The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero (9 page)

In scene after scene, Saul tries everything he can think of, direct and indirect, with his own hands and by various proxies, to kill David. Nothing works. Nor, of course, should we expect it to, since we know that David succeeds Saul as king. What these episodes reveal, then, is Saul’s growing fear—a fear that is driven by his uncertain hold on his own royal position and by David’s increasing popularity. It is important, however, to recognize that the biblical account depicts Saul’s fears as unreasonable—not just intellectually, insofar as David seems to be devoted to Saul’s service without giving any thought to his own advancement, but literally: Saul is portrayed as mentally unstable. The biblical authors link Saul’s jealousy over David’s military successes with the “evil spirit of God” that afflicts the king: after every one of David’s victories, Saul tries to kill him. The Bible makes clear that Saul is losing control not only of his kingdom, but of his mind. The reader of these episodes instinctively sides with David and is made to feel that Saul is losing any legitimate claim to power. At the same time that David is proving himself fit to be king, Saul is gradually proving himself unfit to rule.

Almost every aspect of the biblical presentation is unrealistic. As we saw in the last chapter, David’s lyre-playing and the “evil spirit” that afflicts Saul are closely linked to the secret anointing of David and are historically unverifiable. Moreover, the entire setting of these episodes, with David by Saul’s side at court, seems unlikely. If David was really an officer in Judah, responsible for defending the front lines against Philistine raids, then he was probably not a regular fixture in the royal court to the north. Like the other tribal military officers, David was not part of the central army apparatus led by Saul, Jonathan, and Abner, the familial inner circle. His place was in Judah, and if he ever went to Saul’s capital, it would be only on rare formal occasions—perhaps Saul, like other Near Eastern monarchs, required his officers to appear before him once a year to reaffirm their loyalty.
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But it is improbable that David lived permanently at Saul’s court as the text suggests. Thus the spear-throwing episodes may be safely discounted.

So too the notion of Saul sending David to the front lines in the hopes that he will fall in battle. The narrative makes clear that David was always victorious—it would seem that sending him to war would only increase his stature, rather than result in his death. Furthermore, David’s death in battle would be entirely contrary to Saul’s own good. Saul’s reputation is built on his ability to protect Israel from the Philistines—a Philistine victory over David would be disastrous for Saul’s claim to the throne. Saul’s placing of David at the head of the troops is a literary move, again intended to demonstrate David’s invincibility in battle, and Saul’s own reticence to fight.

The offer to David of Saul’s daughter Michal in marriage is historically highly unlikely.
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The reward, in Saul’s mind, is the likelihood that David will die in attempting to meet the bride-price. But the risk far outweighs any reward: should David succeed, as indeed he does twofold, then the man that Saul is trying to eliminate would become a member of the royal family, and potentially in line for Saul’s throne. Furthermore, any children born to Michal and David would have Saul’s royal blood in their veins and would be potential heirs themselves. We should probably credit Saul with being smart enough not to set in motion such a sequence of events. In addition, when David is forced to flee, Michal does not go with him, which would be inexplicable if they were in fact married (and if she was as supportive of David against her father as the text makes her out to be).

But this marriage does serve a number of significant literary purposes for the biblical authors. The first and most obvious is that David is presented as having a justifiable claim to the throne: he is Saul’s son-in-law. Thus when David eventually becomes king in Israel, it appears to be at least nominally a regular succession, rather than a usurpation by someone outside the royal line. In addition, marriage to the king’s daughter positions David as something like royalty himself. It was common custom in the ancient Near East for kings to marry their children to royal descendants of other nations. A full millennium before David, Mesopotamian kings were marrying their sons to foreign princesses to cement political ties; nearly three millennia later, royal houses in Europe did the same.
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Even Solomon is said to have married the daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh (1 Kings 3:1). Thus the marriage to Michal makes David out to be Judahite royalty, and it serves as an implicit treaty between Saul and David. Ironically, in the biblical presentation, the unification of the northern and southern kingdoms, though accomplished by David, was set in motion by Saul himself. Finally, David did end up marrying Michal—but only after he became king in Judah. The problem is that Michal had long been married to someone else, and David took her by force, as we will see. For the biblical apologists, this was unacceptable—the preferred narrative would be that David was her rightful husband and that Saul had taken Michal from him. And that is precisely what the Bible says (1 Sam. 25:44). Thus the marriage to Michal at this early stage of David’s life is both a bit of literary foreshadowing of David’s kingship and a defense of his character. But in no case is it historically accurate.
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This conclusion also renders doubtful the story of Saul trying to have David killed in his sleep. That story depends on Michal’s protection of David from Saul’s men. If David and Michal were not really married, then the entire scenario falls apart. The story is also mostly comic, as it involves a classic teenager’s ruse: Michal puts an idol into the bed, with some goat’s hair on its head, and pulls the covers over it while David escapes out the window.
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All of these episodes are literary constructions, intended to demonstrate Saul’s unreasonable jealousy of David and thereby to mark the king as mentally compromised. (Indeed, if these stories were true, then we would have to judge David as the more unreasonable of the two: who would willingly return again and again to the service of a homicidal maniac?) The authors’ agenda is most clear in the final attempt on David’s life. After escaping from Michal’s bed, David is said to have fled to the prophet Samuel, in Ramah. And there, something very strange happens. Saul sends his men to capture David, but when they arrive, they are seized with the spirit of God and begin to prophesy ecstatically. Saul sends another group, and then a third, but the same thing keeps happening. Finally, Saul goes himself, and he is also seized with the spirit of God: “He too stripped off his clothes and he too spoke in ecstasy before Samuel; and he lay naked all that day and all night” (1 Sam. 19:24). The king of Israel, naked and mumbling nonsense: as Shakespeare knew when he created Lear, there can hardly be a more damning picture of a once powerful man. He is an embarrassment. His dislike of David results in his complete abasement.
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This latter episode is particularly striking, as it is by far the most humiliating depiction of Saul; but it is manifestly a literary construction, not a historical account. It conforms to the standard biblical pattern of “the rule of three”—Saul sends his men to find and kill David three times before he himself goes, just as Noah sends the dove out from the ark three times, three divine beings appear to Abraham, Israel travels three days into the wilderness during the Exodus, Balaam strikes his donkey three times, the spies visit Jericho for three days . . . the list could go on and on. What’s more, the story culminates in an apparent etiology for what must have been a well-known, if now somewhat obscure, saying: “Is Saul too among the prophets?” (1 Sam. 19:24). In the context of this episode, the saying carries a distinctly pejorative tone, mocking the royal figure writhing naked on the ground. But this is in fact the second time this saying has been introduced in the Bible. The first time occurs when Samuel has just privately anointed Saul as king, and the ecstatic prophecy serves as a divine sign acclaiming the anointing. Samuel tells Saul: “The spirit of the Lord will rush upon you . . . you will be changed into another man. And once these signs have happened to you, do as you see fit, for God is with you” (1 Sam. 10:6–7). When indeed Saul is possessed by the spirit and begins prophesying, the people with him marvel at the sight and say, “Is Saul too among the prophets?” (10:11–12). Far from a negative saying, in its first context the remark about Saul’s prophesying is positive, indicating God’s favor. The second occurrence, in the context of the David story, is an intentional reversal of the earlier acclamation of Saul as king. It plays on the popular saying and subverts it. This is a literary device, not a historical record. It tells us only that the Bible wants to go to some lengths to portray Saul’s irrationality as graphically as possible.

The biblical depiction of Saul has been remarkably persuasive, not only for those who take the text at face value, but for critical scholars as well. In the past century scholars tended to try to diagnose Saul’s illness in modern terms, with the most common suggestion being bipolar disorder.
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After all, he seems to vacillate wildly between affection and hatred for David, between periods of docility and of nearly hyperactive pursuit. But this attempt to diagnose Saul is doomed to failure. First, it imposes modern clinical categories on a text and culture to which they are utterly foreign. To say that Saul was bipolar does nothing to explain how his behavior would have been viewed by a culture that knew nothing of modern science. As one commentator correctly observed, “Saul’s suffering is described theologically, not psychopathetically or psychologically.”
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Second, and most important, it assumes that the biblical account is describing Saul accurately. And this is very much in doubt.

From a historical perspective, for Saul to qualify as unfit to rule it is not enough that we are told that he was so; his actions must testify to it. What does Saul do that marks him as unbalanced? As noted above, his irrational behavior is always linked with his attempts to kill David. From the pro-David perspective of the Bible, this is indeed madness. But let us understand events from Saul’s point of view. Saul was the first king of a small and fragile nation. His kingship was maintained by sheer force of will and the promise of continued military success. He had every right to be concerned about the succession of his line—as he was the first king, there was no established dynastic protocol.

Saul could not have known it, but the people over whom he reigned, the northern kingdom of Israel, would prove themselves largely incapable of maintaining a stable dynastic succession. Over the nearly three hundred years of the kingdom’s history, the longest dynasty lasted only five generations (compare this with the southern kingdom, where the royal succession was unbroken for the more than four hundred years of its existence). The principle of dynastic succession, though common throughout the ancient Near East, still would have required an initial example, preferably two, to set it firmly in place. Even the Bible has Saul recognize this, as he says to Jonathan, “Neither you nor your kingship will be secure” (1 Sam. 20:31). Genealogical succession to the throne was not just a matter of genetic loyalty; it was a way of ensuring that one’s name would be properly remembered and praised (as the example of David’s legacy demonstrates). Kings who are succeeded by outsiders are denigrated; those who are succeeded by their offspring have the royal line named after them and gain fame even in the eyes of non-Israelites. Thus we have an Aramean inscription that mentions “the House of David” and an Assyrian obelisk that refers to “the House of Omri,” the founder of one of the northern kingdom’s short-lived dynasties.
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In a largely preliterate world, this sort of fame was the highest honor to which one could aspire—and thus the possibility of a failed dynastic succession would have been of the highest concern to Saul.

Saul had been acclaimed as king largely because of his ability to fight off Israel’s enemies. Someone else arising who seemed to garner popular approval for the very same reason could spell potential trouble. Throughout the ancient world, as indeed is still the case today, usurpers came most commonly from the military, from the ranks of the officers who could command the allegiance of the army even more effectively than could the king himself. We have already seen the example of Hattušili, who was a successful Hittite general before he seized the throne. Later in Israel’s own history, the northern king Elah would be killed and usurped by his commander Zimri (1 Kings 16:9), who would himself then be the victim of a military coup by Omri, the head of the army (1 Kings 16:16). Saul’s fears were more than theoretical.

Being king in the ancient world meant constantly watching one’s back. The royal succession of every ancient Near Eastern nation was riddled with coups and usurpations. David may have been of use to Saul, but he was at the same time a very real threat, if solely because of his position in the military. If the troops really were pleased with having David as their commander, the boost in morale would hardly make up for the increased risk of a coup from Saul’s point of view. If the populace at large really did have affection for David, even if not at Saul’s expense but merely alongside the king, it would be unacceptable. Power was not so secure in the ancient world, especially in the nascent Israelite state, as to allow for any divided affections.

The entire program of depicting Saul as unfit to rule is a literary construction. The denigration of one’s predecessors was a standard feature of ancient royal rhetoric. In the biblical account, it has an obvious literary purpose: to rhetorically depose Saul so as to make room for David to ascend the throne. It is noteworthy, perhaps, that Saul’s reign did not come to an end because anyone in ancient Israel realized that he was unbalanced or unfit—he died in battle, just where any good king ought to have been, and indeed a classically glorious way for a military leader to die. There is no evidence even from the Bible’s own account that anyone thought Saul was irrational. Indeed, the most important rationale for judging Saul to be sane—even if he had tried to kill David repeatedly—is that, as it turns out, Saul was absolutely right. David would indeed succeed him as king. Saul’s dynasty would never come to be. Far from being unreasonable, Saul was prescient. His fears were justified. Even as the Bible describes him as mentally unstable, the history it records proves the opposite.