Kavanot: Mirror, Mirror

We now come to the conclusion of שמואל א:

Before we start analyzing the text (and there’s a lot to talk about), I want to introduce a new resource: דברי הימים. The historical section of דברי הימים starts with פרק י, and parallels שמואל א פרק לא and then continues to parallel all of שמואל ב and מלכים. It’s an opportunity we have not had before, to look at the same stories from a different perspective. First, what is דברי הימים? It was composed some 500 years after ספר שמואל, with the return to Zion under Ezra:

The commentators argue on the meaning of עד לו. One understanding is עד עצמו—that דברי הימים is the genealogy of the world from Adam until Ezra himself:

The problem is that דברי הימים doesn’t mention Ezra at all; the genealogy stops before his generation. Ezra’s ancestry is recorded in the book of Ezra itself. Some try to connect עד לו to a specific verse:

I think the most profound understanding of the gemara is that of the Maharshal:

דברי הימים is meant to be an עדות, a testimony. Ezra is speaking to a generation trying to rebuild the land of Israel after generations of exile. He is reminding them where they came from, that they have a long history of living in the land, of political independence and of a religion centered on the בית המקדש. Everything in דברי הימים emphasizes the eternal role of the Davidic dynasty and the מקדש; where ספר שמואל shows us David’s reign, warts and all, דברי הימים shows only the glory.

How was דברי הימים written? It is clear that Ezra had older texts available and used them to compose his book:

“Rashi” (actually it’s pretty clear that the commentary attributed to Rashi in the printed מקראות גדולות is not Rashi) cites a version of the Yerushalmi that mentions other texts:

So we look at דברי הימים the way Documentary Theorists look at the Torah: as an accumulation of older texts assembled into a somewhat coherent whole. Inconsistencies and gaps are to be expected. The difference is that while the Documentarists dismiss the “Redactor” as a blind editor, gluing texts together haphazardly. We realize that the redactor is the actual author, like an artist creating a collage. It’s not the origin of the parts that matter, it’s what the creator has done with the whole.

So we see Ezra writing his book of דברי הימים, with multiple scrolls arrayed in front of him, creating a work to inspire the people of the new Jerusalem.

I was amused to find this comment in a scholarly-oriented Christian Bible commentary:

It’s all a matter of framing.

So we have two sources that take different perspectives on the same incidents and history. The problem is that there are many differences, large and small. Which ones warrant further study, and which can we let pass as unimportant? James Kugel coined the term “omnisignificance” for

The irony is that it is not only the rabbinic exegetes that impose omnisignificance on the text. The academics like Kugel do the same thing, though not for religious reasons: they have to feed their children. The imperative of “publish or perish” means that the Biblical scholar has to continously find newer, more subtle interpretations of the same text.

From a religious perspective, we can understand the omnisignificant imperative in the Torah, which is the word of G-d. Every word, every letter, even the crowns decorating the letters, has importance. But נביאים, and especially כתובים, are assumed to have Divinely-inspired but still human authors. I don’t think we have to find a deep meaning in each variation in such a text.

The Malbim, notably, disagreed:

He is arguing with Ibn Ezra’s famous anti-omnisignificant comment:

But if the variations do not have “comprehensible and significant” meanings, why are they there? If both שמואל and דברי הימים exist contemporaneously, I find it hard to imagine a scenario where so many scribal errors—typos—accumulate that much in each book. I would assume that they would be “corrected” to match each other over the years. If we look at texts that are supposed to be identical, we find much smaller difference. I actually calculated the Levenshtein distance between our texts and compared it to the Masoretic and Qumran Isaiah, along with other intra-Tanach texts.

The difference between Isaiah texts is 3%, as is the difference between תהילים קה in תהילים and דברי הימים. I would suggest that this is the expected difference from hundreds of years of (in Meir Sternberg’s words) scribal misadventure. The difference between דברי הימים and שמואל is 30%. That’s ten times more, much more than I am willing to ascribe to “typos”. But if we are not to assign major significance to each change, what are we to make of it?

My understanding is based on a comment by the cartoonist Rick Kirkman:

I see Ezra, with his sources in front of him, writing his book while reading from the others but not copying word-for-word, letting his words flow as he sets down the history that he wants to tell.

However, the more I think about it, the more I like a slightly different explanation. It’s not so much that דברי הימים is looser, it is that שמואל is looser. ספר שמואל is a book of נבואה, and we expect a more poetic text. We discussed this on the pasuk (שמואל א יג:א)‎ בן שנה שאול במלכו. Similarly, תהילים יח is 21% different from the corresponding chapter in ספר שמואל. It is less a copy than a cover version, composed with the נביא's own style.

So let’s look at the differences betweens the texts and see if we can find significance here, even if it’s not omni-. None of the classical commentators explicitly deal with this issue, but Rabbi Eisemann tries to go into each variant detail and explain them with reference to his thesis about the underlying purposes of each sefer. I will mark changes for which I have no explanation beyond “retain[ing] some of the original spontaneity” as “I have nothing”.

נלחמו/נלחמים

This makes sense, since in ספר שמואל this is in the middle of the story (the battle with the Philistines started back in chapter 28) so “were fighting” fits. In דברי הימים this is the start of the story, so it uses the simple past.

וינס איש ישראל/וינסו אנשי ישראל

Rabbi Eisemann proposes that דברי הימים isn’t really interested in the battle as a whole; it just wants to focus on the death of Saul. So בני ישראל are mentioned in the collective, איש ישראל.

בהר גלבע/בהר הגלבע

I can’t see any reason for this change, except perhaps a change in how the mountain was called over the next 500 years.

יהונתן/יונתן

Similar to דוד/דויד, this is clearly a nomenclature change over time.

על/אל

I have nothing.

המורים בקשתהמורים אנשים בקשת and מן היוריםמהמורים

I have nothing.

ויחל/ויחל מאד

This is subtle, but it may be part of דברי הימים's maximizing Saul’s culpability, to increase the contrast with David.

אל נשא כליו/לנשא כליו

I have nothing.

פן יבאו הערלים האלה והתעללו בי/פן יבואו הערלים האלה ודקרני והתעללו בי

Perhaps removing the דקרני reduces our sympathy for Saul.

על החרב וימת/על חרבו וימת עמו

I have nothing.

וכל ביתו יחדו מתו/ונשא כליו גם כל אנשיו ביום ההוא יחדו

דברי הימים is only interested in Saul, not all of Israel.

בעמק/בעבר העמק ואשר בעבר הירדן

דברי הימים keeps the story localized to Saul.

(I am skipping the small variants)

ויפשיטהו וישאו את ראשו ואת כליו/ויכרתו את ראשו ויפשטו את כליו

דברי הימים seems much more interested in the fate of Saul’s decapitated head. I think it may be to contrast Saul’s fate with David, who not only kept his head but put his enemy’s on display:

ואת גלגלתו תקעו בית דגון/את גויתו תקעו בחומת בית שן

Again, דברי הימים is more interested in Saul’s head.

וילכו כל הלילה/וימת שאול במעלו אשר מעל בה׳

ספר שמואל spends much more time on the actions of ישבי יביש גלעד, which is consistent with our reading of דברי הימים focusing on Saul and his failure.

The story in דברי הימים ends with ויסב את המלוכה לדויד בן ישי. This is more than saying “David became king”; ויסב has the sense of turning, of a revolution (literally!). David’s kingdom would be something utterly unlike Saul’s. Ezra will constantly emphasize that David’s dynasty will never fall, and that the return to Zion marks the rebirth of Israel’s glorious past.