Thoughts of Narrator, Thoughts of the Characters?

Idiom, in any language, is difficult to translate. Usually when I come across a difficult sentence to translate or understand, I chalk it up the idiom of the language or style of the narrator. For example, 1 Samuel 2:13 talks about the custom of the priests when people would bring the sacrifice to the Tabernacle in Shiloh. The servant of the priest would boil the meat and then does this: והמזלג שלש השנים והכה בידו , which translates literally as “the fork of three teeth in his hand and strike…” The sense is not terribly difficult to ascertain. The servant of the priest takes a three-pronged fork and sticks it in the boiled meat.

Not everything is just “the way the narrator says it.” One such example is 1 Samuel 1:4-6: “The day would come when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and daughter a gift, but to Hannah he would give one double portion for he loved Hannah and the LORD had shut her womb (כי…ויהוה סגר רחמה ). And her adversary would provoke her to anger – grievously irritating her for the LORD had shut the opening of her womb (כי סגר יהוה בער רחמה).” Now the parallel is clear. Elkanah’s and Peniah’s actions are both motivated by the closing of the womb. I had, however, always read the reference to the LORD as an editorial aside. Elkanah and Peninnahdid x because Hannah had no children. By the way, Yahweh had closed her womb. I had thought that since the explanation is from narrator’s mouth he was editorializing. This early reference to Yahweh’s action with Hannah serves to introduce him as a character who has complete control the situation with Elkanah, Hannah, and Peninnah.

While the reference does express the belief of the narrator, it also expresses the beliefs of the characters. They are motivated to act the way they do because Yahweh had done what he had done. Elkanah acts out of love and gives her what he can since he cannot do anything about Yahweh’s action. His belief about Yahweh’s act of closing the womb also explains the kind of comfort he gives her: “Am I not better than 10 sons?” For Peninnah, her belief about the LORD’s actions with Hannah legitimizes her torture of Hannah: “God had shut her womb, but opened mine. Clearly this act means that I am more significant than she is.” Understanding this dual belief further underscores God’s grace with Hannah and presents a powerful narrative introduction to Hannah’s hymn to the God of her salvation. God is stronger than anyone on earth. He lifts up the humble and brings down the proud.

Polzin’s insight is particularly good on this literary phenomenon. He begins by talking about the ways in which the narrator speaks in the narrative. He’s omniscient. He uses iterative weqatals to bring the reader up-to-date as to what would customarily happen during Elkanah’s yearly visit to Shiloh and then narrative wayyiqtols to bring the reader’s attention to what was different about this time. Polzin then says this:

Other voices speak in this chapter, but the narrator introduces these in not so obvious a fashion as in preceding cases. For example, when the narrator tells us in verse 6 that Peninnah, Hannah’s rival, “used to provoke her sorely, to irritate her, because the LORD had closed her womb,” the question arises whether this characterization of Hannah’s barrenness (“the LORD had closed her womb”) proceeds in fact from the narrator’s convictions, from Peninnah’s convictions, or from a combination of both. Again, when the narrator tells us in the preceding verse (1:5) that Elkanah gave Hannah one portion, for “the LORD had closed her womb,” the same type of question arises: is this the narrators or Elkanah’s view or both? If one contends, as I do, that these two verses report at least the motivation of Elkanah in verse 5 and of Peninnah in verse 6, then we have in the words “for the LORD had closed her womb” the concealed reported speech of Elkanah and Peninnah – if not of a portion of the Israelite populace – is represented by these words, and it remains to be seen whether the narrator as well as the implied author who controls narrator’s speech share this view in the same way and with the same emotive accents as do Elkanah and Peninnah.

Polzin’s point, I believe, provides good insight as to the tendency of the narrator in, at least, 1 Samuel. The implied author can conceal the voice of his characters in the voice of the narrator in order to bring multiple perspectives to a certain situation and draw attention to points that the reader may quickly pass over as inconsequential or an editorial aside.