King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (10 page)

“We have every reason to believe that a homosexual relationship existed,” argues Tom Horner, Bible scholar and Episcopal priest, with rare bluntness. “Seminary professors must consider it, as well as must the diagnostician of ancient male love.”
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Later, the biblical author will cast the first encounter between David and Jonathan in a new and tantalizing light when he allows us to hear David's famous confession of love for Jonathan, so full of provocative meanings for the modern reader. “Wonderful was thy love to me,” David will sing of Jonathan from the pages of
Holy Writ, “passing the love of women.” Indeed, as we shall see, some imaginative readers of the Bible wonder whether David captured the heart of Saul, too, and maybe even Goliath! For now, however, the biographer of David hastens on, and the account snaps into much sharper focus as Saul's “love” for David suddenly turns into fear and loathing.

King Saul, we are told, elevated young David to a position of command over his “men of war,” and David was no less competent and effective in his campaigns against the Philistines than he had been in single combat against Goliath. “Whithersoever Saul sent him, he had good success,” the Bible emphasizes, “and it was good in the sight of all the people, and also in the sight of Saul's servants.” (1 Sam. 18:5) From the first moment of his new military career, David was hailed by the people of Israel as a war hero on the strength of his victory over Goliath.

The same words and phrases are used earlier in the Bible to describe how the prophetess Miriam and the women of Israel celebrated the victory of the Israelites over the army of Pharaoh at the Red Sea. “Sing ye to Yahweh, for he is highly exalted,” called Miriam in a transport of ecstasy, and the women responded as they danced around her: “The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.” (Exod. 15:20–21)
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Perhaps the parallels between the two passages should be understood as evidence that circle dances and call-and-response songs were the traditional way of celebrating a
victory in ancient Israel. Or, more intriguingly, Miriam's song and dance may have been written into the Bible by the biblical author as yet another foreshadowing of David.

But the two victory celebrations are very different in one telling detail. The song that Miriam sang praised God alone for the victory, even to the exclusion of Moses, but the song that the women of Israel sang after the victory over Goliath praised only flesh-and-blood warriors and did not mention God at all.

Just as Yahweh was a jealous deity, the Bible reveals, Saul was a jealous king. His dementia did not prevent him from parsing out the words of the victory song with care; indeed, the moments of paranoia only sharpened his perceptions. Saul did not fail to understand the subtle sting of the song that the women of Israel sang: they praised young David above the king himself, and they credited him with martial prowess that exceeded Saul's own by tenfold. So it was that King Saul marked the handsome young war hero as a man to bury rather than to praise, and so it was that the fairy-tale prince, even at his moment of triumph, fell into disfavor with the king he was destined to succeed.

“They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed but thousands,” Saul muttered in bitter complaint. “All he lacks is the kingdom.” (1 Sam. 18:8)

Abruptly, the fairy-tale glow of the biblical life story of David is extinguished, and something much darker asserts itself. “Saul eyed David from that day and forward,” the Bible reports (1 Sam. 18:9), and the two men entered into a long and deadly chess match that would leave only one of them alive.

O
n the very day after Saul first heard the women of Israel sing David's praises, according to the rather woozy biblical chronology, the young war hero was back in the court of the old king, plucking the strings of his lyre in an effort to soothe the suffering Saul. Then, suddenly, King Saul rose to his feet, seized a spear, and hurled the weapon at David's head with one mighty thrust.

“I will pin David to the wall!” vowed Saul.

Only by sidestepping the spear and fleeing from the palace did the spry David escape with his life. The weapon hurtled past the spot where he had stood a moment before and planted itself deep in the far wall. (1 Sam. 18:10–11) (AB)

Here, Saul's murderous rage is traced by the biblical author to God himself: “An evil spirit from God came mightily upon Saul, and he raved in the midst of the house.” Even in the grip of madness, Saul understood that God was siding with David: “Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him, and was departed from Saul.” (1 Sam. 18:10, 12) Elsewhere, however, the biblical
text suggests a wholly human motive for the attempted murder of David: Saul had already marked David as his rival for kingship in the overheated tribal politics of ancient Israel, and “so Saul became David's constant enemy.” (1 Sam. 18:29) (AB) A third explanation for Saul's failed attempt at homicide is provided by a psychiatric reading of the same text: Saul, after years of intermittent manic depression, had finally slipped into plain homicidal madness.

“There were spooky, tempestuous spells,” David says in Joseph Heller's
God Knows
, “in which killing me was just about the only thing Saul had on his rabid and demented mind, the poor fucking nut.”
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Whether it was politics or madness or a meddlesome God—or all three at once—that turned Saul's love for David into hatred, the biblical author now describes an exercise in political gamesmanship so convoluted, so treacherous, so deeply soaked in conspiracy that it reminds us of Shakespeare's
Richard III
or, for that matter, Richard Condon's
The Manchurian Candidate
. What seems especially and uncannily modern in the biblical life story of David is the sense of “fires within fires”—Arthur Miller's phrase for the paranoia that suffused the Salem witch trials. Just as conspiracy theories shaped politics and popular culture in America in the latter part of the twentieth century, the court history of King David as we find it in the Bible fairly crackles with the same tension and suspicion.

Even if Saul was mad, he was also wily, as we shall soon see for ourselves. The king devoted considerable effort and ingenuity to eliminating David as a rival without bloodying his own hands or alienating the considerable number of men and women in his little kingdom, including his own adult children, who had fallen so deeply in love with David. But David would prove wilier still.

Saul's first ploy was to remove David from the royal household by raising him to a yet higher rank in the army of Israel—“captain
over a thousand” (1 Sam. 18:13)—and sending him off to fight the Philistines in the hope that he would be killed in action. Later, David would use the same ploy to murder a man whose wife he had seduced and impregnated. For David, the scheme worked perfectly. Not so for the unlucky Saul. David was victorious in battle again, the people of Israel came to love the war hero with even greater fervor, and Saul himself “lived in fear of him.” (1 Sam. 18:14–16) (AB)

So Saul made an even more calculating move against David. “Behold my elder daughter Merab,” he declared to David. “Her will I give you to wife—only be valiant for me, and fight the Lord's fight.” Saul figured that David would throw himself even more recklessly into the next battle with the Philistines if a royal princess was the prize of war. “Let not my hand be upon him,” Saul muttered to himself, “but let the hand of the Philistines be upon him.” (1 Sam. 18:17)

David now revealed a gift that would turn out to be even more central to his survival than his physical courage or his soldierly skills—he was a master of political intrigue, and he quickly grasped the motive behind Saul's new gambit.

“Who am I, and what is my life,” said David to Saul in words so modest that they approach sarcasm, “that I should be son-in-law to the king?” (1 Sam. 18:18)

So David foiled Saul's plot by declaring himself unworthy to wed a woman of royal blood, and Merab was married off to another man. But soon a new opportunity presented itself to Saul: the king learned that his youngest daughter, Michal, had fallen in love with David. Once again, Saul sought to use the hand of his daughter as a way of putting David in harm's way, and his new plan was far less subtle than the first one.

“Speak with David secretly,” Saul ordered one of his courtiers, “and say: ‘Behold, the king hath delight in thee, and all his servants love thee—now, therefore, be the king's son-in-law.’ ” (1 Sam. 18:22)

David was not fooled by the king's latest words of flattery and entreaty, and he turned aside the marriage proposal with yet
another declaration of his own unworthiness. “Does it seem to you a trifling thing to offer oneself as a son-in-law to the king?” he demurred to the king's emissary. “Well, as for me, I am poor and humble.” (1 Sam. 18:24) (AB)

When David's refusal was reported back to Saul, the king took the plea of poverty to mean that David was unable to come up with a suitable “bride-price” (
mohar
), the dowry-in-reverse that a suitor was expected to pay his future father-in-law in ancient Israel. So Saul extricated David from his predicament by proposing a bride-price that required only courage in battle, which David possessed in plenty, and not a hoard of gold.

“The king desires no bride-price,” Saul's emissary now told David, “but a hundred foreskins of the Philistines.” (1 Sam. 18:25)
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If David took up the grotesque challenge, or so Saul calculated, he would certainly die by the sword of some Philistine soldier who refused to be separated from his foreskin. What else, after all, would better motivate a man in battle than the integrity of his own genitalia! But, yet again, Saul badly underestimated the willful young David, who may have declined to marry Merab but suddenly burned with desire for her younger sister.

The Bible does not explain his sudden change of heart, but David now relished the idea of sitting at Saul's table as the son-in-law of the king. Indeed, some scholars suspect that marriage to the daughter of the reigning king had always been David's first objective in his long, patient, ruthless plan to put himself on the throne of Israel.
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So despite his earlier protestations of humility and poverty, David sallied forth in search of foreskins as a bride-price for Michal. Ever the overachiever, David returned with
two
hundred severed Philistine foreskins, twice as many as Saul had demanded.
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Saul, foiled again, was forced to welcome the man he detested to the point of madness into the most intimate circles of his family and his court: “And Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife.” (1 Sam. 18:27) But Saul had not yet resigned himself to his fate, and his efforts to do away with David only grew more frantic.
If the Philistines would not do the job for him, vowed mad King Saul, he would find a way to do it himself even if it meant defying the will of God.

“And Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David, and Michal loved him,” the Bible sums up. “And Saul was yet more afraid of David, and Saul was David's constant enemy.” (1 Sam. 18:28–29)

Saul could do nothing right, and David could do nothing wrong, for the simple reason that God willed it to be so—it was only a matter of time before his divine plan to unseat Saul and replace him with David was revealed, and David was elevated to his rightful place on the throne of Israel. Such is the subtext of the Bible as it has come down to us, a set of texts that were repeatedly “corrected” by successive generations of editors and redactors to put a theological seal of approval on King David and the dynasty that continued to reign in Jerusalem for five centuries.

But the pious account of David's rise to power, as we have already seen, may be read as an overlay applied to the older texts, a theologically correct effort by some later biblical source to rewrite history by attributing every act of human will to the hand of an unseen and unheard God. The core of the biblical text is much grittier, much bloodier, and much more suspenseful, as if the author was never quite sure of how it would all turn out. At the heart of the biblical life story of David are two men—each ambitious, willful, and ruthless—contending with each other for a crown. An open-eyed reading of the Bible permits us to conclude that David prevailed over Saul because of his superior skills in war and politics, not because God willed it so.

Saul's next move against David, for example, was a blunder. The hapless king confided to Jonathan that he intended to kill David at the first opportunity. Saul even spoke openly of his murderous intent within the royal household, which included both
Jonathan and Michal, David's wife. Saul ought to have known that his plan would be communicated to David, and so it was that Jonathan, who “delighted much in David,” sought David out, urged him to remain out of sight, and warned him: “Saul my father seeks to slay you.” (1 Sam. 19: 1–2) In the meantime, while David absented himself from the court, Jonathan sought to change Saul's mind.