At the same time, the Bible does not intend explicitly to condone a homosexual relationship between David and Jonathan, as some have suggested.40 The point is that if such a relationship existed, the biblical authors present it as mere fact. The physical expression of Jonathan’s love for David is not important. What is important, from the biblical point of view, is the political ramifications of that love, the benefits that accrued to David as a result of Jonathan’s affection. Sex is power, in the ancient world as today, and David is depicted as using Jonathan’s love for him to his advantage.
That said, the relationship between the two men appears to be a literary construct from beginning to end. It justifies David’s future rule by rhetorically removing the natural heir apparent. Jonathan would have had every expectation of being king some day—the first Israelite to succeed his father to the throne. Perhaps even more than Saul himself, Jonathan had reason to be protective of the kingship and wary of David’s popularity. There are no comparative examples of princes willingly relinquishing the throne in favor of someone outside the royal family. Jonathan’s love for David, and the elaborate relationship they enter into, is historically unrealistic.
Jonathan is a cipher for the reader. His view of David mirrors and makes explicit the view that the reader comes to—or is intended to come to. Everything that Jonathan sees in David—his innocence, his devotion to Saul, his goodness—is the opposite of what Saul sees. It is, however, exactly how we are supposed to understand David. Jonathan says to Saul: “Let not the king wrong his servant David, for he has not wronged you; indeed, all his actions have been very much to your advantage. . . . Why should you be guilty of shedding the blood of an innocent man by killing David without cause?” (1 Sam. 19:4–5). Jonathan puts into words what the reader is meant to be thinking: David is blameless, fighting tirelessly for Saul’s army, and Saul’s pursuit of David is unjustified. The rhetorical power of having this view expressed by Saul’s own son cannot be overstated: the one person besides Saul who should be most wary of David’s growing fame puts David’s innocence, and evident lack of ambition, front and center. If Jonathan, of all people, believes in David’s goodness, then who is Saul—or the reader—to think otherwise?
Jonathan is not the only one portrayed as loving David. In these first few chapters of David’s life, he is explicitly said to be loved also by Saul (1 Sam. 16:21), by the people of Israel and Judah (18:16), and by Michal (18:20). What is clear enough from the biblical story is that every time someone loves David, it results in a distinct advantage for David. Saul’s love leads to David’s being taken into the royal court. The people’s love is necessary for David to be accepted as king, when the time comes.41 Michal’s love provides an opportunity for David to become part of the royal family proper, and it saves his life. And Jonathan’s love protects David from Saul’s jealousy and allows David to escape more than once. All this affection is literarily useful: David succeeds not by his own machinations, but by the free choice of others. David does nothing in the biblical account that could be deserving of condemnation. Saul appoints him head of the army, and David fills that role bravely and without any self-aggrandizement. It can hardly be David’s fault that the troops and the people grow fond of him; he is simply doing his job. When Saul tries to kill David with his spear—twice—David is doing nothing threatening, merely playing his lyre. When Saul offers his daughter in marriage, David’s response is self-effacing: “Who am I and who are my kin, my father’s family in Israel, that I should become the king’s son-in-law?” (18:18); “Do you think that becoming the son-in-law of the king is a trifling matter, when I am but a poor and trifling man?” (18:23). Jonathan and Michal love David of their own free will, like the rest of Israel; David did not coerce them into helping him. He is, from start to finish, utterly innocent of his own success.
This is both manifestly apologetic—it is strongly reminiscent of “The Apology of Hattušili”—and entirely unlikely. To put it bluntly: one does not become king against one’s will, especially when one is not of the royal family. David became king, so David must have wanted to become king. One does not simply stumble onto the throne. Virtually the entire narrative of David’s time in Saul’s service has been revealed to be fictional: his military exploits, his popularity, Saul’s attempts to kill him, Jonathan’s and Michal’s love for him. The authors go to great lengths to prove again and again that David neither desired the kingship nor did anything to motivate Saul’s hatred and his eventual expulsion into the wilderness. All of which suggests that David actually did want the kingship and did do something, did force Saul’s hand—for, eventually, Saul really did cause David to flee. The biblical authors have created an entire counterreality in their depiction of the period before David entered the wilderness. Our question must be, what is the reality that they are trying to cover up? What was it that brought Saul to the breaking point with David?
The Breaking Point
THE BIBLE PROVIDES LITTLE explanation for how David finally came to push Saul over the edge. This is, of course, because the biblical authors try at every turn to downplay David’s role in his own rise to power, a rise that they want to attribute to the working out of the divine plan. Indeed, in the biblical account, there is no edge for Saul to go over—he has sought David’s life from the very beginning, and so David’s flight is merely the result of a long-simmering hatred. Since all of the stories exemplifying Saul’s hatred can be historically discounted, however, we are required to posit a moment when Saul realized that David was not simply a potential threat, but a very real one.
We can safely say that David was ambitious. Much of this may have been attributable to his position: being a military officer may have fueled his aspirations for the kingship. Saul became king because he fought off Israel’s enemies—David was doing the same. David also may have looked to the history of Israel’s political leadership and, reasonably enough, considered Saul to be no more than a glorified judge, destined to pass from the scene without leaving a permanent mark or a hereditary successor. As one biblical scholar has noted, “traditional societies . . . often do not move directly from a segmentary tribal organization to a hereditary, permanent, centralized monarchy.”42 It was not necessarily self-evident to all that Saul would have a dynasty, as it would be the first of its kind in Israel.43 And this may have been the perspective especially from David’s home, the independent territory of Judah, which had not participated in the selection or anointing of Saul as king. David may have seen Saul more as a model than as a monarch.
How did David’s ambition manifest itself? What did he do to deserve Saul’s wrath? Indeed, what could he have done? Regicide (the murder of a monarch) was an impossibility—not for lack of opportunity, but because it wouldn’t result in David’s gaining the throne. Saul seems to have been liked well enough by his people; as much as they may have appreciated David, there was no groundswell of support for deposing the king. But the biblical story does suggest that David made an attempt to change that, to gain allegiance for himself at Saul’s expense. Saul, in a moment of fury at his inability to capture David, screams at his courtiers: “Will the son of Jesse give fields and vineyards to all of you? And will he make all of you captains of thousands or captains of hundreds? Is that why all of you have conspired against me?” (1 Sam. 22:7–8). Saul’s accusation is a damning one: that David has attempted to buy off Saul’s closest supporters. In truth, this is less overt bribery on David’s part than an attempt to present himself as a royal figure. David is playing the role of patron, a role that normally belonged to the king. In the stage between tribal societies and full-fledged kingship—the stage that Saul and, to a large extent, David occupied in Israel—the leader may be defined as one who “redistributes goods (such as spoils of war and agricultural produce) that have come to him, and those who benefit from the redistribution wish to maintain the power of the chief so that they may continue to benefit.”44 David already had the military credentials to rule, at least in his own eyes; w
hat he required was the allegiance of the powerful members of society. If he could provide them with grants of land and high position, they might transfer their support from Saul to himself.
If we can trust Saul’s statement as having some historical basis, we can suggest that David made overtures to members of Saul’s court, perhaps testing the waters.45 This would have infuriated Saul. Yet there is evidence that David’s fall from favor came as the result of an even more spectacular attempt to take the crown away from Saul.
It appears at first glance as if David fled to the wilderness alone—even Michal, his wife according to the narrative, does not go with him. In the wilderness, he takes a new wife, Abigail (Nabal’s wife, whom we met earlier; see also chapter 3). But after the notice of David’s marriage to Abigail, the biblical text says something curious: “David had married Ahinoam of Jezreel, so the two of them were his wives” (1 Sam. 25:43). This is unexpected news to say the least—we never heard of David’s marriage to anyone named Ahinoam, yet here she appears almost as an afterthought. And she will continue to appear throughout the story, always first in the mentions of David’s wives, and as the mother of his eldest son. She is thus more than an afterthought—but who is she, and when did David marry her? And why do the biblical authors bury the notice of their marriage here?
In the entire Bible, only one other woman is named Ahinoam. Remarkably enough, she lived at the same time as David. David even would have known her—for Ahinoam is the name of one of Saul’s wives, the mother of Jonathan and his two brothers (1 Sam. 14:50). Scholars have suggested that the two Ahinoams, Saul’s wife and David’s wife, are one and the same.46 The coincidence of names is telling on its own, but there is another indication that the two Ahinoams are one. Saul is said to have had two other sons born after Jonathan and his brothers. These younger sons, however, were born not to Ahinoam, but to Rizpah, Saul’s concubine (2 Sam. 21:8). In other words, after David is said to have married Ahinoam, she disappears from Saul’s household, replaced by Rizpah. It seems, then, that David took Saul’s wife for his own. But how could this have happened?
In ancient Israel, the wives and concubines of a king were markers of royal status. They were also indicators of the king’s power. If someone was able to sleep with a member of the king’s harem and get away with it, it meant the king had lost the ability to control even that which was closest to him. To sleep with a royal wife or concubine was to declare a coup—not metaphorically, but literally. It was to announce to the world one’s desire for the crown and one’s belief that the current king was incapable of holding it.47 There is no other logical scenario in which Ahinoam would have come to be David’s wife before he entered the wilderness. Saul would hardly have parted with her willingly—this is far less likely than the already improbable idea that he gave his daughter Michal in marriage to David. If Ahinoam became David’s wife, David must have taken her in an act of rebellion.
This, above all else, must have been the precipitating event for Saul’s attempt on David’s life. There is no doubt that Saul would have wanted David dead for it: it is unthinkable that he would have willingly let David survive to seek the crown another day. That David would even attempt such a rebellion implies that he must have enjoyed some popular support—not to the degree that the Bible suggests, but enough that he felt he might succeed in his venture. The fact that David was forced to flee, however, also means that his coup failed. He made the grand traditional gesture of usurpation, but it turned out that Saul had the power to fight back. David miscalculated his position. In one failed act, David went from popular military officer to exile, on the run for his life. This scenario explains other aspects of the story as well. Whether Ahinoam was a willing participant in David’s coup or not—it is impossible to know—once David had slept with her, she hardly could be welcomed back into Saul’s household. In biblical terms, she would have been seen as “defiled” (Deut. 24:4). Thus even without any formal ceremony, by sleeping with Ahinoam David effectively made her his wife, and she was forced to flee along with him—since the traditional punishment for adultery was death (Deut. 22:22). David’s coup attempt also explains why Saul went to such great lengths to hunt him down in the wilderness after he had fled. David was not just some ordinary criminal. He had tried to seize the crown from Saul’s head. He could not be allowed to live.
From the perspective of the biblical authors, this story simply could not be told. Their objective was to portray David’s kingship as an act of the divine will. If these chapters have no record—or even a hint—of David as ambitious, then surely the authors could not recount that he attempted a direct coup by sleeping with Saul’s wife. The entire narrative of David’s time in Saul’s service—from Saul’s crazed attempts on David’s life to the marriage to Michal to Jonathan’s love for David—is effectively in the service of covering up this one unspeakable fact. The Bible could hardly ignore the common knowledge that Ahinoam did become David’s wife. But it could defer the mention of the marriage until later in the narrative—in fact, until the very point when it became absolutely necessary, when David took Abigail as his second wife. Abigail couldn’t be cast as the first, for Ahinoam was the mother of David’s eldest son. So at the moment that David marries Abigail, then, and only then, are we told that he had been married before. And the authors took the further step of not mentioning that this was the same Ahinoam previously identified as Saul’s wife, though they could do little about the identical names. Ironically, however, it is the biblical authors themselves who provide us with one of the most substantial hints that David had indeed taken Saul’s wife for his own. In 2 Samuel 12, the prophet Nathan castigates David for his behavior with Bathsheba and lets this slip in the name of God: “I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives” (12:8). The house is obviously the kingship, but the mention of the wives is inexplicable—unless it is referring to Ahinoam. No cover-up is perfect. The most significant act of David’s time in Saul’s service is also the one the Bible seeks to hide. David attempted an outright coup.48 And he failed—for now.
A CLOSE READING OF this period of David’s life gives us a picture quite different from that presented in the Bible. No great victorious general, David was in fact an officer in the relatively backwater territory of Judah, with the important but hardly glorious task of warding off Philistine raiding parties. Far from being innocent, David seems to have been keenly aware of his situation and how to manipulate those around him to serve his own ends. Saul, for his part, was not unstable or unfit to rule but was rather entirely justified in his pursuit of David. David was no idle threat.
Even while a young officer, David managed to combine ambition, a sharp knowledge of how to elevate his status, and a willingness to do whatever it took to reach his goals. As it turned out, he reached too far and was forced to flee. In the wilderness, however, without the constraints of custom or allegiance, these personality traits came to full expression.
Chapter 3
David in the Wilderness
FROM ISRAELITE SOLDIER TO PHILISTINE VASSAL
THE WILDERNESS OF JUDAH IS a forbidding place. In the northern and central regions, the landscape undulates with small hills. Rainfall is plentiful enough for the hills to be well covered with evergreen trees, though in biblical times these trees were an impediment to habitation. Settlements in this area were possible only by deforestation, yet removing the trees also meant destroying the natural network that held the water in the ground. Habitation therefore required the use of specialized agricultural techniques such as terracing along the hillsides, which prevented the rainwater from simply cascading down to the valley below, washing away the soil with it. Between the hills the valleys were, and still are, largely void of any significant greenery aside from grasses and the occasional shrub.
To the east, toward the Dead Sea, even minimal vegetation effectively ceases. The landscape is true desert, with more substantial rocky outcroppings and deeper rifts between them. The rocky ground and sometimes i
mpenetrable passes between the cliffs make traversing this landscape by foot difficult. What little rain does fall in this region is immediately directed into channels that rage torrentially but only momentarily, drying up quickly into a trickle at best and more frequently merely into a dry bed. Only the occasional oasis provides any support for habitation.
Toward the south, the hills gradually give way to the Negev desert. Here the rainfall is significantly less than in the central wilderness, and agriculture and even pasturage are nearly impossible. The land is flat and broad, the temperatures high. In ancient times, habitation in this region was sporadic, with most settlements originating as military outposts or trading depots. Between the settlements was, and is, empty space.1
This is the landscape to which David fled to escape Saul’s wrath. Here, in the wilderness, David would manage not only to survive, but to accumulate substantial power. He entered the wilderness alone, but he emerged from it a king.
David at Nob
ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE, David’s first stop was at Nob, a small town east of Jerusalem, on the edge of the desert leading down to the Dead Sea. There, we read in 1 Samuel 21, he was given bread by the local priest, Ahimelech, as well as the sword of Goliath—though we are not told how the sword ended up wrapped in cloth and stored in a minor sanctuary. As it turned out, one of Saul’s officials, Doeg the Edomite, was at the sanctuary in Nob that same day. When Saul heard that David was there and had even been given provisions, he sent for Ahimelech and all the priests of Nob. The crazed king ordered his men to kill the priests for treason, but his servants refused. Doeg, however, was more than willing—he killed all eighty-five priests, and for good measure went to Nob and finished off the rest of the town: “He put Nob, the city of the priests, to the sword: men and women, children and infants, oxen, asses, and sheep” (1 Sam. 22:19). As is almost always the case in such stories, however, one priest managed to escape and fled to David. His name was Abiathar, and David promised to protect him.
The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero Page 9