The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero (10 page)

David and Jonathan

A
SIDE FROM
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AUL, THE
other person in Israel who had the most to fear from David’s success and popularity was Saul’s eldest son and heir, Jonathan. As already noted, Jonathan had been a successful and popular military leader before David arrived, thus positioning himself as ready to ascend to the throne after Saul. In fact, Jonathan may have had even more at stake than Saul: Jonathan’s succession would be the most important indication that the newly inaugurated kingship in Israel was a lasting proposition. Any challenge to Saul’s reign was equally a challenge to Jonathan.

And yet the Bible does not present Jonathan as someone who fears or is threatened by David. On the contrary, he is said to have loved David. He defends David to Saul, he protects David from Saul, he even conspires with David against Saul. And throughout it all, in the biblical account, Jonathan effectively abdicates his natural right to the throne in favor of David. In their first scene together, Jonathan and David make a covenant, and, though it is unclear exactly what the contents of the covenant are, the ceremony by which they cement it has great importance: “Jonathan stripped off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, together with his outer garment, his sword, his bow, and his belt” (1 Sam. 18:4). Though this may seem a rather strange thing to do, remember that Jonathan is not just any youngster—he is the king’s son, the crown prince, the presumptive heir to the throne. His clothing and equipment would not be that of the common man or soldier. He would be wearing royal garb, equipped with royal arms. Giving these to David is highly symbolic. It is simultaneously an act of abdication and of anointment. David, not Jonathan, is dressed as the next in line to be king.
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When Jonathan agrees to find out Saul’s intentions regarding David, he again debases himself before David, though this time verbally. He says that if Saul is in fact trying to kill David, “May the Lord be with you as he used to be with my father. . . . Thus has Jonathan covenanted with the House of David; and may the Lord requite the enemies of David!” (20:13–16). This speech is remarkable not for Jonathan’s unwavering support for David, but for the basic assumptions implicit in it. “May the Lord be with you as he used to be with my father”—in this Jonathan is effectively transferring the kingship from Saul to David, rather than to himself. “Thus has Jonathan covenanted with the House of David”—here Jonathan uses royal terminology, “the House of David,” even before David has become king, much less founded a dynasty that could be described as his “house.” “May the Lord requite the enemies of David”—again Jonathan puts David in the position of king, surrounded by enemies vying to remove him from the throne. Just as he did when he gave David his royal clothes, here too Jonathan rhetorically abandons the throne to his beloved friend. And we, as readers, have little choice but to begin seeing David as the presumptive heir to the throne.

To justify David’s unlikely kingship, the biblical narrative must establish three things. The first is that David is worthy of kingship, a claim substantiated by both the invention of stories (such as the secret anointing of David and the defeat of Goliath) and the exaggeration of David’s actions (as in the description of his military exploits). The second is that Saul is unworthy, as demonstrated by his irrational behavior and the notion that God has abandoned him. The third, and least obvious, is that Jonathan, the presumptive heir to Saul’s throne, approves of being replaced by David in the royal succession. It is not enough simply to make Saul look bad and David look good. All the comparisons in the world between the two would not override the expectation that Saul should be succeeded by his son according to the custom of dynastic kingship. So the biblical narrators need to persuade us that David and not Jonathan is the natural choice to follow Saul as king.

The biblical account portrays Jonathan as symbolically and rhetorically abdicating his royal inheritance in favor of David: first by giving David his royal clothes and arms, and then by speaking in terms that put David in the position of authority, complete with a dynastic house. From the moment he enters the story, Jonathan is subordinated to David. He is gullible, while David perceives the situation keenly. He ferries messages between David and Saul. He has no discernible role other than as David’s defender. As Jonathan continues to praise David in the highest terms and to express his devotion, he is diminished practically to the point of nonexistence when compared with the brave and noble David.

But the historical reality of these elements is very much open to doubt—precisely because they all contribute to the goal of rhetorically removing Jonathan from the line of succession. The bestowal of the royal clothes on David is very similar to other biblical stories in which the gift of clothing symbolizes the passing on of status—such as the moment when Elisha dons the mantle of his predecessor Elijah and thereby acquires his prophetic powers (2 Kings 2:13–15), or when Aaron’s priestly garments are passed on to his son Eleazar (Num. 20:28). The private speeches in which Jonathan defends David’s innocence and treats him as the presumptive king are unverifiable, but they are so fully in keeping with the message that the biblical narrative is trying to convey that we must doubt their historical accuracy.

The Bible replaces Jonathan with David. There is no claim, however, that Jonathan is incompetent, as is the case with Saul. The biblical authors have no need to question his fitness to rule, for Jonathan will never have the chance to ascend the throne—he is killed, by happy coincidence, side by side with his father (a coincidence to which we will return). What is required is the demonstration that Jonathan willingly accepts David’s replacement of him—and this is accomplished by portraying Jonathan as being in love with David.

Many scholars have raised the possibility that David and Jonathan had a homosexual relationship.
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Certainly the Bible comes close to saying so. Over and over we are told that Jonathan loved David. And while frequently the word “love” in the Bible and the rest of the ancient Near East has a nonromantic meaning of “covenant loyalty”—this is probably what it means when it says that Saul loved David, for example—the use of the word in the case of Jonathan seems to go beyond that.
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Jonathan does not just “love” David: “Jonathan’s soul became bound up with the soul of David” (1 Sam. 18:1). Jonathan “delighted greatly in David” (19:1)—the same Hebrew word used in Genesis to describe Shechem’s desire for Jacob’s daughter Dinah (Gen. 34:19). When Jonathan dies, David laments for him in these words: “More wonderful was your love for me than the love of women” (2 Sam. 1:26).
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The comparison to the love of women can hardly have a political connotation; this is as close to an expression of romantic attachment between two men as we find in the Bible.

There is nothing historically objectionable about the idea that David and Jonathan were lovers. We need not suppose that David was gay, in our modern understanding. It is clear enough that were we to apply such contemporary labels, we would be more justified in calling him bisexual, considering his multiple marriages and explicitly sexual attraction to Bathsheba. But any such terms—homosexual, bisexual—are inappropriate when describing people in the ancient world. Sexuality as we understand it today is a social construct, a category imposed on people to define them within a larger cultural system.
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No such categories or constructs existed in the ancient world. There was no notion of a person being “gay” or “straight.” People engaged in heterosexual or homosexual acts in various degrees.
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Much of the time these were, by the standards of their contemporary societies, entirely unobjectionable—consider the famous example of Alexander the Great. Even the Hebrew Bible, despite what many people think, has virtually nothing to say on the matter—only two verses in Leviticus, from the hand of a priestly author with a particular agenda who did not speak for the entirety of ancient Israelite culture. If David and Jonathan were lovers, there is no indication that anyone at the time would have batted an eye over it, much less been morally outraged—certainly the Bible seems to be unbothered by its own hints in that direction.

At the same time, the Bible does not intend explicitly to condone a homosexual relationship between David and Jonathan, as some have suggested.
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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.
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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