The Power of Killing

Abstract This chapter analyses how killing—particularly sacrificial killing—figures within the intersecting dynamics that structure the shifts in power in 1 Samuel. It contends that, through such killing, officiants configure societal power, enact a power dynamic over their victims, and pay close attention to the victims’ body and body parts. With these threads weaving through the analysis, the chapter examines the precarious shifts in power from the Elides, to Samuel, to Saul. The Elides make an illegitimate power grab through manipulating animal flesh as the woman Hannah performs her own power through making offerings. Samuel uses sacrifice in his own rise to priestly-cum-judicial authority, and proper and improper slaughter determines the rise and fall of Saul. At several key junctures, there is slippage in the victim: sacrificial structures may be operative, not only over animals but over animalized humans too.