The World Behind the Text
Important historical information to know and understand the text
Important historical information to know and understand the text
1 Samuel
Important cultural and social information to know to
understand the text
There are clues already in 1 Samuel 3:1 about what was happening at the time this text was written, and what a major theme of this story is going to be. “The word of the Lord was rare in those days” (remember all the power struggles going on at this time – an indication in the text that not many people were listening to God and people were doing what they wanted to without any communication with God); “visions were not widespread”. Already we need to know something about what the community at this time understood by “visions”. In the ancient world it was believed that anyone sleeping in a temple (or in the grounds of the temple) may receive important messages from God. However, it is clear from the text that Samuel was not expecting this to happen to him. What happens to Samuel comes as a complete surprise to him.
A cultural phrase in the text:
3:3 “The lamp of God” refers to the menorah in the tabernacle, which was to remain lit all night (Ex 27:21; Lev 24:1–4). Writers also used the phrase ‘the lamp of God’ to indicate that this was a story of hope.
There are clues already in 1 Samuel 3:1 about what was happening at the time this text was written, and what a major theme of this story is going to be. “The word of the Lord was rare in those days” (remember all the power struggles going on at this time – an indication in the text that not many people were listening to God and people were doing what they wanted to without any communication with God); “visions were not widespread”. Already we need to know something about what the community at this time understood by “visions”. In the ancient world it was believed that anyone sleeping in a temple (or in the grounds of the temple) may receive important messages from God. However, it is clear from the text that Samuel was not expecting this to happen to him. What happens to Samuel comes as a complete surprise to him.
A cultural phrase in the text:
3:3 “The lamp of God” refers to the menorah in the tabernacle, which was to remain lit all night (Ex 27:21; Lev 24:1–4). Writers also used the phrase ‘the lamp of God’ to indicate that this was a story of hope.
This is a picture of a menorah used by Jewish
people today.
The World of the text
A clue for finding cultural information in a text is to look for things that don’t make sense to us today, but probably made perfect sense to the people that the author was writing for thousands of years ago.)
Look at the picture of a menorah used by Jewish people today.
What do you think? Did the author of 1 Samuel use the phrase ‘the lamp of God’ to tell readers about what Eli and Samuel were doing, or did the author use this phrase to tell readers that this is going to be a story of hope? (Use the clues about what you know was going on in the time – were the people really happy with life or were they struggling with what was happening around them?)
In the ancient world people would have understood the story of what happened to Samuel as a dream experience where God directly communicated with Samuel. When authors wanted to show readers that the message was really important and it was true they used a technique where the message to the person is repeated a number of times.
A clue for finding cultural information in a text is to look for things that don’t make sense to us today, but probably made perfect sense to the people that the author was writing for thousands of years ago.)
Look at the picture of a menorah used by Jewish people today.
What do you think? Did the author of 1 Samuel use the phrase ‘the lamp of God’ to tell readers about what Eli and Samuel were doing, or did the author use this phrase to tell readers that this is going to be a story of hope? (Use the clues about what you know was going on in the time – were the people really happy with life or were they struggling with what was happening around them?)
In the ancient world people would have understood the story of what happened to Samuel as a dream experience where God directly communicated with Samuel. When authors wanted to show readers that the message was really important and it was true they used a technique where the message to the person is repeated a number of times.