King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (46 page)

9.
The Book of Samuel first describes David's hideout at Adullam as a cave, then
as a stronghold. (1 Sam. 22:1,4) (JPS) McCarter suggests that the text probably describes “a well-fortified hilltop” near the “Judahite fortress city” of Adullam. McCarter,
I Samuel
, 357.

10.
A fortified city approximately sixteen miles southwest of Jerusalem in an area of wooded foothills known as the Shephelah.

11.
Bright,
History of Israel
, 188–189.

12.
Adapted from JPS.

13.
All dialogue between God and human beings in the Book of Samuel is apparently derived from either the dreams and visions of prophets like Samuel or, more often, the simple yes-or-no answers that were solicited by kings and priests through various tools of divination, including the Ark of the Covenant, the ephod, and the mysterious objects known as the Urim and Thummim.

14.
Adapted from JPS.

15.
Adapted from JPS and AB. Ahimelech's reference to David as “commander of [Saul's] bodyguard” appears in the AB but not the JPS, which renders the Hebrew text as a reference to one who “giveth heed unto thy bidding.”

16.
Adapted from JPS.

17.
Adapted from JPS.

18.
Adapted from JPS and AB.

19.
Here, of course, the ephod in question is a garment that identifies its wearer as a priest.

20.
Adapted from JPS.

21.
Emphasis added.

22.
Adapted from JPS.

23.
Adapted from JPS.

24.
By tradition, the Calebites were the descendants of Caleb, the most valiant of the spies sent into Canaan by Moses in advance of the conquering army of Israel. Caleb is first introduced in the Bible as a prince of the tribe of Judah (Num. 13:6), but the Calebites are later described as
non
-Israelites who were only later incorporated into the tribe of Judah. (Josh. 15:13) Carmel was a village located eight miles southeast of Hebron, an ancient and sacred city in the tribal homeland of Judah that was given to the Calebites by Joshua. (Josh. 14:14)

25.
McCarter (
I Samuel
, 396) defines
nabal
as “foolish, senseless … with the collat[eral] idea of
ignoble
,
disgraceful
.”
The New English Bible
renders the word as “churlish.” “He is just what his name Nabal means: ‘Churl’ is his name, and churlish his behaviour.” (1 Sam. 25: 25) (NEB)

26.
Adapted from JPS, NEB, and AB.

27.
Adapted from JPS, NEB and AB. David's coarse if colorful way of referring to a man as “one who pisses against the wall” is translated literally in the King James Version of 1611, which memorably reads “pisseth” rather than “pisses.” More recent (and more polite) translations of the Bible render the vivid phrase as “a male” (JPS) or “a mother's son” (NEB).

28.
Adapted from JPS and NEB.

29.
Adapted from JPS and NEB.

30.
Adapted from JPS.

31.
Adapted from NEB and AB.

32.
Ahinoam's hometown of Jezreel was a village located near Carmel in the tribal
homeland of Judah, rather than the better-known city of the same name in northern Israel.

33.
The locations of Hachilah and Jeshimon are unknown to modern Bible scholarship.

34.
Adapted from JPS.

35.
Maon, a few miles south of Hebron, was yet another hilltop site in the rugged wilderness of the tribal land of Judah.

36.
“Cover his feet” is the euphemism for defecation that appears in the Hebrew text to describe what Saul is doing in the cave. Some fussy translators favor a literal rendering of the idiomatic expression in order to conceal what is actually going on.

37.
Adapted from NEB.

38.
Adapted from NEB.

39.
Adapted from JPS.

40.
Here is yet another example of a dreamy association between two passages in the Bible. The very same words were uttered by Judah, founder of the tribe that bears his name, when he learned that his daughter-in-law, Tamar, had tricked him into impregnating her by disguising herself as a harlot and seducing him. (Gen. 38) David is the distant descendant of one of the twin sons who were conceived in that act of seduction and incest, and the biblical author is subtly reminding readers of David's lineage.

41.
Adapted from JPS.

42.
Adapted from NEB.

43.
Adapted from JPS and NEB.

44.
Ziklag is believed to have been a town located to the southeast of modern Gaza, originally within the tribal lands of Simeon and later assigned to Judah. (Josh. 14:31)

45.
Adapted from JPS and NEB.

46.
Adapted from JPS and NEB. “Negev” means “dry southern country” and here refers to the southerly districts of each of the named tribes. The “Negev of Judah,” for example, is apparently the district around the town of Beersheba in the tribal homeland of Judah. The Jerahmeelites and Kenites were non-Israelites who later came to be regarded as clans of the tribe of Judah. (1 Chron. 2:9, Josh. 14:14)

47.
McCarter,
I Samuel
, 415.

48.
Adapted from NEB and AB.

49.
McCarter,
I Samuel
, 358–359, citing Budde and Smith.

50.
Bright,
History of Israel
, 189.

51.
Adapted from JPS and AB.

52.
McCarter,
I Samuel
, 408.

53.
Adapted from JPS.

54.
Adapted from JPS.

1.
Adapted from JPS.

2.
The staging areas for the two armies were located in the northern stretches of Israel, near Mount Gilboa in the Jezreel Valley. The town of Endor was located in the same vicinity, and a modern village still bears the old name.

3.
Adapted from JPS and AB.

4.
Pfeiffer,
Introduction to the Old Testament
, 342; Lindblom, “Lot-casting in the Old Testament,”
Vetus Testamentum
12, no. 2 (April 1962): 171–172.

5.
Nowhere else in the Bible are we given such a clear example of how the Urim and Thummim were actually used to obtain an oracle from God. Curiously, these details appear in the Septuagint but not in the Masoretic Text, which preserves only an abbreviated version of the episode and makes no mention of the Urim and Thummim.

6.
Lindblom, “Lot-casting in the Old Testament,” 171–172.

7.
Adapted from JPS and AB.

8.
Adapted from JPS and KJV.

9.
P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., an expert and imaginative translator of the biblical text, renders “witch” as “ghostwife” in the Anchor Bible. He points out that the Masoretic Text “conflates two terms referring to a (female) necromancer,” that is, “ghostwife” and “ghostmistress.” McCarter,
I Samuel
, 418.

10.
Adapted from JPS and AB.

11.
Adapted from JPS, NEB, and AB.

12.
Adapted from JPS and AB.

13.
Gerhard von Rad,
Moses
(London: United Society for Christian Literature, Lutterworth Press, 1960), 31.

14.
Martin Buber,
Moses
(New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 7, n.1.

15.
So unsettling is the incident at Endor that some scholars believe it was once removed from the biblical text by a redactor “who was offended by its content” and then restored much later by another redactor who put it in the wrong place, which explains why the chronology and geography of the account are somewhat fractured. McCarter,
I Samuel
, 422.

16.
Adapted from JPS and AB.

17.
Adapted from JPS and AB.

18.
Adapted from JPS and AB.

19.
Adapted from JPS and AB.

20.
Adapted from JPS and AB.

21.
Adapted from JPS and AB.

22.
“Israel,” which means “he who striveth with God,” is the name given to Jacob after he wrestled with and defeated a mysterious stranger who may have been an angel of God or God himself. “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel, for thou has striven with God and with men, and has prevailed.” (Gen. 32:29)

23.
In J. Maxwell Miller and John H. Hayes,
A History of Ancient Israel and Judah
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986), 66.

24.
Niels Peter Lemche, “Habiru, Hapiru,” in Freedman,
Anchor Bible Dictionary
, vol. 3, 6–10.

25.
See Roland de Vaux,
The Early History of Israel
, trans. David Smith (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978), 215. “The band of outlaws whom David gathered around him “bear a strange resemblance to the movements of the warlike and looting Habiru who figure in the texts of Mari and Amarna. What is more, David's positions in the service of the Philistines and that of his men, whom the Philistines regarded as mercenaries and called ‘the Hebrews,’ are almost exactly parallel to that of the companies of Habiru who served the … various rulers in Palestine during the Amarna period.”

26.
Paul Johnson,
The Birth of the Modern
(New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 677–678.

27.
Johnson,
Birth of the Modern
, 679.

28.
Adapted from JPS.

29.
Adapted from JPS and NEB.

30.
Adapted from JPS and NEB.

31.
Hebron, located some nineteen miles southwest of Jerusalem in the Judean highlands, was the home and, later, the burial place of Abraham and Sarah, the first patriarch and matriarch of the Israelites.

32.
The Septuagint depicts Saul with an arrow in his belly, but the Masoretic Text says only that he was “in great anguish by reason of the archers,” a phrase that the Anchor Bible renders as “writhed in fear of the archers.”

33.
Beth-shan was a Canaanite town, apparently under occupation by the Philistines, in the Jezreel Valley of northern Israel.

34.
Adapted from JPS, NEB, and AB.

35.
See McCarter,
II Samuel
, 65.

36.
Quoted in Mitchell Dahood, trans., intro., and notes,
Psalms I, 1–50
, Anchor Bible (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), xxx–xxxi.

37.
Dahood,
Psalms I, 1–50
, xxx.

38.
Pfeiffer,
Introduction to the Old Testament
, 351.

39.
Weisfeld,
David the King
, 5

40.
Pfeiffer,
Introduction to the Old Testament
, 351.

41.
J. A. Thompson, “The Significance of the Verb
Love
in the David-Jonathan Narratives in 1 Samuel,”
Vetus Testamentum
24, no. 3 (July 1974): 334, 335, 337.

42.
Adapted from NEB.

43.
Raphael Patai,
Sex and Family in the Bible and the Middle East
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959), 169, 170.

44.
Horner,
Jonathan Loved David
, 20.

45.
Horner,
Jonathan Loved David
, 20, 24.

46.
Horner,
Jonathan Loved David
, citing S. R. Driver (emphasis added).

47.
Quoted in Frontain and Wojcik,
David Myth
, 8.

48.
Richard Howard, “The Giant on Giant Killing,” quoted in Frontain and Wojcik,
David Myth
, 9.

49.
Ted-Larry Pebworth, “Cowley's
Davideis
and the Exaltation of Friendship,” in Frontain and Wojcik,
David Myth
, 101.

50.
The Bible is uncertain about the number or names of Saul's sons, sometimes identifying three sons (Jonathan, Ishvi, and Malchishua) (1 Sam. 14–49) and sometimes four (Jonathan, Malchishua, Abinadab, and Ishbaal). (1 Chron. 8:33, 9:39) Ishbaal (“man of Baal”) is called Ish-bosheth (“man of shame” in the Masoretic Text (2 Sam. 2:8), perhaps a way for ancient scribes to avoid any reference to the pagan god of ancient Canaan known as Baal. Some scholars propose that Ishvi, Ishbaal, and Ish-bosheth are alternate names for one and the same person.