The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (21 page)
Authors: Thomas Cahill
“The beauty of Israel is slain
upon thy high places:
how are the mighty fallen!
“Tell it not in Gath,
publish it not in the streets of Askelon;
lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice,
lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.
“Ye mountains of Gilboa,let there be no dew,
neither let there be rain, upon you, nor fields of offerings;
for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away,
the shield of Saul,
as though he had not been anointed with oil.
“From the blood of the slain,
from the fat of the mighty,
the bow of Jonathan turned not back,
and the sword of Saul returned not empty.
“Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives;
and in their death they were not divided;
they were swifter than eagles,
they were stronger than lions.
“Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,
who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights,
who put on ornaments of gold
upon your apparel.
“How are the mighty fallen
in the midst of battle!
“O Jonathan,
thou wast slain in thine high places.
I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan:
very pleasant hast thou been unto me:thy love to me was wonderful,
passing the love of women.
“How are the mighty fallen,
and the weapons of war perished!”
David is publicly consecrated king at
Hebron, where the bodies of his Abrahamic ancestors lie and which now becomes the capital of the southern kingdom, for he is, as yet, acknowledged only by his own people—by Judah. A war ensues between the northerners and southerners—between the House of Saul and the House of David—but it is not long before the northern kingdom of Israel capitulates and David is anointed once more at Hebron, this time with the warrior nobles of the north in attendance. The politically astute king, now but thirty years old, realizes that Hebron, deep in southern territory, will not do as capital of the United Kingdom of Israel. He marches on the Jebusite town of Jerusalem, an enclave between north and south—and a capital that will suit his purposes admirably. He captures the town, also known as the “citadel of Zion,” strategically situated on a hill and ever after called the “City of David.” He meets a final Philistine attack, and victory again is swift. David is now the unchallenged ruler of Canaan, a land which can for the first time be called Israel and which will soon stretch south into the Sinai and north to the Lebanese mountains, west to the Mediterranean (along a part of which the defeated Philistines are contained in a narrow coastal
strip) and east of the Jordan to the borders of Gilead. Farther southeast lie the kingdoms of Edom, Moab, and Ammon from which David exacts tribute; to the northeast Aram, from which he may have done the same even as far as the Euphrates.
T
HE
U
NITED
K
INGDOM OF
I
SRAEL
Noted are the approximate areas of settlement of the Twelve Tribes, as well as the border between the ten tribes of Israel and the two tribes of Judah
.
To Jerusalem he brings his three wives, Michal having been restored to him, and many sons are born to him in his new home, where David, adding to the harem already established by Saul, acquires wives and concubines at a steady rate. To his new capital, David, ever the astute pol, also brings the
ark of the covenant in a great procession from the south, thus confirming his control over Israel by physical proximity to its God, who was believed to dwell above the ark. “David and the whole House of Israel danced before Y
HWH
with all their might, singing to the accompaniment of harps, lyres, tambourines, sistrums, and cymbals.… David danced whirling round before Y
HWH
with all his might, wearing a loincloth.” The music would have included a Davidic psalm, one of the popular poems that were becoming part of the young conqueror’s escalating reputation:
O clap your hands, all ye people;
Shout unto God with the voice of triumph!
For Y
HWH
most high is terrible;he is a great King over all the earth.
He shall subdue the people under us,
and the nations under our feet.
He shall choose our inheritance for us,the excellency of Yaakov whom he loved.
God is gone up with a shout,
Y
HWH
with the sound of a trumpet!
Sing praises to God, sing praises;
sing praises unto our King, sing praises!
For God is the King of all the earth:
sing ye praises with understanding.
God reigneth over the heathen:
God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness.
The princes of the people are gathered together,
even the people of the God of Avraham;
for the shields of the earth belong unto God:
he is greatly exalted!
The new king, at the acme of his vigor and enjoying his triumph to the hilt, must have presented a thrilling sight to his people. But not to Michal, the twice-traded wife, herself the daughter of a king but now just an elder member of the expanding harem. “When she saw King David leaping and whirling round before Y
HWH
, the sight of him filled her with contempt. They brought the ark of Y
HWH
in and put it in position, inside the tent which David had erected for it; and David presented burnt offerings and communion sacrificesin
Y
HWH’S
presence. And when David had finished presenting burnt offerings, he blessed the people in the name of Y
HWH
Sabaoth. To all the people, to the whole multitude of Israelites, men and women, he then distributed to each a loaf of bread, a portion of meat and a raisin cake.”
As David returns to bless his own household, Michal steps forward:
“Much honor the king of Israel has won today, making an exhibition of himself under the eyes of his servant-maids, making an exhibition of himself like a buffoon!”
“I was dancing for Y
HWH
, not for them. As Y
HWH
lives, who chose me in preference to your father and his whole family to make me leader of Israel, Y
HWH’S
people, I shall dance before Y
HWH
and lower myself even further than that. In your eyes I may be base, but by the maids you speak of, by them, I shall be held in honor.”
This sour exchange is full of the resonance of real life. David’s endless vitality and enthusiasm are the very qualities that have endeared him to the common people. He knows it, basks in their love, and returns their ardor. Though he is quite happy with himself, he is humble in his way, crediting God with everything. But a man who loves a crowd is seldom as effective in intimate relationships as he is in the midst of the throng. The histories of politics, sports, and entertainment are replete with such figures, triumphant in public, tragic in private.
______
D
avid will dote on his sons, spoiled brats brought up in uncommon luxury, not the stuff of which warrior-kings are made. One of them, his beloved Absalom, will try to usurp the kingship, wooing the northern nobles to his cause and to a bloody battle in the Forest of Ephraim between David’s immense personal guard and an easily routed army of northerners. Absalom’s undignified demise in the course of battle leaves David a broken man, beset by political dissensions that threaten the future of the United Kingdom. David’s inconsolable grief for this unworthy son is one of the most touching scenes in the whole of the Bible, as the king wanders from room to room, repeating over and over, “Oh, my son Absalom! My son! My son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you! Oh, Absalom my son, my son!”
But long before this happens, David engages in another sortie that can hardly have made for domestic peace. It was spring, the chronicler tells us, “the time when kings go campaigning.” Something, however, has kept the king in Jerusalem—business, weariness, complacency?—while his soldiers have gone off on the proper business of massacring Ammonites. The restless monarch is pacing back and forth on the palace roof when he sees a woman bathing, and “the woman was very beautiful.” He makes inquiries and learns that she is Bathsheba, the wife of
Uriah the Hittite, a member of the king’s guard, just now off campaigning against the Ammonites. David sends for Bathsheba. Then, in terse recital, the chronicler tells us: “She came to him, and he lay with her, just after she had purified herself from her period. She then
went home again. The woman conceived and sent word to David, ‘I am pregnant.’ ” In short order, David arranges to have Uriah sent to the front lines of the battle and the rest of the men fall back, so that Uriah is killed. The moment Bath-sheba’s mourning is over, David sends for her: “She became his wife and bore him a son. But what David had done displeased Y
HWH.”
Enter the prophet
Nathan to tell the king a story:
“In the same town were two men,
one rich, the other poor.
The rich man had flocks and herds
in great abundance;
the poor man had nothing but a ewe lamb,
only a single little one which he had bought.
He fostered it and it grew up with him and his children,
eating his bread, drinking from his cup,
sleeping in his arms; it was like a daughter to him.
When a traveler came to stay, the rich man
would not take anything from his own flock or herd
to provide for the wayfarer who had come to him.
Instead, he stole the poor man’s lamb
and prepared that for his guest.”
Hearing this, David flew into “a great rage,” demanding to know who the man was who did this “thing without pity.”
“You are the man. Y
HWH
, God of Israel, says this, ‘I
anointed you king of Israel, I saved you from Saul’s clutches, I gave you your master’s household and your master’s wives into your arms, I gave you the House of Israel and the House of Judah; and, if this is too little, I shall give you other things as well. Why did you show contempt for Y
HWH
, by doing what displeases him?”
One can only cringe before the accusation, which is exactly what David does. “I have sinned against Y
HWH
,” he admits immediately. Even at his worst, David’s spontaneous honesty makes him lovable. One of life’s recurring sufferings surely derives from the chronic inability of human beings to own up to what they have done, but David’s grief for his sins is as genuine as any in the long history of contrition: