20-and 1028-,
If we were to be guided merely by appear- ances, we should have to conclude that in ch. 9, in the most glaring opposition to the later record, Samuel is represented as a personage of purely local importance, a something betwixt seer and priest, such as was probably to be found then in every country town of Israel. For Saul himself knows nothing of him, but needs to have his atten- tion drawn to him by his servant. It can easily be shown, however, that such an impression is due to an illusion purposely created by the nar- rator in order to heighten the dramatic effect of his description. But all the while even he makes no concealment of the fact that Samuel is in quite a special manner the confidant and the instrument of Jahweh. The day before Saul’s arrival Jahweh has already (9!°") announced him to Samuel as His chosen deliverer of His people, and Samuel
- feels himself thus authorized to anoint Saul in the name of Jahweh to be prince over His people Israel. This last act, in particular, implies a very
high sense of the importance of the man and his relation to Jahweh. Then, again, Saul’s cousin (1044%:), at the mention of Samuel, who is evidently named here as a well-known personage, is at once curious to know what he said, which shows that Saul must have known him as well, so that a merely local importance of the man in his own place of abode is out of the question. Rather must we still admit that in the later narrative a correct estimate is given, not indeed of the polit- ical role of the seer, but of his high spiritual and religious importance. The latter he evidently possessed as the maintainer and protector of pure Jahwisin against all attempts to seduce the people to idolatry or at least to syncretism. But pure Jahwism was in those days synonymous with patriotism, for it was only from their own national God that the people could look for deliverance from the cruel oppression of the Philistines. And so he was honoured by later generations not only as the man of action, who, to carry out the strict command of Jahweh, hewed the Amalekite king Agag to pieces with his own hand ‘ before Jahweh’ (1S 15%, an undoubtedly good historical narra- tive), but also as the man powerful in prayer, whose intercession for his people can be compared for efficacy to that of Moses (Jer 15*).* ;
The last + who in the early sources receives the designation ‘seer’ (hézeh) is Gad, ‘the prophet (nabv’), the seer of David’ (28 24"). This is mani- festly to be understood as meaning, on the one hand, that Gad_is to be reckoned among the pro- phets (in the later sense; and so we find him giving counsel to David, 1S 22°, and conveying to him an oracle from Jahweh, 2 S 24") ; and, on the other hand, that Gad filled the special office of ‘seer’ to David. In the latter capacity he would probably obtain oracles in the traditional fashion by mantic machinery. It is not difficult to under- stand why later generations, to whom this kind of official seership had a heathen smack about it, preferred to ignore it and to put in its place a prophetic activity, which appeared to them far more intelligible and—in the case of a David—far more fitting. For this very reason, however, ‘the seer of David’ may be considered to be an older and more correct designation of Gad than ‘the prophet.’
3. We have learned from the above discussion that the seers and ‘men of God’ of ancient times —Moses, Deborah, Gad (partly)—received even at an early date the further designation of #723 na@b?,t
*It was customary at one time to infer from 1 § 1918f. that
Samuel, especially in his capacity of head of a guild of prophets at Ramah, developed an activity which wrought in favour of the theocracy, and probably promoted also the growth of religious literature. But, apart from the fact that these nébvim (see below) are not to be offhand identified with the ‘prophets’ in the later sense of the term, there are the strongest objections to the historical character of this whole passage. The manifest contradiction with 1535 is alone suffi- cient to show that in 19]8f we have to do with a very late midrash, after the manner of 161, _ + We leave out of account the circumstance that the Chron- icler is acquainted with a ‘seer’ named Je'do (2 Ch 929) or ‘Iddo (1215) in the reigns of Solomon, Rehoboam, and Abijah, whereas in 1322 he is called ‘ prophet’; and witha ‘seer’ Jehu in the reign of Jehoshaphat (192). When, again, the Chronicler gives the name of ‘seer’ even to the music masters of David, namely Asaph (2 Ch 2930), Heman (1 Ch 255), Jeduthun (2 Ch 3515), he follows a usage of language unknown elsewhere.
{ Here we may give all that is most essential regarding the etymology and the history of the usage of this term. The root nab@ has not survived in Hebrew, for the verbal forms nibba@’ and hithnabbe’ (‘to show oneself a nabi’’) are derived from the substantive navi’. But the Arabic and the cognate Heb. roots nabah (‘bark’) and ndba' (‘bubble forth’) show that naba’ means originally to throw out words or particular sounds with violence, as happens in mantic rapture or holy frenzy. (On the corresponding Assyr. root=‘to carry off, ‘to tear away violently’ [carried away by a supernatural power], cf. J. Bewer, Amer. Journ. of Semit. Lang. and Lit. xviii. 2, p. 120). Hence the howling dervishes of Islam have been rightly com- pared with the nébi’im of ancient Israel. Nab? then denotes [actively] properly one who professionally [this is implied in the