CHAPTER 6
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606–1669). The Prophet Nathan before David. Pen and brown ink, wash. KdZ 5255 (Benesch 947). Photo credit: bpk, Berlin / Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Jörg P. Anders / Art Resource, NY
Why would a course on political philosophy include a section dealing with the Bible? This question is both necessary and proper. Political philosophy is a part of the Western intellectual tradition, and this tradition is composed of two elements. One part derives from the philosophical tradition of Greece, but the other derives from the Bible, from the East. The influence of the Bible is evidence of the influence of the East on the West. We might call these two elements or two strands of thought Athens and Jerusalem. Neither of these alone is sufficient to characterize the West. The West consists of a centuries-old conversation, dialogue, and debate between these two. What exactly do these names indicate?
It has long been believed that Jerusalem—the city of faith, the holy city—and Athens—the city of philosophy—are the two polarities around which the Western tradition has revolved. The spirit of Athens has traditionally been understood as the embodiment of rationality, democracy, and science in the broadest sense of those terms. The spirit of Jerusalem represents the embodiment of love, faith, and morality, also taken in the broadest sense. For many thinkers—I think of the great German philosopher Hegel—modernity itself is predicated upon the synthesis of Jerusalem and Athens, of ethics and science. Modernity, and hence progress, is only possible with the synthesis of these two great currents of thought. But are these two compatible? Is such a synthesis possible? To ask again the question posed centuries ago by the Christian patristic Tertullian: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”1
On the surface it would seem that Jerusalem and Athens represent two fundamentally different, even antagonistic, moral codes or ways of life. Greek philosophy elevates reason—our own human reason—as the one thing needful for life. Greek philosophy culminates in the person of Socrates, who famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Only the life given over to the cultivation of autonomous human understanding is a worthy human life. The Bible, however, presents itself not as a philosophy or a science but as a code of law, an unchangeable divine law mandating unhesitating obedience. In fact the first five books of the Bible are known in the Jewish tradition as the Torah, and Torah is perhaps most literally translated as “Law.” The attitude taught by the Bible is one not of self-reflection or critical examination but of obedience, faith, and trust in God. If the paradigmatic Athenian is Socrates, the paradigmatic biblical hero is Abraham, who is prepared to sacrifice his son in obedience to an unintelligible command.2
Faced with these two alternatives, the question is how to choose between them. Each side stakes a claim on our allegiance, but each side also seems to exclude the other. How to choose? One answer is to say that we are open to both and willing to listen first and then decide. But to suggest that we will make a choice on the basis of our own best judgment seems to decide the matter already in favor of Athens against Jerusalem. Yet on the other hand, we might say that any answer to the question “Who is right—the Greeks or the Jews?” is based on an act of faith. In this case Jerusalem seems to have triumphed over Athens. A philosophy that is based on faith is no longer a real philosophy. How, then, to decide?
In the Beginning
There are many ways to begin to read the Bible. It can be read as a book of wisdom providing timeless lessons on life’s most difficult problems. It can be read as a holy book given by God to Moses and handed down by Moses to the patriarchs in a line of unbroken tradition. It can be read as a historical work providing archaeological and anthropological information about the world of the ancient Near East. Or it can be read, as I propose to do, as a political book providing a matchless account of the beginnings of humanity, the creation of the first family, the rise of civilization, and the eventual separation of humanity into distinct peoples and nations. This account continues with the specification of one particular people, the people of Israel, their emergence among competing nations, their enslavement and eventual emancipation, their laws and acquisition of a territory, their various attempts at self-government, and finally the emergence of a unified state under a single sovereign. But before considering this, let us return to the beginning.
The Bible enjoins us to return to beginnings.3 The beginning of all beginnings is related in the opening of Genesis. The book begins with the famous words “In the beginning,” or in some translations simply “In beginning.” Who says this? Is it God? Possibly, but elsewhere God’s statements are prefaced by the words “And God said.” Did a person say it? Maybe, but then again there were presumably no people around to witness the beginning. In the beginning, God is said to have created heaven and earth. The earth is said to have been “without form and void.” Does this mean that the earth in some sense existed before God’s creation? At most God seems to have formed the earth like a sculptor forms a statue rather than created it out of nothing.
God is well known to have created the world and everything in it in six days. He proceeds by way of a number of divisions. On the first day are created light and darkness; on the second, the heavens; on the third, earth, water, and plants; on the fourth, the sun, moon, and stars; on the fifth, water animals and birds; on the sixth, land animals and man. What are we to make of these divisions, and what do they represent?
The most obvious difficulty is that days are introduced before the sun, which is not created until the fourth day. We keep track of days by the movements of the earth around the sun. How can there be days or nights before the sun had been created? We have all heard, of course, that the days of creation are not the same as earth days. Perhaps a creation day lasted billions of years. Nevertheless, the order of creation follows a reasonable plan. All beings created on the first four days lack the principle of self-motion. Sun, earth, and water may follow a fixed pattern but are in no way self-moving. The beings created on the last two days—water animals, land animals, and man—contain some principle of agency. There is introduced a hierarchy based on the capacity to initiate activity. This is confirmed by the fact that only man is said to be created in “God’s image” and given dominion over the other beings. Furthermore, God concludes every day with the statement “and God said it was good,” but only after the creation of man does God call his work “very good.”
The order of creation seems to establish a hierarchy with objects like the sun, moon, stars, and earth as well as the various objects occupying the lower rungs of creation, with the various animals and finally man occupying the higher rungs. It is not an exaggeration to say that man is the pinnacle of creation. The Bible explicitly forbids the worship of the sun and moon. It is this depreciation of the heavens that is the specific feature of biblical cosmology. Man is given a kind of rudimentary dominion over the things of the earth that are left undenominated by God. These things gain their identities by being given names; naming is the prerogative of man. We are not told whether the power of language is innate or how it was developed, but it is through language that man expresses his dominion over the various objects of creation.
As is well known, the first account of creation in Genesis, given in chapter 1, is complicated by the second account, given in chapter 2. In the first account, man is created in God’s image; in the second, man is formed from the dust of the earth. In the first account, man and woman are created together; in the second, man is created first and woman only later. All we know about the creation of woman is that it is not good for man to be alone. Man is not intended to live a solitary life but to live as part of a couple or a family.
By the end of chapter 2, the stage is set for the unfolding of human history. God created man without knowledge of good and evil. Adam is told that he may eat freely of every tree or plant in the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil; if he eats of it he will die. It is not clear what the threat of death could have meant to a man who had as yet no experience of mortality. Nor is it clear why God wished to monopolize knowledge of good and evil. Why was this knowledge alone forbidden to man?
It is the serpent, the subtlest of creatures, that entices the woman to eat of the tree of knowledge with the promise that “you will be like God.” Why did the woman disregard God’s command? In the first place, remember that it was to Adam alone that God said that the tree of knowledge was off-limits; Adam obviously passed this down to Eve. It seems that it was not God’s order but Adam’s that Eve disobeyed. She had heard of the divine prohibition only at second hand, by way of “tradition,” so to speak. Second, the woman exhibits a kind of natural curiosity that seems altogether absent in Adam. Adam is little more than a cipher. God commands, and he dumbly obeys. Eve alone shows some of the characteristics of a philosopher: she has a natural curiosity, an openness to experience, and a desire to learn. What must it be like, she wonders, to be like God? But most important, the Bible tells us that our original condition is one of simplicity without moral knowledge. This knowledge is the key to the development of human history. Moral knowledge—knowledge of good and evil—is what makes us human. Prior to their transgression, Adam and Eve lack this essential aspect of humanity. The eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge represents the first decisive step toward the fulfillment of our humanity.
The story of our first parents is the story of the discovery of moral knowledge. Our earliest ancestors, apparently, lived without knowledge of good and evil; the acquisition of this knowledge is responsible for the wholesale transformation of humanity. This is what is meant in the biblical passage “Then the eyes of both were opened.” The first thing they notice is their nakedness, and this induces a sense of shame. The sense of shame, you might say, is the first authentically human moment in Genesis. A person incapable of shame—as Adam and Eve were in the garden—cannot be a human being in the full or proper sense of the word. Only creatures with a sense of the shameful, beings capable of making moral distinctions, can be called human at all. What is often referred to in Christian theology as the “Fall” is really a misnomer. We have not fallen so much as risen to a higher level of moral self-awareness. For what is a human being without the capacity to feel shame, to distinguish good from evil, right from wrong?
This passage raises a central question that has been the subject of literally centuries of commentary. Does the eating from the tree of moral knowledge represent humankind’s first act of rebellion and disobedience to the divine law, or does it represent the first tentative steps toward our own humanity? Is the serpent a tempter and destroyer or a benefactor? Why did God wish to monopolize this knowledge for himself alone? Why did he begrudge Adam and his progeny the knowledge of good and evil that is surely a distinctive feature of our humanity? Or was God, like any good teacher, providing a “teachable moment,” allowing first Adam and Eve and through them the entire human race the opportunity to exercise those capacities of choice, will, and deliberation that are the signs of our mature self-understanding?
The idea that the serpent’s temptation of Adam and Eve, rather than being a curse, is the first step toward our distinctive humanity was put forward nowhere more persuasively than in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Lucifer’s motto—non serviam (I will not serve)—expressed a bold new spirit of adventure and restless individualism that we will see later on given similar form in the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The punishment for Adam and Eve’s transgression was, to be sure, exile and loss of home, but it also entailed the experience of travel and new, unforeseen opportunities. It is in a sense their graduation from a state of perpetual and carefree adolescence to one of the responsibilities of adulthood. Consider just the following lines from the very end of Paradise Lost read every year to Yale seniors on the occasion of their baccalaureate service:
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide;
They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow
Through Eden took their solitary way.4
The struggle between good and evil is the theme of the next great biblical drama, the story of the brothers Cain and Abel. Cain, the older brother, was a tiller of the soil; Abel, a keeper of sheep. For reasons that the text does not explain, God prefers the offerings of Abel. In his anger, Cain kills his brother and adds insult to injury by asking, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain’s punishment is quite mild by biblical standards. He is forced to roam the earth, where he becomes the founder of the first city. It is the line of Cain that brings the invention of the tools and instruments necessary for civilized life. As with the brothers Romulus and Remus and the founding of Rome through an act of fratricide, the biblical message is clear: politics and the arts of civilization are built upon crime.
We can now begin to see a fundamentally different attitude between the biblical and Greek conceptions of moral and political life. For Aristotle, man is the political animal, intended for life in the city; his virtues are the virtues necessary for citizenship and statecraft. The Bible, by contrast, extols pious and humble men—men like Abel: shepherds and nomads—who have consciously or unconsciously rejected the lures of urban civilization. This is a theme that plays itself out throughout the Hebrew Bible. Consider the flight of Abraham, the first Jew, who leaves the Mesopotamian city of Ur in the very center of the civilized world in order to pursue a nomadic existence far from the splendors of urban life. It is to escape the corrupting influences of the city that Abraham seeks a new life for himself and his progeny.
This suspicion of cities, states, and political authority is a theme that is constantly reiterated throughout the Bible. It is repeated in the story of Moses, who leaves the pampered life of Mizriam—the Hebrew name for Egypt—to become a shepherd like his Abrahamic ancestors before his first encounter with God, who sends him back to Egypt for the purpose of ending the enslavement of his people. Moses is the archetype of the prophet who calls the ruler, Pharaoh, to account from a higher authority that transcends the state. The idea of the prophet is the most important biblical contribution to political thought. The political teaching of the Bible consists in large part of explicit indictments of governments—Jewish and non-Jewish alike—for the injustice of their laws and the moral failings of their rulers. There is no other work of ancient literature, to my knowledge, that puts the conscience of the individual over and above the authority of political rulers as clearly as the Bible.
The closest and only approximation in Greek thought to the role of the prophet is the place occupied by Socrates, who appeals to his daimon as a naysayer that protects him from injustice. Recall the following from the Apology: “Perhaps someone might say: But Socrates, if you leave us will you not be able to live quietly without talking? Now this is the most difficult point on which to convince some of you. If I say that it is impossible for me to keep quiet because that means disobeying the god, you will not believe me and will think that I am being ironical. On the other hand, if I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living, you will believe me even less” (37e–38a). Socrates’s appeal here for what we would call civil disobedience is the closest the Greeks ever came to the biblical claims of the prophets to call their leaders to task.
Fundamental suspicion of institutions like the state and ruling authority constitutes the most important political legacy of the Bible. What is it about politics that the Bible finds problematic? The danger with the state and political rule is the ever-present temptation of idolatry. The commandment against idolatry is perhaps the single most important biblical teaching. Idolatry does not mean simply the worship of objects of gold or clay. Idols may take many forms. They are barometers of what a society holds dear, what it worships; this could be money, fame, health, status, or anything else. If the Bible teaches anything, it is that there is only one God, and this God alone is to be worshipped. In particular we must avoid finding god substitutes in our institutions and the people who govern us, turning them into objects of worship. It is this tendency—this very real and human tendency—to turn our rulers into gods that the Bible emphatically warns against.
The fear of idolatry is not just an ancient superstition. Idolatry remains a permanent human disposition. It is a form of fetishism, investing a person, thing, or ritual with certain superhuman powers. Idolatry pertains not only to the object invested with these powers but also to the peculiar passion from which it arises. The psychological basis of idolatry has been brilliantly explored by Emil Fackenheim, one of the twentieth century’s great theologians: “The ancient idolater projects a feeling—fear, hope, pleasure, pain—upon an external object, and he then worships the object. The object, on its part, remains no mere object; the projected feeling gives it a life of its own, and there may be, or even must be, a special rite of consecration during which this life is conjured into it. There is, then, worship because the object is other and higher than the worshipper, and the worship is idolatrous because the object is finite—if only because it is an object.”5
It is the suspicion of idolatrous worship that attends even the institution of kingship in Israel. By the time the Jews have entered Canaan, they find themselves under the rule of different prophets, first Eli—as in Eli Yale—then Samuel, and then his sons. But the prophets too can misuse their power—no one is infallible, not even prophets—and this is why the people yearn for a king so that they can be ruled “like all the nations.” When the people demand a king, here is what Samuel tells them:
These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to the chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and your vineyards and give it to his officers and servants. He will take your menservants and maidservants, and the best of your cattle and asses and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks and you shall be his slaves. (1 Samuel 8:11)
I can think of no stronger indictment of government in any literature. The idea is simple: the institution of kingship is bad. This does not mean that the Bible embraces democracy. Rather, all the institutions of human government represent a kind of rebellion against God. One might wish for a philosopher-king, as did Socrates, but the biblical point of view is that politics—all politics—is coercion and tyranny. War and the constant preparation for war, slavery, and taxation are the price of kingship. Nevertheless, the people are not convinced and still cry out for a king, at which point God seems to give up. “Hearken to the voice of the people in all that they say to you,” the Lord tells Samuel, “for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Samuel 8:7). Never in human history—I would add—has a new government been attended by so little promise for its future.
Biblical Politics
For all of Samuel’s indictment of kingship, the Bible offers a political teaching whose greatest representative is David.6 The story of David comes to light in the wake of the people of Israel demanding that Samuel appoint a king instead of rule by the prophets. The wish to be governed “like all the nations” is taken by God to be a rebuke of his authority, but he nevertheless tells Samuel to give the people what they ask for. After Samuel’s warning that kings will be inclined to tyranny and injustice, Saul is appointed the first king over Israel. It is against this backdrop that David emerges.
The figure of David is best remembered today for his famous battle with the Philistine warrior Goliath in the valley of Elah. David and Goliath have even become names for the struggle between the underdog and the established power. But David was more—much more—than this. David was a king and a warlord, a friend, lover, adulterer, and poet. He is a lover and a fighter. David may not be a philosopher, but he is a poet (he is the author of psalms); he is the master of both the sword and the harp. As a political leader, he stands somewhere between Plato’s philosopher-king and Machiavelli’s prince and has elements of both. In short the story of David is one of the most remarkable political lives ever told.
At first sight David appears like many other biblical heroes—he comes from the most humble of men. He is the eighth and youngest son of Jesse the Bethlehemite. When we first meet David, he has been sent by his father to the battle camp with some food and cheeses for his brothers in the army. David is a shepherd and spends his time tending the family flock while his brothers are fighting the Philistine enemies. We have no inkling yet of David’s later military or political prowess, but we do get a sense of his self-confidence bordering on arrogance. When David offers to take on Goliath, the others are contemptuous, but they give him a shot at it. Saul offers David his own armor and helmet, but David refuses, saying, “The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine” (1 Samuel 17:37). He goes forth armed only with a sling, a story that we shall see Machiavelli tell somewhat differently.
David’s victory over the Philistine immediately elevates him above his humble origins, although this victory is not without costs. David will incur the jealousy and anger of Saul, who comes to see him as a rival for power. This begins almost immediately when Saul is taunted by women singing “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7). So begins a series of adventures (and misadventures) in which David seeks mainly to avoid the wrath of Saul. At various times he becomes a hunted man living in the wilderness, and later he is even forced to take refuge among the Philistines in order to protect himself. However, David’s situation is aided by two figures who care deeply for him and who will figure prominently in the David narrative. These are Michal, Saul’s daughter, and Jonathan, Saul’s son. It is the bond forged between these three souls that will protect and defend David as he tries to evade Saul’s attempts to have him killed.
What distinguishes David from so many other biblical figures is, above all, his great capacity for love and friendship. David’s friendship with Jonathan is one of the greatest in any literature, rivaling that of Achilles and Patroclus in Homer’s Iliad. And his love for Michal is only somewhat overshadowed by his even more famous love affair with Bathsheba. David is foremost a man of great heart or spirit, in Hebrew ruah. Ruah is perhaps the nearest Hebrew term to the Greek thymos or spiritedness. This indicates a passionate soul, a quality at the basis of our capacity for love and friendship as well as for anger and desire for revenge. David is one of the great lovers in history. Contrast his nature, if you will, to that of Socrates. Socrates is also a great lover. He is an erotic man. But Socrates is in love with philosophy. He is a lover of truth, of the examined life. He is in love with an idea. Can such a person ever truly love another human being? One suspects—and even more than suspects—that the answer is no. David, by contrast, is a lover of men and women as well as a lover of God. He has a passionate nature that finds its highest expression in fighting, singing, dancing, and making love.
At first David was promised in marriage to Saul’s eldest daughter, but for reasons not explained we are told that she was given to another. It was Saul’s second daughter, Michal, whom David married. “Now Saul’s daughter Michal loved David and they told Saul and the thing pleased him,” the text reads (1 Samuel 18:20). But it is the friendship of David and Jonathan that is central to the narrative. “The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David,” we read, “and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” What kind of friendship was this? The text describes it almost as a kind of wedding dowry: “Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him and gave it to David and his amour and even his sword and his bow and his girdle. And David went out and was successful wherever Saul sent him; so that Saul set him over the men of war. And this was good in the sight of all the people and also in the sight of Saul’s servants” (1 Samuel 18:3–5). Long before Brokeback Mountain Jonathan seems to say: “I wish I knew how to quit you.”7
The result is that Jonathan and David became inseparable, severely straining the relation between Jonathan and his own father. David is a passionate man who excites passionate relations. Saul reproaches his son for his friendship with David: “For as long as the son of Jesse lives upon the earth, neither you nor your kingdom shall be established,” he warns. But Jonathan is not convinced. “Why should he be put to death?” he asks. “What has he done?” The tone of defiance is clear. At this expression of rebellion, Saul erupts in anger: he hurls his spear, narrowly missing Jonathan. “And Jonathan rose from the table in fierce anger and ate no food the second day of the month for he was grieved for David because his father had disgraced him” (1 Samuel 31–34).
The final statement of David’s deep friendship for Jonathan comes after David learns of the deaths of both Saul and Jonathan. By this time, David has become an outcast living in the wastelands and even seeking refuge among the Philistines. In a final battle with the Philistines, Saul and Jonathan are killed. When David learns of this he is devastated. “Then David took hold of his clothes and rent them and so did all the men who were with him and they mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and for Jonathan his son and for the people of the Lord and for the house of Israel because they had fallen by the sword” (2 Samuel 1:11–12).
David not only weeps and fasts, he sings. He is a poet and a singer. “How are the mighty fallen in the midst of battle,” he sings. “Jonathan lies slain upon thy high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of a woman. How are the mighty fallen, and weapons of war perished” (2 Samuel 1:25–27).
David and Bathsheba
It is now many years after David’s epic battles with Saul. He is almost thirty years old and is king over Judah. In the intervening years he has acquired many wives and many children. After Michal were Abigail and then Maacah, Haggith, Abital, and Eglah. And there were many children, among them Amnon, Chileab, Absalom, Adonihah, and of course later Solomon. But what has happened to Michal? Has she simply been discarded or forgotten? Not likely.
This is the period of David’s greatest triumphs as a commander and political leader. David’s reign over a united Israel lasted a total of forty years, and David himself lived to the age of seventy. As a sign of his success he decides to bring the Ark of the Covenant into his new capital city of Jerusalem in a procession that includes music, singing, and dancing. Here is the description of the scene: “So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the horn. As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart” (2 Samuel 6:15–16).
There is an unmistakable note of anger here. Michal, herself the daughter of a king, witnesses her husband leaping and dancing, acting shamelessly before the people, and she despises him for this. But David does not care. The people, he asserts, will love him for this dancing in front of the crowd:
And David returned to bless his household. But Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David and said, “How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants, maids, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself.” And David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord who chose me above your father and above all his house, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord—and I will make merry before the Lord. I will make myself yet more contemptible than this and I will be abased in your eyes; but by the maids of whom you have spoken, by them, I shall be held in honor.” (2 Samuel 6:20)
This remarkable passage reveals something about the soul of David. It is inconceivable to imagine Aristotle’s great king dancing nearly naked before the citizens of Athens. Yet David says that he does not mind making himself contemptible before the people, because they will love him for this. Is David a shameless demagogue? At the height of his greatest triumph we see him debase himself. And what was the result of David’s passion? Michal was punished with sterility: “Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death” (2 Samuel 6:23). What to make of this?
As in every great story, great tragedy follows great triumph. David has united Israel, and, as the text tells us, he “administered justice and equity to all his people” (2 Samuel 8:15). There are still battles to be fought and wars to be won, but David sits in Jerusalem the head of a unified nation. His days as a warrior are over, and his life as a king and administrator has begun. We should recall here Samuel’s warning to the people about the dangers of kings and their potential for injustice. This is the background to the story of David and Bathsheba.
One evening when he is bored and walking on the roofs of his palace, David sees a woman—a beautiful woman—bathing in a nearby home. He is smitten with the sight of her and sends his messengers to find out who she is. They return with the news that her name is Bathsheba, and that she is the wife of Uriah the Hittite. What follows is revealed in the tersest possible language: “So David sent messengers and took her; and she came to him and he lay with her. Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived; and she sent and told David, ‘I am with child’ ” (2 Samuel 11:4).
Now David has a problem on his hands. What to do? Consider: he already has many wives and many children. What’s one more? And who is this Uriah? Can’t David simply do whatever he wants? He is the king, after all. But apparently being the king is not sufficient to allow complete freedom from all restraints. David is subject to certain moral restraints that not even a king can afford to disobey.
David decides to construct an elaborate ruse to conceal Bathsheba’s pregnancy. He sends for Uriah, who is away from home as a soldier in David’s army, under the pretext of getting news from the front. How are things going? He sets up a party for Uriah and plies him with food and drink in hopes of getting him drunk, sending him home, and letting him sleep with his wife in order to cover up the crime. But David doesn’t count on one thing. Uriah is a loyal solider and remains true to the soldier’s oath of maintaining chastity during a military campaign. Instead of returning to his home, Uriah sleeps at the king’s door with the servants.
Now David does a disgraceful thing to an innocent man and a loyal soldier. He tells Uriah to deliver a letter to his commander, Joab; David’s letter instructs Joab to put Uriah in the front line of the battle and when the siege is to begin, to pull back the other troops and leave Uriah alone to be killed by the enemy, which is exactly what takes place (2 Samuel 11:14).
David successfully conceals his crime, but in the course of doing so has committed a greater one. He is responsible for the death of a just man who has done him no wrong whatever. To add insult to injury, he has even used Uriah as an unwitting pawn to deliver the letter that amounts to Uriah’s death sentence. When David later receives the news from the front that Uriah the Hittite is dead, he sends word back to his field commander Joab, “Do not let this matter trouble you, for the sword devours now one and now another.” He says in effect: don’t worry about it. Uriah was collateral damage. David goes on to take Bathsheba as his wife after her mourning period is over, but we also learn that “the thing that David had done displeased the Lord” (2 Samuel 11:27).
We are now set up for one of the truly singular moments in the kingship of David, perhaps the kingship of any monarch. It is said that the Lord sent the prophet Nathan to the court of David to tell the following story: “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his morsel, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom and it was a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man and he was unwilling to take one of his flock or herd to feed the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him” (2 Samuel 12:1–4). After listening to this story David takes the bait: “Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, ‘As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; and he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing, and because he had not pity’ ” (2 Samuel 12:5–6). Then Nathan adds the kicker: “You are the man” (2 Samuel 12:7).
The realization that David himself is in the position of the rich man who has stolen from the poor man strikes him like a thunderbolt, and it tells us something about David. Although he has committed an injustice, he has not become deaf to the appeal of justice. He correctly interprets Nathan’s parable and feels shame at the wrong he has committed. In a century such as the one we have just lived through, when rulers are frequently mass murderers, how can we not be touched by David’s recognition of his injustice against a single individual? “I have sinned against the Lord,” David laments (2 Samuel 12:13). And David’s sin will not go unpunished, for though David will live, the child will die.
Perhaps what is most interesting about this story is that David chooses to listen to Nathan. Can one imagine a current president or political leader actually listening to the kind of rebuke that Nathan delivers to David? For one thing, he could never even get an appointment until he had been thoroughly vetted and it had been determined what political party he belonged to! But David actually listens. The rule of prophets may have come to an end after Samuel’s appointment of Saul as the first king of Israel, but the prophets have not lost their role as the conscience of the nation. This is what distinguishes the political theory of the Bible from every other work: the role extended to the prophet to act even as a chastiser of rulers and the voice of conscience. The idea that political leaders must bend to the moral law—the voice of conscience—is perhaps the most singular political teaching of the Bible. And of course even David—King David—has to listen.
David repents, recognizing that he has sinned against the Lord. But did he not sin also against Uriah? This statement of David’s has given rise to a wealth of commentary. In Leviathan, for example, Hobbes uses the story of David and Nathan’s parable in a very specific way. As the king, the lawful sovereign of his state, David did indeed sin against God, Hobbes reasons, but as the source of all authority he committed no injustice against Uriah. In other words, the sovereign can never act unjustly toward his subjects, because the sovereign is the source of all justice—so says Hobbes.
The story of David and Bathsheba ends on a note of ambiguity. While the child is sick, David fasts and sleeps on the ground for seven days to atone for his sin. Please don’t take the child, he prays. But the child dies anyway. After his servants break the news to him, David gets up, bathes, puts on fresh clothes, has something to eat, and prepares for business. His servants are confused. He fasted and mortified himself while the child was alive but does not mourn after its death. Why? David’s answer is decisive and pragmatic: “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, ‘Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live?’ But now that he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23).
In other words: What can I do? There is work to be done. Let’s move on. David may repent, but there is a toughness and pragmatism to him that is necessary for kingly rule.
David and Absalom
No account of the life of David would be complete without some recognition of his deep and abiding love for his own children. We have seen the story of David’s love for Jonathan and his erotic passion for Bathsheba, and now his love for the most problematic of his offspring, Absalom. Only a parent can understand what it means to love a child the way that David loves Absalom. The story of David and Absalom is not only that of parent and child but also that of rebellion and civil war.
The story of David and Absalom has a complicated background. Absalom was David’s son by Maacah, and he had a sister named Tamar. Absalom’s half-brother Amnon conceived a violent passion for Tamar. But Tamar was a virgin as well as the half-sister of Amnon, and so she appeared to be off-limits. But an adviser to Amnon came up with a plan. Pretend to be sick, and when your father, David, comes by to see you, say that you would like Tamar to come to your apartment and bake you a cake. So the plan is set in motion. Tamar comes to Amnon’s room to cook for him, and he rapes her. Then something almost as bad as the rape happens next: “Then Amnon hated her with very great hatred; so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, ‘Arise, be gone’ ” (2 Samuel 13:15). Tamar has first been used and then rejected. When she returns home, Absalom knows something is up. He tells Tamar to keep quiet about it. David, who now realizes that he has been manipulated by Amnon, is very angry, yet Absalom remains silent. “But Absalom spoke to Amnon neither good nor bad for Absalom hated Amnon because he had forced his sister Tamar” (2 Samuel 13:22). In other words, Absalom was biding his time.
Two years pass, and little is said between the brothers while Absalom is plotting revenge. Then Absalom decides to throw a party for all of the king’s sons, their families, and servants. Like a scene out of The Godfather, Absalom intends to put Amnon at ease and then kill him. Get him drunk, he tells his retainers, make him feel relaxed but be sure he does not leave the gathering alive. This is exactly what happens. When Amnon is killed, the other brothers flee in panic, and when the story is reported to David it appears at first as if Absalom has killed all of the brothers. Absalom is forced to flee, which he does for three years. “And the spirit of the king longed to go forth to Absalom,” the text reads, because his father loved him (2 Samuel 13:39). But Absalom cannot return home—at least not right away.
After Absalom has spent three years in exile, Joab, David’s strong-arm man and enforcer (something like Luca Brasi from The Godfather), contrives a way to bring him back to Jerusalem. But Absalom has still committed a crime by killing David’s heir and successor, so he cannot simply be reinstated. It is agreed that if Absalom is allowed to return home, he will not be able live within the presence of David. After two more years of this internal exile, Absalom has become increasingly angry. He summons Joab, but Joab will not come. Then he does something to get Joab’s attention that reveals something of his character. He sends his men to go and burn Joab’s fields. This seems to work. Why have I been allowed to come home, Absalom reproaches him, if I must still live as an exile within my own country? Joab goes to David and beseeches him on Absalom’s behalf. David then summons Absalom, who bows with his face touching the ground, and his father kisses him.
Absalom’s sister is violated; he exacts revenge; banishment and forgiveness follow. End of story? Hardly: just the beginning. Almost immediately after being reinstated, Absalom begins planning a rebellion to overthrow his father. Absalom’s name has become synonymous with rebellion and betrayal. He sets himself up with a chariot and horses and a posse of fifty men, who stand at the gate before David’s palace. He begins to foment discontent by denying people access to the king while flattering them that their cases are just. “Oh that I were judge in the land” he tells them, “Then every man with a suit or a cause could come to me and I would give them justice.” In this manner, it is said, “Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel” (2 Samuel 15:4–6).
Absalom is a man of immense pride and ambition; he has no intention of remaining a part of his father’s royal retinue. On top of this, he is a man of great vanity and good looks. In a rare aside, the text pauses to describe Absalom: “Now in all Israel there was no one so much praised for his beauty as Absalom; from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish on him” (2 Samuel 14:25). His most notable feature is his long hair, of which he is excessively proud.
Absalom stealthily continues his wooing of the people for four years out of sight of his father, until at one point he asks David’s permission to leave Jerusalem to visit his former home in Hebron. It is here that Absalom declares himself king and begins his siege of Jerusalem. At first it appears as if Absalom will be successful. A messenger comes to David with the news that “the hearts of the men of Israel have gone after Absalom” (2 Samuel 15:13). As a result David is forced to flee Jerusalem with his followers.
David may have been forced to flee his capital, but he is not yet defeated. The stage is set for a great battle between the army of Absalom and the army of David, recalling the struggle between David and Saul a generation before. David has organized his war party and is prepared to do battle, but his captains tell him that they cannot afford to lose him, that he must stay back. David accedes to this, but not before he is heard telling his captains, “Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom” (2 Samuel 18:4).
The battle is a decisive rout, and the armies of Absalom are scattered. Absalom himself is last seen trying to escape on a mule but gets his hair—his long beautiful hair—caught in the fork of an oak tree, where he is found dangling and is murdered by Joab in violation of David’s orders. The victory that David has won has reestablished his kingship, but at the cost of fracturing his family. While the city is preparing a victory celebration, Joab is informed that the king is weeping and mourning for his son: “So the victory that day was turned into mourning for all the people; for the people heard that day, ‘The king is grieving for his son.’ And the people stole into the city that day as people steal in who are ashamed when they flee in battle. The king covered his face and the king cried with a loud voice, ‘O my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, my son’ ” (2 Samuel 19:1). It would take someone with a heart of stone to read David’s lament for Absalom and not feel his enormous capacity for love.
But this is still not the end of the story. Immediately after David has uttered his famous cry (“Absalom, my son, my son”), Joab speaks bluntly to him, perhaps more bluntly than anyone has spoken to him since Nathan’s rebuke: “You have today covered with shame the faces of all your servants, who have this day saved your life and the lives of your sons and your daughters, and the lives of your wives and your concubines because you love those who hate you and hate those who love you. For you have made it clear today that commanders and servants are nothing to you; for today I perceived that if Absalom were alive and all of us were dead, then you would be pleased” (2 Samuel 19:5–6).
Of course Joab is right, and David immediately recognizes this. Absalom has been David’s bitter enemy, and many people have lost their lives fighting on David’s behalf to ensure the defeat of Absalom. How will they react to David’s mourning the death of their enemy, suggesting that he cares more for his defeated son than for those who have made sacrifices on David’s behalf? As in the earlier case of Nathan the prophet, we see David listen to counsel and act accordingly. David is a man of great heart but also shrewd judgment. His own sense of political pragmatism tells him that he must put his bereavement aside if he is to reassert his authority as an effective leader. Thus the story concludes with David leaving his rooms where he has been in mourning and taking his place before the gates of the city: “And the people were told ‘Behold, the king is sitting in the gate’ and all the people came before the king” (2 Samuel 19:8).
Conclusion
Leo Strauss once remarked that the difference between Jerusalem and Athens represents a conflict between two fundamentally different moral codes or ways of life. The pinnacle of Greek ethics is Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and the pinnacle of Aristotle’s ethics is the virtue called megalopsychia or greatness of soul. Greatness of soul, as the name implies, is the virtue concerned with honor. The great-souled man is said to claim much because he deserves much. Such a person is concerned above all with how he is seen by others and, of course, to be worthy of the recognition bestowed on his acts of public service. The great-souled man is haughty in the extreme.
But contrast this, if you will, with the heroes extolled by the Bible. Such men are deeply aware of their own imperfections, their own unworthiness before God, and are haunted by a deep sense of guilt and inadequacy. The biblical heroes are typically the humblest of men. But more to the point, which of these two is more admirable: Aristotelian man’s sense of his own self-worth and pride at his own accomplishments or biblical man’s sense of his unworthiness and dependence on divine love?
These differences go deeper still. The god of the philosophers is Aristotle’s famous unmoved mover. The unmoved mover is something like pure thought, which is the reason both Plato and Aristotle believed that the act of solitary contemplation brought us closest to the divine. Thēoria—pure contemplation—is the activity the Greeks believed to be most godlike. Needless to say, the Aristotelian unmoved mover, unlike the God of the Bible, is not concerned with man and his fate. The God of Aristotle, whatever else one might say, is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This God, the God of the Bible, is said to have created us in his image. This means that it is not contemplation or philosophy but repentance and the ruthless demand for purity of heart that is required of us. Repentance—in Hebrew t’shuva—means return to an earlier state of purity and simplicity. The omnipotent God of the Bible is not a thinking substance but a being who dwells in the thick darkness, whose ways are not our ways.
And yet these distinctions seem not quite true, at least in the case of David. Like other biblical heroes, David may come from humble stock, but he is a man of tremendous resourcefulness, cunning, and intelligence. He has the soul of a poet and the heart of a warrior. And what is more, he is deeply convinced of his worthiness to rule. Much to the chagrin of his reserved and aristocratic wife, Michal, David dances with joy on the occasion of the return of the Holy Ark to Jerusalem. There is a story told about David by Machiavelli that is quite revealing. In recounting the story of David and Goliath, Machiavelli claims that when Saul sought to give David his armor, David refused, preferring to face his enemy armed only with a sling and a knife. As every reader of the Bible knows, David went to meet Goliath armed just with his sling and five stones (1 Samuel 17:38–40). Why does Machiavelli give him a knife? The biblical David had no need of a knife, for he relied on divine promises, but Machiavelli’s David, skeptical of relying on the Lord’s protection, takes along a knife just in case. While taking liberties with the biblical account, this story captures something of David’s personality. Whatever there is of biblical humility in David is undercut by his boldness, audacity, confidence in his own powers, and unmitigated chutzpah. He is truly a man for all seasons.