The Books of Samuel

"Samuel": why this title?

The book bears the name of Samuel (Shemuel), the prophet whose vocation opens the narrative. The choice may seem surprising: Samuel dies as early as chapter 25 of the first book^[5], and most of the two books actually concern Saul and David. Jewish tradition explains it by the character's pivotal role: Samuel is the one who brings Israel into the age of kings, anointing Saul and then David. He is, in a sense, the prophetic matrix of the whole monarchy. The Hebrew name is traditionally understood as "God has heard" or "asked of God," echoing the prayer by which his mother Hannah obtained him (1 Sam 1:20)^[6].

From one Hebrew scroll to the "Books of Kingdoms"

In the Hebrew Bible, Samuel is one single book, not divided. The division into two goes back to the Septuagint, the Greek translation made by the Jews of Alexandria (3rd-2nd century BC), which grouped Samuel and Kings into a single set of four "Books of Kingdoms" (Βασιλειῶν Αʹ-Δʹ): our two books of Samuel thus became 1-2 Kingdoms, and the two Books of Kings 3-4 Kingdoms^[7]. The Latin Vulgate of Saint Jerome kept this division but called the whole set 1-4 Kings. Printed Hebrew editions adopted the split in two only at the beginning of the 16th century, under the influence of Christian Bibles^[8]. The numbering "1-2 Samuel" that we use today is therefore, paradoxically, more recent than the continuous Hebrew text.

The table below summarizes the book's names in the major traditions, to avoid a common confusion when reading the Fathers of the Church or older Latin editions, where "1 Kings" often means our 1 Samuel.

Place in the Catholic canon

In the Catholic canon of the 46 books of the Old Testament^[9], Samuel belongs to the group of historical books. It immediately follows the Book of Judges and the Book of Ruth, which described a period of disorder when "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judg 21:25), and it directly prepares the Books of Kings, which will recount Solomon, the schism, and the fall of the two kingdoms. The Books of Chronicles, written later, will retell part of the same history from a liturgical and priestly angle. On the canon as a whole and its history, see the main article on the Bible.

The two books form a continuous narrative that can be read as a great fresco in three movements: the end of the judges and the birth of kingship (Samuel and Saul), the rise of David, then David's reign with its glories and sins. The following table gives the overall map before the detailed summary.

First Book of Samuel: from the sanctuary of Shiloh to Saul's death

Samuel, last of the Judges (1 Sam 1-7)

The book opens at the sanctuary of Shiloh, where Hannah, barren and humiliated, begs the Lord to give her a son, promising to consecrate him to God. Her prayer is answered: she gives birth to Samuel and entrusts him to the priest Eli. The child grows in the Temple and one night receives God's call, which he first fails to recognize, until the answer that has become famous:

"Speak, for your servant is listening." — Samuel, 1 Samuel 3:10^[10]

Eli's house is punished for the corruption of his sons, and the Ark of the Covenant, carried into battle as if it were a talisman, is captured by the Philistines (1 Sam 4). But the ark proves formidable in enemy territory: the statue of the god Dagon collapses before it, and plagues strike the Philistine cities until they send it back (1 Sam 5-6)^[11]. Having become judge, Samuel calls the people back to fidelity and obtains victory for them at Ebenezer (1 Sam 7).

The institution of kingship: Saul (1 Sam 8-15)

As Samuel grows old, the people ask for a king "such as all the nations have" (1 Sam 8:5). God interprets this request as a rejection of his own kingship:

"It is not you they have rejected, but me they have rejected: they do not want me to reign over them." — The Lord to Samuel, 1 Samuel 8:7^[12]

God nevertheless grants their request, while warning them of the servitudes a king imposes. Samuel anoints Saul, a tall Benjaminite, who first wins victories. But Saul disobeys twice: he offers a sacrifice that was not his to offer (1 Sam 13), then spares the Amalekite king and the best of the spoil, despite the divine command that devoted Amalek to the ban, that is, to total destruction (1 Sam 15:3). Samuel then pronounces the sentence that seals Saul's rejection and states a major spiritual principle:

"Obedience is better than sacrifice, and docility is better than the fat of rams." — Samuel to Saul, 1 Samuel 15:22^[13]

David's rise and Saul's decline (1 Sam 16-31)

God sends Samuel to Bethlehem to anoint in secret a new king from among the sons of Jesse. Against all expectation, it is not any of the elder sons but the youngest, the shepherd David, who is chosen. The narrative gives here one of the most quoted sentences in the whole Bible:

"God does not see as men see: men look at appearances, but the Lord looks at the heart." — The Lord to Samuel, 1 Samuel 16:7^[14]

The great episodes of David's rise follow: he soothes the tormented king by playing the harp, then defeats the giant Goliath with the name of the Lord of hosts (1 Sam 17:45)^[15]. His growing glory awakens Saul's jealousy, and Saul seeks to kill him. A long flight begins, marked by episodes in which David, twice having Saul at his mercy, refuses to lay his hand on the Lord's anointed (1 Sam 24 and 26). The first book ends with Israel's defeat and the death of Saul and his sons on Mount Gilboa (1 Sam 31).

Second Book of Samuel: the reign of David

David king of Judah, then of all Israel (2 Sam 1-8)

The second book opens with David's mourning: at the news of Saul's death and that of his friend Jonathan, he composes an elegy of great beauty (2 Sam 1). David is first proclaimed king of Judah at Hebron, then, after civil war, king of all Israel. He takes Jerusalem, a neutral border-city, and makes it his capital. Above all, he transfers the Ark of the Covenant there in an exultant procession in which he dances before God (2 Sam 6), making Jerusalem the religious heart of the people^[16].

Sin and passage through crisis: Bathsheba and Absalom (2 Sam 9-20)

At the summit of his glory, David falls. He commits adultery with Bathsheba, then has her husband Uriah the Hittite killed to cover the sin (2 Sam 11). The prophet Nathan comes to expose him through a parable — the rich man stealing the poor man's only ewe lamb — and strikes him with the words:

"You are the man!" — Nathan to David, 2 Samuel 12:7^[17]

David does not justify himself; he acknowledges his sin: "I have sinned against the Lord!" (2 Sam 12:13)^[18]. The very title of Psalm 51 (50) links it to this episode: it is the Miserere, the great psalm of repentance^[19]. But forgiveness does not erase the consequences: David's house is shaken by tragedies, up to the revolt of his son Absalom, who drives him from Jerusalem before dying (2 Sam 15-18). David mourns his rebellious son with heartbreaking grief (2 Sam 19:1).

The appendices (2 Sam 21-24)

The final four chapters form a more freely composed appendix: a famine, the exploits of David's "mighty men," two poems — including a great canticle of thanksgiving (2 Sam 22, repeated as Psalm 18) and the "last words of David" (2 Sam 23) — then the sinful census and the plague that follows. The destroying angel stops at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite (Ornan in Chronicles), where David raises an altar: according to Chronicles, this site will become the place of the future Temple of Jerusalem (2 Sam 24)^[20].

Samuel, prophet, judge, and maker of kings

Samuel is a unique transitional figure: last of the judges, first of the great prophets, and the one who inaugurates kingship by anointing two kings. He combines functions that will later be separated. Scripture places him at the head of the line of the prophets: Saint Peter recalls that "all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came afterwards" announced the days of Christ (Acts 3:24), and God himself joins Moses and Samuel as the two great intercessors of the people (Jer 15:1)^[21]. Before political power, Samuel is the guardian of God's Word. As for the promise of a "prophet like Moses" (Deut 18:15), the New Testament applies it to Christ (Acts 3:22; Acts 7:37). His integrity is underlined in his farewell speech, where he challenges anyone to accuse him of having taken another's ox or donkey (1 Sam 12).

Saul, the rejected king

Saul is a tragic character: chosen by God, gifted and courageous, yet consumed by fear, jealousy, and disobedience. His story shows that royal anointing is not a blank check: the king remains subject to the Word of God transmitted by the prophet. The narrative does not caricature Saul — it shows his initial greatness and his progressive collapse, until the desperate night when, abandoned by God, he consults the medium of Endor (1 Sam 28). His fall prepares, by contrast, the figure of David.

David, the king after God's heart

David is the central and most complex figure of the Old Testament after Moses. Shepherd, musician, warrior, king, poet, and repentant sinner, he is presented as the man "after God's heart" (1 Sam 13:14)^[22], not because he is sinless — his adultery and murder are narrated without disguise — but because, unlike Saul, he always returns to God in repentance. The Catechism of the Catholic Church makes him the very model of prayer:

"David is par excellence the king 'after God's own heart,' the shepherd who prays for his people and in their name; his submission to the will of God, his praise and his repentance, will be the model for the prayer of the People." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2579^[23]

The promise to David

Chapter 7 of the second book is the doctrinal pivot of the whole work and one of the most consequential texts in the Old Testament. David, settled in his cedar palace, wants to build a house (a temple) for God. Through Nathan, God reverses the project: it is not David who will build a house for God, but God who will build a house (a dynasty) for David. The promise is solemn:

"When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up after you a successor from your descendants, who shall be born of you, and I will make his kingship stand firm. [...] I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. [...] Your house and your kingdom shall endure for ever before me; your throne shall stand firm for ever." — The Lord to David through the prophet Nathan, 2 Samuel 7:12-16^[24]

"I will be his father": messianic scope

This promise contains a tension that Israel's history will keep deepening. Literally, it concerns David's immediate son, Solomon, who will build the Temple. But it also says "for ever", an eternal throne — something no mortal king can fulfill. When the Davidic dynasty collapses with the Babylonian Exile (587 BC), the prophets do not conclude that God lied, but that the promise points further and higher: to a descendant of David who will truly reign without end. This is the root of the messianic hope — the word Messiah (mashiah, "anointed one") referring precisely to the royal anointing received by David^[25].

Fulfillment in Jesus, son of David

The New Testament opens precisely on this thread. The Gospel according to Saint Matthew begins with "Jesus Christ, son of David" (Mt 1:1), and the angel Gabriel takes up its terms, applying them to Jesus:

"He will be great, he will be called Son of the Most High; the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end." — The angel Gabriel to Mary, Luke 1:32-33^[26]

The crowd in Jerusalem will acclaim Jesus with cries of "Hosanna to the son of David!" (Mt 21:9), and Saint Peter, on the day of Pentecost, will show that the promise made to David finds its meaning in the resurrection of Christ (Acts 2:30-31)^[27]. Pope Francis, in his catechesis of June 24, 2020, sums up: according to the promises, "it is from the descendants of David that the Messiah comes: a King wholly after God's heart"^[28]. The Catechism, for its part, notes that "many Jews and even certain Gentiles" recognized in Jesus "the fundamental attributes of the messianic 'Son of David' promised by God to Israel" (§ 439)^[29]. The Davidic covenant of 2 Samuel 7 is therefore not an antiquarian curiosity: it is one of the major bridges between the two Testaments.

God chooses the little ones: Hannah's canticle and the Magnificat

The whole book is placed under the sign of reversal: God brings down the powerful and raises the humble. This program is sung at the beginning by Hannah, the barren woman who becomes Samuel's mother:

"The Lord puts to death and gives life; he brings down to the abyss and brings back up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he raises up. From the dust, he raises the lowly." — Hannah's Canticle, 1 Samuel 2:6-8^[30]

This canticle is the direct model of the Magnificat of the Virgin Mary (Lk 1:46-55), which takes up its movement and several expressions^[31]. From Hannah to Mary, the theology is the same: God acts for the humble and keeps his promises against every human expectation. The choice of David, the youngest son and a shepherd, illustrates the same divine law.

"The Lord looks at the heart" (1 Sam 16:7)

The scene of David's anointing at Bethlehem condenses a central intuition of all biblical spirituality: God judges by interiority, not by appearances, rank, or strength. This word runs through everything that follows: Saul, tall and handsome, fails through pride of heart; David, negligible in human eyes, is chosen because God reads within him. It is also the key to the battle against Goliath: David refuses the king's armor and advances unarmed "with the name of the Lord of hosts" (1 Sam 17:45)^[32].

David's sin, repentance, and the Miserere

The Books of Samuel have the rare boldness, in ancient literature, of narrating the grave sins of their hero. David, the model king, is also an adulterer and a murderer. Yet it is precisely his way of sinning and returning that makes him a spiritual master: confronted by Nathan, he does not defend himself; he confesses. This episode is the matrix of the Miserere (Ps 51), the prayer of contrition par excellence taken up every week by the Church^[33]. David thus teaches that holiness is not the absence of falling, but the untiring return to God's mercy.

The Ark of the Covenant, God's holiness, and the future Temple

The motif of the ark frames the narrative: captured by the Philistines at the beginning (1 Sam 4-6), it is solemnly brought back to Jerusalem by David (2 Sam 6). Through its episodes — Dagon's fall, Uzzah's death when he touches it without due reverence (2 Sam 6:6-7) — the book recalls that God is not an object to be manipulated but a holy and awe-inspiring presence^[34]. The narrative also ends with the purchase of the threshing floor where the Temple will rise (2 Sam 24), linking the wandering ark to the stable sanctuary that Solomon will build.

Jewish and Christian tradition: Samuel, Gad, and Nathan

Ancient Jewish tradition, fixed in the Talmud (tractate Baba Bathra 14b-15a), attributes the writing of the book to Samuel himself for the first part, then, after his death, to the prophets Gad the seer and Nathan^[35]. Most ancient Christian authors took up this attribution — Samuel for the part concerning him, Gad and Nathan for what follows — and Saint Gregory the Great extended it to the whole work, which he attributed to Samuel alone. This attribution rests on a verse from Chronicles mentioning the "deeds of King David" recorded "in the Acts of Samuel the seer, in the Acts of Nathan the prophet, and in the Acts of Gad the seer" (1 Chr 29:29)^[36]. Neither the Talmud nor these authors ever made it an article of faith.

The Deuteronomistic hypothesis and modern criticism

Modern academic exegesis locates the composition differently. Since the 1943 work of the German biblical scholar Martin Noth, many scholars connect Samuel with a vast "Deuteronomistic history" — a set running from Deuteronomy to Kings (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings), shaped by the same theology of the covenant and put into form around the time of the Exile (6th century BC)^[37]. The American Frank Moore Cross refined this thesis by proposing a double redaction: a first edition under King Josiah (around 620 BC), revised and completed during the Exile^[38]. In these models, the Books of Samuel integrate ancient sources much older than the final redaction, reworked by successive editors.

This model remains fragile, however, by the admission of the scholarly debate itself. There is no consensus: neither on the exact extent of this "Deuteronomistic history," nor on the number of its redactions (one for Noth, two for Cross, three in the Göttingen school), nor even on its existence — which some exegetes dispute, such as Claus Westermann (Die Geschichtsbücher des Alten Testaments: gab es ein deuteronomistisches Geschichtswerk?, 1994) or, in his own way, Thomas Römer, whose book is precisely entitled The So-Called Deuteronomistic History ("the so-called Deuteronomistic history"). The assessment of these criticisms is drawn up notably by Brian N. Peterson (The Authors of the Deuteronomistic History, Fortress, 2014, ch. 1), who reviews the objections of J. C. Geoghegan, Westermann, and Römer: circular datings, argument from silence, and confusion between literary possibility and historical proof.

Ancient narrative sources

Exegetes identify within Samuel several narrative blocks that probably have distinct origins and are among the oldest in the Bible:

• the Ark Narrative (1 Sam 4-6; 2 Sam 6), the account of the ark's journey;
• the History of David's Rise (1 Sam 16 - 2 Sam 5), which legitimizes his accession to the throne;
• the Succession Narrative, or "court history" (2 Sam 9-20; 1 Kgs 1-2), a masterpiece of historical prose on the intrigues surrounding David's inheritance^[39].

These literary analyses distinguish real styles and narrative blocks, but the "sources" they posit remain reconstructed hypotheses: no copy of them has ever been found, and their boundaries vary from one author to another.

What a Catholic may hold

On the question of author and date, the Church has never defined that the Books of Samuel must be read according to this or that hypothesis of composition: a Catholic remains free to hold the traditional position as well as to examine the hypotheses of criticism, provided the truth, inspiration, and inerrancy of the text are respected. This freedom is not a blank check: as early as 1955, the secretary and undersecretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission specified that exegetes enjoy full freedom with regard to the decrees of the beginning of the century, except where they touch faith and morals — and the substantial historicity of the narrated facts is part of it.

Leo XIII, in Providentissimus Deus (1893), warned against the "higher criticism" that claims to judge "the origin, integrity, and authority of every book" from "intrinsic characteristics alone," and recalled that, "when it is a question of history, of the origin and preservation of any work, historical testimonies have more value than all the rest"^[40]. It is Pius XII's Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) that encouraged the philological and historical study of texts and attention to the manners of speaking and narrating proper to the Ancients^[41] — what Vatican II would call "literary genres": the constitution Dei Verbum recalls that "God, in Sacred Scripture, spoke through men in the manner of men," and invites studying the circumstances of composition to discern what the sacred author intended to affirm^[42].

A Catholic may therefore recognize the existence of ancient sources integrated into the narrative — those tradition attributes to Samuel, Gad, and Nathan — without falling into the rationalist presupposition that would reduce the book to a late fiction with no historical value. In fact, the traditional position accounts well for what the text shows: eyewitness details, a Hebrew language of the classical age, and narratives that apparent doublets do not prevent from being read as a continuous history — the Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) answers the doublet theory point by point: the two accounts of Saul's rejection or of the spared life recount two distinct events, the Amalekite's account of Saul's death is a self-serving invention, and David's introduction to Saul (1 Sam 16) is to be read out of chronological order^[43]. It places the redaction between the reign of Abiam and the reform of Josiah (621 BC): the book speaks of the "kings of Judah" (1 Sam 27:6), hence after the schism, but reports without a word of blame sacrifices that, after Josiah, no author would have let pass^[44].

Archaeology provides a valuable external anchor against purely legendary readings: the mention of the "House of David" on the Aramaic Tel Dan Stele, discovered in 1993-1994 and dated to the 9th century BC, attests the historical existence of the Davidic dynasty less than a century and a half after David^[45].

Masoretic Text, Septuagint, and Qumran manuscripts (4QSamuel)

For more than two thousand years, copyists recopied these books by hand: it is normal that differences crept in between copies. Comparing manuscripts to recover the text closest to the original is what is called textual criticism — and Samuel is one of its richest dossiers, along with Jeremiah.

The Hebrew text called "Masoretic" (MT) — named after the Masoretes, those scribes who, in the Middle Ages (Tiberian schools, 7th-10th century), fixed its vocalization and accents, on a consonantal text stabilized from the first centuries — contains many damaged or shortened places. Yet the Greek Septuagint often follows a different and sometimes better Hebrew text. The discovery at Qumran, near the Dead Sea, of several Samuel manuscripts — especially 4QSamuel^a (4QSam^a), copied in the 1st century BC — confirmed the existence of an ancient Hebrew form often close to the Septuagint and distinct from the Masoretic Text^[46]. These manuscripts, a thousand years older than the medieval copies, show that several forms of the text coexisted before rabbinic unification.

The Nahash paragraph and notable divergences

The most spectacular case is an entire paragraph present in 4QSamuel^a at the beginning of the story of Nahash the Ammonite (around 1 Sam 10:27-11:1), absent from the Masoretic Text and from most current Bibles. This passage, which explains the context of the Ammonite attack, is judged by many critics to be authentically ancient and accidentally lost in Hebrew transmission; the NRSV retains only its first words, in a note^[47]. Other divergences concern numbers (the length of Saul's reign in 1 Sam 13:1, notoriously corrupt in the MT) or details of the David and Goliath story, which is shorter in the Septuagint: several Greek manuscripts omit 1 Sam 17:12-31 and 17:55-18:5, which softens — without removing — the difficulty of the young David unknown to Saul^[48].

Far from weakening faith, this dossier illustrates the real and verifiable transmission of an ancient text, and the patient work of the Church and scholars to restore its most faithful form. It also recalls that inspiration and inerrancy bear on the text of the sacred author — the one textual criticism seeks to recover: "it would be absolutely fatal either to restrict inspiration to certain parts of Scripture, or to admit that the sacred author himself erred" (Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, 1893). As for copyists' faults, the encyclical teaches that they "must not be readily admitted, except on points for which the fact has been duly proved"^[49].

David, figure of Christ

Christian tradition reads David as a figure (a "type") of Christ. Like David, Jesus is born in Bethlehem, anointed with the Spirit, first unrecognized and then rejected by his own, persecuted before he reigns. But Christ is also "greater than David": David calls his descendant "my Lord" in Psalm 110, which Jesus cites to reveal his own transcendence (Mt 22:41-45)^[50]. The sinful king of Samuel thus announces, by contrast as much as by resemblance, the sinless King whose reign is eternal.

The Books of Samuel in liturgy and prayer

The Church nourishes her prayer from these books: Hannah's canticle and the story of Samuel's vocation are read in the liturgy, and many psalms are attributed to David, the "charm of the hymns of Israel" (2 Sam 23:1). The Catechism recalls that "in the Psalms David, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is the first prophet of Jewish and Christian prayer"^[51]. To meditate on the Books of Samuel is therefore to learn to pray with David: in praise, in combat, in falling, and above all in repentance.

• Liturgical translation of the Bible (AELF), text of 1-2 Samuel — the translation quoted in this article.
• F. Bechtel, "First and Second Books of Kings," Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8, 1910 (newadvent.org/cathen/08647b.htm).
• P. Kyle McCarter, I Samuel and II Samuel, Anchor Bible 8-9, Doubleday, 1980-1984.
• Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Roland E. Murphy (eds.), The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Prentice Hall, 1990.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§ 2578-2580 (David's prayer) and § 439 (Jesus son of David).
• Related articles: The Bible · The Old Testament · The Book of Judges · The Book of Ruth · The Books of Kings · Chronicles · The Psalms.