The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel

by Wangerin Jr. , Walter

  Only when the greater body of their cavalcade had entered the eastern reaches of the valley of Rephaim did David cry: “Up, Israel!” All at once the Israelite warriors burst forth from the rocky heights of Rephaim like cataracts, like a thousand spouts of water. Israel astonished the Philistine forces who turned and ran in a panic, leaving their carts, their supplies, their gear, their food—and their gods! That night David made a mighty bonfire. He commanded the men to shout the names of the gods whose images they had captured. Benaiah in particular had a voice so huge that the enemy could hear him even in their camps on the distant hillside. “Dagon!” Benaiah roared. “Dagon!” thundered the hosts of Israel.

  David heaved the image of Dagon into the fire, and then the remarkable Benaiah bellowed: “Lo! Dagon is in flames! How can a god whose image is ashes fight for his people?”

  At midnight David inquired of the Lord whether he should go forth against the Philistines a second time.

  The Lord said, You shall not go forth. In darkness go around to their rear and come upon them opposite the poplar trees that cover the hillside. When you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the trees, bestir yourself.

  David did as the Lord commanded. All night he positioned his armies behind the lords of the Philistines.

  In the morning the wind was still. Israel didn’t move. Every soldier could hear the preparations of the enemy as he dressed in chain mail and tightened his bridles and made metal sing against its sheath.

  Suddenly the million loose leaves of the poplar forests started to flutter, to rattle and chatter and run. The Philistines hesitated, thinking they heard armies in the sky. But the Israelites heard the hosts of the Lord, and instantly they rose from the forests, struck the unprotected rear, routed the Philistines, and drove them in terrified confusion out of their own camps. This is the foe whom Saul could never completely defeat. This is the nation that had grieved the mothers of Israel ever since Samson had perished between the pillars of their temple. On that day David chased them from the valley of Rephaim, all the way back to the gates of Gezer.

  And this, then, is how David perceived that he had become a king among kings and that the Lord had exalted his kingdom Israel: Hiram, king of Tyre, sent a royal embassy to honor David after this dazzling victory over the Philistines. Moreover, Hiram offered him gifts so fine and generous that all the nations knew that Tyre was seeking diplomatic relations with Israel. “If you wish cedar trees,” Hiram said, “I will send as many as you ask. If you wish carpenters and masons, I will send them, too.”

  And David in Jerusalem responded: “Friendship is ever better than war. Yes, I have a thing to build with your cedar trees, Hiram. A house—”

  So DAVID BUILT a magnificent house high on the northern ridge of Jerusalem. His house was the crown of the city. Cedar panels covered the walls. Cedar beams upheld the roofs. Gardens were planted on those roofs, and when he strolled in his gardens the king could see down into every courtyard of every other house in his city.

  A little lower than his own apartments, yet higher than the rest of the house, David built rooms for Michal, the wife of his youth.

  Saul once had placed her on the second floor of his own rough fortress. Maybe, thought David, she would appreciate this more wonderful elevation. He wanted to make Michal glad again. She had scarcely spoken since he brought her to Hebron a year ago. He sat beside her at every festival, but she remained withdrawn. He gave her an onyx brooch, white engraved in black. But she never wore it. For his other wives, all of whom were bearing children, David built thirty chambers, three rows often each on the second story of an entire wing. Already he had taken new wives from Jerusalem, following the custom of the nations round about whereby a king proclaimed his personal force in the size of his harem and the numbers of his children.

  It was a grand house, a royal house. He who had slept in stone caves now lived in a palace of his own conceiving, in which were the spaces of governance, a throne room, a waiting room, working rooms for his officers, space for archives, a treasury for the king’s wealth, stalls for Benaiah and his personal bodyguard. Room! Rehoboth! David thought with joy. Isaac in the wilderness, David in his city: the Lord has made room for us—and I too shall be fruitful in the land.

  It was precisely then, in this mood of gratitude, that another duty forced itself upon David. The Ark of the Lord’s Covenant has been neglected all these years in Kirjath-jearim.

  The Ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts who sits enthroned on the cherubim!

  IN THOSE DAYS David, king of Israel, arose and went with his officers and with elders of the twelve tribes to the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill near Kirjath-jearim.

  They brought with them a new cart.

  At the command of the king, the sons of Abinadab, Uzzah and Ahio, carried the Ark from their father’s house and placed it with sacred care upon the new cart. Then they drove the oxen, Ahio before the cart and Uzzah behind it.

  David and the people of Israel who were with him began to sing. The king sang a verse and the people echoed it word for word. But then the king grew excited that the shrine of the Lord was moving to his city. He laughed and lifted his voice and sang with such a driving delight that the people also sang faster songs. They played lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals—and they abandoned themselves to dancing. As they followed the Ark toward Jerusalem they moved their feet harder and swifter. Uzzah threw his arms to heaven and whirled about behind the cart. But just as they approached the threshing floor of Nacon, he slipped on some warm ox droppings and fell. Uzzah cracked his skull on the stones of the threshing floor and died instantly.

  The word of his death flew backward like an arrow, striking every dancer with mortal terror. They stood still and whispered, “He must have touched the Ark! Uzzah defiled the Ark, and the wrath of God has killed him!”

  No one moved. Who knew what God might do next?

  The king had heard the word of the people, and he, too, grew fearful. “If the Lord has broken forth against Uzzah,” he said, “how can the Ark come to me now?” David commanded that the cart, the oxen, and the Ark of the Covenant all be taken to the house of Obed-edom, a man from Gath, a Philistine who lived nearby among the Israelites.

  The elders and all the people of Israel stole home abashed.

  David returned to his city without the Ark of God.

  But within three months young Abiathar came to King David and smiled. “A remarkable thing has happened, my lord,” he said. “I have been to see the Ark, and I tell you, the Lord has blessed Obed-edom because of it.”

  David said, “The anger of the Lord is passed?”

  Abiathar nodded. A light returned to the king’s golden eyes, and he, too, began to smile. “Then let us bring the Ark of God into the citadel!”

  This time the king wore a white linen apron under his royal robes.

  This time priests bore the Ark by staves on their shoulders, as it had been carried in the wilderness. And this time, when they had gone just six paces from the house of Obed-edom without a rebuke from God, David slaughtered and sacrificed an ox and a fatiling in glorious thanksgiving.

  Then the procession wound up toward Jerusalem, and the king ran ahead of everyone, breaking into whoops of joy. The Lord was with him! David clapped his hands and laughed more loudly than he had before. He danced. Everyone danced with him. They sounded horns in thrilling harmonies. David erupted in a fire of praise and poetry. He stripped his clothes in order to move more freely. He took off everything except the linen apron at his waist, and he leaped white-legged as high as a gazelle.

  As the Ark entered the city, the citizens leaned from their windows and clapped. They lined the streets and, affected by the dancing of the king, roared with delight. The thunder of their voices followed the Ark to the tent which David had prepared for it, and there he offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. He blessed the people in the name of the Lord and distributed to e
very man and woman a loaf of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins.

  Then everyone returned home.

  David, too, went to his house to give his family his personal blessing. They gathered in a courtyard, his wives, his children, all his servants and laborers, maids, bakers, herdsmen—even Rothem the ancient domestic who swept the streets with her bramble broom. Only Michal was not there. This disturbed David.

  When he had pronounced the blessing on everyone else, then he climbed the stairs to his first wife’s chambers.

  He found her sitting at the window, looking down on the city streets.

  “Michal,” he said, “are you ill?”

  She sat profile to him, framed by the window. She did not move.

  He said, “This is the day when the Lord has come into the City of David. Couldn’t you have come down to stand beside me?”

  Michal blinked. Water filled the creases below her eyes. More severely David said, “Why did you neglect the day? Why did you refuse my blessing just now?”

  Slowly she turned to face him. Her lips were pinched and trembling. “For shame,” she said, her throat thick with emotion.

  “Shame?” said David. “Shame, Michal? What does shame have to do with the day that has made this city sacred?”

  Michal glared at him, her eyes bright with tears. “Oh, how the king of Israel honored himself today,” she wailed. “Like any vulgar fellow he flaunted his nakedness before the eyes of men and women together.”

  “Ah,” said David, peering out of Michal’s window. “My wife has turned her vantage into the seat of judgment.” He looked at her. She returned the look, lowering her chin and glaring upward. Softly David said, “I danced before the Lord today. I made merry before him who chose me over your father as the prince of Israel. And I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, Michal. Surely, I will be abased in your eyes. But the men and women of whom you speak—by them I shall be held in honor.”

  David turned and left.

  Michal continued to live in her lofty apartments.

  But even to the day of her death, she had no child.

  KING DAVID STOOD in darkness on the higher hill, the ancient, rocky Moriah, and looked across the ravine at his own generous mansion.

  Its windows shined like a hundred eyes in the night, warm on the inside, bright in the rooms of his dwelling place.

  But this scrub hill was a thorny place, dark and unprotected.

  David prayed that night. He paced the rock and said, “O Lord God, I dwell in a house of cedar, but your Ark dwells in a tent. Let me build you a house—here, on this mountain. Mine on Zion, yours on Moriah—”

  But the Lord said, Since the day I brought the people of Israel up from Egypt I have used a tent as my dwelling place.

  No, David, do not build me a house. Rather, I will make you a house! I took you from following the sheep and made you prince over Israel. I have been with you and I will be with you all your days—and when you lie down with your ancestors I will raise up your offspring and establish his kingdom. I will establish his throne forever. He shall build a house for my name, and I will be his father, and he shall be my son.

  David stood rigid on the dark hill. “O Lord my God,” he whispered, “is this a promise?”

  The Lord said, It is a promise.

  David whispered yet again, “Lord, but is it like your word to Abraham? Is it like your word to Moses on Sinai? Is it a covenant?”

  The Lord answered, It is my covenant with the house of David. It is an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure.

  A wind blew up and tugged at David’s tangled hair. It billowed his loose robe and bathed his body in the cold. But he was lost in the knowledge of the Lord. David’s thin white frame stood erect, his face tipped up to heaven. “It is a decree of the Lord,” he said. “Oh, I will sing the decree of my God!”

  God said to me, “You are my son,

  today have I begotten you.

  I make the nations now your heritage,

  even as far as the ends of the earth.”

  IV

  IN THOSE DAYS David the king of Israel defeated the Philistines in the west and subdued them altogether. He took Methegammah out of their hands.

  He traveled to the king of the Ammonites in the east and offered friendship instead of war. Nahash, very old and very wise, accepted.

  Moab rose up and fought with David. He defeated them. He measured them with a line, making them lie down on the ground. Two lines he measured to be put to death, and one full line he spared. The Moabites became his servants and brought tribute.

  David won a name for himself by slaying eighteen thousand Edomites in the valley of Salt. He stationed garrisons throughout all the kingdom of Edom, and they became his servants, sending tribute.

  In time he ceased to march with his armies. His commanders went forth in his name, and in his name his envoys levied an annual tribute which enriched the treasuries of this king.

  Nahash the king of the Ammonites died in his old age, and Hanun his son reigned in his stead. David sent several emissaries into Ammon to console the young king and to congratulate him. But even before they arrived at the Ammonite capital of Rabbah, Hanun seized the Israelite ambassadors and accused them of spying in his land. He shaved half their beards and tore open their robes at the waist, exposing their genitals. “The cheek declares you women,” Hanun said, “but the hip will prove that you are men. Go on home! Get out of here!”

  When David learned of the humiliation of his servants, he dispatched Joab with a regiment to Rabbah, to teach the callow fool a lesson: Ammon would be bound to Israel one way or the other.

  Joab crossed the Jordan by the ford at the north end of the Salt Sea. This took him through open country on the way to Rabbah.

  As he approached the city, the armies of Ammon came out and began to draw up in battle lines. So did Joab, facing them.

  But suddenly a shout went up at the back of his troops. Joab turned and saw that a huge army, thirty thousand foot soldiers and chariots, was bearing down on his rear. Syrians! Mercenaries! Hanun had purchased their help and put Israel in a nutcracker, and the open country gave chariots a place to play.

  “Abishai!” Joab called to his brother. “Divide the troops! Now! If the Syrians get too close we’ll have no room to maneuver. Take four companies and check Hanun while I fly in the face of this ambush. Go!”

  Joab spent a moment looking south, judging distances and speeds and points most vulnerable in the advancing line. Then he barked orders, redistributed his own forces, and suddenly charged to attack the attackers.

  Sling-stones and javelins and a rain of arrows, the marauding bravery of Joab’s forces, and a rush on foot as swift as chariots—all at once things doubled in speed. The Syrians were astonished at this turn of events. They hesitated. Joab did not. They stopped. Joab charged the harder. Syria broke and scattered, escaping by any means possible.

  And the young Hanun, when he saw his allies failing, retreated into the walls of his city. Joab gave David an accurate report of the events near Rabbah. “I was overconfident,” he said. “Worse, because some Syrians were put to shame, many Syrian cities are preparing to fight us. Hadadezer of Zobah is bringing forces from Damascus and from as far as the Euphrates.”

  David said, “We will not be overconfident the second time. Raise the militia of all Israel. I myself will take command.”

  There were three fords over the Jordan. The second was near Jericho. The third, farthest north, was at Adamah, leading into the valley of Succoth.

  David said, “We’ll cross at Adamah. There will be no haste, Joab. When this is done, it will be done indeed, and it will not occur a third time.” David spoke in pragmatic tones. There was neither censure in his voice nor anything like shame in Joab’s countenance. “Therefore, arrange supply lines for our armies from Succoth and from Mahanaim. When we have entered the valley, we will not turn south toward Rabbah, but north to Helam and Damascus and Zobah.
I must attend to Hadadezer first and Hanun of the Ammonites second.”

  In three weeks King David of Israel had crossed the Jordan to meet the armies of Hadadezer at Helam. Israel and Syria drew up battle lines with shields and spears and fought against each other. David slew seven hundred Syrian horsemen and forty-two thousand foot soldiers. David corralled and hamstrung all the chariot horses, keeping back one hundred chariots with which to equip his own army. When all the captains and commanders of Hadadezer saw that they had been defeated by David, they made peace with him and became his subjects. Now, David sent Joab and the armies of Israel south to lay siege to the fortified city of Rabbah.

  “Patience,” he said to Joab. “There never was haste to the thing. Let the young Hanun grow old inside his walls, and the Ammonites will never challenge Israel again.”

  King David himself returned home. With Benaiah and his bodyguard he carried thirty shields of gold taken from the officers of Hadadezer, as well as great quantities of bronze.

  ON A SUMMER’S DAY at noon, when farmers were harvesting wheat and the olive trees had just begun to bloom, King David put his hands behind his back and went out to walk in the gardens on his rooftop. He strolled among the redbud, the pomegranates, roses, and oleanders. He wore a cool linen tunic and Egyptian sandals turned up at the toe. He was nearly forty, a lean man, light on his feet and vastly content.

  The siege which Joab was conducting against Rabbah east of the Jordan had entered its second month. According to reports, Israel fought daily skirmishes at the city walls to keep Hanun’s forces frightened and unbalanced; but Joab had not yet tried to breach the walls. There was time.

  Apart from this war with the Ammonites, the kingdoms of Judah and Israel enjoyed peace with the rest of the world. Tribute was enriching the treasuries in Jerusalem, and David ruled solely. King David dominated all the territory from Egypt to the Euphrates: by governors he controlled the Aramaeans, the Syrians, Edom; he was himself chief of the Moabite tribes; he had established treaties with Tyre and Hamath; and when Rabbah fell, he would become king of the Ammonites, too.