The books of Samuel are treated in the Hebrew tradition as a single work. The division into two may well be a practical consequence of the conventional size of a scroll, and the death of Saul provided a convenient and appropriate breakpoint. These books cover the careers of the first two kings of Israel—Saul and David—and give an account of the reasons why this new institution arose in Israel and its effects. The Masoretic Hebrew text of the books has its problems, which are often explicable if reference is made to the different readings in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Greek translations, especially the so-called Lucianic tradition.
Critical scholarship on the text has been troubled by duplications of stories and inconsistent attitudes to the monarchy. This has been explained by postulating the combination of pro- and antimonarchic sources, either from different eras or perhaps originating in different circumstances. It has also been postulated that the text collects a number of originally separate works. Those identified include the Ark Narrative (4:1 to 7:1), concentrating on the history of the ark of the covenant; the History of David’s Rise (16–31); and the Succession Narrative (2 Samuel 9–20; 1 Kings 1–2). In addition, the books of Samuel now form part of the great sweep of historical narrative that runs from Genesis to 2 Kings and are also included in the scholarly construct of the Deuteronomistic History, which includes Joshua, Judges, and the books of Kings. Such passages as 2 Samuel 12 do seem to accord with the language and theological concerns of the writers of Deuteronomy.
Without denying that there may be a complex history of accumulation and editorial revision behind the present form of these books, at some point the texts we have were accepted by some readers as at least an adequate representation of what they and their traditions had to say on the matters of David’s kingship and its role in Israel’s history. What may trouble some readers as inconsistency, both stylistically and ideologically, can also be seen as an acknowledgment of the complexity and messiness of human nature and human history, due to the residuum of the unknowable and unpredictable in any human transaction.
Literary scholars, most notably Robert Alter, have held up the characterization of David in these texts as an astonishingly rounded and subtle treatment of an endlessly fascinating and elusive personality. Indeed, he has been called the model of the ambiguity of what it is to be human (Frontain and Wojcik, 5). Rather than offering a simple stereotype of the hero and king, the books of Samuel present several Davids, public and private: father, son, lover, outlaw, and king. In the interplay of these Davids with each other and the other characters, there is a fascinating possibility for exploring the limits of these markers of identity.
Of course, there is a danger of over-reading here. Accidental and unintended juxtapositions may be just that, rather than precursors of modern and postmodern literary effects. Yet one thing is clear from reading these books. Those who handed on these traditions tell stories the whole point of which depends on the subtle ways in which language and power are related and the way history and story can be manipulated and reread in order to provoke particular responses from an audience. Time and again, it is David’s ability to access, process, and manipulate the flow of information within the text that gives him his advantage; his failures occur when he is distracted or outwitted in this deadly game. It is surely not inappropriate to imagine that storytellers and writers who show their characters using and responding to complex communicative strategies would themselves be capable of using such strategies in their own work.
The message of works such as the books of Samuel resides, then, not so much in explicit accounts of actions, speech, and intention, but in the structure of the language, syntax, and narrative conventions that go together to make up this extraordinary work. The effort to match intention and effect is shown to be constantly thwarted. Speech and actions have unintended and unforeseen consequences. This implies that the attempt to reverse the process and deduce intentions from results is even more subject to error and misunderstanding (Frontain and Wojcik, 10).
Hence the importance of the promise and the oath, its divinely sanctioned refinement, in the narrative structure of Samuel 1and 2 (Pyper, 131–55). Promises in the books of Samuel seem to bridge the gap between intention and action by invoking the divine but then compound it when they are broken or reinterpreted. Oaths are only necessary because plain statements do not bind people to a course of action.
This also emphasizes the paradoxical vulnerability of masculinity as a social category. Just as the spoken word always risks misinterpretation by its hearers, so the male has to entrust his seed to a woman, with no guarantee that a son will be forthcoming, or that any child will be his. The gap between intention and achievement that bedevils speech is structurally equivalent to the one between intercourse and childbirth.
Death and succession go together. It is because of death that a successor becomes necessary. This essential heir is also the paradoxical reminder of the inevitability of death and may in fact become the embodiment of that threat to the father. Death, however, is the ultimate downfall of human intention. No one can live forever simply by intending to. Human beings can bring about death, but cannot reverse it; they may bring death inadvertently or fail to do so when they try to.
This paradox is heightened when the political continuity of a community is tied to biological succession, as is the case in a hereditary monarchy. The books of Samuel explore the consequences of the move to a dynastic system in Israel. Questions as to how communities and individuals interact to preserve identity through time are at the heart of their concerns. If we take it that the form we now have of these texts is a product of a time no earlier than the latest incidents they relate, those who are transmitting them know also that the story of the monarchy ends in the defeat and destruction of the Davidic kingdom. They tell these stories to audiences that know the promises of peace and stability have proven to be untrue. How is this to be explained? What lessons can be learned from the past so that a meaning that has relevance to their present situation can be found?
These books also describe a crucial transition in the understanding of Israel as a political entity in the context of the conflicting power claims of the ancient Levant. They describe it, however, for the benefit of communities that are wrestling with the need to understand what Israel is in their own very different situation of defeat and the continued influence of powerful imperial forces. The model of communal identity put forward here has had persisting effects on the models of nationhood that shaped modern Europe and the ideology of colonial expansion, and in turn the complex issues around identity that underlie the struggle for independence from colonial rule (Hastings). The utopian dream of an independent and homogenous Israel united under one king and one God is presented and critiqued in the book in ways that can still inform and unsettle current political arguments.
For modern readers, they raise difficult questions about how identity is to be understood and how differences between genders, generations, and ethnic groups are to be dealt with. Although the cultural assumptions may not be ours and we need always to guard against importing our questions and our answers into ancient texts with different concerns, staying alert to the way in which these texts display the interchange of information and identity as the political and social systems of Israel develop and change can illuminate present dilemmas, often as cautionary tales.
The first three chapters of the books of Samuel act as a prologue to the story of Israel and its kings up to the destruction of the temple, as told in Samuel and Kings. In many ways, they also foreshadow the key themes and dilemmas with which this longer history has to deal.
The extrabiblical evidence for the rise and fall of the Davidic kingdom is surprisingly scant as the archaeology of this period is contested and no accounts exist in other ancient literatures of the time. However, the period they cover marks a time when the two great powers of Egypt and Babylon—which lay to the south and the north of the area where these stories are set—were both undergoing internal convulsions. This left an unusual space for the various peoples of Palestine and Syria to assert their independence and indulge in local battles for supremacy. For the ancient reader, these books are one attempt to explain how and why the promises Israel saw as its heritage turned out so differently from what had been expected. A community that has experienced exile, the destruction of the temple, and the effective end to the Davidic monarchy needs to understand why this does not mean that the God whom the tradition says made promises of protection and enduring sovereignty has failed.
Read in sequel to the book of Judges, 1 Samuel 1 could easily be the birth story of the next judge. The repeated use of the verb “ask” in this story, which resembles the name “Saul” in Hebrew, has led to scholarly debate as to whether this was originally the birth story of Saul (McCarter 1980). Strikingly, neither Saul nor David has such a birth story in Samuel. The familiar story of a childless woman bearing a son through God’s intervention has some twists, however. It is Hannah who takes the initiative in praying for a son, and the reassurance she needs is given by the priest Eli in the temple at Shiloh, rather than by a mysterious messenger. There is a further twist when Hannah vows to dedicate her son to God for life and in her song of praise.
A key theme that runs throughout Samuel and Kings is introduced in the discussion of the failures of Eli’s sons. They are the presumptive heirs to hereditary priesthood of Eli, but their conduct is unacceptable. The narrative tensions develop around vows and their fulfillment, and around the related theme of the hereditary principle. A man of God comes to Eli and announces that despite God’s much earlier promise that Eli and his family would be priests before him forever, now his sons are to be killed and a new order will come into force. This introduces a worrying principle into the narrative. God may rescind the promises he has made, even of an eternal priesthood. The unsatisfactory actions of sons may mean that a promised destiny is not fulfilled. Eli seems to have little influence over his sons but has less over the divine promise. As a model of the future prospects for kingship in Israel, this is sobering.
In another foreshadowing of the later story, Samuel has already entered the story as the one who will supplant Eli’s sons as his successor, combining the roles of priest, prophet, and judge in an unprecedented synthesis. The young Samuel is inspired by the Lord to make this clear to Eli, whose response is the faithful acceptance of his fate. A pattern has been set, of sons who cannot be trusted, of promises, even divine ones, that turn out to be provisional or to have unlooked-for consequences, and of the rise of an unexpected successor.
The interpretative tradition has focused on the incident of Samuel’s call and the rejection of Eli. For writers such as John Cassian and Basil the Great, it is a story that resonates with the issue of how and why God chooses people; in discussions of election, Samuel can be an important example (Franke). He is set aside from childhood, and the story does not argue that any particular gifts on his part set him aside. Eli as the representative of a failing priestly dynasty does, however, have the wisdom to understand that his own role in the story is to bow out graciously, giving what wisdom he can to Samuel.
For readers such as Donna Nolan Fewell and David Gunn (1993), the role of Hannah in this story has become a focus for attention. Her initiative and, particularly, the potentially revolutionary content of her song mean that she can speak for women who challenge any system that attempts to subjugate them. It resonates with the Magnificat in Luke 1:46-55 in its repeated praise of God as the one who reverses status, exalting the weak and humbling those with riches and power. Her song continues to be a challenge today, especially as the systems of power and privilege are constantly threatened in the story to follow, but often reestablish themselves in a new guise. Quite how radical a true expression of Hannah’s sentiments would be is a continuing point of debate as the relationship between belief and political structures is negotiated.
In 1 Samuel 4–6, our attention is turned outward to the international and political environment of Samuel’s new status in Israel. In a manner that becomes familiar through its repetition in the book of Judges, the test for the new political order is a Philistine invasion. Israel is reduced to playing its trump card when it brings the ark of the Lord into the camp, only for this to have the opposite effect of what was intended; the Philistines rally and capture the ark.
Scholars have speculated that a so-called Ark Narrative once formed part of an independently circulated cycle of stories (Gordon). This may be so, but one of the points of the books of Samuel is to account for the bringing together of the Davidic king and YHWH’s temple in Jerusalem and to illuminate the tensions to which this juxtaposition gives rise. In these early chapters, neither the future king nor the ark—as the nearest thing to a physical embodiment of YHWH—are in Jerusalem, and the separate—and sometimes apparently random—stories of the ark and the king are juxtaposed rather than linked. How these two stories come to run together without becoming inseparable is the point of the narrative. In the end, the fate of the kings and the fate of YHWH will be very different. The human institution fails and is transformed, while YHWH’s position continues undiminished despite the fate of the ark, at least within the ideology of the texts.
Even at this point in the story, what in an ancient context might seem to be the defeat of Israel’s God turns out to be quite the opposite. In a series of comic accidents, the Philistine god Dagon is overthrown and the people are plagued with mice and hemorrhoids. The trouble is, however, that no one seems to be able to control the ark, and the story evolves into a sort of hot-potato game as various communities try to get rid of it until it finally comes to rest in Kiriath-jearim. There it waits until much later in the story when David is in a position to bring the ark into the orbit of his growing power.
This story of the ark has led to a rich allegorical series of interpretations. As the sign of God’s earthly presence with Israel, Christian interpreters tied it to the incarnation of Christ (so, for instance, Bede) or to Mary as the vehicle of that incarnation (Jeffrey). In less concrete terms, it becomes a focus for meditation on the reconciling work of God in Christ, drawing on the understanding of the ark as God’s mercy seat. Again, it is the point of encounter. Typically, the history of interpretation comes late to recognizing the satirical bent of the tales.
Theologically, these stories, which have a strong resemblance to folktales, remind the modern reader that these texts are well aware of the uncanniness and the unpredictability of the God they bear witness to. This story is as near as the Bible comes to comic writing. Its message is a serious one for modern readers. Whatever is powerful is also dangerous; whatever can protect us can also be a threat. Any tendency to treat God as a possession or, indeed, to use him as a weapon or as a threat against others is likely to have consequences that no one will enjoy. The unpredictability, allure, and danger of what is, after all, a wooden box on an oxcart, reminds readers that none of the human characters is in control of the story. Those in contemporary political discourse who claim divine support for their policies might well remember this. Humor and irony are appropriate in discussing God’s dealings with humanity. The downside of this is that the opponents of God and of Israel are at times depicted as caricatures and figures of fun in a way that can, if unchecked, seem to justify a stereotypical response that risks forgetting their humanity. How biblical texts portray those who are alien and the proper response to them is a complex question. We do need to note the moments when the Philistines show unexpected courage and those when the people of Israel react through fear or prejudice.
First Samuel 7 shows that Samuel has succeeded in the way that counts for a judge. Under his leadership, the Philistines are defeated. He does this, however, not by military power, but by exercising his priestly office and offering a sacrifice. Now, once more, there is a problem of succession. Samuel is in the same situation as Eli. His sons are worthless, yet, despite this, he names them as his successors. At this, the people protest and ask for a king “like other nations” (8:4).
Samuel takes his resentment at this to God, who agrees to the demand, but with a warning. The warning in 8:8-18 is Samuel’s, however, not God’s. This passage is often read as reflecting a later Deuteronomistic view of the inevitable failure of the monarchy and as being a definitive statement of the antimonarchical trend in these texts. Read in context, however, is it quite the condemnation that Samuel seems to think? After all, what he warns the people is that the king they are seeking will organize the army, give their sons a proper military training, and even find occupations in his palace for their daughters. After the years of uncertainty and chaos that are depicted in the book of Judges, when Israel had no clear leader or any mechanism for appointing one until they had suffered defeat, this is surely just what the people are asking for. Samuel is no longer able to lead them, and his sons offer no prospect of being able to provide stability.
Traditionally, this reading has led to a suspicion of kingship that has not always helped relationships between the church and the state. In response to the Geneva Bible’s questioning of royal legitimacy in the footnotes to passages such as this, based on its endorsement of the Calvinist position that the people have the right to depose a tyrannous ruler, King James decreed that the new version of the Bible produced under his sponsorship should have no footnotes.
In a contemporary reading, we can recognize the same questioning of what constitutes legitimate power in the complex politics of identity that surrounds the call for independence among former colonies, which has led to the establishment of current political boundaries around the world. These issues are the topic of postcolonial studies. A key topic in such studies is the role of mimicry: the way in which the colonized take on the customs and institutions of the colonizer. Paradoxically, a colonized group can only be taken seriously if it shows itself to meet the colonizers’ criteria for nationhood. Here, the people of Israel encapsulate the paradox in a phrase. To maintain their distinctive identity, they need to become “like the other nations.” In particular, they need a king who will provide both a point of union and a continuity of leadership not available under the judges and who will be recognized by their enemies as a legitimate leader. The kind of decisive leadership and economic coordination of society that Samuel warns the people to expect from their king may actually be exactly what they feel they have been missing.
These texts give us an insight into the paradox that by seeking to establish the distinctiveness of our identity, we almost always have to reformulate and even compromise it. Whose criteria do we use? Religious groups fall prey to the same paradoxes as nation states. It also reminds us that any claim, even from a recognized authority, to speak in the name of God needs to be examined.
First Samuel 9 begins by introducing a new character who literally stands out in contrast to the rest of Israel: Saul, son of Kish. He arrives full-grown in the story, with no birth narrative. In fact, the obscurity of his ancestry is made a point. In the wake of 1 Samuel 8, the question—Is this character the new king?—comes to mind, but clearly nothing can happen unless Saul comes to Samuel’s attention. In a story that almost seems to parody the way narratives need to get their protagonists to meet, Saul finds Samuel by accident as he seeks his uncle’s lost asses and is directed to a seer whose words always come true. Samuel anoints him as ruler of Israel (note, however, that the word “king” is never mentioned at this juncture), an unprecedented act in Israel’s story. There follows a promise, but only in the Greek translation. The Hebrew text does not specify what being a “ruler” entails.
Samuel does tell Saul of a sign that will show he has God’s favor. This is an encounter with a band of prophets that throws him into a trance. In itself an intriguing glimpse into the prophetic culture as the writer understood it, this story leaves some doubt as to whether Saul’s experience is seen as creditable.
The narrative recounts two further episodes where Saul is in fact declared king, rather than ruler, although it is the people and the narrator who use the word, not Samuel. In addition to prophetic anointment (10:1), he must be seen to be God’s chosen by lot (10:21) and he must be acclaimed as king by the people (10:24). Again, this may represent the combination of different traditions, but it also emphasizes the fact that Saul’s role is a new one. He is no one’s successor but at the same time embodies a number of leadership roles, and then demonstrates his fitness for office through a military victory over the Philistines (11:11-15). Even so, his rule is challenged from the outset, and no sooner is he acclaimed than Samuel is given a speech—markedly Deuteronomistic in tone—that makes no bones about the fact that the kingship shows the people’s wickedness. Not long after that, Saul takes it upon himself to undertake a sacrifice in the absence of Samuel. On his arrival, Samuel tells Saul that he has broken a divine command, although it is not easy to see from the text just what specific command is meant here (13:13). It is only at that point that we learn of a potential promise to Saul that has now been rescinded. He would have been promised an eternal kingdom, but now his kingdom is already superseded. Another has already been appointed ruler in his stead, although the reader is in the dark as to who this is.
In addition, the final verses of 1 Samuel 13 show that by this stage the vaunted independence of Israel is rather hollow. The nation may have a king, but it is still harried by Philistine invasion and indeed seems to be entirely dependent on the Philistines for any ironwork, as Israel is forbidden to have blacksmiths.
Saul is mentioned only once in the New Testament, but at a crucial moment in the book of Acts, where his namesake, Saul, becomes known as Paul. In Acts 13:21, Saul is mentioned as the first king, but as one supplanted by David. Here Saul becomes the example that explains how those who are legitimately chosen by God can be replaced. Paul’s speech is part of his argument that the rise of the new Israel of the church does not mean that the chosen status of Israel is to be questioned. Saul is legitimately king, even if his kingship passes to David.
To modern eyes, Saul may seem a tragic figure (Exum). He resembles a number of modern leaders whose military prowess and charisma in their struggles for national independence did not equip them to deal with the infighting and political maneuvering that ensued once independence was won, and whose responses typically become increasingly arbitrary and dictatorial. Plucked unwillingly from obscurity, he carries out his key responsibility, to lead the people to military victory, with notable success. However, his status remains undefined and his kingship depends on the assent of the people and the continued support of God. He is then placed in the dilemma of risking loss of loyalty among the people because of the unrest caused by Samuel’s failure to come when he had promised. He makes his decision, only to find that he has lost everything and faces an unknown rival who is destined to supplant him. Given Samuel’s attitude to the kingship, what is his role in the whole story? How is Saul to know what God’s commands are and what comes from Samuel himself? The real crisis of his story is that he loses all communication with God, which is a personal and political disaster. This is something that may speak to rulers of Egypt, Tunisia, and other countries that have experienced upheaval during and after the “Arab Spring.”
We now encounter Saul’s son Jonathan. His appearance in the story may remind us that we have been told nothing up to now of Saul’s domestic life. Jonathan simply arrives in the story as a fully grown warrior. Given the move in these narratives toward hereditary succession, at this point in the narrative the question might arise, Is this the already-designated successor to Saul?
What follows is another story that revolves around an oath. One small detail sets up the unfolding disaster that will eventually destroy Saul’s household. Jonathan goes out to fight the Philistines with just his armor-bearer, “but he did not tell his father” (14:1).
This lack of information becomes crucial. Throughout the books of Samuel, the importance for a ruler to control and master the flow of information in his court and kingdom is a recurrent theme. Because of Jonathan’s omission, Saul has to find out who it is that is missing from the army, has managed to storm the Philistine garrison, and has caused the panic that leads to a full-scale Philistine retreat. We then learn that Saul commits what the Greek text describes as a “very rash act” (14:24). He swears an oath that no one is to eat anything before evening. Jonathan, who has not heard the oath, eats some honey. Things begin to go wrong quickly, culminating in YHWH’s refusal to answer Saul’s question as to whether he should attack the Philistines. Another vital channel of communication seems to be severed.
Saul’s response is to declare that whoever has sinned shall die, even if it is Jonathan. Traditionally, this is seen as yet another rash oath. Yet Saul knew that the only people who were not around when he proclaimed his first oath about the fast were Jonathan and his armor-bearer. Is this second oath an innocent piece of folly, or is it made with that knowledge in mind?
When Jonathan returns, he is subjected to the lot but already seems to have been singled out by Saul. Jonathan owns up to his deed when the lot falls on him and is condemned to die until a unique event in the Hebrew Bible occurs. The people counter Saul’s oath by a directly opposing oath, both invoking the name of YHWH, and thereby save Jonathan, but at the expense of the credibility and prestige of Saul (14:44). He is the only character in the Hebrew Bible who makes an oath in YHWH’s name that is not fulfilled. This outcome also reinforces the growing separation and indeed hostility between Saul and YHWH. Yet despite all this, Saul continues to be a successful war leader, and we are finally told further details of his family. He has several sons and therefore several potential successors. His cousin is now serving as his general.
In rabbinical discussion, this text stands with the story of Jephthah in Judges 11, where another child is put in mortal danger because of the unthinking oath sworn by her father. The warnings against oaths in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament prohibitions of oaths (Matt. 5:33-36; James 5:12) are defended in later Christian writings with reference to these episodes. Saul’s reputation is further besmirched in the tradition by these words. This is tempered by the interest in later Christian writers, including Tertullian and Bede, in the discipline of fasting. In that context, Saul’s imposition of punishment for a breach of the rules of fasting without fear or favor is viewed favorably (Franke).
This story can certainly stand as a warning against rash oaths, but there seems to be something deeper at work here that is a recurrent theme in biblical texts, with troubling repercussions for modern readers. It concerns the dynamics of the relationship between fathers and sons in the ancient world. On the one hand, a son is essential to ensure that the memory and legacy of the father are maintained, but on the other hand, he is a potential rival.
This tension is heightened when it comes to a royal family. Why would a royal son and heir wait for his father to die in order to succeed? A similar fear has prevented many contemporary dictators from nominating a successor until too late, resulting in the collapse of their regime on their death. The fate of Yugoslavia after Josip Broz Tito’s death is one example among many.
Jonathan’s military success and independence suggest that the day may come when he can supplant his father. Is Saul’s oath, consciously or unconsciously, an expression of what in psychoanalytic terms could be a “Laius complex”? This is named after the father of Oedipus, who exposed his infant son in response to a prophecy, later fulfilled as we know, that his son would kill him. This will not be the only time Saul makes an attempt on his son’s life.
There is an odd disconnection between the preceding chapters and 1 Samuel 15. Samuel reappears and this time seems to be about to anoint Saul as king, yet he has already declared that God’s favor has passed to his successor. The episode suggests that, after all that has happened, Saul is not yet king. It is also the first time Samuel has brought himself to utter the word in Saul’s presence (15:1). This renewal of Saul’s kingship, if we read it in this way, brings with it a new test. Saul must eradicate the Amalekites in revenge for their ancient insult against Israel. Not only are the people to be killed, including the infants, but their livestock—even including the donkeys—are also to be wiped out, in accordance with the biblical law related to holy war.
Saul then takes it on himself to warn the Kenites, traditional allies of Israel, to leave the city. Saul and his army then carry out their task, but spare the Amalekite king and the best of the livestock, destroying “all that was despised and worthless” (15:9), a category presumably including the Amalekite women and children. Samuel, once more absent at a crucial juncture, returns, having heard directly from YHWH that he has repented of making Saul king because of his failure to obey divine commands (15:10). The prophet confronts Saul with the fact that he can hear the sounds of animals, and Saul explains that he has spared them in order to offer sacrifice to God.
Samuel rejoins that obedience is better than sacrifice, provoking Saul to a plea for forgiveness and for a restoration of the crucial communication between him and God. This Samuel refuses, which leads to a scene where Samuel expressly denies that “the Glory of Israel” can repent, despite the fact that he has earlier had an explicit message from God that he has indeed repented (15:29). This disparity is highlighted by the end of the chapter, where Saul and Samuel part for good, thus removing Saul’s only remaining connection to God. We are left with a picture of the three in their separate spheres; Saul in Gibeah, Samuel in Ramah, grieving over Saul, and YHWH, explicitly sorry that he made Saul king.
This passage raises for the interpretive tradition some complex moral dilemmas and philosophical quandaries. Obedience may be better than sacrifice, but are there commands that ought not to be obeyed? The problem is compounded in this case because the command is represented as the command of a God who can repent of his previous decisions. For patristic commentators such as Tertullian and Augustine, the implication that God might have been in error is inconceivable, and they explain at length why any language that seems to impute such human qualities to God is to be interpreted allegorically (Franke, 258). This complicates the sort of argument that would defend such genocide on the grounds that whatever God commands is by definition good. If God can change his mind, then what is good today may be bad tomorrow.
Using this story and its cognates in the Bible as any sort of guide to contemporary political action poses acute difficulties. We have to rely on the authority of a human interpreter to find out what God’s will may be. Can that ever be certain enough to justify such blind obedience? Can it ever involve the demand for complete annihilation of a people? In our contemporary context, where acts of terrorism and the use of overwhelming violence in response to these have both been justified by appealing to divine judgment, these stories have a troubling relevance.
Some glimmer of redemption of this text comes from the fact that, by the end of this chapter, apparently all the Amalekites, including the king, have been eradicated. Yet throughout the rest of Samuel, Amalekites continue to turn up, often in quite influential roles in the text. The text does not support its own claim of total annihilation. Do the writers know that such rhetorical claims are almost impossible to achieve and that they say more about the needs and anxieties of the text’s writers many hundred years later than they do about God’s actions in the context of Saul’s reign?
First Samuel 16 begins with God’s rather peremptory call to Samuel to stop grieving for Saul and to find the new king from the family of Jesse in Bethlehem. This begins a block of material running from 1 Samuel 16 to 2 Sam. 1:27, which has been called “the History of David’s Rise.” In this case, there is no ambiguity about the use of the word “king.” Samuel rather unexpectedly hesitates for fear of what Saul will do to him, not having shown much fear of him before (16:2). Once in Bethlehem, he inspects all the sons who attend the sacrifice to which he invites them. At first, he is impressed by the physical appearance of the oldest son, in the way that Saul was impressive, but is told only to pay attention to the heart. All the sons prove not to be the chosen one, so Samuel asks if there is another, even younger son and is told that there is, but that he is out tending sheep. This reflects the common folktale motif of the successful younger son.
When David finally arrives, he ironically turns out to be good-looking as well. Samuel anoints him, and the spirit descends on him. We are then transported back to Saul’s dwelling, where an evil spirit replaces the spirit of YHWH (16:14). He calls for a musician to be found to dispel the effects, and David is recommended in glowing terms as both a skilled player and a mighty warrior (16:18). David is thus installed in the royal entourage.
In the tradition of interpretation, David’s lowly status as shepherd boy and his obscure origins give a particular focus to the metaphor of the shepherd in the subsequent history of interpretation. His musical skills are also at the heart of both Jewish and Christian understandings of the use of music in worship. This also is linked to his association with the Psalms and with the inauguration of the temple services in Chronicles. His role in the liturgy is a large part of his enduring significance in the spiritual life of the communities that look to these works as part of their heritage.
Modern interpreters may see here a common trope of the poor boy made good in many folktales. David is not the third son, or the seventh, as is often the case in such tales, but the eighth: a status pointing to both his marginality and his exceptionality. The role of music in alleviating Saul’s suffering is also intriguing, foreshadowing much modern research on music as therapy.
The instruction to Samuel not to look at the outward appearance to judge who is the man fit to take on the kingship but to look at the heart is often held up as an example to condemn superficial judgments. The story, however, may complicate what is being meant. What exactly is it that Samuel sees in David’s heart? Does he see the qualities that will lead to David’s downfall as well as those that will allow him to rise to the kingship in the first place? The narrator of Samuel almost never gives us a glimpse into David’s inner thoughts and motivations, although other characters are laid open to us at times. It is this that gives him his core of mystery, which is both alluring and at times disturbing and which has made him a character that different generations have been able to rewrite to fit their notions of what kingship might be (Josipovici).
What follows in 1 Samuel 17 is one of the few cases in the Bible where seemingly discrepant elements in the Hebrew traditions of the story correspond to the fact that the Greek translations omit sections of the narrative and thereby read more coherently. The story of David and Goliath is so well known that the discrepancies get overlooked. At the beginning of 1 Samuel 17, David seems to be once again living in Bethlehem and is visiting his brothers on the battlefield with the Philistines, in a very inferior position. His questions and his brothers’ responses do not square easily with the picture of the celebrated warrior introduced to Saul in the previous chapter. Indeed, the way in which they dismiss him seems to show that he has caused tension in his own family previously by his precocious self-confidence.
There seem to be at least two stories combined, one in which David is already Saul’s squire and a respected warrior and one in which his first encounter with Saul is when he is brought to him because of his brash boasts about dealing with Goliath. First Samuel 17:13 seems to imply that he needs introducing to the reader, and Saul shows no knowledge of him when he is brought to him; the Greek versions omit much of this material (McCarter 1980, 306–9).
The felling of Goliath is a key moment. Goliath’s height recalls the stories of giants in Num. 13:32-33 and Deut. 2:10-11, but also harks back to the description of Saul in 1 Sam. 9:2. Yet, what is stopping Saul and Jonathan, who elsewhere have shown both skill and courage as leaders of Israel, from taking on this challenge? In David, a new champion emerges who wins by cunning and skill rather than by strength or force of numbers. When the victorious David is brought to Saul, he asks a strange question: “Whose son are you?” (17:58). Again, this seems incongruous, given that in 16:19 Saul had dealt with Jesse himself. Historical criticism may explain this as an effect of the editing together of different accounts. However, that does not explain why such an obvious discrepancy has been left in the text. Another way of dealing with this text is to concentrate on the effect of this puzzling question. It highlights the key question of succession and the future of the kingship. The next king should be Saul’s son. In the following chapters, David not only takes on the role of Saul’s son and successor but also founds his own dynasty.
The celebrity of this story and its message that the plucky underdog can, with God’s help, overcome the most intimidating and dangerous enemies has led to David and Goliath becoming part of a cliché. This story of victory against the odds may, however, be less clear-cut than it seems. In ancient warfare, the tactical advantage of the agile sling-bearer against an infantryman weighed down with heavy armor was clear.
However it happens, by the end of 1 Samuel 17, David has undoubtedly come to Saul’s attention. We know, though most of the characters do not, that David has already been chosen as Saul’s replacement. The next section can be read as a remarkable narrative achievement in that David, the chosen successor, exchanges roles with Jonathan, the presumed heir to Saul, in a way that means he can be at the same time the first Davidic king, but not the first king. Jonathan’s soul is bound to David’s at their first meeting, and he clothes David in his own princely garments and gives him his weapons (18:1-2). Saul also takes him into his own house and sets him over the army. Saul becomes a surrogate father to him. This also brings into play once more the Laius complex, the father’s fear of the son who will supplant him and who is the reminder of his own mortality. The song the women sing that compares Saul unfavorably to the new young hero bespeaks a threat to Saul’s position (18:7).
Problems quickly arise, which will repeat throughout the rest of the books of Samuel. Kingship is linked to military prowess. Almost inevitably, a successful king’s territory and army will expand to the point where no one man can lead it. Yet appointing a general means risking the possibility that he will outdo the king in gaining victories, thus becoming a rival, just as Jonathan had been.
David’s popularity rises, and Saul sees a threat to his position. In a dark reversal, the Philistine enemies become a potential solution to this problem if David can be induced into foolhardy attacks against them. Saul also uses his daughters to set up traps for David using the promise of marriage as bait in a way familiar from folktales around the world.
What Saul does not reckon with is his children’s loyalty to David, which allows his rival to escape a series of plots against his life. Both his daughter Michal and Jonathan relay Saul’s plans to David and enable him to evade their father (19:11-17; 20:35-42). In this situation, Saul may have the political power, but David has the crucial advantage when it comes to information. Through Jonathan, David can learn what Saul is doing and interpret it more astutely than Jonathan himself. Saul’s anger against David extends thereafter to Jonathan, cementing the bond between the two younger men. Jonathan becomes the target of his father’s spear as David had before him (18:10; 20:33). Both are united against “the enemies of David” (20:16), chief among whom is Jonathan’s own father, Saul.
Jonathan’s relationship with David becomes a model for later writers to discuss the nature of friendship, often drawing on Greek models (Harding). Either the two are seen as an example of equal friendship, one soul in two bodies, or else they are seen as corresponding to the model of the friendship between an older mentor and the lad of promise. Insofar as David is seen as a type of Christ, Jonathan can be seen as the archetypal believer, content to renounce his own power and privilege in devotion to the church.
The stories of David and Jonathan have been at the heart of recent discussions over biblical attitudes to same-sex relationships. The devotion of Jonathan to David is clear, but there is no unambiguous evidence as to whether this had a sexual component; the text will bear rather different interpretations (Harding). As is often the case in trying to answer contemporary questions from an ancient text, we risk applying alien categories to the ancient world. A good way of detecting this is to ask, Could I ask that question in Biblical Hebrew? If the answer is no, that should alert us to the possibility that our categories may be inappropriate. In any case, the word translated “love” in Hebrew is used in the contexts of covenant loyalty. David is never the subject of the verb in the books of Samuel; he is the one who is loved.
David is now a hunted man, and the next section depicts the lengths to which he will go to protect himself from Saul. Indeed, he becomes so implicated with the traditional enemies of Israel that the text has to go to improbable lengths to assure us that he was always at heart working in Israel’s interests. Is this a later attempt to whitewash a murky series of tales? In any case, it resembles those in other cultures, such as the English tale of Robin Hood, featuring an outlaw who is really on the side of the oppressed and of justice.
David first flees to the temple at Nob (21:1). This is the first time we have seen David in the context of a temple and dealing with the priesthood. He asks for bread, but there is only holy bread available, hedged about with conditions. David claims to be on a secret mission from the king, but that does not convince the priest, Ahimelech. David declares that his men have obviously not been in contact with women, as they are on campaign (21:5), a declaration that will come to be ironic in the context of his later dealings with Uriah the Hittite (2 Samuel 11). Thus reassured, but also under duress, the priest allows him and his men to eat the bread.
David regains Goliath’s sword (1 Sam. 21:9), although he is seen by one of Saul’s servants, and then seeks refuge with the king of Gath, Goliath’s own city, of all places. His reputation has gone before him, however, and only feigning madness saves the day. He then escapes to a cave, where he assembles the equivalent of Robin Hood’s band of merry men from the marginalized people of Saul’s kingdom, including his own brothers (22:1-2). Saul’s servant, however, tells the king of David’s doings at Nob, which leads Saul to order the slaughter of all the priests. David then moves to Keilah, where he is warned by YHWH that he will be given up to Saul.
Significantly, David now has the access to divine guidance that Saul has lost. The stories proceed through a series of near misses where the flow of information is all-important. David is informed against, but he always seems to be one step ahead through his own sources of information, crucially including divine guidance through his consultation of the ephod.
Toward the end of these stories, Jonathan and David meet again at Horesh (23:16-18). Jonathan for the first time explicitly states that David will succeed Saul as king, with Jonathan second in command. They make a covenant together once more, and David’s position seems to be settled.
The incident of David’s eating the bread from the altar is recalled by Jesus in Mark 2:26 as part of his justification to the Pharisees for his disciples’ act of plucking grain on the Sabbath. This has taken on a particular significance for subsequent interpreters in arguments over the authority of the Gospel. Jesus is represented as referring to Abiathar as high priest rather than Ahimelech as in 2 Samuel 21. Is Jesus mistaken? Is Mark mistaken? In order to avoid either conclusion, there is a body of literature that seeks to account for this difference with varied degrees of ingenuity. This may seem a rather small detail, but it has become a test case for belief in the historical reliability of the Gospels for certain groups. Others argue that the truths of the Christian message do not stand or fall by such textual details, and asserting that they do misconstrues the nature of these texts and the way in which the fallibility of communication is part and parcel not only of their message but also of their construction.
For the contemporary reader, the connections between religious institutions, political authority, and the control of information in this story has resonances with doubts about the implications for various political systems of the growth of surveillance, coupled with the possibilities for all sorts of groups, official and unofficial, to tap into supposedly confidential information. It is a useful reminder that, although the technology is vastly different, the moral issues around secrecy, spying, and disclosure were also of concern in the ancient world. Second Samuel 20–23 also raises issues as to whether the religious establishment and its rules should stand aloof from politics. Ahimelech is in an invidious position. Is his loyalty to David, to Saul, or to God? How is he to work out the alliances between them? Is complying with David’s wishes going to please or offend either Saul or God? As so often, there is no clear answer in this complex situation. The story leaves us with a heightened awareness of the issues at stake, however.
First Samuel 24–26 forms an intriguing unit. The two outer chapters bear striking similarities, to the extent that they look like two versions of one underlying story. Between them is the apparently unrelated story of Nabal, the inhospitable rich man. Yet, read as a unit, these three stories shed light on each other.
In 1 Samuel 24 and 26, the basic premise is that Saul is in pursuit of David in the wilderness. David, by luck or cunning, is able to approach the unsuspecting Saul and take away part of his possessions. David then, brandishing his trophy, appears to Saul and his army (24:11; 26:16), allowing David to make the double point that he has had Saul at his mercy, but that he has chosen not to kill Saul because he is YHWH’s anointed. As David is the new anointed leader, we might suggest that this is a good general principle for him to establish. Saul’s response in both cases is, surprisingly, to acknowledge David’s moral superiority. Nevertheless, his apparent acceptance of David’s position proves to be short-lived.
There are significant differences in the stories and their results, however. In the first story in 1 Samuel 24, David cuts off Saul’s robe as he is relieving himself. This harks back to the episode where Saul, clutching at Samuel’s robe in despair, tears it, which Samuel interprets as a sign that the kingdom will be torn from his grasp (1 Sam. 15:27). Saul acknowledges explicitly that David will be king and in return exacts an oath from him that he will not wipe out Saul’s name from Israel (24:19-20). This seems to be an acceptance by Saul that his line will go into decline.
In the second version of this encounter, in 1 Samuel 26, David takes Saul’s water jar and spear—perhaps the very one hurled at David’s own head in 19:10—from the midst of the army. David then reproaches Abner, Saul’s general (and cousin), for not protecting the king (26:13-16). Intriguingly, this time Saul addresses David explicitly as his son (26:17), but makes no mention of his kingship, simply making a general statement that David will succeed in many things. After the apparent reconciliation of 1 Samuel 24, this is quite a contrast. David’s reaction in 1 Samuel 27 is to see the lack of any specific pledge as the final confirmation that Saul will not rest until David is dead.
In between these two tellings, in 1 Samuel 25, is the story of Nabal, the man whose behavior is, at least from David’s point of view, summed up by his name, which means “fool.” In response to a request from David for food for his men, albeit with an implicit threat in his reminder that Nabal’s wealth had remained untouched despite the presence of his band, Nabal dismisses David and his pretentions with scorn (25:10). David angrily orders armed reprisals but is forestalled by Abigail, Nabal’s beautiful wife, who urges him not to incur the guilt of a rash blood revenge (25:24-31). In contrast to Nabal’s characterization of David as a resentful ex-servant, she describes him as fighting the Lord’s battles. David is mollified and accepts her gifts (25:35). She returns to the feasting Nabal and next morning tells him the news, which kills him. David is then free to marry Abigail himself.
In context, Nabal is a kind of surrogate Saul (Gordon). Here David is on the point of exacting satisfaction for an insult, which is much less dangerous to him than Saul’s threats. Just as he has protected Nabal’s herdsmen from attack, he has done more than any to preserve Saul’s kingdom from Philistine attack. Saul in chapter 24 speaks in the conciliatory tones of an Abigail, but in 1 Samuel 26, his true feelings, which are much closer to Nabal’s, seem to come to the fore. Yet the story of Nabal shows that restraint on the part of David leads to the outcome that favors him in the end while enabling him to avoid the charge that he is guilty of an inappropriate blood revenge. That would provoke a counteraction that would end in a general massacre, either of Nabal’s men on one hand or of Saul’s army on the other. A pattern that has already been set but that will recur throughout David’s career is exemplified here. Anyone who is an obstacle to David tends to die unexpectedly and often violently, but in a way that allows David an alibi which, at least on the face of it, removes the suspicion of guilt from him.
Abigail is seen by early Christian interpreters such as Ambrose and John Cassian as exemplifying the virtues of wisdom, particularly in her skill both in her speech and in knowing when to keep silent (Franke, 310). As a particularly favored wife of David, who is often identified with Christ, she can also come to represent the church. As a type of the convert, she sees David’s worth and throws in her lot with him. However, both the fact that she is still married and the fact of David’s conduct have meant that this interpretation has some difficulties. That aside, she is an exemplar of the complex relationship between human initiative and divine purposes. By acting prudently to forestall a possible sin by David, she furthers God’s purposes.
These stories show once again the psychological complexity of the books of Samuel. The inclusion of the story of Nabal can be read as an intriguing narrative device to reveal more than one side of David’s character and to show the possibility of another response on his part to Saul. The respect he shows to Saul, and the respect he gains from Saul, may seem to point to the power of restraint to settle situations, but we would do well not to be carried away by the lofty sentiments of either Saul or David. Saul’s words, however sincere, do not stop him from pursuing David. David’s professed loyalty to the king, again whether sincere or not, turns to his advantage and sets a precedent for the treatment of the king that is to his benefit. The rapprochement between former enemies exemplified by such contemporary cases as the meeting between Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and the Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin in the late 1970s is essential at some stage if a protracted conflict is to find any resolution, but this story shows that overidealizing such a situation is rarely wise.
The result of the potential rapprochement between Saul and David is that David once again flees to the heartland of Saul’s—and Israel’s—enemies: the court of Achish, the king of Gath, the city of Goliath. He takes six hundred men and his wives to Gath and asks Achish for a city (27:5). He is given Ziklag. This seems extraordinary. The anointed king of Israel is installed as a vassal of the king of Gath, now allied with the enemy whose defeat gained him his fame.
It is also clear that Achish, for one, has taken David’s final break with Saul to mean that he has also broken with Israel. The chapter explains how David practices an effective deception in this regard. He tells Achish that he is raiding Israel and its allies while in fact attacking other Philistine cities (27:10). He takes the precaution of following the practice that Samuel urged on Saul by massacring entire populations so as to leave no witnesses as to what had occurred. Note that the Amalekites, whom Saul supposedly wiped out, are among those mentioned. Again, David shows his adeptness at manipulating information. Achish takes this as meaning that David has burned his bridges with Israel (27:12). The arrangement works well until Achish decides that David will become his bodyguard and that he and his men will join Achish in a campaign against Israel at Shunem. This presents David with quite a dilemma. How will he maintain his double game?
The story then switches back to Saul. He is confronted by this powerful Philistine force and is now intimidated, in contrast to his younger self. He desperately seeks God’s guidance, but fails to find any means of learning God’s will in the matter (28:6). Samuel, who was one certain means of accessing God, has died. Saul resorts to seeking out a medium at Endor to summon Samuel’s spirit even though he has himself ordered the expulsion of all practitioners of divination (28:7).
The encounter at Endor is an extraordinary passage. The Hebrew Bible contains repeated injunctions against those who have any dealings with the dead. Other ancient cultures in the region have no doubt that the dead have continued importance for the living and expend considerable resources placating them and consulting their wishes. Israel’s traditions do not deny the possibility of such contacts, but forbid them (Lev. 20:6).
Saul, in stark contrast to David, is starved of information and sees no alternative but to break this taboo. Samuel indeed responds to the woman’s summons and, ironically, simply confirms what Saul has already been told, rendering the consultation pointless. The kingdom has been given to David because of Saul’s failure to carry out YHWH’s instructions to annihilate Amalek. Saul collapses, partly because he has not eaten, which brings to mind his earlier rash injunction to his army in 1 Samuel 14. He initially refuses the woman’s offer of food but relents, and she feeds both him and his men generously (28:22-25).
This passage has, not unnaturally, been a source of a great deal of theological speculation on the nature of life after death and of the relation between the holy prophet Samuel and the abhorrent practices of witchcraft. Augustine and Tertullian both puzzle over this. King James VI of Scotland in his Daemonology, a dialogue on the reality of witchcraft, is one of those who uses this story to argue that witchcraft is a reality, not simply an illusion. In his case, this is used to justify his campaign to extirpate witches from his newly united kingdom, with appalling results for the next century.
What is it of Samuel that survives, and from what state has he been recalled? The text itself is not particularly interested in these details. It may well be that the ancient audience would have been familiar with the practices and beliefs of mediums. In any case, for the purposes of the story, an entirely consistent metaphysical account of the realm of the dead is not required. This story is also a source in the tradition for reinforcing the ban on witchcraft and for aligning witchcraft with necromancy. The effect of this on the sad history of witchcraft trials, such as the 1692 trials in Salem Village, Massachusetts, is well documented.
Feminist commentators, in contrast to those who condemn the medium at Endor, have noted the surprisingly sympathetic treatment the text gives her (Frymer-Kensky 2002, 310). She shows genuine concern for the king, whose decrees have threatened her and her colleagues with banishment and death, providing him with food and with comfort. She represents a strand of female expertise and spirituality in ancient Israel that is otherwise suppressed. The books of Samuel, after all, are not written in order to give us an anthropological and sociological account of ancient Israel’s religious practices. They have a clear ideology of their own. Yet we get glimpses in such passages of a religious situation in ancient Israel that is much more complex, and much more in line with wider cultural practices, than the texts are comfortable with. This could well enter into discussions pertaining to the persecution of those whose religious conventions do not represent a society’s norm.
Chapters 29–31 of 1 Samuel bring Saul’s story to a close and explain David’s part in his death—or, rather, his alibi. After all, no one, on the face of it, stands to gain more by Saul’s death, and David is now allied, in appearance at least, with Saul’s enemies. We go back to the mustering of the Philistine forces. The army of Achish joins those of their fellow Philistine lords, and David and his men are obliged to follow on.
The song of the women about David’s prowess compared to Saul’s, which has followed David and has haunted Saul, now gives him an unexpected excuse. The other Philistine kings are highly suspicious of David and quote this song, pointing out to Achish that the coming battle gives David a good opportunity and motive for treachery against his new allies (29:5). By turning against them, he might hope to restore his damaged reputation in Israel. Achish defends David’s record as a loyal servant but orders him to remain behind. David protests against the injustice of the accusation from the Philistine lords, and Achish repeats his high opinion of him, but again insists that David and his men part company with the Philistine army (29:9). The irony of Israel’s hero pretending to be offended by the suggestion that he should be left behind in a Philistine assault on Israel is almost labored in this chapter. The upshot is that David goes back to Philistia while the Philistines go up to Jezreel (29:11).
On their return, David and his men discover that the Amalekites, who seem once more to have survived complete annihilation, have taken advantage of David’s absence to subject his city, Ziklag, to the kind of destruction they themselves have suffered (30:1-2). Rather than slaughter all the inhabitants, as David would have done, however, they have captured and taken away the women and children. David’s leadership is threatened as the people blame him for this catastrophe, but he takes swift action, with the Lord’s support, to pursue the raiding party (30:10). An abandoned Egyptian slave directs them to the Amalekite camp, and they mount a successful rescue, killing all the Amalekites except for four hundred who escape on camels. On their return, the victorious party comes across those of their number who were too exhausted to follow them all the way, and a dispute arises as to whether they should share in the plunder (30:21-25). David makes it plain that the spoils are to be divided equally. He also begins the process of mending bridges with the people of Judah by sending them a portion of the spoil as well.
While this has been going on, the Philistine attack is continuing. Saul’s sons are killed, including Jonathan, and Saul himself is surrounded (31:3). In extremis, he asks his armor-bearer to kill him so that he at least will not suffer the disgrace of being killed by the uncircumcised Philistines. The armor-bearer refuses, so Saul falls on his own sword. The news of his death leads to a wholesale flight by Israel, leaving the Philistines in occupation of the land (31:7). Saul’s story is not yet finished. His body is found, his head cut off, and his body displayed on the wall of Beth-shan (31:10). Hearing of this, the people of Jabesh-gilead, the city Saul defended against Nahash as the first act of his leadership, make the journey to Beth-shan, rescue the bodies of Saul and his sons, and then burn and bury them with appropriate mourning.
In marked contrast to the praise by many philosophers in the Greco-Roman world of the hero who shows mastery of his emotions and of his fate by taking his own life rather than face disgrace, the biblical tradition has been read as condemning any such act as a final rejection of God. Augustine is the most influential of the church fathers to write on the subject, and his views have shaped those of both Catholic and Protestant commentators in succeeding centuries (Augustine 1972). Rather than being seen as the final flaring of nobility for a tragic hero, Saul’s suicide confirms his rejection by God. The text, be it noted, simply reports Saul’s actions, offering no judgment.
For the modern reader, there is a poignancy in Saul’s desperation to maintain his relationship with God, which simply becomes yet another occasion for his inevitable fate to be reinforced. There is an uncomfortable message here about the possibility of coming to a point of no return in this relationship. Saul’s culpability here is not easy to assess. After all, once he has become subject to the attentions of an evil spirit “from YHWH,” is he morally responsible for his own actions anymore? If God is the source of the rebellion against himself, it is difficult to condemn Saul unequivocally. One message of the books of Samuel is that human judgment of others is deeply flawed. Achish and Saul both misjudge David, but he too is capable of misjudgment. The best result may be a due humility in judging others.
Saul’s death marks the transition to the second book of Samuel. The first chapter of 2 Samuel is typical of the ever-growing complexity of the book as David begins his rule. It begins with an extended incident that puts under the microscope the ability of the new king to assess and respond to information and to deal with the complex rivalries and loyalties of the various factions within the kingdom.
David is at Ziklag when a dirty and disheveled messenger arrives who does obeisance to David, the first person who has offered him such royal recognition (1:2). In answer to David’s questions, the messenger reveals that he has escaped from the battle but that Saul and Jonathan are dead. Asked how he knows, he says that he came across the wounded Saul and, at his pleading, delivered a mercy blow. Picking up Saul’s crown and armlet, he has brought them to David.
For the reader, this is, intriguingly, not the story we have just been reading in 1 Samuel 31. This messenger, who describes himself as an Amalekite, does not appear in that chapter; Saul killed himself (1 Sam. 31:4). Is this simply a contradiction caused by editing together different versions, or should we take seriously the fact that the earlier version has the authority of the narrator, whereas we only have the word of the Amalekite in 2 Samuel 1? Has he simply robbed the body of the dead king, seeking to curry favor with his successor?
Be that as it may, the king’s first reaction is to order mourning for Jonathan and Saul (1:18). For all the enmity between them, the honor due to a dead king must be paid. David then questions the young man again and has him executed, not directly for killing the king, but for entertaining the idea of killing him (1:10). Very cunningly, David’s judgment does not depend on deciding between the narrator’s account of Saul’s death in 1 Samuel 30 and the young man’s version. His words, not his deeds, condemn him. Drastic as this is, it makes a clear point to anyone who might have problems with David’s own rule.
We might also note that any other secrets the young man had have now died with him. More suspicious readers have even wondered if David engineered this whole scenario, as it all falls out remarkably well for him (McKenzie, 109). Saul and Jonathan, his key rivals, are dead, yet he is able to present himself as their chief mourner so as to begin to build bridges with his erstwhile opponents in Israel. He is also able to show the firmness of his rule and to reinforce the message that the person of the anointed king, no matter what he has done, is sacrosanct.
The last part of the chapter is taken up with a funeral lament for Saul and Jonathan (1:19-27). It is powerful and moving and yet distinctly at odds with the story we have read in the last few chapters. The elegy depicts Saul and Jonathan as “not divided.” This ignores the accounts of their quarrels over David, not to mention Saul’s attempts to kill his own son. David’s lament for Jonathan, which stresses that his love was greater than the love of women, is a resonant line (1:26). Once again, though, we should note that there is no mention of David’s love for Jonathan.
For all the emotional weight of this lament, the text could hardly be clearer that David is not simply giving vent to his private feelings but is making a public statement, one he orders to be taught to the people and recorded in the book of Jasher. Under the gaze of his people, he needs to reinforce the respect due to Israel’s kings and to make it clear that the claims of the Saulide dynasty have ended in the regrettable death of Jonathan. As happens so often in 2 Samuel, David is not only the beneficiary of the deaths of his rivals but also in the position to lead the mourning and to condemn their killers. He is also, as we have seen, a master at using language through all the channels of communication at his command to turn events to his own advantage.
In the history of interpretation, the lament for Saul and Jonathan has redounded to David’s credit, being a sign of his prowess as a poet and musician and of his generosity of spirit. Many of its phrases have passed into the poetry of subsequent languages, and it remains a moving if enigmatic work, as evidenced by the variety of English translations. As such, it becomes part of the defense of religious poetry as a genre by Jerome and by Protestant writers after the Reformation (Jeffrey, 184).
For modern readers, this chapter raises complex questions about David’s motivations and the way in which the manipulation of perceptions about a ruler is a key part of any political system. Everything David is represented as doing here is part of a public display, and the reaction of his audience, first his own loyal followers and second the wider people of Israel, is firmly in view at all times. An attentive reading makes it hard to escape the conclusion that the text exposes in a sophisticated way some of the hidden workings of any political system. The release of state secrets after a period of embargo in the modern world often reveals that governments, even in democracies, have been routinely engaged in covert operations that were denied at the time.
David now begins to make his move to establish his rule in Judah, anchoring his claim to the kingship of Israel in the loyalty of his own tribe. He needs divine advice to work out his plan of action and is told that he should begin from Hebron. There the people anoint him as king of Judah. David is told that the people of Jabesh-gilead buried Saul and quickly sends a message of appreciation (2:5). This is necessary, because his claim to power is by no means unopposed. Abner, Saul’s cousin and general, whom David had taunted, is sponsoring and protecting an alternative candidate, Saul’s son Ishbaal, who is made king over all of Israel at Mahanaim. For seven and a half years, David is acknowledged as king only in Judah.
For reasons that are not made clear, this situation is destabilized by a contest between David’s men and Abner’s, drawn from Saul’s tribe, Benjamin. David is not present, but is represented by his equivalent to Abner, his nephew Joab (2:12). In an oddly choreographic moment, the twelve champions from each side kill each other seemingly simultaneously and a fierce battle ensues. Abner is pursued by Joab’s brother Asahel and is killed as he refuses to give up the chase (2:23). Joab and his remaining brother Abishai take up the pursuit until there is a standoff in which Abner asks how long this pursuit should last (2:26). Joab and Abishai break off their pursuit, but the damage has been done. Blood has been spilled on both sides. The Benjamites have lost 360 men, whereas Abner’s men have only lost nineteen, but the loss of Asahel means that a potential cycle of vengeance is poised to restart at any moment.
The continued success of the Saulides is one of the many aspects of this transition period between the two kings. It is completely passed over by the books of Chronicles. There, the transition from Saul’s death to David’s reign over all is accomplished by immediate general acclaim (1 Chron. 10:13—11:3). The tendency for the tradition to elevate David above the realpolitik of the books of Samuel clearly has begun early, which makes the depiction of David in Samuel all the more remarkable.
The modern reader is able, however, to see that the books of Samuel offer a picture of David that glosses over or explains away a number of potentially damaging incidents and decisions. How suspicious should we be of the books of Samuel as themselves products of royalist propaganda, or can we detect in them a hidden rhetoric of resistance that at various points in the history of these texts has been necessarily concealed? The most powerful message of this sort of biblical book, after all, may not be in what it explicitly states but the way in which it hints at the complex nature and motivations of any account of a national and political history. These dynamics are explored in a masterly way in Stefan Heym’s novel The King David Report, which recounts the way in which Solomon ensures that the history of his father is written in such a way as to make his own succession inevitable. Heym, however, was writing under the Communist government of East Germany. Under the guise of a critique of the Bible, which suited the political censors, he was able to write a devastating attack on the manipulation of history by any oppressive regime, including the East German government.
In 2 Samuel 3, this incident proves to be the beginning of a long war for ascendancy between David and the descendants of Saul. In the meantime, we learn David has been fathering sons (3:2-5). This sets the conditions for a whole series of potential future conflicts between him, his sons, and his followers as the succession to the kingdom becomes an issue. At this point, however, David’s own kingship over Israel is still far from established.
In Ishbaal’s court, things are becoming complicated as well. Ishbaal accuses Abner of dalliance with one of his father’s concubines, Rizpah, an act that could be construed as a bid for power on Abner’s part and a claim to succession in his own right (3:7). Abner, who after all seems to have been the moving force behind Ishbaal’s reign, is outraged and threatens to throw his weight behind David. In fact, he enters into negotiations with David, restores to him his former wife Michal, and communicates with the elders of Israel and Benjamin confirming that David is indeed the Lord’s chosen ruler. This seems to imply that Abner and the elders have already been contemplating switching their loyalty from Ishbaal.
David then meets with Abner, and all seems to be arranged for Abner to deliver the loyalty of Israel to David (3:20-21). Joab learns of this and berates David for failing to realize that Abner is looking to his own advantage through learning David’s plans (3:24-25). Is David this time the one who is on the receiving end of a political deception, or is Joab blinded by his personal vendetta against Abner? Joab solves the problem in a characteristically direct way. He arranges for Abner to be called back, without David’s knowledge, and stabs him to death.
David is furious and curses Joab’s household. He organizes a public funeral for Abner and himself offers a lament over Abner (3:33-34). As in the case of Saul, however, the narrative itself is clear that this mourning has an explicitly political purpose. All Israel is convinced that David had no hand in Abner’s murder, and David goes out of his way to praise Abner as a great man (3:37-38).
Once again, David has turned a situation to his own good. Abner—a much more formidable foe than the puppet Ishbaal—is dead, but the disastrous rift that the murder of Abner could have caused between David and Ishbaal’s followers has been averted. Joab has conveniently taken the blame, and David has managed to establish an important precedent for any future problems (3:19). If things get out of hand, he can point to the distance between himself and Joab’s actions even if they in fact benefit him. He has achieved what in political parlance would be called “deniability,” an asset to any leader.
Ishbaal, not unnaturally, takes alarm at the loss of his mentor. In a rather piecemeal way, which may mirror the apparent disarray of Ishbaal’s kingdom, the story proceeds. We are told that Ishbaal has two Benjamite raiders. Apparently inconsequentially, we then learn that Saul has another grandson, Jonathan’s son, whom the text calls “Mephibosheth,” a name that contains an element meaning “shame” (4:4). Chronicles preserves this name as Merib-baal (1 Chron. 8:34; 9:40), which seems more plausible and is in line with his uncle Ishbaal’s name, although it carries the same problematic echo of the divine name Baal. The information that he is lame is introduced in a way that suggests this will become a significant plot element, but we hear no more of him at this juncture.
The two raiders kill Ishbaal in his own house, cut off his head, and bring it to David at Hebron (4:8). The reader may be struck by the similarity to the actions of the unnamed Amalekite in 2 Samuel 1, and this is confirmed when David makes explicit mention of the analogy as he condemns the two to death (4:9-11). Like the Amalekite, they had presumed that David would be pleased at the death of his rival. Like him, they learn how wrong that assumption was. They are killed, mutilated, and their bodies hung up.
At long last, in 2 Samuel 5, David is anointed king of all Israel after all the tribes come and declare their belief in him (5:1-3). His first act is to conquer the Jebusite stronghold of Zion (5:7). Politically, this is an astute move. Rather than elevate the Judahite capital of Hebron to the new seat of kingship or risk alienating his Judahite following by moving to an Israelite city, David marks a new beginning by establishing a new center for Israel. The rather odd byplay over David’s apparent hostility to “the lame and the blind” remains mysterious (5:6-8), although the reminiscence of the lameness of Mephibosheth is clear (4:4). Zion is renamed the “City of David” (5:7), and David’s international reputation is indicated by the fact that the king of Tyre sends him the materials and the craftsmen to build himself a house (5:11). More children are born to David in Jerusalem: twelve in all. The old enemy, the Philistines, make one final attempt to disrupt David’s kingdom, but David defeats their army not once but twice (5:20, 25), the second time with the eerie aid of the Lord’s army, signaled by the sound of marching in the treetops.
A pattern, however, has repeated itself. David’s rival has met with his end in circumstances that, at least to the public eye, exonerate him from any possible blame. Any story to the contrary again has died with the perpetrators. David has succeeded in gaining the united acclaim of the people of Israel, but there are undercurrents of unsettled scores, potential rivalries, and stories that clearly admit of more than one interpretation. The rhetoric of kinship contains contradictions that can be managed but not eliminated.
Ambrose of Milan speaks for many in the subsequent tradition who take David’s integrity and piety as expressed in passages such as his mourning for Abner entirely at face value and hold him up as a model of conduct (Franke). It is incidents such as this that explain why God is prepared to forgive the sins of David and his sons, on this reading. Marcion, in his attack on the Old Testament, makes a point of the contrast between David’s rejection of the blind and Jesus’ healings to argue that Jesus is not David’s son. This point is refuted by Tertullian, who finds the contrast in the faithfulness of the blind in the New Testament (Franke).
For the modern reader, the books of Samuel are full of insights into these dynamics that can occur in any human organization: a school, a company, or a church, as much as in a kingdom. Once any organization grows beyond a certain size, its leader can no longer personally supervise every detail and so he or she needs trusted deputies. As we have seen, however, in David’s own case, that deputy may begin to accrue the credit that the king depends on for his own popular success. Furthermore, there is a dangerous game to be played in relying on the loyal deputy to carry out the dirty work so as to leave the leader above suspicion. Inevitably, the deputy has knowledge that the leader cannot afford to make public. If relations become strained, this becomes a serious potential threat.
Having disappeared from the narrative for many chapters, the ark of YHWH reappears as the topic of 2 Samuel 6. David leads a great procession of people down to the ark’s resting place in order to retrieve it and bring it up to his new capital. A new cart is provided to move it, and as it travels David and the whole troupe dance and play musical instruments (6:5). Not all goes according to plan, however, and Uzzah, one of the drivers, is struck dead when he takes hold of the ark to steady it (6:7). The narrative strikingly tells us that David is both “angry” with God and “frightened” of him (6:8-9). This is something he cannot manage, and the presence of the ark in the royal city begins to seem a potential threat as well as an asset. The ark is left with a non-Israelite, indeed possibly a native of Achish’s city of Gath, to see what will transpire. Its caretakers prosper, so David takes this as a good omen (6:11). In an even more elaborately choreographed procession, he and the people bring the ark to Jerusalem, sacrificing animals every six paces. David, wearing the priestly garment called the ephod, dances with all his might before it. Michal, Saul’s daughter, watches him from the window and despises him (6:16).
The ark is brought to a tent, reminiscent of the tabernacle of the exodus stories, and David offers sacrifices, blesses the people, and distributes food to them, again carrying out typically priestly functions (6:17-19). He has succeeded in bringing into his own camp a potential source of division in his kingdom by avoiding any possibility that the ark and its attendant priesthood should become an alternative focus of the people’s loyalty. He has also paved the way for his new capital to become the new center of Israel’s religious life, trumping the claims of the ancient shrines such as Shiloh and Bethel.
One person is less impressed, his wife Michal, who scolds him for uncovering himself in the eyes of the people (6:20). His retort is stinging. The God before whom he danced is the one who decreed that he would supplant her father. She might not be pleased, but, as ever, David’s concern is with his image among the people at large. If they honor him, his own sense of self-abasement counts for nothing. A brief phrase seals both Michal’s fate and that of the Saulide dynasty. Michal bore no children; should any son of David succeed him, that son will not be a grandson of Saul (6:23).
In the tradition, the coming of the ark into Jerusalem represents God’s endorsement of the temple on Mount Zion. For early Christian writers such as Maximus of Turin, the ark, as the place where the Word was housed, becomes a type of Mary as she also bears the Word made flesh. David’s dancing is, for Gregory the Great, an example of humility that Christian leaders should emulate (Franke).
This story contains a number of disturbing elements for many contemporary readers. The apparent unfairness of the death of Uzzah is an unsettling reminder of the danger of any dealings with the divine, but the exchange between Michal and David is unsettling in another way. Michal’s apparent snobbery is met with a curse on her, depriving her of children. In narrative terms, this is justified as we discussed above, but other readers have led us to consider the complex and difficult position of Michal in the story (Heym). Even without this, the story shows that the same events can have profoundly different interpretations depending on whose view we take. Reading with the eyes of the women in the story uncovers assumptions about the power relations in the story that may need to be questioned.
Second Samuel 7 is one of the key chapters in the Hebrew Bible. In it, we see David at the peak of his powers, king of all Israel, at peace in his own city, which is both the political and religious hub of his newly established kingdom. We also see the first inklings of why this hard-fought and longed-for situation, which seems to be the fulfillment of the promise of a land and prosperity for the people of Israel, cannot last. Furthermore, it contains a clue as to how Israel manages to retain its sense of identity and of hope beyond the collapse of the kingdom that has just been established.
It begins with the king established in his palace and at peace with all his enemies, a description that chimes with the book of Deuteronomy (12:10-12) and its prediction that once peace has been established in the land, the Lord will choose a dwelling place. David remarks to the prophet Nathan that he now has a house, but the ark is still in a tent (7:1). Nathan expresses his agreement with whatever David has in mind. That night, however, YHWH speaks to Nathan. In an unprecedentedly long speech, clearly echoing the language and concerns of Deuteronomy, the deity points out that he has never asked for such a house in all his dealings with Israel (7:7). He further points out to David that he has raised him from obscurity and has established a place of safety and security for the people. Rather than David building YHWH a house, YHWH will build a house, in the sense of a dynasty for Israel. One of his offspring will be established forever in his kingdom, and it will be him who will build the house (7:11). YHWH explicitly refers to the cautionary tale of Saul and declares that this time the promise will not be rescinded even if the king commits sins against him. The house and the kingdom will be established forever. Nathan relates all this to David. The change in Nathan’s message reminds the reader that his previous acquiescence with David’s plan was not God’s will; not everything a prophet says is from God.
David responds with an extended prayer (7:18-29), again an unusual feature in the books of Samuel. He does little other than repeat back to God his own promises and describe his deeds to him, acknowledging his own humility and his own dependence on God’s favor.
Three crucial points come out of this declaration for later tradition. First, YHWH is in control of David’s destiny. Second, YHWH is not tied to any temple, and so the destruction of any temple is itself of no eternal consequence. The third is the promise of an eternal kingdom with the possibility ruled out that God, as he has done in the past to Eli and Saul, will rescind the promise. For readers who have seen the destruction of Jerusalem and the failure of David’s line, what can this mean? The reference in 1 Samuel 7 to the offspring of David who builds the temple is most easily attributed to Solomon, but his kingdom was irrevocably split under the reign of his son. The obvious rejoinder that this was due to the sins he and his heirs committed is not open to us, as that explanation is forestalled. If this passage is to mean anything, it can only be that it refers to a throne and a house that have as yet to be established and a kingship that is beyond the political exigencies of this world.
Christian readers have long interpreted this passage as a prophecy of the coming Messiah. Yet the New Testament seems to betray some uneasiness about aligning Jesus to the Davidic tradition. The genealogies have to reckon with the nature of Jesus’ relationship to any Davidic line given that he is God’s son, not Joseph’s. Jesus is also depicted as reacting rather negatively to those who address him as “the son of David” (Mark 12:36-37) and as resisting some of the political and military expectations that seem to have become part of the expectations of a Davidic messiah. All the same, in Acts 13:34-36, Paul explicitly refers to the promises that were made to David being fulfilled in Jesus’ resurrection, contrasting Jesus and David who, as a human being, “after he had served the purposes of God in his own generation, died” (Acts 13:36). This is followed up by a long tradition that reads allegorically David as a type of Christ, ruling, defeated, and restored, which idealized the king. Protestant commentators, uncomfortable with this type of hermeneutic, tend to lay more stress on his humanity and fallibility.
For modern readers, especially those with some critical training, the tension between interpreting this passage as a much-edited failed prophecy of the eternal establishment of Solomon or some other successor’s dynasty and responding to the tradition’s verdict that it is a reference to a future messianic king is an acute example of the need for a sort of binocular reading of the text. Is it possible to hold such readings in tension without being justly accused of attempting to have one’s interpretative cake and eat it? Again, however, is this not symptomatic of the inescapable dilemmas of any sort of revelation of a divine purpose in human affairs? It will always be possible to read the text differently, and the final option for the reader will always be a decision, not an inevitable conclusion. It is a decision that is always also aware of its provisionality. What the biblical text does do, however, is make that provisionality, and the need for decision, exceptionally clear. It also reminds us that such decisions depend on the context within which the text is read, whether the biblical canon or a particular interpretive tradition: Christian, Jewish, text-critical, or skeptical.
In the succeeding chapters, we begin to see that the picture at the beginning of 2 Samuel 7 is already shadowed by intimations of trouble ahead for the kingdom. David still has enemies who need to be subdued. He attacks the Philistines and the Moabites and reduces them to servitude (8:2). He attacks and cripples the army of Hadadezer of Zobah and defeats the Arameans, killing twenty-two thousand of them when they come to Hadadezer’s aid, putting a garrison in place to subdue them and gain tribute (8:5). He gains such a reputation that Toi, king of Hamath, voluntarily offers him tribute (8:10). All this accumulated wealth is dedicated to YHWH. The Edomites are also defeated, losing eighteen thousand men (8:13-14).
Although these victories are presented as signs of the Lord’s favor, we should also be aware that Israel is now in the situation of garrisoning the territory of powerful albeit defeated enemies. David may have won some new allies, but he has also created lasting resentments. He may be able to subdue any potential rebellion against his rule for now, but he is now ruling people who have not consented to his rule and who have no kinship to him. Unifying Israel was difficult enough. Will this new expanded kingship ever know peace?
Potential conflict is embedded in the list of David’s administration at the end of 2 Samuel 8. We are assured that he rules justly over Israel (8:15), but does that term necessarily include these subject peoples? Do they now harbor the kind of resentments that Israel felt under Philistine rule? David is now dependent on an inner cabal. In charge of the army is David’s nephew Joab (8:16). We already know the threat any general may pose, and in Joab’s case, there is an explicit history of differences between him and his uncle (4:39). This circle contains priests who are named before the secretary (8:17), showing the importance of the mutual support of the religious and political establishments in Israel. There is also Benaiah, described as being in charge of the Cherethites and Pelethites (8:18). These turn out to be elite troops whose loyalty is to the king. The fact that there is a need for such an imperial guard, which is distinct from the people’s army, indicates a potential source of tension intrinsic in the kind of kingship David is establishing. A final note says that David’s sons were priests. Not only is this at odds with at least the Deuteronomists’ accounts of how priests are appointed (Deut. 18:5), it is worryingly reminiscent of the situation with both Eli and Samuel. Hereditary priesthood has proven to be an unreliable institution.
The persistence of potential points of resistance to David’s rule in Israel is highlighted in 2 Samuel 9. Jonathan’s lame son Mephibosheth reenters the story when David enquires whether any of Saul’s descendants are left. The declared reason for this is his desire to show them favor in Jonathan’s memory (9:1). This might be plausible but does not necessarily rule out the more practical point that David would do well to nip in the bud any possibility of Saul’s heirs becoming a rallying point for disaffection from his rule. David brings Mephibosheth to his palace and feeds him at his table, having restored all Saul’s lands to him. We should remember, however, that Saul protested that he came from the least of the families in the least of the tribes. What would his ancestral lands consist of? Not only that, but David’s apparently generous gesture of feeding Mephibosheth is, it turns out, less than it seems. He instructs Ziba, an old servant of Saul, and his family to provide the food for Mephibosheth by their labor on Mephibosheth’s own lands (9:9-10). David is thus not out of pocket, and Ziba’s family now has a cause for resentment against him.
Further trouble ensues when the new king of the Ammonites treats David’s ambassadors with disrespect and then hires men from a number of neighboring kingdoms, including the Arameans, to defend himself against reprisals from David (10:6). Joab and his brother manage to defeat the combined armies, but this spurs the Arameans into launching a concerted campaign on their own behalf (10:15). They in turn are defeated, and all the allied kings make peace with David (10:19), but once more, thousands have been killed and any ill-feeling against Israel has material to fuel it. The peace that prevails in the area is one based on fear and is therefore bound to be uneasy and volatile. Being “like other nations” is not a comfortable fate.
In the history of interpretation, the stress in this story has often been on the kindness and charity of David to his potential enemy Mephibosheth in loyalty to his dead friend. The tendency of the tradition to read David’s actions favorably and to give him the benefit of the doubt means that it is taken as an example of the love of one’s enemy that Jesus enjoins, but this may tend to reduce the disabled Mephibosheth to an opportunity for David’s charity, with consequences for the view of disability in Christian tradition (Schipper).
For modern readers, 2 Samuel 8–10 has an uneasily familiar ring in an era where successive new countries and new governments seek to establish themselves, proclaiming peace and stability by repressing old injustices and then being led into reprisals against disaffected groups that simply add to a stock of resentment. Is the message that there is no political utopia and that even at its height, the Davidic empire, like all empires, contained the inevitable seed of its own destruction? An African proverb tells us, “You can’t have the wood without the termites.” The very processes necessary to build the kingdom import the justification and the means for others to tear it down or seek to rebuild it in their interests.
The next chapter shows a kingdom that is not at peace but is now provoking wars on its own account. Second Samuel 11–12 is among the most extraordinary pieces of writing in the Hebrew Bible. Not only do they show a remarkable sophistication in their narrative technique, but they also tell a story that puts Israel’s greatest hero in an uncompromisingly unfavorable light. Here is a king who will resort to deception, adultery, and murder involving loyal members of his entourage without any reference to his God but who apparently also believes himself to be the arbiter of justice.
The beginning of the chapter makes the point that David is now separated from his army. They are off fighting the Ammonites, while he is safe in his palace. A domestic drama ensues that is, tellingly, missing from the Chronicler’s account of the same military campaign in 1 Chronicles 20. In short, David summons Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of his loyal commanders, and makes her pregnant (11:5). When he learns of her pregnancy, he calls Uriah back and does all he can, including using alcohol, to induce Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba. This is all in contravention of the rule that active soldiers abstain from sex that he himself self-righteously invoked in 1 Samuel 21. When this fails, he notoriously sends a letter to Joab by Uriah’s hand containing instructions for Uriah to meet his death (11:14). On hearing the news that he has died, David sends a subtle threat to Joab, who alone knows the whole story (11:25), and marries Bathsheba, ensuring that his child is part of his royal household (11:27).
In all this, David has reckoned without God. Nathan appears and traps him into condemning himself by leading him on so that he pronounces judgment against a fictional character who has stolen and killed a poor man’s sheep (12:1-4). David’s punishment is that the son born to Bathsheba will die. His response to the child’s subsequent illness is flagged by the narrator as incomprehensible to his own courtiers. He mourns until the son dies and then ceases mourning (12:20). Readers are left with contradictory assessments of this behavior. Does it show David’s faith in divine justice, or is it blatant cynicism? The upshot is that Bathsheba bears a second child, who turns out to be Solomon (12:24). What kind of a birth story is this for one of Israel’s most prominent figures?
All this having occurred, Joab sends his own message to David, warning him that his reputation will be threatened unless he comes down to finish the siege of Rabbah himself (12:27-28). David is now the victim of his own concern with reputation. At the end of 2 Samuel 11, he seemed to have saved his own name and acquired a desirable new wife and child. On the contrary, he learns not only that he has offended God (11:26), whom he did not seem to consider before, but also that he has risked jeopardizing his standing with the army. His once unmatched awareness of and control over the important channels of information has lapsed. He forgot about what God knew, he took no account of the army’s perceptions, and Joab now has damning evidence that he could use against him if occasion arises. It is Joab, who now has David and the kingdom’s reputation in his hands, who has to recall David to his duty. For the time being, they are both better served by the continuance of David’s rule—for the time being.
In the traditional interpretation of David, this scene sets the seal on the depiction of David as the archetypal penitent. Convicted by Nathan, he repents of his sins in a way that becomes a model for later generations of Christians. This reading is strengthened by the penitential psalms, such as Psalm 51, that are also attributed to him. He thus becomes an endorsement of the sacrament of confession in Catholic and Orthodox tradition, and of the use of the Psalms in self-examination by Protestant readers.
Contemporary readers may find it difficult to see a marked change in David’s behavior after this episode, however. Readers have argued as to whether his apparent reconciliation with his son’s death shows a mature spirituality or a cynical relief that the punishment has fallen on the child rather than him. Whatever may be true, his subsequent career is marked by the kind of swings between hostility and sentimentalism about his sons that are reminiscent of Saul. The tensions we have outlined throughout that beset any hereditary monarchy are explored here in a series of stories of great but disturbing power. David is shown to be much less astute in managing his own family than he has been in managing those around him on his way to the kingship. Political leaders worldwide are still beset by these problems, exacerbated by the prevalence of the media. The peccadilloes of a Bill Clinton and the complex relationship between Saddam Hussein and his sons are cases in point.
The tension between father and sons, which is exacerbated in the case of a king and his potential heirs, has seldom been so well explored as in the following chapters of 2 Samuel. So far, we have heard nothing of his sons except for lists of their names and their mothers. Now they become the focus of the story in a series of interlinked masterpieces of the laconic narrative style of this book. In particular, they revolve around the glamorous but flawed figure of Absalom.
The first we hear of Absalom is in relation to his sister Tamar, who is the object of their half brother Amnon’s passion. Deceived by his pretended illness, she visits his room only for him to rape her and then spurn her (13:14-17). With her life destroyed, as no one else will marry her if Amnon does not, she seeks refuge with her brother. David, we learn, is furious (13:21), but does nothing to Amnon, his favored firstborn. Absalom, enraged by his half brother’s attack on his sister, bides his time for two years and then invites all his brothers and his father to a feast. It is here that he has Amnon killed and then flees to the king of Geshur’s protection for three years (13:37). Characteristically, the Hebrew is highly ambiguous about David’s attitude to Absalom in a way that most translations cannot capture.
It is Joab, again, who takes the initiative in persuading David to invite Absalom back through an elaborate charade involving a wise woman and a story about a family where one son has murdered another and is now banished (14:5-7). She succeeds, as Nathan did, in trapping David into swearing an oath. The banished son should be allowed to return. David sees through the ruse too late and finds himself obliged to permit Joab to bring back Absalom (14:21).
Again, rather than a touching family reconciliation, there may be realpolitik at work here. Absalom in exile is a constant and uncontrollable potential rival and rallying point for dissent. Joab may be acting in the kingdom’s interest in bringing him back where he can be watched, as David did in the case of Mephibosheth. More self-interestedly, Joab may be establishing himself in Absalom’s good books against the day when David—who has forced Joab to put up with a great deal—becomes more of a liability than an asset to the kingdom.
David’s subsequent refusal to meet Absalom simply fuels his son’s resentment. Absalom cunningly begins to eat away at David’s power by interrupting the flow of petitioners to the king and presenting himself as the only true hope for justice. After four years, he asks permission to go to Hebron (15:7), the place where finally the rest of Israel besides Judah had accepted David as king and has himself proclaimed as the new ruler of Israel. David’s response is to call for the mass evacuation of the city (15:14). Only ten royal concubines are left. On the flight, there is a succession of encounters, the significance of which only becomes apparent on David’s return. He meets Ittai the Gittite, another anomalous inhabitant of Gath, Goliath’s hometown, who proclaims his loyalty. (15:21). He sends the ark back to Jerusalem (15:25), saying that its fate will show what God’s will is. He learns that a trusted councilor, Ahitophel, is now advising Absalom and, in typical fashion, arranges for the elderly Hushai to spy on Absalom’s court (15:34)
Old stories come back to haunt him. He meets Ziba, Mephibosheth’s servant, who tells him that Saul’s grandson is expecting the restoration of his kingdom. David rewards Ziba with the grant of Mephibosheth’s property (16:4), reversing his earlier judgment. He meets another Saulide, Shimei, who abuses him roundly (16:7). David prevents his bodyguard from harming him, saying that if his own son has turned on him, he can hardly blame Shimei, who is doing the Lord’s own bidding (16:11).
In the meantime, Hushai has persuaded Absalom that he has truly defected from David and proceeds to undermine the wise counsel of Ahitophel, who tells Absalom to sleep with the concubines left behind to signal the total break with his father (16:21). Hushai lets this pass, but then he opposes Ahitophel’s advice that a swift targeted assassination of David would lead to the speedy end of the conflict. Instead, Hushai appeals to Absalom’s vanity and counsels a pitched battle involving the whole army with Absalom at its head (17:11). Absalom agrees, and Hushai activates the network of informants that David has set up through the guise of the return of the ark. Ahitophel, seeing that he has been ignored and knowing what the outcome will be, hangs himself (17:23).
Sure enough, when battle is joined, David’s forces under Joab defeat Absalom’s. Absalom himself is caught in a tree by his much-vaunted hair, and Joab dispatches him, despite the public orders of David that Absalom is to be spared (18:14). An extraordinary account of the way in which the message of Absalom’s death is brought to David ensues, playing on the reader’s memory of the other occasions in which a messenger has brought David news of the death of someone whose actions have posed a threat to his kingship. Here this motif reaches an apotheosis as different messengers vie over how the news that David’s son, who had become the embodiment of all that the so-called Laius complex so dreads, is now dead. The beloved son has been thwarted in his attempt to kill and supplant his father. David’s reaction, as so often before, is public mourning for the one whom others might expect he would be glad to see removed from the scene. This time, however, there is no poetic outburst, denunciation of the killer, and protestation of royal innocence, only the broken repetition of his son’s name and the wish that he had died in Absalom’s stead (18:33).
The theological appropriation of such stories has to reckon with the fact that God is generally absent throughout these chapters. It is the dynamics of the human family that are the focus of interest, as well as the way in which personal loyalties and feelings conflict with the necessities of statecraft. Absalom becomes a key example of the perils of pride and of personal vanity and extravagance, often at the expense of recalling the depth of his grievance against his father. Through the imagery of Absalom’s death scene—a corpse hanging by the neck and entangled in branches—Cassiodorus likened his actions against his father David and subsequent fate to that of Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus Christ (Franke, 383).
The story of Absalom represents the tensions between father and son and the tension inherent between the human reactions of David as father and the political judgment of David as king. As in the episode with Bathsheba, David has to be recalled by Joab to his kingly duties and his responsibilities to the whole people. This is the nearest the Hebrew Bible comes to a story of patricide, and we may remember that Plato’s main reason for banning poets from his Republic was that their stories are full of examples of sons killing fathers, something no government can risk encouraging. In this respect, the Hebrew tradition seems to have gone further in suppressing such stories. David’s love for his son risks alienating the rest of his people; this story certainly encourages reflection on the difficulties of drawing the boundary between the personal and the political in any political system. An egregious example from British history is the short and inglorious rule of Richard Cromwell as Lord Protector in succession to his father Oliver, a role for which he had little inclination, aptitude, or training. The propensity for political systems that apparently have no place for the hereditary principle to throw up familial dynasties seems to continue unabated: the Nehru-Gandhi family in India, the Assad regime in Syria, and the Kennedy and Bush dynasties in the United States show that these issues persist in contemporary politics in a range of regimes.
Such close relationships can engender persistent tensions. At the time of this writing, the horrible revenge reportedly exacted by the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on his uncle for alleged corruption, which extended to the killing of his family and associates, is a reminder that the personal and the political are intertwined in many political systems. Kim Jong-un himself only came to power because his elder brother fell out of favor with their father. Close family ties may mean that perceived betrayals lead to exceptional and drastic reprisals as personal hurt and family honor are brought into the equation and often override political considerations.
Second Samuel 19–20 seems to show that the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost for David. First of all, this time the public act of mourning, instead of acting as a potential healing of the rifts in the kingdom and strengthening David’s position, backfires. Once again, it is Joab who has to recall David to his duty to set aside his feelings as a father and act as king (19:5-7), bluntly pointing out that his days as king are over unless he reassures his followers that he would not prefer that they had all died so that Absalom could have survived. The rest of Israel is also in turmoil, knowing that they had thrown in their lot with Absalom and now fear David’s reprisals.
David rallies by appointing Absalom’s general Amasa as head of the army instead of Joab, straining the latter’s loyalty yet again (19:13), and using Amasa to bring Judah back to their leader. Shimei reappears, and David appears to pardon him, swearing that he will not put him to death; he does not swear that his successor will be bound by this oath, however. More to the point, Mephibosheth reappears, alleging that the story Ziba had told was a fabrication designed to get hold of Mephibosheth’s lands (19:27). The king, now apparently bereft of his former astuteness in dealing with deceptive characters, takes the easy way out by dividing the land between them, only for Mephibosheth to get the last word and renounce the land. A final encounter with the elderly Barzillai catches the ambivalent tone of this return. Barzillai refuses David’s offer to become part of the court, but offers his servant Chimcham instead. Returning with David is not a reward he seeks.
This return, far from healing the rifts in the kingdom reopened by Absalom’s appeal to the non-Judahites at Hebron, rubs salt in the wound. Judah and the rest of Israel are set at loggerheads as to which can claim David as their own. The problem is compounded by the actions of a Benjamite called Sheba, who persuades the other tribes that they have no stake in David anymore and should follow him instead, which they promptly do (20:2). David is apparently back where he was in 2 Samuel 2, king only of Judah. He calls on his new commander, Amasa, to muster the Judahite army, but Amasa, suspiciously, fails to return by the appointed time. David then turns to Joab’s brother, instructing him to hunt down Sheba before he can consolidate his power (20:6). Joab joins his brother and in the process of the hunt meets and kills Amasa, concealing his body so that the troops are not distracted from their purpose. Sheba retreats to his ancestral city, which is then besieged (20:14). Through the intervention of a wise woman, the inhabitants are persuaded to kill Sheba and throw his head over the wall in return for the safety of the city (20:22).
The chapter—and the connected narrative of 2 Samuel—ends with a repeat of the list of David’s chief men that is found at the end of 2 Samuel 8. After all that has happened, what has changed? Joab still commands the army, despite David’s apparent attempts to discharge him; Jehoshaphat, Benaiah, Zadok, and Abiathar retain their roles. Two things are different, however. David now has an official in charge of forced labor. Significantly, there is no mention of his sons serving as priests (20:23-26). The relationship between ruler and ruled has changed, as has the succession to the kingdom. Both of these changes bode ill for the future stability of a kingdom that has already all but fallen apart and has only just been reconstituted.
It is quite striking how incidents from David’s past now come back to haunt him and are read rather differently. It is clear from this material just how flimsy a construct the united kingdom of Israel under David has been. Matters that were thought to be settled turn out to be far from solved, and readers can legitimately wonder how subversive these texts are when it comes to the monarchy. David here is hardly a hero. In one way of looking at it, all he has brought to Israel is to draw people into a series of deadly conflicts, which stem from the tensions in his own family. He has also installed the kingly response of forced labor.
Both Ambrose and Augustine account for the fact that David mourns for his treacherous son Absalom, but not for the innocent child in 2 Samuel 12, as a result of his knowledge that Absalom, deprived of the possibility of repentance, is lost to him forever in eternal punishment. David’s seeming contrition and humility in the encounters that mark his progress to and from the city adds to the picture of him in later tradition as the archetypal penitent, although this masks the reality of the long revenge he later plans. In this context, his presumed authorship of the penitential psalms is also explained.
David serves here as a warning of the dangers of a charismatic leader whose personal ambitions and relationships spill out into the politics of his community. Contemporary history can supply all too many parallels. Where is the line between the private life and the public duty of a politician? How far should political careers be judged by private misjudgments and misdeeds? On the one hand, in France, the fact that President Mitterand maintained two families remained secret in a way that would be unthinkable in the United States or the United Kingdom and did not lead to his political downfall. On the other hand, in a later generation the marital misadventures of the later president Nicolas Sarkozy were a factor in changing public perceptions of his competence, although his successor François Hollande’s own problems in this regard put this in a new perspective.
The final four chapters of the books of Samuel are anomalous. Rather than continuing the narrative sequence of the rest of the books, they seem to assemble a number of stories and poems that relate oddly to what has gone before. Second Samuel 21 tells the story of a famine, which YHWH announces is due to a continuing guilt on the house of Saul because he killed the Gibeonites. This seems rather strange in the context of the rest of Samuel, where the accusation laid at Saul’s door is his failure to eradicate the Amalekites. Be that as it may, David agrees to hand over seven sons of Saul to be impaled by the Gibeonites as recompense (21:5). He spares the life of Mephibosheth (21:7), because of his loyalty to Jonathan his father, but the story makes no mention of the oath David swore to Saul that he would not cut off his progeny (1 Sam. 25:21-22). Perhaps he takes the typically evasive view that all he is doing is handing them over to the Gibeonites; what happens to them then is not his responsibility.
Once the sons are killed, however, the mother of two of them, Rizpah (the concubine over whom Ishbaal and Abner fell out in 2 Sam. 2:7), sits in vigil to protect their bodies from birds and animals (21:10). David takes that as a sign and retrieves the bodies of Saul and Jonathan from Jabesh-gilead and ensures them proper burial in Saul’s father’s tomb (21:12). Other names from previous chapters surface in puzzling ways. Both Merab and Barzillai are mentioned, prompting us perhaps to reflect on their motives in a new way.
Further material comes to light, recording a series of fights against giants. On each occasion, it is not David who kills the giant. Indeed, Elhanan is credited with the killing of Goliath (21:19). It is hard not to see a retrospective problematization of the picture of David as the brave young warrior confronting impossible odds on his own. Here David is surrounded by equally competent warriors. The key moment of the encounter between David and Saul is also thrown into question. If David did not kill Goliath, then what is the justification for his rise to prominence in Saul’s court?
Second Samuel 22 is a psalm attributed to David on an occasion of his deliverance from his enemies. It is a fine example of the genre, but again contains material that sits uneasily with what we have read in the rest of Samuel. In particular, it represents David as claiming that he has been rewarded for his righteousness (22:21-25) as the singer harps on his blamelessness before God. Is there an irony here? Does the story of David not rather show that he has indeed been dealt with according to his righteousness, but that he has been far from blameless? His actions, intentional and unintentional, have led not to a serene monarchy in perfect accord with God, but to the fractious, unstable, and unjust kingdom depicted in 2 Samuel 20.
Second Samuel 23:1-7 contains what are presented as David’s last words. This is surprising, as in the preceding narrative he is not yet dead and his story will continue into 1 Kings. Again, is there irony here? David is represented as having an everlasting covenant with God and as the just ruler in contrast to those who are wicked and who can only be touched by a spear. Yet spears abound in the stories of Samuel, most notably the spear David took from the sleeping Saul, which had been hurled at David and Jonathan. By that token, are David and Jonathan, whom Saul attempted to touch with a spear, to be counted among the wicked? How far is this text pointing to the contrast we have seen elsewhere between the pious David who traditionally lies behind the Psalms and the David we encounter in so much of Samuel who is far from a model of piety?
Chapter 24 recounts the brave deeds of David’s champions. The main body of Samuel has kept silent about these for the most part. It commonly represents a military campaign by simply stating that “David went up” against a city and took it. Now we are reminded that he always, of course, went up in the company of mighty warriors whose exploits are not recorded in the books of Samuel but who have driven its story. It is surely not a coincidence either that the final name in the list is the one that haunts David’s memory, then and now: Uriah the Hittite, here praised as a member of the band of thirty and thus one of the elite group of Israel’s greatest fighters (23:19). Again, the contrast between what he deserved and what he received at the hand of David is reinforced.
The final chapter of this section, and thus of the books of Samuel, represents David as the instrument not of God’s favor but of his anger. At YHWH’s instigation, David numbers the people of Israel but then realizes that he has committed a grave sin (24:1). Through the prophet Gad, David is offered three choices: three years of famine, three months flight before his foes, or three days of pestilence (24:12-13). David prefers to fall in to God’s hands than into human hands, and so the days of pestilence ensue, killing seventy thousand people.
This leads to an extraordinary encounter between David and the angel of destruction on a Jebusite threshing floor in Jerusalem, where David pleads for the punishment to be on him and his house rather than Israel (24:17). Nowhere in the rest of Samuel do we find such an incident, which could put a very different theological interpretation on the fate of the Davidic monarchy and how it relates to the survival of Israel. Is Israel’s ultimate destruction explicable as a kind of transferred punishment for the shortcomings of David, just as his nameless son by Bathsheba dies for his sins? Or is the demise of the Davidic dynasty God’s price for the survival of Israel?
The same incident also puts an odd twist into the story of the building of the temple as Gad instructs David to buy the threshing floor in order to set up an altar. The site of the altar is the site of David’s confrontation with an angel of YHWH who is charged with the destruction of Jerusalem. If this is related to the temple, then it becomes not a home for God or a celebration of his bounty, but a mechanism by which the fatal intentions of God are averted.
God’s reaction to David’s decision to take a census of the people has long consequences in the interpretive tradition. The book of Chronicles makes Satan the instigator of the census (1 Chron. 21:1). This adds a level of complication, in that Satan as a tempter is markedly absent in most of the Hebrew Bible. His role becomes prominent in the New Testament, however, and in subsequent Christian interpretation. The seeming disparity between the accounts in Samuel and Chronicles is thus fertile ground for subsequent reflection on the nature of human sinfulness and the role of demonic temptation in human ill doing.
Put together, these anomalous final chapters cast a disconcerting retrospective light over the career of David and his significance in the books of Samuel. What other stories have we not heard, and what other motives have been hidden and suppressed? This peculiar “appendix of deconstruction,” as Walter Brueggemann has called it (Brueggemann 1988), does not simply serve to throw open to question an otherwise straightforward story, however. Rather, it simply heightens the sense any attentive reader must grasp of how complex and enigmatic the story told in the books of Samuel really is. These final chapters also reinforce our sense of how aware these texts are of the intrinsic limitations and paradoxes of any human institution and any human communication. In doing so, they point for theologically minded readers to the way in which any communication between God and human beings is inevitably bound up in the same limitations. It is part of the power of the Bible’s claim to be such a communication that it so subtly and clearly raises these issues, leaving the reader to make his or her decision as to how to respond.
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