#I might try ’ and ‘ for א and ע instead

[hyperpotamianarch]

Sha'ul HaMelech

So, I didn't get to write about Tanach lately. Since one of my daily studies (which only exists for my college, but it can still be fun sometimes) is a chapter from Nevi'im Rishonim, though, I have some stuff to say. Usually I pour my random thoughts on fellow Torah studiers around me, but that works best when they have a reason to study the same thing as me (Parashat Shavua`), or when they might have an interest in it for other reasons (Halacha). The study of the Tanach is a bit different, in that the people I'm around usually have a very different outlook on it than me, which makes talking to them about it a bit difficult. When I'm thinking of an original interpretation to a possuk, I'm not sure I want to hear the Midrash again. I know what it says, and I'm not sure this helps with the Pəshat, thank you very much.

So, that's just a preface to explain why I put my thoughts on Sha'ul HaMelech over here. To begin with that:

The perception of Sha'ul among Jewish circles is interesting. This is the failed king, after all. I hesitate to say which view is most common, because I was used to saying one is but have since (I think) encountered quite a few people who had the other, but two possible ways emerge: the sinful, bad king and the righteous king who fell and failed. As a general rule, I hold to the latter: Sha'ul had much potential, but he eventually failed. But today, I wish to talk about his coronation.

Now, picture this: you are but a humble shepherd (or maybe cowherd. Or just herd animals), of the youngest of the 12 tribes of Israel. You're not an important person, though you are remarkably tall.

Your father's donkeys have been lost, and naturally, you headed out with your servant to look for them all over the place. You might be vaguely aware that there is some turmoil among the Israelites - people asked the prophet for a king or something. That has nothing to do with you, though.

But you can't seem to find the donkeys, and you're hungry, and you tell your servant that at this point your father probably worries over you more than the donkeys. Your servant, however, remarks that there's a prophet close by and you could just ask him about the donkeys. When you raise objections over payments, the servant says he has some money. So they go there, and there seems to be a celebration or something.

To skip ahead a bit, when you meet the prophet, he starts telling you wierd things about greatness, telling him not to worry over the donkeys and that you'll eat with him. The next morning he talks to you alone, tells you of a few signs you will see on your way and anoints you as king. You go home and tell nobody about that, though they saw you start prophesizing, which is so odd there's a new phrase named after you: "Is Sha'ul among the prophets as well?"

A couple of days later, all the people of Israel come gather, for the occasion of crowning their first king. And how does Shəmu'el start this gathering?

“Thus said the Hashem, the G-d of Israel: ‘I brought Israel out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the hands of the Egyptians and of all the kingdoms that oppressed you.’ But today you have rejected your G-d who delivered you from all your troubles and calamities. For you said to Him: 'set up a king over us!’"

-1 Samuel 10, 18-19, Sefaria translation with minor edits

I don't know about you, but if I was Sha'ul in this situation, and I know that I am the king who is to be crowned today... I'd probably have hid too. Usually it's viewed as him simply being humble, and there are certainly other occasions where we see him being humble - such as him not telling his uncle of his anointment, but here... here, I found myself wondering if this threatening opening made Sha'ul scared. He's realizing that he's being put in this position not because it's G-d's will to give the Israelites a king, but because the Israelites insisted. It doesn't help that many people don't appreciate him being appointed king and mock him.

Then, of course, the whole story with Yavesh Gil`ad happens: king Naḥash comes to take over the east side of the Jordan river, and the Yaveshites ask for help. Now, in the Tanachic context we already know that Yavesh is tied to Binyamin, Sha'ul's tribe, through marriage (following the Levite's Concubine story in the book of Judges). That may or may not have had an effect on Sha'ul's decision. However, his next act of butchering two of his bulls and sending it all around Israek serves multiple purposes: firstly, Sha'ul is still dealing with his own cattle. That's not exactly a kingly job. Clearly, his coronation led to practically nothing. Secondly, Sha'ul does assert authority with this - by saying "if you don't come with me and with Shəmu'el I'll do that to your cattle" he's showing that he's the king and he can choose to do that. Thirdly, of course, this parallels the Levite cutting his own concubine to twelve parts and sending it all around Israel.

I don't see a need to detail what happened later. Suffice to say that Sha'ul won. His first act as the actual king following that is pardoning the people who refused to accept him, not wanting to sully the victory with executions. And Shəmu'el declares that they're all going to the Gilgal to renew Sha'ul kingship.

Picture yourselves in Sha'ul's place, again. You just won a battle against the `Amonites, and against a king who was probably much more experienced than you. You saved your kin from enslavement. Your kingship is widely accepted, and you're celebrating before G-d. Then Shəmu'el, your mentor, says he wants to say a few words. You know he led the Israelites up until now, and that now that he's giving the reins to you, he probably wants to make his final speech as a leader. He's still going to be here as a prophet, of course, but he's no longer the Judge.

He starts it up with asking if anyone has unfinished business with him. Did he take anything from anyone unjustly? Did he accept any payment for his role? The Israelites all answer what all of you already know they will: no, he hasn't. He asks G-d and you - G-d's Anointed One - to be witnesses to that, which you accept.

Then he starts another speech about the history of Israel. This time it's more detailed. And, once again, he reminds the Israelites how bad them asking for a king is,

Now, logically, I'm sure Sha'ul realized this had nothing to do with him specifically. The mere idea of a king, or perhaps the idea of asking for a king in this way during this time, is what Shəmu'el is speaking against. G-d chose Sha'ul because he's fit for the task, because he really is a good choice. The fact he was asked to choose a king was bad, but the chosen king wasn't. Logically, Sha'ul must know that.

But from his perspective, it's different. From his perspective, this is the second time Shəmu'el criticizes his role - which he didn't ask for. He was forced to enter a position that Shəmu'el had something against from the very beginning. In his day of victory, the day he was recrowned as king, what Shəmu'el has to say is that he really shouldn't have done this in the first place. Sha'ul starts his kingship feeling that Shəmu'el has something against him, and that quite possibly colors the rest of his reign. Maybe this explains a couple of his bad decisions later on.

[poetryofchrist]

A little text analysis using SimHebrew instead of a Hebrew Keyboard

Here's the mapping of square text to the internal form I use in my software. (For a detailed introduction to SimHebrew see this post by Jonathan Orr-Stav,)

א

ב

ג

ד

ה

ו

ז

ח

ט

י

כ

ל

מ

נ

ס

ע

פ

צ

ק

ר

ש

ת

a

b

g

d

h

v

z

k

+

i

c

l

m

n

s

y

p

x

q

r

w

t

The first 7 are quite straightforward. (Except for /v/ which may map to v, o, or u, depending on the context - but there's more to this than meets the ear. Oh, and except for /a/, but see below.)

For the guttural het, a second h in the Hebrew alphabet, /k/ has been chosen. One normally uses k for kaf, but the graphic similarity of the mirror-image of kaf to c is too good to pass up. So k is free for this mapping to the more guttural het. 

For the extra 't' (tet) in the Hebrew alphabet, I substitute a + sign. That saves me from using an escape sequence as the display version of SimHebrew does.

Yod, the tenth consonant, is a clear mapping, but takes some getting used to where it might operate more like a consonant (as does the English /y/) than a vowel.

The next four revert to the familiar k-l-m-n, identically sequenced in the Greek and Latin alphabets.

Samech, comfort, comes in the circle in place of O in the Latin alphabet. There must be story here.

Ayin takes y for graphic similarity, but it takes some getting used to for internal aural clues to pronunciation.

Of the last 6 only tsade requires a note. Again, X, sometimes used for aleph is also graphically similar to tsade. This takes getting used to as well for one's silent inner pronunciation, since X is ts.

I have avoided making any distinction of final letters internally, so /f/ and /c-cidil/ do not play a part internally in the program, but are used as part of an external display in a book.

Note that /a/ and /y/ are both gutturals. Note that /a/ and /i/ in English are often guttural. If you have followed any of my playful translations of the acrostic poems of the Bible in Lamentations (1-4), Proverbs (31), and Psalms (9-10, 25, 34, 37, 111-112, 119, 145), you will know that since aleph and ayin can carry any vowel, I have allowed any English guttural to play the role of aleph or ayin in these poems.

There are books to write on this mapping, but my purpose here is to try and show you some of the things I had done to analyse sequences of words in the Hebrew Bible using these letters for filters. It is much easier to select a pair of letters in Latin text when operating in English than it is to filter by Hebrew letters which must be translated back and forth between their square form and Unicode.

Here is a form I sketched to look at sequences of 6 consecutive Hebrew stems filtered by any combination of three consecutive stems. 

This filters the filters by the word /bn/, where we see that the three stems, al bn iwral, occur 69 times in the 39 books of Tanach. I you were interested in the stem /bn/ you could type it in as a filter and then click on any of the lines in the frequency column, and presto, all the verses in the selected range of books would appear. You could then note the places where your translation was inconsistent - and see if there was any excuse for your work.

Sample screen showing filtered usage of 6 consecutive stems in the Hebrew Bible

I have been thinking of what I have done and what I could do with it. This sketch I made a month or so ago and adjusted to filter the data a bit as I was writing this post.

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