The Destruction of Shiloh, Pt. 1
This will be a two-post series on the subject of the destruction of Shiloh. More precisely, on the destruction of the Tabernacle at Shiloh.
The Tabernacle at Shiloh was constructed already in the days of Yehoshua (idem. 18:1). There it remained until mysteriously disappearing circa the Israelite-Plishtite War in Shmuel 1:4:1-22. After this war, we do not hear of people coming to the Tabernacle at Shiloh. Instead they go to places such as Nov and Giv'on. The reason was only reported centuries later, in Yirmiyahu 26:1-6 where Hashem tells Yirmiyahu to pass on a prophecy that if the people of the Kingdom of Yehudah do not fix their ways, the Temple will be destroyed just like the Tabernacle in Shiloh (similarly mentioned in ibid. 7:13-15). Subsequently, people get angry at Yirmiyahu for having the gall to threaten them with a destruction on par of that of Shiloh (ibid. 8-9).
Wait, destroyed? When did that happen?!
Actually, this was hinted at already in a Tehillim chapter written by Asaf, who lived around the time of David. In Tehillim 78:59-60, after a number of verses describing the sins of Yisrael, Asaf says:
"God heard it and was enraged; He utterly rejected Israel. He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent He had set among men."
So, there you have it. The Tabernacle at Shiloh had been destroyed due to the sins of Yisrael.
The big question is: Why wasn't this explicitly mentioned in the Book of Shmuel? Clearly it was a very significant event in the history of Am Yisrael, otherwise Yirmiyahu would have not tried to use that memory to warn the people of his time. If it was a "meh-class" event, it wouldn't have had the desired effect. If it was such a major event, why wasn't it mentioned explicitly around the time it happened?
This question was posed to me by a friend a couple of weeks ago. At the time I had offered up one suggestion. Last Shabbat I was in yeshiva and we got to looking around for other answers for this question, and thankfully we did find one. So in this post I'll be sharing the answer I thought up of and in the next post I'll share the answer we found.
My suggested answer is based on a theory I first heard in classes by Dr. Yosi Baruchi. Some of these classes (in Hebrew) were also given publicly and can be found on his YouTube channel (I refer to these classes: 1, 2, 3, 4) as well as on the Herzog Tanach website (1, 2). I don't think he invented the entire theory, but he took it in his own direction and built upon it.
The theory is that a number of books from the Prophets section of Tanach were originally written one way and were later edited, sometimes significantly, by later prophetic figures. The base of this idea can already be found in the Talmud, Bava Batra 14b-15a, where the authorship of all of the books in Tanach is discussed. The Tannaitic braita states that in most cases, the author is the namesake of the book. For example, the author of Shmuel was Shmuel the Prophet himself. However, in the later Amoraic discussion, it is concluded that Shmuel only wrote the part of the book that he lived through. From his death and onwards, the book was completed by the prophets Natan and Gad, who were David's court seers. The Abarbanel takes this one step further and concludes that an even later redaction followed, enacted by none other than Yirmiyahu (see his introduction to Yehoshua and his commentary on Shmuel 1:27:6).
Dr. Baruchi (and others) take this even further. In his opinion, not only were some verses here and there added later, or even whole chapters, but the entire build of the book was changed. I.e., each original book had certain themes and ideas it focused on. Later redactors - in his opinion, either Yirmiyahu or some of his students - re-edited the books by changing the order of the stories, the order of verses perhaps, by adding new sections and removing other sections, thereby completely changing the focus of the books.
Why, you might ask?
The idea is that when, for example, Original Shmuel was written, it was directed towards a generation that needed to learn certain ideas. For a later generation, other ideas were more significant, hence the need to re-write Shmuel. Make no mistake, New Shmuel is no less the word of Hashem than Original Shmuel, because it was also written by a prophet with a Hashem-based directive. In fact, we don't even need to look at it as though someone gathered all copies of Original Shmuel from around the land and forced a new government-issued, censored edition. More likely it was as though Original Shmuel was a 400-500 years old biography of Shmuel and now a brand-new biography by a different author who used, among other things, older sources as well as different sources, came out. Naturally, every author puts his own spin on the topic he's writing about.
What does all of this have to do with the destruction of Shiloh? I propose that perhaps in the hypothetical Original Shmuel, the destruction of Shiloh may have been explicitly recounted, for whatever reason the original author (presumably Shmuel himself) thought it relevant. Many years later, in the time of Yirmiyahu, this story was...harmful to the ideas that Yirmiyahu was trying to instill in the Jews. In what way?
The main theme of the Book of Yirmiyahu is Yirmiyahu is coming to warn the Jews that if they don't repent from various sins, the Temple will be destroyed and the people exiled. Ultimately, this does happen, as we all know, and is recounted both in Yirmiyahu and in Kings, which according to tradition, was also authored by Yirmiyahu. One sin that Yirmiyahu, as well as prior prophets, speaks against a lot is the unjust way the Jewish society is run: Nary do the judges actually pass righteous judgement; people steal and cheat; slaves aren't freed on time (when seven years of servitude are completed), etc. These things naturally caused a rift among the people; the nation is not united. On this note, by the way, there's an interested archeological find dated to circa the time of Yirmiyahu from a fortress called Metzad Chashvayahu. The find is a letter written by someone - apparently a Jewish peasant - complaining to a local governor that a man named Chashvayahu ben Shovi took his garment while he was working at reaping and collecting his grain - apparently due to some kind of debt. The complainer stated that this was done unjustly and was asking the governor to deal with this person.
As such, it would have been somewhat detrimental to Yirmiyahu's cause if the popular version of Shmuel, AKA Original Shmuel, would have contained explicit reference to the destruction of Shiloh. And why? Because as I've suggested in a couple of past posts (see here and here), in the years leading up to the Israelite-Plishtite War mentioned above, we see hints of a re-unification of Am Yisrael, after centuries of divide during the Era of the Judges. Now consider this: Any person could have come up to Yirmiyahu and said: "You claim that if we re-unite and deal out justice the Temple will be destroyed? Well, check out what it says in Original Shmuel: The people there were united, the only injustice was a couple of priests at Shiloh doing some bad stuff on a local level - and yet the Tabernacle was still destroyed! So why should we do any of the things you tell us to do? Must mean that the Tabernacle was destroyed because of some other reason, not societal injustice and disunity!"
Hence, Yirmiyahu may have found it necessary to issue a new version of Shmuel, which takes away the focus from the destruction of the Tabernacle and emphasizes the accomplishments of Am Yisrael when they were united and keeping the Law of Hashem, in hopes of re-popularizing this form of society to save the Temple from being destroyed.
In a couple of days I'll post the other answer to this question.
Comments
Post a Comment