King Shlomo-- "I told you so"

"When you come into the land tht the Lord your God gives you and you inherit it and dwell in it, and say 'I will place a king over me like all the nations around me.'  You shall place a king over you that the Lord your God chooses. . . Only that he should not have many horses . . . and he shall not have many wives in order that his heart not be turned aside, and silver and gold he shall not have much of."   Devarim 17:14-17

The Torah says that a Jewish king:
1. shouldn't have many horses
2. shouldn't have many wives so they don't lead him astray
and
3. shouldn't have much silver and gold.

Shlomo Hamelech is a cautionary tale.   He asked God only for understanding, and God richly rewarded him not just with understanding, but with a long life and wealth as well.  He builds the Beit HaMikdash, he makes Israel into a marvel of the ancient world--- a big kiddush Hashem.

But then, the Queen of Sheva comes and visits and is awed by Shlomo's wisdom and wealth.
We learn:
1. That he has 1,400 chariots (Melachim I 10:26) (chariots are pulled by horses--see above)
2. All of his drinking utensils were gold; silver was considered worthless in the days of Shlomo (because of its abundance)  (Melachim I 10: 21)

And finally:

3. Shlomo loved foreign women and took many of them as wives, and they led him into idolatry. (See chapter 11).

The plain meaning of the book of Melachim I is a cautionary tale-- Shlomo Hamelech may have thought the Torah's proscriptions (and prescriptions) were not for someone as wise as he was.   He may have thought he could avoid the pitfalls.   But he was wrong.


*****
Side point:  There is an issue as to whether Shlomo actually engaged in idolatry, or just didn't prevent his wives from doing so.   This ties into a bigger question of how the Torah and the prophets describe the sins of our forefathers, and whether those descriptions are exaggerated.  I meant to post on this with regard to David and Batsheva.

 Side point:  God seems so displeased with Shlomo, especially contrasted with David.  But David clearly sinned (specifically with Batsheva and Uriah).    Why is David the model king, with all his imperfections?  I think it is because he is a ba'al teshuvah.  When he does wrong, he admits it.  He confesses.  He repents.  As opposed to Shaul who preceded him, who had difficulty admitting his sin, and also opposed to Shlomo his son, who started off righteous, and then went downhill.
The message is simultaneously scary and inspiring:  No matter how great, anyone can crash and burn like Shlomo;  no matter how low one has fallen, anyone can redeem himself with teshuvah like David.

The séance for Shaul---Shmuel I, Chapter 28

Shaul’s searching for a necromancer to raise up Shmuel from the dead so he could take advice from him is certainly a striking one.   One of the larger tangential  (meaning it is not the point of the text) issues that arises from this passage is that it seems clear that Shmuel was indeed raised from the dead.

Does this mean that magic and necromancy are real? 

The argument is certainly strong, and not just from this passage.   Why would the Torah itself prohibit the practice of magic if there were no such thing?  (See Shemot Chapter 22, and Devarim Chapter 18).

There is a famous disagreement between the Rambam and the Ramban.   The Rambam held that in reality, there was no such thing as magic.   The Torah prohibited it precisely because it was a useless endeavor, perhaps to deceive the masses, when people should be instead focused on devotion to God.   Imagine, in a modern context, the plethora of  “New Age” philosophies that have led Jews away from the Torah in their search for spirituality.

The Ramban understands differently, holding that indeed there is such a thing as magic, which is what the Torah prohibits.  It is not so difficult to understand the Ramban in light of the various earlier sources.

But what about the Rambam?    The price he pays for his rationalism is in textual analysis.   The Rambam has a tendency to try to understand biblical passages as being understandable from a rationalist viewpoint.    Thus, if I recall correctly, on our passage he interprets the whole apparition of Shmuel as a vision of Shaul, not as the actual raising of Shmuel from the dead.   Similarly, Bilaam’s donkey didn’t actually talk—the whole incident was a prophetic vision.

Thus, the Rambam would argue that Shaul’s séance to raise up Shmuel didn’t really succeed to raise Shmuel from the dead.   Instead, he had a vision.  Presumably, in order to make the message Shmuel gives to Shaul cogent from a “why is this in the book of Shmuel” point of view, the Rambam would have to understand that God guided this vision in order to give Shaul the message.

Shaul’s failure to defeat Amalek (Shmuel I, Chapter 15)

 This is not so timely, as we have started Sefer Melachim in our cycle.  But I wrote it while recently in Israel, and we read Shmuel I, Chapter 15 it for last week's Haftarah, so here it is.  I will endeavor to catch up.

“God sent me to anoint you as king over his nation, over Israel.  So listen now to the voice of the words of God.”

So does Shmuel introduce his command to King Shaul to wage war and destroy Amalek, including every human being therein, as well as all their livestock.  

The story is very clear that Shaul failed, and it is because of this failure that the kingship is torn from him.  He failed because he spared some of the animals, and spared Agag, the king of Amalek.

Why is this sin so horrible that God decides that it merits the removal of Shaul from his position as king?

After all, we are told that Shaul and the nation “had compassion” on Agag and the best of the animals, and that Shaul intended to sacrifice the animals to God!   Furthermore, Shaul does not even seem to be aware that he failed—he tells Shmuel upon first meeting him “I have fulfilled the word of God”.

Here are 3 answers:

1) The plain meaning of the text is that Shaul disobeyed God and substituted his own judgment for God’s clear will which had been communicated to him by a prophet. 

2) Additionally, there seems to be a clear indication that Shaul lacked the leadership qualities necessary to be king.   Thus, he lays the blame at the feet of the people (they wanted the animals”.    Shmuel rebukes him that even though Shaul doesn’t think much of himself, he is the king and must lead.  And finally, Shaul admits that he was afraid of the people.    Thus, his sin was not mere disobedience to God, but also disobedience that was motivated by fear and an inability to lead the people.  And if the king cannot lead the people to serve God, then he is not worthy to be king.

3) Finally, the destruction of Amalek is an unusual commandment, because the actions involved are normally considered the most heinous of sins—murder.   Thus, a failure—by sparing Agag and the animals--- to fulfill the commandment completely means that the commandment was not followed—Amalek was not wiped out.    And if this is the case, then when Shaul killed the thousands of Amaleki people, his actions essentially became murder.

On a different note, I wonder about the following:   Could Shaul have beseeched God on behalf of Amalek, as Avraham did for the people of Sedom?  Would such an entreaty have been Abrahamic in its merit, or impermissible in this particular case?

King David-- In Contrast

It struck me how much of Sefer Shmuel is dedicated to contrasts:  Specifically between David Hamelech--King David--and everybody else.

Here are two examples:

1) In Chapter 22, David flees from Shaul to Maalot Adulam, and who "gathers around" him ?  Desperate people, people pursued by creditors, people who are bitter of soul. 

Where have we seen this before?  With Yiftach, in Shoftim Chapter 11, Yiftach flees from his brothers, and he becomes the leader of a group of "empty men."

2)  In the end of Chapter 25, Shaul takes his daughter Michal--David's wife-- and marries her off to another man, Palti ben Layish.    This, too, we saw with Shimshon, when his wife was given over to another man, at the end of Chapter 14 of Sefer Shoftim.  


Of course, there are also contrasts to be had with Shaul-- that is a discussion for another time.   But what is the significance of these contrasts?
It seems that David's good behavior/responses is being contrasted with the unfavorable responses of those who preceded him when faced with similar trials.    Yiftach, as we saw, is one of the worst of the Shoftim.   David is clearly viewed favorably (overall) by the prophets.   Yet both have, early in their careers, a role as the leader of a group of vagabonds.  Their commonality draws attention to their differences.   Here, in David, is the king who is the antidote to the terrible period of the Judges.

Shimshon, as well, was one of the worst of the Shoftim.   His response to having his wife taken from him was revenge (in the incident with the foxes and the torches).   David's was to wait until he was king, and to demand Michal back.   (In Chapter 3 of Shmuel 2).   Now certainly, Palti ben Layish was crying all the way at the loss of his wife.  But we have no indication that David knew of this.

In sum:   There are parallels in the life of David to events in the lives of the Judges.  My suggestion is that these parallels are told to us to encourage us to compare and contrast David with those Judges.  The period of Judges was untenable, and a king was needed.  The book of Samuel is trying to show what was right about David, how he was the ideal king.

Who should have been the first king of Israel?--Introduction to Shmuel I

I'm so sorry for the long delay in posting.   So I'll get right to it.

First, the book of I Samuel and II Samuel (Shmuel Alef and Bet) are really one, big book.  If I recall correctly, the division into two books was done by Christian scholars, and it is a division we retain for convenience purposes.

Second, the overall timeline of the book of Shmuel is not so large-- it spans the lives of Shmuel, Saul, and David.  Compare that to Judges, which covered a period of several hundred years, and to Kings, which also spans hundreds of years.

Third is the main point I want to discuss in this post.   Shmuel's birth is preceded by the famous story of Chanah's prayer in Chapter 1.   He is dedicated to God from before birth, and lo and behold, he becomes a successful servant of God.  God speaks to him when prophecy had otherwise ceased.  He serves God in a devoted fashion.  He leads the people.  

On the one hand, compare him to the only other Judge who was dedicated to God before birth--Shimshon.  While Shimshon was the low point (see this post here), Shmuel is the high point, at least as regards leadership.  He lives up to his potential as a religious personality and as a Shofet, a Judge.   Shmuel is the culmination of the period of Judges, and he is the most successful, righteous Judge.
Take home message:  Shmuel was one of the Shoftim, the Judges.

On the other hand, when the people ask for a king in chapter 8, Shmuel sees this as a rejection of his leadership.  God says to him, "They're not rejecting you, they're rejecting Me."    The question is, why would Shmuel see this as a personal rejection?   After all, the reason they get upset is because Shmuel makes his sons into Shoftim when he gets old, and they become corrupted, taking bribes, running after gain.   Aren't they just fed up with the system of Shoftim, some better and some worse?

Now this is my theory, and I take responsibility for it and the likelihood that it is incorrect.   But I think that what is happening here is that Shmuel sees himself as being able to pass the "Judgehood" on to his sons.   But this is the very thing that characterizes a king!  After all, recall in the book of Judges that the Judge Gidon did not want the honor of kingship, and his son, Avimelech, tried to become king. 
My suggestion is that Kingship is centralized rule by dynastic succession, and Shmuel tried to set that up in his own life.  Not for personal glory-- we see that he is indeed, a holy person.   But rather, in order to create the continuous, centralized authority that was absent during the period of the Shoftim.

Thus, there is reason to think that the people are rejecting Shmuel when they ask for a king, and therefore, God tells him "No, they're not rejecting you, they're rejecting Me."   Because the people's choice of a king is motivated not only by their dissatisfaction with the corruption of Shmuel's sons, but by a more negative reason as well.  (Which we will probably discuss later).

To sum up:  Shmuel is a bridge between the period of the Judges and the Kings.   He rules as a Shofet, a Judge.   But he has a centralized power and tries to pass it on, in the manner of a king  (We will see also how he finishes the king's job of killing Amalek when King Saul does not do it.  This is another example of how Shmuel is not just a judge and prophet, but also a type of king).   And, of course, he is the last of the Judges, who acts in God's name when he anoints the first king of Israel.  He is thus a bridge in the sense that he himself is both a judge and a king, and in the sense that he ushers in the transition between the judges and the kings.

The end of Sefer Shoftim-- What's Right in Their Own Eyes

Chapters 17-21 of Sefer Shoftim don't follow the same pattern as the first 16 chapters of the book.   Here there are no outside enemies, no general statements of the sins of Israel, no Judges to save them.

Instead, we have two incidents that are disturbing, even nauseating.    (This and the next paragraph are summaries of the chapters;  additional ideas are below these paragraphs).  The first, about "pesel Michah", the story of Michah, (not to be confused with the prophet of the same name) a man from the tribe of Efrayim, who builds an idol and hires his own Levi to serve as his personal priest.   Some armed members of the tribe of Dan come, forcibly remove the Levi and make him their priest, and seek out some land.   They then set up the idol for themselves, and set up "Gershon son of Menashe" as their priests.

The second is the story of Pilegesh b'Givah, of the man and his concubine who, traveling as night comes, decide not to stay in the "dangerous" Jebusite city of Jerusalem, but instead go on to the city of Givah in the area of Benjamin, where they are taken in by the only hospitable man there.  With deliberate echoes of the story of Sodom, the townspeople surround the home, demand that they "know" the man, and instead, the man throws out his concubine to the people, who rape and abuse her until morning.   The next morning, the husband finds his wife dead, cuts her up into twelve pieces, and sends the pieces of her body to all the tribes of Israel.   The tribes of Israel assemble an army together and demand of the tribe of Benjamin that they hand over the men of Givah to be killed.  The tribe of Benjamin refuses, there is a civil war where all the men of Benjamin except for 600 are killed, and the other tribes swear they will not give their daughters to the men of Benjamin for wives.  They then regret this oath, and come up with two brutal ways to "marry off" the men of Benjamin so the entire tribe of Benjamin is not wiped out.

A few things to note:  

1)  The priest who was established by the tribe of Dan to serve the idol they stole is "Yehonatan ben Gershom ben Menashe."    The "nun" of Menashe is written in a large letter in the Hebrew text.      The Talmud (Bava Batra 109b) says that this "nun" really hides the true identity of the grandfather of this Yehonatan.   His grandfather is not Menashe, but Moshe--Moshe Rabeinu.   In other words, the grandson of Moshe Rabeinu was set up as the priest for this idol established by the tribe of Dan.

This raises a number of issues and questions for thought.   Was there anything that Moshe Rabeinu did or didn't do that led to this degraded fate of his grandson?    Is there any guarantee for the results of human action?  (and does God ever hold us accountable for results?)

2)  On a broader note, these horrible stories that end the book of Shoftim appear to have taken place earlier, not at the end of this period.   For example, reference is made to Pinchas the son of Elazar the son of Aharon haKohen.   For Pinchas to have been alive even at the beginning of the period of Shoftim, he presumably must have been extremely old.   But certainly, the story did not take place later than that.    

So why are these stories placed at the end of the book, disregarding chronology?   I think it is because they paint a detailed picture of the degradation to which the Jewish people had sunk at various times during this period, and thus highlights the need for a centralized leader to keep them in line with God's will.   Thus, the book ends "In those days, there was no king in Israel, each man did what was right in his own eyes."

Presumably, having a "king in Israel", while not a guarantee of spiritual success, will at least give the possibility of raising the spiritual and moral level of the people.    On this note we transition to the book of Shmuel I, where the last (and indeed spiritually the greatest) of the Judges, Shmuel, anoints the first of the kings of Israel, king Saul.

Yiftach and Shimshon

I had discussed in a previous post that the purpose of Sefer Shoftim (or one of its purposes) is to show that the Jewish people needed a centralized leadership, as opposed to the pattern laid out in Chapter 3 of Shoftim, of the people serving God, straying, getting punished, crying out, and getting saved by a Shofet, a "Judge" whom God would save to rescue them, and then starting the cycle again. 

We see, in the overall sweep of Sefer Shoftim, a decrease in quality of the leadership of the Shoftim themselves.   The Shofet reflects the people.    Thus, early on we have Yehoshua himself, we have Ehud ben Gera (who isn't presented negatively at all, although not much stands out), Devorah, who is presented in a very good light, judging the people and leading them, as well as instilling the confidence in her military (i.e. the general Barak) and inspiring the people in the praise of God (the Song of Devorah).
Gidon we already discussed, and while I presented his doubts as something that can give the modern Jew some comfort, at the same time, he asked for miraculous proof after proof from God Himself.   And the 300 men who followed him didn't have that luxury.   So while Gidon is still a strong leader, and of fine character (he turns down the kingship), he is arguably a step down.


Certainly, Avimelech, Gidon's son, is a big step down, murdering his brothers and seizing power.

Then we get to Yiftach and Shimshon.   Yiftach is turned away from the people because of his lowly parentage, and leads a bunch of "empty men", presumably some band of outlaws.  The people only want him to lead because they feel he is their only hope as a military leader.   He agrees to save them only if he can then lead them.   And he then impetuously offers to God the first thing that comes out of his gate, which, ironically, is his daughter.   The Sefer leads us to understand that Yiftach actually killed his daughter in fulfillment of his vow.   Certainly, this horrific act is a huge demonstration of the deterioration of the leadership of Israel.  (Even if he didn't actually kill his daughter, the language of the text is such that we see it is a grave, serious mistake in judgment and values).

Shimshon lacks even what Yiftach had.  Yiftach led the people, but Shimshon never seems to have had the Jewish people's interests in mind at all, even as he went about saving them.    Chosen by God before his birth to be a Nazir, it seems God would have high hopes for Shimshon.    Yet Shimshon has an eye for Philistine women (and is the first recorded example of a son to whom his parents say "Aren't there any nice Jewish girls you can marry instead?")   and kills Philistines not because they are oppressing the Jews, but to get revenge for 1) figuring out his riddle, and 2) marrying off his first wife to another man after he had rejected her, and 3) for gouging out his eyes.

He turns to God, but it is always to avenge his own honor.    Shimshon, though the favorite of elementary school boys because of his physical strength and military might, is the nadir of the Shoftim.  We would never really be aware that he served as a leader except for a summary pasuk stating that he did (I don't have a Tanach in front of me, but I recall such a pasuk).

I'm not trying to "bash" our ancestors, to "diminish" our holy Tzadikim and point out their flaws.   We have many holy ancestors (though only God is perfect), many of them in Tanach.  But it seems that Yiftach and Shimshon are counter-examples, and part of a particular downward spiral.

Chazal certainly saw them on a lower level.  In affirming that we must always be bound to the leadership of our time, even if our leaders are inferior to leaders of previous generations,  the Talmud states:  "Yiftach b'doro k'Shmuel b'doro", "Yiftach in his generation is like Shmuel in his generation".  Yiftach was clearly an example of an inferior leader.

Of course, the monarchy, as we shall see in subsequent books of the Nevi'im, was not always successful either.   But it at least offers the possibility of strong, righteous leadership, which the structure of the people in the period of Judges did not provide.