I want to collect some thoughts here concerning the tight connections between Judges and Samuel. It makes a lot of sense to place Ruth between Judges and Samuel, as our English Bibles do, but the order found in our Hebrew Bibles—Judges then Samuel—brings to light connections you’ll likely miss with Ruth in-between. I want to highlight two such connections here: First, Judges ends with priest problems that spill over into 1 Samuel, highlighting the significance of 1 Samuel 2:35. Second, issues with the tribe of Benjamin stretch across the division of Judges-Samuel and illuminate ways that Hannah’s song (1 Sam 2:1–9) points backwards.

Priest Problems

At the beginning of 1 Samuel, Eli’s sons continue the priest problems with which the book of Judges ended. Judges 18 relays the almost comedic disaster of Micah, his idol, and his very own Levite priest. In Judges 19, we read the horrific tragedy of the Levite’s concubine, the aftermath of which carries the reader to the end of Judges. The priest problems continue in 1 Samuel 2. Eli and his household are rejected from the priesthood at Shiloh because of his sons’ social injustice. Yahweh states,

1 Samuel 2:35 – And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest who will act like me. And I will build for him a faithful house. He will perpetually walk before me.

The Levite drama that spills out of Judges adds more weight to Israel’s hope for a faithful priest. The issue isn’t just Eli in 1 Samuel 2. They’ve been having Levite-priest problems for several chapters. The next section of this post highlights more Levite connections, but before moving on I’d be remiss to fail to mention Nicholas Majors’ new book on the king-priest motif in Samuel. It’s solid work.

Redeeming Benjamin

The awful episode about the Levite and his concubine in Judges 19 took place in a town of Benjamin. This leads to the war with Benjamin in Judges 20 and the provision of wives for Benjamin (through horrendous means) in Judges 21. Because of the atrocities that went down in Benjamin, the Israelites nearly wiped out the whole tribe (Judges 20).

Turn the page to the next book in the Hebrew Bible, 1 Samuel, and we read about the beautiful story of Hannah and Samuel, a story set with the family of a man from Ramathaim-zophim in the hill country of Ephraim. Anson Rainey writes, 

Ramathaim is the town of Ramah in Benjamin … The ‘hill country of Ephraim’ is a geographical, not tribal, term and includes the territory of Benjamin (and Manasseh) as well as that of Ephraim. Elkanah’s ethnicon, אֶפְרָתִי, is homophonous with the ethnicon for a member of the Ephraimite trie (cf. Judg 12:5; 1 Kgs 11:26) but here it makes more sense to interpret it as an Ephrathite. If that be accepted, then the Elkanah-Samuel tradition is Levitical, located in the tribal area of Benjamin, and associated with those Levites who lived in or around Bethlehem. They are, therefore, in line with the Levites who played a decisive role in the final two pericopes of the Book of Judges. So the spotlight is still on Levites operating within the topographical saddle between Mount Ephraim and Mount Judah. This provides another logical link between this book and the Book of Judges. (p. 143, Anson F. Rainey and R. Steven Notley, The Sacred Bridge: Carta’s Atlas of the Biblical World, Second Emended&Enhanced Edition [Jerusalem: Carta, 2014].)

Israel was almost done with Benjamin, but from an area associated with Benjamine the Lord raised up Samuel, one of Israel’s wisest leaders. Hannah’s song (1 Sam 2:1–9) is so beautiful with its upside-down-world perspective:

1 Samuel 2:8 – He raises the poor from the dust; from the ashes he lifts the needy, sitting them among the noble and providing a seat of honor as their inheritance.

Clearly, Hannah’s song points forward to David and serves as the interpretive key to much of what is to come. Noticing the Benjamin connection between Judges and Samuel, however, helps highlight how Hannah’s song points backwards, as well. From the ashes of grotesque violence and rejection associated with Benjamin, Yahweh raises up Samuel and establishes him as a faithful leader.