When Heroes Love
As I indicated in the prologue, it is not uncommon for those who comment on the story of David and Jonathan to suggest parallels between the Bible’s portrayal of these two heroes’ relationship and the portrayal of the relationship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu found in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. In particular, interpreters who locate eroticized and sexualized language and imagery in the David and Jonathan story make this comparison. David Damrosch, for example, writes, “The relationship between David and Jonathan is … developed in terms very similar to those used in the Gilgamesh Epic to describe the friendship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu,” and then goes on to say that “in both texts, the relationship between the friends has clear overtones of a relationship of husband and wife.” Neal Walls claims similarly that Gary David Comstock’s analysis of the David-Jonathan narrative as “a love story” embedded within the more “conventional and socially acceptable language and form of covenant, friendship, politics, elegy, and soldiering” “applies equally well to the companionship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.” Silvia Schroer and Thomas Staubli remark as well on the affinities they see between the David and Jonathan story and the “explicitly homosexual motifs in the description of the friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu.”1
To be sure, Schroer and Staubli overstate in speaking of the Gilgamesh Epic as containing “explicitly homosexual motifs,” for, as I have suggested in previous chapters, the Gilgamesh Epic’s homoerotic language is far more implicit than explicit, full of an ambiguity that I have argued is a critical aspect of the text’s narrative structure and thematic agenda. Moreover, as I have also previously suggested, the Epic of Gilgamesh dates from a time “before sexuality” and thus from a time before the phenomenon of homosexuality of which Schroer and Staubli speak was manifest.2 Still, Schroer and Staubli, as well as Damrosch, Walls, and interpreters like them, are right to point out that in the biblical story of David and Jonathan, as in the Epic of Gilgamesh, there are many passages that seem to depict the two heroes’ relationship as eroticized or sexualized in nature. Arguably, indeed, eroticized or sexualized language and imagery are present in all four scenes in the book of 1 Samuel in which David and Jonathan interact, and some scholars have in addition found indications of homoeroticism in 1 Sam 20:30–34, in which King Saul rages at his son Jonathan because of the favor Jonathan has shown to David. Eroticized language is potentially present too in 2 Sam 1:19–27, which records the lament that David is said to sing over Saul and Jonathan after Jonathan has been killed in battle against Israel’s Philistine enemies and Saul has committed suicide rather than die himself by Philistine hands.3 In all, then, six passages in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel are worthy of our consideration:
1. the account of David’s and Jonathan’s first encounter found in 1 Sam 18:1–4;
2. the second (and, in fact, primary) account of David’s and Jonathan’s first interactions, found in 1 Sam 19:1–7;
3. the account of David’s fleeing permanently from Saul’s court, found in 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 (in most of the Bible’s English versions, 20:1–42);
4. reports of Saul’s anger over Jonathan’s relationship with David, found in 1 Sam 20:30–34;
5. the account found in 1 Sam 23:15–18 of David’s and Jonathan’s last meeting;
6. David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan, found in 2 Sam 1: 19–27.
Let me now turn to examine each of these passages.
The Account of David’s and Jonathan’s First Encounter Found in 1 Sam 18:1–4
As Gilgamesh and Enkidu are introduced to us separately in the Gilgamesh Epic’s Tablet I, so are David and Jonathan introduced separately in the narratives of 1 Samuel. Jonathan enters the story first, in 1 Samuel 13, where he is described in vv 2–3 as leading a thousand men in the defeat of a garrison of Philistine soldiers that is encamped somewhere in the tribal territory of Benjamin, either in King Saul’s hometown of Gibeah (1 Sam 10:26) or in the neighboring village of Geba.4 Curiously, however, nothing is said either in these verses or in those surrounding about who this valorous Jonathan is;5 only in the opening verses of a subsequent scene, which recount the Israelites’ preparations for another battle against the Philistines at the nearby pass of Michmash, are we told that Jonathan is the son of Israel’s King Saul (1 Sam 13:16).6 We are also told in this passage that Jonathan, like his father but unlike the rest of the Israelite army, is armed with spear and sword (1 Sam 13:22). The stage is thereby set for us to expect great things from Jonathan in the engagement to come, as it is now established that, in addition to being an accomplished fighter, he is a royal scion and the bearer of the best available weaponry.
And in fact, in 1 Sam 14:1–23, Jonathan does deliver a great victory at Michmash, mounting a sneak attack on the Philistine camp assisted only by the young man who carries his arms. These two men manage to kill some twenty of their Philistine opponents, which throws the Philistine garrison into a panic. Saul and the Israelite army then sweep down in the midst of this confusion and send the Philistines fleeing. Subsequently, the people speak of this “great victory in Israel” that Jonathan has accomplished (1 Sam 14:45), and they further signal the esteem in which they hold Jonathan by ransoming him so that he is not condemned to death on account of his unwitting violation of an oath his father had made (Jonathan had eaten from a honeycomb that the army came across while on the march, even though Saul, unbeknownst to him, had vowed that the troops would fast that day in an effort to garner the favor of Israel’s God, Yahweh; 1 Sam 14:24–46).
Yet even as this story of the victory at Michmash concludes by highlighting the prowess of Jonathan and his worth to the Israelites and thus seems to indicate that one of the narrative’s primary interests at this point is to document Jonathan’s heroic accomplishments, the text quickly abandons its focus on Jonathan’s valorous exploits in order to return to a motif introduced previously in 1 Samuel 13:7b-15a.7 This motif concerns the ill-fated and even tragic nature of Saul’s kingship, whereby all the king’s actions, even though seemingly well intentioned, lead to misfortune.8 We have just seen, for example, how Saul’s well-intentioned call for a fast in 1 Sam 14:24–46, meant to be pleasing to the deity, goes awry, as it is the mighty Jonathan who is almost lost to Israel as a result of his father’s vow. Similarly, according to 1 Sam 13:7b-15a, Saul waits at Gilgal for the priest-prophet Samuel to come and offer sacrifice before the Israelites go forth to engage in a battle against the Philistines. But even though Saul waits for seven days, as Samuel, presumably speaking for God, had earlier commanded him to do (1 Sam 10:8), Samuel does not arrive. Consequently Saul, whose troops are beginning to desert him, offers the requisite sacrifices himself. Of course, as the luck of this ill-fated monarch would have it, Samuel shows up immediately thereafter and berates Saul for his failure to follow God’s command, thus angering the deity, even though the king’s intent in offering sacrifices to Yahweh before the battle had been just the opposite: to please Yahweh and enlist divine support. Then, according to 1 Sam 15:1–33, Saul fails to destroy all the spoil he had captured in battle against the Amalekites, although this is what Yahweh ordered. Yet, again, Saul’s actions seem to be well-intentioned, as he claims he spared the best of the Amelekites’ livestock so that it could later be sacrificed to God (1 Sam 15:15, 21). But Saul’s well-intentioned acts again miscarry, as Samuel once more berates the king for his failure to follow Yahweh’s decree. Whereas previously, moreover, Samuel told Saul that Yahweh was going to take away from him any hope of a dynasty as punishment for his disobedience (1 Sam 13:13–14), Samuel now declares Saul’s own reign forfeit and announces Yahweh’s intention to chose another as king (1 Sam 15:23, 26–29).
Having thereby established Saul’s kingship as failed, the 1 Samuel narrative is prepared to introduce the character who will ultimately replace Saul, David. David enters the story as we have it in 1 Sam 16:1–13, presented there as a mere shepherd boy, the youngest of the many sons of the Bethlehemite Jesse.9 Despite, however, these rather improbable qualifications, this youngster is designated as Israel’s king to be by Samuel, who acts on Yahweh’s behalf. Yet immediately thereafter, in 1 Sam 16:14–23, a different tale introducing David is found. In it, David, although still described as a shepherd (1 Sam 16:19), seems an older and more seasoned character than does the young boy of 1 Sam 16:1–13, as he is said to have established a reputation among the Israelites as a valiant warrior and a skilled musician (1 Sam 16:18).10 According to this 1 Sam 16:14–23 version of the “introducing David” tale, it is his skill as a musician that brings David to Saul’s court, where he is asked to play the lyre to calm the king, who, as a consequence of forfeiting his claim to kingship, is now being tormented by an evil spirit Yahweh has sent (1 Sam 16:14). Also according to this 1 Sam 16:14–23 account, Saul makes David his armor-bearer because he is so pleased with David as a courtier (1 Sam 16:21). Indeed, after receiving permission from David’s father Jesse, Saul appoints David as a permanent member of his entourage (1 Sam 16:22).
Yet as we read on, the text as we have received it soon switches back to the motif introduced in 1 Sam 16:1–13 of David as a mere shepherd boy who, although he has been designated by Samuel as Saul’s successor, has not yet become a part of Saul’s retinue. Thus 1 Sam 17:12–31 describes how the shepherd boy David initially comes to Saul’s court just to run an errand, to deliver food to his older brothers, who are members of Saul’s army.11 He remains because he becomes determined to fight against the Philistine champion Goliath, who daily has been taunting the Israelites and challenging them to send out a soldier to engage him in single-handed combat. According to this tradition, it is only after the improbable victory of the unarmed and untrained David over the Philistine warrior (1 Sam 17:50) that he is brought before Saul for the first time (1 Sam 17:55–58), and only at this point does he join Saul’s household (1 Sam 18:2).
More important for our purposes, however, is that it is only at this point, according to this particular account of David’s coming to court, that our two focal characters, David and Jonathan, are said to meet, when, as soon as David has finished speaking with Saul after the victory over Goliath, Jonathan is said to find himself “bound” (niqšar) to David. Most literally, the text reads, “the soul (nepeš) of Jonathan was bound (niqšar) to the soul of David”; somewhat more idiomatically, “Jonathan’s life was bound up with David’s life” (1 Sam 18:1). In the next line of this verse, moreover, Jonathan is said to “love” (’āhēb) David as himself (or “as his own soul”; kĕnapšô), and this sentiment is repeated in v 3, where Jonathan is said to enter into a covenant (bĕrît) with David on account of his “loving him as himself” (or, again, or “as his own soul”; be’ahăbātô ’ōtô kĕnapšô). These verses read:
When he [David] had finished speaking with Saul, Jonathan’s life was bound up with David’s life, and Jonathan loved him as himself. And on that day, Saul took him [David], and he did not let him return to his father’s house. And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself.
Then, in v 4, Jonathan gives David some of his most precious possessions: “And Jonathan stripped off the robe he had on, and he gave it to David, along with his battle raiment and even his sword and his bow and his belt.”
At first glance this passage, with its declarations of love in vv 1 and 3 and its portrayal of Jonathan’s overwhelming and apparently selfless munificence in v 4, seems clearly to speak to the intense feelings of personal affection and homoeroticized endearment that are assumed by, say, Schroer and Staubli, whom I quoted at the beginning of this chapter. But, during the last forty years, biblical scholars have raised important questions about the precise meaning of the verb “to love” (’āhēb) and the related noun “love” (’ahăbâ) in this and similar texts, asking especially about the relationship between Jonathan’s two declarations of “love” in 18:1, 3 and the “covenant” (bĕrît) that he is said to make with David in v 3. The impetus for such questions comes from an important article published by William L. Moran in 1963 on the concept of the love of God in the book of Deuteronomy. In this essay Moran demonstrates that Deuteronomy’s understanding of love—by which he meant both “Yahweh’s love for Israel, and the imperative necessity of Israel’s love for Yahweh in return”—is not at all our contemporary sense, which defines love in terms of a tender psychological feeling; a strong personal attachment; a sympathetic understanding; a deep, natural, and genuine affection.12 Rather, according to Moran, love in Deuteronomy is a concept grounded in political language, and this political definition of love frequently occurs as well, as Moran sees it, in the related books of the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua, Judges, 1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings).
More specifically, Moran argues that the love of God in Deuteronomy—1. which is something that can be commanded, 2. which stands intimately related to the concepts of fear and reverence, and 3. which is expressed in terms of loyalty, service, and unqualified obedience to the demands of the law—is a love that has its basis in the ancient Near Eastern ideology of covenant in general and in the covenant demands of fealty and devotion that ancient Near Eastern suzerains imposed upon their vassals in particular. Indeed, Moran substantiated his argument by listing a number of specific parallels between the language of love found in ancient Near Eastern texts that describe suzerain-vassal treaties and texts from Deuteronomy that describe Yahweh’s covenant with Israel. He quotes, for example, the oath the seventh-century BCE Assyrian king Ashurbanipal required of his vassals—“the king of Assyria, our lord, we will love”—to which we might compare what is surely the most famous “love” passage in Deuteronomy, Moses’ decree to the Israelites that “you shall love (’āhēb) Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut 6:5).13 Moran also cites numerous lines from the fourteenth-century BCE letters sent by various kings of Canaan to the Egyptian court at Amarna, the capital of Canaan’s overlord, Pharaoh Akhenaton. These letters repeatedly declare the vassals’ “love” for the pharaoh; as Moran writes, “this is only another way of stating his [the vassal’s] basic relationship to the latter, that of servant.”14 Again, we might compare from Deuteronomy passages such as Deut 10:12, “So now, O Israel, what does Yahweh your God ask of you but to fear Yahweh your God, to walk in all his ways, to love (’āhēb) him, and to serve Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (emphasis mine).
Moran further buttressed these conclusions by identifying at least three narrative passages from the biblical stories about David that, although concerned with relationships between David and other human beings rather than David’s relationship with Yahweh, nevertheless seemed to him to depend not on an understanding of love as a natural expression of affection but rather on Deuteronomy’s understanding of love as a mandatory obligation of covenant.15 The first is 1 Kgs 5:15 (English 5:1), a passage that is set during the reign of Solomon, David’s son and heir, but that looks back briefly to David’s earlier tenure as king. As part of this retrospective, Hiram, who was king of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre, is described as having been the “lover” (’ōhēb) of David. This Moran took to mean that David and Hiram were in a treaty relationship with one another, as alluded to in 2 Sam 5:11, which describes Hiram’s sending of messengers to David, along with skilled craftsmen who were to help in the building of David’s palace and material goods that were to be used in the construction.16 Second, Moran cited 2 Sam 19:7 (English 19:6), in which Joab, who served as David’s military commander after David became king, rebukes David for grieving over the death of his son Absalom, who had rebelled against him, while “hating those who love you (’ōhăbêkā).” This, according to Moran, refers to those “servants” (19:6; English 19:5) who had continued to extend covenant fidelity to David and his monarchy despite Absalom’s attempts to claim the throne. Third, Moran drew attention to 1 Sam 18:16, where all Israel and Judah—that is, the members of the ten Israelite tribes of the North and the two Judahite tribes of the South—are said to “love” (’ōhēb) the young David shortly after he became a member of King Saul’s court. This is to say, as Moran understood it, that all the people of Israel and Judah offered David their fealty and support and thus extended to him proleptically the covenant loyalty they would later be required to grant him when he became king. Moran also suggested briefly, and in a footnote, that the love between David and Jonathan that is described in 1 Sam 18:1 and 3 (and in 20:17 as well, to be discussed further below) was a love not of personal affection but of “loyalty, service and obedience,” an obligation of fidelity stemming from the covenant the two are said to have made. He in particular pointed out how these texts’ descriptions of Jonathan’s loving David “as himself” (kĕnapšô) parallel seventh-century BCE Assyrian treaty traditions in which the future vassals of King Ashurbanipal are commanded to love their overlord to be “as yourselves” (kī napšātkunu).17
Among subsequent commentators many have followed Moran in arguing that the language of love found in 1 Sam 18:1 and 3 (and 20:17) should be seen as having political connotations. For example, in a study that examines in detail the way the verb “love” is used throughout the David-Jonathan narratives, J. A. Thompson speaks of the “political overtones” of the term in 1 Sam 18:1–4 and related passages,18 and in a brief note inspired by Thompson’s essay, Peter R. Ackroyd likewise suggests a “political sense” for love in 1 Samuel’s stories of David and Jonathan.19 Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, in an article entitled “Loyalty and Love,” similarly proposes regarding 1 Sam 18:1–4 and 20:17 that “political overtones of loyalty and formal recognition are suggested for the use of ’āhēb here by the association with the term ‘covenant’ in 18:3,”20 and we can note too the comments of Diana Vikander Edelman, who describes “the use of the verb ‘to love’ as a terminus technicus of treaty language” in the David-Jonathan accounts.21 P. Kyle McCarter, in his magisterial commentary on the book of 1 Samuel, further writes of how the language of love in 1 Sam 18:3 “hints of political loyalty.”22
Yet, with the exception of Edelman, none of these commentators has been as convinced as was Moran that the love of David and Jonathan is to be understood as exclusively covenantal in nature.23 Thus Thompson indicates that the language of love in 1 Sam 18:1 and 3, in addition to its political significance, also connotes “natural affection” that may well have been “deep and genuine.”24 Ackroyd, too, insists on both a “non-political and political meaning” for love in 1 Sam 18:1–4,25 and Sakenfeld argues similarly that the verb ’āhēb, “to love,” carries a “double notion of personal relationship and political commitment” in 1 Sam 18:1–4. Jonathan and David, she writes, “have a relationship of deep personal affection.”26 This same position is advocated by McCarter, who sees alongside the “hints of political loyalty” in 1 Sam 18:1–4 descriptions of “personal affection.”27
Some interpreters, moreover, speak of Jonathan’s affection for David in 1 Sam 18:1–4 in homoerotic terms. Schroer and Staubli, for example, compare the conjunction of the terms nepeš, most literally “soul,” and ’āhēb/’ahăbâ, “love,” in 1 Sam 18:1 and 3 to the five times that the love-struck woman of the Song of Songs speaks of her beloved as the one še’āhăbâ napšî, literally the one “whom my soul loves” (Cant 1:7, 3:1, 2, 3, and 4), to argue that David’s and Jonathan’s relationship should be understood, like the relationship depicted in the Song of Songs, as “a relationship of erotic love.”28 Samuel Terrien similarly proposes that Hebrew nepeš in 1 Sam 18:1–4 has homoerotic connotations, pointing out that the sense of nepeš as “soul” in Hebrew is very different from the Greek sense with which we still live in large part today.29 In Greek tradition, as frequently in ours, the ethereal and immortal psychē or “soul” is viewed as standing in antithetical relation to “an impure flesh.” “On the contrary,” Terrien writes, “Hebrew nephesh [nepeš] designates the fullness of the self, the erōs, the drive to extend the self to the utmost, the organic intermingling of what we mistakenly call body and soul, the ‘psychosomatic’ oneness.” Consequently, Terrien understands the use of nepeš, “soul,” in 1 Sam 18:1–4 to indicate that the “‘psychosomatic’ oneness” or “whole being” of Jonathan was bound to the “‘psychosomatic’ oneness” or “whole being” of David in an “all-embracing” love characterized by emotional intimacy and physical eroticism.30
In support of this homoeroticized interpretation, we might consider a passage found earlier in this version of the story of David’s arrival at Saul’s court, 1 Sam 17:23–27, which describes Goliath’s taunting of the Israelite army. In this text, a line is included in which it is said that Saul had promised to give his daughter to whomever might kill the Philistine champion (1 Sam 17:25). Consequently, in 1 Sam 18:17, as this particular version of the “David comes to court” story continues, Saul offers his daughter Merab to the victorious David.31 David refuses, ostensibly because he is of such a lowly status (he is no more than a shepherd boy and a youngest son, recall, in this particular account’s conceit). Thus he claims he is not worthy to be the king’s son-in-law (1 Sam 18:18). But, in the same way that some commentators have suggested that Gilgamesh refused Ishtar’s proposal of marriage in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet VI, because he had come to prefer the loving relationship he had established with Enkidu,32 might we ask whether David refuses to wed Merab in this version of the story of his joining Saul’s court because he has come to prefer the loving relationship that, according to 1 Sam 18:1–4, he has entered into with Saul’s son Jonathan.33 As Damrosch puts it, although David opts not to take the king’s daughter, “he does get the king’s son,” taking on “the role of the young husband, metaphorically in relation to Jonathan.”34 Here, again, it is tempting to compare materials from the Epic of Gilgamesh, this time language from the opening scenes, where, at least in the axe dream in which Gilgamesh first symbolically encounters Enkidu,35 Gilgamesh visualizes himself as loving and caressing his heroic counterpart to be as if Gilgamesh were a newlywed husband and Enkidu, like Jonathan in 1 Sam 18:1–4, were “like a wife.”
The Second (and Primary) Account of David’s and Jonathan’s First Interactions (1 Sam 19:1–7)
The narrative I have just been considering, which describes David as an unknown shepherd boy who is not introduced to Saul and does not come to the attention of Jonathan until after David’s improbable victory over Goliath, is scattered sporadically through 1 Samuel 17 and 18, found in 1 Sam 17:12–31, 41, 48b, 50, 55–58, 18:1–6a, 10–11, 17–19, 29b-30. It concludes by the final verses of 1 Samuel 18, shortly after David declines to marry Merab.36 Subsequent to 1 Sam 18:29b-30, only the more primary tradition, the one that identifies David as a warrior and courtier of Saul’s from the moment he is first introduced in 1 Sam 16:14–23, is represented. We can summarize the contents of these two narrative strands as follows:37
Table 7.1
As table 7.1 suggests, the primary tradition that introduces David as a warrior and courtier instead of as a young shepherd (1 Sam 16:14–23), although it differs from the variant narrative in its initial presentation of David’s attributes and in its account of how David became a part of Saul’s entourage, agrees with its counterpart in many other respects. It agrees, for example, that David prevailed over the Philistine champion Goliath in single-handed combat and also agrees that, whether David was only a shepherd boy or already a seasoned soldier when he engaged in this fight, he used no weapon other than a slingshot to defeat his opponent (cf. 1 Sam 17:49, the primary tradition, and 1 Sam 17:50, the variant account). More important for our purposes, though, is the fact that the primary tradition may agree with the variant in representing the relationship of David and Jonathan in homoeroticized terms. This is indicated already in the first scene in which Jonathan and David interact according to the primary narrative, 1 Sam 19:1–7.
First Samuel 19:1–7 tells the story of how Jonathan works to dissuade Saul, who has grown jealous of David’s extraordinary military prowess, from the king’s determination to kill David.38 In vv 4–6 of the text, in a conversation with Saul, Jonathan points out to his father that, however great the king’s jealousy, David has in fact done nothing to transgress against Saul. Rather, Jonathan reminds Saul of all David has done on Saul’s behalf, especially David’s defeat of the fearsome Goliath. Jonathan’s arguments in these verses are decidedly pragmatic in tone and political in nature: Saul’s kingship is not threatened but strengthened by David’s presence in the royal court, and hence David’s life should be spared. But in vv 1–2 of this passage, where Jonathan first learns of Saul’s murderous intentions and tells David of his resolve to try to stop his father, Jonathan’s motivation for interceding is described not in terms of political pragmatism but in terms of an emotional commitment to David: “Jonathan, Saul’s son, took great delight in David” (wiyhônātān ben-šā’ûl ḥāpēṣ bĕdāwīd mĕ’ōd; 1 Sam 19:1).
Jonathan’s emotional commitment to David, moreover, might be understood as eroticized in nature. The verb found in 1 Sam 19:1, ḥāpēṣ, “to delight in,” is significant in this regard, for while this term is sometimes used to describe the delight a subject feels for impersonal or intangible objects (material possessions such as gold, vineyards, and houses; abstractions such as long life, help, and deliverance; actions such as doing what is good and pleasing before God), it often figures in important ways in passages concerned with sexual desire and erotic love.39 In Esth 2:14, for example, King Ahasuerus of Persia is said to send for a particular woman from his harem a second time only if she “delighted” (ḥāpēṣ) him on the first occasion, which is to say only if he has found sexual pleasure with her. Similarly, in Gen 34:19, the Canaanite Shechem, son of Hamor, is said to “delight” (ḥāpēṣ) in Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah, whom he wishes to marry, motivated by his feelings of sexual desire—according to Gen 34:3 and 8, he is “drawn to” (dābaq) and “longs” (ḥāšaq) for Dinah. According to Gen 34:3, Shechem is motivated by his feelings of love (’āhēb) and tenderness as well.40 Love (’ahăbâ) and ḥāpēṣ, “delight,” are also used in conjunction in Cant 2:7, 3:5, and 8:4, although the precise meaning of this thrice-repeated passage is unclear. Still, given the generally erotic and sexual context of the Song of Songs, it seems certain that ḥāpēṣ in the Song’s verses must have erotic and sexualized connotations.41
Together, these and other data allow for and may even promote the possibility of an eroticized and sexualized interpretation of Jonathan’s feelings for David in 1 Sam 19:1. Thus G. Johannes Botterweck writes that “ḥāpēṣ stands here [in 1 Sam 19:1] on the fringes of eroticism,” and Schroer and Staubli argue for “the erotic character of Jonathan’s affection.”42 In addition, Schroer and Staubli argue that the term field (śādeh), used to describe the setting of the rest of the passage (1 Sam 19:3), has erotic connotations, given that “field” in the Bible can be a place where lovers meet. They cite, for example, Cant 7:12 (English 7:11), where the love-struck woman says to her paramour, “Come, my beloved, let us go into the field.” Unfortunately, Schroer and Staubli overreach here, given that the term field is used frequently in the Bible without any erotic overtones. Still, it does seem clear that in this 1 Sam 19:1–7 tradition, as in the variant account found in 1 Sam 18:1–4, the relationship of David and Jonathan is presented using language and imagery that are potentially eroticized and even sexualized in nature.
The 1 Sam 19:1–7 tradition also seems to suggest, as does the variant account found in 1 Sam 18:1–4, that David’s relationship with Jonathan is somehow analogous to a marital relationship. Important to consider in this regard is the larger context of the 1 Sam 19:1–7 passage. Within the primary narrative tradition 1 Sam 19:1–7 follows immediately upon an account that describes David’s marriage to Saul’s younger daughter, Michal (1 Sam 18:20–29a).43 That account very pointedly describes the impetus that led to David’s and Michal’s marriage as being Michal’s love (’āhēb) for David. Of course, love, as we have seen, can be a term that signifies only political allegiance and not emotional attachment, but commentators almost unanimously agree that in the Michal story the connotation of the term is affectionate,44 for only affection would explain, as David J. A. Clines suggests, why Michal undertakes an “utterly reckless action” on behalf of David in 1 Sam 19:11–17, lowering David out of their bedroom window so that he can escape from Saul, who, again consumed by his jealously of David, is attempting to kill him.45 Indeed, Michal’s affections seem to be significant enough in degree that the passage that describes her marriage to David opens by commenting on Michal’s love for her husband to be. Notably, for our purposes, the primary tradition’s account of Jonathan’s first interactions with David similarly begins with its description of the great delight Jonathan felt for David:
| “Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved (’āhēb) David” (1 Sam 18:20) | “Jonathan, Saul’s son, took great delight (ḥāpēṣ) in David” (1 Sam 19:1) |
Notable also is the fact that, even though the two terms used to speak of Jonathan’s and Michal’s feelings are different in these two passages (’āhēb in 1 Sam 18:20, hāpēṣ in 1 Sam 19:1), they are—as I have pointed out above—commonly enough used in conjunction to suggest they have basically the same meaning in the 1 Sam 18:20 and 1 Sam 19:1 texts. It is further of significance that in both these passages Michal and Jonathan are initially identified in terms of their relationship to Saul: she is called “Saul’s daughter” and Jonathan is described as the king’s son. The conclusion to be drawn from these parallels is that the primary narrative tradition is deliberately structured in order to suggest that, according to 1 Sam 19:1–7, Jonathan represents metaphorically to David the wife that Michal, according to 1 Sam 18:20–29a, represents legally. In particular, like David’s wife Michal, Jonathan according to 1 Sam 19:1–7 participates in a relationship with David that is characterized using arguably eroticized and even sexualized language and imagery.46
It is further arguable that the primary narrative tradition reflected in 1 Sam 19:1–7 suggests, similarly to the variant account, that David somehow rejects or repudiates his marital relationship with Michal in favor of his relationship with Jonathan. In 1 Sam 18:18, in the variant account, recall, the young shepherd boy David refuses to claim the prize his victory over Goliath offered—marriage to Saul’s oldest daughter Merab—because, I asked above, he had come to prefer the relationship he had established with Saul’s oldest son Jonathan according to 1 Sam 18:1–4?47 In the primary account the matter is presented somewhat differently, as there a marriage does in fact take place, as I just noted, between David and Saul’s younger daughter Michal (1 Sam 18:27). Yet almost immediately after this marriage is celebrated, according to the primary account, David’s interactions with Jonathan begin (in 1 Sam 19:1), and this relationship David enters into with Jonathan can then be said to replace David’s relationship with Michal. To be sure, Michal does not completely disappear from the primary narrative after Jonathan’s and David’s interactions commence; in a subsequent scene (1 Sam 19:11–17) she helps David escape from Saul’s attempt to have him murdered. But in this escape scene, as Michal lowers David through the window of their bedroom so that he can flee from Saul’s henchmen, she effectively removes her husband from her life, at least temporarily. Indeed, although it turns out that David and Michal are ultimately reunited, some years after Saul has died (2 Sam 3:12–16), the narrative’s presumption in 1 Samuel 19 seems to be that the relationship of David and Michal has ended altogether, as David will return no more to Saul’s court and Michal is given by Saul to another husband (1 Sam 25:44). J. Cheryl Exum sums up the matter well when she writes, “In saving David from Saul, Michal loses him.”48
But despite the fact that David is at this point separated from court and from Michal, he is not separated from Jonathan, who in two different passages is described as meeting secretly with David after David flees from Saul (1 Sam 20:1–21:1; English 20:1–42 and 1 Sam 23:15–18). In both these texts, moreover, as I will discuss below, potentially eroticized and sexualized language and imagery are used to describe David’s and Jonathan’s rendezvous. In this way the Samuel tradition may suggest that the erotic relationship it previously presumed between David and Michal should now be imagined to have been supplanted by a relationship between David and Jonathan. Particularly telling in this regard is the episode recounted in 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 (English 20:1–42) in which David’s and Jonathan’s secret rendezvous seems to take place within the immediate vicinity of Saul’s court. Yet although David lies hidden on the outskirts of Saul’s compound for three days, and although, during this time, he twice manages to see Jonathan, “he apparently makes no effort to see Michal.”49 Exum, who points out this discrepancy, further notes the way in which David engages in a remarkably tender and touching farewell encounter with Jonathan in 1 Sam 20:41–42 after it becomes clear that he is still in danger from Saul and must flee, to which she contrasts the scene in 1 Sam 19:11–17 in which David takes leave of Michal by “practically bolt[ing] out the window without any parting words.”50 Once more, we might think by way of comparison of the Epic of Gilgamesh. In the Gilgamesh Epic, recall, when Gilgamesh and Enkidu actually encounter one another, in the Tablet II wrestling-match scene, they both abandon, and abandon rather abruptly, the interactions with women that had theretofore consumed their erotic interests, subsequently to focus their attentions exclusively on one another. Not dissimilarly, in the primary narrative strand that runs through 1 Samuel 18–19, David, almost immediately after marrying Michal (in 1 Sam 18:27), is described as encountering Jonathan (in 1 Sam 19:1–2), and shortly thereafter (by the end of 1 Sam 19:11–17) this relationship with Jonathan can be said to replace David’s marital relationship with Michal.51
It remains here finally to consider how, in the book of 1 Samuel as we have it, the David and Jonathan materials that are found in the primary narrative in 1 Sam 19:1–7 are combined with the variant narrative traditions found in 1 Sam 18:1–4, for arguably in the combined and composite account these two narrative strands are juxtaposed in a way that emphasizes even more emphatically than does either tradition independently the degree to which David’s and Jonathan’s relationship can be described in terms of marriage. Particularly striking here is the means by which the redactor of the combined tradition follows the lead of the primary account in presenting the stories of Jonathan’s and Michal’s initial encounters with David as parallel. That is: as the stories of Jonathan’s initial encounter with David in 1 Sam 19:1–7 and Michal’s initial encounter with David in 1 Sam 18:20–29a are presented as parallel within the primary narrative tradition, so too in the composite text are the variant tradition’s account of David’s and Jonathan’s first interactions (1 Sam 18:1–4) and the primary tradition’s account of David’s marriage to Michal (1 Sam 18:20–29a) rendered in parallel fashion, the redactor carefully shaping these narratives so that Saul’s two children mirror each other in some precise ways.52
For example, just as Michal in the primary account is introduced through reference to her attraction to David (1 Sam 18:20), and with no reasons for this attraction being offered, so too in the variant account (in 1 Sam 18:1) is Jonathan depicted as being drawn to David almost instantaneously, and without any explanation from the narrator about the reasons for this attraction (Damrosch describes it as “love at first sight”).53 Moreover, as I noted above, the narrator of the primary episode specifically describes Michal’s attraction to David in terms of the verb ’āhēb, “to love,” just as Jonathan is described in the variant account as “loving” David (’āhēb, ’ahăbâ). In fact, just as Jonathan is twice said to love David in the variant set of source materials in found in 18:1–4 (1 Sam 18:1, 3), so is Michal twice said to love David in the primary account of their interactions found in 1 Sam 18:20–29a (1 Sam 18:20, 28). We might in addition suggest that, as Jonathan made a covenant with David in 18:3, so too does Michal enter into a similar contractual agreement with David, as the two marry according to 1 Sam 18:27.54 To summarize:
Table 7.2
| The Variant Account (1 Sam 18:1–4) | The Primary Account (1 Sam 18:20–29a) |
| 1 Sam 18:1: “Jonathan loved (’āhēb) him (David) as himself” | 1 Sam 18:20: “Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved (’āhēb) David” |
| 1 Sam 18:3: Jonathan is again said to “love” David (bĕ’ahăbātô ’ōtô kĕnapšô) | 1 Sam 18:28: Michal is again said to “love” David (’ăhēbathû) |
| 1 Sam 18:3: Jonathan enters into a contractual relationship (a covenant) with David | 1 Sam 18:27: Michal enters into a contractual relationship (a marriage) with David |
All these parallels imply the intent, within the composite tradition, to represent Jonathan as he was already represented in each of the composite’s two sources: as being the structural equivalent of a wife to David. Arguably, moreover, by bracketing the story of David’s and Michal’s marriage (1 Sam 18:20–29a) between the two stories that introduce David’s and Jonathan’s marriagelike relationship (1 Sam 18:1–4 and 19:1–7), the composite suggests, as do both its sources, that Jonathan is not only the structural equivalent of a wife to David, but a wife who supplants one of his sisters. To bracket Michal between the David-Jonathan accounts as does the composite, that is, is in effect to squeeze her out, to render her relationship with David parenthetical and thus to indicate that it is Jonathan who has become David’s primary relationship partner.
The Account of David’s Fleeing Permanently from Saul’s Court Found in 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 (English 20:1–42)
I argued in my discussion of 1 Sam 19:1–7 above that the use of the verb ḥāpēṣ, “to delight in,” in v 1 of that passage could suggest that in the primary narrative tradition, as in the variant, the text intends for us to understand that, however politically driven certain aspects of the David-Jonathan relationship may be, the relationship was one of great affection—indeed, homoeroticized affection—as well. This is even more compellingly indicated in the primary account in 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 (English 20:1–42), the story of David’s fleeing permanently from Saul’s court to protect himself from the murderous impulses of the king. As the story goes, David and Jonathan meet secretly after David, with Michal’s help, has escaped from Saul’s attempt to kill him in his bedchamber (1 Sam 19:11–17). In order to determine whether Saul still harbors homicidal intentions, the two heroes develop an elaborate plot. David deliberately absents himself from Saul’s company for the feast of the new moon, although protocol seems to demand that he be present (1 Sam 20:5). Jonathan offers a fabricated excuse on David’s behalf, with the presumption that, if Saul reacts graciously to the excuse, it will mean the king has no animosity toward David. If Saul, though, reacts with anger, then Jonathan will assume his father actually does seek to have David killed. When this plot is carried out, and Saul does react angrily, Jonathan, at another secret appointment he had previously set up with David, informs David of the news and then sends David away in order to keep Saul from taking David’s life.
The initial aspect of this story notable for our purposes is the language of love (’āhēb, ’ahăbâ) used to describe the relationship of David and Jonathan in 1 Sam 20:17, as David and Jonathan work out the details of their plot to determine if Saul’s intent toward David is really murderous. Unfortunately, the textual tradition here is somewhat confused, as the Hebrew as it has come down to us reads, “So again Jonathan caused David to swear out of his (that is, David’s) love for him” (wayyôsep yĕhônātān lĕhašbîa‘ ’et-dāwīd bĕ’ahăbātô ’ōtô). Since Jonathan has not previously been described as making David swear to anything, the “again” of the received tradition stands as nonsensical; the ancient Greek translation of 1 Samuel undoubtedly preserves the better reading here, that “Jonathan again swore to David out of his (that is, Jonathan’s) love for him.” The original oath to which the Greek refers is the one sworn by Jonathan in 1 Sam 20:12–13,55 in which Jonathan promises that he will disclose to David whatever he learns from Saul about the king’s intentions. This agreement is designated a covenant (bĕrît) in 1 Sam 20:16, and, as I have already noted, it is reaffirmed in 1 Sam 20:17 as Jonathan swears again to David “out of his love for him” (be’ahăbtô ’ ōtô). Then, as v 17 continues, Jonathan is said to love David as he loved himself (kî-’ahăbat napšô ’ăhēbô). This language is obviously highly reminiscent of the language found in 1 Sam 18:1–4, in which Jonathan makes a covenant (berît) with David because he loved him as himself (bĕ’ahăbātô ’ōtô kĕnapšô), and what is represented here in 1 Sam 20:16–17 is surely the primary version’s account of this important episode, which heretofore had only been presented in the variant materials interpolated in 1 Samuel 17 and 18.
From this observation it readily follows that the same sort of interpretations commentators have advanced regarding 1 Sam 18:1–4 can apply with regard to 1 Sam 20:16–17. First, we can note that the conjunction of the terms love (’āhēb/’ahăbâ) and covenant (bĕrît) in 1 Sam 20:16–17 clearly point to there being a political dimension to David’s and Jonathan’s relationship. However, according to most commentators, David’s and Jonathan’s political relationship in 1 Sam 20:16–17 is, as in 1 Sam 18:1–4, coupled with “deep affection.”56 As in 1 Sam 18:1–4, moreover, the affectionate aspects of David’s and Jonathan’s relationship could be described as homoeroticized in nature: the conjunction of the terms soul, nepeš, and love, ’āhēb/’ahăbâ, in 1 Sam 20:17 could suggest, for example, as they do to Schroer and Staubli in their interpretation of 1 Sam 18:1 and 3, a relationship of erotic love.
This sort of homoeroticized interpretation finds support in the concluding verses of the 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 text (English 20:1–42). Throughout most of 1 Samuel 20 David hides in a field, waiting to hear how Saul has reacted to his absence from the new moon feast. When Jonathan comes out into the field to report Saul’s response to David, he first sends a coded signal to him, as the two have prearranged, that the news is bad. This coded signal involves Jonathan’s shooting of an arrow and sending his servant boy to retrieve it: as David and Jonathan have agreed, Jonathan will tell the servant boy, in a voice that David can overhear, that the arrow is on the boy’s near side, if it turns out Saul bears no enmity toward David, and that the arrow is on his far side, if David is in fact in danger from Saul. Notably, this is but one of several times that bow-and-arrow imagery is used in the David-Jonathan narratives. In 1 Sam 18:4 one of the precious gifts that Jonathan gives to David after he makes a covenant with him is his bow (qešet), and Jonathan’s prowess with a bow (qešet) is lauded in David’s lament over the dead Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam 1:22). There is also an enigmatic reference to a “bow” in the verses that introduce David’s lament, which read, literally, “And David sang this lament over Saul and Jonathan, his son, and he said to teach the sons of Judah a bow. It is recorded in the Book of Jashar” (2 Sam 1:17–18). The text here is obviously quite obscure, but according to some commentators, its vague reference to a bow is to be taken as the ancient title of David’s lament: thus “The Song of the Bow.” If so, then it becomes intriguing to couple this reference to a bow to the references to Jonathan’s bow and arrows in 1 Sam 18:4, 20:20–22, 36–38, and 2 Sam 1:22 and to argue further that these references may be a part of the text’s homoeroticized imagery. The bow is, after all, “a common, practically unequivocal symbol of masculinity in ancient Near Eastern texts,” and “the phallic symbolism of the arrow is rather obvious.”57 Jonathan’s offering of his bow in 1 Sam 18:4, his shooting of arrows in 1 Sam 20:36, and David’s subsequent lauding of Jonathan’s prowess as an archer in 2 Sam 1:22 might therefore all be read in terms of homoerotic innuendo: a sexual proposition, followed by coitus, and then a fulfilled lover’s words of gratitude.
At any rate, as I noted above, the news Jonathan has to bring to David in 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 (English 20:1–42) is bad, and so he tells his attendant, after he shoots his arrow, that it is “beyond him” (1 Sam 20:38). Consequently David knows, when he emerges from his hiding place to speak directly with Jonathan, that he must leave, and the language the text uses in this farewell scene is highly emotionally charged. Both men are said to weep at their leave-taking, perhaps copiously (the textual tradition is confused, but the Hebrew higdîl, “to magnify,” may point to such a meaning).58 The two heroes are said in addition to kiss one another, and while, as we have seen in our discussion of the Epic of Gilgamesh, kissing in the ancient Near East need not have the connotations of eroticized intimacy it has most frequently in our culture, the emotional context of this farewell scene does suggest the kisses David and Jonathan exchange are markers of affection, rather than, say, acts of homage (as in, for example, 1 Sam 10:1) or signs of respect (as in, for example, 2 Sam 20:9).59 Jonathan also speaks, it seems in an effort to reassure David, of the eternal bond of fidelity that exists between them, that is, of the covenant the two established in 1 Sam 20:16–17. The passage reads (1 Sam 20:41–42):
David [who had been in hiding] rose from beside the mound,60 and he prostrated himself, with his face on the ground, and he bowed down three times. Then they kissed one another, and they wept over one another, even profusely(?). Then Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, for the two of us have sworn in the name of Yahweh that Yahweh will be between me and you, and between my descendants and yours, forever.”
They then part; they part, that is, with the text suggesting for us the great affection and great devotion they have offered to one another.
Crucial to note here is this text’s indication that Jonathan’s feelings for David are reciprocated,61 as the materials we have considered heretofore have made no explicit mention of David’s emotional engagement in his interactions with Jonathan. By professing this now, this passage works to set forth the point I have now intimated several times: that Jonathan is not only, like his sisters Merab (in the variant account) and Michal (in the primary narrative), placed in the position of being like a wife to David, but Jonathan is the wife who supersedes his sisters in terms of the depth of his relationship with David, especially the wife who supersedes his sister Michal. In the account of Michal’s marriage to David in 1 Sam 18:20–29a David is never said to respond emotionally to Michal’s love for him. Nor does he particularly seem to manifest any affection for her afterward: as I have already noted, following Exum, he expresses no regrets about being parted from her in 1 Sam 19:11–17 and he makes no effort to see her once that separation has occurred. Furthermore, David, as Exum points out, does nothing to include Michal when, after he has become a fugitive from Saul’s court, he arranges safe refuge for his parents in Moab (1 Sam 22:3–4).62 Rather, the text seems quite clear that for David, all that motivates his relationship with Michal is his own political gain.63 “The idea was pleasing to David,” we are told, “to become the son-in-law of the king” (1 Sam 18:26), presumably because, “under certain circumstances, to be a king’s son-in-law is to be his legitimate heir.”64 First Samuel 20:41 could well have made a similar point regarding David’s relationship with Jonathan: that David engaged with Jonathan only because Jonathan’s allegiance could help David secure Saul’s throne. However, through its descriptions of the two heroes’ kissing and weeping, the text suggests just the opposite: that David is as emotionally committed to Jonathan as Jonathan is to him.65 This passage thereby implies that, in terms of mutual affection and devotion, the David-Jonathan relationship surpasses the relationship between David and Michal.
That the David-Jonathan relationship somehow surpasses or supersedes the relationship between David and Michal is further indicated by the way in which the narrative again works to place this 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 (English 20:1–42) story featuring Jonathan in parallel with a story from elsewhere in the Samuel complex that features Michal: the story of 1 Sam 19:11–17 I have already described that tells of Michal’s effecting David’s escape from Saul’s court. In both 1 Sam 19:11–17 and 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 (English 20:1–42) one of Saul’s children acts in defiance of the expressed intentions of their father in order to protect David, and each episode ends with David separating from this protector child and fleeing from the presence of Saul. Moreover, in both episodes the offspring’s defiant act includes lying to Saul or to his representatives. Michal tells Saul’s messengers that David lies sick in bed in order to keep them from realizing he has fled (1 Sam 19:14), and, once her deception is discovered, she defends herself by mendaciously claiming that David had threatened to kill her unless she helped him escape (1 Sam 19:17). Likewise, in 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 (English 20:1–42), Jonathan, as I have already noted, lies to Saul in presenting the fabricated excuse for David’s absence from the new moon feast and lies further by claiming he (Jonathan) gave David permission to celebrate the festival elsewhere (1 Sam 20:28–29). Also, in both stories, Saul reacts with anger once he perceives that his children have acted against him, accusing Michal of deceiving him in 1 Sam 19:17 and lashing out at and even attacking Jonathan physically in 1 Sam 20:30–34. As above, we can summarize in a simple table:
Table 7.3
| 1 Sam 19:11–17 | 1 Sam 20:1-21:1 (English 20:1–42) |
| Michal acts to save David in defiance of Saul’s expressed intent to have him killed | Jonathan acts to save David in defiance of Saul’s decision to put him to death |
| Michal lies (twice) to Saul in order to protect David (1 Sam 19:14, 17) | Jonathan lies (twice) to Saul in order to protect David (1 Sam 20:28–29) |
| Saul accuses Michal of deceiving him by abetting David (1 Sam 19:17) | Saul speaks angrily to and attacks Jonathan for favoring David (1 Sam 20:30–34) |
| Aided by Michal, David escapes from Saul’s assassins (1 Sam 19:12) | Aided by Jonathan, David learns that Saul does intend to kill him and so flees (1 Sam 20:35–21:1; English 20:35–42) |
The parallel nature of the stories found in 1 Sam 19:11–17 and 20:1–21:1 (English 20:1–42) is made even more obvious once we realize the story that intervenes between the two in the text of Samuel as we have it, the account in 1 Sam 19:18–24 of Saul dancing among a prophetic band led by Samuel, was almost certainly not a part of the original narrative, as it offers an explanation for something the Samuel tradition has already explained, in 1 Sam 10:9–16 (the origin of the proverbial saying “Is Saul also among the prophets?”). In addition, this “Saul dancing along with Samuel” story contradicts the tradition’s conviction, expressed in 1 Sam 15:35, that, after the battle against the Amalekites, Saul would never again see Samuel alive.66 In the original narrative, therefore, the account in 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 (English 20:1–42) of Jonathan deceiving Saul to facilitate David’s flight from court followed immediately upon the account in 1 Sam 19:11–17 of Michal deceiving Saul to enable David’s escape from Saul’s household, making even more evident the text’s intent to juxtapose the two episodes. The effect of this juxtaposition, moreover, is to suggest, as I proposed above, that Jonathan, the hero of the second story, has come to supplant Michal, the hero of the first. In fact, given that Jonathan is shown as acting to deliver David both immediately prior and subsequent to the Michal escape scene (in 1 Sam 19:1–7 and 1 Sam 20:1–21:1; English 20:1–42), we can again suggest, as I did above regarding the David-Jonathan stories bracketing the Michal marriage scene, that the narrative is structured so as to marginalize Michal, placing her in a parenthetical position in the text purposely to signal the parenthetical status of her relationship with David when compared to the relationship that has come to take primacy, the relationship of David and Jonathan.67
Saul’s Anger Over Jonathan’s Relationship with David (1 Sam 20:30–34)
In 1 Sam 20:28–29 Jonathan, as he and David have planned, reports to Saul David’s fabricated excuse for David’s absence from the new moon feast. Saul’s reaction, as I have already noted, is the sort of hostile response the two heroes had feared, although, perhaps unexpectedly, his anger is initially directed toward Jonathan and not David.68 The language Saul uses in his diatribe against Jonathan is perhaps also unexpected, as the king appears more to berate Jonathan’s mother than Jonathan himself, describing Jonathan as “the son of a perversely rebellious woman” (or “the son of a rebellious young woman”)69 and condemning, along with Jonathan’s “shame” or “disgrace” (bōšet), the way he has “shamed” or “disgraced” his mother’s nakedness (‘arwat immekā). Given, however, that “nakedness,” ‘erwâ, most often refers to genitalia, the intent of, at least, Saul’s latter insult seems to be to suggest that, through his disgraceful actions, Jonathan has brought shame to the mother who bore him; McCarter has argued that the former insult likewise, although it may seem directed against Jonathan’s mother, is actually meant to deride Jonathan as one who, like a rebellious servant girl, forsakes the overlord (in this case, Saul) to whom he properly owes allegiance.70 Thus, for McCarter, Saul’s insults are to be understood as condemning not Jonathan’s mother but Jonathan for disloyalty.71
Nevertheless, as Schroer and Staubli particularly argue, the language Saul uses in his diatribe is extremely sexually charged, so much so that we may be meant to interpret it also in sexual terms; that is, to understand this charged language is used in Saul’s insults because Saul perceives his son’s misdeeds to be sexual as well as political. According, then, to Schroer and Staubli, Jonathan has not only engaged in “the political scandal of a royal son betraying father and kingdom for the sake of a stranger, but also the effrontery of this homosexual love.” Schroer and Staubli, in support, point out that similarly charged language is used frequently in Leviticus 20, in that text’s diatribes against various forbidden sexual practices, including male-male anal intercourse (Lev 20:13).72 Martti Nissinen similarly comments that “the mention of disgracing one’s mother’s nakedness (‘erwâ) conveys a negative sexual nuance and gives the impression that Saul saw something indecent in Jonathan’s and David’s relationship”; Nissinen further suggests that Saul’s condemning of Jonathan for “choosing” (bāḥar) David to his own disgrace and to the disgrace of his mother’s nakedness “indicates a permanent choice and a firm relationship,” analogous to, say, a marriage.73 Indeed, Nissinen might have added that, at least once in the Bible, the same verb, bāḥar, is used to describe the choosing of sexual partners (Gen 6:2).74
The Account Found in 1 Sam 23:15–18 of David’s and Jonathan’s Last Meeting
After David and Jonathan part in 1 Sam 21:1 (English 20:42), the two are said to meet only once more in their lifetimes, in 1 Sam 23:15–18, when Jonathan again acts to protect David, coming to David while David hides at Horesh, in the wilderness of Ziph, in order to assure him that Saul will not find him (thus implying, at a minimum, that Jonathan does not intend to reveal to his father where David is hiding). The text describes Jonathan’s assurances as meant, literally, to “strengthen his [David’s] hand in Yahweh” (wayḥazzēq ’et-yādô byhwh).75 More idiomatically, as McCarter points out, this phrase means “to encourage David through Yahweh,” given that the phrase “strengthen the hand” elsewhere means “to encourage,” especially to encourage those who are fearful, as we would expect the fugitive David to be.76 Such language thereby once more suggests, as do 1 Sam 18:1–4, 19:1–7, and 20:1–21:1 (English 20:1–42), Jonathan’s concern and care for David and therefore his affection, even though this text is without the erotic indications we have located in the passages we have previously examined. It is worth noting, however, with regard to the possible eroticized content of this passage that according to v 18, Jonathan and David are said to make a covenant, reminiscent of the covenants Jonathan is earlier said to have made with David in 1 Sam 18:1–4 and 1 Sam 20:16. Because, moreover, Jonathan is said to be motivated by his “love” (’āhēb/’ahăbâ) for David on both those occasions, and because this love, as we have seen, is understood by most commentators as a matter of personal affection as well as political allegiance, we can suggest that personal affection may again be a motivating factor in 1 Sam 23:18.
Exum has in addition argued that 1 Sam 18:1–4 and 1 Sam 23:15–18 are tied together by Jonathan’s relinquishing to David any claims he has to Saul’s throne: in 1 Sam 18:4 by Jonathan’s giving over to David the royal symbols of robe, battle garb, sword, bow, and belt, and in 1 Sam 23:17 by Jonathan verbally acknowledging David’s future rule, with Jonathan subordinate to him (“As for you, you will be king over Israel, and I will be your second-in-command”).77 This correspondence allows us again to propose that, because Jonathan is said to be motivated by his “love” (’āhēb/’ahăbâ) for David in the former passage, he is motivated by the same affection, along with a sense of fidelity, in 1 Sam 23:15–18 as well. We might finally note, following David Jobling, that in 1 Sam 23:15–18, as in 1 Sam 20:41, Jonathan’s feelings of affection and fidelity seem reciprocated, given that in 1 Sam 23:18, and only in 1 Sam 23:18, are Jonathan and David said to make their covenant “together” (wayyikrĕtû šĕnêhem berît).78 As in 1 Sam 20:41, moreover, it is tempting to propose that this text’s stress on togetherness is meant to indicate a contrast between Jonathan’s relationship with David and the relationship of David and Michal by suggesting that, while Michal’s love for David went unreturned, with David taking advantage of it only because of the chance it offered him to claim Saul’s throne, Jonathan’s affection for David was reciprocated. As does 1 Sam 20:41, that is, 1 Sam 23:18 may want to show that Jonathan has replaced his sister as David’s primary relationship partner, his interactions with David manifesting mutual devotion in ways that her marriage to this king to be never did.
6. David’s Lament Over Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam 1:19–27)
Although at several points above, I have noted passages from the David-Jonathan narrative that might fruitfully be compared to passages from the Epic of Gilgamesh, it is parallels between David’s lament over the dead Jonathan in 2 Sam 1:19–27 and Gilgamesh’s mourning over the dead Enkidu in Gilgamesh, Tablet VIII, that are most commonly cited by scholars.79 Damrosch writes, for example, that “just as the marriage theme in the Gilgamesh Epic reaches its most direct expression at the close of the relationship, in Gilgamesh’s lament for Enkidu, here [in the story of the relationship of David and Jonathan] it is developed most explicitly in David’s lament after Saul and Jonathan die in battle.”80 Similarly, Schroer and Staubli comment that “Gilgamesh mourns for Enkidu in language that comes very close to David’s lamenting the loss of Jonathan.”81 The key verses of David’s lamentation read (2 Sam 1:23, 25–27):
O Saul and Jonathan, beloved and delightful in their life,
And in their death, they are not separated.82
They were swifter than eagles, stronger than lions.
…
How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle,
Jonathan lies slain upon your high places.
I grieve over you, my brother Jonathan,
You were such a delight to me.
Your love to me was wonderful,83
Greater than the love of women.
How the mighty have fallen,
And the weapons of war have perished.
Of initial note here is the fact that David, in v 26, calls Jonathan “my brother” (’āḥî). As I discussed at some length in chapter 3, this might be significant, given the well-known tendency in ancient Near Eastern literature to use the terms brother and sister euphemistically to refer to a beloved and/or to the object of one’s sexual desire. However, as I also discussed in chapter 3, it is only here, in 2 Sam 1:26, and in a handful of passages in the Epic of Gilgamesh that the term brother is potentially used to speak of two men as the objects of each other’s erotic or sexual desire; much more typically the terms brother and sister, when used in an eroticized context, refer to opposite-sex partners. I further noted in chapter 3 that the term brother can be used in ancient Near Eastern tradition to refer to men who are partners in covenant relationship, and, because of the prevalence of covenant language found elsewhere in the David-Jonathan accounts, an interpretation that sees brother in 2 Sam 1:26 as a term of covenant fidelity rather than erotic love has much to recommend it. Indeed, this is the reading urged by scholars such as Frank Moore Cross, Michael Fishbane, and Saul M. Olyan, and particularly of note in Fishbane’s discussion is his observation that the same Deuteronomistic corpus in which the David-Jonathan stories are embedded uses the terms lover (’ōhēb) in 1 Kgs 5:15 (English 5:1) and brother (’āḥ) in 1 Kgs 9:13 to refer to King Hiram of Tyre as a covenant partner of Kings David and Solomon.84 This certainly suggests that the ancient redactors of the Samuel-Kings tradition, as well as its ancient audience, would likewise have understood the term brother, when used in conjunction with the term love in v 26 of David’s lament over Jonathan, to be a reference to these two heroes’ covenant fidelity.
Still, the fact that so many of the examples of the language of eroticized brother- and sisterhood that I cited in chapter 3 come from the biblical tradition—from the biblical books of Proverbs and the Song of Songs (Prov 7:4–5 and Cant 4:9, 10, 12, 5:1, 2, 8:1), from the deuterocanonical texts of Tobit and the Additions to Esther (Tob 5:21, 7:11, 15, 8:4, Add Esth D:9), and from the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QapGen, col. ii)—may suggest that an ancient Hebrew audience would have at least registered the possibility of erotic overtones in the epithet brother with which David lauds Jonathan in 2 Sam 1:26. Moreover, while the terms brother and love certainly suggest covenant connotations when used in conjunction in 1 Kgs 5:15 (English 5:1), 1 Kgs 9:13, and elsewhere, the specific reference to love (’ahăbâ) that David uses to describe his relationship with Jonathan as 2 Sam 1:26 continues, comparing Jonathan’s love favorably to the love of women (niplĕ’atâ ’ahăbātĕkā lî mē’ahăbat nāašîm), is, as Olyan points out, “extremely peculiar in a covenant context.” As Olyan explains, the stress on love in a covenant context typically sees love as an expression of loyalty or fidelity, whereas the love of women to which Jonathan’s love for David is compared is usually “understood by scholars to be a reference to sexual or sexual-emotional love.”85 To be sure, not everyone agrees with Olyan here: for example, Sakenfeld, despite the 2 Sam 1:26 evocation of the “love of women” (emphasis mine), still prefers to give priority in this passage to the politicized meaning of love originally identified by Moran and so downplays any eroticized interpretation.86 Yet, among commentators, she (to my knowledge) stands alone in this view,87 so that even those who acknowledge the political connotations of the term love elsewhere in the David-Jonathan story argue that “warm personal intimacy” is demonstrated in 2 Sam 1:26.88
Yet how to describe more specifically the nature of that intimacy? There is debate. Exum, who translates “Your love for me was wonderful, more than the love of women,” takes David’s words to mean that Jonathan loved David more than women love men or, perhaps, that Jonathan loved David more than women loved David. However, it is not clear from the lament’s text, she argues, that David loved Jonathan.89 Still, she admits it is possible to interpret the poem as indicating this, as does, say, Terrien, who speaks of 2 Sam 1:26 as expressing the “all-shattering quality” of David’s pain, which stems from the “all-embracing character” and “depth” of David’s feelings for Jonathan. Erhard S. Gerstenberger similarly writes of David’s “fairly unequivocal” characterization of his loving relationship with Jonathan as one of “great joy and bliss,”90 and Cross and David Noel Freedman, who translate, “To love thee was, for me / better than the love of women,” also indicate that David loved Jonathan, at least more than David loved women.91 My own sense is that Terrien, Gerstenberger, Cross, and Freedman have the better of Exum on this point, who seems to me to give too little attention to David’s description of Jonathan’s love as something “wonderful,” that is, as something David seems to have cherished and, by implication, a love to which he responded.
In sum: I would interpret David’s words in 2 Sam 1:26 to mean that David perceived Jonathan to have loved him in a way analogous to the sexual-emotional way in which a woman (Michal, say) would love a man and to imply that David returned that love, finding it to be something “wonderful,” indeed, more wonderful that the love David received from the women with whom he had been sexually involved. In support of this interpretation I would note in particular that David’s comparison of the love Jonathan extended to him to the love women give to men fits well with the motif we have now seen several times in larger Samuel tradition, whereby Jonathan is imagined as womanlike or wifelike in relation to David. In particular we have seen this in passages that compare Jonathan to one of his sisters, either the sister who might have been David’s bride, Merab, or the sister who actually became David’s wife, Michal. Just to reiterate, these passages include
1. 1 Sam 18:1–4, in the variant account, where David rejects marriage with Saul’s daughter Merab in favor, perhaps, of his relationship with Jonathan;
2. 1 Sam 19:1–7, in the primary account, where Jonathan’s relationship with David mirrors the marriage relationship into which Saul’s younger daughter Michal and David have entered in 1 Sam 18:20–29a;
3. the composite edition that brings together the variant and primary accounts of 1 Sam 18:1–4 and 1 Sam 19:1–7, in which these two texts’ descriptions of Jonathan’s “loving” interactions with David bracket the account of Michal’s marriage to David, thereby suggesting a parallel between Michal’s marital relationship with David and the marriagelike relationship David establishes with her brother;
4. 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 (English 20:1–42), in which Jonathan, in abetting David’s attempts to escape Saul’s murderous impulses, again mirrors Michal and her helping David to flee from Saul in 1 Sam 19:11–17.
Also to reiterate: several times in the larger Samuel tradition we have seen the same motif that I would see David expressing in his lament regarding the superiority of his relationship with Jonathan as compared to his relationships with women, especially his relationship with his wife Michal. In 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 (English 20:1–42), for example, the way in which David takes leave from Jonathan in a way that is far more emotionally charged than was his leave-taking from Michal in 1 Sam 19:11–17 signals that David’s relationship with Jonathan has come to supersede his marriage relationship with Jonathan’s sister. In addition, I have argued that this passage’s description of Jonathan’s working to save David from Saul’s murderous impulses, when examined in relation to 1 Samuel’s two other “saving David” passages—1 Sam 19:1–7 (Jonathan persuading Saul to spare David’s life) and 1 Sam 19:11–17 (Michal helping David to flee from Saul’s assassins)—shows how the Michal materials are bracketed, and thus rendered parenthetical, in relation to the materials that concern her brother; this same bracketing effect renders Michal parenthetical in the composite narrative of 1 Samuel 18 and 19, where the story of her marriage to David in 1 Sam 18:20–29a is bracketed between the two foregrounded stories of David’s initial interactions with Jonathan in 1 Sam 18:1–4 and 1 Sam 19:1–7. Moreover, in both 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 (English 20:1–42) and 1 Sam 23:15–18 the use of the language of mutual commitment to describe David’s and Jonathan’s relationship alludes to the way that Jonathan’s relationship with David has superseded David’s relationship with Michal, in which her love for David went unreciprocated.92
It is further the case that the lament’s and the larger Samuel tradition’s imagining of Jonathan as womanlike or wifelike in relation to David corresponds quite well to the ways in which male-male sexual interactions were conceived of in the ancient Mediterranean world, including the world of ancient Israel. As I have indicated already in chapter 1, the ancient Israelites, like their ancient Mediterranean neighbors, subscribed to a sexual taxonomy based on the distinctions of active and passive, in which sexual intercourse was understood as an act of penile penetration that an active partner, obviously always male, performed upon a passive recipient. Typically, of course, this passive recipient was female, but the ancient Israelites certainly knew that it was possible to place a man in the sexually receptive position through an act of male-male anal intercourse. Because, however, receptive partners were more typically female, all receptivity—whether receptivity as a part of male-female vaginal intercourse or receptivity in male-male anal intercourse—was defined in terms of the feminine. Thus, in the ancient Israelite imagination, to be the passive partner in a male-male sexual relation was to be feminized or rendered womanlike.93 From this we might conclude the Samuel tradition’s repeated intimations that Jonathan is womanlike or wifelike in relation to David are meant to indicate, as is some of the other imagery I have discussed above, that David and Jonathan were conceived of within their story as same-sex erotic partners, with David perceived as the active or masculinized member of the pair and Jonathan the feminized passive partner.
Why, then, does the Samuel tradition so frequently evoke homoeroticized and sexualized language and images in its depictions of David and Jonathan, and why do the language and images so frequently suggest that Jonathan is to be metaphorically understood as David’s wife? Because, we might suggest, David and Jonathan were in fact imagined to be same-sex partners by the Samuel narratives and, moreover, same-sex partners who conformed to the ancient Israelite sexual understanding that same-sex acts between men were always performed by an active partner (David), conceptualized as male, upon a passive partner (Jonathan), imagined in terms of a feminized identity.
The Ambiguity of Eros
Unfortunately, there is an obvious problem with the proposal I have just outlined: that there is no indication the Samuel narrators view the relationship between David and Jonathan in any way negatively, whereas everywhere else in biblical tradition male-male sexual interactions are resolutely condemned, and precisely because of the feminization of the passive partner.94 As I described in chapter 1, that is, the ancient Israelites assumed not only that there was a rigid differentiation between the masculine (active) and feminine (passive) role in sexual intercourse but also that there was a “hierarchical nature of this differentiation.”95 Within this system of hierarchical differentiation the feminine or passive role—given the patriarchal worldview of ancient Israelite society—was considered inferior. Thus the feminization of the passive partner during the performance of male-male anal intercourse demoted that partner to a woman’s inferior status and so was perceived to be a shameful and dishonoring act.
I have in addition already discussed in chapter 1 the various biblical texts that demonstrate this understanding. We saw there, for example, how, in Gen 19:5, when the men of Sodom demand of Abraham’s nephew Lot, who sojourns in their midst, that he send out the two strangers to whom he had extended hospitality “so that we might know them” (in the biblical idiom, “so that we might have sexual intercourse with them”), what they are actually demanding is that Lot send forth his visitors so that the men of Sodom might place them sexually in a position of feminized passivity and thereby dishonor them by taking from them their male identity. We further saw in chapter 1 how this same logic of sex and gender roles illuminates the kindred story of Judg 19:22–26 in which the Benjaminite tribesmen of the city of Gibeah similarly call for a member of the tribe of Ephraim who sojourns in their midst to send forth his houseguest, a member of the priestly tribe of Levi, for them “to know” (Judg 19:22). As in Gen 19:1–11, even to propose such an act is deemed an “outrage” according to the story (nĕbālâ; Judg 19:23),96 for what such a request actually asks of the Ephraimite is that he send forth the Levite to assume the position of a female in sexual intercourse and so be demasculinized and dishonored by taking on “a position associated with lower status and power.”97
I likewise noted in chapter 1 how Lev 18:22 and Lev 20:13, the two biblical texts that explicitly forbid a man’s lying down with another man “the lying down of a woman,”98 draw on this ancient Israelite cultural understanding that male-male intercourse improperly feminizes the passive or receptive partner. According in particular to Olyan, who has written extensively on these Leviticus texts, it is crucial to realize that, despite the typical interpretation that sees in Lev 18:22 and 20:13 an emphatic condemnation of all “homosexuality,” the specific (and only) same-sex sexual act Leviticus considers in 18:22 and 20:13 is the male-male analog of male-female vaginal intercourse, that is, male-male anal sex. Furthermore, as Olyan and also Ken Stone make clear, the reason male-male anal sex is forbidden according to the sexual logic of Lev 18:22 and 20:13 is because “it confuses the boundaries between gendered subject-object categories” the ancient Israelites considered normative in sexual relations.99 It treats the male receptive partner in male-male anal intercourse, that is, as if he were a woman. As Stone writes, “This confusion is considered abominable to the authors of the Levitical codes, who went to great lengths to map out the distinctions and categories in terms of which the world ought to be ordered and to condemn any activity that was thought to disrupt this system of ordered purity.”100
Olyan, moreover, persuasively argues that in Lev 18:22, which condemns only one of the partners who participates in an act of male-male anal intercourse, it is the active or penetrating partner who is sanctioned. Olyan further suggests that this Lev 18:22 formulation of the prohibition, rather than the formulation found in Lev 20:13, which condemns both men who participate in anal intercourse, is the earlier.101 This is important for our purposes, because it indicates that in its origins the Leviticus tradition sought to castigate exactly those who are castigated in Gen 19:1–11 and Judg 19:22–26, men who proposed to place other men in a position of sexual submission and therefore dishonor them by rendering them female. Again we see, that is, that for a man to penetrate, or seek to penetrate, another man in an act of male-male anal intercourse is to violate, or threaten to violate, the receptive partner’s male identity. The aggrieved suffers dishonor and shame and is thereby owed redress: the destruction of the city of the offending Sodomites, in Gen 19:12–26, the Israelites’ waging a civil war against their offending countrymen, the Gibeahites, in Judg 20:1–48, the condemnation of the penetrating partner in Lev 18:22.
But what of the stories of David and Jonathan? In them, there is no hint that Jonathan, although he is often imagined as wifelike in his relationship with David, is placed in a position of dishonor or shame because of this feminization, nor is there any sense that David should be subject to castigation or that he owes redress because he has improperly demasculinized Jonathan. Rather, the text seems to imply just the opposite: that we as the text’s audience are meant to apprehend David’s and Jonathan’s love for each other as the “wonderful” thing David describes it to be in the lament he sings after Saul and Jonathan have died (2 Sam 1:26). This fact has quite logically led many commentators to argue that the relationship of David and Jonathan, however eroticized and sexualized its language, cannot be understood as sexual in nature. In his recent study of the David materials, for example, Steven L. McKenzie writes, of the erotic language found in David’s lament, “it is extremely unlikely that it is intended to describe a homosexual relationship” because “homosexual acts were condemned in Israelite law” whereas the David-Jonathan relationship is not.102 David M. Halperin also emphatically denies any homoerotic connotations in the language of David’s lament and especially in the lament’s line in which David compares the love of Jonathan favorably to the love of women. “This much-interpreted remark,” Halperin claims, “would seem to mean not that David had sexual motives for preferring Jonathan’s love to women’s but rather that Jonathan’s love for David was astonishing because—even without a sexual component—it was stronger and more militant than sexual love.”103
Similarly, Phyllis Bird, while acknowledging the affectionate quality of David’s and Jonathan’s feelings for one another, writes that “Jonathan’s love for David (1 Sam. 18:1) does not belong to the OT’s [Old Testament’s] understanding of homosexual relations” because it does not involve the same sort of male-male sex acts that Gen 19:1–11, Judg 19:22–26, and Lev 18:22 and 20:13 condemn.104 Nissinen likewise points out that there is no indication in the David and Jonathan stories the two slept together “as one sleeps with a woman,” by which he means both that there is no indication of the two having sexual relations and also that, as womanlike as the depiction of Jonathan may be at points, there is no indication the relationship of David and Jonathan was fundamentally structured according to the dichotomy of active and passive so central elsewhere in biblical and ancient Mediterranean tradition. Nissinen therefore describes the David and Jonathan relationship according to the same paradigm of homosociability that he argued defined the relationship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu in the Gilgamesh Epic. In his words:105
The relationship of David and Jonathan can be taken as an example of ancient oriental homosociability, which permits even intimate feelings to be expressed…. In these relationships, emotional partnership is emphasized, whereas erotic expressions of love are left in the background … and there is no distinction between active and passive sexual roles.
Nevertheless, Nissinen admits that it is “conceivable to interpret David’s and Jonathan’s relationship as homoerotic,”106 acknowledging, as I have catalogued in the first section of this chapter, that several examples of homoeroticized language and imagery can be found in the stories of David’s and Jonathan’s interactions. Halperin somewhat similarly concedes the point I have now noted several times, that the Samuel narrative is structured so as to suggest that David’s relationship with Jonathan replaces David’s conjugal relationship with Michal.107 As I have already intimated, Halperin interprets this to mean that a nonsexual friendship replaces the sexual relationship of marriage, but as in his discussion of the Epic of Gilgamesh in the same essay he fails, in my estimation, to explain why this “fraternal” friendship (the term is Halperin’s) is depicted in such eroticized terms.108 Likewise, Exum, who insists that David’s and Jonathan’s love “is not eros but male bonding,” says nothing about why this male bonding need be so eroticized.109 Somewhat paradoxically, indeed, she quotes with approval Damrosch’s characterization of the David-Jonathan relationship as “friendship-as-marriage,”110 yet overlooks Damrosch’s observation that, “this relationship [between David and Jonathan] has been developed far beyond anything that would have been required simply to assure the audience that David and Jonathan were close friends.” The narrative, Damrosch goes on to say, depicts “an inner picture of intimacy” that “goes beyond the Yahwistic dynamics of brotherly relations.”111 This is an assessment with which I agree. The Samuel text is in tone erotically charged, and far more erotically charged than seems necessary or appropriate to describe the sort of nonsexual friendship that, because of the condemnation of male-male sexual interactions elsewhere in the biblical tradition, is advocated by interpreters such as McKenzie, Halperin, Nissinen, and Exum.
As in our discussion of the relationship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, therefore, it seems we are left at something of an impasse. By all indications, sexual relations in the ancient Mesopotamian world were categorized according to the same hierarchical paradigm we have just been considering for ancient Israel, yet Gilgamesh and Enkidu are unremittingly portrayed as equals in the Gilgamesh Epic. This datum, as we saw in chapter 3, has tended to stymie interpreters in their understanding of Gilgamesh’s and Enkidu’s relationship. Should Gilgamesh and Enkidu, given the highly eroticized and sexualized language used in the Epic of Gilgamesh to describe their interactions, be understood as sexual partners? Or, given these two characters’ failure to conform to the normative pattern of Mesopotamian sexual relations, should they not? We face a similar (although not identical) dilemma here. David and Jonathan are described in the Samuel narratives using such highly eroticized language and imagery that it seems impossible in many respects not to interpret the text’s depiction of their relationship as sexual in nature. Yet the positive way in which their relationship is portrayed so fails to conform to the way male-male sexual interactions are condemned elsewhere in biblical tradition that it seems equally impossible to conceive that we are, according to the Samuel tradition, to imagine David and Jonathan as sexual partners.
In addressing the impasse as we found it in the Epic of Gilgamesh, I suggested that understanding the rite-of-passage narrative structure that underlies the Gilgamesh text allows us to explain the non-normative occurrences of homoeroticized language and imagery within the Gilgamesh tradition. Under the terms of that proposal, the Gilgamesh Epic’s use of highly eroticized language in its depictions of Gilgamesh and Enkidu makes sense even though the hierarchical paradigm we would expect in representations of Mesopotamian sexualized relationships is not present. In interpreting the David-Jonathan materials, as we will see in the first section of chapter 8, the same explanation—dependent on a rites-of-passage analysis—will not yield as fully satisfying results. Still, as I will consider in the second section of the next chapter, the same general interpretive principle—understanding the David and Jonathan story’s homoeroticized language and imagery within the context of the larger narrative structure of the Samuel tradition and in a way that accords with Samuel’s overall narrative strategy—will ultimately allow a successful negotiation of the impasse with which we currently seem confronted.