24. McCarter, I Samuel, 265.
25. A close reading of the Bible reveals that the in-laws of Moses are sometimes described as Midianites (Exod. 3:1) and sometimes as Kenites (Judg. 1:16, 4:11), and the two tribes may have been related. According to the so-called Kenite hypothesis, the Kenites may have been the first worshippers of Yahweh, and “Moses is supposed to have learned from his Kenite relatives both the name of God and the location of his holy mountain.” Moshe Greenberg, Understanding Exodus (New York: Behrman House for Melton Research Center of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1969), 48–49. Also see my Moses, A Life (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998), chapter 8, “The Sorcerer and the Sorcerer's Apprentice.”
26. Adapted from NEB and New JPS.
27. See McCarter, I Samuel, 222, and text of the Revised English Bible in The Complete Parallel Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 592.
28. The New Jerusalem Bible in Complete Parallel Bible, 593.
29. John Bright, A History of Israel, 2d ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972), 186.
30. “Such was Saul's unselfish devotion to the national interests that he retained not only the respect but also the affection of his subjects to the day of his death. He was never confronted, like David, with serious rebellions against his rule.” Robert H. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), 347.
31. William Cowper, “Light Shining Out of Darkness,” in Treasury of Religious Quotations, ed. Gerald Tomlinson (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1991), 165.
32. Adapted from JPS and New JPS.
CHAPTER THREE
“HE IS THE ONE”
1. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
2. Adapted from JPS, NEB, and AB.
3. Adapted from JPS, NEB, and AB.
4. Adapted from JPS and AB.
5. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 6, 247, citing the Septuagint.
6. Tom Horner, Jonathan Loved David (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978), 26.
7. Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 35.
8. McCarter, I Samuel, 277.
9. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament, 345, 363.
10. Oliver Taplin, “Homer,” in The Oxford History of the Classical World, eds. John Boardman, Jasper Griffin, and Oswyn Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 50.
11. Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Books V-VIII, trans. H. St. J. Thackeray and Ralph Marcus (London: William Heinemann; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1934), vol. 5, 249.
12. “Fits of acute mental depression alternating with violent explosions of anger” is how Robert Pfeiffer describes Saul's experience of spirit possession, and other modern commentators have speculated that Saul suffered from paranoid schizophrenia or bipolar syndrome. See Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament, 347.
13. “Saul's suffering is described theologically, not psychopathetically or psychologically,” according to Bible scholar Hans Wilhelm Hertzberg, as quoted in McCarter, I Samuel, 281.
14. McCarter, I Samuel, 281.
15. The instrument that David played (kinnor) is generally called a harp in English translation, but scholars suggest that it more closely resembled a lyre, that is, a portable stringed instrument consisting of a soundbox with two projecting arms to which strings were attached.
16. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
17. Adapted from JPS and AB.
18. McCarter, I Samuel, 282.
19. The cubit, so familiar to Bible readers, is an ancient unit of measurement traditionally defined as the distance from elbow to the tip of the middle finger, about eighteen inches, and a span was the distance from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the middle finger of an open hand, about nine inches. Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and some versions of the Septuagint put Goliath's height at four cubits and a span, that is, a more realistic but still impressive height of six feet nine inches.
20. According to Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin, who was also a military officer with combat experience, a spear or javelin could be likened to a weaver's loom not because of its weight and thickness but because it was equipped with “a cord with a loop on the end …, giving the weapon the appearance of a weaver's leash rod.” The cord and loop allowed the warrior to throw the weapon with greater force and accuracy. Yigael Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), vol. 1, 10.
21. McCarter, I Samuel, 304, n. 28. “This is the only hint we get that tradition told of a strain in David's relationship with his brothers similar to that in the story of Joseph.”
22. John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 91. See also P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., tr., notes, and comm., II Samuel, Anchor Bible (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984), 95.
23. McCarter, I Samuel, 292, n. 5, citing K. Galling, E. Sapir, and Y. Yadin.
24. Free, that is, from taxation and other obligations to the king.
25. Adapted from JPS and AB.
26. Adapted from JPS.
27. Adapted from JPS and AB.
28. Adapted from JPS and AB.
29. Moshe Greenberg, Understanding Exodus, 67–68; p. 68, n. 1.
30. Philo of Alexandria, The Essential Philo, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 204.
31. Julius Wellhausen, the founder of modern Bible scholarship, as quoted in McCarter, I Samuel, 295.
32. Scholarship suggests that a later biblical source tried to explain away the apparent contradiction between the two scenes by adding a single clumsy line to the text: “David went to and fro from Saul to feed his father's sheep at Bethlehem.” (1 Sam. 17:16) In other words, we are meant to understand that David served as court musician to King Saul and shepherd of his father's flocks at the same time. But the effort at “harmonizing” the two versions of Saul and David's first meeting is unsuccessful—Saul does not recognize David when the two encounter each other on the battlefield.
33. Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1909–1938), vol. 6, 260, n. 78, citing, inter alia, Mo'ed Katan.
34. “David” was once thought to be a military rank or title, like “general,” rather than a personal name, at least for a brief period when a similar word (davidum) was first detected in a collection of ancient Near Eastern texts known as the Mari archives. Thus, it was suggested, “David” might be understood as the title of the warrior whose personal name was Elhanan. But the whole notion evaporated when it was later confirmed that davidum is derived from an Akkadian word that is best translated as “defeat” or “downfall,” a title that no general or king (and King David least of all) would ever embrace! See D. R. Ap-Thomas, “Saul's ‘Uncle,’ ” Vetus Testamentum 11, no. 3, July 1961, 244.
35. Bright, History of Israel, 188.
36. Alter, Art of Biblical Narrative, 118.
37. Botterweck and Ringgren, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 3, 158.
38. D. H. Lawrence, David, in The Complete Plays of D. H. Lawrence (London: William Heinemann, 1965), 91.
39. Israel H. Weisfeld, David the King (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1983), 5.
40. Julian Morgenstern, “David and Jonathan,” Journal of Biblical Literature 78, pt. 4 (December 1959): 322.
41. Horner, Jonathan Loved David, 28.
42. Adapted from JPS.
CHAPTER FOUR
INNOCENT BLOOD
1. Joseph Heller, God Knows (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 7–8.
2. Adapted from JPS.
3. Morgenstern, “David and Jonathan,” 324.
4. Some versions of the Septuagint report that David brought back only one hundred foreskins, but the Masoretic Text insists that David doubled the quota set by King Saul. McCarter, I Samuel, 316.
5. Adapted from NEB and AB.
6. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
7. Teraphim, a term that is generally translated as “household gods,”
refers to the idols believed to embody the spirits of pagan gods and goddesses who protected hearth and home and were used for ritual purposes in the ancient Near East, including the land of Israel.
8. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
9. The original Hebrew text of 1 Sam. 19:17 uses an idiomatic expression in the form of a question. “He said unto me: ‘Let me go; why should I kill thee?’ ” is how the same passage is rendered in the JPS and the AB. Both translations, however, imply that Michal is falsely reporting that David threatened her with death.
10. The fact that the biblical author is comfortable in making use of menstruation as a plot point—and using it to show a woman getting the better of a man—has been cited as evidence that the biblical sources included both men and women and, in particular, that the source identified as J may have been a woman.
11. “Asherim” are thought to be living trees or carved wooden poles by which the Canaanite goddess called Asherah was depicted and worshipped.
12. The place where David and Samuel seek refuge, “Naioth,” is regarded as a place name in the Masoretic Text and in many English translations, but more recent translations treat the word as a common noun and translate it as “the sheds” (NAB), “the huts” (NJB), or “the camps” (AB). McCarter (I Samuel, 380) understands “Naioth” as a reference to “a shepherd's camp pitched outside a city.” Similarly, what the JPS translates as “the cistern that is in Secu” is rendered in the AB as “the cistern of the threshing floor that was upon the bare height.” (1 Sam. 19:18, 22)
13. Earlier, when Samuel was shown to execute the Amalekite king whom Saul had spared in defiance of the death sentence imposed by God, the Bible insists that “Samuel never beheld Saul again to the day of his death.” (1 Sam. 15:34) The fact that Saul and Samuel encounter each other here may indicate that the passage was added to the biblical text by a later source “who even surpassed the earlier writer in his contempt for Saul.” McCarter, I Samuel, 331.
14. The text harks back to an earlier incident in which Saul, newly anointed by Samuel, encountered a band of prophets and fell into ecstatic prophesy along with them. (1 Sam. 10:10–11)
15. Adapted from JPS.
16. Adapted from JPS.
17. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
18. The first day of each month in the lunar calendar of ancient Israel was celebrated as a day of rest and an occasion for feasting (Num. 29:11–15; Amos 8:5) and remains a holy day in Jewish tradition.
19. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
20. Adapted from NEB.
21. The seating arrangements are described in detail in McCarter's lucid and plain-spoken translation of the Hebrew text as it appears in the AB. (I Sam. 20:25)
22. Ejaculation, menstruation, contact with the carcass of a dead animal, or an unsightly skin condition, among many other things, rendered a man or woman temporarily “unclean” and thus unfit to participate in ritual observances, including the Feast of the New Moon. “One who suffers from a malignant skin-disease shall wear his clothes torn, leave his hair dishevelled, conceal his upper lip, and cry, ‘Unclean, unclean’ ” goes one of the biblical rules of ritual impurity. “He shall live apart and must stay outside the settlement.” (Lev. 13:45–46) (NEB)
23. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
24. Adapted from JPS and NEB. Literally, Saul called Jonathan “You son of a rebellious servant girl,” and then condemned him for “the disgrace of your mother's nakedness,” that is, “disgrac[ing] his mother's genitals, whence he came forth.” McCarter, I Samuel, 343.
25. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
CHAPTER FIVE
DESPERADO
1. Nob is believed to have been a “priestly city” of ancient Israel, located north of Jerusalem in the tribal land of Benjamin, near Saul's hometown of Gibeah.
2. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
3. Like much else in the lives of Moses and David as recorded in the Hebrew Bible, the incident is echoed in the life of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels. Jesus cited the example of Ahimelech and David to defend his disciples against the charge that they had violated the law by plucking and eating ears of corn on the Sabbath. “Have you not read what David did when he and his men were hungry?” (Matt. 12:3–4) (NEB)
4. Adapted from NEB.
5. Scholarship suggests the nature and use of the ephod was already a mystery to the final editors of the Bible, and they may have unwittingly preserved the references to the ephod as an idol or an idol-case. More commonly, the term is used in the Bible to refer to a priestly garment—David himself will wear an ephod while performing a ritual dance on the road to Jerusalem, an incident that will produce a scandal in the royal household and seal the fate of Saul's daughter Michal. See Julian Morgenstern, “The Ark, the Ephod, and the ‘Tent of the Meeting’ ” (continued), Hebrew Union College Annual 18 (1943–1944): 3, 8–9, 11. See also John Lindblom, “Lot-casting in the Old Testament,” Vetus Testamentum 12, no. 2 (April 1962): 171–172. “The ephod together with its idol is meant.”
6. Adapted from JPS and NEB.
7. See E. A. Speiser, trans., intro., and notes, Genesis, Anchor Bible (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987), 44. JPS: “Sons of God.” NEB: “Sons of the gods.” (Gen. 6:1)
8. Like the teraphim in David's house and the ephod in the shrine of Yahweh, the semidivine origins of Goliath fit nowhere in the official theology of the Hebrew Bible, which insists that Yahweh is the only god and an asexual god at that. The notion that God had sons who mated with mortal women and sired a race of giants has been described by the revered Bible scholar Ephraim A. Speiser as “not only atypical of the Bible as a whole but also puzzling and controversial in the extreme.” (Speiser, Genesis, 45). The best explanation, of course, is that the passage was borrowed from one of the pagan cultures amid which the ancient Israelites (including the biblical authors) lived and worked.
9. The Book of Samuel first describes David's hideout at Adullam as a cave, then as a stronghold. (1 Sam. 22:1,4) (JPS) McCarter suggests that the text probably describes “a well-fortified hilltop” near the “Judahite fortress city” of Adullam. McCarter, I Samuel, 357.
10. A fortified city approximately sixteen miles southwest of Jerusalem in an area of wooded foothills known as the Shephelah.
11. Bright, History of Israel, 188–189.
12. Adapted from JPS.
13. All dialogue between God and human beings in the Book of Samuel is apparently derived from either the dreams and visions of prophets like Samuel or, more often, the simple yes-or-no answers that were solicited by kings and priests through various tools of divination, including the Ark of the Covenant, the ephod, and the mysterious objects known as the Urim and Thummim.
14. Adapted from JPS.
15. Adapted from JPS and AB. Ahimelech's reference to David as “commander of [Saul's] bodyguard” appears in the AB but not the JPS, which renders the Hebrew text as a reference to one who “giveth heed unto thy bidding.”
16. Adapted from JPS.
17. Adapted from JPS.
18. Adapted from JPS and AB.
19. Here, of course, the ephod in question is a garment that identifies its wearer as a priest.
20. Adapted from JPS.
21. Emphasis added.
22. Adapted from JPS.
23. Adapted from JPS.
24. By tradition, the Calebites were the descendants of Caleb, the most valiant of the spies sent into Canaan by Moses in advance of the conquering army of Israel. Caleb is first introduced in the Bible as a prince of the tribe of Judah (Num. 13:6), but the Calebites are later described as non-Israelites who were only later incorporated into the tribe of Judah. (Josh. 15:13) Carmel was a village located eight miles southeast of Hebron, an ancient and sacred city in the tribal homeland of Judah that was given to the Calebites by Joshua. (Josh. 14:14)
25. McCarter (I Samuel, 396) defines nabal as “foolish, senseless … with the collat[eral] idea of ignoble, disgraceful.” The New English Bible renders the word as “churlish.�
� “He is just what his name Nabal means: ‘Churl’ is his name, and churlish his behaviour.” (1 Sam. 25: 25) (NEB)
King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) Page 34