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woman was objective or subjective, is really of no importance whatever. Suffice
that it was real, and came to her ab extra.
(^232) As will be seen, we regard the apparition of Samuel not as trickery by the
woman, but as real - nor yet as caused by the devil, but as allowed and willed of
God. A full discussion of our reasons for this view would be evidently out of place.
Of two things only will we remind the reader: the story must not be explained on
our modern Western ideas of the ecstatic, somnambulistic, magnetic state
(Erdmann), nor be judged according to the standpoint which the Church has now
reached. It was quite in accordance with the stage in which the kingdom of God
was in the days of Saul.
(^233) Most writers suppose that this Aphek was close to Shunem, though the
supposition by no means tallies with the narrative. There is, however, this
insuperable objection to it, that as Shunem is between eighty and ninety miles from
where Ziklag must be sought, David and his men could not possibly have reached
the latter "on the third day."
(^234) It is a curious instance of the resemblance of the popular parlance of all nations
and ages, that the word in vers. 10:21, rendered by "faint," literally means "were
corpsed" - the same as in some districts of our own country. The Hebrew word is
evidently a vulgarism, for it occurs only in these two verses.
(^235) The places enumerated in 1 Samuel 30:27-31 were all in the south country. The
Bethel mentioned in ver. 27, was, of course, not the city of that name in the tribe of
Benjamin, but Bethuel, or Bethul (1 Chronicles 4:30), in the tribe of Simeon
(Joshua 19:4).
(^236) So correctly, and not, as in our Authorised Version (ver. 3), "the archers hit him,
and he was sore wounded."
(^237) So literally in ver. 4, rendered in the Authorised Version, "abuse me."
(^238) Commentators have raised, as it seems to me, needless difficulties about an
expression which always means "east of the Jordan." There cannot be anything
incredible in the border-towns on the other side of Jordan being deserted by their
inhabitants. If such a strong fortress as Bethshan was given up, why not smaller
places across the Jordan?
(^239) This is the correct rendering of 2 Samuel 1:9.
(^)