Samuel

Samuel or Shmu'el (Hebrew: שְׁמוּאֵל) is an important leader of ancient Israel in the Book(s) of Samuel in the Hebrew Bible.

His status, as viewed by rabbinical literature, is that he was the last of the Hebrew Judges and the first of the major prophets who began to prophesy inside the Land of Israel. He was thus at the cusp between two eras.

According to the text of the Book(s) of Samuel, he also selected/anointed the first two kings of the Kingdom of Israel: King Saul and King David.

Name

According to 1 Samuel 1:20, Hannah was the mother of Samuel and named him in memory of her requesting a child from God and God listening. However, this position is disputed by some textual scholars who consider that the passage originally referred to Saul, and was later doctored.

For the suggested etymology of the passage to work for the name Samuel requires it to be translated as Heard of God ('Shama', heard; 'El', god/El (a god)), or possibly as a sentence "God has heard", with "Shama" as the verb and "El" as the subject. Saul on the other hand means asked, and so certain scholars think an anti-monarchial editor changed the narrative so that Saul would no longer appear to have a divinely appointed birth.

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