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Posts Tagged ‘textures’

Gittai’s truth: 2 Samuel 14–16

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 26, 2008| 3 Comments »

In the face of his son Absalom’s insurrection, David’s flight to the desert is the stage upon which a colorful handful of characters display, respectively, deepest loyalty, most loathsome self-interest, and opportunistic vengeance. It seems that David’s prior sojourn in Gath has won him the loyalty of a considerable number of Gittites. One of them, Ittai by name, now articulates what love means when it links one warrior to another:

All his officials passed by him; and all the Cherethites, and all the Pelethites, and all the six hundred Gittites who had followed him from Gath, passed on before the king. Then the king said to Ittai the Gittite, ‘Why are you also coming with us? Go back, and stay with the king; for you are a foreigner, and also an exile from your home. You came only yesterday, and shall I today make you wander about with us, while I go wherever I can? Go back, and take your kinsfolk with you; and may the LORD show steadfast love and faithfulness to you.’ But Ittai answered the king, ‘As the LORD lives, and as my lord the king lives, wherever my lord the king may be, whether for death or for life, there also your servant will be.’ David said to Ittai, ‘Go then, march on.’ So Ittai the Gittite marched on, with all his men and all the little ones who were with him.

Blind loyalty is perhaps always wrong. Yet there is a sighted fidelity that looks almost like it, and it is a very good thing indeed. Ittai’s unexplained solidarity with a deposed Israelite monarch puts even his own men and his ‘little ones’ at risk for the sake of its beloved object. It is the glue that makes history something nobler than iron filings duly lining up around the strongest magnetic force. When circumstance stretches men’s chesed to its breaking point, some find it thicker than blood, more enduring than the tribe, more compelling than all alternatives. The biblical anthology is capable of recognizing the nobility of this sentiment, indeed of elevating it among the virtues as the achievement of men and women under stress who might have acted more pragmatically and saved themselves hardship and calamity. (more…)

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sudden turns: 1 Samuel 27-29 // Luke 17

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 19, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Faith that is shaped and nourished by regular contact with Scripture learns to anticipate sudden turns in circumstances. More often than not a certain merciful lurching becomes our experience as what some call Providence directs our steps in ways that contain equal parts peril and mercy. (more…)

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worthless slaves: Luke 17

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 17, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The institution of slavery and the concept of duty no longer arouse us to noble thoughts. We find the first offensive and the second pedestrian. More often than not our moral aesthetics not only incapacitate us for sympathetic reading. They also betray us by the extreme selectivity with which we assign deficits to the moral codes of other times and other places while skating over the incoherences that afflict us in this time and this place. (more…)

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the abundance of madmen: 1 Samuel 20-21

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 16, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Rarely does an ancient document explore the nuance and pathos of human experience as probingly as the so-called ‘History of David’s Rise’. This deep current in the Deuteronomistic History gives us not only the hero-in-waiting story of David’s encounter with the Philistine miscreant Goliath but also the deeply moving parting of David and Saul’s son Jonathan. (more…)

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Samuel’s complex grief: 1 Samuel 13-15

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 14, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The seer Samuel’s proximity to YHWH’s counsel makes him the pivotal figure in the Saul narrative. His gaze penetrates the smoky gray of events, illuminating in forboding sentences the direction that YHWH would have them go.

Samuel must have made unpleasant company, not the kind for smalltalk and hors d’oeuvres. One felt his presence as an interruption. Like the prophets of which he would become a prototype, Samuel was more often than not both late and unwelcome. (more…)

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the last seat: 1 Samuel 10-12 // Luke 14

Posted in textures, tagged , , , on April 12, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Israel’s first and short-lived king, Saul by name, is arguably the Hebrew Bible’s most tragic figure. He bears that peculiar curse that consists of great things happening to him. He does not invite them. In fact he seems bent on fleeing the tectonic movement of events that bring inexorable fame upon his large, fragile shoulders. (more…)

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family solidarity: 1 Samuel 1-2, Luke 12

Posted in textures, tagged , , , on April 8, 2008| Leave a Comment »

We believe that faith unites a family. Sometimes it does, though more seldom than we imagine.

Aging Eli felt a deep foreboding when reports of his sons’ comportment as self-serving priests reached his dulling ears. He pleads with them to change their ways, but does not offer understanding on the basis of ‘family’. The language is of covenantal repercussions, of cutting off and being cut off. In a short time Eli’s sons would be dead. Their stolen meat would do them no good then and Eli would be forbidden the unrestrained grief a father feels over righteous sons. (more…)

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out of nowhere: Ruth 3-4

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 7, 2008| Leave a Comment »

One almost feels a wry heavenly smile hovering over the proceedings as the short story of Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz ambles towards its contented dénoument. The wily grandmother-to-be joins the submissive and diligent protagonist and the sturdy, good-hearted male rescuer to produce an unlikely ending that is full of YHWH’s blessing. Events bring the wish that YHWH might bless into the concrete reality of Bethlehem’s space and time. A child is born and an old lady gets her name back.

So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, the LORD made her conceive, and she bore a son. Then the women said to Naomi, ‘Blessed be the LORD, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin; and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne him.’ Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse. The women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, ‘A son has been born to Naomi.’ They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David. Now these are the descendants of Perez: Perez became the father of Hezron, Hezron of Ram, Ram of Amminadab, Amminadab of Nahshon, Nahshon of Salmon, Salmon of Boaz, Boaz of Obed, Obed of Jesse, and Jesse of David.

The wry smile must have come down and shaped itself upon the lips of Israelite generations, for the last words of this little story end with David’s name. Who could have guessed that an indigent Moabite should become the monarch’s ancestress?

One wonders what else can be accomplished when little men and women, unobserved by those who make and write history, act mercifully in time of need. Perhaps YHWH’s favorite among his repertoire of means is found in this scenario.

The text has a name for it. It is called blessing.

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Abimelech’s shadows: Ruth 1-2

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 6, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The narrator of the book of Ruth is exact about his setting. He places his moving story in ‘the days when the judges were judging Israel’. What is more, he gives his merciful and strong hero a pedigree that links it to the Book of Judges. Boaz is of the family of a certain Elimelech.

Mere assonance and historical proximity remind one of Abimelech, born to Gideon and his concubine, a bloody-handed figure of ill repute. A very good man finds his place among the roster of bad men who populate the pages of the Book of Judges. Not all flowed crimson, not all was dark, not all turned violent and craven in the tribal confederacy of the conquest years, it would seem. (more…)

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identity crisis: Judges 17-20

Posted in textures, tagged , , on April 5, 2008| Leave a Comment »

it would be difficult to find in the Hebrew Bible a story of more brazen awfulness than that of the Levite traveler and his concubine on their ill-fated layover in Gibeah of Benjamin. The conduct of the ‘men of the city’ is miscreant. Their overnight host, so generous in his rescuing invitation that they pass the night in his home, responds with inexplicable calculation to the pressure that his townsmen bring to bear. Finally, the Levite himself responds to the outrage with one of his own. He cuts up the body of his concubine and sends the pieces to the tribes of the Israelite confederacy, demanding a reaction to the horror that has gone down in Benjamin:

‘Get up,’ he said to her, ‘we are going.’ But there was no answer. Then he put her on the donkey; and the man set out for his home. When he had entered his house, he took a knife, and grasping his concubine he cut her into twelve pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel. Then he commanded the men whom he sent, saying, ‘Thus shall you say to all the Israelites, “Has such a thing ever happened since the day that the Israelites came up from the land of Egypt until this day? Consider it, take counsel, and speak out.”‘

The wording of his complaint seems intended to provoke reflection on the Israelite project as well as to demand immediate retribution. His time frame, within which he claims for his experience a shattering uniqueness, is bookended on the early side by reference to ‘the day that the Israelites came up from the land of Egypt’. (more…)

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