Give Us a King!: Samuel, Saul, and David
Give Us a King! Samuel, Saul, and Davidis Everett Fox's new translation of Saul I and II. Fox, whose translation ofThe Five Books of Mosesis by far the best contemporary rendering of Hebrew Scripture, has performed another literary miracle withGive Us a King!. His style presumes that "the reader of the Bible should ideally recite the text aloud, allowing himself or herself to be led by its sound rather than presupposing what is to be found there," as Fox explains in this book's introduction. Consequently, Fox's translation (which appears on the page in the form of free verse, not as prose) preserves the strangeness of the Hebrew text, rather than smoothing it over with English euphemisms and elegant transitions. The style of Fox's translation, one hopes, will bring new readers to consider the perennially urgent matters described by Samuel I and II. According to Fox, the central themes of these stories are personal responsibility and leadership--"a people's struggle with what it means to ask for leadership, how the leaders measure up to the task, and how the ideals of a culture fare in that process." This book might be most productively read along with Robert Alter's very different but equally impressive translation of the same texts,The David Story.--Michael Joseph Gross