Samuel and the Prophetical Office, Lecture XVIII: Samuel (part 1)
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D.
The fall of the sanctuary of Shiloh was the ter-
mination of the first period of Jewish history
which had lasted from Moses to Eli. It had
been a period varied and shifting in detail, but with
this common feature, - that it was a time of wan-
dering and of strife, of danger and of deliverance,
of continual and direct dependence on the help of
God alone, with no regular means of government, or
law, or army, or king, to ward off the enemies that
were constantly assailing them from without, or to
repress the disorders that were constantly disturbing
them from within. The Judges themselves were
regarded as invested with something of a divine or
God-like character ; the more so perhaps from their
solitary and strange elevation above all around them.
A new selection of Judges is described as "a choosing
of new gods ; "and the two last of the series are
especially dignified with the name of "God." This
period, called on these accounts by Josephus "the
Theocracy" or "Aristocracy," was now at an end.
The wanderings were at last over, and the battle was
at last won. The desire of the people was stimulated
by its nearer insight into the customs of the sur-
rounding nations to have a ruler like to them ; the
coming change had already, as we saw in the times
of the Judges, made itself felt by the gradual
approximation to such an institution in the
lives of Jair and Abdon Gideon and Abimelech, Eli
and Samuel. All these indications were at last to re-
ceive their full accomplishment in the inauguration of
a fixed, hereditary, regal government, in the person
of the first king - "Behold the king whom ye have
chosen, and whom ye have desired. Behold, the
Lord hath set a king over you." Now, therefore,
was to begin that second period, that new and untried
future, which was to last for another five hundred
years - the period of the Monarchy. Was it possible
that an institution which had begun in wilfulness and
distrust would ripen into a just and holy law? would
the establishment of armies, and officers of state, and
king succeeding king, as a matter of course, without
any sudden call or mission, - would the growth of
poetry, and architecture, and music, and all the other
arts which spring up under an established rule, -
would the secure dwelling of every man under his
own vine and fig-tree, - would these and many like
changes destroy or confirm, diminish or expand, the
faith which had hitherto been the safety of the Chosen
People? Would the true Theocracy, the government
of God, be weakened or strengthened, now that in
name it was was withdrawn? Was this great stride in
earthly civilization inconsistent with the preservation
of the ancient primeval religion of Abraham, and
Moses, and Joshua?
Such were the questions which actually would arise
in the mind of any thoughtful Israelite at
this crisis. They are questions which, in some form
or other, arise at every like crisis in the progress of
the Church. It must be reserved for the discussion
of the history of the Monarchy to point out how
these natural fears were in part justified, but yet on
the whole rendered futile, by the actual results of
the change. In the Kings of Israel and Judah we
shall see the first exhibition of that union of regal
and priestly excellence, which was to be completed
in a yet diviner sense, only in the final stage of the
sacred history. We shall trace in the victories of the
hosts of Israel the first complete establishment of the
new and great name of God, - " The Lord of Hosts,"
" Jehovah Sabaoth." In the Psalms of David, in the
Temple of Solomon, and in the prophecies of Isaiah,
we shall recognize a fuller communion with God,
even than on the holy mountain of Sinai, or in the
speaking face to face with Moses as with a friend.
But those blessings were still in the distance. We
are yet on the threshold. It will, however, be useful
here to describe the influences first of the indi-
vidual and then of the office, which were raised
up to guide the Jewish Church (and, by example,
the Christian Church) through this or any like
transitions.
In this crisis of the Chosen People, second only in
importance to the Exodus, there appeared a leader,
second only to Moses. Amidst the wreck of the an-
cient institutions of the country, amidst the rise and
growth of the new, there was one counsellor to whom
all turned for advice and support - one heart to
which "the Lord" especially "revealed Him-
self." The life and character of Samuel,
covers the whole of this period of perplexity and
doubt. The two books which give an account of the
first establishment of the Monarchy are called by his
name, as fitly as the books which give an account
of the establishment of the Theocracy are called by
the name of Moses. At the close of this first period
of the Jewish history, and on the eve of the second
period, it will be necessary to draw forth those points
in his character and appearance which specially fitted
him for this position. As in the case of all the ear-
lier characters of the Jewish Church, we must be
content with an uncertainty and dimness of percep-
tion ; we must not expect to form a complete por-
traiture of either the man or his history. But the
general effect of the whole career is sufficiently clear,
and on that alone I propose to dwell.
I. First, then, observe precisely what his position
was, and how he filled it. He was not a Founder
of a new state of things like Moses, nor a champion
of the existing order of things like Elijah or
Jeremiah. He stood, literally, between the
past and the future, between the old an the new,
with that sympathy for each which, at such a period,
is the best hope for any permanent solution of the
questions which torment it. He had been brought
up and nurtured in the ancient system. His child-
hood had been spent in the Sacred Tent of Shiloh,
the last relic of the Wanderings in the Desert. His
early dedication to the sanctuary belonged to that age
of vows, of which we saw the excess in the rash and
hasty vows of Jephthah, of Saul, and of the assembly
at Mizpeh ; in the more regular, but still peculiar and
eccentric devotion of Samson to the life of a Nazarite.
As he grew up, devoted by his mother, herself almost
a Nazarite, secluded from the world in his linen
ephod, his long locks flowing over his shoulders, on
which no razor was ever to pass, perhaps we may
add, abstaining from all wine and strong drink, he
must have presented a likeness, civilized and tamed
indeed, but still a likeness, of the wild Danite cham-
pion who rent the lion, and smote the Philistines with
the jawbone of an ass - he must have been a living
memorial of past times, far into a new generation
which knew such things no more.
He was also a Judge, of the ancient generation, the
last of the Judges, the last of that long succes-
sion who had been raised up from Othniel
downwards to effect special deliverances. In the over-
throw of the sanctuary of Shiloh, and the disasters which
followed, we hear not what became of Samuel. He
next appears, after an interval of many years, suddenly
amongst the people, warning them against their idol-
atrous practices. He convened an assembly at Miz-
peh - probably the place of that name in the tribe of
Benjamin - and there with a symbolical rite, expressive
partly of deep humiliation, partly of the libations of a
treaty, they poured water on the ground, they fasted
and they entreated Samuel to raise the piercing shrill
cry, for which his prayers were known, in supplication
to God for them. It was at the moment that he was
offering up a sacrifice, and sustaining this loud cry, that
the Philistine host burst suddenly upon them. A
violent thunderstorm and (according to Jose-
phus) an earthquake, came to the timely assistance of
Israel. The Philistines fled, and, exactly at the spot
where twenty years before they had obtained their
great victory, they were totally routed. A huge stone
was set up, which long remained as a memorial of
Samuel's triumph, and gave to the place its name of
Eben-ezer, "the Stone of Help," which was thence passed
into Christian phraseology, and became a common name
of Puritan saints and Nonconformist chapels. The
old Canaanites, whom the Philistines had dispossessed
in the outskirts of the Judæan hills, seem to have
helped in the battle, and "there was peace between
Israel and the Amorites." A large portion of lost
territory in the plain of Philistia was recovered. The
battle of Eben-ezer - the first, and, as far as we know,
the only direct military achievement of Samuel -
marked as it was by the first return of victory to the
arms of Israel after the fall of Shiloh, was apparently
the event which raised him to the office of "Judge."
There, in the same way as "Jerubbaal, and Bedan,
and Jephthah," with whom he is thus classed, he
won his title to that name, then the highest in the
nation. He dwelt in his own birthplace, and, like
Gideon, or like Micah, made it a sanctuary of his own.
There was still no central capitol. Shiloh was gone,
Shechem was gone, and Jerusalem was not yet come.
All was as of old, yet uncertain and unfixed. The per-
sonal, family bond was stronger than the national. He
went from year to year, indeed, in solemn circuit to
the ancient sanctuaries within his own immediate
neighborhood - "Bethel, and Gilgal, and Mizpeh" -
and "judged Israel in all those place." But "his re-
turn was always to Ramah; " or there was his
house, and there he judged Israel, and there he built
an altar unto the Lord." As yet "there was no king
in Israel - he did what was right in his own eyes."
His sons, as in the case of those of Jair and Abdon,
shared the power with him, though at the remote
southern sanctuary of Beersheba ; and in their corrupt
practices he lived to see a repetition of the scandals
of Hophni and Phinehas. He was, as it might have
seemed, but as one of the old chiefs of the bygone
age - half warrior, half sage. Like the Levite who
dwelt in the sanctuary of Micah, but on a grander scale,
he was consulted throughout the neighborhood
as an oracle for any of the vexations or difficul-
ties of common life. In him we see the last example
of the custom which was "beforetime in Israel when
men went to inquire of God" about these matters.
An ass would have gone astray on the mountains, or
an expedition in search of a settlement would need to
be blessed, and the inquirers would come with the ever-
recurring present (bakhshish) of the Oriental supplicant
- loaves of bread, or the fourth part of a shekel of sil-
ver, or the offer of a good place in the new settlement.
An awful reverence for the ancient times thus grew
up around him. His long-protracted life was like the
shadow of the great rock of an older epoch projected
into the level of the modern age. "He Judged Israel
all his life:" even after the Monarchy had sprung up,
he was still a witness of an earlier and more primitive
state. Whatever murmurs or complaints had arisen,
were always hushed for the moment before his pres-
ence. They leaned upon him, they looked back to him
even from after-ages, as their fathers had leaned upon
Moses. A peculiar virtue was believed to reside in his
intercession. In later times he was conspicuous amongst
those that "call upon the name of the Lord," and was
thus placed with Moses as "standing" (in the special
sense of the attitude for prayer "before the Lord."
It was the last consolation that he left in his
parting address, that he would "cry," in agitated
moments, "all night long unto the Lord," and thus
seem to draw down, as if by force, the Divine answer.
"Cease not to cry to the Lord for us." "And Samuel
cried unto the Lord . . . and " (as if with a special ref-
erence to the meaning of his name, "asked" or "heard"
of God) "the Lord heard him." No festive or solemn
occasion was complete without his presence. "The
people will not eat until he come, because he doth
bless the sacrifice; and afterwards they eat that be
'bidden.' " His coming was a signal for mingled fear
and joy. The elders of Bethlehem "trembled at his
coming, and said, 'Comest thou peaceably?' And he
said, 'Peaceably: I am come to sacrifice unto the Lord.
Sanctify yourselves, and come with me to the sac-
rifice.' "
When we read of that apparition, in which he was
evoked after death, as he had been known in life, there
was something terrific, yet venerable, in his aspect;
"I see a god ascending out of the earth."
His long Nazarite hair, now white with age,
marked him from a distance to be the old grey-headed
seer. The little mantle which his mother gave him,
reaching down to his feet, had from his earliest years
marked him out as an almost royal personage; and the
same peculiar robe, in extended proportions, wrapped
round him, was his badge to the end. On its skirt
Saul had laid hold when he had last parted from Sam-
uel at Gilgal. By its folds, he recognized him in the
vision at Endor.
II. Such was Samuel, as the last representative of
the ancient mediæval Church of Judaism. But
there was another relation inseparably blended
with this, in which he must be regarded as the first
representative of the new epoch which was now dawn-
ing on his country. He is explicitly described as "Sam-
uel the Prophet." " All the prophets from Samuel and
those that follow after." "He gave them judges until
Samuel the Prophet." We have already seen the lower
and more limited sense, in which he might be so called,
as the oracle of his neighborhood or of his country in
the various difficulties, great or small, which drove them
to consult him. We are even enabled to observe the
special means by which he received the revelations
which thus first gained for him the reverence of his
countrymen. "By dreams, by Urim, and by prophets,"
we are told, weer the three especial channels by which
in those days "the Lord answered" to those that in-
quired of Him. By the first of these, we can hardly
doubt, it is intended to be intimated that Samuel re-
ceived and delivered his early warnings. "The word of
the Lord was precious in those days - there was no
open vision." It was in the stillness of the night,
just before dawn, that Samuel first heard
the Divine Voice. That voice and those visions
still continued. "The Lord revealed himself to Samuel."
It is, with perhaps one exception, the earliest instance
of the use of the word which has since become the
name for all Divine communication. "The Lord un-
covered the ear," - such is the literal expression ; a
touching and significant figure, taken from the man-
ner in which the professor of a secret moves back the
long hair of his friend, and whispers into the ear thus
laid bare the word that no one else may hear. It is
a figure which precisely expresses the most universal
and philosophical idea conveyed by the term "Revelation,"
thence appropriated in the theological language both of
Eas and West. "The Father of Truth" (says an em-
inent scholar, indicating his own use of this phrase to
describe the mission of the Semitic races) "chooses
His own prophets, and He speaks to them in a voice
stronger than the voice of thunder. It is the same
inner voice through which God speaks to all of us.
That voice may dwindle away, and become hardly
audible; it may lose its divine accent and sink into
the language of worldly prudence; but it may also
from time to time assume its real nature with the
chosen of God, and sound into their ears as a voice
from Heaven. A 'divine instinct' would neither be
an appropriate name for what is a gift or grace ac-
corded but to few, nor would it be a more intelligible
word than 'special Revelation.' "
Through these revelations, the child first and then
the man, became "Samuel the Seer." By that
ancient name, older than any other designa-
tion of the Prophetic office, he was known in his own
as in after-times. "I am the Seer," was his answer
to those who asked, "Is the Seer here?" "Where is
the Seer's house" "Samuel the Seer" is the name
by which he is known in the books of Chronicles, as
the counsellor of Saul and David. And, as if in a
distorted reminiscence of his peculiar gift of second
sight, - of insight into the secrets of Heaven and of
the future, - Samuel is the character selected in Mussul-
man traditions as the first revealer of the mysteries
of the nocturnal flight of Mahomet from Mecca to
Jerusalem. But it was in a much higher and more
important sense than as a mere "seer" of visions, that
Samuel appears as preëminently "The Prophet." The
passages already quoted from the New Testament in-
dicate to us, and Augustine in his "De Civitate Dei,"
has well caught the idea, that he is the beginning of
that Prophetical dispensation, which ran parallel with
the Monarchy from the first to the last king, and to-
gether with it forms the essential characteristic of the
whole of the coming period. "Hoc itaque tempus, ex
quo Sanctus Samuel prophetare cœpit, et deinceps
donec populus Israel in Babyloniam captivus ducere-
tur . . . . totum est tempus Prophetarum." It
was from Samuel's time that the succession was never
broken. Even the Musselman legends delight to make
him the herald of all the Prophets, down to the last,
that were to come after him.
In many ways does this origination of the line of
Prophets centre in Samuel. We may trace back to
him the institution even in its outward form and
fashion. In his time we first hear of what in
modern phraseology are called the Schools of
the Prophets. Whatever be the precise mean-
ing of the peculiar word, which now came first into
use as the designation of these companies, it is evi-
dent that their immediate mission consisted in utter-
ing religious hymns or songs, accompanied by musical
instruments - psaltery, tabret, pipe and harp, and cym-
bals. In them, as in the few solitary instances of
their predecessors, the characteristic element was that
the silent seer of visions found an articulate voice,
gushing forth in a rhythmical flow, which at once
riveted the attention of the hearer. These, or such
as these, were the gifts which under Samuel were now
organized, if only one may say so, into a system. The
spots where they were chiefly gathered, even in latter
times, were more or less connected with their founder;
Bethel and Gilgal. But the chief place where they
appear in his own lifetime is his own birthplace and
residence, Ramah, Ramathaim-zophim, 'the height,
the double height of the watchmen." From this or
from some neighboring height they might be seen
descending, in a long line or chain, which gave its
name to their company, with "psaltery, harp, tabret,
pipe, and cymbals." Or by dwellings, the leafy
huts as they were in later times, on the hill-side -
Naioth in Ramah " - they were settled in a congre-
gation (such is the word in the original), a church
as it were within a church, and "Samuel stood appointed
over them." Under the shadow of his name they
dwelt as within a charmed circle. From them went
forth an influence which awed and inspired even the
wild and reckless soldiers of that lawless age. Amongst
them we find the first authors distinctly named, in
Hebrew literature, of actual books which descended
to later generations, and gathered up the recollections
of their own or former times. Song, and mystic,
and dance were interwoven in some sacred union,
difficult for us to conceive in these western or north-
ern regions, yet not without illustrations even at the
present day from religious observances of Spain
and of Arabia. But, unlike the dances of Seville and
Cairo, the mystical songs and ecstasies of these Pro-
phetic Schools were trained to ends much nobler than
any mere ceremonial observance. Thither in that age
of change and dissolution Samuel gathered round him
all that was generous and devout in the people of
God. David, the shepherd warrior and wandering
outlaw - Saul, the wild and wayward king - Heman,
the grandson of Samuel himself, chief singer, after-
wards, in David's court, and known especially as the
king's seer - Gad, the devoted companion of David
in his exile - Nathan, his stern reprover in after-times,
and the wise counsellor of David's wise son - all, how-
ever different their characters and stations, seem to
have found a home within those sacred haunts, all
caught the same divine inspiration; all were, for the
time at least, drawn together by the invigorating and
elevating atmosphere.
I may be forgiven, if for a moment before dwelling
in detail on what belongs to the special age and
country, I call attention to the fact that this is the
first direct mention, the first express sanction, not
merely of regular arts of instruction and education,
but of regular societies formed for that purpose - of
schools, of colleges, of universities. Long before Plato
had gathered his disciples round him in the olive
grove, or Zeon in the Portico, these institutions had
sprung up under Samuel in Judea.
It is always interesting in ecclesiastical history to in-
dicate the successive moments at which the successive
ideas and institutions, afterwards to be developed, first
came into existence. And here, in Oxford, it is im-
possible not to note with peculiar interest the rise of
these, as they may be truly called, the first places
of regular religious education. They present to us,
even in detail, the same fixedness of local continuity,
which so remarkably distinguishes our schools and
universities from the shifting philosophical societies of
Greece; at Betel and at Gilgal, if not at Ramah,
the schools of the Prophets are found in the time of
Elijah where they were in the time of Samuel, even
as our own university, and our own colleges, still
flourish on the ground chosen ages ago by Alfred
and by Walter de Merton. They present to us, also,
so far as we know anything of their constitution,
something of the same large influence, so often ob-
served amongst ourselves ; the effect exercised rather
by the general atmosphere and society of the place,
than by its special instructions. Of the information
imparted by Samuel, or by the fathers of the school
of the Prophets, we know hardly anything. We see
only that there was a contagion of goodness, of en-
thusiasm, of energy, which even those who came
with hostile or indifferent minds, such as Saul and
the messengers of Saul, found it almost impossible to
resist; they, too, were wrapt into the vortex of in-
spiration, and the by-standers exclaimed with astonish-
ment, "Is Saul also among the prophets?" How like
to the spell exercised by the local genius of our
English Universities, insensibly, unaccountably exer-
cised over many, who would not be able to say how
or whence they had gained it ; how like to the in-
fluences passing to and fro amongst us, for good or
evil, from the example, the characters, the spirit of
our companions ; far more potent than lectures, or
precepts or sermons. "I have learned much from my
Masters, more from my companions, most of all
from my scholars." And, further, if this be so,
the peculiar circumstances of the rise of the Pro-
phetic Schools of Israel may well point out
to us one special object, at least, of all such
seats of education everywhere. To mediate
between the old and the new ; to maintain a current
of independent thought and feeling amidst the pres-
sure of lower influences ; to distinguish between that
which is temporal and that which is eternal - this is
the mission of institutions like ours ; this was the
mission of Samuel, and of the schools of which he
was the Founder.
from The History of the Jewish Church, Vol. I : Abraham to Samuel,
"Samuel and the Prophetical Office; Lecture XVIII: Samuel"
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1879, pp. 429-444
Posted Mar 28, 2018, 4:41 PM UTC · edited
20