I’m doing 1 Samuel 4 this Sunday for my adult Sunday school class. Samuel is an incredible book. It is so deep and nuanced in its story telling. At this point in the story we know that things are very bad in Israel. The whole cultic operation has been corrupted by Eli’s sons and Eli is blind to their transgressions only responding to what he hears third hand. The spiritual malaise has been slumbering beneath the surface, clear to Yhwh but unseen by the people and with the rise of the Philistine threat once more their poverty will be revealed.
The Philistines organize themselves for war and Israel, implied here to be hapless loses the first battle. The elders in their performance review credit God for their loss. Their plan to change the performance of their armies involves changing their god-management strategy. Hophni and Phinehas have of course now taken full control of the god-management division of Israel and are called upon to manage this god and get him to up his performance. God was a bit distant from the last battle. Maybe he wasn’t paying attention. Maybe he was distracted. If they get his throne/footstool out front and center then maybe he’ll be roused and the Philistines can be their slaves instead of the other way around.
When the ark comes into the Israelite camp the army gets pumped up for battle and a shout goes out. The Philistines hearing this shout get scared. They heard what the god of Israel did to the Egyptians and they don’t want that to happen to them, so they do just like Pharaoh did, they harden their hearts and steel themselves for the battle and off the go. This time, however, the outcome is not what we saw with superpower Egypt.
One of the reasons I love the book of Samuel is because it is so multi-layered. Part of the art in this incredibly economic narrative is the view of the world through eyes of the elders of Israel as well as through the eyes of the Philistines. We know that common culture/conventional wisdom of the time had a variety of basic beliefs about what gods were, what they were like, how they should be managed and how life could be managed with respect to them. Gods were certainly central to the operations of the world. Gods were involved in every area of life from how many sons the wife pumps out, to the crops in the field, the goats in the flock and the armies on the battle field. What we see here is the there is little difference between the elders of Israel and the Philistine men. When it came to dealing with the gods they were all on the same page.
I’m reading John H. Walton’s book “Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament” where there are helpful seconds on the culture of the time and region. He notes there that the gods were not necessarily better than people, they were just stronger than people. We tend to be more familiar with Greek mythology and not much reflection will note that this is illustrated by their stories countless times.
The gut-check moment of the story naturally follows the “good idea” of Israel’s elders. In the first battle, the performance they were attempting to remedy, they only lost 4,000 men. The second was a rout that made the first look mild. It was a total catastrophe. The narrative progresses of course through the perspective of the family of Eli and the strangeness of the fact that they mourn the loss of the ark more than the mourn the loss of his rotten boys. The climax of the story is the last verse where even the reception of a son, Ichabod cannot comfort his dying mother. God is in exile from Israel!
As readers of the story know, what follows will be God undoing the conventional wisdom on the care and feeding of the gods both for the Philistines and more importantly the elders of Israel. God will use the conventional wisdom of the region against itself by stepping out of the roles they have forced him into. This God cannot be managed. Even when the ark returns Yhwh will show them (as he showed the Philistines) that he does what he wants and their imaginations about his limitations are simply foolish.
The most amazing consequence of human rebellion seems to be the way we imagine we can somehow outsmart God. The gods can be managed. They have to carted along like some blind, overweight Eli out to the battle and have the noise rouse them to say “oh my, I think I’ll kill some Philistines today. I didn’t know they were bothering the people who bring those nice tasty lambs to the BBQ!”
What strikes me is how often we do this today. We imagine God doesn’t know all kinds of things or that this or that problem is really too much for him so we have to take matters into our own hands.
Nearly every conventional wisdom corruption of God diminishes God in some way and leaves us on the state as the principle actors of history. I think about the scene in the movie Avatar when the bad army dudes are coming in to kill the Navi spirit tree and the hero and heroine have to somehow rouse the great pantheistic nature god into action. What kind of a god do you have if it doesn’t even know that the army dudes are there digging their stupid little ore? Sheesh. Again, the gods of these stories are all somehow at our disposal and somehow need our management like an elderly person who can no longer see how dirty the flatware is.
The Bible is commonly panned for being from a different place and time. Its heroes were killers and slave owners. One way its helpful to us is precisely because it speaks to us from a different time. It is not subject to our conventional god wisdom that suggest to us that power and opportunity are available to those who have learned to manage, feed and seduce the gods whether they be being or some universal spirit or the physics of the natural world. If we can get beyond the chronological sneer of imagining the people today somehow are wiser than people of the past, we just might learn something. pvk
Leadingchurch.com 
The Conventional Wisdom god
I’m doing 1 Samuel 4 this Sunday for my adult Sunday school class. Samuel is an incredible book. It is so deep and nuanced in its story telling. At this point in the story we know that things are very bad in Israel. The whole cultic operation has been corrupted by Eli’s sons and Eli is blind to their transgressions only responding to what he hears third hand. The spiritual malaise has been slumbering beneath the surface, clear to Yhwh but unseen by the people and with the rise of the Philistine threat once more their poverty will be revealed.
The Philistines organize themselves for war and Israel, implied here to be hapless loses the first battle. The elders in their performance review credit God for their loss. Their plan to change the performance of their armies involves changing their god-management strategy. Hophni and Phinehas have of course now taken full control of the god-management division of Israel and are called upon to manage this god and get him to up his performance. God was a bit distant from the last battle. Maybe he wasn’t paying attention. Maybe he was distracted. If they get his throne/footstool out front and center then maybe he’ll be roused and the Philistines can be their slaves instead of the other way around.
When the ark comes into the Israelite camp the army gets pumped up for battle and a shout goes out. The Philistines hearing this shout get scared. They heard what the god of Israel did to the Egyptians and they don’t want that to happen to them, so they do just like Pharaoh did, they harden their hearts and steel themselves for the battle and off the go. This time, however, the outcome is not what we saw with superpower Egypt.
One of the reasons I love the book of Samuel is because it is so multi-layered. Part of the art in this incredibly economic narrative is the view of the world through eyes of the elders of Israel as well as through the eyes of the Philistines. We know that common culture/conventional wisdom of the time had a variety of basic beliefs about what gods were, what they were like, how they should be managed and how life could be managed with respect to them. Gods were certainly central to the operations of the world. Gods were involved in every area of life from how many sons the wife pumps out, to the crops in the field, the goats in the flock and the armies on the battle field. What we see here is the there is little difference between the elders of Israel and the Philistine men. When it came to dealing with the gods they were all on the same page.
I’m reading John H. Walton’s book “Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament” where there are helpful seconds on the culture of the time and region. He notes there that the gods were not necessarily better than people, they were just stronger than people. We tend to be more familiar with Greek mythology and not much reflection will note that this is illustrated by their stories countless times.
The gut-check moment of the story naturally follows the “good idea” of Israel’s elders. In the first battle, the performance they were attempting to remedy, they only lost 4,000 men. The second was a rout that made the first look mild. It was a total catastrophe. The narrative progresses of course through the perspective of the family of Eli and the strangeness of the fact that they mourn the loss of the ark more than the mourn the loss of his rotten boys. The climax of the story is the last verse where even the reception of a son, Ichabod cannot comfort his dying mother. God is in exile from Israel!
As readers of the story know, what follows will be God undoing the conventional wisdom on the care and feeding of the gods both for the Philistines and more importantly the elders of Israel. God will use the conventional wisdom of the region against itself by stepping out of the roles they have forced him into. This God cannot be managed. Even when the ark returns Yhwh will show them (as he showed the Philistines) that he does what he wants and their imaginations about his limitations are simply foolish.
The most amazing consequence of human rebellion seems to be the way we imagine we can somehow outsmart God. The gods can be managed. They have to carted along like some blind, overweight Eli out to the battle and have the noise rouse them to say “oh my, I think I’ll kill some Philistines today. I didn’t know they were bothering the people who bring those nice tasty lambs to the BBQ!”
What strikes me is how often we do this today. We imagine God doesn’t know all kinds of things or that this or that problem is really too much for him so we have to take matters into our own hands.
Nearly every conventional wisdom corruption of God diminishes God in some way and leaves us on the state as the principle actors of history. I think about the scene in the movie Avatar when the bad army dudes are coming in to kill the Navi spirit tree and the hero and heroine have to somehow rouse the great pantheistic nature god into action. What kind of a god do you have if it doesn’t even know that the army dudes are there digging their stupid little ore? Sheesh. Again, the gods of these stories are all somehow at our disposal and somehow need our management like an elderly person who can no longer see how dirty the flatware is.
The Bible is commonly panned for being from a different place and time. Its heroes were killers and slave owners. One way its helpful to us is precisely because it speaks to us from a different time. It is not subject to our conventional god wisdom that suggest to us that power and opportunity are available to those who have learned to manage, feed and seduce the gods whether they be being or some universal spirit or the physics of the natural world. If we can get beyond the chronological sneer of imagining the people today somehow are wiser than people of the past, we just might learn something. pvk
Share this:
Related
About PaulVK
Husband, Father of 5, Pastor