Thursday, January 10, 2013

Shocking Statement in Bible Commentary

 Reflections on 1 Samuel 16:1-2

Walter Brueggemann makes a shocking statement on p. 121 of his commentary on 1 & 2 Samuel when he says, “Yahweh will lie, if necessary, in order to move the kingship toward David.” He says this despite noting that Samuel had affirmed just a few verses earlier that the “Glory of Israel will not lie” (1 Samuel 15:29).

So what prompted Brueggemann’s assertion? It was that God told Samuel to take a heifer to Bethlehem for a sacrifice so that he wouldn’t have to tell Saul he was going there to anoint a new king (1 Samuel 16:2). Brueggemann admits this may not be a “blatant lie,” but he says it is “clearly an authorized deception” and that Yahweh is “very close to falsehood.” Between those two statements, Brueggemann says that “Yahweh will lie, if necessary.”

First note that when Samuel said that the “Glory of Israel will not lie,” he was undoubtedly referring to Numbers 23:19 where it notes that God is not man “that he should lie.” Second, note that Paul affirms in Titus 1:2 that God “never lies,” and the writer of Hebrews 6:18 says that it is “impossible for God to lie.” Withholding a secret is not in itself a lie. As J. E. Smith notes in The Books of History, “The animal was not a subterfuge, but a means of verifying his sacrificial intentions should he be challenged by Saul’s agents.” Samuel was not obligated to tell everything he knew, but only answer the question he was asked.

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