King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (33 page)

As David ascended the Mount of Olives and headed toward the wastes of the Judean desert, his own elegiac words for the slain Saul and Jonathan must have haunted him. At that bitter moment, David must have cast his memory back to his glory days, and surely we are intended to do so—the day when Samuel rejected David's seven brothers and called the youngest one to be anointed, the single combat between the shepherd boy and the Philistine giant, the fairy-tale romance with a king's daughter and the freebooting years when he always succeeded in besting old king Saul, the final campaign that brought David ever upward toward kingship and empire. Here the Bible preserves the very moment when David teeters at the edge of despair: the king of all Israel, a man after God's own heart, was now reduced to a refugee, barefoot and weeping.

The scene is, in a real sense, one of the defining moments of the Bible. The people of Israel—and, more particularly, the descendants of the tribe of Judah who will one day be called the Jews—will experience for themselves the terror of flight and the pain of exile in the millennia to come. But it is here that the Bible offers the first glimpse into that terrible future as David flees into the wilderness.

Yet something stirred in David at this moment of defeat, some spark of the survival instinct that had kept him alive against the best efforts of his enemies to kill him off, some resurgence of the strong will and the agile mind that had allowed him to prevail against them until now. At the darkest moment in his life, David seemed to assert himself against all those who conspired to put an end to his kingship.

On the peak of the Mount of Olives, David encountered a man called Hushai, who is identified in the Bible as “the Friend of David.” (2 Sam. 15:37) (AB) The phrase, as we have seen, is reminiscent of an ancient Egyptian title, “the Friend of the King,” and may have identified Hushai as a privy counselor of special inti-macy.
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Hushai, too, was reduced to despair—his garment was rent and his head was sprinkled with earth in the ancient signs of mourning. And yet, at the sight of his friend, the old fighting spirit reasserted itself in David, and the king suddenly saw a way to use Hushai to fight back against his renegade son.

“If you come with me, you will only be a burden to me,” David told Hushai, suddenly displaying his old savvy as a guerrilla fighter. “But if you return to the city, and say to Absalom: ‘I will be thy majesty's servant, as I have been thy father's servant in time past,’ then you can help me frustrate Ahitophel's plans.” (2 Sam. 15:33)
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The espionage apparatus that David put into place is a sign
that he had not lost his cunning and ruthlessness after all. Hushai would insinuate himself into Absalom's inner circle and then serve as a double agent. Whatever intelligence Hushai managed to gather within the court of Absalom would be passed along to the two high priests, Zadok and Abiathar, who would use their own trusted sons to convey the intelligence reports to David. And, even more crucially, Hushai would be in a position to neutralize whatever good advice Ahitophel might give to Absalom. If Ahitophel counseled a particular policy or a plan of action, then Hushai would seek to turn Absalom's mind against it.

“O Lord, I pray thee,” implored David, “turn the counsel of Ahitophel into foolishness.” (2 Sam. 15:31)

Absalom was not the only man in Israel who burned with ambition to depose King David and make himself king. Amid the chaos created by Absalom's coup d'état, the plotters showed themselves. Saul's lame son, Mephibosheth, was now ready to claim the crown, as David discovered when he crossed the path of Ziba, the old servant of King Saul and the man into whose care David had placed Mephibosheth and his estate.

Ziba was leading a string of asses loaded down with food and drink: “Two hundred loaves of bread, and a hundred clusters of raisins, and a hundred of summer fruits, and a bottle of wine.” Another sign of David's renewed vigor was his sudden demand to know what Ziba meant to do with the supplies—David understood the value of such provisions to a guerrilla army, and he apparently intended to “liberate” the asses and all they carried to supply his own army. Just as David had once shaken down the household of Nabal during his years of banditry, now he did the same to Ziba. Unlike Nabal, Ziba knew and feared David, and he quickly complied with the unspoken demand. (2 Sam. 16:1)

“The asses are for the king's household to ride on,” Ziba said, improvising a gesture of support to assuage David, “and the bread
and summer fruit for the young men to eat, and the wine that such as are faint in the wilderness may drink.” (2 Sam. 16:2)

“And where is your master's son?” David now demanded of Ziba.

“Behold, he abides at Jerusalem, for he said: ‘Today the Israelites are going to give me back my father's kingdom,’ ” Ziba declared, thus betraying Mephibosheth as readily as he had surrendered the supplies intended for his master. (2 Sam. 16:2)
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David now played on what he calculated to be Ziba's greed and faithlessness. He declared Ziba to be free of any duty to serve Mephibosheth, and authorized Ziba to seize the property that he held in trust for Saul's only surviving son.

“Behold,” said David to Ziba, “you shall have everything that belongs to Mephibosheth.” (2 Sam. 16:4)
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So the expert plotter was back in play. With a few deft words, David managed to separate Mephibosheth from his lifelong servant and his only real ally, thus neutralizing one contender in the mad scramble for power that Absalom had set into motion. Now amply provisioned, surrounded by a corps of mercenaries who owed allegiance only to him, and wired into Absalom's inner circle through a network of spies and double agents, David marched into the wilderness with renewed strength and a freshened spirit. No longer was it a rout; rather the old guerrilla fighter was returning to the style of warfare that he knew intimately and had used successfully against Saul and his other enemies. Now he would bring the same skills to bear against an enemy in whose veins his own blood flowed.

David's old fighting spirit was stirring again, but the fact remained that Absalom, not David, was now the charismatic leader to whom the people of Israel turned. Here we are reminded that God's favor and public acclaim are two very different things: Saul may have forfeited the affection and confidence of Yahweh, but
he never faced a general rebellion against his kingship. Here and now, all the old grudges were boiling up against David, and the notion that he was God's anointed king seemed to matter not at all to the general populace. The fact that the people of Israel rallied so readily to Absalom confirms that David may have been beloved of God, but he was despised of men.

As David passed through the village of Bahurim on the outskirts of Jerusalem, he discovered for himself not only how little he was loved but also, perhaps more important, how little he was feared by the people of Israel. A man called Shimei, a blood relation of Saul, charged out of his house at first sight of the fleeing king and his entourage. Undaunted by David or the soldiers who flanked him, Shimei boldly approached, cursing bitterly and casting stones at all of them, both the king and his men.

“Begone, begone, you scoundrel! You man of blood!” cried Shimei. “The Lord has returned upon you all the blood of the house of Saul, whose throne you have stolen!” (2 Sam. 16:7)
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“Man of blood” is how Shimei's words of abuse toward David are generally translated into English from the original Hebrew text, but even this rich and resonant phrase may not convey the gall that boiled up in Shimei at the sight of the deposed king. So P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., offers an alternate and perhaps more accurate translation of the same phrase in the Anchor Bible: “You bloodstained fiend of hell!”

Shimei proceeded to scold King David publicly in the harsh language of a man who is either fearless or mad. David, he declared, had bloodied his own hands in the course of claiming the kingship of Israel. The Bible does not specify what bloody deeds Shimei had in mind, but scholars have speculated that he condemned the king for some or all of the very deeds from which the biblical authors have so carefully distanced King David—the death of Saul and Jonathan in battle against David's former masters, the Philistines; the assassination of Saul's son, Ishbaal, and Saul's general, Abner, both of whom were killed by men who sought to curry favor with David; and the hanging of seven other sons and grandsons of Saul by the Gibeonites. Unlike the biblical
apologists, who insist that David is guiltless in all of these deaths, Shimei condemned David as a mankiller who was being punished by God for his bloody deeds.

“The Lord has given the kingdom to your son, Absalom!” Shimei railed. “Behold, you murderer, see how your crimes have overtaken you!” (2 Sam. 16:8)
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The old soldiers who accompanied David—the “mighty men”
(gibborim)
, as they are known in the King James Version and other translations (2 Sam. 16:6)—were astounded at Shimei's words, and their first impulse was to silence him with the sword.

“Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king?” asked Abishai, Joab's brother, the impulsive killer who would have struck down King Saul himself during their bandit years if he had not been restrained by David. “Let me go over, I pray thee, and take off his head.” (2 Sam. 16:9)

But David once again refused to let Abishai draw his sword. “What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah,” complained David, distancing himself from the bloodthirsty brothers, Abishai and Joab. Perhaps David was reluctant to order the execution of a close relative of King Saul; perhaps he was suffering from the sentimentality that sometimes blunted his old ruthlessness; or perhaps he was simply confident enough in his own renewed strength that he felt no need to punish a deranged old man for his lunatic words. In any event, David spared Shimei. (2 Sam. 16:10)

“Let him curse,” said David, who wondered aloud whether God himself had not bidden Shimei to deliver the public scolding. “Perhaps the Lord will mark my sufferings and bestow a blessing on me in place of the curse laid on me this day.” (2 Sam. 16:10, 12) (NEB)

So David moved on, and his little army followed him. David may have regained some of his old confidence, but he was still a man on the run. And it is a measure of his lingering fatalism and defeatism that David attributed Shimei's bitter curse to God himself.

“If someone curses in that way, it's because Yahweh has said to him: ‘Curse David!’ ” (2 Sam. 16:11)
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Indeed, God's anointed now believed himself to be under a curse of divine origin. “To the ancient mind, the curse had real efficacy,” explains John Bright, and the notion of blood-guilt “was no figure of speech.”
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Indeed, David may have felt himself doubly betrayed—first by his own son, who had deposed him from the throne, and now by his God, who had instructed an old man to put him under a curse. As David and his band moved off in search of a new refuge, Shimei trailed after them, still cursing, still throwing stones, still casting fistfuls of dust at the once and future king.

A
bsalom and his army marched into the City of David in muted glory—David had fled, Jerusalem was undefended, and so the new king of Israel claimed the ultimate prize without so much as drawing his sword from its scabbard. Now he turned to his father's former advisor, the turncoat Ahitophel, a man so revered that a question put to him by a king was “as if a man inquired of the word of God.” (2 Sam. 16:23)

“Give your counsel what we shall do,” said Absalom, as if he was surprised at how easy it had been to depose King David and confused about what to do next. (2 Sam. 16:20)

Ahitophel knew that Absalom needed to make a public display of his authority. Since he had not been forced to fight for the throne, and had not distinguished himself in battle, the self-crowned king must do something to show that he was now the man in charge. So Ahitophel came up with an audacious and even shocking idea, one that would convey a clear message to the army and the rest of Absalom's supporters that there was no turning back for any of them.

“Have intercourse with your father's concubines,” Ahitophel counseled the new king, “and all Israel will come to hear that you have given great cause of offence to your father, and this will confirm the resolution of your followers.” (2 Sam. 16:21) (NEB)

The whole point of Ahitophel's plan was for Absalom to take his pleasure with David's ten concubines in a public place where all of his subjects would be able to watch. A pavilion was erected on the roof of the royal palace—the same place, ironically enough, where David had first spotted Bathsheba. Then each one of the concubines was escorted to the pavilion, where she submitted to a sexual encounter with Absalom “in the sight of all Israel.” (2 Sam. 16:22)

The public spectacle depicted in the Bible can be seen as yet another lurid episode in the soap opera that King David's life so often resembled. But it is also evidence of the moral example that David had set for his sons. Thus, for example, David's sexual conquest of Bathsheba may have led Amnon to believe that he could take his half sister, Tamar, for his own pleasure without consequence. The fact that the rape of Tamar went unpunished by David prompted Absalom to take revenge against Amnon—and David's apparent weakness and lack of resolve encouraged him to go into open rebellion against his father.