Category Archives: King David

Wednesday, April 18, 1 Samuel Chapter 25 (maybe more)

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“Abigail is an extraordinary woman who is ready to take risks in order to save her husband
and household members from David’s wrath.”
    –Shulamit Valler

“Neither Michal nor Abigail seem to have made idols of their husbands;
they did not even consult them as to what they should think, say, or do. 
They furnish a good example to wives to use their own judgment and
to keep their own secrets, not make the family altar a constant confessional.”
    –Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1898)

Wednesday, April 4, 1 Samuel Chapters 23 and 24

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1 S 24:16  “Saul said: ‘Is this thy voice, my son David?’  And Saul lifted up his voice and wept.“

“Despite Sha’ul’s failures and his subsequent descent into monomaniacal pursuit of David, there is something that leads many readers to view the first king of Israel not as evil, but as tragically marred…Sha’ul is not a misfit but a ‘mighty’ warrior who has fallen, surely not a cause for rejoicing.”
       —-Everett Fox

What’s Love Got to Do with It? David and His Lovers

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Wednesday, February 15, we read 1 Samuel Chapters 18 and 19 in English

 
The theme for Chapters 18 and 19 is “What’s Love Got to Do with It”  (thank you Tina Turner!)

     
    Michal helps David to escape from Saul

    In Chapter 16:21, we already learned that Saul loved David: “And David came to Saul, and stood before him, and he loved him greatly.”
     
    In our next study session, we will read that Saul’s children loved David. 
    18:1 “And it came to pass…that the soul [nefesh] of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.”
    18:20 “And Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved David.

    Did David love anyone?  Does the text place more emphasis on Jonathan’s love for David than Michal’s, although both of them save David’s life?  Join our reading and discussion next Wednesday.

    Study with Penina – 1 Samuel 16 and 17 – February 1 at 7:30pm – RSVP

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    Wednesday, February 1, we read 1 Samuel Chapters 16 and 17 in English
     
    In Chapter 16 we at last meet David, soon to be King, a contradictory and complex characater.

    “The Bible certainly does not idealize him, but he is all the more appealing for that.  No bit of human hope and despair, bravura and foolishness and bitter melancholy, smoldering hatred and deepest love, is foreign to him.”
         –James Kugel

    As recent interpreters have pointed out, he is a man whose feelings are often hidden from us, a man who is acclaimed and loved by others (including his readers) but of whom it is never said that he loves anyone…David, as a man who is sincere but hardly a saint, has through the ages provided a powerful model for repentance…He emerges from Samuel as a humble and humbled king, who points the way to the possibilities of genuine change.”
         —Everett Fox

    And stay tuned:  in Chapter 18, to be read on February 15, we will meet two of the people who love David, Jonathan and Michal.

    1 Samuel 14:24 – 15:35 : Study with Penina January 18

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    Wednesday, January 18, we read 1 Samuel Chapters 14:24 -15:35 in English

      “The old story of the battle of Michmash Pass and the cursing of Jonathan leaves us in a condition of gloomy uncertainty about Saul.  We do not yet know what is to become of him, but we look ahead to the events to come with little hope for him left.”
          —-P. Kyle McCarter, Jr. 

      1 Samuel Chapter 15:
      22 But Samuel said [to Saul]:
      “Does YHWH delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
      As much as in obedience to the command of YHWH?
      Surely, obedience is better than sacrifice,
      Compliance than the fat of rams.
      23 For rebellion is like the sin of divination,
      Defiance, like the iniquity of teraphim.
      Because you rejected       the command of YHWH, [YHWH] has rejected you as king.”

      Study with Penina 1 Samuel 7-8, November 2, 7:30pm RSVP

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      1 Samuel Chapters 7-8
      Wednesday, November 2, 7:30pm to 9pm.  Eitz Chayim library. 
      Bring your Tanakh, snacks, wine.
      RSVPs appreciated
       
      No prior study or knowledge of text study or Hebrew is required! 
      Books provided if you don’t have your own.

      Review and study material can be found on Penina’s blog
      See New York Times article in links:  “The Scrolls as a Start, Not an End”

      We meet each 1st and 3rd Wednesday evening to study the book of Samuel.

      Study with Penina 1 Samuel 5-7 October 19, 7:30pm

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      1 Samuel Chapters 5-7
      Wednesday, October 19, 7:30pm to 9pm.  Eitz Chayim library. 
      Bring your tanach, snacks, wine.
      RSVPs appreciated
       
      No prior study or knowledge of text study or Hebrew is required! 
      Books provided if you don’t have your own.
      Review and study material can be found on Penina’s blog

      Throughout the year we will meet each 1st and 3rd Wednesday evening to study the book of Samuel.

      And they placed the Coffer of YHWH on the wagon,
      along with the chest and the gold mice and the images of their tumors.
      And the cows went-straight on the road, on the road to Bet Shemesh:
      on one path they went, going-along (and) lowing,
      but they did not turn right or left.
      —1 Sam 6:11-12 (Fox translation)

      “Against the spareness and swift efficiency of normal Hebrew narrative style, the writer here lavishes synonyms and repetitions in order to highlight the perfect geometry of the miracle: against all conceivable distractions of biology or sheer animal unknowingness, the cows pursue an arrow-straight…trajectory… [T]he milch cows…are going strenuously against nature: their udders full of milk for the calves they have been forced to leave behind.”
      —Robert Alter, The David Story

      October 5, 2011 Study Session

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      1 Samuel Chapters 3-5
                                       
      Wednesday, October 5, 7:30pm to 9pm.  Eitz Chayim library. 
      Bring your tanach, snacks, wine.
       
      No prior study or knowledge of text study or Hebrew is required! 
      Books provided if you don’t have your own.

      Throughout the year we will meet each 1st and 3rd Wednesday evening to study the book of Samuel.

      YHWH said to Shemu’el:
      Here, I am about to do a thing in Israel
      such that all who hear of it – their two ears will ring!
      —1 Sam 3:11 (Fox translation)

      I will do such things,–
      What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be
      The terrors of the earth.
      —King Lear

      Leaders fail in Samuel, “and it is in confronting their failures that the reader is empowered to ponder the meaning of responsibility and leadership for our own time.  The narratives…unfold in a way that cautions human beings about the exercise of power and takes offenders to task.”
      —Everett Fox

      “Women play a larger role in the books of Samuel than in most of the rest of the Bible… It has, in fact, been suggested that one of the major themes of the stories of David and his family is precisely the unavoidable link between public and private life within a ruling family.”
      —Jo Ann Hacket