“The Lord has spoken of David, saying: By the hand of my servant David I will save my people Israel out of the hand of the Philistines and all their enemies,” Abner said. “In times past you sought for David to be king over you—now do it.” (2 Sam. 3:17–18)19
The Bible does not disclose why Abner experienced a change of heart. Perhaps he concluded that David was destined to take the crown away from Ishbaal, and he wanted to put himself on the winning side. Perhaps he resented Ishbaal's accusation of sexual scandal, whether or not he was guilty as charged. In any case, Ab-ner's declarations of loyalty persuaded David that he was now an earnest ally, and so David granted Abner the audience he had long sought. Abner arrived in Hebron with twenty of his men— all blooded in battle against David's army—but David welcomed his former enemies with a royal feast. As Abner's men drank and dined at the king's table, the turncoat general coolly offered to betray the man he had once championed.
“I will arise and go, and will gather all Israel unto my lord the king,” Abner said, “that they make a covenant with you, and that you may reign over all that your soul desires.” (2 Sam. 3:21)
David accepted Abner's pledge of loyalty without a moment of self-caution. If the renegade general of a rival king was willing to come over to David's camp, he was ready to embrace his new ally without questioning his motives or his bona fides. The deal was done, and Abner “went in peace.” (2 Sam. 3:21)
Not everyone in David's inner circle was quite so trusting of Abner, who had changed his colors once and might change them again. David's own general, Joab, still nursed a highly personal grudge against the man who had killed his brother in battle. When Joab returned to Hebron after his latest foray against the Israelites to discover that Abner had come and gone with David's blessings, the headstrong general charged into the throne room and confronted David.
“What have you done?” Joab cried out. “Abner came to deceive you, and to learn all about your movements and to find out what you are doing!” (2 Sam. 3:24–25)20
The Bible does not tell us whether David answered these insolent words, but the scene suggests that Joab was unimpressed by the crown that David now wore and unintimidated by the man he had known as a comrade in arms long before David made himself king of Judah. Indeed, Joab was never willing to defer to his uncle's authority, and now he took it upon himself to exact revenge on Abner without bothering to ask for permission—he dispatched his own messengers to summon Abner back to Hebron, “but David knew it not.” (2 Sam. 3:26)
When Abner appeared once again at the gates of Hebron, perhaps a bit bewildered by his sudden recall, Joab called him aside and asked for a moment “to speak with him quietly.” The unsuspecting Abner drew close to Joab and, we might imagine, inclined his head to hear what his former adversary had to say. And then Joab drew his dagger and delivered a deathblow to Abner, striking him in the groin, the very same spot where Abner's spear had penetrated the body of his dead brother. Asahel's blood cried out for revenge, as Joab saw it, and now revenge had been taken.
Surely David the outlaw would not have been shocked at the rough justice that Joab inflicted on Abner. David the king, however, could not afford to be implicated in the blood feud that raged between the clans of Abner and Joab. Just as he had done when the Amalekite reported the slaying of Saul, David disavowed the slaying of Saul's general. Although both deaths were ultimately to his benefit, David refused to alienate the people of Israel by acknowledging any role in these useful murders.
“I and my kingdom are guiltless before the Lord forever from the blood of Abner,” David mused aloud. “Let it fall upon the head of Joab, and upon all his father's house.” (2 Sam. 3:28–29)
A public funeral for Abner was held in Hebron. David himself followed the bier and delivered the eulogy, whipping the crowd into a frenzy of grief. “And the king lifted up his voice, and wept at the grave of Abner, and all the people wept,” the Bible reports, describing a display of political showmanship that seems eerily modern. “Know you not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel?” David cried. Ignoring the entreaties of his own courtiers, he made a point of refusing to take food on the day of the funeral: “God do so to me, and more also, if I taste bread or anything else till the sun be down.” (2 Sam. 3:32, 35, 38) And his public display of grief had precisely the effect that David had intended.
“And all the people took notice of it, and it pleased them,” the Bible records. “So all the people and all Israel understood that day that it was not the king's will to slay Abner.” (2 Sam. 3:36)21
Back in the palace at Hebron, David complained to his courtiers about the ruthlessness of Joab and his brothers—“These men are too hard for me!”—and he piously called upon Yahweh to punish them. “Reward the evil-doer,” he prayed, “according to his wickedness.” But he recognized, too, that a hard man can be good to find in the treacherous world in which he lived. Joab, who has been described by modern scholars as a “good Machiavellian courtier” and the “toughest of ancient Near Eastern mafiosi,” was too valuable to the ambitious king of Judah to be sacrificed for the sake of public relations. (2 Sam. 3:39)22
And so David ordered Joab to join in mourning the man he had killed—“Rend your clothes, and gird you with sackcloth, and wail before Abner” (2 Sam. 3:21, 39)—but he neither dismissed Joab from his service nor punished him for slaying Abner. The day might come when a man of Joab's skills and temperament would turn out to be crucial to winning and keeping the throne. If Joab ever became dispensable, David must have resolved, he would dispense with him. And until then, Joab would remain in service to David as the general of his army and, from time to time, the royal hit man.
BEHOLD THE HEAD OF THE KING
When word of Abner's assassination reached the court of King Ishbaal in far-off Gilead, “his hands became feeble, and all the Israelites were affrighted.” Abner had been the real power in the rump kingdom, and now Abner was dead and gone. How then could the cowering Ishbaal, who has been dismissed by Bible scholars as “an ineffectual weakling” and “a thoroughly unkingly invertebrate,” stand up against the ruthless king of Judah who so clearly wanted to claim the crown of all Israel? (2 Sam. 4:1)23
Ishbaal's terror was wholly justified. Two captains in his army, Baanah and Rechab, following the example of their dead general, sought to win favor with David by delivering Ishbaal's head. So shabby was the court of King Ishbaal that he was attended only by a woman who busied herself with sifting wheat as she sat outside his door while he took his customary midday nap—and, fatefully, she had fallen asleep at her chore. The two conspirators walked right past her into the king's bedchamber, where they stabbed the sleeping man to death. (2 Sam. 4:5) (NEB)
The assassins paused only to hack off the king's head, and they carried it with them as they slipped out of the palace and fled toward the frontier. All night long they traveled in the direction of Judah, cradling the gruesome evidence of the favor they had done for David, urging each other on with speculation about how richly they would be rewarded for it.
“Behold the head of Ishbaal, the son of Saul, your enemy, who sought your life,” the killers addressed David as they held up the severed head. “Yahweh has avenged my lord the king this day of Saul and of his seed.” (2 Sam. 4:8)
The boastful assassins may have been well pleased with their deed, but David declared that he was not. “When one told me: ‘Behold, Saul is dead,’ as though he brought good tidings, I took hold of him and slew him instead of giving a reward for his tidings,” David responded. “How much more, when wicked men have slain a righteous person in his own house upon his bed, shall I not now require his blood of your hand, and take you away from the earth?” (2 Sam. 4:10–11)
So, as he had done so many times before, David issued a death sentence. His soldiers fell on the two men, “and they slew them, and cut off their hands and their feet, and hanged them up beside the pool in Hebron.” The severed head of Ishbaal was given an honorable burial in the s
ame grave that held the corpse of Abner, the man who had made him king of Israel and who had been ready to unmake him. Buried along with their mangled remains was the brief dynasty that Saul had founded.
“WE ARE THY BONE AND THY FLESH”
Years had passed since David was first called out of the fields by his father to meet a strange old seer named Samuel. On that day, the prophet had poured oil over his beautiful young head and promised him the throne of Israel as a gift from Yahweh. But over the years David must have wondered when the promise would be fulfilled. Of course, he did not wait in idleness for God to put a crown on his head, nor does the Bible suggest that God intended him to do so—David made his own destiny, both by force of arms and by backroom intrigue. Now at last David was rewarded with the prize that he had sought for so long, with such craft and cunning, and with such bloodthirsty ambition. At the age of thirty-seven, after seven and a half years on the tribal throne in Hebron, David was raised by popular acclaim to the kingship of both Judah and Israel.
We can imagine David's satisfaction when one of his courtiers announced that a delegation of distinguished men, the elders of all Israel, had appeared at the gates of his palace in Hebron and now awaited his pleasure.
“Behold,” the elders of Israel proclaimed to the king of Judah, “we are thy bone and thy flesh.” (2 Sam. 5:1)
These diplomatic words were perhaps intended to veil the ugly truth that all of them knew: David was the king of Judah, and Judah was at war with the rest of the twelve tribes of Israel. Indeed, the very notion of a blood relationship between David and the rest of the Israelites is seen by scholars as a late insertion in the original Hebrew text. Still, the elders of Israel were willing to put an end to the bloody civil war by conceding defeat, making a covenant with David, and acclaiming him as “king over Israel.”
“In the past, while Saul was still king over us, you led the forces of Israel to war and you brought them home again,” the elders declared by way of obeisance, acknowledging David's heroism in war and his good standing with God, “and Yahweh said to you: ‘You shall be shepherd of my people Israel, and you shall be their prince.’ ” (2 Sam. 4:2) (NEB)
The long and glorious reign of David, king of Israel, had begun.
Chapter Eight
CITY OF DAVID
Stories about Jerusalem should not be dismissed because they are “only” myths: they are important precisely because they are myths.
—KAREN ARMSTRONG, JERUSALEM
David's first act as king of Israel was to select a new royal capital for the united kingdom over which he now reigned. As a battle-tested military strategist, he wanted a place that was centrally located and easily defensible. As a savvy politician, he wanted a place that belonged to none of the twelve tribes. The capital was to be regarded as an island of national identity in a sea of tribal rivalries—a symbolic function not unlike that of the District of Columbia in the early history of the United States. So David chose as his new capital a fortified hill-town in the heart of ancient Israel, a place that had always belonged to the Jebusites, one of the native-dwelling tribes of Canaan, a place called Jerusalem.
Jerusalem has long been regarded in pious tradition as a place of surpassing holiness. According to the the Talmud, Jerusalem was the place where Adam offered the first sacrifice to God, where Noah erected an altar after the Flood, where Abraham was called to slaughter Isaac.1 So sacred was Jerusalem that in one rabbinical fairy tale David refuses to mount a military assault on its defenses. Instead, he orders Joab to climb to the top of a cypress tree near the city wall; the tree is pulled back with ropes and then allowed to spring back into place, and Joab is catapulted over the high wall and into the heart of Jerusalem. The surprised Jebusites surrender to Joab without a fight, and the city wall lowers itself to allow David to stride into Jerusalem.2
The truth, as recorded in the Book of Joshua, is rather more brutal. Unlike the other cities of Canaan, Jerusalem had beaten back the Israelite armies under the command of Joshua during the invasion and conquest that first established Israelite sovereignty: “And as for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out.” (Josh. 15:63)3 To make Jerusalem the capital of his new monarchy, David would have to succeed where the mighty Joshua had failed.
“You will never get in here!” the Jebusites taunted David and his men from the ramparts of Jerusalem. “Even the blind and the lame will turn you back.” (2 Sam. 5:6) (New JPS)
But the Jebusites badly underestimated David's cunning and ruthlessness. He sent a squad of commandos to infiltrate the fortifications and surprise its defenders, issuing an order of shocking brutality.
“Whoever smites a Jebusite,” David ordered his men, “let him strike at the windpipe, for David hates the lame and the blind!” (2 Sam. 5:8) (AB)
THE LAME AND THE BLIND
The blood-shaking command of David has been the source of much consternation over the centuries. What, after all, are we to make of the fact that God's chosen king declares his hatred for “the lame and the blind” with such callousness and cruelty? The question is even more frustrating because the biblical text itself is so “troubled” and even “corrupted” that we cannot know with certainty what the biblical author meant to convey with these words.4 Still, the mighty efforts of scholars and theologians to explain away David's death sentence on the disabled is significant in itself—King David is ultimately so charismatic that sympathetic Bible readers have come up with some highly inventive arguments to excuse his less savory words and deeds.
Thus David's order to “strike at the windpipe,” as P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., renders the Hebrew text of 2 Samuel 5:8 in the Anchor Bible, may mean only that David was urging his men to kill rather than maim the enemy in the assault on Jerusalem—he was a pragmatic soldier, and he did not want to be burdened with wounded prisoners of war once he had conquered Jerusalem.5 Indeed, the seemingly bloodthirsty order may be understood as evidence of David's compassion: he was expressing a preference for a clean kill in battle, McCarter proposes, out of respect for “religious scruples against the mutilation of living human beings, a violation of the sanctity of the body to which David finds killing preferable.”6
Other scholars suggest that the phrase is a metaphor that reveals how David managed to penetrate the defenses of Jerusalem. The Hebrew word for “windpipe” (sinnor) also means “water pipe” in postbiblical usage and may refer to a gutter or conduit that ran through the city walls to the nearby Spring of Gihon, the principal source of fresh water supplies for Jerusalem. Thus, some translators suggest that David ordered his men to penetrate the defenses of Jerusalem by crawling up the waterworks: “Getteth up to the gutter” is how The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text (JPS) renders the same phrase.7 Still others regard sinnor as a kind of grappling hook, which is the meaning of a similar word in Aramaic, and thus the New English Bible translates the same text in a much different way: “Let him use his grappling-iron to reach the lame and the blind, David's bitter enemies.”
Of course, none of these theories account for the unsettling fact that David is said to hate “the blind and the lame,” and a heroic effort has been made over the centuries to explain it away. Medieval commentators imagined that the Jebusites had posted images of a blind Isaac and a lame Jacob on the ramparts of Jerusalem to demoralize the Israelites.8 One especially imaginative sage of the late Middle Ages proposed that “the lame and the blind” were water-powered robots, and he explained David's supposed attack on the waterworks of Jerusalem as a way of disabling them by cutting off their power supply!
Modern scholars have proposed more reasonable, if not necessarily more accurate, approaches to the same troubling text. Maybe “the lame and the blind” were “taboo cultic personnel of the Jebusite shrine” who were stationed on the fortifications in the hope that David and his men would break off their attack for fear of violating the taboo.9 Or “perhaps [the Jebusites] paraded the blind and the lame of the city on
the walls, as was the custom of the Hittite army, to warn any soldier who dared to penetrate the stronghold of his fate.”10 Each of these scholarly arguments, no less than the fanciful tales offered by the Talmudic storytellers, is intended to give us a kinder and gentler David than the ruthless warrior-king who is depicted in the Book of Samuel.
The most straightforward reading of the text does not require such exertions. The Jebusites taunted David—“Even the blind and the lame will turn you back”—and David replied with a taunt of his own: “David hates the lame and the blind.” Even if this exchange of threat and counterthreat was merely an example of battlefield rhetoric, full of sarcasm and perhaps a bit of bluff, it rings true of David. He had always been willing to act ruthlessly against anyone he regarded as an enemy or a security risk, and nothing he said or did during the conquest of Jerusalem would have come as a surprise to those who knew him before he was king of Israel.
THE CITY OF DAVID
A second and entirely different version of the conquest of Jerusalem appears in the Book of Chronicles. As we have already seen, the Chronicler is always quick to censor the scandalous details of David's life. He betrays no knowledge of David's brutal sentiments toward “the lame and the blind,” nor does he report a commando attack on the waterworks of Jerusalem. Rather he gives an antiseptic account that focuses on an act of daring and courage by Joab.
King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) Page 16