1 Samuel by David Jobling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first picked up this volume six years ago when I was preaching on I Samuel and needed more commentaries on it. At the time I read portions of it and was deeply impressed. It ended up restructuring many of the sermons I had planned for that series.

The lections on early Israel return this summer, and I'm taking another, and more comprehensive, stab at preaching from these stories. This time I wanted to read all the way through this commentary ahead of the series.

And what a rewarding read it was. Jobling engages in "against the grain" interpretations that bring out the issues of class, race, and gender in the stories. The book contains insightful comments on the stories, reflections on the shape of the book and the canon, and exploration of the meta-questions of hermeneutics and how we engage in biblical scholarship. It is brilliant.

Among the interesting insights is his interpretation of the David and Jonathan relationship. He accepts that this is a homoerotic relationship, but points out that the Bible only ever indicates that Jonathan loved David, never the reverse. David, Jobling believes, used the relationship with Jonathan to get ahead, in the same way that David used his relationships with women. Jobling writes that Jonathan fills a similar role in the plot to David's women, and places his interpretation of Jonathan within that rubric.

Jobling also finds the Medium (or commonly "Witch") of Endor to play a key role in interpreting the book. She provides an alternative to the establishment history attempting to be narrated in the book. She is a woman, she lives along the disputed Philistine boundary, and she practices forbidden rituals. But she is able to successfully connect with the idealized past (in the person of Samuel's ghost) and bringing healing to Saul. I have not planned a sermon on her, but I think I'll have to restructure my series to do that.

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