys would follow him as leaders in Israel. Who else could possibly have the experience, the training, the authority from God that Samuel had? He was unique, alone in power and reputation. Of course his sons would succeed their father; they had only to be reared up in the right way, the way of YHWH, the way that only Samuel knew fully.
Sacrificial practice was intricate and subtle. On the surface, it looked quite simple; kill the unblemished beasts in the accepted way and hoist them on the altar to be offered completely to the God who awaited the pleasant odor. Though the pagan Babylonians had foolishly imagined that their gods (who were of course no gods!) actually lived on the sacrifices of their created people, Israel believed no such idiocy. No, YHWH was pleased with the people’s animal gifts and especially enjoyed the rich odors of sheep and goat as they arose into the skies from the faithful altars. Had not YHWH said precisely that when Noah had first sacrificed a clean and pure beast right after the land had dried up from the flood? The very ancient Babylonian story of the flood, a story they told out of their complete ignorance and which the Israelite historians had narrated correctly, claimed that the gods who brought the flood, because they were terrified of their own human creations, had forgotten that without human sacrificial gifts the gods themselves would die of hunger! Samuel loved to tell this ridiculous story to his boys so that they could readily see how nonsensical the pagans were and, in contrast, how glorious were the stories and traditions of Israel.
But YHWH demanded sacrifices rightly done, so Samuel had spent long hours teaching Joel and Abijah the intricacies of the rites: which knives to use in the ritual slaughter and just where the knives were to be applied to the throats of the beasts; how to tell which animals were truly pure and unblemished and just which sort of spots were and were not acceptable in the search for purity; how grain offerings were done, which grain to use and how much; whether animal or grain sacrifice which motions were done and when, right hand up, left hand down, then reverse. There was so much to learn, but Samuel was eager to teach.
Unfortunately, Joel and Abijah were neither one eager pupils. When they were young, under the age of ten, they still stood in considerable awe when their aging father, now past fifty, performed the offerings at the temple in Ramah, employing his still thunderous voice to fill the room with the ancient prayers. Their eyes would grow wide as the squalling beast was killed, then heaved onto the rock altar, on the roaring fire, to disappear in smoke up to the ceiling and out the hole in the roof, snaking its way to YHWH, who awaited it with eagerness, as their father had always said.
But when they grew old enough to wonder, to ask questions about the ancient and hallowed practices, their boldness made the prophet angry.
“Why not kill the bad creatures, Papa,” asked the 13-year-old Joel “and save the best for yourself? Burnt up beasts smell and taste the same whether they are blemished or not. Who will ever know?”
“Just how do you know that YHWH wants burnt flesh anyway,” asked Abijah; “does the God eat it? How? Does YHWH have a mouth? How big is it? Why can’t we have the roasted flesh? I’m hungry!”
Abijah was always hungry, and Joel was always questioning. Samuel would snap out a response.
“Both of you need to worry less about your stomachs and your ridiculous questions and more about your future work for the people of Israel!”
And he would fume and rage and storm out of the temple, rushing back to his wife, demanding that she take a firmer hand with the boys.
But she did not. She loved them to distraction, and could see no wrong in them. Samuel was often gone to the surrounding towns, dispensing justice, offering the sacrifices, since he was seen as the only one who could really lead in the services, since he was the only one who was God’s prophet, God’s priest, God’s judge. In short, Samuel was the leader in Israel of all facets of their lives, and thus was on the road as much or more than he was home. Ziah was as much in awe of her husband as was everyone else, so she tried her best to ride herd on the growing boys, but without Samuel’s presence they defeated her with their increasing arrogance and secrecy and lying.
When Joel turned eighteen and Abijah sixteen, Samuel thought it would be valuable experience for the boys if they were given leadership over the far-away region of Beer-Sheba in the southern deserts of the land. Though it was distant from Ramah, some six or seven days’ walk, it was hallowed as the final place where Abraham and Sarah had camped during their first trip to the land promised by YHWH inumerable winters ago. Though Samuel was intent on having his boys take over the whole land when he died, the old priest did not know his boys at all. Just like the two boys of his mentor Eli, his boys were foul and rotten and unworthy of leadership of a pig sty, let alone the whole people of YHWH. But Samuel could not see, however clearly he claimed to see the word of YHWH. And Ziah was much too afraid of her husband to share with him her growing misgivings about their sons. For she had seen them with young women and heard their bold-faced lies when she asked them about it. When she had demanded that they say their prayers before meals, they would look at each other and laugh, tearing into the flesh, gorging on the bread, and loudly slurping their beer with unclean hands and lips silent to YHWH, who had supplied the feast. And she knew that they had far more money than she ever gave them, and often wondered to herself where it had come from. But none of this did she tell Samuel, whose doting old age fatherhood blinded him to the truth. She had heard of the real blindness of the dead priest, Eli of Shiloh, but ruefully thought that her own husband, Eli’s pupil and successor, was just as blind as Eli had been.
So, Samuel sent Joel and Abijah to Beer-Sheba, the so-called “well of the seven.” It received
