King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (8 page)

The fact that David is both the youngest
and
the worthiest of the sons of Jesse, by the way, is another example of an ironic subtext that runs throughout the Hebrew Bible. The principle of primogeniture, by which the firstborn or eldest son is supposed to succeed to his father's title and property, began in distant antiquity, and the Bible formally embraces the superior rights of the eldest son in the elaborate rules of law that are embodied in the biblical text. Yet the Bible can be understood as a saga about the surprising success of
younger
sons: Isaac prevails over his older
half brother, Ishmael; Jacob over his earlier-born twin, Esau; Joseph over all of his older brothers. Each of these stories may have been intended to prepare the Bible reader for the successes of David. When we finally encounter him, we are not at all surprised that the last-born David beats out his six or seven older brothers for the blessing of God.

“And the elder shall serve the younger,” God revealed to Rebekah about the fate of her twin sons, Jacob and Esau. (Gen. 25:23) The same will be true of David and his son and successor, Solomon.

All of the earliest exploits of David are filled with the sparkle and glow of a fairy tale. Soon enough we will begin to see David as an ambitious tribal chieftain at war with a reigning king, an outlaw who shakes down the wealthiest of his countrymen for protection money, a mercenary who puts himself in service to Israel's worst enemy. All of these personal characteristics seem historical rather than fanciful precisely because they are so much at odds with what we expect of a fairy-tale prince. For now, however, the Bible engages in a kind of narrative backing and filling to provide David with a tale of origin that fits his political and theological stature: “As often happens with great men, popular imagination supplied charming legends,” observes Bible commentator Robert H. Pfeiffer, who points out that the incidents of David's early life create “an atmosphere of make-believe and the illusion of a mirage.”
⁹
Or, as another scholar once wrote of Homer, “he was given suitable lives, not a true one.”
¹⁰

The very first encounter between Saul and David was the direct result of a terrible affliction that God visited upon Saul. “The spirit of God” may have departed from Saul, but he was not merely abandoned to his lonely fate. Rather, “an evil spirit from Yahweh” was sent to haunt and terrorize the doomed king.

Exactly what afflicted Saul has been debated since antiquity. Josephus, a Jewish general and historian who authored a “rewritten Bible” in order to explain Jewish law and tradition to a readership in the Roman Empire, insisted that Saul was “beset by strange disorders and evil spirits which caused him … suffocation and strangling.”
¹¹
More recent Bible critics understand Saul's affliction as fits of melancholia and madness that we would describe today as mental illness.
¹²

The biblical author, however, regarded Saul's dementia strictly as a sign of divine disfavor.
¹³
And so the courtiers of the king turned to the traditional cure for spirit possession—a cure that was “common to every ancient society confronted by demons”—in a desperate effort to relieve Saul's suffering. The cure was the sound of music,
¹⁴
and the courtiers urged that Saul submit to the Bible-era equivalent of music therapy.

“Let our lord command his servants to seek out a man who is a skillful player on the harp,” they proposed, “so that when the evil spirit comes upon you, he shall play with his hand and you shall be well.”
¹⁵

“Provide me a man that can play well,” Saul agreed, “and bring him to me.”

“Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite who is skillful in playing,” piped up one of the courtiers. Then, as if to make the ironic point that David was more richly favored by God than Saul himself, the well-meaning courtier checked off the other admirable entries on the résumé of the young lyre player: “A mighty man of valor, a man of war, skilled in speech, and handsome—the Lord is with him.” (1 Sam. 16:16–18)
¹⁶

Saul dispatched a messenger to Jesse with a royal decree: “Send me your son David!” Jesse dutifully summoned David from the fields where he was tending the sheep, provided him with an ass to ride, provisioned him with bread and wine and a kid from the flock, and then sent his youngest son to serve King Saul.

Saul, like so many other men and women to follow, was suddenly and powerfully smitten with love for David at the moment
he laid eyes upon him. Then and there, King Saul resolved to name young David as his weapons bearer, a position of unique intimacy and importance in the royal household.

“David shall remain in my service,” went the king's message to the young man's father, “for he has found favor in my eyes.” (1 Sam. 16:22) (AB)

Yet even though “weapons bearer” was David's new job title, Saul cherished him for a gentler skill: David alone was capable of easing the madness that came upon the king at odd moments and reduced him to raw terror. “And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took the harp, and played with his hand, and so Saul found relief, and it was well with him, and the evil spirit departed from him.” (1 Sam. 16:14–23)
¹⁷

The Bible tells two very different stories about the first meeting of Saul and David. Although the passage that introduces David as the royal lyre player is regarded by some scholars as “the oldest tradition available to us,”
¹⁸
the second story is far more familiar and more enduring. Indeed, it is the most vivid moment in the remarkable life story of David as it is preserved in the Bible, and it has been imprinted indelibly on our imagination through thirty centuries of high art and popular culture. When we think of David, we think of this story.

“Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle,” the biblical tale begins, “and there went out a champion from the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath.” (1 Sam. 17:1, 4)

The Philistines arrayed themselves on one hillside, the Israelites on the facing hillside, and Goliath stood in the valley between the two opposing armies, the Vale of Elah (Valley of the Terebinth).

“Choose you a man, and let him come down to me,” Goliath
challenged. “If he be able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants—but if I prevail against him and kill him, then you will be our servants, and serve us!” (1 Sam. 17:8–9)

No fairy-tale villain was ever described in more fanciful terms—Goliath was a giant “whose height was six cubits and a span,” that is, nearly ten feet tall, according to the Masoretic Text. (1 Sam. 17:4)
¹⁹
As if his sheer height and bulk were not intimidating enough, Goliath was outfitted in full armor, fashioned of bronze—a helmet on his head, a coat of mail over his huge torso, and a pair of greaves on his thick calves. A shield was carried by a bearer who walked ahead of him on the battlefield. Against the improvised weaponry of the Israelites, Goliath was armed with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, all of the same impressive scale. Indeed, the Bible notes that the wooden shaft of his weapon was as thick as a weaver's beam
²⁰
—one of the emblematic details used to identify Goliath in the biblical text—and the spearhead alone weighed “six hundred shekels of iron,” that is, fifteen pounds. (1 Sam. 17:7)

As for Saul and the army of Israel, the mere sight of Goliath shattered their will to stand up and fight, which was precisely the intent of the Philistines in sending the fearful giant out to the front line. Morning and night for forty days, Goliath appeared and issued the same challenge. “Give me a man,” Goliath taunted, “that we may fight!” Not a man among the Israelites was brave enough to face him in single combat, and so the Philistine giant was free to stand in the open and abuse the Israelites. (1 Sam. 17:10)

Among the soldiers who cowered behind Saul in the ranks of the Israelite army were the three eldest sons of Jesse. David, too young to serve in the army, stayed at home to tend his father's sheep in the fields around Bethlehem, but now and then Jesse dispatched him to the front with provisions—parched corn and loaves of bread—for his brothers and cheeses as a gift to the captain under whom they served. So it was that David approached the front on that momentous day and saw for himself how Goliath
taunted the men of Israel. And David saw, too, that not a man among them was willing to take up the challenge.

“What are you doing here?” shouted his eldest brother, Eliab, when he spotted David among the soldiers at the front—a flash of sibling rivalry that may have been intended as a reminder of the earlier biblical account of Joseph and his brothers.
²¹
“And who have you left to look after those few sheep in the wilderness? I know you, you impudent young rascal—you have only come to see the fighting.” (1 Sam. 17:28) (NEB)

But young David was undaunted by the scolding, and he lingered in defiance of his big brother. Just as we would expect in a well-told fairy tale, David seemed to understand that the opportunity to make his fortune would be found not among the sheep on his father's country estate but here on the battlefield among kings and giants.

Certain of the familiar details that the biblical author uses to dress up the tale of David and Goliath are consistent with what we know about warfare in ancient and primitive societies. Champions were sometimes selected to engage in ritual battle with each other as surrogates for their respective armies.
²²
And, remarkable as it seems to us in an era of smart weapons and standoff war-making, a courageous man with a sharp tongue might attempt to demoralize an enemy with verbal abuse before the fighting began in earnest. In fact, Goliath's taunts have been likened by anthropologist Raphael Patai to the Arab tradition of the
hija
, “an insulting poem or diatribe,” by which an enemy was verbally battered in anticipation of battle. So the sight of Goliath strolling back and forth in front of the army of Israel, shouting insults and provocations in preparation for single combat with a champion, is not entirely fanciful.

Other details, however, betray the overheated imagination of
the biblical storyteller. The inventory of Goliath's armor and armaments, for example, turns out to be an unlikely hodgepodge of ancient weaponry, some defensive and some offensive, none of it distinctively Philistine. Goliath's sword is described with a term that suggests a curved, scimitar-like weapon of Asiatic design, his helmet is Hittite in origin, and his “coat of mail” appears to be patterned after Egyptian scaled armor.
²³
The biblical author obviously cared less for getting his facts straight than for making a suitable impression on his original audience—Goliath, readers are meant to understand, was such a formidable enemy that his defeat in battle by a shepherd boy would be, quite literally, a miracle.

Indeed, the fairy-tale quality of the biblical tale of David and Goliath always asserts itself. Young David, for example, is made to overhear the soldiers who gossip about the prizes that would be bestowed upon any man brave enough to take up Goliath's challenge and survive: “It shall surely be that the king will enrich the man who kills him with great riches, and will give him his daughter, and make his father's house free in Israel.” (1 Sam. 17:25)
²⁴
Thus inspired by the prospect of such good fortune—yet another common motif in folklore across history and throughout the world— David boldly approached King Saul and offered to do what no man in the army of Israel had been willing to do.

“Let no man's heart fail within him,” said young David, adding a subtle taunt of his own to those uttered by Goliath. “Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.” (1 Sam. 17:32)

King Saul, giving no sign that he had ever seen David before, scoffed at the idea of a shepherd boy in single combat with the mightiest warrior in the Philistine army. “You are only a lad,” Saul said, “and he has been a man of war from his youth.” (1 Sam. 17:33)
²⁵

At this point in the biblical account, however, the storyteller's voice falls away and we hear from the biblical theologian. David delivers a richly symbolic sermon in response to Saul's highly practical observation. He is only a humble shepherd, David boasts of himself, but he has rescued the sheep of his father's flock from
ravening lions and bears, and now he would rescue the flock of Israel from the predations of the Philistines. Notably, David mentions nothing about the reward that he might expect—riches, a royal princess, and tax relief. Rather, he presents himself as pious and wholly pure of motive. God alone—not a sense of patriotism or raw self-interest—now motivates David to take up Goliath's challenge.

“Your servant smote both the lion and the bear, and this un-circumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he has taunted the armies of the living God,” young David is made to say. “Yahweh, who delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.”

“Go,” says Saul, convinced by the boy's zealous words, “and Yahweh shall be with you.” (1 Sam. 17:36–37)
²⁶

The Bible gives us a final poignant encounter between Saul and David in the moments before the fateful battle, a moment so intense and so intimate that the scene is still capable of surprising the modern reader. The king suddenly strips off his own armor and weaponry—a helmet of bronze, a coat of mail, a belt and sword—and he dresses young David in them. The gesture is tender and solicitous, as if to express the love that wells up in the king toward the shepherd who offered to save his crown. But young David is too slender to bear the weight of the armor and lacks the experience to wield a heavy sword in battle—the biblical text suggests that he staggered under the heavy trappings of war, unable to walk, much less to fight! So David slips out of Saul's armor, lays down the king's sword, and chooses a very different set of weapons—the wooden staff of a shepherd and the slingshot that a boy raised in the country might fashion for his own amusement and defense.