8

LIMINALITY AND BEYOND

Liminal Heroes?

I have indicated, at the end of the previous chapter, that the sort of rites-of-passage analysis I used in chapters 4 and 5 to explain the homoeroticized language and imagery of the Gilgamesh Epic will not yield as fully satisfactory results in our investigation of the similar sorts of language and imagery found in the David and Jonathan stories. Nevertheless, I must admit that certain aspects of the Samuel narratives do conform well to the rites-of-passage template originally proposed by Arnold van Gennep and particularly to the descriptions of the rites-of-passage’s liminal phase advanced by Victor Turner.

For example, the Samuel narratives’ initial descriptions of, especially, David can be well explained using the analytical category of the rites-of-passage liminal phase. Certainly, the first of the two narratives that introduce David, 1 Sam 16:1–13, presents him in a very liminal way, as he is both depicted as the lowest of the low, as a shepherd boy and the youngest of many sons (v 11), yet simultaneously described in the most exalted of terms, as the one designated by Israel’s God Yahweh to be his people’s next king (vv 12–13). Similarly, as this version of the “introducing David” story continues, in 1 Sam 17:12–31, 41, 48b, 50,¹ David is, on the one hand, represented as a relative nobody within Israelite society, a youngest son and shepherd boy whose only significant function within the Israel’s commonwealth is to bring food to his older and socially more important brothers, who serve as soldiers in Saul’s army (vv 14–15, 28). On the other hand, David is depicted as a particularly valiant fighter. Indeed, although just a shepherd boy, David is portrayed in 1 Sam 17:12–31, 41, 48b, 50 as a more able fighter than are all of the warriors who belong to Saul’s entourage; David is the only one willing to take on the Philistine champion Goliath and also, presumably, the only one capable of defeating this strapping foe.

In the second (and primary) narrative strand found in the 1 Samuel tradition,² David likewise seems to be introduced as a liminal character. Thus in 1 Sam 16:14–23, as in the 1 Samuel 17 text I just discussed, David is described both as a shepherd (1 Sam 16:19) and as a “nobleman” (1 Sam 16:18);³ he is, in addition, according to this same passage, a man who is preeminently skilled in both the arts of peace (the playing of the lyre) and of war. However, as this particular account of “David’s early days in Saul’s court” continues, in 1 Sam 17:1–11 and 32–40, it turns out that this warrior David, despite having been appointed Saul’s armor-bearer (1 Sam 16:21), is not so good with armor after all, as he finds himself unable to engage Goliath—unable even to walk!—while wearing the helmet, breastplate, and sword that Saul loans to him to use in his single-handed combat (1 Sam 17:38–39). Consequently David, although Saul’s armor-bearer, puts aside Saul’s armor in favor of the weapons of a shepherd, a staff and slingshot. Or we might say more abstractly that, in this primary version of the Goliath story, David puts aside one identity and fights according to another, although, after he triumphs, he arguably returns to the first (laying claim to Goliath’s armor as the spoils of his victory in 1 Sam 17:54, as typically would any warrior who vanquishes another). David by this account therefore represents a character who is neither fully courtier nor fully peasant, but rather one who “seems to shift and change,”⁴ in much the same way that “liminal entities,” according to Turner in The Ritual Process, “are neither here nor there, they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial.”⁵

In many respects these various liminal markers that are found in the narratives depicting David’s earliest days at court, both the narratives of the primary tradition and the variant, are reminiscent of the liminal markers that I suggested in chapter 4 were present in the descriptions that introduce Gilgamesh and Enkidu in Tablet I of the Epic of Gilgamesh (for example, Gilgamesh as both king and barbarian; Enkidu as both animal and human). Yet even as I suggested in chapter 4 that the Gilgamesh Epic’s introductory descriptions of both Gilgamesh and Enkidu were full of liminal imagery, I nonetheless insisted that the liminal phase of the Gilgamesh Epic truly began only about a third of the way through the Standard version’s Tablet II, in the aftermath of the wrestling-match scene in which the two heroes actually meet. Not until then, I argued, were Gilgamesh and Enkidu both separated, according to the language of van Gennep’s rites-of-passage structure, from the sets of conditions that had previously defined each’s existence (Gilgamesh from his harassing of Uruk’s citizenry, Enkidu from his rural homeland and the prostitute Shamhat); also, not until then, I argued, did the crisis that Gilgamesh’s oppressive behaviors had occasioned in Uruk begin to find the sort of redress that Turner associates with liminality in his paradigm of social drama.

In the Samuel narratives the matter is handled similarly we might suggest, especially in the variant tradition. In it, as I indicated above, aspects of David as a liminal character are introduced already in 1 Sam 17:12–31. However, it is not until 1 Sam 18:2 that we can actually speak—to use van Gennep’s language—of David separating himself from his earlier set of social circumstances, by leaving his father’s household at Saul’s request and moving into the royal court. The same basic motif seems depicted in the primary tradition, although there it is significantly compressed. David, as I again indicated above, is initially identified in the primary tradition according to certain liminal markers in 1 Sam 16:18–19. Then, in 1 Sam 16:22, Saul sends to David’s father Jesse and requests that David become a part of the royal entourage. Thus David is separated from the conditions that had previously defined his existence. Alternatively, were we to use the language of Turner’s social drama model, we could propose that, in both the primary and variant tradition, the crisis that had emerged in the narrative in 1 Sam 15:23, 26–29—Yahweh’s rejection of Saul as king and of Saul’s descendants as Israel’s dynastic line—begins to find redress in 1 Samuel 16–18, as the king-to-be David moves into the royal court and begins to be associated with the office that will eventually be his.

Still, David, although now living in a kingly abode, is not yet king, and in both the primary narrative and the variant we can identify this betwixt-and-between status with regard to the crown as a crucial marker of the fully liminal phase within which David exists after leaving his father’s home. This is especially true in the primary narrative strand. In this account David’s position as Saul’s armor-bearer in his early days at court seems emphatically to position him as Saul’s subordinate (1 Sam 16:21), as does the David’s use of the term servant to describe himself in relation to the king (1 Sam 17:32, 34, 36). Yet in 1 Sam 18:7, as this primary tradition continues, the relationship is portrayed differently. This verse comes at a point in the narrative after David has defeated Goliath and the Israelite army more generally has battled successfully against the Philistines. As the army marches home from these endeavors, the women of Israel sing a victory chant to celebrate.⁶ Its words are “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands,” instead of the expected “David (the armor-bearer and subordinate) has killed his thousands, and Saul (the king and leader of the army) his ten thousands.” The women are saying, that is, that David has usurped King Saul’s place as Israel’s premier warrior and commander-in-chief, and this even though Saul is still king and that place is rightfully his. Or, in terms of the analysis we are pursuing here, we might again state more abstractly that the women’s song lauds David as if he occupied a status-superior position with respect to Saul, even though he is in fact Saul’s status inferior.

This episode thereby serves to propel David into an ambivalently charged set of interactions with Saul, as, according to 1 Sam 18:8–9, once Saul hears the women’s victory chant, he begins to reassess his relationship with David. As a consequence, David finds himself caught between the status of being Saul’s beloved armor-bearer and the status of being Saul’s enemy. As the text of 1 Samuel 18 continues, especially in the primary narrative tradition, David is generally depicted as occupying the latter of these two positions, the enemy of Saul. Saul thus seeks to remove David from his presence (1 Sam 18:12–16) and to make David fall at the hands of the Philistines by requiring of him a bride-price of a hundred Philistine foreskins (1 Sam 18:25). In 1 Sam 19:7, however, Saul and David are reconciled, and “he (David) was in his presence as before.” Yet, almost immediately, Saul’s feelings turn again, and he seeks to pin David to the wall with a spear (1 Sam 19:10). It is at this point that first Michal, in 1 Sam 19:11–17, and then Jonathan, in 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 (in most of the Bible’s English versions 20:1–42), abet David as he flees permanently from Saul’s court.

We might compare this moment in the David story to the episode found at the beginning of Tablet IX of the Gilgamesh Epic when Gilgamesh, utterly bereft over Enkidu’s death and convulsed with fear about his own mortality, leaves behind his own royal court in the city of Uruk. As I suggested in chapter 4, the scenes that follow in the Gilgamesh Epic are particularly filled with liminal features, and so too do liminal markers begin to multiply in the story of David. After he leaves Uruk, for example, Gilgamesh is repeatedly described as “wandering,” terminology I previously suggested implies a quality of aimlessness reminiscent of the ambiguity that characterizes liminality.⁷ Somewhat similarly does David seem constantly to move from place to place in Israel’s southern region of Judah after he flees from Saul’s court. At least sometimes, moreover, it seems he moves without any sense of where he is going or why. He flees to Ramah, just north of Saul’s hometown of Gibeah, in 1 Sam 19:18, after Michal helps him escape from their bedchamber, then he returns (presumably) to Gibeah to rendezvous secretly with Jonathan, in 1 Sam 20:1. Next he leaves Gibeah for another nearby village, Nob, according to 1 Sam 21:2 (English 21:1).

After Nob, according to 1 Sam 21:11–22:5 (English 21:10–22:5), David begins to roam further afield, even ranging outside Judahite territory. In addition, his movements begin to be described in the text in a manner that feels almost frenetic. Thus David flees from Nob to the Philistine city of Gath, about twenty-five miles west and a little south, in 1 Sam 21:11 (English 21:10); then he goes from Gath back east ten miles, to the cave (or perhaps “stronghold”) of Adullam, in southwestern Judah (1 Sam 22:1).⁸ Next, two verses later according to the text as we have it, he travels at least thirty to forty miles east across the Jordan River, into Moab (1 Sam 22:3), before returning, two verses later still, to Judah, to the “Forest of Hereth” (1 Sam 22:5).⁹ Homelessness, Turner has argued, is one of the characteristic experiences of liminality. If so, then David in 1 Sam 19:18–22:5 certainly seems to qualify as liminal.

Also striking in these 1 Sam 19:18–22:5 narratives is the degree to which crucial aspects of David’s identity seem confused. David Jobling carefully documents, for example, how ambivalently the story of David’s and Jonathan’s secret encounter in 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 (English 20:1–42) treats the matter of David’s status as Israel’s future king. In 1 Sam 20:1, David comes before Jonathan as one comes before a sovereign, indeed, as David has previously come before Saul (1 Sam 16:21, 17:57, 19:7). Jonathan then decrees to David, “You shall not die” (1 Sam 20:2), a statement that Jobling proposes “exactly balances Saul’s ‘He shall not be put to death’” in 1 Sam 19:6.¹⁰ Moreover, as Jonathan continues speaking in 1 Sam 20:2, he explicitly identifies himself with King Saul—“My father does nothing great or small without revealing it to me”¹¹—and a few verses later David speaks of himself as “servant” to Jonathan (1 Sam 20:8), as elsewhere he has called himself or been called “servant” to Saul (1 Sam 17:32, 34, 36, 19:4).¹² In addition, in this same verse, David, apparently in an allusion to 1 Sam 18:1–4, recalls the covenant into which “you have brought your servant,” which is similar to language used elsewhere to speak of a covenant relationship an overlord has entered into with a subordinate (for example, Ps 89:4; English 89:3). Jonathan further presumes a kingly status in the fabricated story he tells Saul about David’s absence from the new moon feast, describing how he (Jonathan), acting as his father’s surrogate, received David’s petition to celebrate the festival with his family in Bethlehem and then granted his request (1 Sam 20:27–29).¹³ Finally, at the end of this 1 Samuel 20 passage, as David and Jonathan take their leave of one another, David falls to the ground as he comes forth from his hiding place outside Saul’s court, doing obeisance before Jonathan as would a subject before a king (1 Sam 20:41).¹⁴

However, Jobling suggests that Jonathan’s words to David in 1 Sam 20:13, “May Yahweh be with you, as he has been with my father,” imply that Jonathan has abdicated his rights as royal heir in favor of David. He further points out that Jonathan’s next words, asking David to deal faithfully with Jonathan and his descendants in the future, are the sort of petition an underling makes to his overlord, not a crown prince to an inferior.¹⁵ David also seems rather like a sovereign in 1 Sam 21:10 (English 21:9) when he takes the sword of Goliath from the shrine at Nob, where it apparently has been kept ever since David defeated the Philistine champion. In taking this weapon, David says, “There is none like it,” seemingly indicating that it is the most noble (and thus the most kingly) in the land. According to the very next verses, moreover, David seems kingly enough that he is mistakenly identified as Israel’s ruler when he goes to the Philistine city of Gath (1 Sam 21:11–12; English 21:10–11). Like a king, too, David gathers followers around him (1 Sam 22:2). Yet these followers are hardly the nobility that typically make up a king’s entourage; rather, they are said to be those in dire straits, those in debt, and those bitter of spirit. And of course David, no matter how noble his position as “captain” (śar) over them, is in fact a fugitive.

As the story continues, in 1 Sam 23:1–24:8 (English 23:1–24:7), several other motifs are introduced that arguably point to David’s increasingly liminal nature. First we can note that, according to the tradition, David, although he has technically been a fugitive since the time Michal lowered him from their bedroom window (1 Sam 19:11–17), is not described, in the chapters that immediately follow that episode, as being actually pursued by Saul (assuming here, as I noted in chapter 7, that 1 Sam 19:18–24, which describes Saul and his messengers seeking David in Ramah, is secondary to the original text). Beginning in 1 Sam 23:1–14, though, we find a set of stories that portray Saul as actively in pursuit of David. Saul first seeks David at the village of Keliah, which is on the border of Judah and the territory of the Philistines (1 Sam 23:7–8), and, after David escapes from Keliah, Saul chases after him in the wilderness of Ziph, several miles to the south and east (1 Sam 23:14). David eludes Saul there, and in the more southerly wilderness of Maon as well, even after some Ziphites reveal to Saul his whereabouts (1 Sam 23:19–28). Saul, though, does not relent: after a brief interlude, during which he is called away in order to repulse a Philistine raid (1 Sam 23:28), Saul seeks David in the wilderness of Engedi, on the southwestern shore of the Dead Sea (1 Sam 24: 2–3; English 24:1–2). From the point of view of a rites-of-passage analysis, it is very tempting to describe David as being forced here to undergo the sorts of onerous tests and trials that are so typically imposed on liminal entities, forced, that is, to face (repeatedly) a murderous threat and somehow overcome it. We might remember, moreover, that typically a liminal entity’s tests and trials are imposed by some sort of ritual leader. Most typically, we might also remember, these leaders are members of the liminal person’s community, who, although they are not themselves participants in the liminal person’s rite of passage, somehow assume authority over the liminal experience. Yet among communities where there are no such leaders, Turner argues that the role of the ritual leader can be assumed by an otherworldly agent.¹⁶ It is tempting to suggest that Yahweh plays this role in 1 Samuel by plaguing Saul with an “evil spirit” (1 Sam 16:14, 15, 16, 23, 19:9) that compels him relentlessly in his obsessive pursuit of David.

At the same time, however, that Yahweh is arguably compelling Saul in his obsessive attempts to kill David, Yahweh is described in the narrative as directly intervening in this-worldly affairs to help David triumph in his ordeals. Indeed, four separate times in 1 Sam 23:1–14 alone, David makes ritual inquiries in order to learn from Yahweh what he should do in the face of the challenges that confront him; on each of these four occasions Yahweh responds (1 Sam 23:2, 4, 11, and 12; cf. 1 Sam 28:6, in which Yahweh refuses to answer Saul). Yahweh further is described in 1 Sam 23:14 as working to protect David by not giving him into Saul’s hands. In the terms of the rites-of-passage analysis in which we are engaged, we might say that what we are seeing here is evidence of the experience of divine inspiration and revelation typically enjoyed by liminal entities.¹⁷ We should recall in this regard that, while it might initially seem paradoxical to claim that Yahweh, the same otherworldly entity whose “evil spirit” is arguably the cause of David’s tests and trials, simultaneously takes responsibility for delivering David from harm, this sort of dual role, as I described in chapter 4, is precisely analogous to the dual role as instigator and deliverer that Shamash plays in the course of Gilgamesh’s and Enkidu’s expedition against Huwawa/Humbaba. It is in addition exactly the sort of dual role that Turner ascribes generally to the ritual leaders in a rite of passage. These leaders both impose upon their liminal charges numerous trials and trials yet also provide to these charges the crucial sacra or divine knowledge they need in order to overcome their ordeals.

I further noted in chapter 4 that in ancient Near Eastern tradition a liminal entity’s experiences of divine inspiration and revelation often take place in wilderness locations, because according to the ancient Near Eastern worldview, to quote (as in chapter 4) Edmund Leach, “such places stand at the boundary between This World and The Other and are therefore appropriate places for a meeting between the natural and the supernatural.”¹⁸ It is striking in this regard the degree to which 1 Sam 23:1–24:8 (English 23:1–24:7) stresses a wilderness setting: David moves from Keliah to the wilderness (midbār) of Ziph (1 Sam 23:14), then further south, to the wilderness (midbār) of Maon (1 Sam 23:24), then east into the wilderness (midbār) of En-gedi (1 Sam 24:2; English 24:1). According, moreover, to the Hebrew text of 1 Sam 25:1, he travels from these locations even deeper into the wilderness space, into the desolate and uninhabited wilderness (midbār) of Paran in the northeastern region of the Sinai Peninsula. Given that David is reported back in the wilderness of Maon, in southern Judah, in the next verse, most scholars assume the Hebrew tradition has been corrupted at this point and that we should read “the wilderness of Maon” in 1 Sam 25:1, as, indeed, does the ancient Greek translation of 1 Samuel.¹⁹ I cannot necessarily disagree with this consensus, but I would nevertheless point out that there is much that is compelling about the reading Paran from a rites-of-passage perspective. According to such an interpretation, the Samuel narrative is moving David geographically into progressively more barren and isolated wilderness spaces at the same time that it is compounding the number of motifs in David’s story that correspond to Turner’s descriptions of liminality. As David becomes more and more paradigmatically a liminal being in the 1 Samuel materials, he appears to be located more and more by the narrative in the sort of wilderness space that is paradigmatic for liminality in ancient Near Eastern tradition.²⁰

Other textual difficulties in this part of the 1 Samuel account are also intriguing to consider in relation to a rites-of-passage paradigm. In 1 Sam 24:2–23 (English 24:1–22), and again in 1 Sam 26:1–25, stories are told of how Saul comes close to achieving success in his pursuit of David, or at least how he manages to come, along with his army, into the immediate proximity of David’s hiding place. On each occasion, however, the tables of the pursuit story are turned, so that David becomes the hunter rather than the hunted. Thus David manages stealthily to approach Saul and cut off a corner of his robe in the first narrative (1 Sam 24:5; English 24:4) and in the second he spirits Saul’s spear and water-jar away from Saul’s side while Saul sleeps (1 Sam 26:12). In both instances David uses this booty to make clear to Saul that he had been close enough to have murdered the king (1 Sam 24:12; English 24:11, 26:15–16). He further makes clear that he refrained from doing so because he still considers himself a loyal subject of Saul’s and asks, somewhat plaintively in each case, why—given his fidelity—Saul has insisted on pursuing him (1 Sam 24:9–16; English 24:8–15, 26:17a–20). In both accounts, Saul admits that he has behaved unjustly and reconciles with David, leaving off his pursuit to return home (1 Sam 24:17–23; English 24:16–22, 26:21–25). In the first story (1 Sam 24:21–22; English 24:20–21) Saul in addition acknowledges that David will someday be king and sovereign over his descendants.

For P. Kyle McCarter this declaration, found in the first account in 1 Sam 24:21–22 (English 24:20–21), serves as the key to the interpretation of both the “David spares Saul” stories. He takes the second story in 1 Sam 26:1–25 to be the older and understands the first story in 1 Sam 24:2–23 (English 24:1–22) to be a tendentious retelling inserted by a later editor who, by demonstrating that Saul himself came to recognize David as Israel’s future sovereign and thus subordinated the rights of his descendants to David’s, sought to erase any doubts about the legitimacy of David’s kingship and to counter any claims to the throne that could be advanced on behalf of a Saulide dynasty.²¹ The advantage of this sort of interpretation is that it accounts well for the rather enormous narrative inconsistencies that exist in the text as it now stands, in which, in the aftermath of the “Saul defers to David” narrative of 1 Sam 24:2–23 (English 24:1–22) as we have it, David almost immediately finds himself again pursued by Saul as if he were still the king’s enemy (1 Sam 26:1–2). The disadvantages, however, are, first, that this interpretation ascribes to the redactor who allegedly incorporated the 1 Sam 24:2–23 narrative (English 24:1–22) only the most mediocre of literary talent, so that he inserted his story of Saul’s reconciliation with David into the 1 Samuel complex in such a wooden way and so without attention to the larger context that it sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb. Second, this interpretation fails to explain why narrative inconsistencies are also associated with the older 1 Sam 26:1–25 reconciliation story, as, immediately after that story’s supposedly happy ending, David perceives himself still to be in danger from Saul and so flees to Philistia to escape from the king’s persecution (1 Sam 27:1).

What, though, if we interpret in order to suggest the inconsistencies in 1 Sam 24:2–23 (English 24:1–22), 26:1–25, and the related chapters are precisely the point: what if, that is, the changing portrayal of David as the enemy, and then the ally, and then again the enemy, and then again the ally, and then once more the enemy of Saul were taken as evidence of the liminal character of David in these chapters, serving as yet another indication of the betwixt-and-between existence that David experiences in this part of the 1 Samuel tradition? Indeed, this is exactly the interpretation I have suggested above regarding 1 Sam 18:12–21:1 (English 18:12–20:42), chapters in which David, while still resident at court (or at least hiding out in close proximity to it), also bounces between an identity as Saul’s enemy and an identity as Saul’s beloved. The materials found in 1 Sam 24:2–27:1 (English 24:1–27:1) seem in many respects just an exaggerated version of this same pattern, exaggerated, I might suggest, because all the narrative’s markers of liminality have become exaggerated at this point: the dangers David faces at Saul’s hands have become greater and greater, the role played by Yahweh as ritual leader has become larger and larger, the wilderness locations in which David’s ordeals take place have become increasingly more barren and isolated, and David, although he is the king to be, lives less and less like a sovereign in waiting and more and more like an outlaw and outcast.²²

It is while David lives more and more like an outlaw and an outcast that he is visited by Jonathan for the last meeting the two have in their lifetimes (1 Sam 23:15–18). Notably, moreover, all four of these two heroes’ encounters occur within what I have just described as the liminal part of the Samuel narrative. The two first meet, at least according to the shorter variant account, just as David is separated from his life as a shepherd boy in the house of his father Jesse (1 Sam 18:1–4). They continue to interact, according to the primary narrative strand, during David’s betwixt-and-between days in Saul’s court (1 Sam 19:1–7) and during David’s liminal experiences as a wanderer (1 Sam 20:1–21:1; English 20:1–42) and in the wilderness (1 Sam 23:15–18). Jonathan in addition is arguably portrayed as liminal himself from 1 Sam 18:1–4 onward. For example, as I have previously noted, he sometimes acts as if he were David’s sovereign, yet at other points he is imagined as David’s subordinate, even at times within the same story (1 Sam 20:1–21:1; English 20:1–42). More significant still is the Samuel narrative’s description of Jonathan’s relationship with Saul. At points Jonathan deliberately defies his father in order to act in solidarity with David. He lies to Saul, for instance, in 1 Sam 20:28–29. Yet Jonathan does not flee with David when the latter abandons Saul’s court in 1 Sam 21:1 (English 20:42). Nor does Jonathan ever seem to consider that his proper place might be anywhere other than at his father’s side, and thus he fights together and dies with Saul in battle against the Philistines (1 Sam 31:2–4).²³

What these various data suggest with regard to our analysis here is that we should understand the David-Jonathan relationship—which takes place wholly within liminal time and liminal space and whose two participants are each well described as liminal characters—as itself liminal. It then becomes tempting to argue that the anomalous way in which homoeroticized innuendo is treated in the Samuel narratives—positively, rather than negatively, as it is everywhere else in biblical tradition—is part and parcel of this liminal experience, in which, to quote Turner, “ordinary constructions of common sense” are “reconstructed in novel ways.”²⁴ More specifically: I posited in chapter 4 that the liminal structure of the Epic of Gilgamesh allows—in fact, even requires—that the eroticized and sexualized representations of Gilgamesh’s and Enkidu’s relationship not conform to the hierarchical paradigm that is otherwise normative for erotic and sexual relationships in the Mesopotamian world. Somewhat analogously, we can posit here that the liminal structure found within the 1 Samuel materials allows—in fact, requires—that the narrative tradition present the homoeroticized nature of David’s interactions with Jonathan in a positive manner that is contrary to the negative way male-male sexual interactions are presented in Israelite texts outside a liminal framework.

Within liminality, I quoted Turner in chapter 4 as writing, “the classifications on which order normally depends are annulled or obscured.”²⁵ As we saw in chapter 7, a crucial classification on which ancient Israelite sexual order normally depended was the proper observance of gender roles, with men assuming only the active role in sexual intercourse and women assuming only the passive. The repeated violation of these norms in the David-Jonathan stories, as Jonathan, although male, is over and over depicted as wifelike in relation to David, would ordinarily evoke condemnation in Israelite tradition. But within a liminal context, as Turner’s analysis would predict, the violation of the norms becomes, in a sense, the norm, so that an eroticized and sexualized male-male relationship that, outside liminal time and space, would seem in the Israelite worldview “bizarre,” even “to the point of monstrosity,” becomes in this instance acceptable and even commendatory.²⁶ Their love was “wonderful,” David says in the lament he sings following Jonathan’s death (2 Sam 1:26), and my point here is that, whatever the normative Israelite view, within the liminal context of the Samuel materials, David’s assessment is right. Within liminality a relationship that would otherwise seem condemnatory is praised.

The liminal imagery of the 1 Samuel narrative all culminates, perhaps, in 1 Sam 27:1–2, when David becomes an outcast from his own country, fleeing Judahite territory to enlist in the service of King Achish, who rules over the Philistine city of Gath. From a rites-of-passage perspective, a particularly impressive “confusion of all the customary categories” seems to be introduced here:²⁷ is David now Israelite or a member of the community of Israel’s most despised enemies, the Philistines? Achish certainly takes David as Philistine, giving him the city of Ziklag in exchange for his military service in 1 Sam 27:6 and assuming that David will fight as his ally when the Philistines assemble for war against Israel in 1 Sam 28:1–2. Achish’s warlords, however, believe that David’s loyalties ultimately lie with the Israelites, and they do not trust David to serve among them in the battle against Israel in which they are about to engage (1 Sam 29: 3–5).

And what of David himself? During his sixteen months with Achish (1 Sam 27:7), he engages in a program of massive deception. He wages war raids, as his position as Achish’s mercenary requires that he do, and enriches Achish with the plunder from these raids (sheep, oxen, donkeys, camels, clothing), as again his mercenary position requires (1 Sam 27:9). When Achish asks him about the victims of his raids, David consistently claims that he has been attacking Achish’s foes in nearby Israelite settlements, in the southern region of Judah (1 Sam 27:10). In fact, however, he has been attacking non-Israelite communities, and, in at least one instance, he has attacked a non-Israelite community that was otherwise an enemy of Israel and consequently, by default, an ally of the Philistines (the Amalekites; 1 Sam 27:8). David, moreover, when told by Achish that the Philistine king expects him to march with the Philistines against the Israelites, says in reply, “You will learn what your servant will do!” (1 Sam 28:2). This Achish takes as a profession of loyalty to him—that Achish will learn the extent of David’s fidelity—whereas David actually means to say that, in the throes of battle, Achish will learn that David has remained loyal to his native land.²⁸ Similarly, in 1 Sam 29:8, Achish assumes that when David says he will “fight against the enemies of my lord the king,” it means David will fight with his lord Achish against Israel. But David’s words might rather mean, as Marti J. Steussy points out, that David intends to fight for King Saul against Philistia.²⁹

At one level, in terms of the analysis we have been pursuing, David’s actions here seem consistent with, and even emblematic of, the liminal characteristics that have defined him, arguably, from the point when he was first introduced in the narrative in 1 Sam 16:1–13. Thus David stands positioned betwixt and between a Philistine and Israelite identity. Yet it is extremely important to realize that liminal entities are perhaps best described as “caught” or “trapped” between identities, with the implication that the loss of power and authority that comes with liminality forces liminal entities into status-ambivalent positions they do not (and would not necessarily) choose for themselves. Liminal entities, in Turner’s words, are marked by “passivity” and “submissiveness”; they are “clay or dust, mere matter” who, in the course of their rites of passage, are less actors and more acted upon.³⁰ This is not the shrewd and conniving David who dupes Achish regarding his ethnic loyalties.³¹ Nor is it the shrewd and conniving David who, in a subsequent scene in 1 Samuel (1 Sam 30:26–31), gives some of the booty captured in a raid against the Amalekites to the elders of Judah. Because David’s gift to these elders earns him their loyalty, and because this loyalty will be of enormous importance to David later, in 2 Sam 2:4, as he assumes the throne over the Judahite tribes of Israel’s southern region, we have to see David’s actions in 1 Sam 30:26–31 as carefully calculated, the deeds of an agent who works to take charge of and effect his own destiny, rather than the deeds typical of a liminal entity who submits passively as the events engineered by the community’s ritual elders (whether human or otherworldly) unfold around him. David’s cleverness in these passages, moreover, stands in stark contrast to the attribute of “foolishness” or nonsagacity that Turner, in The Ritual Process, includes in a list of the features of liminality.³²

How to explain the deviations from the expected rites-of-passage pattern that we find in the descriptions of David’s actions in 1 Sam 27:8–28:2 and 30:26–31? One possibility is to suggest that, by 1 Samuel 27, liminality within the narrative structure is beginning to come to an end, so that the liminal attributes that have previously defined David’s character and the nature of his existence begin to erode and even to disappear. Given that Saul, who holds the throne that David is to assume, and Jonathan, Saul’s presumptive heir, are soon to die fighting against the Philistines (1 Sam 31:2–4)—and also that two other of Saul’s sons are killed in this battle—this possibility has much to recommend it: with the current occupant of the throne and three of its main claimants dead, the path seems clear for David to assume the office of Israel’s king and so, shortly after 1 Sam 31:2–4, to complete the status transition from shepherd to monarch that has been in process since 1 Sam 16:1–13.

According to 2 Sam 2:1–5:5, however, David’s status transition is not effected as quickly and neatly as the events of 1 Sam 31:2–4 might adumbrate. Saul does have one surviving son, called in the tradition Eshbaal or Ishboshet, and, according to 2 Sam 2:8–11, Abner, the commander of Saul’s army, moves after Saul’s and Jonathan’s deaths to have this Eshbaal or Ishboshet anointed as king over the northern tribes of the Israelite confederacy.³³ David, meanwhile, reigns in the South, in Judah (2 Sam 2:4). This situation, in which David reigns only over the southern territory of Judah, persists, according to biblical chronology, for seven and a half years, until David becomes king over the North as well (2 Sam 2:11, 5:5).³⁴ Arguably, according to a rite-of-passage logic, David is still at least somewhat liminal for these seven and a half years, until his ascension to the combined throne of Judah and Israel is completed in 2 Sam 5:1–5.³⁵ Arguably, therefore, it becomes problematic to explain the less than liminal aspects of David’s actions in 1 Sam 27:8–28:2 and 30:26–31 as indicative of David’s movement out of a liminal existence even before Saul’s and Jonathan’s demise.

We might in addition note in this regard some of the other less than liminal aspects of the David story even during what I have characterized as the narrative’s liminal phase. In the same list of liminal features from The Ritual Process that I mentioned above, for example, Turner includes the “suspension of kinship rights and obligations,”³⁶ but the seemingly liminal David, in the midst of his flight from Saul, makes arrangements for his father and mother to dwell in safety in Moab until his fate in Israel is clear (1 Sam 22:3–4). Turner also includes as four separate items in his catalog of liminal features “homogeneity,” “equality,” “absence of status,” and “absence of rank,” yet David, as I have noted, is labeled the śar, or “captain,” of his wilderness entourage, an entourage made up, granted, of the outcasts of society, but an entourage of which David is leader all the same (1 Sam 22:2). Another item of Turner’s list is “sexual continence,” yet David marries during his time in the wilderness, twice (1 Sam 25: 39–43).³⁷

Such less than liminal aspects of David’s wilderness existence come into even clearer relief when compared to the manifestations of liminality we found in the Epic of Gilgamesh. We might note, for example, that, while David, after he is separated from Saul’s court according to rites-of-passage interpretation we have been pursuing, wanders in the wilderness as does Gilgamesh after he abandons Uruk in the Gilgamesh Epic, David never wanders as utterly separated from all aspects of his identity as does Gilgamesh.³⁸ Thus, even while in the liminal space of the wilderness, David retains his earlier identity as a mighty warrior: armed with a noble weapon (the sword of Goliath), attended by a entourage that fights at his side, and, most important, prevailing in military endeavors. He prevails against the Amalekites and other non-Israelite groups in 1 Sam 27:8, as I have mentioned, and, even more significantly (given that this occurs squarely in the midst of what is arguably the narrative’s liminal phase), he delivers the oppressed city of Keliah in 1 Sam 23:1–5. Compare Gilgamesh, who during his wilderness wanderings after leaving Uruk can barely be recognized as a human, much less as a hero. He is, rather, portrayed as both animal-like and as a corpse (like animals, he is covered with matted hair and eats flesh for food; like a corpse, he is unanointed and wears tatters). The alewife Siduri, when she first lays eyes upon him, is so scared by his appearance that she bars her door (Tablet X, lines 1–14). We might contrast the point in David’s wilderness wanderings when he encounters a woman, Abigail, wife of Nabal, who—when she hears that David is in her vicinity—loads up donkeys with abundant provisions and goes forth to meet him, making obeisance before him when she comes into his presence (1 Sam 25:18–25).

I will have more to say about what I consider this important Abigail episode in the third section of this chapter, but, for the time being, let us continue to consider how markedly certain aspects of the story of David in the wilderness contrast to the demonstrably liminal features of the Gilgamesh account. Unlike Gilgamesh, David never arrives at utterly otherworldly (and thus utterly liminal) spaces (for example, the interior of Mount Mashu and the sea with the perilous waters of death that lie in its midst), and, unlike Gilgamesh, David never encounters utterly otherworldly (and thus utterly liminal) beings (for example, the theriomorphic scorpion-men). Rather, David comes closest to such a confrontation only before his wilderness adventures, when he engages in combat against the fearsome Goliath.³⁹ Also note that David’s wilderness trials in escaping Saul, although onerous, are in no way as onerous as are Gilgamesh’s wilderness ordeals. Indeed, Gilgamesh, toward the end of his series of trials, twice fails to triumph in the tests set for him (he cannot pass Utnapishtim’s test of staying awake for six days and seven nights, nor is he able to lay claim to the restorative powers offered by the magical Plant of Rejuvenation). But David always succeeds, even when things look most bleak (in 1 Sam 24:2–23; English 24:1–22, and 26:1–25, when Saul comes, along with three thousand of his chosen troops, into the immediate proximity of David’s hiding places).

By the time he loses the Plant of Rejuvenation, Gilgamesh, I indicated in chapter 5, is so wholly “ground down” by his liminal ordeals, just as Turner’s model of liminality would predict, that he is finally able to learn the truths of human existence necessary for him to be reaggregated into his community and resume his position as king, and as a king, moreover, who has been transformed by his liminal experiences from an irresponsible ruler to a model monarch. David, however, even though he arguably has experiences in the Samuel narratives that qualify as liminal, is in no way as profoundly changed as is Gilgamesh by the trials he undergoes, and one gets the sense that the sort of king David is once he ascends the combined throne of Judah and Israel in 2 Sam 5:1–5 is just the sort of king he would have been had he become monarch immediately after he was first introduced in the narrative and identified as Saul’s successor in 1 Samuel 16.⁴⁰ In fact, in 2 Sam 5:2, as David is being crowned as king over the tribes of the North, he is lauded by the Israelites as the one who was designated by Yahweh to be the “shepherd over my people.” Given that the image of king as shepherd is practically ubiquitous in ancient Near Eastern literature, including the literature of the Bible, this is a perfectly acceptable and even expected metaphor for a text that concerns a sovereign’s coronation to evoke.⁴¹ Yet here in 2 Sam 5:2 it takes on added significance, as David, of course, entered the narrative as an actual shepherd in 1 Sam 16:1–13 and continued to manifest this identity early in the story of his days in Saul’s court, both in the primary and variant narrative traditions (1 Sam 16:19, the primary tradition, and 1 Sam 17:15, 28, the variant).

This has important implications within the context of our current discussion, as in demonstrates in a nutshell the point I put forward above: that, although David is arguably characterized as liminal in certain respects in the narratives of 1 Samuel and arguably undergoes certain liminal experiences, he is nevertheless basically the same shepherd before the liminal phase of his story begins that he is as his liminal status, in 2 Sam 5:1–5, apparently comes to an end. Gilgamesh, conversely, by the end of his story, becomes a king of a quite different sort than the reckless and irresponsible monarch he was in his story’s opening scenes. Another text that illustrates in a nutshell the different ways in which liminality is ultimately manifest in the Gilgamesh Epic and the Samuel narratives is 2 Sam 1:11–12, where David and his followers, after hearing of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan, engage in the sort of mourning rituals characteristic of liminality (tearing their clothes, weeping, and fasting). They thereby separate themselves from their normal positions within their community’s social structure by separating themselves from normal markers of status (appropriate clothing) and from normal human behaviors (eating). Gilgamesh, of course, does much the same when Enkidu dies, tearing out his hair and stripping off his royal garments (Tablet VIII, lines 62–63). Yet while Gilgamesh persists in these liminal behaviors far beyond the weeklong period of mourning prescribed in Mesopotamian tradition, David and his men maintain their liminal identity as mourners only part of one day, and this even though other biblical texts, including other texts in the Samuel tradition (1 Sam 31:13), suggest that the ancient Israelites, like the people of Mesopotamia, typically observed seven days of mourning.⁴² If Gilgamesh, throughout the Epic of Gilgamesh and especially in its culminating tablets, might be described as hyperliminal, so extreme and extensive are his liminal behaviors and experiences, David, throughout the story of his rise to power and especially in its culminating moments, might be described as only marginally so.

It thus seems to me that, while liminal imagery and the rites-of-passage pattern are somewhat represented in the Samuel narratives of David’s ascension to kingship, and in fact at certain points are strongly represented (and, whatever my caveats above, I do not wish to deny this), this liminal imagery and rites-of-passage pattern are not as powerfully and even pristinely present in the David story as they were in the Gilgamesh Epic. Nor, I might add, are liminal imagery and the rites-of-passage pattern as powerfully present in the 1 Samuel materials as I believe they are elsewhere in the biblical tradition, in, for example, the story of the Israelites’ exodus out of Egypt and their transformation from slaves into a free people (after, notably, forty years of wilderness tests, trials, and sacred revelations).⁴³ These observations raise the possibility, as I suggested at the beginning of this chapter, that liminal imagery and the rites-of-passage pattern might not fully inform the Samuel narrative’s use of eroticized and sexualized language and imagery in the stories that describe the relationship of David and Jonathan. Indeed, if we focus for a moment on some of the details of the various David-Jonathan episodes, we can see that, as in the 1 Samuel narrative as a whole, the rites-of-passage pattern and liminality are less than perfectly represented. Comparing the way liminal motifs are manifest in the Epic of Gilgamesh again makes this particularly clear.

I argued in chapter 5 that the Gilgamesh Epic, as part of its liminally based depictions of Gilgamesh’s and Enkidu’s relationship, insisted on describing these two heroes as equals, as representatives, that is, of the typically liminal experiences of homogeneity and egalitarianism. I further maintained there that, as Turner’s paradigm would predict, this liminal experience of homogeneity and egalitarianism helped facilitate a narrative vision of what Turner calls communitas, the experience of utter and absolute fellowship and solidarity that liminal persons typically enjoy. Yet while David and Jonathan certainly can be said to enjoy experiences of fellowship and solidarity, their interactions are nevertheless not comparable to the communitaslike interactions of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. David and Jonathan, for example, are not well described as equals.⁴⁴ To be sure, as I have earlier noted, their status relationship to one another is unclear, so that at some points Jonathan appears the kingly one in relation to David, while at other points David appears sovereign over Jonathan. Still, the idea that there is a status relationship to be negotiated between David and Jonathan is never abandoned, whereas in the egalitarianism of communitas, as Turner understands it, “distinctions of rank or status disappear or are homogenized.”⁴⁵

David and Jonathan also do not manifest the same single-minded and exclusionary focus on one another as do Gilgamesh and Enkidu. As I noted above, for example, Jonathan, however great his devotion to David, never so throws in his lot with David that he abandons his father Saul in order to live with David’s outlaw band. Indeed, every interaction Jonathan has with David somehow involves Saul. Saul takes David into his house at the same time Jonathan is coming to love and make a covenant with him (1 Sam 18:1–4). Jonathan intercedes with Saul twice on David’s behalf once Saul’s delight in David turns to enmity (1 Sam 19:1–7 and 20:1–21:1; English 20:1–42). Jonathan meets with David one last time before he (Jonathan) dies in order to encourage David as David tries to escape from Saul’s relentless pursuit (1 Sam 23:15–18). Even upon the occasion of Jonathan’s death, Saul is still a looming presence, as David laments the two jointly. “O Saul and Jonathan … in their death, they are not separated,” he sings (2 Sam 1:23), just as Jonathan seems never to have been separated from Saul, or at least from the thought of Saul, throughout the course of his interactions with David.

In fact, so present is Saul in the stories of David’s and Jonathan’s interactions that Silvia Schroer and Thomas Staubli see in the Samuel narratives a love triangle, with both Saul and Jonathan in love with David and in competition for his affections (an idea also explored by André Gide, in his 1896 play Saül).⁴⁶ Yet while such an interpretation has the advantage of explaining some of the Samuel tradition’s language and imagery (especially 1 Sam 16:22, where it is said that Saul “loved” [’āhēb] David), it surely imposes (as Schroer and Staubli are wont to do) far too much of our modern sensibility regarding the possible configurations of sexual relationships back onto the world of ancient Israel.⁴⁷ Still Schroer’s and Staubli’s sense that the David-Jonathan relationship is not as exclusionary as a liminal relationship of heroic companions should be, as well as the lack of liminal egalitarianism manifest in David’s and Jonathan’s interactions, suggests, as I indicated above, that a rites-of-passage analysis may not wholly account for the use of eroticized and sexualized language and imagery in the stories of David and Jonathan. As we will see in the following section, a fuller explanation requires us to understand that, in addition to a rites-of-passage framework, there is an even more dominant structuring principle at work in the 1 Samuel narratives on which I have focused, the principle of apologetic.

Erotic Apologetic

In his recent study of the David story, Steven L. McKenzie entitled his chapter on the Bible’s account of David’s life “Royal Propaganda.”⁴⁸ By this McKenzie means, as argued most fully and persuasively by McCarter,⁴⁹ that the story of David’s ascent to the combined throne of Israel and Judah is apologetic in tone, an attempt by David’s biographers to justify David’s right to rule over Israel’s northern and southern regions despite the strong claims that surely could be advanced by David’s detractors on behalf of the dynasty of Saul. In particular, David’s biographers, as McKenzie (following McCarter) sees it, “function to legitimate David as Saul’s successor by answering charges against him.”⁵⁰ To defend David against those who might condemn him as an outlaw, for example, the David story insists that he was rather an unwilling fugitive from Saul’s court, forced by Saul’s irrational jealousy into a life of banditry and brigandage. Similarly, to defend David against those who might condemn David as a Philistine ally, the David story presents him as one who fled to Philistia only as a last resort and, while there, worked secretly on behalf of his Israelite brethren by conducting war raids against Israel’s enemies.⁵¹ According to this understanding, the stories of David’s interactions with Jonathan, too, are to be read in terms of apologetic:⁵² David did not, as his potential detractors might claim, malevolently usurp the Israelite throne from Jonathan, the rightful heir; rather, Jonathan voluntarily abdicated whatever claims to kingship he might have had because of his great devotion to David. This devotion, the narrative implies, its audience—and especially those members of its audience who might otherwise question David’s right to rule—should extend to David and to his dynasty as well.

We have seen, moreover, that, according to the readings I suggested in the last chapter, Jonathan’s devotion to David should be described both in terms of political loyalty and personal affection. It is, of course, obvious how the passages from the David-Jonathan stories that focus primarily on Jonathan’s political loyalty function in accord with the apologetic reading we are considering here: David cannot be accused of forcibly taking the throne from the legitimate crown prince Jonathan because Jonathan willingly gave his fealty to David. So, therefore, is the narrative’s audience told that David is in fact their rightful king and that they owe him and his dynasty the same fealty Jonathan has offered. More specifically, in 1 Sam 18:4, as Jonathan gives over to David the royal symbols of robe, battle garb, sword, bow, and belt and thus relinquishes any claim he might make to the throne, so too is the message to the narrative’s audience that they should relinquish any claims they might advance on behalf of Jonathan and his descendants in favor of the claims of the dynasty of David. Likewise, as Jonathan acts as a subordinate to David’s sovereign in 1 Sam 20:13–15, so too, the argument of the apologetic urges, should the ancient Israelites acknowledge David and his descendants as rightfully their overlords and so subordinate themselves willingly to the Davidic dynasty’s rule. Also in 1 Sam 23:17, just as Jonathan voluntarily accepts that David is to be king over Israel while Jonathan serves as his second-in-command, so too, according to the logic of the apologetic, should the narrative’s audience admit and even espouse the legitimacy of Davidic kingship.

As I noted in the first section of this chapter, however, the theme of Jonathan’s acting in a way that honors David’s claim as Israel’s rightful king is not carried through in the 1 Samuel tradition in a wholly consistent fashion, as Jonathan acts far more like a crown prince and king in waiting rather than David’s subordinate in 1 Sam 19:1–7 and 20:1–11, 27–29, and 41–42. In 1 Sam 20:1–2, for example, he speaks with David as a king would speak with a subject. David also, in vv 8 and 41 of this same text, assumes more of a role as Jonathan’s subordinate rather than his sovereign (identifying himself as Jonathan’s servant and making obeisance before him). This positioning of Jonathan in a more kingly role in relation to David undermines the apologetic thrust of the narrative to some degree, and the narrative’s apologetic agenda is undermined even more if one were to recall that one of the key passages of Jonathan’s voluntary submission, 1 Sam 18:4, belongs to the variant narrative strand that is scattered only intermittently through 1 Samuel 16–18 and is not a part of the primary Samuel tradition. Still greater undermining is suggested, moreover, if one were to agree with McCarter that some of the key passages of Jonathan’s subservience are additions made by the Deuteronomistic redactors of the Samuel tradition and thus are secondary to the original text (1 Sam 20:11–17, 23:15–18).⁵³

Together, these various data indicate that the earliest forms of the David narrative fail to suggest to their audience as emphatically and unambiguously as they might that they should follow Jonathan’s lead in submitting themselves politically to David. What I want to argue, though, is that the apologetic’s point of view is powerfully recovered and even more forcefully put forward in the texts that focus primarily on the “personal affection” dimension of Jonathan’s devotion to David. I want to argue, in other words, that while the “political loyalty” passages convey the narrative’s apologetic thrust imperfectly—at some points quite bluntly, yet at others less than definitively—the verses and passages that depend primarily on “personal affection” language and imagery, although somewhat more subtle, are ultimately more successful in getting the narrative’s apologetic point clearly across.

Let me point out first in this regard that, no matter how ambivalent at times the portrayal of David’s and Jonathan’s political relationship—David at some points acknowledged as Jonathan’s political superior and at other points depicted as Jonathan’s political subordinate—the Samuel tradition is unremitting in its sense that David is personally dear and beloved to Jonathan. Indeed, the theme of Jonathan’s affections for David runs as a constant thread through the four texts that depict the two heroes’ interactions, and it is also attested in the lament David sings upon Jonathan’s death. By stressing this theme consistently, the narrative works, I believe, to clarify its varying pictures of David’s and Jonathan’s political relationship. Whatever the ambiguities of the political interactions, the consistent way in which Jonathan is depicted as caring for David indicates to the narrative’s audience both 1. that Jonathan does not feel he has been wronged or treated badly by David during David’s ascent to the throne, and thus David cannot be accused of malevolently usurping the Israelite crown from Jonathan, the rightful heir, and 2. that, as Jonathan unreservedly bestows his affections on David, so are the subjects of the Davidic monarchy to extend toward David and his dynasty their highest esteem and regard. Because Jonathan, in short, “loves” and “delights in” David unconditionally and wants only to see him live safely and prosper, then so should Samuel’s ancient Israelite audience “love” and “delight in” their Davidic monarch and his dynasty, rather than feel aggrieved on Jonathan’s behalf and maintain that Jonathan has been unjustly pushed aside for the sake of David’s kingship. In fact, for the narrative tradition, it is in the making of this point that the dual connotation of love in the David and Jonathan stories takes on special significance, so that even though, at times, Jonathan might be portrayed as acting more the political superior of David than as his political subordinate, it is nevertheless clear to the narrative’s audience that his love—which is to say his personal affection but also his covenant fidelity and loyalty—is unwavering. Hence, the audience is told, their love for David, and their acknowledgement that he is their rightful king, should be unwavering as well.

But far more important in getting this message across, I believe, is the way in which David’s and Jonathan’s love is depicted in the Samuel narratives in homoeroticized terms, in particular homoeroticized terms that depict David and Jonathan as being like husband and wife, with Jonathan occupying the wifelike role. As I discussed at the end of chapter 7 and again in the preceding section, it is these feminized depictions of Jonathan that, more than anything, have been an impediment to those who seek to explain the homoeroticized language and imagery of the David-Jonathan materials, since everywhere else in biblical tradition, it is regarded as a grievous evil to render a man feminine within a sexualized relationship. Yet in the Samuel materials, seemingly anomalously, this feminization of Jonathan within a homoeroticized context is treated as acceptable and even, to quote again from David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan, a “wonderful” thing (2 Sam 1:26). But what I think McCarter’s understanding of the David story as apologetic allows us to understand is that, from the narrative’s point of view, homoeroticized feminization in this particular case is in fact something wonderful because this feminization furthers the tradition’s goal of affirming David’s right to the throne over the claims that might otherwise be advanced on behalf of Saul’s descendants.

More specifically: by depicting Jonathan as occupying a feminized position within his homoeroticized relationship with David, and by drawing on the ancient Israelite understanding that the feminized position within sexual relationships was a position of status inferiority, the narrative is able to suggest that Jonathan has relinquished the status-superior position that he was otherwise accorded on account of his birth and inhabits instead the subordinate position women held with respect to men within the ancient Israelite sexual and social hierarchy. Sexual roles in ancient Israel, that is to say, were isomorphic with social rank,⁵⁴ or, as we who experienced the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s might more succinctly say, the personal, for the ancient Israelites, was also the political. As Ken Stone writes, “Within a culture marked by rigid gender differentiation and hierarchy, a man who assumes the [sexual] role allotted by convention to a woman is moving, socially, downward.”⁵⁵ The Samuel tradition, guided by this conviction, depicts Jonathan as assuming a feminine role within an eroticized and sexualized relationship with David in order to intimate that Jonathan has moved into a socially subordinate position with respect to David and so has surrendered whatever claim he might have to the throne. Any sense that the royal office David and his dynasty hold should more rightfully belong to Saul’s descendants is thereby abrogated, and the Samuel tradition forcefully reiterates its primary theme: that David can claim the kingship over Israel and Judah rightfully and without question, without question even on the part of Saul’s legitimate heir.

To put the matter another way: the ancient Israelites, as we have seen, without exception saw male-male sexual interactions as involving an active partner, gendered as male, and a passive partner, gendered as female. Furthermore, they without exception believed that to place a man in the passive or feminized position was grossly to humiliate him because that man was stripped of his male identity and with it the status superiority that comes with masculinity. Such humiliation and status subordination is normally, within a society that zealously protects the rights of its male citizens, to be decried. But, for the apologetic narrators of the Samuel narratives, Jonathan’s status subordination in relationship to David is precisely the point they want to advocate; to place Jonathan in a position of status subordination in the stories of his interactions with David is a means of achieving precisely the status elevation of David in relation to Jonathan the narrators of 1 Samuel wish to promote. We should recall, moreover, as I noted above, that while the political loyalty passages within the David and Jonathan narratives do at several points indicate that Jonathan voluntarily put aside whatever claims he might have to the throne in favor of the claims of David, they do not necessarily do so consistently. Consequently, they leave unresolved the issue of Jonathan’s political status in relationship to David. The personal affection passages we have just been considering, however, and especially the homoeroticized innuendo within these passages, by constantly depicting Jonathan as wifelike in his interactions with David, unconditionally assert that Jonathan has surrendered his status-superior position to David and so unreservedly affirm the narrative’s conviction that it is David who should be king instead of Saul’s son. We can quote again Stone regarding the ancient Israelite understanding of sexual interactions: “sexual penetration implies social submission.”⁵⁶ The Samuel narratives use this principle in insinuating a homoeroticized relationship between David and Jonathan in order to imply social submission on Jonathan’s part and social superiority on the part of David.⁵⁷

We might furthermore suggest that the narrators of the Samuel tradition intend to insinuate not only that David rules as Israel’s legitimate king because the otherwise rightful heir to the throne is subordinated, like a woman, in relation to David, but that as Jonathan becomes womanlike in his relationship with David, he actually is disqualified from any claim to the crown he might put forward. The issue of kingly qualifications is, after all, an important theme within the Samuel tradition. Thus Saul, according to the logic of the narrative’s apologetic, becomes no longer qualified to serve as Israel’s king once “the spirit of Yahweh” departs from him in 1 Sam 16:14 and an evil spirit inflicts madness upon him instead. Saul, that is, comes to lack the attribute of divine affirmation that had previously entitled him to rule over Israel.⁵⁸ Jonathan’s son Merib-baal/Mephibosheth is likewise depicted in the Samuel narratives as unqualified to hold the throne because he is lame and so lacking the attributes of physical prowess and might that a king requires.⁵⁹ Jonathan, the narrative may be hinting, somewhat similarly is disqualified from any claim to the throne because he has relinquished the status-superior male identity that is proper and indeed requisite for an Israelite monarch. In assuming a feminine role, that is, Jonathan may make himself suitable, according to ancient Israelite tradition, only to occupy a position of subservience to another.

To be sure, Israel (or, more specifically, Israel’s Southern Kingdom of Judah) was, at one point in its history, ruled by a queen (2 Kgs 11:1–20), which might suggest that my reading here is wrong and a feminized identity need not disqualify Jonathan from a right to the crown. But I would counter by suggesting, first, that according to the biblical tradition, the reign of Queen Athaliah was hardly considered a success within Israel’s monarchical history, which implies there existed little support among the ancient Israelites for a woman (or womanlike) ruler. Note in this regard that neither the Deuteronomistic authors of 2 Kings 11 nor the authors of the parallel account in 2 Chr 22:10–23:21 uses the standard regnal formula in describing Athaliah’s reign (“so-and-so was so many years old when he began to reign; he reigned so many years”), which indicates that they did not consider Athaliah’s rule to be legitimate. Second, and more important, I would argue that according to the sexual paradigms of the ancient Israelite world, Jonathan, in assuming a feminized position in relation to David, assumes a status that is even lower in some senses than that of any woman who might sit upon Israel’s throne. In both Genesis 19 and Judges 19, recall, it was deemed better for the host character in each story to send forth women, even virgin daughters, to be raped than to send forth his male guest or guests; this was because to rape women, even virgins, although a crime, was not as heinous a crime as was the proposed violation of the active role within sexual intercourse deemed proper for men. Jonathan, according to this logic, is more shamed and humiliated on account of his feminization with respect to David than would be a woman, even more shamed and humiliated than would be a woman who is sexually violated, and thus Jonathan is rendered even more subordinate than any woman. Jonathan, in short, is fallen so low, the narrative’s homoeroticized innuendo may imply, and has assumed so abjectly subservient a position in relation to David, that neither he nor his descendants can ever rise again to advance a claim to the throne.

We should moreover be cognizant, in terms of this reading, of the pains to which the text goes to absolve David of any charge of sexual coercion that might be leveled against him. David, unlike, say, the inhabitants of Sodom in Genesis 19 or the Benjaminites of Gibeah in Judges 19, cannot be accused of interacting, or seeking to interact, sexually with Jonathan against Jonathan’s will. Rather, the text, whether the primary or variant tradition, goes to great pains to portray Jonathan as the initiator of the two heroes’ homoeroticized relationship. Thus it was Jonathan who first loved David, according to the variant tradition in 1 Sam 18:1, and likewise Jonathan who first delighted in David, according the primary narrative strand in 1 Sam 19:1. In other words, Jonathan, although womanlike in terms of his relationship with David, acts as the sexual aggressor. This is virtually unparalleled in biblical literature, in which, much more typically, the role of sexual aggressor belongs to the masculinized partner in erotic and sexual relationships. David Damrosch points out, for example, that when the verb ḥāpēṣ, “to delight in,” is used in an eroticized and sexualized context elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible its subject is always a man and its object is always a woman (Shechem is said to delight in Dinah, for example, in Gen 34:19).⁶⁰ We can similarly observe that, when the verb ’āhēb, “to love,” and the related noun ’ahăbâ, “love,” are used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible to describe erotic and sexual attraction, these terms almost without exception refer to a man’s feelings for a woman.⁶¹ The patriarch Isaac is said to have loved his wife Rebekah (Gen 24:67), for example, and Isaac’s son Jacob to have loved his wife Rachel (Gen 29:18, 20, 30) and possibly, albeit to a lesser degree, to have loved Rachel’s sister Leah as well (Gen 29:30).⁶² The mighty Samson is said to have loved Delilah (Judg 16:4, 15), and Samson’s Timnite wife seems to presume that he loved her too at some point (Judg 14:16). Also, Elqanah of Ramathaim is said to have loved his wife Hannah (1 Sam 1:5), King Solomon to have loved his many foreign wives (1 Kgs 11:1, 2), King Rehoboam to have loved his queen Ma‘acah (2 Chr 11:21), and King Ahasuerus of Persia to have loved the Jewess Esther (Esth 2:17). None of these women, however, is ever described as loving her sexual partner in return, nor are women generally described in the Bible as loving the men with whom they are in an erotic or sexual relationship. Why, then, the atypical descriptions in 1 Sam 18:1, 3, 19:1, and 20:17 of the womanlike Jonathan “loving” (’āhēb/’ahăbâ) and “delighting” in (ḥāpēṣ) the masculinized David? I propose that within the Samuel tradition, this motif fulfills two critical functions.

First, by suggesting that Jonathan willingly and voluntarily entered into a homoeroticized relationship with David, and, more important, that Jonathan willingly and voluntarily assumed the womanlike role in his interactions with David, the Samuel narratives confirm the message found in at least some of the “political loyalty” passages I discussed above (1 Sam 18:4, 20:13–15, 23:17), the sense that Jonathan willingly and voluntarily gave his fealty to David and willingly and voluntarily accepted a position as David’s subordinate and second-in-command. Second and more crucially, the Samuel narratives, by portraying Jonathan as willingly entering into a relationship with David and even initiating their homoeroticized interactions, is able to have its cake and eat it too, so to speak, in terms of the ancient Israelite understanding of sexual and social hierarchy. By rendering Jonathan as womanlike, and thus as subordinate in status to David, the text furthers its claims that David is rightfully Israel’s king. Yet, at the same time, the text, by atypically depicting the womanlike member of its homoeroticized relationship as the relationship’s initiator, defends David against the charge that he forcibly feminized another man, an act for which, under the terms of passages such as Gen 19:1–11, Lev 18:22, 20:13, and Judg 19:22–26, he might otherwise be condemned. Indeed, this effort to exonerate David from any charges of improper coercion might explain why, as I described in chapter 7, the Samuel tradition is so muted in its descriptions of David’s feelings for Jonathan, suggesting only in 1 Sam 20:41–42, 23:18, and 2 Sam 1:26 that David reciprocated Jonathan’s feelings for him and, even in these passages, barely elaborating on that point.⁶³

The motif of Jonathan as the initiator of his relationship with David, in short, serves the narrative’s apologetic agenda in multiple ways. It suggests that, as Jonathan willingly and voluntarily submitted himself sexually to David, so should the narrative’s audience willingly submit themselves politically to David and accept him as their king. At the same time, it defends David against those who might condemn him for unlawfully coercing another man.

For many modern commentators the homoeroticized innuendo of the David and Jonathan stories has generated questions about whether these two characters, to use our contemporary parlance, are or are not gay. For those, moreover, whose answer to this question is “they are” (my greeting card, for example), the stories’ homoeroticized language and imagery have served as important affirmations for the sanctity of gay men’s relationships within today’s biblically based communities of faith as well as within our larger society. But according to the reading I offer here, the authors of the Samuel narratives intended something different when they incorporated homoeroticized motifs into their accounts of David’s and Jonathan’s interactions. They intended to evoke in their audiences’ minds the very specific paradigms according to which sexual interactions were conceived of in the ancient Israelite worldview, so that their audience would immediately identify, as was the norm in the ancient Israelite conception of sexual relations, one partner in the relationship as status superior and gendered as male and the other partner in the relationship as status inferior and gendered as female. They further intended, through their indications that it was Jonathan who held the position of the womanlike status inferior, to demonstrate to their audience that David rightfully occupied the status-superior position of king over Israel and Judah that Jonathan might otherwise have claimed. They may, in fact, have intended to demonstrate to their audience that Jonathan, by assuming the status humiliation associated with feminization, became disqualified from any claims that might be made to the throne on his behalf or even on behalf of his descendants. Yet, at the same time, by stressing Jonathan’s “love” for and “delight in” David and by therefore depicting Jonathan as the initiator of the homoeroticized interactions, the Samuel narrators defended David against the charge that he improperly forced Jonathan’s humiliation upon him.

Samuel’s portrayal of David’s and Jonathan’s relationship, in sum, cannot serve as a model of what male-male erotic and sexual relationships can be like in our society. The stories of David’s and Jonathan’s interactions instead need to be understood as carefully shaped to fit the apologetic agenda of the Samuel accounts, and it is only within the context of the Samuel apologetic that they can be properly analyzed. Every connotation associated with male-male sexual interactions in the ancient Israelite world is evoked by the Samuel tradition and then exploited in order to convey the narrative’s conviction that David and his heirs legitimately hold the throne that might otherwise belong to the house of Saul.

David’s Wives

I have been at some pains in my discussion of David’s and Jonathan’s relationship to show how closely certain aspects of David’s interactions with Jonathan as recounted in 1 Samuel parallel parts of the narrative that describe David’s interactions with Michal. I have noted, for example, that both Jonathan and Michal enter into contractual relationships with David (a covenant in Jonathan’s case and marriage in the case of Michal) and that both subsequently abet David’s attempts to escape from Saul’s threats of murder by twice lying to their father, even as he condemns them for deceitfulness and disloyalty (1 Sam 19:14, 17, 20:28–34). The narrative’s point in stressing these parallels, I have argued, is to portray Jonathan as Michal-like, which is to say womanlike and even wifelike, in his relationship with David and consequently to suggest that Jonathan has surrendered the position of status superiority with respect to David he otherwise could claim by virtue of his royal birth. Jonathan thereby surrenders his claim to the throne in favor of David’s. In this regard Jonathan is portrayed not only as wifelike in his relationship with David but, from the Bible’s point of view, as a stereotypically good wife, one who, as any stereotypically good wife should do, makes himself subordinate to the husbandlike David. Michal, as we have seen, is also cast in the role of a stereotypically good wife in 1 Samuel 18–19, subordinating herself to David and always acting in favor of his best interests, even when those interests may run counter to her own, as in 1 Sam 19:11–17, when, to quote J. Cheryl Exum (as in chapter 7), “in saving David from Saul, Michal loses him.”⁶⁴

In the final episode in which Michal appears in the David story, however, she is depicted differently. In this text, 2 Sam 6:16–23, Michal speaks with disgust about David’s dancing before the ark of Yahweh as he brings it in procession into his newly established capital city of Jerusalem. This dance is apparently so enthusiastic that David’s clothes fall away and expose his genitals (2 Sam 6:20). But, as Exum writes, “it doesn’t take a psychologist to recognize that Michal’s complaint about David’s attire, or lack of it, is not the real issue.”⁶⁵ She goes on to note that Michal, in confronting David, refers to him as “the king of Israel,” and he responds also by talking of kingship—of how he has been chosen by Yahweh in place of Saul and Saul’s descendants.⁶⁶ The real issue, then, is the rivalry between the house of Saul and the house of David, and Michal here—despite being David’s wife—speaks in accord with her ties to her father. Indeed, as Exum perceptively points out, Michal is pointedly described twice in this passage as “Saul’s daughter” (2 Sam 6:16, 20), whereas in passages where she is more allied with David, she is referred to as David’s wife (1 Sam 19:11).⁶⁷

Second Sam 6:16–23 thus has the effect of portraying the previously good wife Michal as one who has not subordinated herself to her husband but who instead acts in ways that are to her own advantage, whatever David’s best interests might be. The narrative tradition responds by turning its back on her, dismissing her from the text in 2 Sam 6:23, never to appear again, and with the notice, moreover, that she was barren until the day of her death.⁶⁸ Since bearing children for ancient Israelite women was the primary means by which they achieved recognition within their communities,⁶⁹ the childless fate the narrative imposes on Michal here is significant indeed; as Exum puts it, “refusal to submit leads to rebuke and humiliation.”⁷⁰ More important for our purposes, however, is that the narrative here asserts one last time a motif I have suggested it has earlier promoted at several points in the stories of David, Jonathan, and Michal: that Jonathan is not only, like Michal, portrayed as womanlike or wifelike in relation to David but that Jonathan’s relationship with David comes to supplant or supersede David’s relationship with Michal. Thus unlike Jonathan, who voluntarily surrenders his birthright to David in the Samuel tradition and is deemed praiseworthy for it, Michal, by ultimately refusing to subjugate herself or her family’s dynastic claims, is condemned within the tradition as one undeserving of progeny and even as undeserving of another mention.

We can understand the narrative’s point here even more clearly by considering its account of another of David’s wives, Abigail. This woman is in certain respects similar to both the wifelike Jonathan and David’s first wife, Michal: when she first appears in the Samuel narratives, for example, she is represented as occupying a status-superior position with respect to David comparable to the status-superior position the royal offspring Jonathan and Michal hold with respect to David when he joins Saul’s court. We are thus told, in the opening verses of the scene in which Abigail is introduced (1 Sam 25:2–42), that she is married to a man named Nabal, a wealthy pastoralist who belongs to the clan of the Calebites.⁷¹ This clan, according to biblical tradition, was an especially powerful Judahite family (it traced its ancestry back to Caleb, one of the major heroes of the Joshua stories of Israel’s conquest of the land of Canaan; see Num 14:20–24, 32:11–12, Deut 1:34–36, Josh 14:13–14). Jon D. Levenson has in addition persuasively argued that Nabal was not just a member of this powerful Calebite clan but its chieftain;⁷² Abigail therefore, as Nabal’s wife, could legitimately claim the position of extremely high status that would come from being such a noble’s wife. David, conversely, is living as a fugitive and an outcast at this point in the narrative, and the only marker of status ascribed to him is that he is the captain (śar) of a band of ruffians.

According to 1 Sam 25:2–42, David’s ruffian band is running what is essentially a protection racket, with David telling Nabal that he and his men did not allow any harm to come to Nabal’s shearers while these shearers tended Nabal’s herds in the region of Carmel and in return requesting (in effect, demanding) that Nabal give his entourage food for a feast.⁷³ Nabal refuses to pay David off, foolishly, given that David determines to avenge himself upon the Calebite. Abigail, however, seeks to make amends and so save Nabal from David’s wrath. Thus, as I noted in the first section of this chapter, she loads up donkeys with abundant provisions (bread, wine, meat, grain, raisins, and fig cakes) and goes forth from Nabal’s compound to bring this bounty to David (1 Sam 25:18–22). What is striking for our purposes here is the fact that, when these two actually meet, the nobleman’s wife Abigail, although she surely outranks the extortionist David, acts in ways that are utterly deferential. Some of this, of course, may be the result of diplomatic tact, as Abigail’s goal in engaging David is to mollify him and defuse his anger. Still, as Adele Berlin writes, “Abigail is polite far beyond what is required.” Abigail, Berlin goes on to say, “acts toward David and addresses him as though he is the lord.”⁷⁴ She makes obeisance before David, for example, when she comes into his presence (1 Sam 25:23), and thrice during the two verses that describe her first words to David she calls herself his “servant.” She takes upon herself, moreover, the blame for Nabal’s foolish act and begs David’s forgiveness (1 Sam 25:24–25).

As Levenson particularly points out, Abigail acts here as the proverbial “capable” or “stalwart” woman who is lauded elsewhere in biblical tradition (the ’ēšet ḥayil of Prov 31:10–31). For example, Abigail, even though she completely subordinates herself before David, nevertheless “opens her mouth to speak with wisdom” (Prov 31:26) so as to advise David not to go ahead with his planned attack upon Nabal, lest he incur bloodguilt and be subject to acts of revenge perpetrated by Nabal’s family (1 Sam 25:26–31).⁷⁵ Abigail in addition appears in this scene as Proverbs’s ideal wife to Nabal by “protecting her husband’s interests, taking the initiative when he is unwilling or unable to act, and apologizing for his rude behavior.”⁷⁶ Indeed, as I have just noted, she generously takes upon herself the blame for Nabal’s foolishness, even though she in no way is actually accountable.

McCarter furthermore suggests that Abigail’s pleas to David asking for mercy for Nabal and his family are reminiscent of the request for fidelity to his descendants that Jonathan makes of David in 1 Sam 20:14–16. McCarter then explains by arguing that both 1 Sam 20:14–16 and 25:28–31 were added by a later editor who was looking forward to David’s actual reign and especially to 2 Samuel 7, in which Yahweh affirms David as God’s chosen and bestows an eternal grant of kingship upon David’s house.⁷⁷ In terms of the analysis we are pursuing here, however, what we need to realize is the degree to which the comparison McCarter has suggested highlights how the status-surrendering Abigail is, like the status-surrendering Jonathan, a good wife (or wifelike character), as opposed to the bad wife I have discussed above, Michal. Abigail, moreover, is not just a good wife to Nabal but also, like Jonathan, a good wife to David, for, as the story of Nabal’s interactions with David comes to its end, Nabal rather conveniently dies (1 Sam 25:38) and David shortly thereafter marries Abigail himself. As this marriage begins, Abigail’s deferential behavior continues unabated, although David is still not in any position to deserve such consideration. In fact, Berlin again describes Abigail’s homage “when David proposes marriage” as “all out of proportion,” as “the widow of the wealthy rancher answers the young upstart by saying: ‘Behold, your handmaid is a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord!’” (1 Sam 25:41).⁷⁸ But however out of proportion Abigail’s subservience may seem from our vantage point, from the narrative’s point of view, Abigail, like Jonathan, deserves to be lauded, for even though she is otherwise entitled, she voluntarily, repeatedly, and unconditionally accepts a status as the inferior of David. Thus as a character she acts in support of the narrative’s attempts to show David as the legitimate occupant of the highest office in the Israelite confederacy. Whatever Michal would deny David in 2 Sam 6:16–23, Abigail, like Jonathan, works to affirm.