Lection and Liturgy

There are a few carefully selected stories from the two books of Samuel which occur in the lectionary. There is a larger number in those churches which use the continuous Old Testament lectionary. This wider selection is not surprising, as these books tell the story, often quite critically, of the establishment of the Israelite monarchy. They also present a warts-and-all picture of the man who would come to be revered as the ideal king, David of Bethlehem. King David Playing the Harp (detail), Gerard van Honthorst, 1622, via Wikimedia Commons The book begins with the story of Samuel’s birth to Hannah and Elkanah, though Hannah, desperate to conceive, is the main character. Her story, and that of the eventual birth of her son as an answer to prayer, is echoed by Luke when he comes to tell the story of Mary and Elizabeth at the beginning of the gospel. Hannah gives her miracle baby, Samuel, back to God and he is brought up in the sanctuary at Shiloh. He grows up to become a ...

The short story, Ruth , sadly gets no use in the normal Sunday lectionary. It is tempting, following on from the absence of Deborah and Jael ( see yesterday’s post ), to wonder if the men who compiled the lectionary were giving in to a little bit of unconscious bias against women’s stories! Jean-François Millet, The Gleaners. Ruth meets her future husband while gleaning To be fair, however, it is hard to pull out a single excerpt from a very tightly written short story. The book tells the story of an Israelite family who go to live in the neighbouring country of Moab. The husband dies, leaving his widow Naomi and two sons. The sons marry Moabite women, and then the sons die. Naomi, accompanied by her loyal daughter-in-law Ruth, goes back to Israel. There Ruth attracts the attention of a wealthy and kind man, and ends up marrying him. Their child is named as the grandfather of King David. The story is placed between the books of Judges and Samuel, because of when it i...