The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero (12 page)

This last dramatic detail seems to be fictional, as it exists mostly for the purpose of providing an etiology for a place in the wilderness called “the Rock of Separation.” But true or not, it highlights once again the respective powers and advantages of the two adversaries. David is trying not to confront Saul, but to escape him. Saul is stronger than David, yet David is mobile and moves quickly from place to place to avoid capture. Even when Saul is close, David has the ability to slip away. Hiding in the wilderness, constantly moving, he and his men resemble guerilla fighters, such as have operated in this way from time immemorial. Even today, with the most advanced technology, it is difficult to track down and capture small, highly mobile groups, as examples from Uganda to Sri Lanka to Afghanistan repeatedly prove. It is no surprise that David expected to be safe in the wilderness.

And yet Saul seems regularly to find him—which points to another salient feature of these episodes. Whatever affection the people once may have had for David, it evidently evaporated rather quickly, such that they are perfectly willing to turn him in. This may appear to be fickle behavior. After all, the people loved David when he was fighting off the Philistines. But this is precisely the point: David is no longer fighting off the Philistines. We tend to think of the conflict between David and Saul as one of good against bad, of the righteous against the oppressive. But David and Saul did not live in an abstracted black and white universe. They were participants in an established culture and political system. The tradition of leadership in Israel, as we have seen, was one of “what have you done for me lately?” Leaders were temporary employees, holding their positions only for as long as their constituents needed protection. When the job ended, the position ended. If the person was unable to do the job, someone else would have to step up. Popular affection was pinned not to a person, but to a persona. By trying to usurp the throne, and as a result being forced to flee from Saul to the wilderness, David relinquished his position as officer in the war against the Philistines. He now fought not for Israel, but for himself. As one biographer of David put it, “David’s band survived in the wilderness by terrorizing the local population.”
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He was no longer of use to the Israelites—if anything, he was now a burden. For a people scattered in small towns and villages throughout the hills of Judah and Israel, what benefit would there be in supporting David any longer? His coup having failed, he could not provide the only service that was of value to them—protection from the Philistines. The one who could do that, as before, was Saul, and so it was Saul who commanded the people’s allegiance. Indeed, throughout the story, up to the moment of Saul’s death, there is no evidence that anyone in Israel or Judah has any objection to his rule. Nor should they, since he seems to have done his job perfectly well.

Should David have felt betrayed by the Judahites? He himself was from Judah, after all—why did his compatriots feel nothing special for him? The answer is that Judah was, biblical narratives notwithstanding, not yet a cohesive tribe; scholars believe that it was among the last tribes in Israel to coalesce.
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Judah is strikingly absent from the earliest record of Israelite tribes, that of Judges 5. None of Israel’s early leaders in the book of Judges are said to be Judahites. In fact, the one who comes from that region, Othniel, is identified as a Kenizzite (Josh. 15:17)—an ethnic group, potentially native to Canaan, that was eventually incorporated into Judah—but he is not yet considered a Judahite. The territory of Judah was far larger and less densely populated than that of the northern tribes. As noted above, much of it was uninhabitable wilderness, with occasional settlements dotting the landscape. In such a place communication was difficult and centralized organization much more so. Judah was a region, not a polity. Each town was its own self-enclosed community. Even after the Philistine threat made regional self-defense desirable, it was Israel, the northern kingdom, that provided it. Judah had no need to organize into a unified tribe. David, therefore, was not properly a Judahite—he was a Bethlehemite, from the region of Judah. The inhabitants of Keilah and Ziph had no responsibility for him. Nor does David ever seem to think that they should—he does not appeal to common ancestry in hopes of finding a safe haven. He goes to Judah because it is a wilderness, not because it is his homeland.

David’s Innocence

T
HE
B
IBLE PRESENTS A
pair of stories about David coming upon Saul unawares. The first, in 1 Samuel 24, takes place at En-Gedi, the oasis at the edge of the Dead Sea. There, Saul enters a cave to relieve himself, not knowing that David and his men are hiding in that very cave. David’s men encourage David to attack Saul, but he refuses. Instead, he sneaks up and cuts off a corner of Saul’s cloak—somehow accomplishing this without Saul noticing. As Saul starts to leave, David steps forward and shows him the swatch of cloth, thereby demonstrating that, though he had the opportunity, he did not lay a hand on the king. Saul admits that he has been in the wrong, even proclaims that David will be king and have a dynasty, and requests that David not wipe out Saul’s family after he has achieved the throne. David agrees, and they part ways.

The second story, in 1 Samuel 26, happens in the wilderness of Ziph. There, Saul falls asleep, and David sneaks up beside him. Again, David’s men encourage him to kill the king, but David refuses, saying that when Saul’s time comes, his death will be by God’s hand or in battle. Instead, he grabs the spear and water jug lying beside Saul and takes them some distance away. He calls to Saul from the top of a nearby hill and shows him the spear and water jug, thereby demonstrating, as in the incident in the cave, that he did not lay a hand on the king even though he had the opportunity. Again, Saul admits that he has been in the wrong and even proclaims that David will prevail. Then they part ways.

Even in their barest outlines, the two stories are virtually identical; there is no need to detail the many nearly verbatim verses. It is highly improbable that both stories are true. But, as with the stories in 1 Samuel 16–17 examined in chapter 1, in fact neither of these stories is anything more than a literary invention. Two major themes are at play in these passages. One is Saul’s admission of guilt and acceptance that David will one day be king. Only according to the pro-David biblical account does Saul have anything to be guilty of. As we have seen, it is the biblical authors’ aim to make Saul’s pursuit of David unjustified both by repeatedly proclaiming David’s innocence and by making Saul out to be mentally unstable. More confusing, however, is Saul’s declaration that David will indeed be king. Even in the biblical narrative, why would Saul say such a thing? The only explicit reference to David’s future kingship comes in the private anointing ceremony in 1 Samuel 16, of which Saul cannot have had any knowledge. In fact, part of the Bible’s agenda is to make clear that David was definitively not seeking the kingship at all. What we have here, then, are two episodes composed with the larger literary scope of the David story in mind, with the knowledge both of the private ceremony in 1 Samuel 16 and of David’s eventual ascent to the throne. Outside the literary world of the Bible—and even to a certain extent within it—Saul would never have said such a thing.

The second major theme, and perhaps the more interesting, is David’s demonstration of his lack of desire to kill Saul. On the surface, this seems to be merely a response to Saul’s aggression: David shows that he is not trying to attack Saul—again this affirms his explicit lack of desire for the kingship—so why is Saul trying to attack him? The more important statement, however, is not only that David did not kill Saul, but that David
would never
kill Saul: “Yahweh forbid that I should do such a thing to my lord, Yahweh’s anointed—extending my hand against him—for he is Yahweh’s anointed” (1 Sam. 24:7). “Who can lay hands on Yahweh’s anointed and be innocent? . . . As Yahweh lives, Yahweh himself will strike him down, or his day will come and he will die, or he will go down to battle and perish. But Yahweh forbid that I should extend my hand against Yahweh’s anointed!” (26:9–11). What David says in these lines is that he is bound by his own faith in God never to attack Saul.

Like Saul’s acceptance of David’s kingship, however, this too is confusing from a narrative standpoint: why should David have to deny so forcefully a desire to kill Saul? In the story to this point, David has never shown any aggression toward him. Rather, it has been quite the reverse: Saul has been constantly seeking David’s life. All David has ever expressed is a desire to be allowed to live. The text’s strong defense of David is at odds with the story, but it is absolutely comprehensible when understood as an apology. Saul would, after all, eventually die—in battle, just as David (coincidentally) predicts. David would become king after Saul, though he had no right to the throne. He had also already tried once to seize the kingship. Anyone in Israel may well have wondered whether David had a hand in Saul’s death, given the way things turned out. These stories address that issue directly: not only did David not have a hand in Saul’s death, but when he had the perfect chance to bring it about—twice—he didn’t take it. As we will see, this particular apologetic defense of David will recur later. For now, we can simply note that it raises the question: if the Bible goes to such lengths to argue that David wasn’t involved in Saul’s death, should we consider the possibility that he might have been?

David and Nabal

S
ANDWICHED BETWEEN THE TWO
episodes of David sparing Saul’s life is the story of David and Nabal (1 Sam. 25).
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We have already discussed this episode in the introduction, but it is worth considering again, now that we have a better sense of David’s time in the wilderness. In this story, as a reminder, David sends ten of his men to the Calebite Nabal, a wealthy owner of flocks, indicating that since Nabal’s shepherds had come to no harm under David’s protection, Nabal might be inclined to give David some supplies. Nabal refuses, so David and all of his men arrive at Nabal’s door fully armed. Abigail, Nabal’s wife, greets David with some food and drink and denigrates her husband while proclaiming David’s future kingship. David agrees not to harm Nabal—and yet, miraculously, God strikes Nabal down a few days later. David immediately sends his men to take Abigail as his wife, to which she readily agrees.

David’s motivations in sending his men to Nabal should be obvious. For some time they have been in the wilderness, a hard place in which to survive, and have been forced to move constantly, away from Saul and away from the various local communities that want nothing to do with them. Perhaps, as seems to be the case with Ziph, their reputation has preceded them. Rather than gaining strength, they seem to be losing it. And as David and his men grow more desperate, they have to seek out sustenance in more direct ways. Thus a thinly veiled threat, clothed though it may be in polite language, might be a way of gaining access to a supply of goods, one that could sustain them for a long while.

Nabal knows precisely with whom he is dealing. David, after all, was once a reasonably well-known military leader, and his flight from Saul hardly could have gone unnoticed. David assumes that Nabal knows him, saying, “Greet him in my name” (1 Sam. 25:5). Though Nabal’s response makes it seem at first as if he has never heard of David, a closer look reveals that this is not the case. “There are many slaves today who run away from their masters” (25:10), Nabal says. This is a cutting remark, aimed squarely at the relationship between Saul and David. David, Nabal implies, is no better than a slave to Saul, and his flight is equivalent to running away from a master. Nabal not only knows who David is, he knows which side deserves his allegiance. Here again we see two key features of David’s wilderness experience: that he is known, and that he is unloved. As for David’s men, they “come from I don’t know where” (25:11)—the ultimate insult in ancient Israelite society. Almost everyone in the Bible is identified by his or her homeland, as kinship affiliation was the basis of personal identity. To be without a place and family of birth was to be virtually nonexistent. This is what it means to enter the wilderness—and we may note that once David enters the wilderness, he is never again referred to as being from Bethlehem. Like his men, he has effectively renounced his past affiliations. Even his father, Jesse, is mentioned again only as part of David’s name. He disappears from the narrative. Nabal knows who David is, but he knows him as a man who has given up all that identifies him as Israelite, as part of a community, and has chosen to make his way in the wilderness.

To run a protection racket, one must be willing to do the dirty work if the victim refuses to pay up. David, never afraid to make the necessary effort, is certainly willing in this case, arriving with his men fully armed, even admitting his intentions to kill Nabal. Did Abigail really come out to greet David with provisions? It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that she recognized what was about to happen and tried to forestall it. If this is the case, however, she seems to have miscalculated. By showing David that Nabal had plenty to spare, Abigail may have sealed her husband’s fate. It is possible that she delayed it—after all, Nabal doesn’t die right away, but a few days later. But once David’s men had gone through what she gave them, they would have known that there was more where that came from. We may speculate that Abigail’s gift tided David over for a moment but also ensured that he would return. And this time, there could be no further negotiations.