The David Dossier
Chapter One: The Nature of the Historical Writings
Can we know anything at all about David? Did he exist?
A major preliminary question is whether it is possible even to attempt to reconstruct the
history of the time of David, let alone to recover the personality and character of David.
During the 1990s the current of ‘revisionist’ historians grew ever stronger and more
dominant. The patriarchal stories were seen as a construction after the exile to provide a
parallel to the story of the return from exile, a crossing of the desert to take possession of
the land at divine command by strangers from Mesopotamia, namely Abraham from Ur
and Jacob returning from Aram-Naharaim. As early as 1983 John van Seters had written,
‘This study has shown that the Court History [the major Succession Narrative in 2 Sm]
was not contemporary historical reporting but a post-Deuteronomic work of quite a
different kind’ (In Search of History, p. 355), namely ‘a post-exilic response to
Deuteronomy’ (p. 361). It can also be seen in terms of comparative folk-lore. Thus Hans
M. Barstad (‘History and the Hebrew Bible’ in Lester L. Grabbe, ed., Can a ‘History of
Israel’ be Written?, Sheffield Academic Press 1997, p. 37-64) argues that in the ancient
world national histories have various myths which always, or at least normally, feature in
the construction: a myth of migration to a land, a myth of origins or settlement, the myth
of a golden age (this features in Israelite history in the age of the Davidic Empire), a myth
of degeneration, and a myth of regeneration (in biblical history, the era of Ezra and
Nehemiah). Such a pattern serves as the unconscious model for Israelite history, but does
not necessarily imply that all factual truth is absent. Such optimism would hardly be
echoed by Philip Davies (in his article ‘Biblical Historians, ancient and modern’, p. 110)
who claims that ‘Historians cannot write a critical history in which a ‘patriarchal age’ and
an Israelite ‘conquest of Canaan’ figure’.
Even more radically, in the same collection Niels Peter Lemche (‘Clio is also among the
Muses!’, p. 123-155) sees the early history of Israel as a projection backwards of a certain
view of twentieth century history: in the 1920s the great biblical historian Albrecht Alt
saw the history of Palestine in terms of Jewish immigration to the British Mandated
Palestine. The ancient Israelites were the Jews, the inferior Canaanites the dispossessed
Arabs. Alt’s basic idea was that ‘the Palestinians or Canaanites were no more than a
wretched bunch of idol worshippers who were really not worth paying attention to’
(Lemche, p. 139). Consequently that American doyen of archaeologists and historians in
the 1930s, William J. Albright, ‘accepts genocide if only the victims belong to an inferior
race’ (Lemche, p. 135), and this was linked to a ‘conviction that the religious beliefs of
the Canaanites were limited to fertility rites, unlike the religion of the Israelites, which
focused on ethics and morality’ (p. 136). For Lemche this is to rob a whole area of its
history and dignity, especially unjustifiably since in 1992 Philip Davies and Thomas
Thompson ‘showed that the ancient Israelites themselves were also fictitious creations of
the imagination of the biblical historians’ (p. 138).
In the same vein, but concentrating on our period, Philip Davies holds (The Origin of the
Ancient Israelite States, Sheffield Academic Press 1996, the papers given at a conference
held in 1995 in a Jerusalem about to celebrate its 3000 years) ‘the issue is whether such a
figure as the David of the Bible existed’ (p. 15), to which Lemche’s answer will be
negative, since even on the biblical evidence there was no Judaean state in the tenth
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century, despite the portrait of David’s huge empire (p. 18). So Diana Edelman contends,
perhaps more positively than some of the other participants would accept, that the literary
picture of Saul provided by the Books of Samuel is compounded of and based on:
A story underlying 1 Sm 9.1-10.16, ‘How Saul took control of a segment of
Mount Ephraim’ (p. 153).
A saying, twice repeated 1 Sm 10.11-12; 19.24, ‘Is Saul one of the prophets too?’
Two popular songs, 18.7; 21.12 ‘Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens
of thousands’, and the Lament over Saul and Jonathan, 2 Sm 1.19-27 (note that
Saul is nowhere given the title of ‘king’). According to Edelman, p. 151, ‘most of
the information [in 1 Sm 28-31] is a creative imagining of events based on the
information in the lament’.
A little administrative list, 2 Sm 1.9, that Saul was ‘king of Gilead, of the
Asherites, of Jezreel, of Ephraim, of Benjamin and indeed of all Israel’.
Such literary analyses are combined with an appeal to the lack of confirmation of the
biblical story by any evidence outside the Bible. At this time, it is claimed, resources were
simply inadequate for any desire to or possibility of preserving historical records.
Jerusalem was a mere undeveloped hamlet. Extra-biblical evidence can only be
archaeological, and this is in short supply. Recently, however, two inscriptions have
provided strong evidence for the historic importance of David.
Inscriptions testify to the lasting importance of David
The first inscription to be discussed is the Mesha or Moabite Stone1. This is a victoryinscription commemorating triumphs of Mesha over the king of Israel and the House of
David in Transjordan. The empire won by David, according to the Bible, on the eastern
shore of the Jordan did not last, and this inscription records its whittling away. The earlier
part of the inscription records Mesha’s victories in the territory of Gad and Reuben, north
of the River Arnon. (The biblical account in 2 Kgs 3.27 gives a different angle: the
Israelites simply withdrew, in horror at Mesha having sacrificed his own son). Attention
then moves south, to Horonen, south-east of the Dead Sea, in the territory controlled by
Judah. André Lemaire has restored the crucial sentence before the inscription breaks off
as ‘and the House of David dwelt in Horonen’ (line 31). Clermont-Ganneau attained the
outline b**wd (** representing two illegible letters). Subsequent scholars advanced to
bt*wd. Now Lemaire2 claims to read a missing d, making btdwd or ‘House of David’.
This would constitute an important indication of the continuing reputation of David’s
1
The stone has an exciting history. It was shown to F.A. Klein, a Frenchman from Alsace, working for the
Anglican Missionary Society, in 1868 in the Transjordanian village of Dibon. In the subsequent quarrel
between French and Germans (the English contender, Charles Warren, graciously withdrew) for its
possession the tribesmen succeeded in blowing it apart by subjecting it alternately to fire and water. Not,
however, before an impression or ‘squeeze’ had been taken by means of wet porous paper pressed into the
letters. Under pressure from the tribesmen, even the squeeze had to be ripped off before it was properly dry,
and one of its escaping carriers received a spear-wound in the leg. Many fragments of the stone were
subsequently gathered in by the intrepid French archaeologist, Charles Clermont-Ganneau, and it is now in
the Louvre, partially restored with the help of the torn squeeze. It has still, however, never been properly
published.
2
In his article ‘“House of David” restored in Moabite Inscription’ (Biblical Archaeological Review 20/3
(1994), p. 30-37.
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dynasty in about 850 BC, a testimony to the overriding and continuing importance of
David in the constitution of the kingdom of Judah. It is notable that the dynasty of David
remains stable throughout the history of Judah, while in the northern kingdom of Israel,
lacking the tradition of David, dynasties change with striking rapidity.
To the Mesha Stone has now been joined the David Inscription from Tell Dan. This
monumental victory-inscription in Aramaic was discovered in 1993 at Tell Dan on the
extreme northern border of Israel, and two other missing pieces a year later.3 The writer
claims that with the help of the (Syrian) god Hadad he has destroyed thousands of
chariots and horses of the King of Israel. On the next line stands -k bytdwd. This is most
plausibly read – remember that Aramaic, like Hebrew, writes only the consonants, not the
vowels - as the final letter of ‘king’ (melek), followed by ‘of the House of David’. There
are difficulties, chief among which are:
1. A word-dividing dot stands between all the words except bytdwd. One would
therefore expect byt.dwd. It is, however, quite possible that this expression is
considered a single word, by analogy with ‘Israel’, the other country mentioned.
2. There is not a neat parallel between the two kings. One would expect either
‘Israel’ and ‘Judah’ or ‘House of Omri’ and ‘House of David’. A similar
unevenness occurs in the Mesha Stone, and it seems fair to consider both as
testimonies to the greater importance of the Davidic dynasty in the southern
kingdom of Judah than even of Omri in the north.
3. It has been claimed that dwd is a local deity. But none of the claimed inscriptional
instances of the word as the name of a deity offers more than the most fragile
support (see Hans Barstad and Bob Becking in ‘Does the Stele from Tel-Dan refer
to a deity Dod?’ in Biblische Notizen 77 (1995).
One of the subsequently-discovered fragments gives us the clue to who these two kings
were, by means of two fragmentary word-endings, rm and jhw (i.e. -ram and -yahw), each
followed by br, i.e. bar ‘son of’, which shows that they are the ending of names, each
about to give also the father’s name. The only two contemporary kings who fit these data
are Jehoram of Israel (reigned 850-845) and Ahasjahu (usually spelt in English
‘Ahaziah’) of Judah (845), and indeed 2 Kings 8.28-29 records that these two made war
together against Hazael of Damascus, and that Jehoram was wounded in the battle. The
chief deduction, however, to be drawn from these two inscriptions is that David was
remembered nearly two centuries later in the mid-ninth century with sufficient vigour for
Judah to be known as ‘the House of David’.
The Nature of the biblical Sources
The ‘revisionists’ claim that the composition of the Books of Samuel dates from several
centuries after the events described. The final edition is, without doubt, part of the great
Deuteronomic History which views the whole history of the period from the ‘Settlement
in Canaan’ under Joshua to the Exile from the optic of fidelity to Yahweh’s commands
(which brings success) and infidelity (which brings disaster, eventually the Exile to
Babylon). Similar phrases and motifs occur throughout this history – perhaps most clearly
3
An incautious custodian, surely acting ultra vires, allowed me to photograph it in the Israel Museum in
July 2003. The definitive discussion to date is, however, that of Avraham Biran and Joseph Naveh, ‘The
Tell Dan Inscription: a new fragment’ in Israel Exploration Journal 45 (1995), 1-18.
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characterized in Judges 2.11-16, 1 Sm 8 or 2 Kings 23.24-27. The completion of this
history is usually placed late in the period of the Exile or soon after the Exile. The
question is, however, how ancient and how reliable were the sources used in the
composition of this history. For the later period of the monarchy court records were used,
as is shown for example by 1 Kings 22.46, ‘The rest of the history of Jehoshaphat, the
valour he showed, the wars he waged, is this not recorded in the Book of the Annals of
the Kings of Judah?’ For the earlier part of the story the sources are much more folkloristic. So much of the account of the Settlement given in the Book of Joshua is culled
from aetiological myths explaining, with very doubtful historicity, features of the
landscape or customs, e.g. the capture of Jericho (Joshua 6) or Ai (Joshua 8 – the very
name means ‘Ruin’), the name Ramath-Lehi = ‘hill of the jawbone’ (Judges 15.17), the
special status within Israel of the inhabitants of Gibeon (Joshua 9). Many of the stories of
exploits in the Book of Judges are typical of the swashbuckling exploits of popular folklore (e.g. Ehud in Jg 3, much of the cycle of Samson in Jg 13-16).
Amid these, however, and at the opposite extreme, are fragments of ancient poetry, often
quite extensive, whose verse-form would have made them more easily and more exactly
memorable; they may be presumed to be contemporary with the events they celebrate.
The Song of Deborah (Judges 5) could hardly have been composed later, for it gives a
very different picture of the real relationship between the tribes in the early years of the
settlement from the fraternally united twelve-tribe league which was later to become a
standard construct. Even names of the tribes are different: Simeon and Judah are not
mentioned, and ‘Machir’ (Jg 5.14) appears to be one of the tribes. Other fragments of
poetry are noted as having been preserved in the Book of the Just, such as the poetic
version of Joshua’s victory over the Amorites (Jos 10.12-13), David’s Lament (2 Sm
1.18) and Solomon’s Prayer (1 Kings 8.12-13 LXX).
To come to the story of David itself, two different major sources exist, which must be
considered separately. The first concerns the kingship of Saul and the rise of David, the
second David’s own reign. The first, confined almost entirely to 1 Samuel (splaying over
into the first chapter of what has now been divided off as 2 Samuel), is marked by a series
of doublets.
 Twice Saul is appointed king, once anointed privately by Samuel (9.1-10.13),
once publicly selected by lot (10.17-27).
 Twice Saul is rejected by God through Samuel on rather inadequate ritual
grounds, once for himself sacrificing when Samuel fails to keep his appointment
(13.8-14), once for failing to sacrifice all the Amalekite captives and their goods
(15.10-33).
 Twice Saul, assaulted by an evil spirit, attempts to spear David to the wall while
David is attempting to soothe him with music (18.10-11; 19.9-10).
 Twice Saul offers David his daughter in marriage, each time in an attempt to keep
David under his own control, and each time David responds with a statement of
his own unworthiness. Once the daughter is Merab (18.17-19), once Michal
(18.20-27).
 Twice Jonathan intervenes with Saul on David’s behalf, devising some slightly
obscure messaging system in the countryside (19.1-7; 20.1-42).
 Twice David takes service with Israel’s enemies, Achish king of Gath, once
diverting suspicion by playing the madman (21.11-14), once settling in happily
and setting up his own double-crossing activity (27.1-12)
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

Twice David, pursued in the desert by Saul, spares Saul in humiliating
circumstances, grounding his restraint on a prohibition of striking the Lord’s
anointed (24; 26)
Twice the death of Saul is recounted, once directly, in which case the mortally
wounded Saul falls on his own sword to escape capture (31.1-7), once in the
message of the Amalekite warrior who claims to have killed him at his own
request (2 Samuel 1.1-10).
Attempts have been made to divide these into an A and B source. Halpern sets up a table,
p. 277-9, but neither here nor in his commentary, p. 263-76, does he – to my mind –
succeed in delineating a pattern which would distinguish two sets of material (e.g. one
more favourable to Saul than the other, one more hostile or hesitant towards the
Philistines, one in which the direction of affairs by God is clearer), let alone that one is
earlier than the other. In addition, there are occasions when not two but three versions
occur. The young David is introduced three times, once as picked out for anointing by
Samuel - a typical conventional legend of the discovery of a boy-hero, at variance with
the later anointings as king of Judah at Hebron (2 Sm 2.4), then as king of Israel at
Jerusalem (5.3). On one occasion David is introduced to court by Saul’s retinue as a
young musician to charm the troubled king’s moods (1 Sm 16.14-23). On another
occasion he comes before Saul, quite unknown, as part of the single combat with Goliath
(17)4. The taunt-song, ‘Saul has killed his thousands and David his tens of thousands’, is
used three times (18.7; 21.12; 29.5) in different circumstances. The popular saying, ‘Is
Saul one of the prophets too?’, occurs twice in wholly different situations (10.10-12;
19.20-24). Unless some clear pattern can be found to bind these stories together into two
clearly-differentiated series, it seems better to assume that there were simply different
popular traditions current and circulating about David’s rise to power, which were then
gathered together.
On the other hand, it has long been claimed that the second major source, comprising the
latter part of the story, the so-called Succession Narrative (2 Sm 9-20 plus 1 Kings 1-2),
originally isolated by L. Rost in his 1924 book Die Überlieferung von der
Thronnachfolge Davids, must be a single near-contemporary account. Different authors
have made different estimates of where this homogeneous account begins. Rost saw it as
running from the comment in 2 Sm 6.23 that Michal, David’s wife, remained childless to
the final comment that Solomon was secure on the throne in 2 Kings 2.46. A strong case
is made out by Kiyoshi Sacon5 that the subject-matter (David’s political advancement
narrated from a personal and sexual angle, echoing particularly the sexuo-political
intrigue of the final section in 1 Kings 1-2) and the concentric structures of 2 Sm 3.6-4.12
unite this section to the narrative.
4
The Goliath-combat has its own difficulties, for elsewhere (2 Sm 21.19) his slaying is attributed to one of
David’s men. There may even be confusion with another monster from Gath, who was killed by David’s
nephew (21.20-21). Has the daring deed been transferred from subordinate to principal? I once heard a
World War II general say, ‘I liberated the Dutch city of Eindhoven’.
5
‘The Literary Structure of “The Succession Narrative”’ in Studies in the Period of David and Solomon and
other essays, ed. Tomoo Ishida (Yamakawa-Shuppansha, Tokyo, 1982), p. 44-47.
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There are also differences between scholars on the purpose of the narrative. Rost saw its
purpose as being to glorify Solomon. For him the clue to the central interest of the whole
account is given in the repeated question, ‘Who shall sit upon the throne of David?’ L.
Delekat, however, in 19676 reversed this process, with the claim that the purpose of the
narrative was to shake Israel’s loyalty to Solomon by showing that both David and
Solomon exercized power in an arbitrary and unfair manner. David Gunn goes further: he
refuses to comment on the date or historicity of the narrative, treating it solely from a
literary point of view. For him there is no particular political or moralistic Tendenz in the
story. In his article, ‘David and the Gift of the Kingdom’ (Semeia 3, 1975, p. 14-45) he
argues that the author concentrates on ‘a picture of the rich variety of life’, since ‘his
judgement is tempered by his sense of the intricacy and ambivalence of the situations that
confront his characters’ (p. 36). An important theme of the story is the contrast between
public and private life: David remains passive in receiving the kingdom through the
efforts of others, surrenders it to Absalom without a struggle, receives it back almost
unwillingly, and finally passively acquiesces in Solomon’s succession. This passivity
stands in sharp contrast to David’s scheming ambition in the stories of 1 Samuel. Within
2 Samuel the striking contrast, is between David’s political and private life, for in his
private life he behaves energetically in his pursuit of Bathsheba and his elimination of her
husband, and then the whole story becomes dominated by his indulgent affection for his
children. Consequently it may be doubted whether the story is correctly named ‘The
Succession Narrative’; more apt would be simply ‘The Court Narrative’, as in the article
of the Anchor Bible Dictionary. Accordingly, Dunn concludes both this article and – three
years later - the book King David, genre and interpretation (Sheffield, JSOT Supplement
6, 1978) with the same sentence, ‘This is the work of no propagandist pamphleteer nor
moralizing teacher: the vision is artistic, the author, above all, a fine teller of tales’ (p.
111).
One puzzling feature which must be explained if any political Tendenz is claimed is the
difference between to final two chapters (1 Kings 1-2) and the earlier material. The
literary techniques employed leave no doubt that the ultimate author is the same. The
politico-moral Tendenz of the final two chapters, is, however to legitimate Solomon’s
accession to the throne and to excuse Solomon for the systematic liquidation of David’s
old guard, putting the blame squarely onto David himself, wizened and defenceless as he
now is. The overall purpose of the earlier account is to win the reader’s affection for
David, warts and all. Is there a radical break between the sources used by the author of
‘the Court Narrative’ in 2 Samuel and 1 Kings, which remains visible even through his
skilled re-shaping of the material?
Would the shaping of the story for a political propagandist end imply that the account,
although admittedly making a political and dynastic point, is historically unreliable? The
detail and characterization of the personalities involved can, it is claimed, stem only from
a contemporary who knew the personalities intimately, normally held to have written at
the court of King Solomon. In any case, whether a political Tendenz has affected the
writing or not, it is important to point out that superb story-telling and characterization are
not the preserve of historical writers, but can equally well typify a work of fiction. At the
other extreme, if David Gunn is correct, that it is ‘a story told for the purpose of serious
entertainment’ (The Story of King David, p. 62), how much veracity should be expected?
In the narrative (as pointed out be Eissfeldt) private conversations are relayed, as between
6
Tendenz und Theologie der David-Salomo-Erzählung’ in Festschrift L. Rost (BZAW 105, 26-36)
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between Amnon and Tamar in her bedroom, and presented with balance and artistry. The
incident may have occurred, but imagination and literary skill have certainly contributed
to its telling. Occasional details suggest that the author may not be so totally
contemporary as was once thought. One or two anachronistic hints slip in, as when David
goes to ‘Yahweh’s sanctuary’ (12.20), though the Temple had not yet been built. There
are indications that the events took place some time before, as the remark about Tamar’s
dress, ‘for this was what the king’s unmarried daughters wore in days gone by’ (13.18).
(Similarly in 1 Sm 27.6 a certain distance is suggested by the note that ‘Ziklag has been
the property of the kings of Judah to the present day’).
Strong and detailed arguments for the basic historicity of the David accounts in the Bible
are presented by Baruch Halpern in his book David’s Secret Demons, messiah, murderer,
traitor, king (Eerdmans, 2001), p. 57-72, before he goes on to represent David as a mass
murderer or serial killer. It is important to distinguish Halpern’s historical data from his
interpretations. On the one hand Halpern, driving the hermeneutic of suspicion to its
ultimate, maintains that many of the basic facts presented in the biblical narrative are
untrue or at least twisted. David never served under Saul (p. 283). The connection of
David to both Saul and Jonathan relies primarily on David’s Lament, which is ‘part of
David’s alibi for Saul’s death’ (p. 284) for which David was in fact responsible. Typical
of Halpern’s method is the cui bono? argument, for example in the insidious suspicion
that David provoked the revolt of Absalom: it ‘could not have turned out better if David
had planned it… since he profited from it, one ought to wonder’ whether he provoked it
(p. 380). On the other hand he does bring to light a host of arguments to show that the
sources for the David story are contemporary.
1. Places names are indicative. Neither Bahurim nor Nob, important in the David
story, feature in the lists seventh-century lists of Joshua 18.21-28 (p. 64); they
must have lost their importance by then, or even ceased to exist. A number of
David’s heroes come from the Negev, which was settled in the time of David, and
where neither earlier nor later archaeological traces have been found (p. 65,
backed up by William G. Dever, in Tomoo Ishida, p. 285). Similarly Gath, a
powerful city in David’s time, becomes increasingly unimportant archaeologically
after the tenth century (p. 69).
2. Many of the names in the accounts are of the type which occur on inscribed
objects like arrow-heads from this period but not later, e.g. Hushai (2 Sm 17),
Naharai (2 Sm 23.37). By contrast the names compounded with the divine name
‘Yah’, popular in later centuries, are rare (p. 71). How many children were named
‘Glen’ and ‘Stacy’ a generation ago, how many ‘Albert’ today?
3. Spellings of names and other words is characteristic of those found on early
inscriptions, and markedly different from those of later, especially post-exilic,
times (p. 59-62). Where does a text featuring ‘color’ and ‘worshipers’ originate?
The unit of weight pym (1 Sm 13.21) occurs on archaeological objects of this
period, but not after the Exile (p. 57-58). Similarly a twenty-first century story
would scarcely include shillings and pence.
In the last analysis it seems that the author of this material was close enough to the events
he reports to give an accurate account. At the same time, the artistry with which he
reports the events makes it clear that his purpose is ‘serious entertainment’ (David Gunn).
What does this ambiguous phrase mean? What is the relationship between the two terms?
If the seriousness of the entertainment does not lie in a political purpose, is its purpose to
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show the mixture of personal and private motives, laudable, attractive and generous, selfseeking, repellent and shameful, which lie behind a political figure’s decisions?
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Chapter Two: The Rise of David
1 Samuel 13-16 David and the Failure of Saul
Poetry is more easily remembered than prose, and many of the most ancient pieces in the
Bible are in poetry. Perhaps the most ancient of all is the little couplet of the song of
Miriam:
Sing to Yahweh, for he has covered himself in glory,
Horse and rider he has thrown into the sea (Ex 15.21).
In our present enquiry similarly probably the most trustworthy of all relics is the ittle
jungle sung by the israelite women. It suck in the gullet of Saul and also in the memory of
the Philistine leaders, who twice quote it when they are trying to size up David for their
own purposes:
Saul has killed his thousands,
And David his tens of thousands (1 Sm 18.7; 21.12; 29.5)
Whether the story of the single combat with the Philistine champion is to be regarded as
sober reality or as a secondary dramatisation, we would suggest that this triumphant little
couplet provides the historical basis for events which are to come.
Saul was already subject to bouts of depression, and these must surely be connected with
his consciousness of failure. The Bible gives us two versions of Saul’s failure, neither of
which is entirely satisfactory. In the first (1 Sm 13) as the Philistines muster to threaten
Israel, Saul is gathering his forces in the comparative safety of Gilgal, near the Jordan,
protected by the whole range of this hill-country from the strong and threatening
Philistine army. Samuel had instructed Saul to wait seven days, after which he would
come to offer the sacrifice which would presumably signal the start of the campaign. The
period of waiting would inevitably be difficult and jittery, a considerable trial of faith, and
when Samuel did not appear at the end of the period fixed, it is hardly surprising that the
army started to drift away. It is difficult to blame Saul for taking the law into his own
hands and performing the sacrifice himself. There was at this time nothing irregular about
this except Samuel’s instructions, linked to the promise which Samuel had failed to keep.
There is no question of Saul usurping the office of priest, for there is no indication that
Samuel was a priest, and indeed no indication that anything like the priesthood existed.
Certainly Solomon’s sacrifice in 1 Kings 8.5 is regarded as legitimate. It is hard not to
feel sympathy for Saul when Samuel pops up immediately afterwards and – without any
apology for his own behaviour – condemns Saul. No reason for the rejection is given
other than disobedience, no accusation of impatience or lack of trust. Saul is simply told
curtly that his dynasty will not endure.
On the other occasion of Saul’s condemnation Samuel has slightly better grounds. In the
war against Amalek, nomads in the desert of the south, Saul has been instructed to
exercise the curse of destruction, that is, to take no prisoners or live booty, but to kill
everything, considered an act of worship and acknowledgement to God, the lord of battle.
Instead, ‘Saul and the army spared Agag [the king] with the best of the sheep and cattle
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and falings and lambs and all that was good’ (1 Sm 15.9). When Samuel remarks on
thebleating of sheep and lowing of cattle, Saul can only return the feeble excuse that the
best of the sheep and cattle were spared to be sacrificed ‘to Yahweh your God’ – easy
enough to say because it cannot be disproved. The reproachful ‘your’ is a nice touch! On
this occasion, despite Saul’s immediate repentance, Samuel pronounces that Yahweh has
rejected him as king of Israel, and leaves him for ever, being delayed by Saul’s pathetic
clutching at his cloak only long enough to butcher Agag ritually. Samuel then departs and
mourns for Saul, as though he were already dead.
Have we really heard the whole story? David would commit what seems to us a far worse
crime and yet be pardoned for his repentance. There is some similarity to the story of
Moses’ condemnation for lack of trust, simply because he struck the rock twice (Nm
20.11-12). The penalty, a further forty years in the desert and prohibition of himself
entering the promised land, seems out of all proportion to the offence. So much is this the
case that some scholars have suggested that Moses’ real crime was so horrific that it was
suppressed out of respect for the great patriarch, and this comparatively minor fault
substituted instead. It is notable that both the privileges of the priesthood (and its
centralisation) and the curse of destruction are concerns of the Deuteronomic writer who
was responsible for the ultimate editing of these histories. Alternatively the two incidents
of Samuel’s rejection of Saul can be seen as expressions of a prophetic theology in the
northern kingdom, that the authority of the king must always remain subordinate to that
of the prophet. An attractive theory is therefore that the two reasons given for Saul’s
rejection stem from a later editing rather than from any historical grounds.
What is the historical reality? Was Saul not up to the job? W. Humphreys (‘From Tragic
Hero to Villain’ in Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 22 (1982), p. 95-117)
suggests that Saul was called as nagid [tribal leader] and had to function as melek [king].
‘Trapped between two worlds, he was ground between them and destroyed’ (p. 99). His
task was, of course, transitional between the temporary tribal chiefs who were the
‘judges’ and the permanent monarchy which we see in David and Solomon. He succeeded
in keeping the Philistines at bay, and they were never afterwards a serious threat, although
his last battle with them cost him his life. Only he did not succeed in founding a dynasty,
which from the vantage-point of David and Solomon made him look a failure. He was
indeed outwitted by the ambitious young David, and his tragedy consists in the failure of
all his efforts to keep David subordinate. From the viewpoint of the next generation this
could be seen as the withdrawal from him of the spirit of Yahweh.
Whatever the theological reason for his rejection, in the long account of the campaign
against the Philistines which is sandwiched by the two accounts of Samuel’s
condemnation, Saul does seem to behave with extraordinary dithering and incompetence:
 Jonathan and his armour-bearer set out, on Jonathan’s own initiative, to raid the
Philistine camp. They succeed in panicking the whole Philistine force, but before
Saul will take follow-up action he holds a roll-call to see who is missing (14.17).
On several grounds he should have known that it was his son.
 Saul still delays taking action and insists on consulting God’s will by means of the
(semi-magical) ephod carried by Abijah. But at the last minute he goes back on
this decision and advances without consulting God (14.18-20).
 He then forbids under curse anyone to eat anything till the pursuit of the fleeing
enemy is over. Result? Jonathan, who failed to hear the curse, falls under its
condemnation by casually digging some honey out of a honeycomb he happened
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

to pass, while the rest of the people become so weak from fasting that they have to
abandon the pursuit (14.30-31).
Saul unimaginatively and woodenly repeats the curse against his son and
condemns him to death/ The sprightly Jonathan accepts the sentence but, at the
popular request, Saul fails to carry out his oath (14.44-45).
Saul then simply ‘decided not to pursue the Philistines’ (14.46), so that they retie,
regroup and return to fight another day.
In this litany of muddles, Saul certainly appears fearful and indecisive, unable to pursue a
firm course of action or to push any course of action through to the end. He constantly
changes his mind in a way which makes a nightmare for any subordinate, puts petty
restrictions of a ritualistic nature to cover his own lack of confience, and seems set on
frustrating any positive initiative. It is certainly a change from his inspired and decisive
action when he first sprang to prominence:
Now Saul was just then coming in from the fields behind his oxen, and he said,
‘What is wrong? Why are the people weeping?’ They explained to him what the
men of Jabesh had said. And the spirit of Yahweh seized on Saul when he heard
these words, and he fell into a fury. He took a yoke of oxen, cut them into pieces
and sent these by messengers throughout the territory of Israel with these words,
‘Anyone who will not march with Saul will have the same done to his oxen!’ At
this a panic from Yahweh swept on the people and they marched out as one man
(1 Sm 11.5-8).
It is not surprising that Saul was aware that the spirit of Yahweh had left him, and that he
became moody and depressed. The obvious and growing success of David and the
comparison to his own lack of success musthave fuelled the fires of his jealousy.
Note on the text used
This part of the story runs up against considerable variation in texts of the Bible. In the
story of the Philistine conflict some material is inserted and some missing, resulting in
overlaps and clashes. These overlaps and repetitions continue in this section, and we have
therefore chosen to use the text which is attested not only by the Hebrew manuscripts but
by the Greek as well. This yelds a simpler, less encumbered story.
1 Samuel 16-17 David appears on the Scene
A great man is well known; his every move is noted and recorded. But it is only when his
greatness is apparent that people begin to look for the childhood stories which explain, or
at least lead up to, this greatness. By then the memories of his origins may be obscure, for
the details did not at the time seem worth noting. It is for this reason that for the stories of
a great man’s beginnings it is often necessary to resort to legend. Furthermore, the
fondness which many display for childhood and youth tends to romanticise such stories.
Of David’s emergence into history there seem to have been three versions current, all of
which are included in the Bible. Each of these has its own peculiar character and must be
considered on its own. The narrator is not concerned that in detail they are incompatible,
or at least incompatibly presented. But the biblical editors do not mind putting side by
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side two clashing versions. As in the two Creation accounts of Genesis, they give
different and complementary perspectives.
1. David the anointed shepherd-boy (16.1-13)
The story of David’s anointing by Samuel has a certain romantic quality, building up an
atmosphere of awe and expectation first with the trembling of the elders and then with the
failure of Jesse’s sons, one after another, to match up to God’s choice, until finally the
youngest – so insignificant as to be almost forgotten – is chosen. There is a delicate
balance between the theme, so common in the Bible, that God’s choice is often for the
least favoured, the younger son, the smallest, etc, and a care to show the young David’s
attractive qualities.
The origin of this story has been plausibly suggested to be prophetic circles in the
northern Kingdom of Israel. It shows considerable affinity with the story of the choice of
the northerner Saul in 1 Sm 10.17-24, when selection by lot gradually narrows down to
Saul, who has disappeared and is eventually found hiding among the baggage. The
constant guidance of Samuel at each step by the silent inspiration of God is another
feature which fits the prophetic tradition. Similarly the way in which the spirit of Yahweh
‘seizes upon’ David as it had on the ancient judges, and as it would later on the
charismatic prophets of the northern kigdom, indicates the same origin. From the formal
point of view it has also been suggested that each is the first act in a widspread three-act
drama of rise to kingship: first the king is designated, then he proves himself by success
in war, finally he is publicly acclaimed. Saul is first privately anointed by Samuel, then
proves himself by victory over the Ammonites, then is publicly proclaimed (10.17-24;
11.1-11; 11.12-15). Similarly David is here privately anointed, then proves himself by
victory over Goliath and finally is popularly acclaimed (18.7).
With regard to the historicity of the passage, it must be said that it clashes with David’s
future anointings as king of Judah at Hebron (2 Sm 2.4)and also by the elders of Israel as
king of Israel some years later (2 Sm 5.3). When these take place there is no awareness
that David had already been anointed. The later incidents are also historically more
credible, firmly anchored and functional in the process of history. Forced to choose
between the two versions, one cannot but prefer the later anointings, and suspect that this
childhood anointing is a later romantic legend.
2. David the harpist (16.14-23)
The David who emerges in this story is already older, a man old enough to have proved
himself ‘a brave man and a good fighter’, reliable enough to be Saul’s armour-bearer (it
was a future armour-bearer to Saul who was later to be asked to kill him, no task for a
simpering page-boy, 1 Sm 31.4), though he is chosen primarily for his musical ability. It
has been judged to be the most ancient version, and the beginning of a continuous history
of the rise of David.
The story shows no interest in Saul, and gives no explanation why the spirit of Yahweh
had been withdrawn from him. The modern psychoanalyst would say that Saul’s
consciousness of failure induced these fits of wild and eventually homicidal depression.
His courtiers were not preparedo let the power pass from their patron – of course it had its
rewards for them too – and set about looking for a therapist not only capable of soothing
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the deranged king but also calculated to inspire some sort of more permanent affection or
admiration, which might bring him out of himself again. It must have been that Saul’s
terrors, perhaps resulting fom his feeling of inadaequacy and isolation, were soothed not
only by the music but also by the friendliness and charm of the young man. We will see
again and again in the story of David that he had the ability to inspire devotion of the sort
that induces people to follow a leader anywhere. Saul’s feelings of fondness for David
could have gone a long way towards counteracting his isolation and depersonalisation. At
first there is no trace of the enmity or even hostility which Saul later displays towards
David. David’s fighting qualities were no doubt sought to attract Saul, rather than to
enable the therapist to cope with Saul’s violence. The hostility is, as we shall see, a later
development.
The author of this account is, however, less interested in the psychology than in beginning
to show David’s continuing loyalty to Saul. There is a clear current running through the
stories of David’s rise to power which insists that David did not unfairly or selfishly
arrogate Saul’s position to himself. On the contrary, David showed Saul every
consideration, but it was simply a matter of divine choice, for the spirit of Yahweh had
been withdrawn from Saul, and – as the author often repeats – Yahweh was with David.
Whether this is a one-sided view of the historical reality remains to be seen.
3. David the Warrior (17)
The story of David and Goliath is itself obviously composite, an amalgam of at least two
versions proceeding from the two views of David which have already been presented.
Either David comes to the battlefield as Saul’s aide or he comes as a visitor bringing
some home-comforts to his elder brothers. A solution is provided by the omission of
verses 12-31 and 55-58 (so the whole of the visitor-version) from the Codex Vaticanus.
This in fact also leaves a text in the chiasmus-pattern so common in the best of Hebrew
historical writing:
a. A champion stepped out from the Philistine ranks (4)
b. The Philistine’s equipment (5-7)
c. The Philistine’s challenge (8-11)
c’. David’s reply to the challenge (32-37)
b’. David’s equipment (38-40a)
a’. David walked towards the Philistine (40b).
Particularly David’s refusal to be at all dismayed in v. 32 is an obvious contrasting
response to the general dismay in v. 11. The account of the Philistine’s ponderous armour
(his breastplate wieghts over 50 kilos, his spear over 6 kilos) contrasts so delicately with
David’s minimal and simple kit. If v. 42, which is an obvious accommodation to the
David anointed by Samuel, a lad ‘with ruddy cheeks and an attractive appearance’, is cut
out, then this balancing chiasmus is immediately followed by a neat verbal duel: the
Philistine comments on David’s weapons, curses David by his gods and makes threats
about his corpse, to which David replies by cursing him in the name of Yahweh and
making similar threats about his corpse (whereas to the commont of youth in v. 42 he
makes no reply). Each time, however, David lifts the exchange onto a new level by the
expression of his trust in God. After this he immediately uses the despised weapons.
Besides the chiastic pattern, this story has many of the qualities which will be found in
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the Court Narrative of 2 Samuel, the acute observation and the graphic description of the
equipment and fight, the dramatic build-up nad the irony of the Philistine’s challenge.
To this structured military story the amusing and romantic account of the little lad, too
young for the army, who sneaks up to have an inquisitive look for himself, when he was
meant only to bring supplies from home, adds a further and unnecessary dimension. It
also brings some difficulties: it seems to introduce all the family as if they have never
been heard of, making a fresh beginning in v. 12. And it makes some clashes: David
would have no tent of his own in which to stow the Philistine’s weapons (v. 54) if he is
only visiting.
The clashes and contradictions between the three main stories of David’s emergence will
be obvious. They are not merely independent but are actually incompatible. We have to
suppose that the anointing was kept secret, despite the presence of the elders, and was
even unknown when David was later anointed king of Judah and king of Israel. It is best
regarded as a prophetic legend to legitimate David’s reign. The other two stories are also
incompatible with each other if the fuller version of the conflict with the Philistine is in
question, though the slimmer version is compatible with the harpist story. There is also
the difficulty of the attribution of the slaying of Goliath to Elnahan, also a warrior from
Bethlehem with a remarkably similar patronymic (2 Sm 21.19). Was the giant-slaying
transferred to David from Elnahan, and was David’s reputation for prowess in battle
originally grounded on a quite different basis? By and large, then, it seems best to accept
as the most basic version of David’s emergence the harpist-story. Its inclusion of mention
of David’s dexterity (though string-playing and stone-slinging do not always go together)
and prowess as a warrior leaves room also for addition of the Philistine-story7. Above all,
the relationship between Saul and David, and David’s position in Saul’s household
(where he is accessible to both Jonathan and Michal) provide a basis for the future
unfolding of the story.
18.17-30; 19.11-17 David’s Marriage to Michal
Saul proceeds to a series of moves designed to check David’s meteoric rise. We have
already heard that Saul feared David, since Yahweh was with him and had withdrawn
from Saul (18.12, a refrain also in v. 28 and in part already in 16.14, 18). Sauls’ first
move was to send David away from the royal presence as commander of a thousand; this
backfires because his success only wins him more popularity.
Next we have the classic folklore theme of the ignoble young hero set an impossible task
in order to win the princess’ hand, in this case the bride-price regularly paid in Semitic
society by the young man to the bride’s parents. With any luck David would get himself
killed in fulfilling the request for a hundred Philistine foreskins. One can imagine that the
racialist joke would appeal to many a young blood in the army, and David cheekily
doubles the number requested, thus increasing the slightly raffish wit of the whole
situation. It is now that Saul becomes desperate and turns to murder, though this second
instance of his trying to pin David to the wall is slightly incongruous: would the
Some late linguistic features are pointed out by Alexander Rofé, ‘The Battle of David and Goliath’ in
Judaic Perspectives on Ancient Israel, ed. J. Neusner and others (Fortress Press, 1987, p.117-151). It has
also been suggested that the idea of a challenge to single combat may be dependent on the single combat
between Paris and Menelaus in Iliad 3.
7
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successful commander of a thousand relapse into his role as court musician? Saul’s next
move is a more public one, involving his agents and well as himself, though indeed
relationships between Saul and David have already deteriorated to the point where they
communicate only through intermediaries (v. 22, 24-25). By 20.31 Saul will no longer
pronounce the hated name, but refers only to ‘the son of Jesse’.
The domestic image used in Michal’s witty trick must be a nearly life-size statue. There is
an intriguing parallel with the Jacob story in Genesis 31.34-35: Jacob too had been
offered two sisters as wives, and had had to pay a hard-earned bride-price. When he flees
from his father-in-law his wife also uses the trick of illness (her own in that case, not
Jacob’s) and domestic images. Later such images were condemned by King Josiah’s
reforms as idolatrous (2 Kings 23.24). In any case the persistence of all kinds of cultobjects, fertility figurines, etc, at all levels of archaeology in Palestine raises intriguing
questions about the continuance of superstition alongside the official Yahwism.
David’s relationship with his first wife is not a particularly happy one. We are never told
that David loved her at all. She fell in love with him and she makes all the going, while
David cynically says it would be a fine thing to be the king’s son-in-law (18.26). Michal
risks the king’s anger to protect her husband, but we hear of no reciprocal devotion.
When David is expelled from court she is given to another husband. David demands her
return when, after Saul’s death, he is negotiating with Saul’s heirs: obviously marriage to
Saul’s daughter is an important title to the crown, which he can allow to no rival. But the
devotion of her new husband stands in touching contrast to David’s disregard: he follows
her weeping right to the edge of Benjaminite territory, until Abner, the chief remaining
power in the north, roughly pushes him away (2 Sm 3.16). By now Michal has lost her
illusions about David, who already had several wives, and there is no sign of any love lost
between either of them. Finally, when Michal sees fit to reproach David for dancing
energetically before the ark, clad only in a skimpy loin-cloth, he answers her with a
bitterly wounding reproach of her father’s failure. It is hardly surprising that the author
adds that heavily-loaded sentence, ‘And to the day of her death Michal, daughter of Saul,
had no children’ (2 Sm 6.23). She was an unfortunate victim of politics, caught up in the
tragedy of her father’s house. No doubt she remembered her years of happiness with
Paltiel as well as her ancestral pride, and may well have compared his loving
attentiveness with David’s attitude, cold from the first and now retaining her only as a
potential mother of rivals who must be inaccessible to other men.
19.1-7; 20.1-42 David and Jonathan
Jonathan has already become well-known to the readerof 1 Sm, both for himself and for
his relationship to David, by two incidents. The first gives an attractive picture of
Jonathan as a debonair and enterprising young officer. With his devoted armour-bearer
(‘our hearts are as one’, he says, 14.7) he mounts a private attack on a Philistine outpost,
scaling a cliff amid the derision of the Philistine guards, and then sets off general panic in
the Philistine army by slaughtering 20 men. In the course of the subequent battle, having
inadvertently and totally innocently broken his father’s ill-judged prohibition of eating
any food, he offer himself with open-hearted generosity to be executed rather than hold
up the advance. He is saved by the clamour of the people, for he was obviously a popular
figure (14.45).
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A second incident occurs after David’s conflict with the Philistine. It is the first contact
between the two, since it opens, ‘Jonathan felt an instant affection for David’ (18.1). His
openness and affections are expressed in the excitement of the victory by a shower of
personal gifts: he gives David his cloak and armour, including sword, bow and belt. He
must have realised the symbolism of the transference to his new friend of this princely
regalia – David could now strut in the uniform of the crown-prince – but in the thrill of
victory he merely wanted to pile congratulations on his new friend, forgetful of his own
rights. The modern commentator will immediately think forward to David’s lament over
Jonathan, ‘Your love for me more wonderful to me than the love of a woman’ (2 Sm
1.26), and ask whether there is a homosexual element involved. However, in such a
warrior culture bonds between man and man are especially strong, and anyway the
voracious heterosexual interests of both are guaranteed by the number of their children.
The present story in 1 Sm 20 belongs to a darker period in David’s life, when
relationships between David and Saul are deteriorating badly. Either this or the incident
of Michal’s trick with the idol in bed could be the last appearance of David at Saul’s
court. It is striking that the loyalty and devotion which David inspires in both brother and
sister stretches so far as to induce them to protect him against their royal father. The story
forms a turning-point in David’s rise, for now for the first time, in his outburst to
Jonathan (v. 31) Saul acknowledges that his motives for persecuting David are not simply
moody jealousy at David’s prowess and popularity but the maintenance of the royal
dynasty. Is his claim that David deserves to die merely the product of his anger? The
reader has seen no evidence of criminal activity to support this accusation, though
David’s ambition has already become obvious in his desire for a match with the king’s
daughter whom he does not love. No doubt Saul the king was a shrewd judge of men and
knew both the young upstart and his besotted supporter. Further, we must remember the
angle from which David is presented in this part of the story is that of the innocent,
wronged and misunderstood young man. Perhaps the evidence for David’s criminal
ambition is simply not presented by our selective author, or Saul had the shrewdness to
see the evidence of an ambition still too latent to be obvious to others.
The test which the two friends devise is a curious one. Must we assume that David ought
to be in his place at Saul’s table for the monthly New Moon celebrations (cf. Nm 28.1115) to the extent that absence suggests plotting? Saul may well have deduced that a
pressing visit to his home town for a clan-sacrifice was a preface to raising the standard of
rebellion – Absalom would do the same in the next generation. Or was David’s presence
at the king’s table even a form of house-arrest? In any case the resultant family flare-up is
touching evidence of Jonathan’s loyalty to his friend in the face of all his own personal
interests, and even at the risk of some physical danger to himself. It is evidence also of
Saul’s increasingly irascible temper – not without cause, as he saw the succession
slipping from his dynasty and his own son conspiring with ‘the son of Jesse’ .
Note: There are certain jolts in the narrative as it stands at present: verses 11-17 seem to
interrupt the flow of the story quite unnecessarily. Their excision allows Jonathan in v. 18
to answer directly David’s question in v. 10. Furthermore, the final paragraph, verses 4042, makes nonsense of the elaborate system of signalling with arrows: if the two friends
can meet and chat, there is no need for such a system. Both these sections are focussed on
the oath of loyalty to Jonathan and his descendants which David makes, and which will
play an important part in the subsequent events surrounding Saul’s and Jonathan’s
families when David comes to power – a vital factor in justifying his actions. It is
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assumed that they, and verse 23 which has the same theme, are adventitious to the
original story.
David in Flight from Saul
We now come to a series of stories of David as an outlaw, fleeing from Saul. They are not
necessarily in chronological order, since their order is due to the editor who gathered
them together. One principle of determining their chronological order may be David’s
gathering strength.
1. David at large in the Desert of Judah
At Nob (21.1-10) David is definitely weak and in flight. Isaiah 10.32 shows that Nob lay
between Anathoth and Jerusalem, only a few kilometers from Saul’s capital at Gibeah; its
proximity to Saul gives the priest Ahimelech good grounds for fear in yielding to the
demands of the king’s rival. The incident is perhaps the first turning-point in David’s
independence. With the demise of Shiloh Nob had become the national sanctuary, the
natural place to store (or keep on view) Goliath’s sword, the trophy of victory over the
Philistines. David’s naïve lies to Ahimelech (‘We were so keen to get to the match that
we forgot our packed lunches and our football-boots’) conceal serious demands. The
symbolic value of holding the sword would be of major value to David, and the
consumption of the dedicated loaves must have conferred further legitimacy on Yahweh’s
business. Perhaps the most significant of all is that the attestation of sexual purity
(‘things’ in 22.6 is the same euphemism as in adolescent English) implies that David is
engaged in a sacred war. When Saul repays the priests for aiding and abetting his enemy
(22.6-23) he plays further into David’s hands by thrusting into David’s arms the sole
survivor and the ephod8. Saul’s own tragedy is delicately hinted: the massacre in 22.19
sweeps away just those elements the sparing of which at Gilgal (15.3) had earned him his
rejection, ‘men and women, infant and suckling, ox, ass and sheep’.
David’s first two initiatives amount to a further declaration of war. Like any wise rebel,
he puts his family in safe-keeping with the king of Moab and gathers a private army of
malcontents who will constitute his power-base in the future struggles (22.1-4). After
moving their centre of operations a second time, however (22.5), David, or at any rate his
men, still feel insecure in the wilds of Judah (23.3), and are glad to get inside a walled
city. Keilah had been a strong Canaanite fortress, on the edge of the hill-country as it
descends to the coastal plain. David with his band of men may well have been invited by
the citizens to repulse the Philistines. Saul thinks this an ideal moment to pounce on him,
confined within the city, and David does not feel secure enough to resist (23.1-14). Once
David has beaten the Philistines off, the citizens of Keilah would be glad to be rid of him
and his 400 men, and handing him over to Saul was of course a cheaper way of finishing
the business than paying David’s mercenary fee! An indication of an early date may be
the arrival of Abiathar (23.6): he would scarcely have been wandering loose for long after
the massacre of the other priests of Nob, carrying with him the mysterious and sacred
ephod. The author is careful to emphasize constantly that Yahweh is behind David: three
times in this passage alone David consults Yahweh before making a move. By the third
time he is in possession of the ephod and its priest , which gives additional security and
8
What exactly this was remains obscure. In post-exilic times it was an elaborate breastplate or apron worn
by the high priest (Ex 28). In these earlier times it was used for ascertaining the divine will in a way which
was subsequently felt to be superstitious (Jg 8.27; 17.5, etc).
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authority. David can now ascertain God’s will, and Saul cannot. Eventually Saul will be
driven to necromancy (28) his final lowest point, when, deserted by God and totally
isolated, by consulting the witch of En Dor he breaks his own prohibition of necromancy
and wizardry. The tragic depths to which he has sunk are clear when after the séance with
Samuel he breaks his military fast (28.25), the very crime for which he had long ago been
prepared to execute his own son. He can sink no lower.
2. David spares Saul (24; 26)
There are two stories of David sparing Saul. It is difficult to believe that two such similar
happenings were allowed to occur. Would not Saul have tightened his security after the
first? We are dealing with oral traditions which could easily represent two divergent
accounts of the same incident. It is all part of the story of Saul chasing David all over the
desert of Judah, territory which is much more familiar to David than to Saul himself.
The story in chapter 26 bears several hall-marks of David. His appeal to his companions
to join him in a dare-devil deed, ‘Who will come with me to the camp, to Saul’ (26.6)
reads very like the challenge, ‘Who will bring me a drink of water from the well that
stands by the gate of Bethlehem?’ (2 Sm 23.15) – an invitation to a deed of bravado,
penetrating the enemy lines. If any trait of David’s character is clear it is his ability to
attract people as a leader. He inspired admiration in the women who sang of his killing
his tens of thousands, devotion in Ittai of Gath (who has barely joined his service, 2 Sm
15.20), in Hushai (who returns to Jerusalem to work for him at the periolous job of
unprotected double-agent, 2 Sm 15.37), and dogged affection in the army opposing
Absalom, as well as the personal adherence and generosity of Jonathan and Michal’s love
and devotion.
Another hall-mark of David is his insistence on the sanctity of the Lord’s anointed. Later
on, when he himself is king at Hebron and Saul’s successor is assassinated, and already
when Saul himself is given a coup de grace (2 Sm 1), one can readily understand that by
his incisive action he is also protecting his own position. But at this early stage, when he
is still a fugitive, such insistent respect is more remarkable: it characterizes not only his
own action but also his checking of Abishai, his taunt to Abner and his reply to Saul. If it
is an anachronism, it is well worked into the text.
The cave-version (24.1-23) has two additional features – which does not of course imply
that it is either later or secondary. Firstly, the element of detailed prediction of David’s
future kingship is especially clear and improbably resigned (for Saul does not in any way
abdicate or co-opt David); it occurs regularly in other stories (20.13, 42; 23.17; 28.17).
The editor who included these passages was obviously concerned to stress that David’s
kingship was so firmly divinely decreed that it was already obvious to all concerned.
Secondly, the cave-version makes considerably more a mockery of Saul, if not a
degradation. That Saul should go into a cave, removing his robe ‘to cover his feet’ is a
euphemism for defecating, so that David and his men caught him not only in a helpless
but frankly in a highly undignified situation. Is his nakedness symbolic of his loss of the
kingship? Worse, cutting off the edge of his robe suggests a symbolic castration, almost
sympathetic magic depriving him of his virility. The ‘father’ and ‘son’ language they use
to each other adds to the sexual significance. However, both versions of David’s
magnanimous action underline heavily David’s loyalty to Saul, emphasising that in no
way could David be blamed for unduly grasping at the crown. The propaganda in favour
of David comes to a head in 24.23, a clear recognition by Saul that David will replace
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him. This is surely premature and would make Saul’s subsequent actions very difficult to
understand. Moreover it is a theme which often, though ineptly, occurs elsewhere in the
stories of David’s rise: Jonathan recognises David’s future kingship already in 20.13-16,
and Abigail’s flattery is unnecessarily exact on this point (25.28-30).
3. Nabal and Abigail (25)
This delightfully-told story, with its understatement and oriental courtesy concealing
some steely bargaining, marks another turning-point in David’s fortunes. At the
beginnning he is a powerful freebooter; by the end he has secured himself a recognised
position in the southern part of the country.
David is, of course, running a protection-racket, guaranteeing peace and good order
against the payment of a certain fee. At least, that alone is clear, though there are fairly
heavy hints that the payments stave off not only interference from others but also
interference from David’s own band. The fact that some men from Ziph, in the same area,
lay information against him to Saul (26.1) shows that there are some who would be glad
to be rid of him. Whether David had by now been given Ziklag as his base cannot be
established, for we do not know the chronology of this period at all. But at any rate in the
same time-zone the Philistine king plants David at Ziklag and encourages his freebooting
operations, no doubt on the assumption that this refugee from Saul will act as a destabilizing agent to Israel. In fact David is far too astute to play the merely negative part
allotted to him, and contents himself with harrying the non-Israelite tribes in the north of
the Negeb, that is, a little further south than the victims intended by the Philistines. At the
same time, by slaughtering any captives, he ensures that his Philistine masters do not get
to know the details of his adventures (27.5-12). Far from alienating his own people,
David was winning their goodwill by giving them a share in his booty, building up a
steady support for himself in many of the important towns of Judah (30. 26-31).
It is as part of this movement, quite possibly fairly early in it, that he comes in contact
with Nabal. The time is the sheep-shearing, one of the few labour-intensive moments of
sheep-farming, when the gathering of shepherds and shearers gives the opportunity for a
traditional feast. Absalom later will use this moment to invite Amnon and to murder him
in revenge for the abuse of his sister Tamar (2 Sm 13.23ff). David reckons that he and his
men could justifiably expect to enjoy their share of the feast too – the security guards are
also part of the staff! (25.7-8, 21). This, at least, is the more moderate reading of the
request; it could also be construed as a barefaced demand that David’s men should be
given not merely a cut but the whole of the victuals prepared for the party. David’s
approach varies a little: speaking to his own men he claims equality with Nabal, referring
to him as ‘my brother’ (25.6). In the message to Nabal, however, he is more submissive,
even wheedling, claiming close ties but allowing subordination by referring to himself as
‘your son David’.
None of this cuts any ice with Nabal. One can almost hear the plutocratic expostulation –
note the self-centredness of ‘I…I…I’ in 26.11! The servant who runs whining off to his
mistress is surely right: ‘he is such a brute that no one can say a word to him’. No doubt
this pun on his name (nabal=brute) was much used in the household. Nabal does not even
bother to listen to the elaborate request, casually lumping David with runaway servants, a
gibe which had enough truth in it to sting David into action. Heedless of the consequences
of his sally, Nabal falls to the feast and is soon far too drunk to receive his wife’s
confessions. In spite of which conduct it is hard not to feel just a trace of sympathy when
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he sobers up in the morning and realises everything, dying – with somewhat Dickensian
convenience – of a broken heart in ten days time.
Meanwhile Abigail loses no time. There is not much sign of reluctance, let alone of love
or loyalty to her brutish husband. She times her entry onto the scene with David nicely,
springing our from behind the fold of the mountain and casting herself dramatically at
David’s feet, as generous with her own compliments as she is with her husband’s
foodstuffs. She does have the grace to admit that her action in handing over the provisions
to David saves him from the crime of bloodshed. She then goes on to make a fulsome
prophecy of David’s future greatness, and the lasting dynasty which will be his, ending
with a coy little request to be part of his good fortune. However, the fact that David in his
reply makes noreference to these elaborate promises, and the similarity in phraseology to
the great dynastic promise of Nathan (especially ‘lasting dynasty’ in 26.28 and 2 Sm
7.16) suggests that it may be a later formulation.
The episode comes to its due conclusion when Abigail, without any mention of due
mourning for Nabal, and with the expected little speech of unworthiness, springs up with
all alacrity to accept David’s offer of marriage. Thus he inherits Nabal’s powerful
position in the southern hill-country. But what of David’s other wife, Ahinoam, who is
mentioned here for the first time? The name occurs only once elsewhere, and that is of
Saul’s wife, Ahinoam daughter of Ahimaaz (1 Sm 14.50). It is scarcely credible, but quite
possible, that David somehow now had Saul’s wife. This would hardly endear him to the
king, and would account for Saul’s impacable hostility. It would also go a long way
towards constituting a claim on the throne for David. As Jon D. Levenson put it, David
‘swaggered into Hebron with the wife of a Calebite chieftain on one arm and that of an
Israelite king on the other’ (Studies in the Bible and Ancient Near East presented to
Samuel E. Loewenstamm, ed. Yitzhak Avishur and Joshua Blau [Jerusalem, Rubinstein,
1978] p. 241) 2 Sm 2.2.
David the Philistine Mercenary
1. The Madman (21.11-16)
This fragment is strange in view of the trusted position which David later has under
Achish. Its wit and inventiveness chime in nicely with all we know of that enterprising
young man, and the dating of it to the beginning of his time as a fugitive fits his
behaviour; he would never have pulled off the deception once he had become known as
the leader of a private army. It is obviously the action of an unsupported fugitive, seeking
to extract himself from a midjudged situation. Surely David lays on the fit when his
approach to the leader goes wrong, to extricate himself from a situation which has turned
sour. But why Achish? Either a floating tradition about David and a non-Israelite ruler
was later attached to Achish as the best-known figure available and a known contact of
David’s, or Achish appreciates the wit and has the breadth to realise that the cunning used
on this occasion against himself can be used also against his enemies. We have laready
seen that David’s ability to charm knew no bounds.
2. The Trusted Captain (27)
David is presumably tired of being a fugitive from Saul. Even with his 400 men and the
successful protection racket he was too vulnerable, and no doubt the situation was made
worse byhis having two wives and considerable property – at any rate that inherited from
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Nabal – without any secure base. The rest of his band had their families too. However,
after a probationary period of a year and a half the ruler of Gath gave him Ziklag on the
border of the Negeb and of Judah as his own base of operations, presumably intending
that this outlying town should be a sort of spearhead for acts of devastation against
David’s own countrymen. David lies to Achish that he is raiding the Negeb of Judah and
other Israelites territories, when all the time he is marauding the non-Israelite tribes of the
desert, and making sure that no captives survive to tell the tale. In his final raid (30.2631), on the contrary, he ingratiates himself with the elders of several towns in Judah by
distributing the spoil to them. He may well have been building up his power-base in
Judah for years like this.
3. A lucky escape (28.1-2; 29)
The final crunch looms when Achish invites David to join him in war against Israel.
Obviously he thinks that this Hebrew9 mercenary, who fought for Keilah against the
Philistines and who now seems to have been a loyal servant of the Philistines against
Judah, can be trusted even against Israel. Only the mistrust of his Philistine fellowchieftains lets David out of a nasty situation. In trusting David to defend him against
David’s own nation Achish certainly shows an extraordinary confidence. David must
have fostered this with his wheedling loyalty. What, indeed, does he mean by his two
ambiguous remarks to Achish: ‘you will soon see what your servant can do’ (28.2), and
his expressed intention of going to ‘fight the enemies of my lord the king’(29.8)? Achish
must have understood the title to refer to himself, but David may have meant entirely the
opposite. He keeps his secret! As things turn out, the exclusion gives him the best of
every world: he is saved from the clash of loyalties; he is given the opportunity to
continue building up his power-base in the absence of the prying eyes of his Philistine
masters while they are campaigning in the north of the country, and into the bargain
Achish sounds apologetic to him (26.6, 9-10). As things turned out he made good use of
the respite to repay the vengeance which his former victims had swiftly inflicted during
the short period when he was moving towards the north with his Philistine masters.
Characteristically, his inspired leadership also initiates then the generous and popular rule
that the whole army shares the spoils, not just the front-line troops (30.21-24).
David’s Reaction to the News of Saul’s Death
1. The News Received (2 Sm 1.1-16)
The account of the death of Saul and his three sons, Jonathan, Abinadab and Malchishua
was given in the preivous chapter: Saul and his armour-bearer fell on their own swords,
Saul having been severely wounded by the archers. In the present chapter the account
brought by the young Amalekite differs in several details. The Amalekite claims that the
chariots and cavalry were bearing down on Saul (no mention of archers) and that Saul
invited him to administer a coup de grace as Saul leant on his spear (no mention of the
armour-bearer or of Saul falling on his own sword). The Amalekite then took the
emblems of royalty from Saul’s body and brought them to David, with the implication
that this had been his purpose in despoiling the body.
The expression ‘Hebrews’ is here used carefully. It is normally used only by non-Israelites, not by the
Israelites about themselves. The equivalent word in all the texts of the surrounding nations (and especially
the Amarna Letters, written from Canaan to Egypt a couple of centuries before this) is quite
uncomplimentary, denoting them as rebels, mercenaries, outcasts, wandering terrorists; it is often coupled
with ‘dogs’ and ‘stray dogs’
9
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Two explanations of these discrepancies are possible. The first is that there were simply
two different traditions current about Saul’s death, the second that the Amalekite was
lying. In favour of the latter theory there is a good deal of circumstantial evidence:
Amalekites were, as we have just seen, professional marauders and plunderers. What else
was the young man doing on the battlefield? He would not likely be a member of either
army. One might well be suspicious also of his mention of cavalry and chariots, for the
terrain of Mount Gilboa is far too steep and uneven for any chariot. So was the young
Amalekite simply a battlefield-looter who had the audacious plan of using his unsaleable
loot to good effect by bringing the emblems to David? He misjudged his man! If David
seems callous in his immediate execution of the man who had only acceded to Saul’s last
request, it may be that he did not believe the young man’s story either. We have already
seen in the stories of his sparing Saul in embarrassing situations that he would not
tolerate harm to the Lord’s anointed.
We must, however, also bear in mind that this story is the capstone of the propaganda
which exonerates David for complicity in Saul’s downfall. There may well have been
those who commented unfavourably on the fact that David had been serving in the
Philistine army at the time when Saul was killed by the Philistines, and that David wore
the insignia which had been worn by Saul. Also that David had married Saul’s ex-wife
and carefully put his family in safety while himself chose to stay in the south to build up a
power-base, double-crossing his Philistine masters to ingratiate himself with the leaders
of Judah and win their kingship. A case could be made that Saul had been right to expel
from the court the young upstart who seemed determined to rival him. The previous
stories have carefully shown how David soothed rather than exacerbated Saul’s
depressions, how David left his secure place in Saul’s court only when he was irrationally
expelled, how he magnanimously and respectfully spared his persecutor, how he was
explicitly barred from the battle in which Saul fell. Now come two other pieces of
evidence, a firm alibi (he was rescuing his family in the deep south at the exact time when
Saul was being killed in the north, three days journey away) and an explanation of how he
came to have the royal insignia in his possession. We have no grounds for disputing the
facts of the case as they are put forward by the court historians, but they do leave room
for interpretation.
2. David’s Lament over Saul and Jonathan
Despite its quite remarkable and possibly unparalleled age, the pedigree of David’s
Lament is impeccable. The Book of the Just, in which it is said to be preserved, was
presumably an ancient collection of poetry, for the famous little couplet about the sun
standing still over Gibeon (Jos 10.13) is also culled from this collection. The strange note
that the Lament was for teaching archery (if the text is to be so understood) coule imply
that somehow it was sung as an accompaniment to archery exercises; there are similar
notes at the head of some psalms, often considerably later than the psalms themselves.
There is no reason to believe that the attribution of the Lament to David is incorrect, and
the penultimate verse can scarcely be by anyone else. This conclusion is pregnant with
consequences for the tradition that David was responsible for composing the psalter, or at
any rate was responsible for at least some psalms.
The Lament is built on a series of balances and correspondences reflecting a high degree
of artistry and excluding any possibility that it was an extempore composition. The first
part is public and formal (with its formal invocation of mountains, Philistines and Saul
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and Jonathan themselves, the second more intimately personal, as though David could not
forbear to add his own personal grief. The main part of the poem is in the form of a
chiasmus:
a. How did the heroes fall (19)
b. The daughters of the Philistines rejoice (20)
c. Two nature images, dew and rain (21)
d. Shield dishonoured…not greased shield (21)
d’. Jonathan…Saul…Saul…Jonathan (22)
c’. Two nature images, eagles and lions (23)
b’. The daughters of Israel weep (24)
a’. How did the heroes fall (25)
To this formal and public part is added David’s own personal grief, again with an
intertwining of first and second person pronouns to indicate their union:
You…I…I…you
Jonathan, my brother
You…me…me…you.
This section too ends with the refrain, ‘How did the heroes fall?’ binding it to the formal
part of the poem.
In striking contrast to the interlocking verbal artistry, the imagery of the poem is simple.
It is the imagery of one who revels in the beauty of the countryside of the land of Israel,
the dew and the rain on the commanding heights of the Gilboa range, the eagles and lions
which abounded until quite recently. It is the imagery of a warrior whose thoughts are
filled with shield, bow, sword and weapons of war. But equally striking is what is not
there: no mention at all of God. Is Yahweh not concerned with death, not even with the
death of his anointed? One would certainly have expected, especially from the singer of
the psalms, who shares all the experiences of life with the Lord, that he would
communicate this national and personal loss with God. Perhaps his frame of mind was not
so pious as later writings would lead us to believe. Alternatively, of course, he may be
keeping to some primitive non-Yahwistic literary convention, long rooted in Canaan, of
which we know nothing because of lack of documentation. The poem has the air of being
formal and bound by convention, as is so common with the rites of death. It is nonetheless
heartfelt for that, and particularly the intertwining of David and Jonathan in the final
section is a moving expression of their affection. It is as though, having finished the
formal lament for the king and his son, David cannot but bring in his own personal
affection for his friend before he ties this into the main lament by repeating the refrain
once more.
David King at Hebron
1. David takes control (2.1-11)
These two little paragraphs contain several fascinating historical hints as to the story of
David. Taken at their face value they present the pious young hero raised in God’s good
time to the kingship, and already immediately acting as God’s representative in rewarding
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the courage and loyalty of Jabesh in Gilead. Such is the impression intended by the author
or compiler of the narrative.
The cold political facts look slightly different. For one thing, David had carefully
prepared the ground at Hebron by his gifts of booty during the desert campaigns (1 Sm
30.31), conciliating the elders of Hebron to himself. Hebron was the natural capital of the
region, an ancient town in a secure and central position, the sacred city of Abraham,
hallowed by the presence of the tombs of the patriarchs. It would be a focal point for
Absalom’s revolt too. The text represents David as entirely open to the will of God,
entirely undecided where to go, and waiting upon the indication of God’s will. Somehow
in David’s case the divine indications always coincide with the politically advantageous!
This anointing as King of Judah by the elders clashes significantly with the earlier
anointing by Samuel at Bethlehem (1 Sm 16.1-13), but fits with the subsequent anointing
by the elder of Israel to be their king too (2 Sm 5.3). Here we have the record of the
choice of David by the elders of the region, whereas in the Samuel story we have (as
already suggested) a later propheteic story, accommodated to the tradition that the
anointing of the kings of Israel was the work of a prophet. The timing of the anointing
contains its own puzzle: David reigned in Hebron for seven years and six months (2.11),
while Ishbaal10 reigned only two years in the north. Yet the impression is given that there
are no gaps between Saul’s death and his son’s accession, or between Ishbaal’s death and
David’s accession to the throne of Israel. Did in fact David begin to reign at Hebron
before Saul’s death? This would add bitterness to the final rivalry between the two kings.
Perhaps the most interesting study is of David’s behaviour towards the people of Jabesh
in Gilead. Again there is the contrast between the story as told and the politics behind the
story. As told, the story is a pleasant record of David’s thanks to the courageous little
town for their loyalty to his predecessor, and his blessing on them. Jabesh in Gilead had
indeed been courageous and loyal in taking the bodies of Saul and his sons off the walls
of Beth Shean and providing them with decent burial (1 Sm 31.11-13). This was partly an
act of gratitude by them for Saul’s first campaign as king, his rescue of them when they
were being besieged by the Ammonites (1 Sm 11). It may well be a sign of the extent of
Philistine power after the battle at Gilboa that such an act was left to a town well up in the
north and beyond the Jordan, far from the Philistine bases on the coast.
The political realities, however, lie deeper than that. The capital of the Saulide rump
kingdom now ruled by Ishbaal and his general Abner probably lay hardly a score of
kilometers from Jabesh, on the same side of the Jordan and within very easy reach. If
David could establish his influence at Jabesh it would give him a foothold very near his
rivals at Mahanaim. In his message to the citizens he claims explicitly as much as he
legitimately can, that the only monarchy around to replace that of Saul is his own, even
though Jabesh lies will outside Judah. Implicitly he goes a good deal further. By taking
upon himself to thank they for their deed he implies that he has succeeded to Saul’s
position. More than this, he even promises to treat them well, as though he had some
power or jurisdiction over them, an almost laughable claim at this distance. More
presumptious still, the double calling-down of a blessing from Yahweh surely implies that
10
The appearance of confusion in the biblical text over the names Ishbaal and Ishbosheth is the result of the
meaning of the name. ‘Ish-baal’ means ‘Man of [the god] Baal’. The biblical writer prefers to put
‘Ishbosheth’ which means ‘Man of Shame’. The same occurs with the names Mephibaal/Mephibosheth,
which mean ‘From the mouth of Baal/Shame’.
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David holds some sort of special status with Yahweh which permits him to exercise the
divine patronage; the citizens of Jabesh are invited to deduce that David is the channel of
God’s favour to them.
2. The Rift between the Generals (2.12-3.1)
The clash between north and south looks rather like a clash of generals. On each side
there is a powerful warror, a formidable army commander, skilled in all the techniques
and wiles of hand-to-hand combat, ruthless and unbending. Each has his fair measure of
cunning, each a shrewd horse-sense too. They are not men to tangle with, and the
shedding of blood is to them chillingly ordinary. The difference between them is that in
the north Abner is the king-maker while the king himself, Ishbaal, remains a puppet
figure, while in the south Joab, though not always easy to control, is subordinate to the
charismatic figure of David.
The importance of this incident lies not in the oddly inconclusive battle of champions in
which all the combatants on both sides are killed, but in the fierce battle which follows
and started off the blood-feud between the two generals. Asahel, the youngest of the three
brothers, nephews of David, of whom the general Joab is the eldest, gives the impression
of carefree self-confidence. He is already one of that inner band of picked warriors of
David, the Thirty (2 Sm 23.24), can run like a wild gazelle, and is foolish enough to pay
no attention to Abner’s warning. He obviously has no conception of the gnarled Abner’s
effortless efficiency in killing. Abner, on the other hand, must have realised the long-term
consequences of his killing a brother of the powerful and vindictive Joab, since he
attempted to deflect his naïve and overconfident young pursuer. Exactly what trick Abner
used when Asahel refused to be diverted is unclear. Did he stop suddenly in his flight, in
such a way that Asahel could not avoid falling onto his backward-facing spear-shaft?
There are arguments for holding that the Court History begins with this incident. If,
however, this is the case, it must be a detached part, for other incidents are reported
before the continuous Court History begins in 2 Sm 9.
 1 Kings 2.5 uses this incident to justify the killing of Joab. Solomon is requiting
what David was too gentle to avenge. The evidence should be part of the
document.
 Literary characteristics are already present, the lively and detailed narration, the
vivid portrayal of secondary characters, the dialogue in direct speech, the
repetition of phrases and chiasmus11.
 There is a striking parallel in the formulaic composition between the pursuit of
Asahel and that of Amasa (20.10-22)12
2.24 Pursuit by Joab and Abishai
20.7
2.24 Linked to landmark at Gibeon
20.8
2.23 Important person, not main quarry, killed
20.10
2.22 Slaying done by a trick
20.10
2.23 Victim struck in the belly
20.10
2.23 Victim becomes a rallying-point
20.11
2.26 Pursuing general rebuked
20.19
2.27 Joab protests his wish to end the slaughter
20.20
11
See David M. Gunn, The Story of King David (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement 6,
1978), p. 76-81
12
See David M. Gunn, ‘Narrative Patterns and Oral Tradition in Judges and Samuel’ in Vetus Testamentum
24 (1974), p. 286-317
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2.28
Joab blows the trumpet to disengage
20.22.
3. Ishbaal alienates Abner (3.6-11)
Abner seems to have grown impatient with the feeble Ishbaal. We are told that he took
complete control of the House of Saul, and his is con firmed by his arrogation to himself
of Saul’s concubine. In the ancient world this was a claim to the sovereignty enjoyed by
the concubine’s previous royal partner. So Absalom publicly sleep with David’s
concubines on his first arrival in Jerusalem to demonstrate his claim to David’s throne
and to show that there is now no going back on them (10.20-23). Adonijah’s mere request
for Abishag, the concubine of David’s old age, is considered sufficiently pretentious to
deserve the death penalty (1 Kings 2.13-25). Abner was already a potential rival, being a
cousin of Saul (1 Sm 14.50). His pretence that he was unaware of the political
implications of his action is somewhat disingenuous. It is only surprising that Ishbaal was
so blind to the realities of the situation that he dared to protest, for it would clearly cost
him his crown.
4. The Murder of Abner (3.12-39)
How deeply was David implicated in the murder? The account is redolent of apologetic,
straining to show that the initiative for transferring the throne to David lies with Abner,
and that David was merely passive – a curious contrast to his passionate and well-planned
acquisition of Bathsheba! Abner made the arrangements with the elders of Israel, and
Abner came to David at Hebron. Ishbaal was even feeble enough to issue the order for the
return of Michal, Saul’s daughter (which inevitably strengthened David’s claim to the
northern throne), as if ithad no political significance. Her second husband’s tears and
David’s stony silence alike show that it was no love-match on David’s part but only a
political move to avoid any danger of her prolonging Saul’s blood-line.
David of course knew that the jealousy and blood-feud between the two generals was
such that if the two came anywhere near each other one of them was bound to fall, but
was it a miscalculation that Joab should return just as Abner leaves? It is a powerful piece
of apologetic that Joab actually has the cheek to blame David for letting Abner go
unmolested! Highly suspicious are David’s thrice-repeated refusals of blame when the
news comes,and his continued failure to take any effective action to punish Joab. He
curses Joab, rather feebly, but behaves in a very different way from his action towards the
killers of the Lord’s anointeds, Saul and Ishbaal, whom he executed immediately. The
author may stress that the people took note of David’s fasting as a sign of grief, and that it
pleased them and they undersood that the king had no part in the murder. But it is hardly
adequate that David should simply leave it to God, ‘May Yahweh repay the criminal as
his crime deserves’, while keeping the criminal at his side in a responsible position. Was
he afraid of Joab, or could he simply not manage without him?
Another mystery is why Abner allowed himself to get killed. Joab seems to have been a
left-hander, and it may be that he used on Abner the same sort of trick as he did years
later on Amasa (20.9-10). An experienced warrior would check that a potential enemy
had no sword on his left hip, whereas Joab would wear his on the right hip, to be drawn
with the left hand. Perhaps Joab simply outwitted his rival.
5. The Murder of Ishbaal (4.1-12)
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Abner having been eliminated, there is only Ishbaal between David and the throne of the
north. The story of the murder is again concerned to exonerate David: he reacts
explosively and firmly against the perpetrators of this convenient crime.
The murderers stemmed from Beeroth, part of the Gibeonite confederacy which Saul had
treated so harshly (21.1). But since they had entered Ishbaal’s service there is no reason to
suppose that the murder of Saul’s son was motivated by hatred of Saul. A more probable
motive is the desire for some sort of reward from David – whence their nocturnal dash to
him. There is now no trace that David had given them any encouragement. It has been
suggested that the evidence died with them at their instantaneous execution. Dead men
tell no tales.
David, King of a United Realm
1. David anointed king of Israel (5.1-5)
By the murder of Ishbaal as well as of Abner the northern tribes were presumably left
leaderless. It is they who make the approaches to David inviting him to assume their
kingship, as the author of this narrative, still eager to exonerate David from any charge of
ambitious engineering, makes clear. They give three reasons:
1. ‘We are your own flesh and blood’ - genetically this is patently untrue, for David
is a southerner by birth. It must therefore be understood as a persuasive definition:
they are committing their fortunes to him, offering to unite the two stocks.
2. ‘It was you who led Israel on its campaigns’ – this confirms the song which had
annoyed Saul so much, ‘…and David his tens of thousands’.
3. ‘It was to you that Yahweh promised…’ – the divine promise that David would be
shepherd and leader has been mentioned several times in the course of David’s
rise. It may be a reflection back from the explicit promise in 2 Sm 7.
2. The Capture of Jerusalem (5.6-12)
David’s decision to make Jerusalem his personal city and his capital was a stroke of
genius, more weighty than any other human factor in the perpetuation of his dynasty. The
ancient Jebusite city was one of the unassimilated pockets of indigenous population
remaining in the hill-country. Its strategic importance is immense, for it dominates the
crossroads: past it leads the east-west road between desert and Mediterranean, past it
leads the north-south road from Asia Minor to Egypt along the crest or watershed of the
hill-country. Quite apart from its natural geographical advantages, Jerusalem also held a
crucial political position, belonging neither to Saul’s territory of Benjamin and the
northern tribes nor to David’s territory of Judah and the south. But, adjacent to both, it
made the perfect hinge between the two, won by David’s private army and so owned
personally by him as a base from which he could rule both territories. In modern times a
somewhat similar case is provided by the choice of Washington as United States capital,
solving the dispute between the rival claims of Maryland and Virginia.
The ancient Jebusite city was built on a hill, with a spring near the foot of the hill. These
were the two essentials for any ancient stronghold: height for protection and fortification,
and a spring for water. The spring, with its rock-pool in which the water gathers, was
below and outside the walls. This of course created a defence-problem: water-carriers
could hardly come in and out of a besieged city. So a shaft was sunk some 15 metres into
the rock, by which the spring could be reached from inside the city, the normal external
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opening being blocked up. A similar water-tunnel was constructed in other local ancient
cities (Hazor and Megiddo) soon after this. The other problem was the overflow of water,
which would continue through the closed external entry, making the location of the spring
obvious to attackers. This problem was not solved till the time of King Hezekiah, who in
701 BC had a tunnel 600 metres long bored in the rock, leading the water to a lower point
inside the city, the Pool of Siloe, from where it could disperse harmlessly and unnoticed.
With these preliminaries we may approach the difficulties of the text. The first is the
obscure and tortuous reference to the blind and the lame holding David off. The most
convincing explanation of this comes with the help of a Hittite oath text, by which those
who break the oath (in the Hittite case one of military loyalty) invoke on themslves the
fate of sterility, blindness and dumbness. Similarly the Jebusites were invoking magic to
keep David out, either with a curse of blindness and lameness, or even perhaps invoking
an oath of allegiance he had possibly once sworn to them with these sanctions.
The second difficulty is the incomplete sentence, ‘whoever touches (or ‘harms’) the
zinnor and kills a Jebusite…’. The word zinnor occurs once elsewhere in the Hebrew
Bible, in Psalm 42.7, ‘Deep is calling on deep in the roar of your cataracts (zinnor)’. Until
recently it was assumed that the zinnor was the vertical shaft or pipe, and that Joab led his
men 15m up the vertical Warren’s Shaft (recently re-opened to the public), a major feat of
daring and achievement. Now, however, it is remarked that
1. ‘Gets up the tunnel’ is an incorrect translation, influenced by the parallel 1 Chr
11.6.
2. The excavations of 1997 suggested that Warren’s Shaft was incorporated into the
water-system only after David’s time.
3. Zinnor can mean ‘gutter’, ‘overflow pipe’.
What Joab did, then, was quite simply to break down the overflow and drain the spring
into the valley, leaving no water available to the inhabitants, and thus compelling their
bloodless surrender13. David had seen the effectiveness of this when he said, ‘Anyone
who is to beat the Jebusite must get at the overflow.’
Following the account of the conquest come two short notes on building. It seems
unlikely that David in fact built any walls to Jerusalem, though he may have repaired
existing walls, for archaeology shows that the same massive stone walls existed and were
constantly repaired between 1300 and 800 BC. The ‘Millo’ (which literally means ‘the
Fill’) is an enormous dump of stone filling the depression between the City of David and
the area later to be occupied by the Temple. Just such a ‘fill’, dating from the time of
David or Solomon, has been found by archaeologists.
The cedars of Lebanon were famous for the size and quality of their timber, The majesty
of these thousand-year-old trees is still inspiring, whereas in Israel great trees were hard
to produce before artificial irrigation. Hiram was to send vast quantities of such timber
(and craftsment to work it) for the construction of Solomon’s Temple. David seems to
have confined himself – not without theological justification – to building a palace for
himself.
3. Philistine Incursions (5.17-25)
The conclusion of Zvi Abells and Asher Arbit, ‘Some new thoughts on Jerusalem’s ancient water
systems’, Palestine Exploration Quarterly 127 (1995), p. 2-7.
13
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These two incidents, narrated after the capture of Jerusalem, fit much better before that
event. The Valley of the Rephaim does indeed lead up to Jerusalem – at present the Tel
Aviv/Jerusalem railway line follows it – but if David were established in the fortress of
Jerusalem the Philistines would have little hope of a victory over him. They would
certainly have had no need to ‘seek him out’ (5.17). It makes more sense to suppose that
they attacked as a response to his anointing as king of the whole country. This made him
a far more formidable force to be reckoned with than the emancipated ex-vassal of the
Philistines which he could still be considered when ruling from Hebron. These two sallies
can therefore best be construed as attempts to check David before he became altogether
too powerful, provoked by his anointing as King of Israel.
The second sally seems to have been the decisive moment. The Philistines were forced
back from Gibeon, which is well within the Israelite hill-country, all the way to Gezer,
one of the first foothills rising towards the hill-country out of the Philistine plain. There is
no further mention of any Philistine incursion into Israelite territory, and we may deduce
that the Philistines had now learnt that Israel was too strong to be toyed with.
4. The Installation of the Ark in Jerusalem (6.1-23)
Without undue cynicism the installation of the Ark can be regarded as David’s ultimate
master-stroke: it securely made his personal capital city also Yahweh’s capital city and
dwelling-place on earth, imparting to Jerusalem the religious significance it enjoys to this
day. Until fairly recently it was widely accepted among scholars that the progressive
biblical stories about the Ark had formed part of a ‘History of the Ark’, one of the
documents underlying the Books of Samuel, and now fragmented into different chapters.
This view was linked to the view, sponsored by Mowinkel, of a great annual festival at
Jerusalem in which the Enthronement of the Ark played an important part, and the
History of the Ark provided the cult-story read on this occasion. It has, however, now
Become accepted that there is insufficient evidence for any such festival.
The Ark had been the symbol of the presence of Yahweh among his people from the very
beginning of his people in the encounter on Sinai. It had given to Shiloh its importance as
the national sanctuary until the Ark was taken as a sort of talisman into battle against the
Philistine and was captured by them. It was the capture of the Ark, rather than the death
of his two sons in the same battle that caused the aged priest Eli to fall of his stool and die
(1 Sm 4.18). His daughter-in-law named her son Ichabod, ‘The glory has gone from
Israel’, to grieve over this loss, rather than the loss of her husband (1 Sm 4.21).
It is dangerous to meddle with holy things, and the captured Ark showed its sanctity by
bringing disaster on the Philistine temple where it was installed as a trophy for their god,
Dagon. Instead, it knocked Dagon off his pedestal and then shattered the statue (5.1-4).
The Philistines finally decided it was too hot to handle when it afflicted them with piles,
whereupon they sent it off with great reverence to the furthest town of the territory
towards Israel, Beth Shemesh. There again it wreaked havoc, until the inhabitants asked
the citizens of the neighbouring Gibeonite town of Kiriath-Jearim to take it over, the
Gibeonites being loosely integrated into Israel, and so a sort of halfway-house. There it
remained, perhaps forgotten and neglected, certainly unmentioned, for some decades until
David conceived his master-stroke of making it the jewel in his crown.
The chief impression of the operation of the installation is again the sanctity of the Ark. A
new cart, untainted by secular use, was provided for it, and a celebratory procession with
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all kinds of musical instruments and the king dancing ‘before Yahweh’. But again disaster
struck Uzzah reached out to steady the Ark and was struck dead. Was this because he was
himself unconsecrated, or because he dared to think that Yahweh could not look after his
own? In any case the procession was halted until the blessing brought on its temporary
residence encouraged David to try again. This time the procession started with a
propitiatory sacrifice and David danced at its head. The joyful little cortège of 2 Sm is as
nothing compared to the elaborate ceremonial described in the liturgy-centred 1
Chronicles 13 and 15, where singers, Levites and generals are summoned from all the
territories of Israel to accompany the Ark, the sacrifices are increased from an ox and a
fat sheep to seven bulls and seven rams, and trumpets, cymbals, lyres and harps are added
to the simple and strident musical accompaniment of war-cries and blasts on the ramshorn. The whole ends with a celebratory meal for all involved, but not before Michal has
struck the sour note which earns her permanent segregation.
Nathan’s Promise to David
1. The Promise (7.1-17)
In the story of David’s rise to power as we have it now this gripping account of God’s
promise to David of a secure dynasty, the direct consequence of David’s devotion and
generosity in wishing to share his good fortune with Yahweh, is the final climax. So
central, however, is this promise that it has undergone quite a process of development, as
it was read and re-read in successive generations and applied to the questions and
concerns of later ages. The best way of discovering the layers which heightened its
meaning for each successive stage is to work back through the later layers to the more
primitive.
In 622 BC under King Josiah, began a great religious reform, centred on the stability of
the royal dynasty according to divine promise, and on concentration of all sacrifice and
liturgy in the one Temple at Jerusalem, in order to abolish the local rites practised all over
the country and often more or less tainted by ancient Canaanite superstitions. With reform
went hand-in-hand a major literary endeavour which included the editing of the history of
Israel from Joshua until that time. Since this editing clearly shows the interests and
language of the Book of Deuteronomy first published at this time, it is known as the
Deuteronomic edition of the history. It was at this time that the Books of Joshua to Kings
were put together. The Deuteronomic ideas and themes appear repeatedly in them, but,
especially at the major turning-points of Israel’s history, where the editor points the
lessons of the period, e.g. by putting a speech in the mouth of Samuel (1 Sm 7.3; 8.10-18;
12.6-15). Linked with the characteristic theological concerns of the Deuteronomist is a
very characteristic vocabulary, used in a repetitive and stereotyped way. In our case the
salient phrases occurring in the prophecy but typical of the Deuteronomist are: Yahweh
choosing a place for his name, the promise of rest from all enemies, when Israel will be
for ever secure. With such phrases and verses the Deuteronomic historian has underlined
the message of the version he received, stressing how the history of Israel from the Judges
onwards has been leading to this point of choice of one stable place of worship, which is
to be the guarantee of God’s protection. The centre of the Deuteronomist’s thought is the
centralisation of worship at Jerusalem for ever. David’s positioning of his capital in
Jerusalem, and Yahweh there granting him ‘rest from all his enemies’, is the penultimate
stage towards the climax of the building of the Temple, of which the permanence of
David’s dynasty is the accompaniment and guarantee. Passages easily isolated as his
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work as verse 1b, 9b-11a, 16. It is also possible now to link to this same editor small,
unnecessarily detailed predictions of David’s sovereignty which have occurred in earlier
stories.
The puzzle about the core which remains after the isolation of these Deuteronomic
additions is that it would be strange for a story so negative to be preserved from David’s
time. If David’s proposal to build a Temple had simply been rejected the story would
surely have dropped this element. Unfulfilled proposals are seldom recorded in history.
On the other hand various factors point to the appositeness of the combined themes of
Temple and dynasty in the reign of Solomon. It was, after all, Solomon who actually built
the Temple,and Solomon certainly liked to present some of his plans as having been
conceived and so authorised by David (this is a major factor in 1 Kings 1-2). This would
be most suitable in the case of the building of the Temple. It may be pointed out that there
is a whole series of texts from the ancient near east where a promise to a god to build a
temple receives the response of the divine promise of a dynasty. It could well be that the
convention was seized upon in the time of Solomon to express fully the Solomonic theory
of a frustrated proposal by David to build the Temple. It makes sense to stress unfulflled
proposals when their failure to be fulfilled is seen to be no more than temporary.
Furthermore, the promises for the most part concern not the security of David’s own reign
but that of his future heirs, fitting therefore the reign of his heir far more aptly than the
beginning of his own reign.
There is, however, still one very strong unexplained feature of the passage: the critical
attitude towards a Temple at all, and the longing to retain the primitive aspects of tentdwelling and freedom from being anchored in one place. This is a theme very common in
the earlier prophets, as part of the protest against the hypocrisy of a worship allied to
injustice, and their yearning for the primitive fidelity of Israel to Yahweh during the
‘honeymoon’ of forty years in the desert. It is difficult to decide whether the theme that
Daivid is not in a position to patronise and take Yahweh prisoner by building him a house
is part of the prophetic protest or is earlier. Certainly it is expressed with great emphasis
(the pronouns are strongly stressed in the original: ‘Are you to build me a temple?’), and
it is skilfully woven round the word-play on house as building and house as dynasty. But
no age has a monopoly of literary skill. Most probably we may consider this section as
comprising verses 1a. 2-3, 11b-15.
Is there then no part of this passage which can authentically be referred back to David’s
own time? Two arguments favour a more primitive tradition than the Solomonic core
proposed. Firstly the prayer of David in reply to the oracle makes no reference to the
Temple, in spite of the fact that it too has undergone considerable expansion by later
hands, both Deuteronomic and other. It seems to be a response, then, to the promise of a
dynasty independent of any offer of a Temple. Secondly, the magnificent promise to
David quoted in Psalm 89.19-37 guarantees unfailing assistance without any allusion to
the Temple. Although the psalm as a whole is, of course, later, this version of the promise
may well go back to a source older than and independent of that given in 2 Sm 7, a
promise given directly to David by Nathan. This original core can be seen in verses 4-9a.
2. David’s Prayer (7.18-29)
In its present form David’s prayer, like the promise to which it now responds, has
undeergone considerable modification and amplification. It is much too elevated and
liturgical. Thus verses 22b (‘there is none like you’) to 26 are clearly the work of the
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Deuteronomist, where themes like the uniqueness of Yahweh, his great and terrible deeds
and his choice of Israel to be his own people, are especially at home, quite apart from the
idea of Yahweh making a name for himself, as we say in the previous section.
But behind this stands the prayer of David himself, with his lovely humility and openness
to the Lord. He is responding to the blessing and asking that itbe fulfilled, in a way which
almost suggests that the original place of the prayer was at the end of the ceremony of
receiving the ark rather than after Nathan’s promise. Whatever its original situation, it is
full of David’s own awareness of his humble origins. One is reminded of the moment
long ago when the perky and ambitious young officer suddenly decided that it would be a
fine thing to be the king’s son-in-law (1 Sm 18.26). He stands before the Lord as servant
– itself a title of intimacy and therefore of honour – committed to accepting from the Lord
whatever he sends.
3. David’s Victories (8.1-18)
This little, somewhat haphazard collection of victory-stories and officials serves two
purposes. It forms the concluding bracket with the list of sons and victory over the
Philistines (5.13-25) around the central events of the settlement in Jerusalem. It also
serves to show the preliminary fulfilment of the promise, ‘I shall grant you rest from all
your enemies’ (7.11).
The first new conquest mentioned is over the Moabites, on the far side of the Dead Sea.
The drastic fate meted out to them is the more surprising in that during David’s days as a
fugitive they had harboured his parents out of Saul’s reach. And if the data of the Book of
Ruth are taken as reliable, he himself had Moabite blood through his grandmother Ruth.
The second campaign mentioned is dealt with more fully in the comment on Chapter 10.
Here it is worth noting that, in accordance with the purpose of showing that Yahweh is
responsible all the time for giving David rest from all his enemies, Yahweh’s guidance is
explicitly mentioned in 8.6. David recognises this in 8.11-12 by dedicating to him the
spoil of the campaigns. The final campaign mentioned is told nowhere else, but it is
perhaps necessary to show that David’s conquests – and note the refrain, ‘Wherever
David went, Yahweh gave him victory’ – extended also to the Edomites in the south and
southeast of Judah, defeated in the Arabah, the cleft which runs from the Dead Sea to the
modern Gulf of Aqaba. This would have secured David’s southern border.
Far from these victories merely giving David rest from his enemies (though they must
have kept him busy, being spread over his whole reign), they made him the most
important ruler in western Asia. Mesopotamia and Egypt were both in decline and this
period, and for a short time Israel controlled the central portion of the fertile crescent.
Chapter Three: David as King
1. David’s Faithful Love to Jonathan’s Son
This story starts off the so-called Court Narrative, as it is conveniently delimited, at any
rate as a continuous narrative, running (apart from four appendices to 2 Sm) up to David’s
death and Solomon’s accession in 1 Kings 2.
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Superficially this particular story is a story of David’s fidelity and gratitude, repaying the
debt he had incurred to Jonathan for protecting him during his periods of disfavour with
and persecution from Jonathan’s father. David searches out Jonathan’s only surviving
relative and promises to maintain him for ever at his own table, guaranteeing to him also
an income from his own lands. The narrative stresses three times David’s ‘faithful love’.
But does it not protest just a trifle too vehemently? It is obvious that Meribaal14 will be
under David’s control – especially with his physical disability – if he is attached to the
king’s table; this was in fact a well-known form of house-arrest for dignitaries in the
ancient world. Ominously, ‘eat at my table’ is repeated four times in the narrative. Thus
the only surviving member of Saul’s dynasty is rendered harmless without being made
into a martyr by imprisonment or death.
The story has a further sinister aspect if it is put into relationship with the story of the
massacre of Saul’s sons at Gibeon (21.1-14), and with the Benjaminite Shimei’s curses on
David when David seems to be running out of luck, ‘Man of blood, scoundrel! Yahweh
has paid you back for all the spilt blood of the House of Saul’ (16.8). In some people’s
minds David had a debt to pay! The two stories may originally have been linked, for they
are bracketed in the literary way so common in these stories by the motif of eating: the
Gibeon-story begins with the famine, and the Meribaal-story ends with Meribaal eating at
the king’s table. They could have been divided for two reasons, to show David’s faithful
love as quite independent of the murky business at Gibeon (not merely trying to make
minimal amends through a harmless cripple), and also to provide a parallel and
justification, at the end of David’s riegn, for the executions which will begin Solomon’s
reign.
At the same time David manages to put into his debt another potentially powerful
character, Saul’s ‘servant’, Ziba, a man of considerable household, with his fifteen sons
and twenty slaves. ‘Servant’ may well indicate a quite exalted office, more like a steward
or major-domo. Later his is called ‘servant of the House of Saul’ (19.8), still many years
later retaining what must have been a title of honour. He was surely a man worth
conciliating, and he here seems to be made heir (after the restricted Meribaal) of Saul’s
remaining property.
War with the Ammonites and Arameans (10)
Another list of David’s campaigns was given in Chapter 8, more complete but less
detailed, a mere recital of successes. In this account we can see more of the politics and
David’s methods.
Firstly there is David’s characteristic diplomacy. The Ammonite chiefs were surely
correct in seeing hostile intentions behind the oriental courtesy of David’s gesture. At any
rate David soon put into action the hostile intentions which they had suspected. We may
assume that the faithful love shown by the king of the Ammonites to David was
connected with some kind of alliance with David during his days as an outlaw. Then, of
course, an alliance with a bandit chieftain was a counterbalance to the power of Saul, king
of Israel. Now that David was himself king, with plans to expand his kingdom (obvious,
14
We have already explained the double name Meribaal/Mephibosheth in a footnote above.
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if the victories described in chapter 8 had already occurred), his attempt to sweet-talk
Hanun was seen in a very different light, resulting in the humiliating mockery described.
The point of the insult is to mock their virility by removing half their beards and exposing
their private parts. It might be especially a gibe at their attempting to achieve in an
underhand way what they should have attempted in a manly fight.
In a second paragraph David uses the excuse of the presence of the Arameans, with whom
he as already at war, to launch an attack, but as Joab finds himself fighting against two
armies at right angles (the Ammonites are directly east of Jerusalem – the capital RabbatAmmon is the present Amman, capital of Jordan – while the Arameans are in the north,
roughly modern Syria), he cannot pursue either victory. When the war escalates with
Aramean reinforcements, David himself takes over, defeating all the Aramean princelings
under the overlordship of Hadadezer, a powerful ruler who attempted to extend his rule as
far as the Euphrates (8.3 – it may be the same campaign as that described in chapter 8).
This must have taken David’s rule far into Syria
David’s Sin and its Consequences (11-12)
1. The Sin
The story of David’s adultery is recounted with a restrained artistry which is all the more
telling for its understatement. In many ways it is the keystone which holds the pattern of
David together. For all his politics and all his piety David is seen to be prone to the most
basic human passions in a way which makes him patron saint of sinners. It is the
disastrous turning-point of his career, and after this everything – or everything which the
biblical author cares to tell us about – goes wrong, much of it as a consequence of
David’s mishandling of his family. No more is heard of those successful campaigns.
Attempts have been made to show that simple sexual lust is not at the root of David’s
conduct, but that the ageing monarch is seeking reassurance of his continuing virility. Too
old to go on campaign against the Ammonites (‘at the time when kings go campaigning’,
11.1!), he is suffering, it is claimed, from ‘retirement neurosis’. Is this not transposing
backwards the situation when David’s troops, a whole generation later, when Absalom,
now not even yet born, has had time to grow up and achieve the eminence needed to
revolt against his father, restrain David from taking the field against his son. If he was
already suffering from ‘retirement neurosis’ a score of years before, would he have been
able to put up with the rigours of flight from Jerusalem before Absalom? On the other
hand, he was not young, for Bathsheba was granddaughter of one of his own warriors,
Eliab.
The story begins with simple temptation. David’s palace may be assumed to have been
high up on the top of the hill on which the city was built. As he strolls on the flat roof in
the cool of the evening he looks down upon another flat roof lower down the hill, where
the attractive young woman is taking her bath, free from the prying eyes of those who live
below her. Was she aware of the possibility of the king’s roving eye falling upon her as
he took his oevening stroll? David had already acquired for himself a number of wives,
but all of them for the purposes of political alliance. She certainly seems to offer little
resistance when the invitation comes, and her loyalty to her husband stretches only to the
most perfunctory mourning at his death before she moves in with the king, still before the
birth of the child whose conception began the incident. We do not even hear that she was
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upset by the death of the child. It is only many years later, when David is on his deathbed,
that she first takes vigorous action, perhaps stung by her replacement by Abishag. It may
not even be unkind to suggest that she was well aware of what she was doing when she
slept with David at a time when she was most likely to conceive, just after her monthly
period. The little message she sends, ‘I am pregnant’ is redolent of smug satisfaction that
she has trapped her lover.
It is then that David’s real crime begins, and a crime committed with all the smooth
trickery of that consummate politician. His first concern is to disguise the evidence of his
lapse by making it appear that the child to be born had been fathered by the girl’s
husband. Here several contrasts appear between the two men. Seen against David’s
smooth-tongued manoevering Uriah is the epitome of the straightforward fighting man,
loyal and unquestioning. He is summoned from the front, no reason given, though when
he arrives David does go through the motions of asking for a report on the war. Evidently
as one of David’s thirty champions (23.39), he was sufficiently highly-placed and trusted
to expect this sort of thing. At no stage does he question David’s somewhat strange
attentiveness as the king plies him with presents, wines him and dines him, encourages
his marital activity (‘feet’ is a common euphemism for genitals, so that ‘wash your feet’
may be a euphemism for sexual intercourse). David well knows that Uriah is sufficiently
bluff and trustworthy to carry his own death-warrant to Joab without there being any
danger of his prying into its contents. But Uriah is also the epitome of self-discipline and
loyalty to the rules of correct conduct, contrasted with David’s self-indulgence and
dissoluteness. Sexual activity during a campaign was forbidden; of this David in his
younger days had been well aware and observant (1 Sm 21.6). When Uriah refuses to go
down to his house on the grounds that the Ark and the army are undergoing the
discomforts of field-life, one can hardly fail to hear the echo of David’s pious protests
against the contrast beteween his own life-style and that of Yahweh’s Ark, when he
offered to build a Temple for the Lord (7.2).
Having failed to persuade the cuckolded husband to open up the possibility that he has
himself fathered the child, David has no alternative but to eliminate him. This is done in
the most cold-blooded way, no doubt with the loss of other lives as well. One can imagine
how the arrangement was relished by the tough and unscrupulous Joab. In the past he had
been the recipient of David’s reproaches – not, admittedly, backed up by any action –
when he himself had eliminated his rival Abner by treachery (3.27). He would be
similarly merciless in disposing of Absalom, despite David’s instructions (18.14). It must
have been pleasing for him to find his king in the same compromising situation. The
relish shows through in the instructions he gives to the messenger, carefully whipping the
king into a fury before reducing him to a shamefaced and apologetic acceptance of the
murderous news. Joab, the bluff soldier, was not without a certain cruel wit. It is,
however, not without its irony that David, secure in his palace, should lecture Joab on the
unforeseen chances of war.
It is the contrast between David’s fury at the unnecessary loss of life and his complacency
when he discovers that Uriah was among the fallen that really shows the depths of
David’s guilt. Another contrast gives the clue to the shape of the whole incident: David’s
reaction contrasts starply with Yahweh’s. ‘Do not take the matter to heart’, says David,
but ‘what David had done displeased Yahweh’ (11.25, 27). The contrast is strengthened
by use of the same verb (literally ‘let it not be bad in your eyes’ and ‘it was bad in the
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eyes of Yahweh’, respectively). This enables the reader to see that the whole two chapters
are built on a chiasmus:
a. David sends Joab to besiege Rabbah, but himself remains in Jerusalem (1)
b. David has intercourse with Bathsheba; she becomes pregnant (2-5)
c. Uriah is killed as David wills (6-17)
d. The message comes to David from Joab (18-25)
e. David marries Uriah’s wife; she bears a son (26-27a)
d’. The message comes to David from Yahweh (27-12.15a)
c’.The son dies, as Yahweh wills (15b-23)
b’. David has intercourse with Bathsheba; she becomes pregnant (24-25).
a’. Joab takes part of Rabbah and sends for David from Jerusalem (26-31).
2. The Aftermath – Nathan’s parable and the death of a son
This little series of incidents is pivotal for any interpretation of David. What was David’s
attitude? How sincere was his repentance and how devoted and religious a person was he?
There is, one must say, something slightly contemptible in his complacent over-reaction
to Nathan’s story. He condemns Nathan’s fictitious character to death, although the
fourfold restitution is all that is demanded by Ex 21.37. He then hopes to escape without
paying any penalty himself, though in fact the death of his son is exacted as the first of
four sons to die (the others being Amnon, Absalom and Adonijah).
Nathan’s parable is well within the prophetic mould. The business of a prophet is, after
all, to open the eyes of the recipients of his message to the realities of life as God sees
them. Just as in Aesop’s Fables, the prophet often finds that one of the ways of lulling his
hearers into receptivity is to move onto the plan of harmless and cuddly dumb animals or
even the inanimate creation. An early example of this, one of the earliest poems in the
Bible, is Jotham’s fable of the trees in Judges 9. Ezekiel is perhaps the past master of the
technique, with his great allegories of the eagle, the lionness and the crocodile (Ez 17; 19;
31). In David’s case, this technique of a parallel situation was to be used again by Joab in
his machinations for Absalom’s pardon (17.6-11).
It has been suggested that the whole Nathan incident, though ancient, has been inserted
into the narrative, for David’s fasting and penance to save his son fit slightly strangely
after Nathan’s message that the son is to die. Perhaps David was merely hoping against
hope. Or alternatively we may say that Nathan’s message has been made more explicit.
The author of this narrative certainly likes to anticipate later events and link together
separate incidents. In just this way he now refers enigmatically to David’s neighbour
taking his wives as David had taken the wives of Saul and Uriah, and lying with them in
broad daylight. This will, of course, be fulfilled when Absalom takes David’s concubines
in a tent on the flat roof ‘with all Israel watchiing’ (16.22). The prophecy that David’s
household will never be free of the sword is tragically fulfilled by the later history of the
present generation of his family, within the confines of this author’s narrative. The
working out of this doom is so prominent that the prophecy may be regarded as the keystone of the whole edifice.
It is, however, in David’s reaction to his punishment that the centre of interest of this
episode, and even of the whole story of David, lies. The touching devotion of his officers
who are afraid to tell him that his child is dead lesthe commit suicide gives way to the
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most wonderful expression of trust in Yahweh. There is nothing more to be done but
accept the Lord’s will, so David, never a slve to the demands of rituals such as mourning
customs, cleans himself up and lovingly expresses to the Lord his acceptance of his
deserved punishment. This simple confidence and prayerful acceptance of God’s will can
be seen as a memorable testimony to the great man’s simplicity.
Is it unworthy to allow a niggling doubt? Is it really possible to cut off a genuine sorrow
so suddenly and sit down to a hearty meal? Should there not have been at least some
recrimination that he was to blame for the death of the innocent child? Is this the
behaviour of the man who was later to be so insanely indulgent to his erring sons? Or has
David been hoping that he could hoodwink even the Lord by his mourning, as he had
hoodwinked his followers by mourning for Abner after Joab had foully but conveniently
done him to death?
Absalom
1. The Rape of Tamar
This touchingly-told story of Amnon taking advantage of the kindly, obedient Tamar and
their trusting father is recounted with impressive artistry; no moralizing comment is
required. Amnon follows in his father’s footsteps, with his undisciplined lust, in
infatuation gratified through deviousness. We leap a generation, but it is no chance that
this is the next story told after that of David’s lust. Amnon’s downfall is vividly painted.
It starts with his voyeurism, watching every move – and the reader looks over his
shoulder – as Tamar goes through the task of preparing his food. He had planned this
lustful feast of the eyes beforehand, for it is mentioned in both Jonadab’s advice and
Amnon’s own words to David. At first everything goes smoothly. Amnon lies there
passively while Tamar bustles around. Then suddenly he springs into action: his every
sentence is imperative! It is only at the last ditch that Amnon finds any difficulty. Tamar’s
gentleness and helplessness shine through every line, right to the end where Absalom
comforts her like a little child. Amnon’s callousness is correspondingly more brutal. ‘Rid
me of this thing’, he says – not ‘woman’, and certainly no name. Within the verse (15)
love turns to hate.
The concentration and symmetry which focusses so mercilessly on the central statement,
‘he overpowered and raped her’, is achieved by the literary technique of chiasmus, every
feature before this central point being balanced by a corresponding feature afterwards:
a. The four principal characters: Absalom, David, Tamar, Amnon (1-2)
b. Jonadab advises Amnon (3-5)
c. Tamar goes to Amnon’s house in kindness (8)
d. Amnon sends everyone out (9-10)
e. Amnon pulls Tamar to him (11)
f. The rape (14)
e’. Amnon thrusts Tamar from him (15)
d’. Amnon calls his servant in (17)
c’. Tamar leaves Amnon’s house in horror (19)
b’. Absalom advises Tamar (20)
a’. The four principal characters (21).
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2. Absalom’s Revenge
The most horrifying element in this story is the king’s failure to take adequate measures
against Amnon, indeed his total failure to react at all, simply because of his love of his
eldest remaining son. One wonders whether those who began to look to Absalom for
redress of wrongs had suffered from the same feebleness or partiality of the king.
Absalom at any rate shows some tenacity, biding his time for two years, till the
favourable opportunity presents itself, and then acting with aggressive insistence and a
touch of that arrogance (‘Have I not myself given you the order?’, he says to the hesitant
assassin) of which we shall see more later. The contrast between the ageing king and his
vigorous son is complete. Most of a generation has passed since the previous incident:
there David was fathering children; now they are grown up. The king must have
suspected that something was afoot when Absalom invited him to the festival. His polite
excuse carries little weight, for, in the days of a fairly elementary court ritual, the burden
imposed by the coming of the king would not have been significantly greater than that
imposed by the entertainment of his whole troupe of sons. Is he simply too tired by now
to travel 30 km for a party, or does he want to keep out of trouble?
Absalom’s protectiveness towards Tamar would have been well-known; he proclaims it
again by naming his own daughter ‘Tamar’ (14.27). Friction with Amnon may well have
been fueled by rivalry between their two mothers, both northern princesses from Jezreel
and Geshur (where Absalom takes refuge) respectively. In a world where bloodvengeance was to be a normal method of justice for many centuries to come (and still,
tragically, today), it could be that David was simply avoiding involvement in a nasty
situation. He did not wish to condone the revenge, but neither did he wish to prevent it.
We have seen his tears before at news of an assassination! On the other hand, his alarm at
the preliminary impression that Absalom had overstepped the limits15 – perhaps already
making a bid to leave himself sole heir – could still have been genuine enough. The tables
are beginning to turn as the reader begins to feel some sympathy for David in his
weakness and to lose sympathy for Absalom in his ferocity. Both tendencies will
continue.
One of the masterly techniques of this writer is brilliantly shown here: change of pace in
narration. The murder is quickly told, the suspense slow and drawn out. The same change
of pace occurs between Tamar’s baking-activity and the snap conclusion. It will recur in
the elaborate meanderings of the wise woman of Tekoa and David’s quick decision.
Again in Joab’s swift action to the hapless Absalom and the slow progress of the news.
3. Absalom’s Return
If the events surrounding Amnon’s misbehaviour and its punishment throw little credit on
David, and may even suggest that he is past his best, the negotiations for the return of
Absalom are reassuring as well as disquieting. They are disquieting still because the
initiative lies so firmly with Absalom. The mighty Joab, that tough commander-in-chief
of the army, is still on Absalom’s side and arranges the ruse which occasions his return.
The woman from Tekoa is described as a wise woman, presumably therefore revered as
part of the wisdom tradition in Israel, and credited almost with magical or prophetic
powers, like the woman of En Dor whom Saul consulted at his lowest point (1 Sm 28). If
Joab takes the trouble to send beyond Bethlehem for her, she must have had a
I cannot forbear comment on Jonadab, David’s nephew. First he advises Amnon how to set about the
rape, then he is clearly aware of Absalom’s plan to assassinate Amnon. Not a very nice person.
15
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considerable reputation. It is therefore all the more surprising that the story she tells is so
inept! She relies, of course, a good deal on flattery, twice comparing King David to the
Angel of God (this comparison is made on three separate occasions, once here, once by
the Philistine king Achish and once by Meribaal son of Saul, when he is in a very tricky
position (1 Sm 29.9; 2 Sm 19.28). It is applied to no one else in the Bible. The flattery
must be designed to paper over the cracks, for the parable has none of the aptness of
Nathan’s parable after the king’s adultery. The woman’s case rests on the fear that her
whole stock will be destroyed because she will have no male heirs left. There is also the
suggestion that the motive of the avengers is merely to lay their hands on the inheritance.
Neither of these applies, for, even if Absalom is reckoned as dead because he is in exile,
David still has other sons. Nor is there any question of David seeking to lay his hands on
Absalom’s property. The woman over-pleads her cause when she claims that David has
condemned himself by his judgement in her fable. There is surely a hint that she feels she
has overstpped the limits of propriety when, having applied the fable to the situation for
which it was composed, namely Absalom’s return, she takes fright and starts to pretend
again that the fable is reality and that she really is in such a threatened situation. These
changes of mood and tactic add a touch of burlesque to the scene. Her elaborate imagery
(‘extinguish the ember’, ‘water spilt on the ground’), her exaggeration and her rhetoric
(verbs with cognate object in 14.12, 13, 14, 14, 15) are perhaps meant to raise a smile16.
At the same time it is reassuring to find that David sees through the whole stratagem, and
with his old wit recognises Joab’s hand in it. Nevertheless he grants the request, knowing
that it is from Joab. Is the king still a feeble pawn,as he appeared at the time of the rape of
Tamar? The canons of modern justice cannot of course be applied (periodic review of
sentences, remission for good behaviour, etc), and a good case can be made for justice
having been done by the canons of more inspirational – or perhaps whimsical – justice.
Absalom has taken due vengeance for the dishonouring of his sister, and now has served
his sentence for the inevitably irregular way in which it was done. He still has two years
of official disfavour at court to live through. The grim silence of the ‘reconciliation’ scene
is ominous; no sign of kiss or embrace. Elsewhere we hear plenty about David’s
emotions.
Another disquieting feature, however, is Absalom’s high-handed and arrogant action
towards Joab after his return. Joab was arguably the most powerful figure in the land after
the king himself, and certainly an awesome force to be reckoned with. And if gratitude is
a force which enters into politics, Absalom might have been grateful to Joab for his part
in securing his return. Instead he wants even more, and cares little how he gets it; he will
do violence to Joab without a qualm. Most significant of all, he knows that he can stir
even the powerful Joab to anger without fear of reprisal – until, that is, Joab finds him
caught in the tree. The arrogance was no doubt fuelled by his imposing appearance, which
will later lead to his death, as the author reminds us.
4. Absalom’s Rebellion (15.1-12)
We come now to the climax which is the reason for the rehearsal of the whole previous
cycle of events – it is, after all, only one complex of events chosen from many in the reign
of David, and the only one which the narrator has chosen to recount since the Bathsheba
incident many years before. The full extent of Absalom’s ambition is revealed, and the
16
This speechifying in the Wisdom mode is another skill of our author, seen also in the speeches of Hushai
and Ahitophel – on every occasion at turning-points in the narrative.
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logic of his previous behaviour. He had been born the third of David’s sons. The first,
Amnon, he had eliminated nine years ago. The second, Chileab, born to Nabal’s widow,
simply does not feature; he appears only in the list of sons born to David at Hebron (2 Sm
3.3). Did he die young, or was he merely a nonentity? The next was Absalom himself,
born of a princely line on his mother’s side. Did his stay in exile at the court of his
maternal grandfather fuel his ambition? Was he getting impatient for the succession? If
we posit that at the time he raped Tamar Amnon was at least 18, so Absalom at least 16
years old, by now Absalom was approaching his thirtieth year and David his sixtieth.
Patience was not one of Absalom’s chief virtues, as his burning of Joab’s crops shows.
And how complete had been that ‘reconciliation’ with David in ominous silence?
At any rate Absalom secured for himself the trappings of royalty, a chariot and horses
with an escort of fifty men, considered a sign of royal prerogative both before in Samuel’s
speech at Saul’s inauguration (1 Sm 8.11) and after when Adonijah aspires to the throne
(1 Kings 1.5). His other ploy of denigrating the royal system ofjustice and promising
better himself if he were ruler, is an obvious one for acquiring a following. Perhaps the
appeal to ‘the men of Israel’ is a claim for support from the northerners, where his own
ancestry lay. But his power-base must have extended also far into the south, David’s own
country, for he chooses Hebron as his rallying-point, and has support also in Giloh,
another Judean city (1 Sm 15.14).
The writer of the chronicle views the matter in personal terms, but in fact Absalom must
have had some grounds for his appeal, which we cannot now assess. One surmise is that
the wars of conquest made David unpopular – unless the soldiers were duly rewarded
with booty. Perhaps the expenses of court were found burdensome. Of course David’s
administration of justice may have been slack, as his treatment of Amnon had been,
though it would be unreasonable to generalise from David’s treatment of his own family,
and especially of his heir apparent. A final conjecture might be that Absalom promised to
the old capital of Hebron that he would restore its dominant position.
Whatever the basis of Absalom’s power, it does argue a certain slackness on David’s part
that he should allow Absalom to provide himself with this regal retinue and that he should
be unaware of its implications, especially as he had used the same ruse of a sacrifice at
Bethlehem to escape from Saul’s court (1 Sm 20). When Absalom comes up with the
feeble plea that he wants to fulfil a vow made four years previously, David might surely
have suspected that something was afoot!
5. David’s Flight before Absalom (15.13-16.14)
The chain of events as David leaves Jerusalem shows him at his most resigned and
subject to the will of God, the perfect instrument in God’s hands.
In the narrative as we have it, it is not obvious why he leaves Jerusalem to Absalom. This
is because the narrator puts all the stress on the loyal support David receives, not only
from his own personal army, but also from the whole of Jerusalem, weeping as he
departs. Nevertheless, the reasons are there: Israel has shifted its allegiance to Absalom.
Presumably Daivd is aware that his own city will remain loyal to him, and wants to avoid
the suffering which a siege would entail. The author makes much of the personal loyalty
of David’s mercenaries, the Cherethites and Pelethites who appear intermittently in the
course of the David story. The six hundred mercenaries fom Gath could originate from
David’s own time as a mercenary in the service of King Achish of Gath decades earlier;
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presumably they all come in relays, as David’s suggests about Ittai, who has been with
him only a short time. It is touching that, when David resignedly calls Absalom ‘king’,
Ittai stoutly corrects him (15.19, 21). Similarly personal is the loyalty of Zadok, priest of
Jerusalem taken over by David, though he may well have suspected that he would have
no place in Absalom’s scheme of things, remembering how Saul had treated the priests
who helped David at Nob (1 Sm 22).
The progress out of Jerusalem is more than an expression of loyalty to David. It has
virtually the tone of a liturgy of penance, as they climb the Mount of Olives in an attitude
of grief, heads veiled and barefoot, to the ancient sanctuary of Nob. However, even now
David’s political canniness has not deserted him. Forgoing the opportunity of presenting
his cause as a holy war by taking the Ark with him, he gains the advantage of leaving
friends in the city, for the priests’ sons will serve as messengers to keep him informed.
Hushai, his ‘friend’ (a technical term for a trusted advisor), is planted as a possible
double-agent. After his decisive intervention he is never heard of again; did he pay for his
loyalty with his life?
The Shimei incident is one of the most touching of all in David’s career. This, the seventh
of the meetings during David’s flight, shows the nadir of his fortunes. Shimei’s curses are
a reaction to David’s gruesome execution of the seven desecendants of Saul at the hands
of the Gibeonites (2 Sm 21.1-14). David resignedly leaves the effect of the curses in
God’s hands, whether they should be fulfilled or turn to a blessing, though he even seems
to admit that heis at fault. The possessive ‘his curses’ could be taken referring either to
Shimei or to Yahweh, and David’s forgiveness of Shimei on his return will show that he
meant what he said (19.19-24).
There is a neat balance in the encounters of David’s departure and his return, enwrapping
the more decisive events in the centre:
a. Ten concubines left in charge (15.16-17)
b. The loyalty of Ittai (15.18-22)
c. The loyalty of Hushai and his sons (15.32-37)
d. The gifts of Meribaal and Ziba (16.1-4)
e. The curses of Shimei (16.5-14)
f. The rival counsellors (16.19-17.23)
g. David at Mahanaim (17.24-29)
f’. The rival armies (18.1-19.9)
e’. Shimei pardoned (19.17-24)
d’. The reward of Ziba and Meribaal (19.25-31)
c’. The reward of Barzillai and his son (19.32-41a)
What happened to Hushai and his sons?
b’. The loyalty of the men of Judah (19.41b-20.2)
a’. The punishment of the ten concubines (20.3)
6. Hushai and Ahitophel (16.15-17.43)
The debate, at this crucial turning-point, is brilliantly depicted. Hushai, the double-agent,
enthusiastically but ironically declares his loyalty with his double, ‘Long live the king!’
Which king? In answer to Absalom’s taunt of his betrayal he returns with another
ambiguous declaration for ‘the man whom Yahweh and his people and all the men of
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Israel have chosen’ – and who is that? However, in the end he chooses caution and utters
an unambiguous (and untrue) declaration of loyalty to Absalom.
The real traitor, Ahitophel, then shows his colours by the advice to Absalom to burn his
boats. The appropriation of the royal concubines constitutes a claim to royalty, and in this
case the insult is made even more flagrant because the son is taking to himself the father’s
sexual privileges. It is no act of lust but an act of politics, after which there is no going
back, either for himself or for his followers. It was an act which must have appealed to
the young man’s vanity.
Then begins the real bargaining. Ahitophel’s advice is firm, confident and good, his
sentences as short and energetic as his advice. He permits himself just one rhetorical
flourish, ‘like a bride returning to her husband’, perhaps remembering how Absalom has
been occupying his time. He is, after all, a professional counsellor. Hushai, David’s
friend (a professional term), has more at stake, and the harder case to make. He spares no
wiles in his rhetoric! He flatters Absalom own perceptiveness: ‘you know…’; there is a
lot of ‘you’ by contrast to Ahitophel’s ‘I’. He stresses his own commitment to Absalom,
‘We shall… we shall’, carefully avoiding any impression of familiarity with David by
referring to him as ‘your father’. His images are luxuriant, ‘as angry as a bear robbed of
its cubs’, ‘like sand on the seashore’ (a comforting allusion to the promises to Abraham),
‘as the dew falls on the ground’ – the bear (David) is a fierce beast, but the dew
(Absalom’s forces) is an uncontrollable force of nature. His language itself is energetic in
a way which cannot be rendered in English: David’s side, ‘melting they will melt’ (v. 10),
Absalom’s side, ‘rallying they will rally’ (v. 11).
Only then does the author show his own stance, ‘Yahweh having resolved to thwart
Ahitophel’s shrewd advice and bring disaster on Absalom’, for Yahweh is the ultimate
source of success and failure. The two-stage messaging system works – with the help of
the ruse first devised by the prostitute of Jericho (Jos 2.6) – and Ahitophel commits
suicide, the only deliberate suicide in the Hebrew Bible. It will be repeated by the other
counsellor who betrayed his master, Judas Iscariot.
7. The Defeat of Absalom (17.24-19.9)
So David escaped across the Jordan and installed himself at Mahanaim, which had been
the capital of the remains of Saul’s kingdom, ruled by Ishbaal after Saul’s death, a little
town lying a few miles back from the Jordan in the foothills. There he receives supplies
from three local chieftains. One of these, Shobi from Rabbah-of-the-Ammonites, must
have been a vassal, for his brother had long ago been defeated by David (10.2; 11.26).
Another, Machir of Lo-Debar, was an old ally (9.4).
When it comes to the final battle we see David at his most vulnerable and Joab at his most
brutal. The aged king, around 60 years old, yields to the affectionate insistence of his
troops that he should not join the battle-lines, and contents himself with seeing them off –
with a public and explicit warning that Absalom was not to be harmed. The extent of
David’s foolish indulgence towards Absalom becomes clear at this: he refers to Absalom
as a ‘lad’ four times. Whatever David’s faults may have been, vengefulness was not one
of them. The warning was lost on Joab. Absalom might be his first cousin, but had
recently appointed another cousin to Joab’s place as commander-in-chief. There was also
the old score to settle of the arson of Joab’s field in order to engineer a meeting. So there
can have been no love lost between them, and there is no need to suggest that Joab
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thought David was merely pretending to shield his son. We have seen once how Joab
dealt with rivals (Abner) and will see it again (Amasa). His ruthlessness is further stressed
by the soldier whom he tries to persuade to undertake his dirty work for him: the common
soldier knows that Joab will have no scruple in jettisoning his own instrument if
necessary.
It remains only to inform the king, waiting eagerly for the news. Contrasting with the
previous swift and decisive action, suspense slows the narration right down, centred on
the expression ‘good news’ which will be no good news at all. First the argument over
who should go, then – as the scene shifts to the waiting king – the detailed description of
almost every step of the approaching messengers. Here also the character-drawing is at its
most delicate. The eager young aristocrat, Ahimaaz, already once before a fleet-footed
messenger, zealous to inform the king again, forgetting that it will be bad news, but
cunning enough to withhold the disastrous details when he arrives. The simpler Cushite,
an Ethiopian, takes the shorter but slower route through the forest and is outrun by his
intelligent rival’s route along the valley. Is there an element of colour-prejudice in Joab’s
choice of the bearer of bad news, or is Joab already hinting that the news is black? Joab
himself, factual and impatient, quickly losing patience with Ahimaaz’s insistence and
dismissing the young man with a peremptory monosyllable. Finally David himself, old
campaigner that he is, interpreting the single messenger as a bearer of good news, since
defeated stragglers come in groups. How different is his passionate emotion, despite the
need for tact and statecraft (as Joab roughly points out), from his calm at the death of his
baby son by Bathsheba! He had been cold and distant to Absalom before, and recent
events should have confirmed the rift; yet his grief is inconsolable. David, who has so
often shown himself hard and calculating, now gives way entirely to grief, with the pentup emotion of the strain of the last few days. Just as Amnon’s love for Tamar turned in an
instant to hate, so now in an instant victory is turned to mourning, good news to bad,
pride to shame, peace to pain. One of the loveliest touches is the sympathy of the army
for his grief; despite Joab’s threats of desertion, obviously the soldiers had more
understanding for the bereaved father than had their hard-bitten commander. Joab himself
is simply spluttering with rage, with his ‘whiplash imperatives’17 and his repetition of the
same words (‘today’, ‘life’) over and over again.
The account comes beautifully to rest with David taking his seat at the gate. Part of the
restfulness of this is derived from the literary pattern, which also emphasises how the
narrative is centred on David and his affection for Absalom:
a. David at the gate (18.1-4a)
b. David’s anxiety over Absalom and its frustration (18.4b-17)
c. The news reaches David (18.19-32)
b’. David’s grief over Absalom and its frustration (19.1-9a)
a’. David at the gate (19.9b).
8. David’s Return (19.10-44)
The return of the original ruler after the failure of a temporarily successful coup cannot
but bring embarrassment to those who cast their lot with the leader of the coup; we see
17
Charles Conroy, Absalom! Absalom!, (Rome, Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1987) p.79
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this in full measure. But David also works hard to regain the sympathy of those whose
disillusionment gave Absalom his support.
First there is the problem of Judah, which had supported Absalom massively in his coup.
David’s message to his priestly agents in Jerusalem utilizes two factors, the innate rivalry
between Judah and Israel, the southern and northern tribes, and his own bloodrelationship with Judah. He also makes Judah the astonishing concession of appointing
Amasa, Absalom’s erstwhile commander, his own commander. At last Joab, who had
stuck with David through thick and thin, has overstepped the mark and is stripped of his
rank after his greatest victory. Follow Joab’s advice David might, but forgive him for
killing Absalom he would not.
There was work to be done towards the northerners too; both Shimei and Meribaal have
their part to play here. When Shimei, who had so ferociously cursed and insulted the
fleeing David, now hurriedly comes to beg his pardon, tactfully stressing that he is the
first of the northernrs to greet the king, he is granted a smiling amnesty in honour of the
day of welcome. Quite apart from Shimei’s hint that he is the harbinger of the whole of
the loyal north, his thousand Benjaminite supporters may have helped to win him pardon.
But the king’s oath would not save him for long. Solomon would soon sort that out!
Then there was Meribaal. This is the third round in the battle to control Saul’s inheritance
between Saul’s crippled grandson and Ziba, Steward of the House of Saul. First Meribaal
is placed under house arrest and Ziba charged to administer his patrimony for him (9.113). Then, at David’s flight, Ziba manages to win the whole by convincing David of his
own loyalty and Meribaal’s disloyalty (16.1-4). Now, at David’s return Meribaal protests
that he had been misrepresented and simply welched on by his servant – with some extra
flattery thrown in.
The fate of the concubines, those hapless pawns of Absalom’s claim to kingship,
completes the symmetry of the account of David’s flight and return (see above).
Sheba’s Revolt (20)
Just how widespread was Sheba’s revolt? The author tells us that he was ‘a scoundrel’,
but also that ‘all the men of Israel’ followed him. When no levy from Judah responded to
the new commander, Amasa, David’s private army – now under the control of Abishai,
Joab’s younger brother, but with Joab himself still present – had no difficulty getting to
the extreme north of Israel and sufficed to quell the revolt. The impression, however,
remains that David was scared of a renewal of dissent, and that real support for him was
more lukewarm than the protestations at his return had suggested.
The most notable feature of the story is the encounter between Amasa and Joab. The
details of how Joab managed to eliminate the cousin who had supplanted him as
commander-in-chief are neat. He grasped Amasa by the beard with his right hand. We
already know from his murder of Abner (3.27) that he was a left-hander, but presumably
he carried his sword on his left hip, as though he were a right-hander, so he needed to
contrive to let the sword fall, so that he could pick it up with his left hand. To take a
sword from the left hip with a left hand is virtually impossible. It is only surprising that
his cousin Amasa was careless enough to be caught by this stratagem. Again Joab is
revealed as an unscrupulous man of blood, and again no protest from David. Indeed, by
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verse 23 Joab is again commander of the whole army. They followed him immediately
(20.13) and he clearly already commanded the siege of Abel Beth-Maacah. His brother
Abishai just slips quietly back into the background again.
The little scene of the parley on the wall of Abel Beth-Maacah has its own special
interest, and that for two reasons. Firstly, there is the prominence of a wise woman again.
At an era when one would expect male dominance, and in a military context, a woman
leads the negotiations with an army outside the walls. Secondly, she cleverly makes the
point at issue, the preservation of national traditions, the Lord’s own heritage, in order to
preserve the town from assault. Why are the northern towns the repository of Yahweh’s
heritage? Perhaps they were so remote that any novelty passed them by.
List of David’s Officials (20.23-26)
The list of officials serves as a reminder of just how little we know about David’s reign
apart from David’s personal relationships. Of the organisation of the kingdom and its
administration we know virtually nothing. Nor are we better informed about trade and
economic factors, about social conditions, worship, popular religion or general feeling
towards David and how Absalom gained his support and Sheba remained comparatively
isolated. The list of officials is also enigmatic, but perhaps can tells us something, though
there are various problems which do not need to be solved here.
A couple of hints may prove informative. Adoram was in charge of forced labour. The
interest here is that in the next reign forced labour becomes one of the chief causes of
discontent. The Israelites were subjected to extensive forced labour for the sake of
Solomon’s immense building projects. If this institution existed already under David, it
may have been one of the causes of discontent already then. On the other hand, David
certainly subjected the captives from the Ammonite campaign to this sort of labour (2 Sm
12.31), and Adoram may have been in charge of this.
The other intriguing character is Shiya the secretary (20.25). This is no doubt the same
person as Seraiah in 8.17 and Shusha in 1 Kings 4.3. In each place there are variant forms
in the manuscripts. Unusually, his father’s name is not given, even in the fullest list at
8.17, where all the fathers’ names except Zadok’s are given. Zadok was a Jebusite priest
before being taken over (with the city itself) by David. The form of the name Shiya is
foreign to Israel, quite possibly Egyptian. There is a good chance that the name of the son
who succeeds him in the office, Elihaph, is compounded with the name of an Egyptian
god. Both secretary and herald (the office held by Jehoshaphat) are important court
functionaries in the Egyptian records. This encourages the suggestion that David began
modelling his embryonic court and royal administration – such a thing had, of course,
never existed before in Israel – on Egyptian precedents, and had employed an Egyptian as
one of the highest and most central functionaries. The immense expansion of David’s
conquests and sphere of influence would make some such machinery essential. Internally,
also, the census was presumably part of the same development.
Supplements (21-24)
At this stage the narrative sequence is interrupted by six appendices or supplements.
These are arranged symmetrically in pairs and chiastically without any regard for
chronology:
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a. Narrative: three years of famine and its resolution (21.1-14)
b. List of military exploits: the sons of Rapha (21.15-22)
c. Poem of victory (22.1-15)
c’. Poem of David’s last words (23.1-7)
b’. List of military heroes (23.8-39)
a’. Narrative: three days of epidemic and its resolution (24.1-25).
1. Three Years of Famine and its Resolution: Execution of Saul’s Descendants (21.1-14)
This dreadful incident must have taken place early in David’s reign, since it is linked to
the burial of Saul and Jonathan, and also because the sparing of Meribaal seems to
precede the arrangements made for him in 2 Sm 9.1-13. We do not know the background
of the blood-guilt incurred by Saul on the Gibeonites. However, the Gibeonites were
partially incorporated into Israel, protected by a special treaty. In the folklore this special
status had been won by a neat and cunning trick (Joshua 9.3-27). Geographically they
were placed to the west of the territory of the tribe of Benjamin, between them and the
Philistines. In the Philistine wars Saul may have treated them, fairly or unfairly, as
enemies, decimating them and threatening to exterminate them altogether. Their demand
for blood-vengeance is only too convenient for David, since it gives him the opportunity
to remove seven remaining sons of Saul from any possibility of rivalry; three had already
been killed at Gilboa. The form of execution is unclear. In Numbers 25.4 the verb seems
to mean ‘impale them in the sun’, and this would fit the Greek translation here, which
literally means ‘put them out in the sun’. In another place, Genesis 32.26, the Hebrew
verb is used of the dislocation of Jacob’s thigh. In any case it was no easy death,
confirmed by the refusal of burial.
At the same time David is enabled to obey Yahweh’s command to purge the blood-guilt,
dispose of rivals, satisfy the Gibeonites and make a show of clemency and fidelity to his
ally Jonathan by fulfilling his oath to spare Jonathan’s crippled and harmless son – under
strict conditions. Furthermore, having heard of Rizpah’s pathetic and heroic loyalty, he
can be dutiful to Saul’s lineage by burying the bones in Saul’s own territory, suggesting
that he is performing a family duty, so claiming the inheritance of Saul as his own. As
previously remarked, it is convenient that Yahweh’s orders so often coincided with
David’s political advantage.
2. The sons of Rapha (21.15-22)
This little collection of information about Philistine wars fits chronologically at the
beginning rather than the end of David’s reign. Presumably it was an ancient record
which the compiler did not want to be lost, and so fitted in here. The ‘sons of Rapha’
could be physically four gigantic and monstrous sons of the same father, or members of a
warrior confraternity called ‘the sons of Rapha’.
There are two points of interest concerning David. The first is the devotion of his men
when Abishai (Joab’s younger brother, eventually appointed to succeed him for a short
time before Joab won his way back to the command) rescued David from the first
champion. The prime quality of a guerilla leader, such as David was, must be to inspire
personal loyalty in his followers. The title they here give him, ‘the lamp of Israel’ is high
praise indeed, almost sacral, for God is the light of Israel, for instance in the song which
follows (2 Sm 22.29: ‘Yahweh, you yourself are my lamp, my God lights up my
darkness’).
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The second point of interest concerns Goliath: who killed him? The name of Goliath is
not integral to the famous story in 1 Sm 17, occurring only in two verses, and easily
removed. That story has, in any case, legendary traits, and this stark and unadorned
mention of killing by Elnahan is persuasive by its simplicity. Attempts have been made to
identify David with Elnahan (‘David’ [= ‘Beloved’?] is represented as a throne-name, and
‘Elnahan’ as the personal name), but it seems more probable that the giant Philistine
killed by the young David was originally unnamed and was identified with Elnahan’s
victim only later. It is a common phenomenon of story-telling that unnamed persons tend
to acquire names in the course of re-telling; obviously it adds point to the story. But this
does not detract from the heroism of the young David!
3. A Song of Victory (22)
All the psalms are attributed to David in the Hebrew tradition, but there is no particular
reason why David should have authored this song, identical (apart from minor variations
of text) to Psalm 18. Is it connected by the title conferred on David in 21.17, ‘light of
Israel’, enabling David to return this title to Yahweh in 22.29?
Rather than being a single psalm, the poem consists of two psalms joined by a bridge. The
bridge consists of verses 21-25, which are of a different stamp to the rest, strongly
marked by the Deuteronomistic theology of the late seventh century. The stress on ‘the
ways of Yahweh’, his ‘judgements’ and ‘statutes’, and blameless fidelity to the tradition
are all key-interests of the reformers at that date. These verses are neatly bracketed off by
the balancing phrases in verses 21 and 25.
The earlier part (verses 2-20) forms a grand hymn of thanksgiving for deliverance from
some life-endangering threat, using the beautifully open and expressive nature-imagery of
storm and earthquake. This imagery is shared with the nature-gods of storm, thunder and
lightning which occur in the cultures of Canaan and the ancient near east. Such gods were
represented as riding on the clouds and brandishing a thunderbolt, ready to hurl it. The
awesome picture builds on the terror of a mountain storm. Israel adopted the imagery, no
doubt from the gods of Canaan, but also drawing on it own Sinai experience of Yahweh
in storm and earthquake, to express the powerful intervention of its own God to rescue
from the threat of danger all those whom he loves. This part could well be early, and has
even been assigned to David’s own time.
The second early poem (verses 26-46 or 51) describes the fashioning of a great warrior by
Yahweh. It could easily be applied to the sturdy young warrior who killed the Philistine
giant, and this is no doubt the reason why it is inserted here. However, it could equally
well be sung by any victorious king who thanks God for his military success in the
expansive language of the orient.
The whole fine poem is appropriate enough to David, but tells us nothing about him, and
cannot as a whole be attributed to him as author. Nor can the two component early poems
be firmly denied him.
4. Poem of David’s Last Words (23.1-7)
It is attractive to see this little poem as genuinely the work of David. The opening mirrors
the opening of the very ancient poem of Balaam:
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Thus speaks Balaam, son of Beor,
thus speaks the man with far-seeing eyes (Numbers 24.3),
but the second verse shows all the signs of the prophetic tradition, and must be placed
later (cf. Isaiah 42.1).
The two ruling images are brilliant: the positive image of the morning sun sparkling on
the grass after rain, and the negative one of unwanted thorn-twigs swept away with a
pitch-fork for burning. The idea of the king as light shining on his people occurs in
various forms in contemporary literature of Egypt and Mesopotamia. But it is difficult to
believe that the David we know from the body of the book would have spoken of himself
in these terms. The poem is too self-congratulatory and self-satisfied for the man who
prays as we hear him pray in reply to Nathan’s promise to him, or who allows Shimei to
hurl abuse at him. All David’s instincts were to humble himself before the Lord in naïve
delight, not to congratulate himself on basking in God’s eminence and anointing. If we
take as genuine the two poems early in the book, the lament over Saul and Jonathan and
over Abner (2 Sm 1.19-27; 3.33-34), there is little comparison with them. They are rough,
vibrant, energetic, sparkling with bright imagery but uneven in rhythm, neither polished
nor conventional. At best it would be written by one of David’s courtiers, steeped in the
Wisdom tradition of Egypt.
5. List of Military Heroes (23.8-39)
These further historical fragments take us right back to David’s early days of exploits
against the Philistines. The story of the Three and their daring penetration of the Philistine
garrison at Bethlehem, just for a chance remark of their leader, sounds like the madcap
sort of shceme to which young men of enterprise and initiative are prone, breaking
through the enemy lines just for a ‘dare’. It would be a march of a good 30 km from
Adullam to Bethlehem through hostile territory, all to earn David’s praise! David’s
response to this devoted and idiotic venture is brilliant. He acknowledges the risk and the
daring, but invokes the Lord in such a way as to discourage a repetition. If he had drunk
the water, others might have followed suit. As it is, he stresses their courage but gives
thanks to the Lord in such a way as to suggest that if it were not for divine protection,
they would not have been so successful. David’s firm and unconventional but immediate
decision shows him to be just such a man as a charismatic guerilla leader needs to be:
loyal and appreciative, but seeing beyond the vision of his subordinates and invested with
an aura of mysterious contact with God.
The list of the Thirty also has its tale to tell, a roll-call of great men, many of whom we
have met in the course of the story. However the real interest of the list lies in their places
of origin, which gives us an idea of David’s recruiting-area. Almost all are from Judah
and the south, apart from a handful from the territory of Benjamin and a couple from as
far north as Shechem. These would be fighters attracted from a wide area by the
reputation of this guerilla leader and prepared to throw in their lot with him – some for
family reasons, others perhaps principally for the booty they would win.
6. Three days of epidemic and its resolution (24)
The final chapter adds little to the history of David. It is of a quite different stamp to the
human stories of the Court Narrative. Its characters are wooden and their interplay stilted.
It leads up to the purchase of a site for the Temple, and so may be regarded as an
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aetiological myth of the site18. David had not been allowed (2 Sm 7) or had not been able
(1 Kings 8.16) to build a Temple for the Lord, but this purchase of the site and first
sacrifice there do give him some part in it. Araunah (a non-semitic name) was presumably
one of the ancient Jebusite inhabitants of the city, who had a threshing-floor on a higher
hill, just to the north of the city.
But there are several puzzling features to the story:
 Why is the census a sin? Perhaps because God controls the life and increase of his
people, and to number them is to encroach on God’s prerogatives. Or perhaps
because a census is always unpopular, leading as it normally does to taxation and
quotas of requisitioned labour. It would be easy to suggest that the epidemic
which ravaged the land was a punishment for this unpopular procedure.
 David himself repents and unbidden acknowledges his sin. But the punishment is
unleashed first against the innocent people. What right has David to make this
choice? The triple alternative is a typical folk-lore motif, and the bargaining has
none of the feeling or delicacy to which we are accustomed in David’s dealing
with the Lord
 Why does the epidemic stop at the gates of Jerusalem, and David again
acknowledge his fault? There seems to be no consequence of his request that he
and his family should alone be punished.
 The figure of 1,300,000 fighting men is impossibly high, representing a total
population of well over 5 million. It has been suggested that the word translated
‘thousands’ can also mean a much smaller unit, say a dozen fighting men. The
area of David’s conquests here indicated covers much more than the traditional
land of Israel, stretching from Aroer in Transjordan and Beersheba in the south,
right up to Tyre and Sidon in the north. Is Kadesh (24.6) the city on the Orontes,
way north of Damascus? This would indicate an even greater sphere of influence.
 Araunah’s offer of a free gift and David’s insistence on paying a price has a strong
reminiscence of Abraham’s purchase of the burial-cave at Macpelah (Genesis 23).
Of course, if no price is paid, the tenure of the new owner remains insecure.
 Joab’s remarks and obedience to an order with which he disagrees are right out of
character!
Chapter Four: The Last Days of David (1 Kings 1-2)
The Struggle for the Succession (1 Kings 1)
The impression given by these accounts is that David is now really very old, a mere
figurehead, well advanced into senility and no longer capable of any real leadership. He is
found in his private room, he is wrapped thoroughly in clothing but is still cold, and he
has a permanent nurse-cum-hot-water-bottle in the form of Abishag. Although her
outstanding and repeatedly-stressed beauty was one of the criteria for her selection, and
David was not formerly lacking in sexual drive, he is not tempted by her. Furthermore,
although David is stirred into giving the instructions asked of him, he does not appear in
public to support Solomon, as he might most usefully have done, and he makes no
objection to Adonijah exercising prerogatives of heir apparent while the old king is still
18
That is, a story told to explain some special feature of geography (why Jericho was uninhabited),
behaviour or custom (why Israelites do not eat the thigh sinew).
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alive. It is hard to believe that he was responsible for his actions. The initiatives are surely
taken by others, to which the old king agrees for the sake of a quiet life. We are familiar
enough with the idea of undue influence on the aged to change their wills. Questions
would be asked nowadays whether David was really of sound mind, memory and
understanding. He was in no state to resist the carefully-planned double assault of
Bathsheba followed by Nathan, with their repeated appeals to the words of the promise
long ago mediated to David by Nathan in Yahweh’s name (2 Sm 7.12-16).
The clue to the dynastic machinations in progress is given by the line-up of personalities.
Adonijah must be much the senior son. His mother, Haggith (who herself appears only in
lists and takes no active part) was David’s wife long before Bathsheba, while he still
reigned at Hebron. So Adonijah was only trying to assert his right of primogeniture, a
right which was by no means absolute at that time. He behaves in exactly the same way as
his full-brother Absalom had done. We are told of his outstanding good looks, just as with
Absalom, and he uses the same retinue to declare his pretensions, a chariot and team with
fifty forerunners. His party seems to be the old guard. His military assistant is the doughty
old Joab, David’s nephew and commander since Hebron days. Similarly his priestly
assistant is Abiathar, who had been David’s priest even before then, and had followed
David since Saul massacred the other priests of Nob.
The opposition seems to be more a Jerusalem party. Solomon’s mother, Bathsheba, had of
course been picked up by David in Jerusalem. The military arm is represented by
Banaiah; he was ‘hero of many exploits’ (1 Sm 23.20), a professional soldier presumably
anxious to oust Joab and rise to his position of commander-in-chief. He brings with him
at least one of David’s champion, Rei, and Shimei, who as a Benjaminite and supporter of
Saul could be relied on to oppose the Hebron old guard. The priestly arm is represented
by Zadok, who first appears well into the Jerusalem period as being in charge of the Ark
during Absalom’s revolt. Both his name and the lack of any genealogy of Zadok in the
Books of Samuel suggest that he was a priest of the Jebusite worship in pre-Davidic
Jerusalem, co-opted personally by David as his priest and custodian of the newly-located
Ark. They have as their ally the highly-influential Nathan, who again does not appear till
David has arrived in Jerusalem. Before then David relied for divine guidance on
divination supplied by Abiathar.
However, Adonijah’s party were outwitted on every count in this slightly ludicrous scne
of two coronations and the two springs of Jerusalem. Not only did Adonijah’s party lack a
prophet to declare the will of Yahweh. Solomon’s party also had the horn of oil
(seemingly controlled by Zadok), the efficient mercenaries, and above all they won the
ear and authority of the aged king. Adonijah with his chariot and fifty guards, in fatal
imitation of Absalom, had underestimated the importance of these factors and the hold of
the Jerusalem party over the populace. This they must have realised when the courageous
Jonathan, Abiathar’s son, brought the bad news to the party that the other side had won.
The only remaining question is whether David was merely pushed into action by
Bathsheba and Nathan or whether he was actually duped by them. Neither in the story of
Adonijah’s banquet given in 1.9-10 nor in Bathsheba’s version of it in 1.19 is there any
sign of anything illegitimate or any sign of actual revolt or coronation. All the anxious
mother can complain about is that her son was not invited to the party. Perhaps she now
realizes that Solomon will be outside the circle of power when Adonijah, to whom David
is placing no obstacle, comes to the throne. It is only in Nathan’s version of the party that
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there is anything untoward to report, namely that Adonijah’s merry cronies are shouting,
‘Long live King Adonijah!’ (1.25). Even so, there is no mention of crowning or anointing,
and Nathan seems more concerned about his own exclusion and that of his friends.
A closer reading suggests that Bathsheba’s party makes all the going. Solomon has been a
nobody, mentioned only at his birth as the fourth of eleven sons born to David in
Jerusalem (2 Sm 5.14-15). It is all too clear that David has said nothing about the
succession, so that Bathsheba worriedly says, ‘You are the man, my lord king, to whom
all Israel looks to tell them who is to succeed my lord the king’ (1.20). (This is Bathsheba
first positive action since she told David that she was pregnant. We hear nothing of her
feelings at the death of her first husband, Uriah, or of her love-child by David). Nathan
even envisages that David may have made a contrary decree in Adonijah’s favour without
telling him (1.24, 27). Everyone is clear that Yahweh has decreed the continuance of the
dynasty, but not by whom. Hence the enormous stress put upon the decision by its triple
repetition, announcement by the king (1.32-35), narration (1.38-40) and report to
Adonijah (1.43-48), not to mention the frenetic appeal to Yahweh’s blessing (1.36-37, 4748; 2.15, 24) and the relieved final confirmations, ‘And now the kingdom was secure in
Solomon’s hands’ (2.12, 46).
The double-barrelled assault on the aged David is cleverly planned. First comes
Bathsheba. She rouses him, but gets only a dyssyllabled reply, ‘Mah lak?’, more or less,
‘Whassup?’ or ‘What are you on about?’ She affects puzzled ignorance, and carefully
refrains from blaming David. Then comes Nathan with further puzzled questions, all
suggesting unjustified usurpation.
Arrangements for the Future (1 Kings 2)
The final chapter of the David story makes depressing reading. The account shows David
tidying up the loose ends with a callously sanctimonious efficiency, quite at variance with
his manipulated senility in the previous chapter. All David’s instructions are, of course,
given in private, and are brought from the bedchamber, with no possibility of
confirmation, by those whom they profit. On the plea of blood-guilt (which he did
nothing about at the time) he recommends Solomon to eliminate the long-serving Joab.
One wonders whether Joab had in fact been the practical ruler of the country for some
time. David had never been able to handle him, and since the death of Absalom he seems
to have handled David, briefly dismissed but soon eliminating his rival and re-instating
himself.
David also indicates that Shimei is now to be punished for the curse for which he was – it
now seems temporarily – spared earlier. Shimei obliges by foolishly breaking his parole
and going off to the Philistines to collect runaway slaves.
One cannot expect David to order the elimination of his own son Adonijah, so Adonijah
obligingly plays into Solomon’s hands by making an incredibly foolish request which
would show that he still had ambitions of kingship. What makes the story too good to be
true is that even Bathsheba pretends to fail to recognise that Adonijah’s request for
David’s concubine is innocent, and blandly forwards it to her son. She would have had to
live a very sheltered and innocent life over the past decades not to be aware of the
implications of her request. The conversation between Adonijah and herself was of course
a private one. Did she make it up?
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All these happenings must raise the question whether the Court Narrative must be seen as
truly running smoothly all the way to the end of 2 Kings 2. Rost originally isolated this as
‘The Succession Narrative’, directed ad majorem gloriam Salomonis. That is, he saw the
whole narrative as intended to legitimate Solomon’s accession. There are, however,
difficulties in this position:




The apologetic (or propaganda) of the stories of David’s rise to power is to show
that his rise was motivated not by ambition but simply by self-preservation against
Saul’s unfair treatment. This is not the only possible reading of the facts. But once
David was on the throne, the purpose of the stories in 2 Samuel is to depict David
as a sympathetic, fallible, human figure, making no attempt to hide his faults.
Now the purpose of the apologetic is to legitimize Solomon and whitewash his
conduct, putting the blame for any unfairness on David.
There is a sudden change in David between the first and second chapters of 1
Kings. In the first chapter he is senile and incapable. That was psychologically
plausible, as a continuance of the decline seen in the situation at Absalom’s revolt.
In the second chapter he is calmly and meticulously deadly in his detailed
instructions. This jars both with the previous chapter and with the previous book.
There is a sudden change between the semi-democratic tribal rule of David in 1-2
Samuel and the autocratic, unchecked despotism which Solomon attributes to
David in 1 Kings 2.
The style of narration has changed. There is certainly a brilliance about the
narration of the deceit and cunning in the duping of the aged David. However,
there is no longer a rhythmic development of plot or interest in character,
personality and motivation, but only a series of executive orders. Dramatic
situations are not exploited, for instance Adonijah gathering support, Joab’s flight
to the altar and Shimei’s journey to the Philistines. Chiasmus and the clever
rhetoric have alike disappeared.
There is room, therefore, for considerable doubt whether 1 Kings 1-2 is really a
continuation by the same author of the narrative of David’s reign in 2 Samuel.
Chapter Five: The David Tradition in the Monarchy
1. The Pre-Exilic Prophets
It might seem that the obvious method to investigate the David tradition during the
monarchical period, down to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian invaders
in 586 BC is to consult the history of the period as given in the Books of Kings. But
here a difficulty arises, for the Books of Kings received their first edition – admittedly
from a number of ancient and contemporary sources – at a precise and marked
moment of history, the Deuteronomic Reform under King Josiah in the years after 620
BC. They are characterised by the theology of the time, for it was a period of intese
theological thinking. So their evidence witnesses as much to the thinking of their own
time as to the history of the period they cover. Hence for the development of the
tradition up to that time we turn first to the evidence of the prophets.
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The first and most striking observation is how strictly confined to Jerusalem the
importance of David was. It is not surprising that in the northern kingdom, which split
off from the southern part of the country immediately after the death of Solomon,
there is no mention of David. For the northern monarchy was inevitably in
competition with the line of David, and the northern sanctuary was in open
competition with the sanctuary of Jerusalem. It had been founded specifically to
provide a rival religious centre to Jerusalem, so that northererns would not be obliged
to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Amos
Until the prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem the only prophetic writings we have are Hosea
and Amos, the prophecies collected and edited by their disciples.As with all the
prophetic books, some passages were added to the original proclamations of the
prophets to keep them relevant to the present time. Of the three mentions of David in
these prophets, two belong to a later period (Ho 3.5; Am 9.11). The only authentic
mention of David is therefore given in Am 6.5.
Amos was a shepherd from Tekoa in the south, in the hill-country on the edge of the
Judean desert. He was sent, unwillingly to prophesy at the northern national sanctuary
against the luxury and social injustice practised by the rich. It is in satirising their
luxury that Amos mentions David.
Lying on ivory beds
and sprawling on their divans
they dine on lambs from the flock
and stall-fattened veal.
They bawl to the sound of the lyre
and, like David, they invent musical instruments.
They drink wine by the bowlful
and lard themselves with the finest oils
but for the ruin of Joseph they care nothing (Amos 6.4-6).
For Amos, then, far from being a great king, David the musician is simply an example of
dalliance! Or at least he is caught up in the dalliance of the worthless rich.
Another, and very different, example of a local, non-Jerusalem view is provided by Micah
of Moresheth, a little town near Gath (but not yet exactly identified) somewhere in the
south-west of Judah. He is very much the peasant, constantly using imagery drawn from
field animals, sheep, jackals owls. He prophesies at the same time as Isaiah of Jerusalem,
around the time of the Fall of Samaria (721 BC), threatening the disaster which will befall
others too if they continue to profiteer and cheat the poor, foretelling the sack of the
majority of the hill-towns which took place at the invasion of the Assyrian king,
Sennacherib. The growing power of the Mesopotamian empire of Assyria engulfed one
after another of the little states on the mediterranean coast. The northern kingdom of
Israel, Samaria, was swallowed up and its inhabitants deported, the ten northern tribes
simply disappearing from history somewhere in the Assyrian empire. In 703 Sennacherib
came further south and devastated the cities of the hill-country of Judah, but mysteriously
– the Bible ascribes it to divine intervention – left Jerusalem uniquely unharmed. Isaiah
describes Jerusalem as being left ‘like a shed in a cucumber field’ (Is 1.8 – that is,
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standing up clearly among low-lying, ground-plants), the Assyrian records (more
threateningly) ‘like a bird in a cage’.
Micah
In the books of the pre-exilic prophets it is never straightforward to divide the words of
the original prophet from subsequent accretions, for the biblical editors factored into their
works subsequent sayings relating to further and later stages of the history. So, for
instance, at the end of Amos’ doom-laden message is added a later prophecy of
restoration after disaster, ‘On that Day, I shall rebuild the tottering hut of David, make
good the gaps in it, restore its ruins’ (Amos 9.11). The biblical message of disaster would
have been incomplete without the balancing message of eventual restoration. In the same
way the Second and Third parts of Isaiah (chapters 40-55 and 56-66 respectively) are
added to complete the message of the First Isaiah, or Isaiah of Jerusalem. Not only that,
but within the chapters of First Isaiah supplements are integrated which fill out the
message as it needs to be seen from a subsequent viewpoint. So, to apply this to Micah,
we cannot be sure that the viewpoint on David is uniquely that of the eighth century
prophet from Moresheth, untinted by those who put the Book of Micah together later.
Now look to your fortifications, Fortress!
They have laid siege to us.
The ruler of Israel will be struck on the cheek with a rod.
But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, the least of the clans of Judah,
from you will come for me a future ruler of Israel,
whose origins go back to the distant past, to the days of old.
Hence Yahweh will abandon them only until she who is in labour gives birth,
and then those who survive of his race will be reunited to the Israelites.
He will take his stand, and he will shepherd them
with the power of Yahweh, with the majesty of the name of his God,
and they will be secure, for his greatness will extend
henceforth to the most distant parts of the country.
He himself will be peace!
Should the Assyrian invade our country, should he set foot in our land,
we shall raise seven shepherds against him, eight leaders of men.
They will shepherd Assyria with the sword,
the country of Nimrod with the naked blade (Micah 5.1-5).
This mysterious and majestic prophecy, whose language stands out from the more
mundane language around it, contrasts with the present ‘ruler of Israel’ a future ruler
‘whose origins go back to the distant past’. He will shepherd the Israelites in security with
the power of Yahweh, while he will shepherd the invading Assyrian with the power of the
sword. The focus on Bethlehem, birthplace of David, centres the hope on the Davidic line
and tradition. Yahweh’s promise to David is, then, already the anchor of Israel’s hope.

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‘Bethlehem Ephrathah’ is an expression to distinguish Bethlehem in Judah from another
Bethlehem in the territory of Zebulon. Bethlehem and Ephrathah are neighbours in the territory of
Caleb (1 Chr 2.24).
‘least of the clans of Judah’ is a delicate touch, stressing that help comes from Yahweh’s choice
rather than from human achievement – just as in David’s original anointing.
‘Until she who is in labour gives birth’ is not to be referred to any particular birth, but is only an
assurance that it cannot be long delayed. It is as certain and as speedy as the natural process of
child-bearing.
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The ‘shepherding’ (in peace or with the sword) is also an allusion to David the shepherd-boy.
The ‘seven’ and ‘eight’ invoke the mystique of numbers. Seven is the perfect number, and 7/8
occur frequently in spells and incantations 19.
Isaiah
Firmly dated to the time of King Ahaz of Judah (736-716) is a similar reassurance from
the prophet Isaiah, based on the David lineage, one prophecy firmly linked to the year
736 and expanding into a series of prophecies. Threatened with attack by his two northern
neighbours, Israel and the Arameans, King Ahaz is supervising the preparations of the
water-supply in case of a siege in 736. Isaiah assures him that the threat will rapidly
recede. Isaiah offers Ahaz any sign he likes to ask. When Ahaz testily refuses the offer,
the prophet himself proffers a sign:
Yahweh spoke to Ahaz again and said, ‘Ask Yahweh your God for a sign,
either in the depths of Sheol or in the heights above’.
But Ahaz said, ‘I will not ask. I will not put Yahweh to the test.’
Isaiah then said, ‘Listen now, House of David, are you not satisfied with trying
human patience, that you should try God’s patience too?
The Lord will give you a sign in any case. It is this:
the young woman is with child,
and will give birth to a son whom she will call Immanuel.
On curds and honey will he feed until he knows how to refuse the bad and choose
the good. Before the child knows how to refuse the bad and choose the good the
lands whose two kings are frightening you will be deserted’ (Isaiah 7.10-16).
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Depths…heights – the use of such opposites in Hebrew often indicates everything in-between.
Young woman - A Christian reading of the text, reliant on St Matthew’s use of it, immediately
applies it to the birth of Jesus from the virgin Mary. This cannot have been the original sense, for it
is a sign to Ahaz, to be recognized by him. Nor does the original Hebrew suggest a virgin birth, for
‘virgin’ is the later Greek translation and specification of the Hebrew ‘young woman’, indicating
only any young girl, often unmarried.
‘Immanuel’ - The young woman will give her child the significant name of ‘Immanuel’=‘God is
with us’, indicating the divine protection, presumably in relief that the threat has receded.
Furthermore, before the child grows to the age of moral choice, the lands themselves will have
been destroyed (Israel was destroyed in 721, and the Arameans before then).
How then is the birth a sign? Is it that the child is male? A 50/50 chance is not much of a sign! Is
the young woman Ahaz’s wife? We do not hear that he had a child at this time. The most
satisfactory explanation is that, as in the case of Micah’s prophecy, the cycle of pregnancy and
birth is being used as a timing-factor: A young woman (any young woman) is with child, and
within nine months the security of Jerusalem will be so assured that in relief she will give the child
this prophetic name in thanksgiving. Before the child is grown up, the ‘two smouldering
firebrands’ (Isaiah 7.4) now threatening will have disappeared off the map.
The whole prophecy is again anchored to David by the address, ‘House of David’. This is
the reason for the assurance. The same joy and confidence in the line of David overflows
in two further prophecies of Isaiah concerning a son of David’s line. The first is clearly
connected with liberation from a military threat, and is marked by the birth of a son. It has
been suggested that the four double-names exemplify the Egyptian coronation ritual, at
which the new king was adopted by the god and given five throne names. This is,
however, not necessary – there are only four, not five names – especially in view of
Isaiah’s own frequent use of symbolic names for children (7.3, Shear-Jashub=A Remnant
19
See Kevin Cathcart, ‘Micah 5,4-5 and Semitic Incantations’ in Biblica 59 (1978), 38-48.
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will Return; 7.14, Immanuel; 8.3, Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz=Speedy-Spoil-Quick-Booty).
In any case, on this occasion the ‘son’ must be a son of Ahaz. The names attribute to him
Wisdom, power, eternity and peaceful rule, in much the same way as ‘Immanuel’. These
qualities are expressed more conventionally in the following quatrain. In the original
statement allowance must be made for the rhetorical flourishes of court language and for
the overwhelming joy of release from threat. The ruler is seen as the pledge of permanent,
paradisiac peace and far-reaching harmony. When this first, literal meaning has been
seen, then it can be accepted that the fuller meaning may be seen in Christ.
You have enlarged the nation,
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you as people rejoice at harvest time,
as they exult when they are dividing spoils.
For the yoke that weighed on it,
the bar across its shoulders,
the rod of its oppressor,
these you have broken as on the day of Midian. …
For a son has been born to us,
a son has been given to us,
and dominion has been laid on his shoulders,
and this is the name he has been given:
‘Wonder-Counsellor,
Mighty-God,
Eternal-Father,
Prince-of-Peace’ ,
to extend his dominion in boundless peace
over the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to make it secure and sustain it in fair judgement and integrity (Isaiah 9.2-6).

The Day of Midian – the overwhelming defeat of Midian in Judges 6-7.
In the third of the prophecies the child of the line of David is described in the same lyrical
terms. The expression ‘stock of Jesse’, introducing the detailed, sevenfold effect of the
descent of the spirit of Yahweh, may be seen as a deliberate allusion to the prophetic
scene of the anointing of David by Samuel in the presence of his father, Jesse. The climax
and conclusion of that scene is when ‘the spirit of Yahweh seized on David’ (1 Sm
16.13). The ‘stock’ and growth from the ‘roots’ links in Isaiah’s prominent theology of
the ‘remnant’ already announced in the name of his son, Shear-Jashub (and 4.3; 6.13;
10.20-23).
A shoot will spring from the stock of Jesse,
a new shoot will grow from its roots.
On him will rest the spirit of Yahweh,
the spirit of wisdom and insight,
the spirit of counsel and power,
the spirit of knowledge and fear of Yahweh. …
No hurt, no harm will be done on all my holy mountain,
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for the country will be full of knowledge of Yahweh, as the waters cover the sea
(Isaiah 11.1-3, 9).
In two further passages Isaiah also promises protection explicitly because the king is of
the line of David. These are best dated to the withdrawal of the threat of Sennacherib in
701 BC, when he destroyed the other cities of Judah but left Jerusalem intact.
By the road by which he came, by that he will return;
he will not enter this city, declares Yahweh.
I shall protect this city and save it
for my sake and my servant David’s sake (37.34).
The second passage, linked by the same final phrase, promises also deliverance of King
Hezekiah from illness:
I shall cure you. In three days time you will go up to the Temple of Yahweh.
I shall add fifteen years to your life.
I shall save you and this city from the king of Assyria’s clutches
and defend this city for my sake and my servant David’s sake
(38.5-6; also given in 2 Kings 20.5-6).
Jeremiah
Of the other pre-Exilic prophets, Jeremiah has little to say about David. He was at fairly
constant loggerheads with the kings who refused to accept his message. Being from
Anathoth, so a northerner, he would have little inbuilt attachment to the Davidic
monarchy. He was slighted and confined by the kings, and eventually imprisoned in an
underground storage well. There are only three passages in Jeremiah which make more
than a passing reference to David, and two of these are post-exilic. Even in the genuine
passage from Jeremiah the mention of David is perfunctory.
The first, 30.8-9, is a prose intrusion in a poetic passage, lacking both the rhythmic
structure of the surrounding lines and their rich imagery. The surrounding prophecies
concern the northern kingdom, and this suddenly breaks into a characteristically exilic
dream of the restoration of the Davidic monarchy for both kingdoms:
That day, Yahweh Sabaoth declares, I shall break the yoke now on your neck and
snap your chains; and foreigners will enslave you no more, but Israel and Judah
will serve Yahweh their God and David their king whom I shall raise up for them.
The second and third passages are very similar, one being clearly based on the other:
23.5-6 Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall raise up an upright
Branch for David. He will reign as king and be wise, doing what is just and upright in the
country. In his days Judah will triumph and Israel live in safety. And this is the name
he will be called, ‘Yahweh-is-our-Uprightness’.
33.15-16 In those days and at that time,
I shall make an upright
Branch grow for David,
who will do what is just and upright in the
country. In those days Judah will triumph and Israel live in safety. And this is the name
the city will be called, ‘Yahweh-is-our-Uprightness’.
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It is normally considered that 33.15-16 is the later of the two passages, using the earlier
23.5-6, on two grounds. Firstly, in the verses which follow, David is coupled with the
levitical priests, who become important only in and after the exile. Secondly, the
renaming of the city (as opposed to the person in 23.6) brings it close to the exilic and
post-exilic Ezekiel 48.35 and Isaiah 62.4. As genuine Jeremiah material, then, we are left
with 23.5-6. This is a neat little punning passage, playing on the name of King Zedekiah,
the last monarch of Judah, imposed by the Babylonians as a puppet-ruler after the first
destruction of the city and partial deportation in 597 BC. They gave him this throne-name
(spelt in Hebrew Zidqiyahu=Yahweh is my Uprightness). Jeremiah likes playing on
words and names, and does so also in 7.30-32 and 20.1-6. He also makes extended
comments on the other kings of his time, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin in 22.1030. This whole prophecy on Zedekiah circles round the Hebrew word zedeq=upright20.
Alluding graciously to the prophecy of the scion springing from the stock of Jesse and
reigning as wise and upright king (Isaiah 11.1-9), Jeremiah announces that this puppetking is not the scion prophesied. There will be another king who does fulfill this role and
bring us Yahweh’s uprightness. His name will be Yhwh-zidqenu=Yahweh is our
Uprightness). It is the word-play that engages Jeremiah’s interest, not primarily the line of
David.
Ezekiel
The promise to David does, however, retain some peripheral interest, even in the dark
days of the Exile. In the exile Ezekiel’s task was to refresh and renew the hope of Israel,
to reassure them that not all was lost, that there was still a future and a destined return.
Ezekiel insists on this message in many ways, the new spirit which will be breathed into
the nation (the Valley of the Dead Bones, 37.1-14), the new covenant and the new heart
of flesh rather than of stone (11.14-21; 36.26-28), perhaps most of all, the scintillating
vision of the New Jerusalem (40-48).
Among all these there is no mention of the promises to David. Only two passages show
that the figure is there, at least in the background.
I will raise up a single shepherd, my servant David, and put him in charge of them
to pasture them; he will pasture them and be their shepherd. I, Yahweh, will be
their God and my servant David will be ruler among them (34.23-24).
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The word used for ‘ruler’ is perhaps felt to be more ceremonial and more traditional than
the outworn ‘king’. ‘Raise up’ is used of judges and prophets, figures chosen by God and
filled with the spirit. It therefore suggests a prophetic role in the spirit of God.
‘A single’ suggests a return to the united kingdom, one ruler for the whole flock, after the
Davidic model.
‘Servant’ is a title of high dignity in this near eastern context (as it will be in the Servant
Songs of Deutero-Isaiah), suggesting a plenipotentiary second-in-command, close to and
trusted by the principal and authorized to considerable freedom of action.
David my servant is to be their ruler for ever. I shall make a covenant of peace
with them, a covenant with them for ever (37.25-26).
20
It is crucial for the effect of the punning to remember that in Hebrew only the consonants are written and
only the consonants are reckoned in such word-play . To the Hebraist this is all delightful;
to the non-Hebraist it may be tiresome!
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David is again the guarantee of Yahweh’s fidelity. ‘Covenant’ refers back in history. The
word twice used for ‘for ever’ has a marvellously reassuring sense of sacred stability,
referring forward to the end of time, but again alluding to the promise made to David in 2
Sm 7. In both these prophecies of Ezekiel David has become a mere symbol. The same
will be seen in the theology of Ezekiel’s near-contemporary, the Deuteronomist.
2. David in the Theology of the Deuteronomist
In 622 BC, under King Josiah, began a great religious reform in Jerusalem. This is known
as the Deuteronomic reform because it is characterised by the Book of Deuteronomy,
which was produced from the Temple in the course of the reform. The book purports to
be the work of Moses and was claimed simply to have been discovered at this moment,
having lain hidden in the Temple for all these centuries (during most of which the Temple
had not, of course, existed!). More importantly, it encapsulates perfectly the two great
principles of the reform, namely that
1. The prosperity of God’s people depends on fidelity to the Law. God has promised
to protect his people, but this promise will be fulfilled only if Israel is faithful to
the Law. If Israel is faithful to the Law it will prosper; if Israel neglects the Law it
will be punished.
2. This can be achieved only by centralisation of the cult in Jerusalem. Only so can
the distortions and superstitions of the local cults surviving from Canaanite
religion, and shown by archaeology to have been still widely practised at this
time, be overcome.
One of the ways in which both these principles were demonstrated and inculcated was the
editing of the history of Israel from the entry into Canaan up to the time of writing. This
has given us the biblical books of Joshua to Kings, in which these two principles are
guiding factors. Throughout the history the pattern of prosperity as a reward to fidelity
and persecution by enemies as a punishment for infideltiy dominates the presentation. In
addition, the centralisation of the cult in Jerusalem is the climax which is gradually
prepared, first by the movement leading to the establishment of the monarchy under Saul,
then by its transfer to David who won Jerusalem. This leads on to the building of the
Temple by Solomon, and finally the great celebration there of the centralised Passover,
led by King Josiah.
The theological concerns of the authors are comparatively easy to discern both through
summaries and through style. From time to time major summaries are given, e.g. a
summary of the period of the Judges, Judges 2.11-23; the evils of monarchy spelled out
by Samuel, 1 Sm 8.10-22; the ideals of the Davidic monarchy expounded by Solomon, 1
Kings 8; the divided kingdom, 1 Kings 12.26-33) or theological lessons pointed (e.g. on
the role of Joshua, Jos 1.6-9; on the impetus given by Joshua, Jos 23.6-16, 24.14-24; on
the lessons of the Fall of the Northern Kingdom, 2 Kings 17.7-23). The theological
emphases and even the repeated phrases which dominate these presentations are easily
picked out, and are found recurring in less extensive editorial material: ‘keeping my laws
and ordinances’, ‘follow my ways by doing what I regard as right’, ‘the city which I have
chosen as a dwelling-place for my name’, ‘the city which I have chosen out of all the
tribes of Israel’.
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David plays an essential part in this schema, as may be seen from one important editorial
passage on the division of the kingdom at Solomon’s death:
He [Solomon] has not followed my ways by doing what I regard as right, or by
keeping my laws and ordinances as his father David did. But it is not from his
hands that I will take the kingdom, since I have made him a prince for as long as
he lives, for the sake of my servant David, who kept my commandments and laws.
I shall, however, take the kingdom from the hand of his son, and I shall give it to
you, that is, the ten tribes. I shall give one tribe to his son, so that my servant
David may always have a lamp in my presence in Jerusalem, the city which I have
chosen as a dwelling-place for my name (1 Kings 11.33-36).
David has become an ikon of fidelity (‘Your servant David my father lived his life in
faithfulness and uprightness and integrity of heart’, prays Solomon in 1 Kings 3.6), so
that the later kings of Judah are repeatedly judged by the standard of David’s fidelity to
the commandments (Solomon in 1 Kings 9.4; 11.4, 6, 34; Jeroboam in 14.8; Abijam in
15.3-5; Amaziah in 2 Kings 14.3; Ahaz in 16.2; Hezekiah in 18.3; Josiah in 22.2). This is
clearly a narrowing and an idealisation, at best concentrating on one aspect of his
conduct, consonant with the interests of the Deuteronomist much more than with David’ s
own concerns For the Deuteronomic writing the canons of decent behaviour, kindness,
fairness, etc are not important concepts. The idea of ‘faithfulness, uprightness and
integrity of heart’ is simply a matter of obedience to Law, and all success and all approval
of Yahweh is estimated in terms of meticulous subservience to a legal code.
This serves, however, to show the real importance of David in the mind of the editors of
the Deuteronomic History. David is the founder and guarantee of the Jerusalem kingship.
Saul is the failure, from whom the kingship was torn away. It was to David that the
promises were made, as the editor makes clear even during David’s rise to monarchy,
through the mouth of Jonathan (1 Sm 20.14), Saul himself (24.21) and Abigail (25.28).
Once David is settled on the throne the fullest version of the promise comes in
theprophecy of Nathan in 2 Sm 7, which can be felt hovering behind almost any future
statement about David and the monarchy. In the later part of the Deuteronomic history the
fulfilment of the promise is again dependent on obedience like David’s (1 Kings 2.3-4:
8.25; 9.4-5; 11.38). The monarchy constitutes David ‘a lamp in my presence’, as we first
hear in 2 Sm 21.17: ‘You are never to go into battle with us again, in case you should
extinguish the lamp of Israel’. The phrase is taken up by the editor and used emphatically
in 1 Kings 11.36, where the survival of one tribe is promised by Yahweh to keep the lamp
in his presence; 15.4, where the unworthy Abijam is nevertheless given a son to succeed
him for the same purpose; 2 Kings 8.19, where the unfaithful Jehoram is tolerated for the
sake of the survival of the ‘lamp for ever in his presence’. In extraordinary contrast to the
picture given in the actual stories of his career recounted in 1 Samuel to 1 Kings, David
has become a puppet dancing to the restricted tunes played by the legalistic editor.
3. David in the Theology of the Chronicler
During the exile, as we have seen, iknterest in the flesh-and-blood David wanes, and from
being a real historical figure David becomes more a symbol of the ideal monarch, whose
rule is closely associated with that of Yahweh. In the Books of Samuel there was a certain
hesitation about the relationship of the human king to Yahweh, the divine King, and a
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certain feeling that any human monarchy detracted from the sovereignth of Yahweh, and
was a desertion of Yahweh. Once the monarchy itself has been detroyed in the Sack of
Jerusalem, this hesitation quite disappears, and any competition between the fivine and
the human king disappears with it. The king becomes a reflection of Yahweh. However,
whereas in the exile there was no interest in the historical figure and attention only to a
future king, in the Books of Chronicles history again becomes the medium of conveying
the message.
This is not surprising, for the wheel of circumstances has turned full circle too. When the
author of the Books of Chronicles (‘the Chronicler’) writes, the Temple has been restored,
and Israel is again established in its own territory. Circumstances have, of course,
changed. Jerusalem and its surrounding territory are no longer independent, but are part
of the Persian Empire, a small element in the massive province of Trans-Euphrates,
closely and bureaucratically administered by a Persian satrap. Nevertheless, a good deal
of independent rule was left to the different subject peoples within the Empire, and each
native culture was encouraged to flourish. This culture had considerably changed since
the Sack of Jerusalem. During the seventy years in Babylon Judaism21 developed, that is,
a spirituality and observance based on strict adherence to the Law. The centrality of the
Law and the separateness and segregation which this imposes became all-important, for
only so could the Jews maintain their integrity and separateness from the people around
them, the Babylonians.
At the return to Jerusalem a new impetus develops, centred on the rebuilding of the
Templs, amid violent opposition over some decades from the neighbouring peoples, who
managed to block the rebuilding for some time by appeals to the central Persian
government. Nevertheless, by the time the Chronicler comes to write, in the first half of
the fourth century BC, a Temple of some kind, much less splendid than Solomon’s
Temple, had been rebuilt and the cult re-established. An important part of the
Chronicler’s purpose was to provide a historical basis and background for this renewed
cult, and he re-handles the history of the monarchical period with this purpose, to justify
the practice of his own times by showing the continuity of the historical tradition between
those times and his own.
This requires a fair amount of re-adjustment of the history of the earlier times! It would
be difficult to establish whether he has any independent sources. Writing some 600 years
after the events he recounts, it is unlikely but not impossible that he has. Certainly his
main source is the Books of Samuel and Kings, which he treats very selectively, a
selection of a selection, for, as we have seen, the history of David given in Samuel and
Kings is already highly selective. Once David is established in jerusalem, with the Ark in
place, that history dealt with only three complexes of events. First, the Bathsheba incident
and its consequence, then – after a leap of a whole generation – the rape of Tamar and the
resultant revolt of Absalom, and finally – after another leap – David’s extreme old age.
The Chronicler, consistently seeking a basis for the renewed Temple cult, is even more
selective.
The words ‘Jew’ and ‘Judaism’ come, through Greek and Latin Ioudaioi from the Hebrew Yehudim,
Yehudah. The northern tribes had disappeared, and it was only the inhabitants of the territory of Judah who
were exiled to Babylon. Technically, ‘early Judaism’ does not refer to the time of Abraham but begins
during the period of the Babylonian Exile.
21
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For the Chronicler the bedrock of this basis is David. He is viewed as the founder of the
Temple and its cult. This requires several special emphases in the treatment of the David
story. Firstly, David is represented as the focal point of Israel’s history. Secondly, when
we arrive at the story of David himself, all reference to imperfection is expunged.There is
no suggestion of the misconduct with Bathsheba, let alone the murder of Uriah her
husband. The indulgence of David towards his sons goes unmentioned, and any
possibility of questionable conduct with regard to Saul is ruled out by the simple and
sharp judgement on Saul, ‘Thus died Saul in the infidelity of which he had been guilty
towards Yahweh, in that he had not obeyed the word of Yahweh and because he had
consulted a necromancer for guidance’ (1 Chr 10.13). The only criticism of David occurs
over the census: the census must be included because it led to the purchase of the ground
on which the Temple was to be built. But various touches mitigate even the criticism
contained in this story: basically the story is taken over from 2 Sm 24, but in 1 Chr 21
David intercedes explicitly for his people (v. 17), thus showing his generous care for
them, and finally Yahweh’s acceptance of his sacrifice of repentance is emphasised by the
observation that Yahweh answered him with fire from heaven on the altar of burnt
offering (v. 26). Thirdly, there is no suggestion that David was an individualist who made
his own way, gradually acquiring power and influence. On the contrary, from the start he
is the hero and embodiment of all Israel. To some extent this makes nonsense of history.
Thus Saul’s tribesmen go down to join David at Ziklag (12.3) at a period when in fact
David was a freebooter in open opposition to Saul, and a vassal of the Philistines. Also,
‘all Israel’ comes to David at Hebron immediately after Saul’s death (11.1), whereas in
fact several years elapse between David’s crowning at Hebron after Saul’s death and the
submission to him there of ‘all Israel’. After 600 years the more delicate lines of history
have been obliterated in favour of the overall picture conceived by the Chronicler, of
David as the embodiment of Israel.
Two focal points show the Chronicler’s view of David at its clearest. The first is the
account of the transfer of the Ark to Jerusalem, the second is the instructions given by
David on his deathbed.
1. The Transfer of the Ark to Jerusalem
In 2 Sm 6 the transfer of the Ark to Jerusalem occurs in two stages, the first takes it as far
as the house of Obed-Edom, where it is given a temporary resting-place because of the
fear inspired by Yahweh’s anger against Uzzah for putting out his hand to touch the Ark.
This operation is undertaken by ‘all the picked troops of Israel, 30,000 men.’ In
Chronicles it is preceded by a decision of ‘the whole assembly of Israel’ after which
David sends messengers to summon ‘all Israel from the Shihor of Egypt to the Pass of
Hamath’, that is, all the inhabitants of the country at its furthest theoretical limits, limits
which were in fact never reached, stretching from the modern border between Gaza and
Egypt in the south to a point well north of Beirut. Instead of being a military operation it
has become a national liturgy.
The same is even more true of the second stage. In 2 Sm one does not get the impression
of a gigantic crowd, though at one stage the presence of ‘the entire House of Israel’ is
mentioned (v. 15). Plenty of war-cries and blasts on the horn and singing and rejoicing,
but not a crowd of thousands. In Chronicles the operation is transformed into an immense
and stratified liturgical procession, with Levites all in their due order and each group
performing their proper liturgical function. In 2 Sm David arouses Michal’s contempt by
exposing himself, clad only in a skimpy loin-cloth as he dances and whirls in front of the
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Ark. In Chronicles, although the mention of Michal’s contempt is still there, we hear no
more of ‘whirling’, and David is wearing a cloak of fine linen as well as the ephod – all
very decent. This is very much what one would expect from the Founder of the Temple
Liturgy.
2. David’s Deathbed
In 1 Kings the disposition which David makes at his deathbed -, to be fairer, the
dispositions made by those able to manipulate him – concern his successor on the throne
and the elimination of possible rivals for the succession; they are affairs of state. In
Chronicles the focus is on the future liturgy. The nomination of Solomon as king is a
mere detail, quickly dealt with, ‘When David had become old and full of days, he made
his son Solomon king of Israel, and then summoned all the leaders of Israel, with the
priests and Levites’ (23.1). David then gets on with the really important business (in the
eyes of the Chronicler), dividing the Levites into classes, selecting officials for the
liturgy, and finally summoning to Jerusalem all the officials of Israel to witness him
handing over to Solomon the plans for the Temple (28.11), and entrusting him with the
charge of building it. David has done all in his power towards the building of the Temple,
assembling all the materials as well as prescribing the plans. It is only because he was so
preoccupied with wars of conquest and was a ‘man of blood’ that he has to leave the
actual building to his son Solomon, the ‘man of peace’ (22.8). The purpose of all this is to
show that David is the ultimate founder of the Temple liturgy.
Fidelity to the liturgy and concern to maintain the purity of the cult in the face of
competition from superstitious practices and the inroads of foreign idolatry are criteria
throughout the remainder of the Books of Chronicles on which the success of kings is
estimated. Again and again this is expressed in terms of following the prescriptions of
their ancestor David. For the Chronicler, therefore, the abiding importance of David is as
founder of the liturgy. Human character and motivation are of minor importance to the
Chronicler, so that the fascination of David as a person passes him by.
The messianic hope, also, holds little interest for the Chronicler. In his day Israel was a
theocratic state, where the priests held sway and where there was little thought of any
future kingship. It is significant that Yahweh alone is the real King and kingship belongs
to him. Thus the original prophecy of Nathan in 2 Sm 7 concludes, ‘Your dynasty and
your sovereignty will ever stand firm before me’ (v. 16). But in the Chronicler’s version
Temple and kingdom alike belong to Yahweh, ‘I shall set him over my Temple and
kingdom for ever’ (1 Chr 17.14). In David’s final instructions he insists that Yahweh ‘has
chosen my son Solomon to sit on Yahweh’s sovereign throne over Israel’ (28.5). In his
great final prayer David proclaims, ‘Yours is the sovereignty, Yahweh; you are exalted,
supreme over all’ (29.11). The kingship of Yahweh, which plays such an important part
in the psalms of the Temple liturgy, so fills the author’s mind that it excludes any thought
of human kingship in Israel. In other parts of Israel’s tradition the concept of David as the
model for a future kingship, which will perfectly fulfil Yahweh’s sovereignty over the
world or over Israel, is of paramount importance; in the work of the Chronicler it plays no
part.
Chapter Six: David and the Psalms
1. David and the Authorship of the Psalms
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Christians are familiar with the passage in the gospel where Jesus attributes to David the
authorship of Psalm 110, ‘The Lord declared to my Lord’ (Mt 22.43-45). Ben Sira
already says of David,
In all his activities he gave thanks
to the Holy One Most High in words of glory.
He put his heart into his songs
out of love for his Creator (Sira 47.8-10).
The idea that David was the author of the psalms is deep in Jewish as well as Christian
tradition. Many of the psalms carry superscriptions which even note precisely the
occasion when he composed them, e.g. Ps 51, ‘Of David, when the prophet Nathan had
come to him because he had gone to Bathsheba’, despite the fact that the final two verses
of the psalm clearly look forward to the rebuilding of Jerusalem (so presuppose its
destruction at the beginning of the exile) and assume the full sacrificial liturgy which
certainly did not exist in David’s time. Many more of the psalms carry the simple
superscription ‘Of David’, without any historical details of time and place, and it seems
most probable that these details were added later.
It is, in any case, perfectly clear that many of the psalms were written well after David’s
time. In some cases the theology and spirituality of the psalms accord perfectly with a
later period, often after the exile, and in some cases incidents which are clearly later than
David’s time are mentioned. Similarly there is a strong case that some of the psalms, e.g.
Psalm 29, with its vigorous use of Canaanite imagery and attribution to Yahweh of the
imagery connected with the Canaanite nature Baal-gods of thunder, lightning and storm,
at least originate from a primitive period before David. What explanation therefore to
give to this ‘Of David’? Many others of the superscriptions suppose the fully developed
liturgy of the Temple. ‘Of the sons of Korah’, ‘Of Asaph’, etc, seem to attribute these
psalms to cantors of the Temple mentioned by the Chronicler; these psalms may have
been written by the named personality, or written for a particular group of singers. This at
least suggests that the titles are post-exilic.
There is, of course, some foundation in the historical books for associating David with
music and liturgy. He soothed Saul with his music. He danced, whirling, before the Ark
when he caused it to be brought up to Jerusalem and installed in his capital. Most
important of all, the lament over Saul and Jonathan is attributed very cogently to him, and
is surely very ancient. It shows deep poetic feeling. These factors, however, may merely
show why the authorship of the psalms was attributed to David, without making it any
more likely that he actually wrote the majority of them. Perhaps most influential of all
factors in the attribution of the authorship of the psalms to David was the tradition,
expressed so forcefully and at such length in Chronicles, that David set up and organised
the Temple liturgy, in which the psalms played such an important part.
In any case, the phenomenon of pseudepigraphy shows that authorship in ancient Judaism
was regarded in a different way from that in which it is regarded today. It commonly
occurred that literary works were attributed to famous figures of the past who were
certainly not in any modern sense authors of them. In the Bible well-known and
universally accepted axamples of this are the Song of Songs, attributed to Solomon,
though its spirit and language show it to have been written at least 500 years after his
date. Similarly the biblical Wisdom of Solomon cannot have been written by Solomon; it
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was composed at Alexandria in the middle of the first century before Christ. This
phenomenon was so common that it must be considered a literary convention rather than
a literary fraud. In some way it was felt that such attribution put the work under the
patronage of the named figure. I would suggest that this is the true relationship of the
psalms to ‘the sweet singer of Israel’.
2. David in the Psalms
In the psalms Zion is all-important. It has been calculated that nearly half (70) of the
psalms contain ‘Zion-markers’, not necessarily a literal mention of Zion, but the
equivalent, some such phrase as ‘the House of the Lord’, ‘where the Lord’s name rests’.
This already gives a covert reference to David as founder of the sanctuary. David himself
is mentioned 79 times in the psalms, a strong testimony to his continuing importance in
the worship of Israel. Apart from this, there are three psalms where the David tradition
plays an especially important part.
Psalm 89
The psalm as a whole is an appeal to God’s faithful love, an appeal in time of distress,
pointing out the unexpectedness of disasters in view of God’s promises of protection. It is
not clear what the disasters in question are. The servant of God who prays at any rate the
final verses of the psalm refers to himself as the anointed of Yahweh, that is, the king, and
the disasters mentioned seem to be national ones.
You have pierced all his defences,
and laid his strongholds in ruins.
Everyone passing by plunders him,
he has become the butt of his neighbours (vv. 40-41).
Various occasions have been suggested for the composition of the psalm, either during
the exile, when the most acute national disasters had taken place and yet there was (for a
time) still a king, or during the national disasters leading up to and climaxing in the exile.
However, the occasion of the composition is of less importance at the moment. What is
important to us is that the grounds for the invocation is the promise made to David, which
is given in a different form from that given in 2 Sm 7:
I have given strength to a warrior,
I have raised up a man chosen from my people.
I have found David my servant
and anointed him with my holy oil.
My hand will always be with him
and my arm will make him strong.
No enemy will be able to outwit him,
no wicked man overcome him.
I shall crush his enemies before him,
strike his opponents dead.
My constancy and faithful love will be with him,
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in my name his strength will be triumphant.
I shall establish his power over the sea,
his dominion over the rivers.
He will cry to me, ‘You are my father,
my God, the rock of my salvation!’
So I shall make him my first-born,
the highest of earthly kings.
The tone of this poetic version of the promise is more far-reaching and triumphalist than
the quiet version given in 2 Samuel, which has no claim to the dominion represented by
‘his power over the sea, his dominion over the rivers’, let alone ‘the highest of earthly
kings’. Similarly the bond to Yahweh is here more strongly expressed than in 2 Samuel
(‘I shall be a father to him and he a son to me’) by immediacy and warmth of the cry,
‘You are my father’, and the promise that he will be the first-born.
Each of these developments is in line with developments elsewhere in the tradition of
David. The first development fits the generally wider view, the outlook over the whole
world instead of the original restriction to the narrow territory of Israel itself. In David’s
time the Israelites were not accustomed to look beyond their own land, possible extending
their view up to the coastal strip as far as Damascus, and to Moab and Edom, but never
beyond this narrow mediterranean littoral. The second development is in line with the
grandeur of the titles accorded to the shoot from the stock of Jesse in Isaiah, and
especially with the closeness to God through the spirit of God predicated in Isaiah 11, and
also with the ambiguity of the situation in Ezekiel, where David is the vice-gerent of
Yahweh’s own kingship.
The David represented in the psalm is the idealised David of the messianic promises, not
the historical figure but the symbol of the point of contact of God’s promises, the point
where the divine promises to Israel touch earth. It must, however, be remembered that
here the promise is expressed poetically, with the impressionistic imagery proper to
poetry.
Psalm 132
In this psalm three themes are combined,
 The installation of the Ark in Jerusalem
 The choice of Jerusalem as a dwelling for Yahweh
 The promises of a dynasty for David.
All three are interwoven and interdependent, as indeed is inevitable from their content.
The installation of the Ark at Jerusalem was what made it both David’s capital and the
special dwelling-place of Yahweh, and its position as David’s capital made Jerusalem the
symbol of the permanence of his dynasty. Among these three it is difficult to say which
predominates.
Yahweh, remember David
and all the hardships he endured,
the oath he swore to Yahweh,
his vow to the Mighty One of Jacob.
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‘I will not enter tent or house,
will not climb into bed,
will not allow myself to sleep,
not even to close my eyes,
till I have found a place for Yahweh,
a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob!’
Listen, we heard of it in Ephrathah,
we found it at Forest-Fields.
Let us go into his dwelling-place,
and worship at his footstool.
Go up, Yahweh, to your resing-place,
you and the ark of your strength.
Your priests are robed in saving justice,
your faithful are shouting for joy.
For the sake of your servant David
do not reject your anointed.
Yahweh has sworn to David
and will always remain true to his word,
‘I promise that I will set
a son of yours upon your throne.
If your sons observe my covenant
and the instructions I have taught them,
their sons too for evermore
will occupy your throne.’
For Yahweh has chosen Zion,
he has desired it as a home,
‘Here shall I rest for evermore,
here shall I make my home as I have wished.
I shall generously bless her produce,
give her needy their fill of food,
I shall clothe her priests with salvation,
and her faithful will sing aloud for joy.
There I shall raise up a line of descendants for David,
light a lamp for my anointed.
I shall clothe his enemies with shame
while his own crown shall flourish.’
It has been insistently claimed that the liturgical context of this psalm is a Jerusalem feast,
either of the installation of the Ark or of the renewal of the Kingship. The intertwining of
the themes makes it impossible to decide for which feast this psalm would be more apt. In
fact the existence of each of these feasts is hypothetical. There is plenty of evidence in
other ancient Near Eastern countries, Mesopotamia and Egypt, for an annual celebration
of the Kingship of a god, and the renewal of earthly, human kingship, in each case
accompanied by processions and humns such as this psalm. One could easily imagine that
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the Ark would be carried in just such a procession, and that a ceremonial re-installation of
the Ark in Jerusalem might accompany the annual celebration either of God’s choice of
Jerusalem for his dwelling-place or his choice of David as founder of a dynasty. It so
happens, however, that there is no evidence at all for the existence in Israel of either of
these feasts. They may or may not have existed, but cannot safely be postulated as the
background of this psalm.
A connected difficulty, and one which is more relevant to our enquiry into the
development of the view of David in later Israel, is about the date of the psalm. If the
psalm is really linked to such a feast, it must be pre-exilic, for such a feast can have
existed only in the pre-exilic Temple. The Ark disappeared in the sack of Jerusalem,
making impossible in the time of the Second Temple any procession centred on the Ark.
The last two verses of the psalm seem post-exilic, suggesting that Yahweh is promising a
reversal of the present state of affairs by lighting a lamp for his anointed and clothing his
enemies with shame. But of course this final quatrain could have been added at the time
of the exile to an already existing poem. The phrase ‘light a lamp for my anointed’
suggests the Deuteronomic period, where the expression is used: ‘so that my servant
David may always have a lamp in my presence in Jerusalem’ (1 Kings 11.36). So even
this final quatrain may be pre-exilic.
The text of the psalm reflects the view which we have found to be standard in the later
monarchic period, of David as a pledge of God’s favour, and the promise sworn to him as
a guarantee of the continuance of the present state of affairs. It also adds one significant
piece of historical lore, the oath of David to find a dwelling-place for the Ark (vv. 3-5).
There is a further interesting implication, that the Ark had to be searched for in Ephrathah
(an alternative name for Kiryat-Yearim), that it was lost and needed to be found. This
might suggest that David, realising the political potential of the Ark for sanctifying his
own capital city, recovered a more-or-less forgotten symbol of Yahweh’s presence, and
swore a great oath to instal it in Jerusalem. It is only surprising that there is no trace of
this oath in the ample historical traditions about David in the Books of Samuel. It may be
that this oath is merely a piece of poetic licence expressing David’s resolution over the
matter.
Chapter Seven: The Son of David in the New Testament
We have seen that in the tradition about David in the Old Testament after his death, the
historical person gradually gives way to an idealised concept, the model for a future
personality. The certainty of the coming of this personality, based on the promise of a
permanent dynasty to David, is the pledge of God’s continued protection. The David who
is to come becomes closer and closer to God’s own kingship, both in his function and in
his qualities. In the New Testament this tradition about David recurs on various
occasions.
1. Mark
In the synoptic gospels, both Matthew and Luke develop the significance of the title ‘son
of David’, which plays little part in Mark. In Mark, the earliest of the gospels, this
tradition surfaces on two occasions, both of which may be regarded as evidence of the
popular expectations of David. On the first Jesus is hailed as son of David by the blind
beggar Bartimaeus on the outskirts of Jericho (Mk 11.47). The fact that Bartimaeus calls
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Jesus ‘son of David’ while asking for his sight to be restored may be taken as evidence
that he connects with the line of David the promises of the ultimate restoration and
abolition of disease, death and other evils, which was expected as part of the restoration
of all things in the eschatological era. The renewal of the sovereignty of God with which
these are assoiated is to be fulfilled through the line of David.
Similarly at the solemn entry into Jerusalem Jesus is failed as bringing into being ‘the
kingdom of our father David’ (Mk 11.10). Jesus is not himself hailed as David or son of
David. In Jesus’ ministry it was always the sovereignty of God which was important, not
the personality of Jesus himself. He proclaims not himself but the realisation of the
sovereignty of God. So his entry into Jerusalem is seen not as a glorification of himself,
but as the moment when God’s promise to come into his own, to pruifyhis Temple and to
renew its worship, was fulfilled.
Both of these occasions may be regarded as expressions of the popular hope of a
messianic kingdom, a hope which became stronger and stronger, and became more and
more political under the hated yoke of the Romans, until it exploded into the Jewish
Revolts of 66 AD and 132 AD. The political form of this hope is closely allied with the
Davidic tradition, to the extent that Simon ben Kosibah, the leader of the Second Revolt,
took the name Bar Kocheba or ‘son of the star’, with clear reference to David (cf. also
Nm 24.17). Jesus, however, suggests that there is more to the son of David tradition than
a merely human inheritance.
In Jesus’ famous conundrum which introduces the last of the final group of four
controversies between Jesus and the Jewish leaders providing a climax to his Jerusalem
ministry, Jesus puts the question (Mk 12.35-36),
How can the scribes maintain that the Christ is the son of David? David himself,
moved by the holy Spirit, said,
‘The Lord declared to my Lord,
take your seat at my right hand
till I have made your enemies your footstool.’
David himself calls him ‘Lord’; in what way can he then be his son?
The implication is that if David himself (here accepted as author of the psalm) calls the
Messiah ‘Lord’, he must be accepting that the Messiah is greater than himself. But a
descendant is normally considered lesser than an ancestor. Therefore Daivd is suggesting
that his descendant is more than a simple descendant of his, or at least is encouraging his
listeners to consider his nature more deeply. This is a literalist piece of exegesis, typical
of the contemporary exegesis. No solution is offered by Jesus to the conundrum, and
certainly it cannot be said that Jesus is teaching that the Messiah must be more than
human. The fact, however, that Jesus calls upon his hearers to reflect on the Davidic
tradition could suggest its importance in his won thinking. Jesus does not in fact seem to
have used messianic language of himself, possibly because of the political connotations
which ‘son ofDavid’ terminolgoy carried at that time. The liveliness of the expectation of
a descendant of David in Jerusalem circles is attested also by the popular querying in
John 7.41-44.
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2. Matthew
Matthew’s emphasis on the title ‘son of David’ begins from the very start of the gospel.
The purpose of the first chapter is to legitimise Jesus’ claim to the title. So after the
imposing list of ancestors, which has been called ‘a drum-roll of the history of Israel’, the
rest of the chapter treats the adoption of Jesus into this line. The adoption is no casual
affair and is dependent on no human decision. Far from wishing to adopt Mary’s son,
Joseph had no wish to interfere where the Holy Spirit had been at work. He was all for
divorcing Mary informally, that is, calling off the betrothal. It needed the intervention of
the angel to persuade him not merely to continue with Mary but to go further and adopt
the child as his own, so integrating him into the House of David. The conclusion and
climax of the chapter is accordingly the naming of the child by Joseph, a gesture of
adoption, since it is the right of the father to name his son. So, right from the beginning
Matthew regards it as of cardinal importance that Jesus should be of the line of David.
The same significance must be attached to the emphasis on Bethlehem, the town of
David, as the birthplace of Jesus, one of the few material facts common to the infancy
stories of both Matthew and Luke, stressed by the second of Matthew’s fulfilment
quotations (Mt 2.1, 5).
The title is important also in Matthew’s account of the ministry of Jesus. This becomes
clear from his own summary passage at the end of the little series of miracles, when the
crowds ‘were astounded and said, “Can this be the son of David?”’ (9.22). It is an
expression of Matthew’s important stress on the arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven, which
he envisages as the accomplishment of the Davidic kingdom. Again in 9.27, the cure of
the two blind men at Jericho – no doubt derived from Mark’s narrative of Bartimaeus –
they invoke Jesus as ‘son of David’. The title is put also into the mouth of the Canaanite
woman who asks Jesus for the cure of her daughter (15.22). Her appellation as
‘Canaanite’ (Mark has ‘Syro-Phoenician’) may show that, like the Canaanites when Israel
settled in Canaan, she is ready to be converted and to enter Israel. Her invocation of Jesus
as ‘son of David’ is further evidence of her readiness to enter into the inheritance of
Israel. Similarly at the triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Mt 21.25), instead of Mark’s
emphasis on the sovereignty of God, ‘the kingdom of our father David’, the focus,
typically of Matthew’s development of Christology, if more directly on Jesus himself as
son of David: ‘Hosanna to the son of David’.
3. Luke
The infancy narratives of Luke also have this strong emphasis on the line of David,
though, as in all the allusions of these first two chapters, less blatantly than Matthew’s
clear quotations. The whole atmosphere of these two chapters is that of the Old
Testament, as though to say that they form the completion of the hope of Israel and are in
every way still part of the same story. The language is biblical (‘now it happened that…’,
‘when the time came for her to have her child’); the narration is modelled on that of
biblical stories (the annunciation to Mary on the annunciation to Samson’s mother); the
canticles are constructed on the model of biblical poetry, full of Hebrew parallelism.
Above all, the spirituality is biblical: the priest Zechariah is upright in the sight of God,
fulfilling his priestly duties, Simeon is waiting for the redemption of Israel, Anna never
leaves the Temple, the parents of Jesus are insistent on fulfilling the requirements of the
Law. The overall impression is that the long-awaited salvation has at last come to the
faithful and expectant Poor of Yahweh. Quotations from the scriptures may be rare, but
the whole is permeated by allusion to the scriptures.
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Against this background the Annunciation to Mary is an announcement of the fulfilment
of the promises made to David by Nathan. Preliminarily, the first information we are
given is that Mary is ‘a virgin, betrothed to a man named Joseph of the House of David’
(1.27). The virgin birth again makes a difficulty in the succession of Jesus to the line of
David, but betrothal to a man of David’s House is the next best thing! The angelic
messenger’s promise refers unmistakably to the promises to David (1.32-33):
He will be great, and will be called son of the Most High.
The Lord will give him the throne of his ancestor David.
He will rule over the House of Jacob for ever,
and his reign will have no end.
Though there is little direct quotation – perhaps only ‘for ever’ - in this quatrain, the
allusions are manifest. Thus it is only by reference to the promises to David that the birth
of Jesus can be made intelligible.
2 Samuel 7
I shall be a father to him
I will appoint yr son to succeed you
To govern my people Israel
I shall make his sovereignty secure
For ever
Luke 1
He will be called son of the Most High
Give him the throne of his ancestor David
He will rule over the House of Jacob
His reign will have no end
.
For ever.
In his second volume, The Acts of the Apostles, Luke reinforces this emphasis particularly
by two keynotes of speeches. Peter’s speech at Pentecost explains what has been
happening at Pentecost, and the meaning of the resurrection which it follows. The
confident expectation of Psalm 16, ‘you will not abandon me to Hades or allow your Holy
One to see corruption’ is attributed to David as author and speaker. The expectation was
not fulfilled of David, which enables Peter to say that the patriarch David, as prophet,
foresaw the resurrection. The promise to David was fulfilled in the Risen Christ (Ac 2.2732). In the same way Paul, in his keynote speech to the Jews at Antioch22, interprets ‘the
holy things promised to David’ (Isaiah 55.3) of the incorruption of Christ’s resurrection,
again quoting Psalm 16, ‘You will not allow your Holy One to see corruption’23. David
died, was duly ‘buried with his ancestors, and has certainly seen corruption. The one
whom God has raised up, however, has not seen corruption’ (Ac 13.36-37). Here, in a
somewhat new departure, then, David as author of the psalms is seen as a prophet of
Christ’s resurrection.
Conclusion
Keynote, because it is intended as exemplary of Paul’s preaching to the Jews, just as the speech at Athens
is exemplary of his preaching to the gentiles.
23
On both occasions Acts of course quotes ‘corruption’ from the Greek Septuagint. The Hebrew reads ‘the
pit’, understood of Sheol, the abode of the dead. While the original cannot be said yet to declare clearly a
belief in the resurrection of the dead, it does at least express a conviction that God will not desert the singer
of the psalm, his chosen one, among the dead. In accordance with the exegesis of the time, the author of
Acts takes the individual words literally, referring to the incorruption of the body of Jesus..
22
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Two questions remain unresolved at the end of this study, and they are two questions
which are central: what was the real character of David, and how did the David-myth
come to develop?
1. It is still possible to view David either as an unscrupulous power-politician, ready to
manipulate anyone, including God, any thing or situation to his own advantages, or as a
vigorous but saintly instrument of God, devoutly following God’s will. Fundamentally, it
depends on the approach of the reader. If the reader approaches the story with a critical
mind, intent on finding and assembling hints of unfavourable evidence, a good deal can
be found. Since the story is quite openly favourable to David, the criminal investigator
cannot expect to find more than hints, bumps and creases in the story, which suggest that
a veil has been drawn over evidence less favourable to the hero. An extreme case of such
an attitude is that of Baruch Halpern who, regarding David as a serial killer, interprets
every silence as an admission of guilt.
By the author of the stories which lie behind 2 Samuel David is understood to be the
chosen of the Lord. He was chosen for his natural endowments and anointed at a young
age to be king of Israel. He delivered Israel from the Philistine threat and devotedly tried
to soothe the deranged king, Saul. Saul responded only with violence, which David bore
with exemplary understanding and forgiveness, taking no action against the king even
when Saul fell into his power in the course of one (two) of his expeditions intended to
capture David. Driven to take refuge among the Philistines, David continued to show the
same respectful attentiveness and love to Saul and his beloved son Jonathan when they
were killed. Ascending the throne in Saul’s stead, David stood aloof, as far as possible,
from the ambitious struggles of the two generals Joab and Abner. David was, to be sure,
human, and fell wildly and sinfully in love with another man’s wife, eventually
murdering the husband to make his own crime appear less wicked. But his repentance
was as whole-hearted as his sin, typical of his open, expansive and almost childlike
affection. The same love in his temperament characterised his relationship to Yahweh, his
desire to build a Temple for the Lord, and his mistaken indulgence towards his own sons,
which led to the short-lived horrors of Absalom’s rebellion and the supreme expression of
his grief as a father. In the last scene, too, as David is an old man, we see the same
innocence and trust in the arrangements which tie up the inheritance for David’s son
Solomon.
This picture of the ideal king, the very human monarch whose only fault is his overflow
of affection twoards God and his fellows, cannot fail to move the reader. It has remained
a model and an inspiration down the ages, an example of reckless generosity and its
delights and dangers.
We have, however, suggested that a darker interpretation can be put upon the stories. The
stories of David’s rise are propaganda, presenting in a much gentler light what was really
naked ambition. The little shepherd boy was altogether a tougher nut, whose successful
association with the king bred in him early an ambition to succeed to the same position,
who unashamedly used to love of the king’s son and daughter (which he did not
reciprocate) as a stepping-stone for his designs. He was a born leader, one of those
attractive personalities who can lead men anywhere. He bided his time, carefully building
up his power-base and bending both Philistines and his own people to his will. With his
eye already on the throne, his one principle was the sacredness of the person of the Lord’s
Anointed, who must remain untouched and be respected through thick and thin. Violence
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breeds violence, and violence done to Saul could eventually rebound on his successor.
But when his tough and ambitious supporter, Joab, used underhand and criminal methods
on non-royal opponents to further David’s cause, David did no more than wring his hands
in elaborate expressions of grief. His move to consecrate the capital he had won as his
own city by installing there the Ark of the Covenant (which had never before played an
important part in the cult, and was currently lying neglected and forgotten in a little hilltown) was a piece of shrewd manipulation of religion, just as his earlier acquisition of a
private priest and a private prophet had been. Just how devoted to Yahweh was David? It
is striking that David’s lament for his friend Jonathan includes no mention of God. He
does not lay the matter before the Lord at all. Even the fasting for the life of his infant son
by Bathsheba does not ring quite true, and can be regarded as another attempt to
manipulate the deity, instantaneously abandoned when it is seen to have failed. Was there
really an intimate personal bond between David and his God?
Once the Court Narrative starts we are again in a different ball-game than that of the
stories of David’s rise to power. The starting-point of the Court Narrative which stands
behind the Deuteronomic editor’s recital remains disputed. The basic core is 2 Samuel 920. Does it already begin at the shenanigans which lead to David’s choice as king of
Israel? The capture of Jerusalem? The transfer of the Ark? The first certain episode is the
story of Nathan’s promise, closely followed by the Bathsheba incident. The basic temper
of this narrative is an intimate family story, showing David in all his charm, warmth,
passion and failure. At any rate by the time of the next series of incidents, a generation
later, it is a different David with whom we are dealing from the thrusting young schemer
of the stories of David’s rise to power.. To some extent his administration has slipped. He
has become complacent and indulgent to his unruly sons, allowing considerable disquiet
to fester in the kingdom. There are traces of a certain indecision in his treatment of
offenders. Yet when it comes to ways and means of frustrating Absalom’s plans, he is as
sharp as ever, whatever the cost to his double-agents. Unable to control his own sons, he
certainly cannot control the unscrupulous Joab, who easily wins back the position as
commander of the army by simply murdering his replacement.
In the final scene of all, 1 Kings 1-2, the angle of the narrative (or of the narrator) has
again changed. Centre-stage is taken now no longer by David but by Solomon. The
purpose is no longer to present the picture of David; it is to present an apologia for
Solomon’s cleansing operations at the beginning of his reign. David is now senile and is
manipulated helplessly by stronger and more ambitious members of his entourage. He is
pathetically billed as the scapegoat for the bloodbath with which Solomon’s reign opens,
represented as authorising the removal of potential rivals to Solomon’s power. By now
the impetus of the narrative has come to be seen in its true colours. The ultimate thrust of
the narrative is to show Solomon as the great and devoted son of a great and devoted
father. The greatness and piety of David are important, but the greatness and piety of
Solomon more important still. If there is a choice of blaming one or other, David is the
one to go to the wall – and in his extreme old age he can hardly be held fully responsible
or blameworthy.
Can a believer, one who accepts that God has guided history, and especially that God’s
Word is in the Bible, accept the darker side of this picture of David? Should this not be
disturbing to the believer? How can it be that the founder of Israel’s monarchy and the
model for the Messiah should be a rogue? And, perhaps more disturbing, how can it be
that the Bible presents as a devoted servant of God one whose real character and motives
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were far less praiseworthy? There is enough evidence in history, both of the Old
Testament and of the Christian centuries, that God may use unholy instruments and
unworthy motives for his own holy purposes. It was Jacob’s lies to his father which won
him the promise. It was the jealousy of Joseph’s brothers towards Joseph that established
him in Egypt, ready to receive them, and so to prepare a people ready for the covenant. It
was the brutality of the Assyrian King Sennacherib and the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar
which punished Israel and sent the survivors into exile, so that the nation might be purged
and a purified remnant emerge. It was the refusal of the Jewish authorities to accept Jesus
which led to his rejection and his final act of obedience on Calvary. It was the persecution
by Roman emperors which tempered the early church in the blood of martyrs, and later
the temporising of bishops at the time of the development of the Christological doctrines
– as Newman pointed out – that led to the strength of lay involvement in these truths. The
disedifyiing lives of certain Renaissance Popes did not necessarily harm the Church, nor
need one believe that all the motives which led to the forging of the doctrines of Vatican
II were necessarily pure and good. So with David also, therefore, it is thoroughly
admissible that his ambition, his unscrupulousness and his wily manoevrings should have
furthered the progress of God’s designs. That Israel’s monarchy should have been
established by such a flesh-and-blood characger as this David is by no means disturbing.
God used his vigorous and even unscrupulous ambition to found a stable and well-rooted
monarchy. During his life David inspired devotion in those who surrounded him and,
whatever his faults, there remains a great attractiveness in the whole-heartedness with
which he pursued his ends and repented.
2. How is it, however, that the later books of the Bible, and the final editing of the
Deuteronomic editor presents such a smooth plaster-cast picture of a devoted servant of
the Lord if David was in fact an ‘oversexed brigand’? How is this compatible with the
veracity of scripture? The Bible is a heterogeneous collection of documents, of all kinds
of provenance and tendency. There are love poems like the Song of Songs, heroic and
poetic victory chants like Deborah’s Song in Judges 5. There are folk-tales, aetiological
myths, tribal sagas like the stories of the patriarchs. There are mocking satires and whole
books of outright fiction like Tobit and Esther. There are sophisticated embroideries of
history for the purpose of symbolism, like the accounts of the ten plagues of Egypt given
in the Book of Wisdom. Each of these displays a different relationshp between narration
and historical fact, and between these and the divine message of the Bible.
It may be objected that these are quite different cases from the distorting and one-sided
propaganda which constitutes the story of David. If David is really such a rogue, then
these instances provide no parallel for the falsification of history which would be
involved in this case. There are, however, closer parallels still: the version of the stories
of David, Solomon and the subsequent monarchy given in 1-2 Chronicles is clearly an
adaptation of the accounts in Samuel and Kings which presents a one-sided and even
distorted version of the original, one thrust of which is to present a liturgically-idealised
version of King David, founder of the Temple liturgy. If biblical historians can so edit
and present sources of which we have the original as well as the edited versions, there is
no reason why a biblical historian should not have edited material (of which we no longer
have the sources) in such a way as to present a morally, instead of a liturgically idealised
version of David. Every historian and every writer has a particular view of events, and
wishes to mediate this view to the readership. The story of David given in the Books of
Samuel is just such a view, which a modern historian might well consider partial and
incomplete.
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The great interest of this view of David’s monarchy is that, by the time the earliest
account of David came to be written, the process which was to produce the myth of David
had already started. The word ‘myth’ of itself carries no intrinsic implication for historical
truth; it simply means that the historical account so characterised determines (or at least
influences) a view of life or of some particular aspect of life. To speak of the foundationmyths of Greek cities is not to give judgement on the historical truth of the stories which
surround the founding of such cities; it simply implies that the stories were highly
influential in the view held by the inhabitants about their nature and situation. To speak of
the myth of the Nazi Holocaust does not imply that the view of these events currently
held is false, but that this view is important in understanding how Jews now see
themselves and their destinies. Similarly the myth of David concerns the function of
David in the development and history of the monarchy in Israel.
David founded the monarchy and its institutions. In practice, Saul’s kingship was little
other than a lasting form of the charismatic office of Judge; it brought with it no
permanent institution or court or organisation. David changed all that. He captured and
made his own the capital city which was to be the centre of the monarchy till the collapse
of that monarchy, and the centre of Israel for far longer. He made the political capital also
a religious capital by installing there the Ark of the Covenant, which he ensured had a
vital position in Israel’s liturgy and prayer as the localising sign of God’s presence on
earth. With good reason he came to be revered as founder of Israel’s liturgy. In the
profane sphere also his achievement was staggering. By good fortune the two normal
super-powers of the Near East were in a period of withdrawal, and David seized the
opportunity to expand territorially to boundaries which had never before been so distant,
and never would be again. He made at least the beginnings of a court and the bureaucracy
which goes with it, vastly expanded by his son Solomon, who enjoyed such a reputation
for wisdom. These are the true, historical grounds for the David-myth.
It was entirely correct that David should thereafter be regarded as the founder of the
institution of the monarchy. That he should be regarded as the ideal of all future monarchs
is not quite so obvious. There are question-marks not only over his methods of acquiring
his position but also over his morality in the exercise of it. Of his administration of it we
know next to nothing because of the vast gaps in the record provided by 2 Samuel; in
terms of years alone, there are two gaps of well over a decade each. But we do know that
there were two serious rebellions in the course of the reign, which does argue that there
was cause for discontent. Each of these rebellions was crushed not because of the
weakness of its support but through the daunting military prowess of that battle-scarred
and ruthless old warrior, Joab.
The adoption of David as the ideal of all monarchy for the future was perhaps the result
of three factors. Firstly, the favourable account of his achievements given in 2 Samuel
must have been widely current from then onwards, and would of course have influenced
opinion in David’s favour. Secondly, the importance of David in founding the monarchy
made it easy to present him as the backbone of the monarchy for all time to come.
Thirdly, however, and most importantly, the promise of a successor to David as the
beloved son of God meant that David would always be present in his descendant. As this
promise became more and more important to Israel as a pledge of liberation from present
misery, so the figure of David loomed greater and greater as the guarantee of God’s
favour for all time to come.
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By the time of Jesus, however, the hope in David’s son and successor had become
dangerously materialist and political. Jesus himself was reticent with regard to Davidic
and messianic titles because of these associations; there was obvious danger that his
mission would be understood in political and revolutionary terms. Among his followers
there were those, notably Matthew, who used the David-myth to express the meaning and
mission of Jesus. But on the whole the David-myth is less prominent in the New
Testament than in contemporary Judaism. It was not till the Jwish messianic revolts that it
again sprang into the forefront.
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