6. Introducing David

1.  The card was produced by Robert Lentz and published in 1995 by Bay Area Dignity.

2.  The terminology that should be used to describe this scholarly position is contested. The arguments for describing it as revisionist are best presented by Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know? pp. 47–48, n. 47, and p. 255, n. 55, who points out that revisionist is a term that the adherent of this position have sometimes used of themselves (see, for example, Lemche and Thompson, “Did Biran Kill David?” p. 17; Lemche, Israelites in History and Tradition, p. 157). Dever also suggests that the term need not necessarily have pejorative connotations, although according to Nadav Na’aman, “Cow Town or Royal Capital? p. 67, n. 2, Philip R. Davies, one of the proponents of this position, disagrees. Certainly, the other terminology commonly used to describe the adherents of this scholarly position, minimalist, seems in intent derogatory and disparaging and should be avoided.

3.  See, for example, Dever’s What Did the Biblical Writers Know? p. 4.

4.  Lemche and Thompson, “Did Biran Kill David?” p. 18; this quote brought to my attention by Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know? p. 10.

5.  Thompson, as quoted in Shanks, “Face to Face,” p. 28.

6.  Of course, my short summary here is, by necessity, a vast oversimplification of the revisionists’ views and also suffers from its attempt to collapse the nuances of various revisionist positions into a synthetic whole. For a fuller presentation, the following works are crucial: Davies, In Search of “Ancient Israel”; Davies, Whose Bible Is It Anyway? Davies, “Whose History? Whose Israel? Whose Bible?” Lemche, “Early Israel Revisited”; Lemche, Israelites in History and Tradition; Lemche, Prelude to Israel’s Past; Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People; Thompson, “A Neo-Albrightian School”; Thompson, “Historiography of Ancient Palestine”; Thompson, “Defining History and Ethnicity”; Thompson, The Mythic Past; Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel.

7.  Lemche, Israelites in History and Tradition, p. 166; this quote brought to my attention by Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know? p. 48.

8.  Thompson, “A Neo-Albrightian School,” p. 697.

9.  Thompson, The Mythic Past, p. 7; this quote brought to my attention by Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know? p. 49.

10.  Lemche and Thompson, “Did Biran Kill David?” p. 16.

11.  Lemche, as quoted in Shanks, “Face to Face,” p. 40.

12.  Lemche and Thompson, “Did Biran Kill David?” p. 18.

13.  Thompson, as quoted in Shanks, “Face to Face,” p. 34.

14.  Lemche and Thompson, “Did Biran Kill David?” p. 19; this quote brought to my attention by Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know? p. 126.

15.  For a good survey of the revisionists’ position and the response of their critics, see Shanks, “Face to Face”; Shanks, “The Biblical Minimalists.” For more detailed criticism, see Dever, “‘Will the Real Israel Please Stand Up?’” Parts 1 and 2; Dever, “Revisionist Israel Revisited”; Dever, “Philology, Theology, and Archaeology”; Dever, “Archaeology and the ‘Age of Solomon’”; Dever, “Archaeology, Ideology, and the Quest for ‘Ancient’ or ‘Biblical’ Israel”; Dever, “Histories and Nonhistories of Ancient Israel”; Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know? passim, but especially chapters 1 and 2 (pp. 1–52); Halpern, “Erasing History”; Halpern, “The Construction of the Davidic State”; Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, passim, but especially chapters 3 and 4 (pp. 57–103); Japhet, “In Search of Ancient Israel”; Provan, “Ideologies, Literary and Critical.”

16.  The stele fragments were originally published by Biran and Naveh, “An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan,” and Biran and Naveh, “The Tel Dan Inscription.” A full bibliography of the discussions that ensued (through 1997) can be found in can be found in Kitchen, “A Possible Mention of David,” pp. 42–44. Post-1997 materials that should be noted include: Biran, “Biblical Dan and the House of David Inscription,” and Lemaire, “The Tel Dan Stele.”

17.  The date of the stele has been debated in the literature but nevertheless seems firm; see Kitchen, “A Possible Mention of David,” pp. 34–35.

18.  Lemche, as quoted in Shanks, “Face to Face,” pp. 36–38. Frederick H. Cryer also raises the possibility of forgery, although he ultimately rejects it; see Cryer’s “On the Recently Discovered ‘House of David’ Inscription,” pp. 14–15, and his “Of Epistemology, Northwest-Semitic Epigraphy and Irony,” p. 6.

19.  Ben Zvi, “On the Reading bytdwd”; Cryer, “On the Recently Discovered ‘House of David’ Inscription,” p. 17 and n. 34 on that page; Cryer, “A ‘BETDAWD’ Miscellany,” pp. 52, 54; Davies, “Bytdwd and Swkt Dwyd,” pp. 23–24; Davies, “‘House of David’ Built on Sand,” pp. 54–55; Lemche and Thompson, “Did Biran Kill David?”; Thompson, “‘House of David.’”

20.  For example, Dever, as quoted in Shanks, “Face to Face,” pp. 36–37; Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know? p. 30.

21.  As most forcefully argued by Kitchen, “A Possible Mention of David,” pp. 29–35.

22.  Lemaire, “‘House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription.” Note also Kitchen, “A Possible Mention of David,” pp. 29–44.

23.  McKenzie, King David, p. 19.

24.  Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, pp. 318, 428.

25.  Tarler and Cahill, “David, City of”; Kenyon, Digging Up Jerusalem, pp. 114–115; this latter reference brought to my attention by Na’aman, “Cow Town or Royal Capital?” p. 67, n. 5. See further, on Kenyon’s excavations, Steiner, “It’s Not There,” p. 29.

26.  Shiloh, Excavations at the City of David I, p. 27, as cited by Na’aman, “Cow Town or Royal Capital?” p. 67, n. 6; see also Steiner, “It’s Not There,” p. 29, and cf. Tarler and Cahill, “Excavations Directed by Yigael Shiloh,” p. 34.

27.  Thompson, as quoted in Shanks, “Face to Face,” p. 35.

28.  It is Dever, in What Did the Biblical Writers Know? p. 127, who has astutely pointed out that Thompson’s source for his figure of circa two thousand is Finkelstein’s “Archaeology of the United Monarchy,” p. 184, and that Thompson has misinterpreted Finkelstein with regard to the geographical region covered in Finkelstein’s estimate.

29.  Meyers, “Kinship and Kingship,” pp. 240–241.

30.  Dever, in What Did the Biblical Writers Know? p. 127 and the references there.

31.  The Hellenistic chronology is the one typically subscribed to by Lemche and Thompson (although on Thompson, see Dever, “Histories and Nonhistories of Ancient Israel,” p. 90), whereas a Persian date is advocated by Davies. See Thompson, “A Neo-Albrightian School,” p. 686, n. 8.

32.  See Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, pp. 274–289, especially pp. 284, 287; Friedman, The Exile and Biblical Narrative, pp. 1–26; Nelson, Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History, passim, but especially pp. 13–28, 119–128.

33.  Dever, “What Did the Biblical Writers Know?” passim; see also the voluminous collection of materials cited in support of this point by Halpern in David’s Secret Demons, pp. 58–72.

34.  Dever, “What Did the Biblical Writers Know?” p. 246.

35.  Ibid.

36.  For discussion, see, most recently, Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, pp. 7–8; McKenzie, King David, pp. 75–76; Steussy, David, pp. 10–11.

37.  The evidence that supports this claim has been exhaustively surveyed by Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, pp. 107–226. A good summary discussion is available in Meyers, “Kinship and Kingship,” pp. 247–251.

38.  Cf., however, Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know? p. 127.

39.  As in n. 24 above, see Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, pp. 317–320, 428.

40.  Meyers, “Kinship and Kingship,” pp. 243–244; see also the discussion of Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, pp. 107–226.

41.  Meyers, “Kinship and Kingship,” pp. 236, 257–259, 263.

42.  The key archaeological evidence that demonstrates the emergence of a state under Solomon is the presence of virtually identical monumental entry gates in the city walls of Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer. Most scholars date these gateways to the mid-tenth century BCE and argue that their massive size and their standardized plan are evidence of a powerful royal authority, in control of the financial resources necessary to engage in large-scale building projects and also able to exert enough administrative control to establish its preferred design in provincial capitals across Israelite territory. Such a reconstruction, moreover, corresponds nicely with the description in 1 Kgs 9:15 of Solomon’s building activities at the three sites in question. Finkelstein, however, has challenged the tenth-century BCE date of the Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer remains and thus challenged the notion that there is a full-fledged Israelite state in existence at that time. See his “Date of the Settlement of the Philistines in Canaan,” pp. 213–239; Finkelstein, “The Archaeology of the United Monarchy”; Finkelstein, “State Formation in Israel and Judah”; Finkelstein, “Hazor and the North in the Iron Age”; also Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, pp. 433–450; Ussishkin, “The ‘Solomonic’ City Gate at Megiddo.”

43.  Jasper, “Literary Readings of the Bible,” p. 27.

44.  Bowman, “Narrative Criticism,” p. 17.

45.  Gunn, “Narrative Criticism,” p. 201.

46.  King and Stager, Life in Biblical Israel, p. 7.

7. David and Jonathan

1.  Damrosch, Narrative Covenant, p. 203; Walls, Desire, Discord, and Death, p. 67, quoting Comstock, “Love, Power and Competition,” p. 23; Schroer and Staubli, “Saul, David and Jonathan,” p. 35.

2.  As I discussed in chapter 1, the phrase “before sexuality” is taken from Halperin, Winkler, and Zeitlin, eds., Before Sexuality.

3.  There has been some debate in the literature over the parameters of David’s lament. Gevirtz, Patterns in the Early Poetry of Israel, p. 76, emends v 18 so that it reads as the introductory couplet to the lament; he is followed by Holladay, “Form and Word-Play in David’s Lament,” pp. 162–168. As I do here, however, most commentators take the lament as beginning with v 19: so, for example, O’Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure, p. 233, following Freedman, “The Refrain in David’s Lament.” For further discussion, see Edelman, “The Authenticity of 2 Sam 1, 26”; McCarter, II Samuel, pp. 67–68.

4.  The scribal tradition has confused the Benjaminite villages Gibeah (gib‘â) and Geba (geba‘) throughout 1 Samuel 13–14; for discussion, see McCarter, I Samuel, p. 225; less completely, Hertzberg, I and II Samuel, pp. 101–102.

5.  But cf. Hertzberg, I and II Samuel, p. 104, n. a.

6.  Only later still is it indicated that Jonathan is Saul’s oldest son, in 1 Sam 14:49 (assuming, that is, that the biblical convention of listing sons in order of their age holds in this verse and in the four other verses in the Bible in which Saul’s sons are named [1 Sam 31:2 = 1 Chr 10:2, 1 Chr 8:33, 9:39]). The tradition is otherwise confused about the names and even the number of Saul’s sons; see McCarter, I Samuel, p. 256.

7.  It has been suggested that much of the material found in 1 Samuel 13–14 (13:2–7a, 15b–23, 14:1–46) stems from a larger complex of traditions that catalogued Israel’s victories under Saul in the wars against the Philistines and that focused especially on the heroism of Saul’s son Jonathan. In the redactional history of Samuel, only the story of Jonathan’s exploits at Gibeah/Geba and Michmash was included because its account of Saul’s unfortunate oath served the editor’s purpose of portraying Saul’s leadership as irredeemably flawed. As P. Kyle McCarter writes, “The old story in cc 13–14 has survived because it illustrates the failings of Saul,” even though, “just as surely … it demonstrates the heroism of his son” (McCarter, I Samuel, p. 251); see similarly Ackroyd, The First Book of Samuel, pp. 104, 119. For a methodologically different attempt to deal with the anomalies of 1 Samuel 13–14 (one that works more with the canonical form of the text as it has come down to us, rather than with its different redactional strata), see Jobling, “Saul’s Fall and Jonathan’s Rise.”

8.  On the Saul story as tragedy, see Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, pp. 16–44, and the references cited there; also Jobling, “Saul’s Fall and Jonathan’s Rise,” especially p. 368.

9.  According to 1 Chr 2:13–15, David is the youngest of Jesse’s seven sons; 1 Sam 16:10 assumes there are seven sons other than David (see also 1 Sam 17:12). For discussion, see, most recently and thoroughly, McKenzie, King David, pp. 52–53.

10.  For discussion of the different textual strata within 1 Samuel, see Ackroyd, The First Book of Samuel, p. 135; Hertzberg, I and II Samuel, pp. 240–244; and, most fully, McCarter, I Samuel, pp. 20–23, 27–30, 278, 282.

11.  Although 1 Sam 17:12–31 follows 1 Sam 16:1–13 in theme, it and its related materials (1 Sam 17:41, 48b, 50, 55–58, 18:1–5, 10–11, 17–19, 29b–30) were originally an independent narrative and one that seemingly joined the biblical tradition very late, given that it is not reflected in the Greek Codex Vaticanus, considered by scholars to present the most reliable witness to the original translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek in the fourth century BCE. See, preeminently, Tov, “The Composition of 1 Samuel 16–18”; also Ackroyd, The First Book of Samuel, p. 148; Hertzberg, I and II Samuel, pp. 146–147; McCarter, I Samuel, pp. 306–307; McKenzie, King David, pp. 70–73, 77–83. But cf. (among others) Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, pp. 6–7; Rofé, “The Battle of David and Goliath,” pp. 119–123.

12.  Moran, “Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God,” p. 77.

13.  Ibid., p. 80.

14.  Ibid., p. 79.

15.  Ibid., pp. 80–81.

16.  On 2 Sam 5:11, see Bright, History of Israel, p. 204; also Thompson, “Significance of the Verb Love,” p. 334.

17.  Moran, “Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God,” p. 82, n. 33; see also Fishbane, “Treaty Background of Amos 1 11,” p. 314.

18.  Thompson, “Significance of the Verb Love,” p. 335.

19.  Ackroyd, “The Verb Love,” p. 213.

20.  Sakenfeld, “Loyalty and Love,” p. 200 (cited from the original publication of this essay found in Michigan Quarterly Review). See also Sakenfeld, “Love (OT),” p. 376a.

21.  Edelman, “The Authenticity of 2 Sam 1, 26,” p. 66.

22.  McCarter, I Samuel, p. 305.

23.  Although Sakenfeld, as I read her, equivocates on this issue; see below n. 26 and also my comments on p. 191.

24.  Thompson, “Significance of the Verb Love,” p. 336.

25.  Ackroyd, “The Verb Love,” p. 214; Ackroyd also argues that the verb niqšar, “to be bound,” in 1 Sam 18:1 has political overtones as well as nonpolitical connotations suggesting personal affection.

26.  Sakenfeld, “Loyalty and Love,” p. 200 (cited from the original publication of this essay found in Michigan Quarterly Review). On p. 201 of this article, however, Sakenfeld seems to downplay the significance of David’s and Jonathan’s “personal relationship” and “personal affection” by denying any “possibility of a homosexual relationship between David and Jonathan” in 1 Samuel. “The present writer,” she states, “interprets the themes of love, loyalty, and covenant in a quite different direction.”

27.  McCarter, I Samuel, p. 305.

28.  Schroer and Staubli, “Saul, David and Jonathan,” p. 28.

29.  As Athalya Brenner points out (in The Intercourse of Knowledge, p. 175), the premier demonstrations of this point are by Boyarin, Carnal Israel, pp. 31–60, and Eilberg-Schwartz, “The Problem of the Body,” pp. 17–46.

30.  Terrien, Till the Heart Sings, pp. 149, 169.

31.  On the connection between 1 Sam 17:25 and 18:17, see, especially, Ackroyd, The First Book of Samuel, p. 152; Hertzberg, I and II Samuel, p. 160.

32.  See chapter 3, p. 72 and n. 68.

33.  Cf., however, Fewell and Gunn, Gender, Power, and Promise, p. 146, who offer a far more cynical reading of David’s motivations and actions.

34.  Damrosch, Narrative Covenant, p. 206.

35.  As discussed in chapter 3, Gilgamesh, in the Standard version of the Gilgamesh Epic, envisions both the axe and the meteor that symbolize Enkidu in his dreams as being “like a wife” to him; in the Old Babylonian version, this motif is found in the axe dream only.

36.  Above, n. 11.

37.  Taken, with adaptations, from Tov, “The Composition of 1 Samuel 16–18,” p. 119.

38.  This theme of David’s extraordinary military prowess—superior, indeed, to that of Saul—is first introduced in the primary narrative tradition in 1 Sam 18:6–9 and is reevoked in 1 Sam 21:11 and 29:5.

39.  Botterweck, “ḥāpēṣ,” p. 94.

40.  It is difficult to come to terms with Shechem’s professions of love in Genesis 34, given that they follow immediately on a description of Shechem’s rape of Dinah. I have surveyed various scholarly opinions on this issue and offered my own in Ackerman, “The Personal Is Political,” pp. 455–457.

41.  Botterweck, “ḥāpēṣ,” pp. 95–96.

42.  Ibid., p. 95; Schroer and Staubli, “Saul, David and Jonathan,” p. 28.

43.  The intervening 1 Sam 18:29b–30, recall, is a part of the materials found in 1 Samuel 17–18’s variant strand.

44.  In her 1983 article “Loyalty and Love,” Sakenfeld, following Moran, suggests that Michal’s love for David is the love of covenant loyalty and fidelity rather than the love of personal affection. This is because of Sakenfeld’s assumption that “Michal loved David before she even met him personally” (p. 200). But there is little textual basis to support this reading, and in her 1992 entry “Love (OT),” in ABD 4, Sakenfeld, correctly in my opinion, classifies the love of Michal for David as “the attraction of one person to another of the opposite sex” (p. 376a). Certainly, all other commentators of whom I am aware understand Michal’s love in emotional terms.

45.  Clines, “The Story of Michal,” p. 131.

46.  My comments here focus on ways in which the same sorts of arguably eroticized and even sexualized language and imagery are used in 1 Samuel’s depictions of Michal and Jonathan; for more general descriptions of these two characters’ parallel natures, see Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation, pp. 24–25; Damrosch, Narrative Covenant, p. 206; Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, pp. 71–95; Exum, Fragmented Women, pp. 51–60.

47.  On Jonathan as Saul’s oldest son, see above, n. 6.

48.  Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, p. 82; Exum, Fragmented Women, p. 23.

49.  Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, p. 82; Exum, Fragmented Women, p. 23; see similarly Clines, “The Story of Michal,” p. 132.

50.  Exum, Fragmented Women, p. 53; similarly, Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, p. 83.

51.  One might argue that Jonathan is depicted in the narrative as turning his back on a marital relationship as well, in favor of his relationship with David, although the evidence that would support this interpretation is somewhat sparse. We do know that Jonathan was understood by the biblical writers to have been married, given that he is identified in 2 Sam 4:4, 9:6 and 1 Chr 8:34, 9:40 as the father of a son, called Mephibosheth (in 2 Samuel) or Merib-baal (in 1 Chronicles; on these variant names, see below in chapter 8, n. 62). We also know that, according to 2 Sam 4:4, Jonathan’s son is said to have been five years of age when his father was killed in battle. What we do not know, because the book of 1 Samuel includes very few chronological markers in its narrative (and also because the few it does include are textually confused; see, for example, 1 Sam 13:1), is the amount of time that the tradition ascribes to the period between David’s coming to Saul’s court and Jonathan’s death. It seems plausible, however, to assume that the narrative understood Jonathan to be married to and begetting children with the mother of Mephibosheth/Merib-baal at the time when David and Jonathan first began to interact. Yet there is no mention at all of Jonathan’s wife in the Samuel materials. Perhaps we should just ascribe this silence to the Bible’s general disregard for its women characters, or perhaps to the Samuel tradition’s generally erratic presentation of the major events of Jonathan’s life (above, n. 7). However, we can perhaps also speculate that, even as the narrative admits Jonathan was married, it obscures traditions regarding Jonathan’s wife in order to suggest that, in Jonathan’s life, as in David’s, once a relationship with a heroic counterpart is established, that relationship somehow overshadows and even replaces the hero’s relationship with a woman.

52.  As in n. 46 above, my focus here is on parallels of a potentially eroticized and sexualized nature; more general discussions of Jonathan’s and Michal’s parallel natures can be found in the references cited there.

53.  Damrosch, Narrative Covenant, p. 203.

54.  See similarly Jobling, 1 Samuel, p. 163, who describes the covenant between David and Jonathan as “analogous to a marriage agreement.”

55.  See further McCarter, I Samuel, p. 337.

56.  Ibid., p. 342.

57.  Hillers, “Bow of Aqhat,” p. 73; see also Hoffner, “Symbols for Masculinity and Femininity,” pp. 329–331; Walls, The Goddess Anat, pp. 189–190, 201–202.

58.  McCarter, I Samuel, p. 341.

59.  See further above, chapter 3.

60.  Reading ’argāb, “mound,” for the Masoretic negeb, “south,” with the LXX.

61.  Further on this point see Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation, pp. 24–25, but cf. Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, p. 80, and p. 169, n. 30.

62.  Exum, Fragmented Women, p. 53; similarly, Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, p. 83; Clines, “The Story of Michal,” p. 133.

63.  Political considerations also motivate David much later in the narrative, in 2 Sam 3:13–15, when, as part of his efforts to secure Israel’s throne, he demands that Michal be returned to him: to lay claim Michal is, obviously, to assert a claim to her father’s kingdom. Adele Berlin further suggests that the text’s notice that Michal never had any children (2 Sam 6:23) provides “a hint that the husband who never loved her now stopped having marital relations with her” (Poetics and Interpretation, p. 25). See also on 2 Sam 6:23, and more generally on the subject of Michal’s unrequited affections and David’s political motivations, Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, p. 73; Exum, Fragmented Women, pp. 22–27, 54; McKenzie, King David, p. 87.

64.  Jobling, “Jonathan: A Structural Study,” p. 17; cf. the far more sweeping claims of Morgenstern, “David and Jonathan,” pp. 322–325.

65.  Cf., however, as in n. 33 above, the more cynical interpretation of David’s actions offered by Fewell and Gunn, Gender, Power, and Promise, p. 150.

66.  McCarter, I Samuel, p. 330. Cf., however, Jobling, “Jonathan: A Structural Study,” p. 18, who labels 1 Sam 19:19–24 a “satirical recapitulation” of the earlier “Saul among the prophets” story. Jobling offers a different interpretation in 1 Samuel, pp. 120–121.

67.  See similarly Damrosch, Narrative Covenant, p. 206.

68.  Jobling, “Jonathan: A Structural Study,” pp. 21–22, reads this scene as indicating that the narrative has so come to presume a total identification between David and Jonathan that Saul’s anger at Jonathan, which extends even to the point of Saul’s seeking to kill his son, is really anger directed against David: “an act directed at one is an act directed at the other.” See also on the identification between David and Jonathan, Jobling, 1 Samuel, pp. 95–96; Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, pp. 75, 79; Leach, Genesis as Myth, p. 67. But cf. Jobling, 1 Samuel, p. 161, where he suggests that the text “fails to explain the extremity of his [Saul’s] fury against Jonathan” and goes on to suggest, as I will discuss below, that “irrational homophobia” may be the cause.

69.  The Masoretic text reads ben-na‘ăwat hammardût, taking na‘ăwat as a Niphal participle of ‘wh, “to be bent, twisted.” Commentators often emend to ben-na‘arat hammardût, “a rebellious young woman.” See BDB, p. 597b, s.v. mardût, and p. 730b, s.v. ‘wh I.

70.  McCarter, I Samuel, p. 343.

71.  See similarly Hertzberg, I and II Samuel, p. 175.

72.  Schroer and Staubli, “Saul, David and Jonathan,” p. 28.

73.  Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, p. 55. Nissinen ultimately concludes, however, that the text does not mean to imply David and Jonathan had a physically intimate relationship. See further below.

74.  McCarter, I Samuel, p. 339, follows the LXX in reading ḥbr ’th, “to be in league with,” versus the Masoretic bḥr, “to choose.”

75.  The Masoretic tradition reads that Jonathan encouraged David through “God,” but the reading “Yahweh,” reflected in both the Septuagint and at Qumran (in 4QSam^b), is preferable.

76.  McCarter, I Samuel, p. 374.

77.  Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, p. 80; on 1 Sam 18:1–4 as symbolic abdication, see similarly (with further references), Jobling, “Jonathan: A Structural Study,” p. 20; Jobling, 1 Samuel, p. 96; McCarter, I Samuel, p. 305; also Ackroyd, The First Book of Samuel, p. 147. But cf. Comstock, “Love, Power and Competition,” pp. 13, 20.

78.  Jobling, 1 Samuel, p. 164.

79.  On the parameters of the lament’s text, and the question of whether v 18 should be included, see above, n. 3.

80.  Damrosch, Narrative Covenant, p. 205.

81.  Schroer and Staubli, “Saul, David, and Jonathan,” p. 35; see also Abusch, “Gilgamesh’s Request and Siduri’s Denial, Part 1,” p. 4.

82.  I follow here the prosody marked in the Masoretic text, although most modern translations divide differently and read, “In their life and in their death, they were not parted” or some variation thereupon (so, for example, the RSV, the NRSV, the NJPS, the REB, and the NEB). Other modern scholars, concerned by the lack of a verb associated with “in their life” that stands parallel to the verb “separated” (niprād) associated with “in their death,” emend to read something like “They were not parted in life / and in death they were not separated” (so McCarter, II Samuel, p. 72) or “In their lives they were joined / And in their death they were not divided” (so Gevirtz, Patterns in the Early Poetry of Israel, p. 92). For arguments against such emendation, see Holladay, “Form and Word-Play in David’s Lament,” pp. 179–180.

83.  The Masoretic text reads npl’th instead of the expected npl’h. In their important Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry, originally published in 1950, Frank Moore Cross and David Noel Freedman suggest that an aleph has been lost by haplography, yielding an original reading of npl’ ’t, “wonderful” or “surpassing wast thou”; the next colon, in their understanding, would then read, “To love thee was for me / Better than the love of women” (Cross and Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry, pp. 17–18). Freedman basically reiterates this suggestion in his 1972 article, “The Refrain in David’s Lament,” pp. 265, 271 (cited from the reprinted edition of this article found in Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy). McCarter, however, suggests that the seemingly anomalous npl’th may not be such an anomaly after all but may represent the way in which verbs ending in a final aleph can follow the vocalization pattern of final-he verbs. See McCarter, II Samuel, p. 73. For yet another explanation of npl’th, see Hertzberg, I and II Samuel, p. 236, n. d.

84.  Cross, From Epic to Canon, pp. 9–10; Fishbane, “Treaty Background of Amos 1 11,” pp. 314–315; Olyan, “‘Surpassing the Love of Women.’”

85.  Olyan, “‘Surpassing the Love of Women.’”

86.  Sakenfeld, “Loyalty and Love,” p. 201 (cited from the original publication of this essay found in Michigan Quarterly Review); see further my comments in nn. 23 and 26 above.

87.  Edelman’s position is the closest to Sakenfeld’s, as she argues that v 26 is secondary to David’s lament, added by an editor “to give the narrative theme of the covenant between David and Jonathan an air of authenticity” (Edelman, “The Authenticity of 2 Sam 1, 26,” p. 74).

88.  McCarter, I Samuel, p. 77.

89.  Exum, Fragmented Women, p. 53 and n. 22 on that page; see similarly Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, pp. 73 and 93, and Jobling, 1 Samuel, p. 165, who writes of the lament, “there are … no words (or at best ambiguous ones) of David’s love for Jonathan. David sings still of Jonathan’s love for him.” Yet how to take this statement of Jobling’s in relation to the comment he makes regarding 2 Sam 1:26 found on p. 161 of 1 Samuel—“Here is a man telling of his love for another man, comparing it with heterosexual love, and saying it is better”—is completely unclear to me.

90.  Terrien, Till the Heart Sings, p. 169; Gerstenberger, Leviticus, p. 297.

91.  Cross and Freedman, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry, p. 17; see similarly Freedman, “The Refrain in David’s Lament Over Saul and Jonathan,” p. 265 (cited from the reprinted edition of this article found in Pottery, Poetry, and Prophecy).

92.  In addition to the materials I have catalogued, see Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation, pp. 24–25, who argues that “characteristics … usually perceived as feminine are linked with Jonathan”; also Fewell and Gunn, Gender, Power, and Promise, pp. 150–151; finally, and most provocatively, Holladay, “Form and Word-Play in David’s Lament,” p. 184, who argues that 2 Sam 1:26 should be read and interpreted in conjunction with 2 Sam 1:24, as 1:24 begins with women in the same way 1:26 ends with them (the first line of 2 Sam 1:24 reads, “O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul”). Yet, as Holladay also points out, there is still a “vast difference” between the two verses: “in v. 24, the daughters of Israel are addressed and told to weep over Saul, while here [in v 26] it is Jonathan himself who is addressed.” Holladay does not go on to draw the implication he might, but our interests can lead us to suggest that one effect of the parallels Holladay cites is to render Jonathan, like the daughters of Israel, as female.

93.  As I discussed in chapter 1, the premier presentations of this sort of analysis are those of Bird, “The Bible in Christian Ethical Deliberation”; Olyan, “‘And with a Male’”; Stone, “Gender and Homosexuality in Judges 19”; Stone, Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History, pp. 69–84.

94.  As in n. 93, see Bird, “The Bible in Christian Ethical Deliberation”; Olyan, “‘And with a Male’”; Stone, “Gender and Homosexuality in Judges 19”; Stone, Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History, pp. 69–84.

95.  Stone, “Gender and Homosexuality in Judges 19,” p. 96; Stone, Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History, p. 76.

96.  As pointed out by Bird, “The Bible in Christian Ethical Deliberation,” p. 148.

97.  Stone, “Gender and Homosexuality in Judges 19,” p. 97; see similarly Stone, Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History, p. 76.

98.  As in chapter 1, I rely on Olyan, “‘And with a Male,’” for this translation.

99.  Stone, “Gender and Homosexuality in Judges 19,” p. 98; see similarly Stone, Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History, p. 78.

100.  Stone, “Gender and Homosexuality in Judges 19,” p. 98; see similarly Stone, Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History, p. 78.

101.  Olyan, “‘And with a Male,’” pp. 186–187.

102.  McKenzie, King David, p. 85.

103.  Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, p. 83.

104.  Bird, “The Bible in Christian Ethical Deliberation,” p. 146, n. 6.

105.  Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, p. 56.

106.  Ibid., p. 55.

107.  Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, p. 83.

108.  See my critique of Halperin’s analysis above in chapter 3, and in addition, as there, Walls, Desire, Discord, and Death, p. 90, n. 80. Another very brief critique of the essay on heroic friendship in which Halperin discusses the Gilgamesh and Samuel materials is offered by Nussbaum, “Bondage and Freedom of Eros,” p. 573, who labels it “rather thin.”

109.  Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, p. 73; Exum, Fragmented Women, p. 52.

110.  Exum, Fragmented Women, p. 53, quoting Damrosch, Narrative Covenant, pp. 204–206.

111.  Damrosch, Narrative Covenant, p. 202.

8. Liminality and Beyond

1.  On the relation of 1 Sam 16:1–13 and 1 Sam 17:12–31, 41, 48b, 50, see n. 11 in chapter 7.

2.  As in chapter 7, n. 11, see, on the different textual strata within 1 Samuel 16–18, Ackroyd, The First Book of Samuel, p. 135; Hertzberg, I and II Samuel, pp. 240–244; McCarter, I Samuel, pp. 20–23, 27–30, 278, 282; McKenzie, King David, pp. 70–73, 77–83; and, most fully, Tov, “The Composition of 1 Samuel 16–18.”

3.  For David as a “nobleman” in 1 Sam 16:18, see McKenzie, King David, pp. 57–59, although note that McKenzie reads the seeming disjunction between the descriptions of David as a shepherd and a noble differently than I do.

4.  Steussy, David, p. 4.

5.  Turner, The Ritual Process, p. 95.

6.  On the role of women as singers of victory songs in Israelite tradition, see especially Poethig, The Victory Song Tradition; also Meyers, “Of Drums and Damsels,” and Burns, Has the Lord Indeed Spoken Only Through Moses? pp. 11–40, although I would note my disagreement with many of the specifics of Burns’s interpretation, especially her differentiation of cultic versus secular victory songs.

7.  Above, p. 99, 114.

8.  The Masoretic text reads me‘ārat ‘ădullām, “the cave of Adullam,” and this is reflected also in the versions, but McCarter, following a suggestion originally made by Julius Wellhausen, prefers to read mĕṣudat ‘ădullām, “the stronghold of Adullam,” as is suggested by subsequent references to “the stronghold” in 21:4–5. See McCarter, I Samuel, p. 355.

9.  The location of Mizpeh in Moab is unknown; see, most recently, Arnold, “Mizpah,” p. 880b. The location of the “Forest of Hereth” is likewise unknown; see Hamilton, “Hereth,” p. 147b.

10.  Jobling, 1 Samuel, p. 97; see similarly Hertzberg, I and II Samuel, p. 172.

11.  Reading l’ y‘śh with the Qĕrē’ for the Kĕtîb lw ‘śh.

12.  Jobling, “Jonathan: A Structural Study,” p. 21; Jobling, 1 Samuel, p. 97.

13.  Jobling, “Jonathan: A Structural Study,” p. 21; Jobling, 1 Samuel, p. 97.

14.  Jobling, “Jonathan: A Structural Study,” p. 22.

15.  Ibid., p. 21; Jobling, 1 Samuel, p. 97; see also McCarter, I Samuel, p. 342. McCarter explains these seeming contradictions in 1 Sam 20:1–21:1 (English 20:1–42) by suggesting 1 Sam 20:11–17 represents a secondary addition to the 1 Samuel 20 narrative, made by some redactor who particularly wanted to foreshadow 2 Samuel 9, in which David, now king, takes Jonathan’s lame son Merib-baal/Mephibosheth into his house and otherwise treats him with kindness because of the commitment he made to Jonathan while Jonathan was still alive. As the methodological approach I have taken in both this and the last chapter suggests, I am generally not at all opposed to this sort of analysis that identifies and finds an explanatory power in isolating various sources and redactive levels in the text. Still, I think that here, McCarter too readily excises 1 Sam 20:11–17, which at least in its theme of Jonathan’s obeisance to David reads as consistent with parts of the narrative that McCarter would not dismiss as secondary (especially 1 Sam 18:4).

16.  Above, p. 109–110.

17.  On at least two of the occasions in which Yahweh responds to David’s ritual inquiries (1 Sam 23:10–11, 12), God responds by means of a divination rite conducted for David by Abiathar, a priest who has taken refuge with David after fleeing from the shrine at Nob (which Saul had destroyed because the clergy there gave David sanctuary early on in his flight from the king’s court). The presence of Abiathar in David’s entourage is significant for our analysis, as Abiathar serves as a visible symbol of the way in which contact with the divine is manifest during this arguably liminal period in David’s life story.

18.  Leach, “Why Did Moses Have a Sister?” p. 37.

19.  McCarter, I Samuel, p. 388.

20.  Above, p. 108.

21.  McCarter, I Samuel, pp. 17, 386–387.

22.  Notably, the cave in which David is described as encountering Saul in 1 Sam 24:2–23 (English 24:1–22) is, according to Turner, a typical liminal symbol, embodying liminality’s ambiguity by representing both “birth and death, womb and tomb.” See Turner, “Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual, and Drama?” p. 295 (cited from the original publication of this essay found in On the Edge of the Bush). See similarly Turner, “Dewey, Dilthey, and Drama,” pp. 41–42.

23.  McKenzie, King David, p. 95.

24.  Turner, “Process, System, and Symbol,” p. 160 (cited from the reprinted edition of this essay found in On the Edge of the Bush).

25.  Turner, “Metaphors of Anti-Structure,” p. 64.

26.  Turner, “Process, System, and Symbol,” p. 160 (cited from the reprinted edition of this essay found in Turner, On the Edge of the Bush).

27.  Turner, The Forest of Symbols, p. 97; this quote brought to my attention by Bell, Ritual, p. 40.

28.  See McKenzie, King David, pp. 62, 102, also McKenzie, “Introduction to and Annotations on 1 Samuel,” p. 441 (note on 1 Sam 28:2).

29.  Steussy, David, p. 72.

30.  Turner, The Ritual Process, pp. 96, 103.

31.  Note similarly Hertzberg’s assessment of David in 1 Sam 27:2–4, “He comes as the head of a powerful, indeed much-feared, band. He is, moreover, a man who is himself related to families living in the hill countries of Caleb and Judah [through the marriages he has made in 1 Sam 25:39–43; see further my discussion below] … he represents one of the strongest figures in Israel.” Hertzberg, I and II Samuel, p. 213.

32.  Turner, The Ritual Process, p. 106.

33.  Saul’s son is called Eshbaal in 1 Chr 8:33 and 9:39; elsewhere, he is named Ishboshet. Scholars generally presume that the form Eshbaal, meaning “man of the Lord [i.e., Yahweh],” is original; Ishboshet, “man of shame,” was substituted when ba‘al as an epithet of Yahweh became conflated with the commonly used title of the Canaanite storm god Baal.

34.  According to the biblical chronology, David’s reign over the southern tribes of Judah lasts seven and a half years while Eshbaal/Ishboshet reigns for only two years in the North. Some scholars presume this latter date must be wrong and that Eshbaal/Ishboshet reigned in the North for the same number of years as did David in the South; others argue that the received tradition is correct and that Eshbaal/Ishboshet reigned for only the last two years of David’s reign in the South, following a five year hiatus during which the country sought to reorganize itself after the defeat at the hands of the Philistines described in 1 Samuel 31. Steussy, however, proposes that the narrative sequencing implied by the biblical text is wrong and that David had become king over the southern tribes of Judah several years before Saul had died; see her David, pp. 76–77. For further discussion, see McCarter, II Samuel, pp. 88–89.

35.  My analysis here thus agrees with Leonhard Rost’s fundamental insights regarding the Samuel narratives and especially the part of Rost’s work that isolated an integrated narrative complex called the “History of David’s Rise” that runs from 1 Sam 16:14 (or perhaps 1 Sam 16:1) to 2 Sam 5:10. See Rost, Die Überlieferung von der Thronnachfolge Davids.

36.  Turner, The Ritual Process, p. 106.

37.  David’s first marriage is to Abigail, the widow of the Calebite Nabal, a name that means “Fool.” Nabal, moreover, lives up to his name according to the story of his interactions with David in 1 Sam 25:2–38. He refuses to give provisions to David and his followers when asked, an act of foolishness given that David is in effect running a protection racket according to 1 Sam 25:5–8, claiming that he let no harm come to Nabal’s shepherds when they were shearing in the territory where David’s band was resident and requesting (essentially demanding) payment in return. David, however, as the mastermind of this protection racket, appears cunning and shrewd. Marrying Abigail is also a shrewd move on David’s part, as he becomes heir to Nabal’s significant wealth and to Nabal’s significant influence within the powerful Calebite community (see Levenson, “1 Samuel 25”; Levenson and Halpern, “The Political Import of David’s Marriages”). As McKenzie writes, “It was a short step from there to the kingship over all Judah” (McKenzie, King David, p. 99).

What David does not appear here, though, is liminal, as, again, it is foolishness, not sagacity, that is a characteristic mark of liminality. Similarly, in 1 Sam 21:13–15, although David acts a liminal-like fool, his behaviors are, the text makes clear, a pretense, a clever ruse to protect himself (he feigns madness in order to disguise himself from the Philistines of Gath, who recognize him when he comes into their midst after fleeing from Saul’s court and would have him killed as the military champion of their Israelite enemies).

38.  It is worth noting, however, that the language of “wandering” (hithallēk) is used specifically of David, in 1 Sam 23:13.

39.  Goliath, granted, might be thought of as an otherworldly being, given the traditions that exist regarding his substantial height. However, the “six cubits and a span” (that is, nine feet, nine inches) reported in the Masoretic text is probably a secondary reading. The original, as suggested by McCarter, would have been four cubits and a span (that is, six feet, nine inches). As McCarter admits, this still marks Goliath as “a true giant in an age when a man well under six feet might be considered tall.” Yet Goliath is not the fantastical giant we sometimes imagine him to be. McCarter, I Samuel, pp. 286, 291. See also, on Goliath’s gigantic nature, Halpern, David’s Secret Demons, p. 8 and n. 4 on that page; McKenzie, King David, pp. 73–75.

40.  Cf., however, Halpern in David’s Secret Demons, passim, who argues (p. 6) that David, once he becomes king, manifests “an independence of the law [and] a personal lust” that were “born in David’s days as an exile in the wilderness.” In Halpern’s understanding, that is, David, as is typical in a rite of passage, is transformed by his time living as an outlaw and bandit. Atypically for a rite of passage, however, David as Halpern describes him is not particularly transformed for the better.

41.  A good summary of the ancient Near Eastern and biblical data can be found in Vancil, “Sheep, Shepherd,” pp. 1188a–1190a.

42.  See Gen 50:10, Jdt 16:24, Sir 22:12, 2 Esd 5:20. It is important to note, however, that the biblical materials are not unanimous in indicating a seven-day mourning period in Israelite tradition: 2 Sam 3:35 may suggest a mourning period of one day or less, whereas Num 20:29 and Deut 34:8 indicate a thirty-day period of mourning.

43.  Ackerman, “Why Is Miriam Also Among the Prophets?” See also Haldar, The Notion of the Desert, p. 5; Talmon, “The ‘Desert Motif,’” pp. 50, 54; Talmon, “Wilderness,” p. 947b; Cohn, Shape of Sacred Space, pp. 7–23; Propp, Exodus 1–18, pp. 35–36. The Haldar, Talmon, and Cohn references were all brought to my attention by Propp, Exodus 1–18, p. 35.

44.  This contra Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, p. 55, who speaks of the two heroes’ “equality” based on the fact that “there is not a trace of the distinction, elsewhere so central, between the active and passive role.”

45.  Turner, The Ritual Process, p. 95.

46.  Schroer and Staubli, “Saul, David and Jonathan,” pp. 22–36. Gide’s play was brought to my attention by Fewell and Gunn, Gender, Power, and Promise, pp. 148–149.

47.  Above, p. 177.

48.  McKenzie, chapter 2 in King David, pp. 25–46.

49.  McCarter, “The Apology of David.”

50.  McKenzie, King David, p. 32. Halpern is also an enthusiastic follower of McCarter’s analysis; see Halpern’s David’s Secret Demons, pp. 75–76.

51.  McCarter, “The Apology of David,” p. 500; see also McKenzie, King David, p. 32.

52.  The apologetic nature of the Jonathan materials were not really explored by McCarter in his initial presentation, “The Apology of David.” They have, however, been commented on by McKenzie; see his King David, pp. 84–85.

53.  McCarter, I Samuel, pp. 16–17; McCarter, “The Apology of David,” pp. 492–493; on 1 Sam 20:11–17, cf. my comments above, n. 15.

54.  Cf., as noted in chapter 1 (pp. 8–11), David M. Halperin’s discussion of sexual and social isomorphism in classical Athens; see Halperin’s One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, p. 30.

55.  Stone, Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History, p. 79.

56.  Ibid., p. 76; Stone, “Gender and Homosexuality in Judges 19,” p. 97.

57.  To some extent, my reading here agrees with that proposed by Fewell and Gunn, Gender, Power, and Promise, pp. 148–151, and Jobling, 1 Samuel, pp. 161–165. The authors of both of these works agree that casting Jonathan as wifelike is part of the “proclamation,” as Fewell and Gunn describe it (p. 151), of David’s ascendancy. However, I find that neither Fewell and Gunn nor Jobling really considers adequately the way in which Jonathan’s portrayal as wifelike is integrally tied to the ancient Israelite understanding of gender identity within male-male sexual interactions. Fewell and Gunn, in particular, seem to assume that the paradigms of sexual relations that are a part of our world are virtually identical to those of the ancient Israelites: for example, in discussing the fact that Jonathan, whom they take as David’s lover, also fathered children, they speak of the possibility that Jonathan was bisexual, or of the possibility that he, although his primary sexual orientation was homosexual, lived out a heterosexual role for at least some part of his life. To be sure, in making this latter suggestion, Fewell and Gunn argue that such behavior is “common in patriarchal societies,” thereby indicating their understanding that patterns of sexual relationships vary across cultures. But they do not seem to realize that so great is the degree of variation that it makes no sense, within ancient Israelite tradition, to speak at all of homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual in the way we think of these terms.

58.  McCarter, “The Apology of David,” pp. 502–503.

59.  Jonathan’s son is called Merib-baal is 1 Chr 8:34 and 9:40, but Mephibosheth in 2 Sam 4:4. As in the case of the names used of Saul’s son Eshbaal/Ishboshet (above, n. 33), scholars generally presume that the form Merib-baal is original and that the ba‘al element of this name, which originally referred to Yahweh as “Lord,” was changed once it became used primarily as the title with the Canaanite storm god. In this name also the first element mĕrîb, or at some points mĕrî, was changed to mĕpî, “from the mouth of.” Probably this is due to textual confusion, whereby the original name of Jonathan’s son and Saul’s grandson Merib-baal became conflated with the name of another relative of Saul, Mephiba‘al (2 Sam 21:8).

60.  Damrosch, Narrative Covenant, pp. 204–205.

61.  The Song of Songs, anomalous in so many respects when compared to the rest of the biblical literature, is also anomalous regarding the usage of ’āhēb and ’ahăbâ. There it is the young maiden who over and over is said to love the young man (Cant 1:7, 2:5, 3:1, 2, 3, 4, 5:8); also the “maidens” generally are said to love him (Cant 1:3, 4). Only once, though, and obliquely, is the man’s love for the maiden described (Cant 2:4), where the maiden claims, “his intention toward me was love [ahăbâ].”

62.  Gen 29:30 reports that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah, which suggests Jacob was not without affection for the older sister. Yet two verses later, in Gen 29:32, Leah gives voice to the hope that “now” (‘attâ), because she has given birth to Reuben, Jacob will love her, which suggests she has not found herself the object of Jacob’s affection prior to that point.

63.  On this virtual “embargo in the narrative in suggesting that David cares for Jonathan,” see, in addition to Jobling, 1 Samuel, p. 163, which is the source of this quote, Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, p. 93; Exum, Fragmented Women, p. 53, n. 22; Fewell and Gunn, Gender, Power, and Promise, pp. 150–151.

64.  Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, p. 82; Exum, Fragmented Women, p. 23.

65.  Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, p. 86; see similarly Exum, Fragmented Women, p. 24.

66.  Exum, Fragmented Women, p. 25; see similarly Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, pp. 86–87.

67.  See Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, pp. 81–85; Exum, Fragmented Women, pp. 43–46.

68.  In 2 Sam 21:8, according to the Masoretic text, Michal does appear again, along with a notice that David has killed the five sons she had borne to Adriel, son of Barzillai, the Meholathite. But several ancient manuscripts read Merab here for Michal, and this obviously accords far better with the tradition of Michal’s barrenness recounted in 2 Sam 6:23, as well as with the account of Merab’s marriage to Adriel the Meholathite in 1 Sam 18:19. See, with references to further discussion, McCarter, II Samuel, p. 439; also Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, pp. 90–91; Exum, Fragmented Women, p. 38.

69.  As is most famously indicated by Rachel’s plaint to Jacob, “Give me children or I will die,” in Gen 30:1.

70.  Exum, Fragmented Women, p. 34.

71.  Reading klby with the Qĕrē’ in 1 Sam 25:3 for the Kĕtîb klbw.

72.  Levenson, “1 Samuel 25,” pp. 26–27.

73.  See also above, n. 37, where, in the context of considering to what degree the David story actually conforms to van Gennep’s rite-of-passage paradigm, I discuss David’s cleverness as the mastermind of this racket, as opposed to the foolishness we might have expected according to Victor Turner’s paradigm of liminality.

74.  Berlin, “Abigail 1,” p. 43.

75.  Levenson, “1 Samuel 25,” p. 19; also Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation, p. 31; McCarter, I Samuel, p. 401.

76.  Berlin, “Abigail 1,” p. 43.

77.  McCarter, I Samuel, pp. 401–402; see also, regarding McCarter’s redactional understanding of 1 Sam 20:14–16, n. 15 above.

78.  Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation, p. 31.

Epilogue

1.  See chapter 5.