There is one last point I would make about Abigail as she is described in 1 Sam 25:2–42, and that is how like she is to Ishtar as described in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet VI. Yet she is unlike as well. Abigail and Ishtar are like, most obviously, in the way that they both appear within narratives that are focused on marriage to their story’s hero, Ishtar proposing to Gilgamesh that the two of them wed in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet VI, lines 6–9, and Abigail and David actually marrying in 1 Sam 25:42. But the Ishtar and Abigail episodes within the Gilgamesh Epic and the David story are very unlike in that Gilgamesh scathingly repudiates Ishtar’s offer of marriage, whereas David seems to waste no time in wooing and winning Abigail after her husband Nabal has died.
These similarities and differences suggest to me in microcosmic form the larger point I have promoted in the last two chapters of this book: generally both how like and unlike the Epic of Gilgamesh and the David story are. As we have seen, the David story conforms in many ways to the same rites-of-passage pattern that was so helpful in illuminating the narrative framework of the Epic of Gilgamesh. One example of this conformity is the fact that the Ishtar and the Abigail episodes occupy virtually the same structural position within the larger Gilgamesh and David tales. Both episodes occur midstream within their tales, so to speak, long after the main action of the narrative has begun, yet long before there is narrative resolution. By the time the Ishtar and Abigail episodes take place, that is, the hero is wholly engaged in the journey that will lead to the position he will occupy at the culmination of each story, yet the heroic figure, whether Gilgamesh or David, has a long way to go before he comes to his throne as a fully mature and fully capable king. According to the terms of our rites-of-passage analysis, both the Ishtar and Abigail episodes are thus positioned squarely in the midst of their story’s liminal phases, as, in each, the narrative’s hero stands poised betwixt and between the identity that characterized him at the beginning of his story (whether that be irresponsible monarch in the case of Gilgamesh or youthful shepherd in the case of David) and the mantle of responsible kingship he will assume at its end.
Still, while the Abigail episode occupies basically the same structural position in 1 Samuel as does the Ishtar episode in the Epic of Gilgamesh, it does not ultimately function in the same way within the 1 Samuel narrative as does the Ishtar episode within the Gilgamesh Epic. The Ishtar episode, I argued in chapter 5, does much to exemplify the liminal nature of the narrative phase of the Epic of Gilgamesh in which it is set, by stressing the liminal nature of Ishtar herself and, even more so, by stressing the liminal aspects of Ishtar’s encounter with Gilgamesh: the unconventional way in which she, although female, makes a proposal of marriage, the unconventional way in which he insults her when rejecting her offer, as if she were his subordinate rather than a goddess, and the unconventional nature of her marital proposition, which, as Tzvi Abusch argues, may not be the offer to participate in the rite of the life-affirming sacred marriage it appears to be but rather an offer to Gilgamesh to descend to the netherworld and be king of the dead.1 Gilgamesh, moreover, in rejecting Ishtar’s proposal, appears liminal in that he embraces the attitude of sexual continence Victor Turner has identified as characteristic of liminality (this in contrast to his behaviors earlier, in the preliminal phase of the Epic). As I noted in chapter 8, however, David, in marrying Abigail, clearly does not adopt the typically liminal stance of sexual continence. David also, as I further suggested in chapter 8, often does not seem to manifest the typically liminal attitude of nonsagacity or foolishness during the story of his ascent to the throne that is told in 1 Samuel, and this is particularly true in the Abigail episode. There David’s moving to woo and win Abigail almost immediately after her husband Nabal has died seems a shrewd and calculating attempt to secure certain advantages that marriage to this noblewoman might bring, especially a shrewd and calculating attempt to become a member, through this marriage, of Judah’s powerful Calebite clan and thus to become the successor, in certain regards, to its chieftain Nabal. This leadership position is of obvious benefit to David as he advances his claim to the Judahite and ultimately Israelite throne.
Whereas gender roles in the Gilgamesh and Ishtar story, moreover, are confused in ways that are typical of liminality, conventional gender roles in the David and Abigail story are scrupulously observed. Indeed, if anything, I suggested in chapter 8, adherence to conventional gender roles is exaggerated in the David and Abigail story, especially in the case of Abigail, who, through her completely deferential and submissive behavior, is portrayed as the utterly perfect woman and wife. This is a key, I also suggested in chapter 8, to understanding how the David narrative’s apologetic interests ultimately supersede its use of liminal imagery. Abigail, as a perfectly submissive and subordinate wife, models, from the apologetic’s point of view, the behavior all of David’s subjects should properly assume, not challenging David or his right to rule but submitting themselves to David as Israel’s rightful king. Liminal imagery, that is, although certainly present in the David story, is ultimately trumped by the story’s apologetic thrust, and consequently the 1 Samuel episode involving Abigail, which we might otherwise have expected to resemble the Gilgamesh episode that involves the liminal Ishtar, is conceptualized quite differently in order to promote what is ultimately the David story’s quite different agenda. Thus, the Ishtar and Abigail narratives, although in many respects similar, are handled very differently within their respective traditions because, in the end, these two episodes function in different ways according to the different priorities their two narratives seek to articulate.
Michal, too, occupies a position structurally in the David narratives that in many ways seems reminiscent of the position occupied by certain women in Gilgamesh. For example, as the prostitute Shamhat is a dominant presence in the scene in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet I, in which Enkidu begins to be separated from his previous animal-like existence, so too is Michal a dominant presence in the scenes in 1 Samuel 16–18 in which David is first separated from his early life as a shepherd. Likewise, as the alewife Siduri and somewhat the wife of Utnapishtim are dominant presences in the concluding tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh, as Gilgamesh begins to come to the realizations about the nature of existence that are necessary for him to resume his rule over Urukite society, so too is Michal a dominant presence in the scene in 2 Samuel 6 that comes at the culmination of the story of David’s ascent to the combined Judahite and Israelite throne. Yet Shamhat, Siduri, and probably also Utnapishtim’s wife, I argued in chapter 5, are dominant presences in the scenes in the Epic of Gilgamesh in which they appear because their exceptionally liminal natures allow them to serve as figures who can effectively move the Epic’s main characters, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, in and out of liminal time and space. Michal, however, although she is a dominant presence at basically the same structural points within the David tale as are Shamhat, Siduri, and Utnapishtim’s wife within the Epic of Gilgamesh, hardly functions as they do as a liminal character who can help facilitate movement in and out of liminal time and space. Instead, in 1 Samuel 16–18, David is separated, to use the language of the rites-of-passage paradigm, from his previous existence as a shepherd before he encounters Michal in 1 Sam 18:20; similarly, in 2 Samuel, David becomes king of Judah (in 2 Samuel 2) and Israel (in 2 Samuel 5), and thus arguably completes his rite-of-passage status transition, before the 2 Samuel 6 episode involving Michal occurs. Michal, moreover, can hardly be described as having the same sort of liminal qualities as Shamhat, Siduri, or Utnapishtim’s wife. In particular, she, as a king’s daughter, hardly exemplifies the sort of statusless existence characteristic of liminality.
Thus, although the Michal passages, like the Abigail episode, occupy basically the same structural positions as do crucial passages involving women characters in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the function of the Michal passages within the David story is ultimately quite different than are the functions of the Shamhat, Siduri, and Utnapishtim’s wife passages within the Gilgamesh Epic. Shamhat, Siduri, and Utnapishtim’s wife are liminal characters the Gilgamesh tradition uses as part and parcel of its overall rites-of-passage structure. The David story, however, although rites-of-passage elements are surely present, ultimately gives priority to its apologetic aims, and its portrayals of Michal, as I suggested in chapter 8, need to be read in the light of these apologetic goals.
While the narrators of the Epic of Gilgamesh and the biblical story of David thus draw on some similar motifs regarding women and employ some similar descriptions of women’s interactions with their stories’ heroic characters, these narrators in the end use these similar motifs and story lines differently. Likewise, I have suggested, the Epic of Gilgamesh and the biblical story of David use some similar conceptions of sexual relationships and their hierarchalized nature, and some similar evocations of homoeroticized innuendo, ultimately in service of different agendas: the Gilgamesh Epic’s homoerotic egalitarianism, however inappropriate given the paradigms of sexual hierarchy found elsewhere within Mesopotamian tradition, works in support of the text’s use of a rite-of-passage pattern and, indeed, serves dramatically to illustrate crucial aspects of the Epic’s liminal core; the David story’s “wondrous” appreciation of Jonathan’s sexual self-humiliation, however negatively this sort of surrender of status is regarded elsewhere in biblical tradition, works in support of the Samuel narrative’s apologetic argument that Saul’s rightful heir has abdicated whatever claim he and his descendants might make to the Israelite throne.
I suggested in the prologue that my priorities in this volume were to understand the two narratives on which I have focused in terms of their ideologies of sexual relationships, in terms of their ideologies of gender, and in terms of their narrative frameworks and structure. I hope, as I close, that I have shown how fruitful this multidimensional analysis can be, both in terms of demonstrating the Gilgamesh Epic’s and the David story’s points of similarity and also in terms of illustrating features that are distinctive to each of these two magnificent tales of ancient Near Eastern heroic love.