By Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin in Pikesville, Maryland
Rabbi Amnon Bazak’s second volume on the biblical book of Samuel is superb, far better than the many classical commentators he frequently mentions.
Many biblical commentators, but of course, not all, enjoy using the biblical words as steppingstones to teach sermons, good ideas, indeed valuable ideas, but not what the Bible intended.
Bazak writes on pages 180 to 181 of his splendid 456-page book: “we will attempt to understand the plain sense of the text, as we have done from the very beginning of the book of Samuel, based on a firm belief in the value of the first of the seventy faces of the Torah: the plain sense. Unwavering in our belief in the sanctity of the prophetic books…. We will humbly listen to what the text is saying, we will seek to understand what it is trying to teach us, and we will not force it to tell us what we, perhaps, would like to hear.”
Bazak does this in fascinating ways, often showing us parallels with the writings in other biblical books, which open our minds to new ideas that the Bible intends to teach us to improve our lives and the rest of the world, as well as give us hours of joy, as I will show in the following examples.
He displays the parallels between the wording of Eli’s death in 1 Samuel 4 and King Saul’s death on pages 8 and 9, which give us insight into why the Bible relates these tragic dramas.
We read about the first split of the kingdom of our ancestors, which preceded the second split after the death of King Solomon. The first occurred after the death of King Saul, when David was king only over the tribe of Judah for seven years and six months. And Bazak explains why he made the city of Hebron his capital while another ruled the other eleven tribes.
In chapter 11, he offers a fascinating analysis of King David, Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, how David’s general responded to David’s message to arrange that Uriah be killed, did Bathsheba seduce David, did he rape her, and explains how and why each of the four and others acted as they did, what mistakes each character made, and clarifies “this most complex story in the Tanakh.”
As an aid to understanding this drama, he has us examine the interesting parallel between this story and the story of Jacob’s son Judah and his two sons’ wife, Tamar, in Genesis 38.
Among multiple other analyses, Bazak explains why David’s son Absalom began his rebellion against his father in the city of Hebron, David’s capital for more than seven years before he ruled over the united tribes. He explains why David did not adopt King Saul’s policy, which clearly showed a preference for his own tribe members, granting them special privileges and distinguished positions. He also compares David’s last words in II Samuel 23 with Psalm 89, which contains God’s promise to David concerning the everlasting kingdom of his house.