Good Book

by David Plotz

  I’m not sure what to make of Samuel’s conclusion that obedience trumps anything else, even good intentions. It’s a very militaristic philosophy: you must obey orders, even when you think you have a better idea. Samuel again disavows Saul, then executes the Amalek king himself.

  “And the Lord was sorry that He had made Saul king over Israel.” I bet He was sorry. Just as the Israelites are discovering what a pain it is for them to have a king (especially a nut like Saul), God is discovering what a pain it is for Him to have a king. A king, after all, sets himself outside God’s laws. A king doesn’t think the rules apply to him. According to the Bible, there can be only one true king. That’s very galling for the king on Earth, who will do everything he can to circumvent God’s rule. In a sense, the face-off between Saul and Samuel anticipates the history of western civilization until 1900. God and his priests demand one thing; the king thinks he knows better; the sparks fly upward. Saul is a troubled soul and a rotten monarch, but I can’t help sympathizing with him against Samuel. The priest is doing everything he can to topple the king and bring down the monarchy he despises. Why shouldn’t Saul try to control his own kingdom?

  CHAPTER 16

  The Lord dispatches Samuel to Bethlehem to find a new king. Samuel ends up at the house of Jesse and Jesse’s sons. Apparently having learned nothing from the fiasco with Saul, Samuel starts to choose Jesse’s tall, handsome eldest son as the anointed one. God interrupts irritably and says, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature…for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

  In many ancient myths and holy books, heroes are taller and stronger than ordinary men. But the Bible is full of regular guys. Tall Saul is the exception, the only champion of God chosen for his appearance. (And look how that turned out.) Otherwise, the Bible heroes are average Jobs—frail and cowardly Jacob (rather than manly Esau), stuttering Moses, little Gideon.

  Samuel rejects Jesse’s seven oldest sons. Then, as in the story of Cinderella, he asks if there is another sibling. The youngest, the shepherd David, is summoned from the fields. The Lord says he’s the one, and Samuel anoints him. Let me partially retract the comments I made in the last paragraph. Right after the moving speech about how God doesn’t pay attention to outward appearance, the Bible ogles David, who “had beautiful eyes, and was handsome.”

  As soon as David is anointed, the “spirit of the Lord departed” from Saul, and he starts being tormented by an “evil spirit.” (Given his symptoms, it sounds as if he’s suffering from something like schizophrenia, or possibly epilepsy, or perhaps a really nasty depression.) Saul is soothed only by music. By coincidence, Saul hears that David is great on the lyre and summons him to court. David quickly becomes Saul’s favorite and calms him with songs whenever the madness descends. This tips us off to David’s slyness. He’s been anointed king by Samuel, yet he never reveals this to Saul. The whole episode is very All About Eve.

  CHAPTER 17

  David and Goliath—it’s just as good as I remember. You know the story. The Philistines and Israelites prepare for war. When the armies assemble, the Philistines send out their champion, Goliath. He stands either nine and a half feet tall or six and a half feet tall, depending on which translation you believe. Let’s make him nine and a half feet tall. “The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and his spear’s head weighed 600 shekels.” I don’t know what that means, but it sounds scary. For forty days Goliath shouts challenges at the Israelites, and for forty days Saul can’t find a willing champion. Meanwhile, Jesse sends young David to the battlefield with a care package of bread and cheese for his older brothers. David hears Goliath’s challenge, and he’s furious: “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” David’s oldest brother, Eliab, chastises him for butting in on the affair. David doesn’t back down, and he’s brought to Saul.

  Saul scoffs that David’s too young and inexperienced to fight Goliath. David counters that he kills lions and bears while protecting his flock. Saul doesn’t really have any other choice, since his men are cowards, so he names David as his champion. David tries on Saul’s armor, but it’s too cumbersome. He goes unprotected into battle, carrying only his slingshot. Naked before God, David embodies manly faith. He taunts the giant. “You come to me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.” You know the rest. One rock slung. One dead giant.

  I must confess I’m pretty excited to be reading about my namesake. Throughout my childhood, I had a poster on my wall, showing a painting of David with the head of Goliath. (It was by Andrea del Castagno.) I then took it with me to college. Like the David in the painting, I was tall with curly brown hair, and I always identified with him. We were not much of a Bible household—my parents are the most secular of Jews—and David was the only figure in the Bible I ever thought about. As a little boy, I wanted to be brave like him. As a teenager I got an illicit thrill out of the story of Bathsheba. I wasn’t sophisticated, but insofar as I had a biblical hero, it was David. Now that I am actually reading his story, I’m glad that he’s living up to my childhood idealization.

  CHAPTERS 18-19

  “The soul of [Saul’s son] Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” Hmm. Does it mean what I think it means?

  David rises to command Saul’s army and leads the Israelites to one victory after another. Saul becomes envious when he hears the people singing, “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” Saul, by now quite loony, sets out to kill his young rival. He has as much success as the CIA had with Fidel Castro (and has almost as much imagination as the CIA). He heaves his spear at David but misses. Next, he tells David he can marry his daughter Michal if he brings Saul the foreskins of 100 Philistines. Saul expects David to die in the attempt. (This foreshadows David’s own crime against Bathsheba’s husband.) But the mission is no problem for David, who kills 200 Philistines—100 extra for good measure—and returns with the fleshy bits. Let’s not dwell on what Saul did with the present.

  Time for plan C. Saul tells Jonathan he wants to assassinate David. Jonathan warns David, then talks his dad out of the attempt, convincing him that David is innocent. Saul promises he won’t try to kill David, and he really seems to mean it. But sure enough, the next time David and Saul are alone together, the king again flings his spear at David, who runs away. So Saul sends his guards to capture David, but his wife, Michal—Saul’s own daughter, you remember—makes a mannequin of David out of the household idol and hides it in the bed while David escapes.

  This episode of the idol in the bed is a fabulous reminder that the Bible has not only given us much of the language we speak—words, phrases, aphorisms—but also invented our very idea of what a story is. The dummy in the bed has reappeared thousands of times in books, in movies, on television, and in real life, for serious purposes (the prisoner breaking out of jail, the hero avoiding the murderer), and for comedy (the teenager sneaking out after curfew). It’s a 3,000-year-old plot gimmick.

  CHAPTER 20

  David and Jonathan get ever more Brokeback. The two are thrown together repeatedly, as Jonathan keeps tipping David off about Saul’s plans to kill him. Jonathan and David sneak off and swear their love for each other. Later, when David knows he has to flee Saul’s court permanently, they rendezvous in a farm field, kiss, weep, and bid each other good-bye. Again I ask: does this mean what I think it means?

  CHAPTERS 21-25

  Having made his final break with Saul, David sets himself up as a guerrilla, a freedom fighter at the head of a 600-man militia. He’s the George Washington of Judea. Meanwhile, Saul sinks ever deeper into paranoia. When he hears that some priests lent David a sword, he orders eighty-five of them murdered and then wipes out the city where they lived. One survivor escapes and finds David, who blames
himself for the massacre.

  You may bite my head off for saying this, but David reminds me powerfully of Bill Clinton (and not just because of their sexual appetites and their love of music). Like Clinton, David brilliantly combines two virtues and one vice. He truly loves God. He is profoundly warm and empathetic—he’s continually feeling the pain of others. Yet he cannily exploits his understanding of human nature for his own advantage. He’s always gaming people, measuring them, working them over to gain an edge (e.g., he adores Jonathan, yet flips him against his dad).

  David’s guerrilla army rescues an Israeli town from the Philistines. Rather than thanking David, Saul immediately besieges the town to trap David’s army inside. David and his men escape to the wilderness. Saul pursues him, and in a brilliantly cinematic moment—you can imagine it filmed from above by helicopter—the two armies are on opposite sides of the same mountain, David marching right into Saul’s trap. Suddenly, Saul is summoned away to repel a Philistine incursion. Saul returns with another huge force. David and his men take shelter in a cave. By coincidence, Saul ducks into the cave “to relieve himself.” David’s men urge him to kill the king while he’s vulnerable, but instead, David sneaks up and clips a corner from Saul’s cloak. When Saul leaves the cave, David follows him and confronts him with the torn piece. “See, my father, see the corner of your cloak in my hand; for by the fact that I cut off the corner of your cloak, and did not kill you, you may know for certain that there is no wrong or treason in my hands. I have not sinned against you, though you are hunting me to take my life.”

  Ever prone to histrionics, the mad king shouts and weeps. He forgives his protégé and apologizes hysterically. “You are more righteous than I; for you have repaid me good, whereas I have repaid you evil.” Saul recognizes that David will indeed be king and begs him not to wipe out Saul’s family when he takes the throne. Saul goes home and leaves David in peace. Saul has already promised forgiveness to David three times before this and has always reneged. I am betting this amnesty won’t last, either. In Saul’s defense, he’s not calculating in his betrayals of David—he’s just so deranged that he can’t help himself.

  CHAPTER 25

  David’s always working the angles. Nabal, a “surly and mean” tycoon, is married to the “clever and beautiful” Abigail. David sends ten of his men to ask Nabal for food. They tell Nabal that they could have stolen his livestock, but they didn’t. In exchange for that restraint, they suggest, Nabal should feed David and his militia. Nabal brushes them off, saying, “Should I then take my bread and my water, and the meat that I slaughtered for my own shearers, and give them to men who come from I don’t know where?” His rebuff enrages David, who immediately marches his army toward Nabal’s farm. Abigail hears that they’re coming and thinks fast. She collects huge quantities of provisions and waylays David’s men before they reach Nabal. She flings herself at David’s feet and begs him not to take vengeance, saying that if he kills Nabal, he will have a guilty conscience. David agrees, but takes all the food (200 fig cakes—yum!). Several days later, the Lord smites Nabal. David immediately marries Abigail.

  A couple of things about this story:

  (1) David is such a horndog that he picks up a widow at a funeral.

  (2) The first time I read it, I enjoyed the meet-cute romance between David and Abigail and shared David’s righteous indignation against the miserly Nabal. But when I read it again, I was appalled. David is a shakedown artist. Reexamine the facts of the story. David’s men tell Nabal they didn’t steal his animals—the obvious threat being: if you don’t pay up, we will steal your animals. It’s a protection racket. Nabal is absolutely right. He shouldn’t have to feed David’s army rather than his own men. David marching his army against Nabal is like a capo sending his hit man to break a deadbeat’s knees. It’s extortion. David walks away with all the food he can carry. And Nabal, the victim of this crime, is smitten for his troubles.

  CHAPTER 26

  David and his lieutenant Abishai sneak into Saul’s camp at night and walk right up to the sleeping king. It’s a repeat of David’s encounter with the peeing Saul in the cave. Abishai begs to assassinate the king, but David—cannily thinking ahead to when he will wear the crown and malcontents will want to kill him—forbids it: “No one can lay hands on the Lord’s anointed with impunity.” Instead, David steals Saul’s spear and water jar and tiptoes out of the camp. From a far hilltop, David then taunts Saul’s commander Abner for not guarding Saul: “You deserve to die, because you did not keep watch over your lord the king.”

  Saul hears David’s voice and calls out to him. David begs for peace. Saul immediately apologizes again and implores David to come back. Knowing just how fickle and deranged Saul is, David doesn’t accept the invitation, but he does return the spear and water jar, and they part friends. Saul’s farewell to David—which turns out to be the final words between them—is: “May you be blessed, my son David! You shall achieve, and you shall prevail.” This is the benediction of a father to his heir: he blesses David and calls him his son. This further legitimizes David’s claim to succeed him, right?

  CHAPTER 27

  David is sick of the hassle of living in Israel. (I know how he feels: Israelis can be so rude.) So, he defects to the Philistines. This is shocking. It’s as if General MacArthur had moved to China in 1951. The Philistines are tyrannical, thuggish idolaters, chariots-of-mass-destruction-driving villains, and David has been doing little but murdering them for the past ten chapters—yet they’re still better allies than David’s own king. David and his 600 men become a bandit gang. They raid all the neighboring tribes except the Israelites, sack towns, slaughter women, and steal livestock. It’s ugly.

  Still, let’s note what David does not do during his exile among the Philistines. He does not worship idols. He may not be particularly faithful during this period—his conversations with God certainly decrease in frequency—but he never abandons the Lord.

  The Philistine king, Achish, decides to make war against Israel and tells David he must accompany the Philistines. David doesn’t hesitate: he eagerly volunteers to serve as Achish’s personal bodyguard and fight his own countrymen. But Achish’s generals distrust David—they fear he’ll switch sides during the battle—and they persuade the king to send him home.

  CHAPTER 28

  When King Achish invades Israel, Saul, who’s more and more cuckoo, decides he needs to consult with Samuel. Since Samuel is now dead, this is a problem. Saul disguises himself and visits the Witch of Endor. He begs her to conjure the ghost of Samuel. This episode drives home, as if we could have forgotten it, the faithlessness of Saul. He has explicitly banned witchcraft, and the Lord made it abundantly clear in Leviticus that witchcraft is absolutely, utterly, completely forbidden, an automatic death-penalty offense—do not pass Go; do not collect 200 shekels. Yet Saul is so scornful of God that he consults the witch anyway. (And he’s so spineless that he can’t even make a decision about war strategy without ghostly advice.)

  Samuel comes when summoned, but he’s steamed. He reminds Saul that the Lord “has become your adversary.” He also predicts that Saul and his sons will die the next day. This plunges Saul into despair, but after a nice steak dinner, he returns to the battlefield.

  CHAPTER 30

  A stupendous digression. David returns home to find that the Amalekites have sacked his town and kidnapped his wives. David and his men weep till they can weep no more. (Young men, take a lesson from David: He’s a warrior, he plays the lyre—the guitar of its day—and he’s not afraid of a good cry. Now do you understand why the chicks dig him?) David prays to God, who tells him to pursue the raiders. As he and his men chase the enemy, they encounter an Egyptian boy, the slave of one of the Amalekites. He is sick, so the Amalekites left him behind to die. David and his men feed and nurse the boy back to health. He leads them to the Amalekite camp, where they rescue David’s wives and kill the raiders. The story hinges on the Egyptian slave boy. Here we have the tables
of Exodus turned: instead of Egyptians with Israelite slaves, we have Israelites with an Egyptian slave. Do the Israelites maltreat him or set him to work, as the Egyptians did to them? No: they feed him, revive him, liberate him. It’s a tribute to David’s big heart (as well as his strategic brilliance, since he uses the boy to win the battle). The Bible is surprisingly short on acts of mercy, but this one glows on the page.

  Let’s also pause for a second to appreciate the structural brilliance of 1 Samuel. Here in its final chapters, the book jumps back and forth between David and Saul. It’s a fantastic contrast. In David’s chapters, we witness fidelity, mercy, and martial genius. In Saul’s, we see degradation, idolatry, and incompetence. The crosscutting heightens the tension of the stories and prepares us for David’s coming triumph.

  CHAPTER 31

  One final jump cut takes us back to Saul versus the Philistines. This battle is a rout. The Philistines kill Saul’s sons, including David’s favorite, Jonathan. Saul doesn’t last much longer. Wounded by an arrow, he begs his servant to finish him off, “so that the uncircumcised may not run me through and make sport of me.” The servant refuses, and Saul falls on his sword. The Philistines cut off his head and impale his body to a wall.

  NINE

  The Book of 2 Samuel

  God’s Favorite King

  In which David is crowned king of Judah, then becomes ruler of all Israel when Saul’s son is assassinated; he makes Jerusalem his capital and moves the ark there; he seduces Bathsheba, impregnates her, gets her husband, Uriah, killed in battle, and marries her; God punishes David by killing the baby, but they have another son, Solomon; David’s son Amnon rapes his sister Tamar, so another of David’s sons, Absalom, has Amnon killed; exiled for that crime, Absalom returns and deposes David, who eventually defeats his son; Absalom gets stuck in a tree by his hair and is killed by David’s men.