The translation of the Hebrew Torah is, of course, crucial to passage of Samuel's message in modestly good facsimile of the obviously quiet and yearning tone of the original. Do you know anyone who can give you the sense, and whys, of the implications of what actually were the words that the Torah scribes are reputed most faithfully to have passed down to us over the intervening 2600 or so years?

My sense of Samuel I and II is that the author was a dear, wise man -- one very much beloved. I see no reason to let all the passages of scripture that make no sense contaminate what we particularly receive from Sammy.