The Infant Warrior & King

Doyle Walker

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How does it make you feel to say there are difficult verses in the Bible? Why?

Issues in 1 Samuel 13:1

Learning Objectives

After this section, you should be able to:

• Explain what a text-critical problem is

• Explain the issue in 1 Sam 13:1

• Identify the kind of question this passage raises

Introduction

You may not realize it, but 1 Sam 13:1 is actually a very controversial verse in the ot.

1 Sam 13:1

1 Samuel 13:1 ESV

Saul lived for one year and then became king, and when he had reigned for two years over Israel,

The verse is about Saul’s reign: when Saul became king, and how long he reigned. That sounds kind of boring.

Why is that worth even thinking about? Why is it worth discussing?

A Famous Text-Critical Problem

This verse contains a very famous what is called “text-critical issue.

So what does “text-critical” mean?

Textual Criticism—the Art and Science of Recovering an Ancient Document

Today, a book is printed from a text that has been written by the author. The work is produced under the supervision of that author. Consequently, we can be confident that the printed form of the work accurately represents the author’s original writing. This, however, is not the case with works written before the invention of printing in the fifteenth century.

The science of attempting to reconstruct the text of documents is known as “textual criticism.” The person who practices textual criticism is known as a textual critic. While the word, “criticism” usually carries the idea of finding fault with something, this is not the case here. Rather, the term is used with the idea of weighing and evaluating the available evidence to come up with the original wording of a text. Textual criticism collects and examines the evidence about written works in an attempt to recover the original text. Therefore, textual criticism is not criticizing the Bible.

When we look at the subject of the textual criticism of the Bible, we find two extreme positions that are sometimes held. One position holds that there is no need for any textual criticism, while the other position believes there is no hope of finding the original text. Each of these positions is incorrect.

On the one hand, there are those who do not believe that any textual criticism should be applied to Scripture. They argue that God has preserved His Word intact through certain Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. These manuscripts should be the basis of every translation that is made into another language. No other manuscripts should be consulted except these certain ones that have been “providentially preserved.”

On the other hand, there is the position that it is not possible to recover the original text of Scripture. It is argued that the best we can do is to recover the latest edition of the biblical books that was edited by others than those who wrote the original.

The first position is held by people who have a very conservative view of the Bible, while the second is held by those who have a very liberal attitude toward Scripture. However, neither of these positions is the correct one. Textual criticism must be practiced on the biblical books because there is no one manuscript, or group of manuscripts, that perfectly preserve the original reading.

Yet, we do believe that it is possible to discover what the authors originally wrote. There is no need to assume that the text was changed to such a degree that we no longer have the authors’ original words. The original text can be recovered through the science of textual criticism.

What I mean by that is—when I say “text critical,” I am referring to how the Hebrew text came down to us, how it was copied in different manuscripts and handed down to us into modern times so that we could produce our English translations.

So there’s a very famous textual issue in this verse that makes it important and worth discussing.

A Question of Inspiration?

This problem, as we’re going to see, is not solvable by the normal means or a face value reading of the text. And because of that, it raises questions of inspiration for some people. But I would like to ask, should it really? Is this something that a coherent view of inspiration cannot accommodate? I think inspiration can accommodate 1 Sam 13:1, but to really understand what I am getting at, we need to look at the problem first and then talk about what we see.

Examining the Two Issues

Learning Objectives

• Identify the two problems posed by 1 Sam 13:1

• Describe how popular English translations treat 1 Sam 13:1

Let’s take a look at 1 Sam 13:1. Very literally—again, this is actually what you see in the Hebrew text, word for word, not making any attempt with English to sort of smooth it out. This is what you actually read in 1 Sam 13:1: “Saul was one year old when he became king, and he reigned for two years over Israel.”

Saul’s Impossible Age

There are some obvious problems here. Saul’s age, of course, is impossible. You don’t become a king when you’re one year old. You say, “Well, you know, in some stories, you know, he’s the next in line and the king dies, and then they make the little kid king and somebody else rules on his behalf.” That’s nice, but that’s actually contrary to the biblical story. Saul is a full-grown man when Samuel makes him king through his anointing. We know that story. It’s right in the ot. That’s one problem.

The Length of Saul’s Reign

The other problem is that the reign length of two years just flies in the face of biblical chronology, as it can be reconstructed from other verses. So Saul’s age in 1 Sam 13:1 is impossible and contrary to the biblical story, and the reign length just cannot be reconciled with biblical chronology.

Popular English Translations

English translations basically try to cheat here. For instance, the kjv has “Saul reigned one year.” The esv has “Saul lived for one year and then became king.” That’s probably a little less dramatic of a cheat, but this is not what the Hebrew text says. It says, literally, “Saul was one year old.” If we go back again to the verse, just looking at what it literally says, “Saul was one year old when he became king, and he reigned for two years over Israel.”

Summary

Again, just reminding you, we need to address two problems: the age in the first part, and the reign length in the second part. What I am going to do is unpack this and take these things in order, and we’ll look at the possibilities and even more problems for 1 Sam 13:1 as we proceed.

Understanding the Two Issues

Learning Objectives

After this section, you should be able to:

• Identify the problem regarding Saul’s age

• Identify the problem regarding Saul’s reign

Introduction

The first issue that a literal reading of 1 Sam 13:1 produces, and which we need to resolve—just going with the Hebrew text that’s there—is the statement that Saul was one year old when he became king.

Saul’s Age

In Greek Manuscripts

Some Greek manuscripts—that is, some Septuagint manuscripts (and for those for whom that term is perhaps unfamiliar, the Septuagint was the Greek translation of the Hebrew ot, and it was done in ancient times)—some Septuagint manuscripts give Saul’s age when he began to reign as thirty years. That number is actually drawn from 2 Sam 5:4

2 Samuel 5:4 ESV

4 David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years.

and inserted into 1 Sam 13:1 by the Septuagint translators. In other words, the Greek reading there is not original, and the number in 2 Sam 5:4 itself is probably not accurate either because of the problem in 1 Sam 13:1.

Now, why do I say all that? How could I prove that? It’s because the number thirty doesn’t work with the very next verse, 1 Sam 13:2. Verse 2 has Jonathan in command of a thousand troops. If Saul was thirty, then Jonathan, who is an adult—what do we do with that? Saul would have been about ten years old when he fathered Jonathan. Jonathan needs to be an adult in 1 Sam 13 for this to have any coherence at all.

Saul’s Likely Age

The number forty for Saul’s age probably works better, because then Saul would probably be about twenty when he had Jonathan, but there’s no manuscript evidence for that at all. Most Greek manuscripts, frankly, don’t even have the verse, verse 1. There’s no Hebrew manuscript evidence as well that has a sensible number. So that’s the dilemma. There is no Hebrew number that makes sense, and there is no Greek manuscript evidence that makes sense.

Saul’s Reign

Translations’ Solutions

The second problem was, he reigned for two years over Israel. The translations sort of fudge this as well. The nasb has “And he reigned forty-two years over Israel.” In other words, the nasb actually just arbitrarily adds the number forty to the second half of 1 Sam 13:1, where all we read is the number 2. It just adds forty to the two and comes up with forty-two years. The niv does the same thing. The esv, on the other hand, has “When he had reigned for two years over Israel”—inserting a little adverb there just to kind of smooth over the problem.

Again, if you go back to just what the Hebrew says, very literally, “Saul was one year old when he became king, and he reigned for two years over Israel,” why would you even think of adding the forty, other than just to try to arbitrarily solve the problem?

Considering Acts

The reason you would do that is really Acts 13:21

Acts 13:21 ESV

21 Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for forty years.

which says Saul reigned for forty years. So that’s where the number “forty” would come from for the nasb translators, for instance. That’s why they choose to take that number from Acts 13:21 and then add it to the “two” of the Masoretic Text. But if you actually do that, then you have 1 Sam 13:1 saying he reigned forty-two years, and Acts 13:21 says he reigned forty. There’s still a contradiction there.

Summary

The issue is that translators feel they have to do something with the number “two” in the second half of 1 Sam 13:1, because just in the playing out of biblical history, in terms of biblical chronology that you get from all sorts of other sources in the Bible about Israel’s history, a two-year reign for Saul doesn’t work. Again, we are left with two problems: How old was Saul when he became king, and how long did he reign? First Samuel 13:1 presents us with textual problems in both respects.

Resolving the Issues

Learning Objectives

After this section, you should be able to:

• Discuss how the problems of 1 Sam 13:1 may be solved

• Explain the relationship between translation and inspiration and how 1 Sam 13:1 highlights it

Lost Numbers

How do we resolve the problems of 1 Sam 13:1? The honest answer is that the correct numbers have been lost to date. In other words, we have no manuscript data from any source that gives us the correct numbers in the verse, that would actually work. It’s not legitimate to just make up numbers to fix the problem, because as we’ve seen, even the numbers that are chosen from other verses in either the ot or the nt create their own problems, and they’re arbitrary. The actual numbers that belong in 1 Sam 13:1 in the Hebrew text have been lost in transmission.

Translation and Inspiration

I actually like this verse and what it teaches us. It’s a very good verse for helping us remember that inspiration is not about translations or even copies of the Hebrew text. Inspiration is about what was originally written.

In this case, what was originally written would have made sense, but we just don’t have it. We know it would have made sense because of everything else in the chronology of the monarchy and how that plays out. We just don’t have an exact number to plug into this verse, that aligns with everything else that’s in the traditional Hebrew text, the Masoretic Text.

How do we define Inspiration?

God is the ultimate source in that (1) he created humans, (2) it was his idea to give us revelation; (3) he hand-picked the people and created the circumstances that gave rise to the Scriptures.

When it comes to inspiration, inspiration is not a paranormal event. Inspiration was a process. You had people record things as they happened, or after the fact, and that was transmitted. Whatever the final product of however God providentially prepared whoever wrote 1 Samuel, what he produced would have made sense in the text, because people could have easily seen it and corrected it or known about it or complained about it.

Conclusion

But whatever that number was, is now lost to us today. There is no issue of doctrine, of course, that depends on 1 Sam 13:1, but the honest answer is that here we have an instance of something lost not in the process of inspiration but in the process of copying that which was inspired.

When it comes to the canon of Scripture, we don’t have God audibly telling leaders which books were in or out. We don’t’ have God “dictating” the actual words to the original authors. You may not know this. But this is actually how Islam claims it got the Koran. But with the Bible, we have humans making those decisions, being guided by divine providence in those decisions. In other words, we say God was in the process; we trust providence.

If God can providentially oversee the process of completing the Canon through the Spirit working in the believing community without it involving some direct divine visitation, he can do the same in inspiration. How big is your God? He’s up to one task and not the other? Preservation from error in the process gets done however God operates in providence (which operations are myriad). God is involved however he wants to be. He COULD speak to a writer directly (the Scripture itself shows us this is rare), or he could mold a person through a series of life events that prompt him to write something, then watch, step back and say “Not bad, Paul; that’ll do,” or “John’s not as good a writer as Luke, but he got the job done. Maybe I’ll let him write something else …”

The point is that God is not required to pick every word himself in supernatural visitation for the end result to be satisfactory to him – precisely because he can intervene in a very human process whenever and however he wishes to prevent human frailty from undermining his intentions. Again, I ask, how big is your God? Can he only work by direct proximity? Is he spatially challenged? No. If you need God to originate every word, thereby reading INTO Scripture a view that mandates no word can originate with humans, then I think your God is too small.

REFERENCES:

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/stewart_don/faq/words-bible/question2-what-is-textual-criticism.cfm