Recently in my house, we’ve had a lot of conversations about the Book of Samuel. It started after we watched the David movie with my kids over Sukkot. My daughter in particular was fascinated by the relationship between King Saul and David. A few days later she asked me, “Mom, do you think David was sad when King Saul died?” It was a good question. Saul had spent years pursuing David and trying to kill him. And yet Saul was also David’s king. My son quickly added another layer. David was married to Michal, one of Saul’s daughters, and his best friend was Jonathan, Saul’s son. Was Saul David’s enemy? His father-in-law? His king? The father of his best friend? Somehow, he was all of those things at once.
And yes, for the record, David was devastated when Saul died.
After watching the movie, we went back to the text, and then started listening to a podcast about Samuel together during breakfast. It has quickly become a family project. Part of the reason I am writing this article today is my own commitment to relearning these stories. I want to know them well enough to teach them to my children, and their questions have made me realize how much there is to learn again. A few chapters earlier, for example, we met Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas. My children could not understand them. These men were priests. They served in the Mishkan. Their role was literally to serve God. And yet they were corrupt.
“But how can they be priests if they’re bad?”
It sounds like a simple question, but it really isn’t. How can someone hold a holy role and still behave in a way that is completely at odds with it? It is really not so different from my daughter asking whether David could mourn Saul. They are trying to understand how two things can be true about the same person. How can Saul be chosen by God as king and become jealous and destructive? How can Jonathan love his father deeply while also recognizing that David will be the future king? How can Eli be a priest and still fail so badly when it comes to his own sons? How can Hophni and Phinehas hold sacred positions while behaving in ways completely unworthy of them? And eventually we will have to ask the same questions about David himself.
There is a verse in Samuel that gets to the heart of this. When Samuel is sent to anoint a new king from among Jesse’s sons, he sees Eliab and assumes he must be the one. Eliab looks the part. But God tells Samuel:
Samuel is being reminded that human beings rarely fit neatly into the categories we assign them. That nuance runs through the entire book. Saul is a king, a father, a father-in-law, a man chosen by God, and also a man who spends years trying to kill David. David can fear him, flee from him, and still mourn him when he dies. He tears his clothing and writes a lament for Saul and Jonathan. None of those truths cancel out the others.
And this does not begin or end with Samuel. We just celebrated Simchat Torah, the Jewish holiday when we finish the annual Torah reading cycle and immediately begin again from Genesis. The third to last verse in the Five Books of Moses sums up Moses’ life with one of the greatest descriptions ever given to a human being.
Where does Moses hear the end of his story?
From outside the Land of Israel.
He had spent forty years leading the people toward it. He had longed to enter it himself. And because of his own mistake, he was not permitted to cross over. I am still not sure whether that fills me with anxiety or comfort. I am not Moses. I am not David. I am just Sara. I am trying to raise my children well, do meaningful work, serve God, and make the right choices.
But there is also something deeply comforting in knowing that the people God chose were still people. Their greatness did not make them incapable of failure, and their failures did not erase all that was great within them.
God did not ask flawless people to do His work. He asked human beings. Which means holiness was never reserved for people who never get it right. The harder question is what we do when we do get it wrong. And maybe that is where the real work begins.
