Jeremy Rosen
Saul and David: Rivals for the Crown

Jeremy Rosen - Saul and David: Rivals for the Crown

- So ladies and gentlemen, welcome back again. We are going to talk about initially Saul and David, two very different characters, the first two kings of the Israelite Empire. Of Saul, we have no record. Of David, in fact, this is the first archaeological record that we have, the tell done inscription of the House of David going back 2,900 years. But I’m going to follow what the Bible says about these two characters because the books of the Bible, particularly the books of Samuel and Kings, appear to be just concerned with records and history. But in fact, they give an amazing insight both into early politics and political structures and the characters and the challenges that monarchs, that kings face. There are similarities between Saul and David going back roughly speaking 3000 years ago. Both of them have good and bad points. Both of them were not initially accepted as kings and monarchs. Both of them were reluctant to take on the task. Both of them were challenged by religious authorities who they got on the wrong side of sometimes. And therefore, both of them, in a sense, recognised that they were not above the law. Both of them fill out with their sons. Both of them were betrayed. And this commonality, in a sense, is interesting, coincidental or not. But where we left off last time, Saul, king Saul, the reluctant king, had been appointed because on the one hand, he was tall and strong. And on the other hand, Samuel was inspired by God to select this man. And he went through a process of transformation. Initially, he was not accepted, but then after a couple of military victories, he was. But what Saul showed was that he could easily be led by others. That he was not strong enough to resist the pressure of the social community.

And it was that, that weakness, that led Samuel to say of him, your dynasty will not survive, you are not the right person to be a king. We don’t want the tail wagging the dog. And we also don’t want somebody who’s not accept fully prepared to accept my religious authority. So Samuel dies. He dies in a situation in which Saul has alienated almost everybody. He even condemned his own son, Jonathan, to death. And it was only when the rest of the soldiers in the army turned around and says, you can’t do this to your own son. Think what kind of person would do that to their own son that he relented. He pursued David ‘cause he was jealous of him through a spirit. And then David had to flee and yet insisted that he did not hold it against the king. And he recognised that Saul was the king and he couldn’t undermine him. And when he had opportunities to take Saul’s life, he didn’t take it. He respected the position of the monarchy. But nevertheless, David soon comes across as somebody much more complex and richly endowed than Saul. So even while Saul was alive and David has to run away, we see how he’s able to attract friendship, the friendship of Jonathan. How he’s able to get his wife Michal, to let him out of the window to escape the men, the soldiers Saul has sent after him to kill him. So David also is able to deceive in order to protect his life under threat from Saul. First of all, when he goes to the priests of Nob who he has to go to to get refreshment or to get supplies, he doesn’t tell them that he’s running away from Saul. He lies to them and tells them, you know, I’m on a mission from Saul and therefore I need support and supplies.

And in fact, this lie ended up causing them to die. And then he has to run away again. And he runs again surprisingly to Achish, the Philistine king 'cause he’s got nowhere to go. And worrying about how the Philistine will regard David, who has actually killed Goliath and killed Philistines, he pretends to be mad and Achish says, “oh, this is a lunatic, he’s no threat to us.” And then he has to run away again. And he’s pursued all the time by allies of Saul who try to betray him. And yet he manages to survive. He also in this position, together with a group of his soldier, soldiers, these are followers, other dispossessed and alienated people in the community who join him. And with them, he manages to build a little kind of private army that it’s under the control actually of Achish the Philistine king. But he is deceptive because he takes his men out to attack. Achish thinks he’s attacking other Jews belonging to Saul, but in fact he isn’t. He’s attacking other Philistines, but lying to Achish as to where all the good booty comes from. And yet again, another example of him in this situation is that when they do gather booty and his fighting men say, listen, we fought, we put our lives online for this. We should have the lot. David insists, no, everybody, the women, the children, the civilians so to speak, should all share. So he’s very conscious of his responsibility, but he’s also showing that he knows how to deceive people, get on with other people. He’s quite a calculating man.

We come to the biggest crisis of his life is when his face towards the end with the future of Saul, Samuel has died. We don’t know if Samuel said anything to Saul about David. We don’t know if David has said anything to Saul about the future. But with the death of Samuel, Saul has lost his religious leader, his guide. He’s confused, he doesn’t know what to do. And facing the massive Philistine army, he is desperate. And in his desperation, he turns, he gets his general to find him a witch, the famous witch of Endor. Saul previously has tried to get rid of witches under the influence of the Sam, and he tried to get rid of all the idolatrous superstition. But when push comes to shove, and in the end he’s desperate, he looks for some way of finding out what to do. He doesn’t ask the witch of Endor for her advice. He asks the witch of Endor to bring up the spirit of Samuel. He goes in disguise, but she soon rumbles who he is. And she’s frightened, he promises to look after her. He won’t kill her. He will protect her if she only gets Samuel to come. Samuel is risen up from the dead. One of the most controversial elements in Jewish theology, do we believe in this issue or is this just imaginative? Is this just hocus pocus? Either way, Samuel emerges and says to Saul, “I’m sorry old man, you’ve blown it. This is the end. This is your death.” And poor Saul has to go out then to face the Philistines.

And he and Jonathan are killed and destroyed on Mount Gilboa. What happened on Mount Gilboa is told in two different ways in the text of the book of Samuel. According to the initial text, what happens is that as the Philistines are closing in on Saul and Jonathan, Saul aware of the fact that if he’s captured, he’s going to be tortured, ask his shield bearer to finish him off, to kill him so that he doesn’t fall into their hands. And the young man says, “no, I can’t. I can’t touch the anointed of God.” And so in the end, it’s Saul, so to speak, who falls on his own sword. Later on, after the end of the battle, an Amalekite youth passes by the area of Mount Gilboa and sees the body of Saul and his crown and his armour. And apparently he says to David, Saul said, kill me before the Philistines get to me. And so I abate him. You’d have thought that David would’ve been happy about this, but in fact he’s not. He’s desperate about it. And not only that, he turns to the Amalekite and he says, “how dare you stretch out your hand against the anointed one of God.” And he condemns the Amalekite to death. Meanwhile, the body of Saul and Jonathan have been taken off the field of battle and taken away before they could be desecrated. And they are eventually returned for a normal burial.

But you can see from this how David so respects the position of kingship that he is violently opposed to anybody who undermines it. And we are going to see another example almost identical later on. But after this particular event, we see another side in the Bible to David. We have this dirge, one of the most beautiful, beautiful pieces of poetry in the whole of the Bible in which David’s famous phrase, how the mighty have fallen or the glory is gone, it makes in almost in a sense Cleopatra and Anton’s speeches rather shallow imitations of this beautiful poetry at the beginning of David’s reign, so to speak. But David’s reign at this moment is not assured. He is not the automatic successor of King Saul. And as a result, he is faced with almost immediately a civil war. The civil war is between his tribe, the tribe of Judah, and the remnant of the tribe and the family of King Saul. King Saul has left, Jonathan was his favourite son, but he’s dead. And there’s another Saul called Ish-bosheth, strange term 'cause Boosh in Hebrew is shame. So the man of shame, was that his real name or was the name applied to him afterwards? But Ish-bosheth is somebody who has been placed by a general court Abner, this strong man, strongman Abner on the throne of Saul. And he has the loyalty of most of the tribes of Israel, whereas really King David only has the tribe of Judah.

And he establishes himself and declares himself as king in Hebron, in Hebron, Hebron as the king in Hebron as opposed to the king of the north, the king of Saul. The Civil War is carried up by two generals. There is Abner carrying it out on the part of Saul. And there is Joab, the uncle of David, carrying it out on the part of David. These two generals. Soon after the death of Saul, these two sides come together. They come together at a place called the Pool of Gibeon. And you have a fascinating incident in which both sides send forward 10 men to fight against each other at the pool of Gibeon. It’s almost the same, whoever wins that will be the king. And in fact, what happens is each one grabs hold of the other one by the beard with their daggers stab each other and all of them get killed, which is reminiscent of certain examples, similar examples in early Greek mythology as well. On the way the end of this, the two generals say, look, this is no way to continue. Let’s not go to fight. Let’s go our separate ways. And they go their separate ways. But Joab has a younger brother called Asahel, and Asahel wants to make a hero of himself. And he runs after Abner with a spear to get his revenge for the fact that Abner brought about the death of his friends and is a Spitzer. He chased after Abner. Abner turns around and see’s coming and says, “Asahel, go back, don’t turn this into a battle.” And Asahel continues. And again he says, “don’t go back, I don’t want to shed any blood.” And again, Asahel pursues him. And finally Asahel catches up with him.

But Abner is stronger and he kills Asahel. And this becomes, if you like, the personal vendetta of Joab to avenge himself against Abner. There was a desire for peace, but some individual’s ability to make the wrong decision brings about continuing civil war. This goes on for several years. David in Hebron, Saul up in the north, 10 northern tribes until Abner falls out with Ish-bosheth. Ish-bosheth is the puppet on the throne. Abner is the boss. Abner asks Ish-bosheth if he can possibly marry one of the concubines of Saul, who after Saul’s death is left unattended. And Ish-bosheth takes this as a great personal insult. The woman who slept with my father is going to sleep with you, and he refuses. And Abner is so upset, you know, I’ve looked after you, I’ve protected you, you are now treating me as a dog. And he decides, enough’s enough, and he goes over to King David. And he negotiates with King David that he will bring the north to him and unite the kingdom finally under David, after these years beforehand. This happens, this negotiation while Joab is out in the field fighting the enemies. He comes back, he sees Abner walking out of the gate of the city. He comes in and he wants to know what’s happened. Wagner’s the enemy. Why was he let off? And he’s told David has made a deal with him and he is furious. and he runs after Joab personally and he kills him. David is weak. He’s relied on Joab his uncle. He’s furious, he can’t take action against Abner.

This is the problem sometimes of a monarch. You can’t alienate all your barons. You’ve got to negotiate. You are in a weak position for running the country. So he has to respond in some way. And his way of responding is by publicly declaring, I did not order this. This is not what I wanted. I’m against this. Don’t hold it against me. And in fact, the people accept this. They don’t hold it against him. And he is accepted as the king of everybody. But there’s a little incident after this that I find one of the most painful incidents in the text. When Saul had married off Michal, his younger daughter to David, and she had supported David, and David had fled. He married her after somebody else to a man called Palti Ben Laish. When David manages to regain the power of the north, he demands of Abner the general while he was still alive, that he should be given Michal back. And Abner gave instructions for her to be brought back. It took some time, but finally the Bible describes how Michal is being brought back to David and conducted by David’s soldiers. And behind them, her husband Palti Ben Laish is weeping, is weeping with tears. Why is he taking my wife, the one I love when he’s got so many other wives, six other wives, he’s got plenty of concubines. Why is he taking her. And this image of Palti Ben Laish walking behind in tears is something in a sense I hold against David. He didn’t need to do that. Why did he do this? Is it just because he needs to boost his ego? But there you see the other side coming up of this man’s character.

And we all have different sides to our characters. But this is a sad story. Abner is killed and there are two men who then want to ingratiate themselves with David. And even though Abner has handed all the reigns of power over to King David, still Ish-bosheth, the son of Saul remains alive. And these two men called Rechab and Baanah decide we want to ingratiate ourselves with King David by killing Saul. And they go off, they kill Saul, they come back and boast to David, “look, your enemy’s been taken away. There’s no challenge to your authority now. There’s only one person left over in the family and that’s a descendant of Jonathan. And he’s a cripple anyway we’re going to come back to him too.” David’s reaction is, how dare you kill somebody like this? It offends me. And he insists that they should pay the death penalty. So you see, he doesn’t want to benefit from the violence that other people carry out and he wants to protect the sanctity of the monarchy even though they have killed his rival. Anyway, now finally, after these years, seven and a half years in Hebron, he becomes king in Jerusalem or he prepares. He hasn’t yet conquered Jerusalem. He is going to do it in the first year where he is going to rule for the next 33 years to give 40 altogether. He conquers Jerusalem. The story is complicated as how he did it by initially trying to negotiate with the king of Jerusalem and the king of Jerusalem sending back an insulting message, accusing him of being no better than the blind or the crippled.

But anyway, he manages to find a way into the city, conquers it and that becomes his capital from that moment onwards. And in Jerusalem, he sits this new king now with eight wives and with 19 children. Not all of these children are in senior positions, but there he is. And the first thing he does in Jerusalem is he wants to bring the arc. The ark has been outside of Jerusalem all this time ever since. Initially it was captured by the Philistines, then brought back and then kept by different Jewish estates until this moment when he’s being brought up to Jerusalem to be in the centre, to make Jerusalem now the religious capital as opposed to all the other mini capitals and sanctuaries that existed before. On the way up to Jerusalem, there’s a little tragedy where somebody called Uzzah tries to grab hold of the arc 'cause he fears it stumbles and he dies. And David is furious with God for allowing this to happen because he’s doing this on the way up to glorify God. But nevertheless, he springs the ark into Jerusalem and he’s dancing and he’s dancing, like there was all this going wild and dancing and kicking on his feet. And probably as he was wearing skirts, showing up his leg or whatever it was. Michal his wife looks out the window and she says, “you are the king. Why you so demeaning yourself by dancing with a mob.” So we can see here two things. One of them, he’s a passionately religious man. For all of this that’s been going on, and all the years of fighting and battling, he’s always been consulting priests, he’s always been consulting Oracles asking what to do and what not to do. So he has a very deep, profound religious element.

And this has come out also in this poetic element in the songs, in the dirges he writes when he survives, king Saul’s attempt to kill him, when Saul dies and Jonathan dies and he laments them. But nevertheless, finally he comes up to Jerusalem, brings it to Jerusalem, and he turns round to his now chief prophet. They’ve always had prophet, he’s had various other prophets before. There’s God, and of course there is Nathan. And he says to Nathan, “you know, now I want to build a temple.” And Nathan comes back and he says to me, “look, I’m sorry. You’re a man of war. You’re a man of violence. The temple has to be a symbol of peace. We are not going to build a temple in your lifetime, in your son’s lifetime maybe, but not in your lifetime.” And this was again, a tremendously sore point for David. Going through the Book of Samuel, the next incident also shows David’s respect for the family of Saul and for Jonathan, his good friend. And he inquires about whether there’s any descendant of Jonathan left alive. And he’s told that there is another son, a son of Jonathan called Mephibosheth, not to be confused with Ish-bosheth. Mephibosheth was born not quite crippled, but when his mother heard about the death of Saul, she was conceived, she was pregnant at the time. She was so shattered and desperate by what had happened that Mephibosheth was born a cripple.

And he is of no challenge to the king. The king finds out of his existence and he sends somebody called Ziba to bring him to the king to see what he’s like. He sees that this is no threat. And so he gives an estate to Mephibosheth and tells Ziba and his sons to manage the estate for this poor crippled guy. But the crippled guy will come and have a place at King David’s table. Later on, later on, unfortunately, this guy, Ziba, not a nice guy, is going to betray Mephibosheth and claim that he was disloyal to David, which is not the case. And there is an example of David deciding in light of this, not to completely break off with Mephibosheth, but to split his state between Mephibosheth and Ziba. And this is interpreted by the rabbis as being an example of what happens when you listen to . He shouldn’t have listened to what Ziba said. He should have relied on Mephibosheth. But in the end he did deduct half of Mephibosheth’s estate to give to Ziba. There is another example of King David, I would say his problematic attitude to people. And this problematic attitude to people comes with regard to the Gibeonites. The Gibeonites were a group of people who were allied to the Israelites but not part of the Israelites. And Saul had, for whatever reason, we don’t know it was not mentioned earlier, had attacked them and killed large numbers. And there was a plague. And David thought the plague that he had was because he had done something wrong. And he asked the oracle what the cause of this was. And the Oracle said it was the death of the Gibeonites.

So he called the remaining Gibeonites together and said, “what will we do to avenge thee.” “Well, you know, we must get our vengeance. If there are any other people, remaining descendant of this family, we want them killed.” And unfortunately there were, David had them killed. Rizpah, their mother sat by their corpses weeping on a very sad episode as well. And again, this shows the problem that David had of trying to please everybody. You can’t please everybody, you can’t please some. But nevertheless, it is a stain on his reputation, which is another reason why this man is so complex and it’s so difficult to know how really to judge him. But clearly throughout his life, his reign, he was always being challenged by somebody or another. One of the most famous challenges is a man called Sheba Ben Bichri. Sheba Ben Bichri rebelled against him. The army was sent to bring him back on counts of treason. He holds up in a town in a fortress and David runs up, besieges the fortress, and says, “hand over this man to me and I’ll let you all live,” and nobody wanted to do that. But there was a wise woman in the town and said, “listen, we’re not going to allow this to happen. We want to save the town.” She kills Sheba Ben Bichri and David comes in, takes it over, the rebellions over. That’s important because later on in the Talmud, there’s this tremendous debate about can you kill somebody, one person to save two others or three or four others?

And the answer is, in a Talmud, no, you must never ever give somebody over to be killed or to be raped, to save other people. You can do it in self-defense if you are being attacked, but you can’t hand over another person. And therefore everybody turned around and said, ah, but what happened with Sheba Ben Bichri? Well, one argument would be, well that was David long before the Talmud. But the Talmud doesn’t work that way. And the Talmud says, ah, but when somebody is convicted of treason, that’s an exception. 'Cause in that sense, having been convicted, found guilty and convicted, they’re already dead. And that’s why this was okay. But the biggest challenge, the biggest challenge of all to David came from actually his sons and his children. And the beginning of this, it seems to me, starts off with the horrible case of Amnon and Tamar. Amnon was one of David’s sons from Assyria’s wife. Tamar was a daughter from another. Amnon developed a passion for his sister, a sexual passion for her, and he wanted her badly. And he didn’t know what to do. And he had an advisor, Jonadab, not a very nice guy who says, “you know what suggest you do? Pretend you are ill. And then ask your father, king David for Tamar to come and nurse you.

And then when you’ve got her, you can do whatever you want.” That’s what happened. Amnon asked his father, David, “I’m Ill, I’m sick. Please send Tamar to me.” He sent Tamar to him. Tamar came in, he grabbed hold of her and he began the process of raping her. She begged him not to and he raped her. And the moment he’d raped her, he felt disgust and he kicked her out and abandoned her. And she went and she told her brother of Absalom, another son from another wife, a brother, half brother. And he said, “look, don’t do anything. I want you to come and live with me. I’m going to take care of you and this is my responsibility.” And of course the question is, did David not know what was going on? Why was he so stupid as to advise Tamar to go to Amnon? And and why did he not respond afterwards? He knew what was going on. He must have had spies, particularly because initially Tamar came out weeping and screaming in the palace so he must have known something. He didn’t act. Absalom after a year decided, now things have died down, I’m going to act. And he sent a message to the king saying, “look, at harvest time, I want on my country estate to have everybody coming round, everybody coming round so that we can celebrate together and show how as a family we’re all united.” And King David said, “okay, that’s a great idea, great idea, why not.”

Absalom then invites everybody and finds a way at this event of getting hold of Amnon and killing him. When David hears about this, he’s furious. Furious, I don’t know if it’s over the fact that Absalom took the law to his own hand or that his other son was killed or that this was an example of division within the community, within the framework of the royal family. But either way, he sent Absalom into exile. And Absalom in exile gets bitter, angry, sends messages begging the king to have him back. And the king frankly loved Absalom. Absalom was his favourite son. He spurred Abraham to no end. And Joab again, the famous Joab, decides he wants to bring Absalom back. And we don’t know exactly whether his motive was political or personal, but he sees how David is suffering from not being, having his son with him. And so he gets somebody, a woman to come along to the king. He doesn’t want to do it directly, and spin a story about how she has two sons and one of them has done wrong and has gone into exile. And the other one she fears for whether she’s going to lose two sons in one go. And why can’t she bring the exile back. What does the king think? And the king says, “yes, well I think you should bring the exile back.” And at that moment, Joab comes in and says, “ah, well don’t you learn from this lesson?” And the king says, “what? You put this woman up to it?” Calls a woman up, she says, “yes, I’ve put him up to it.” And nevertheless, he allows Absalom to come back. Absalom comes back. He then takes up residents fundamentally in Hebron leaving David in Jerusalem. And in Hebron he begins to court the other tribes.

And so we’re already seeing here a play of the divisions between the tribes that has been perpetuated even after the unified kingdom. The unified kingdom was still shaky, dates why David had to tread so carefully. He goes to people in the different towns and they’ll say, I know you’re not happy with my father. Or you know, you know this judgement didn’t go your way. If I were in this position, I’d give a different judgement . If I were in the position there. And he got himself dolled up and he was a very good looking man with beautiful long flowing locks of hair. And everybody admired him and he had tremendous charisma. And Dave is already getting quite an old man. And as a result, he wins large numbers of people over. Soon he is strong enough and has acquired enough support, including the support of Joab, enough support of people to lead an open rebellion against his father. And so much so that he’s managed to take over control of Jerusalem. And from Jerusalem, he has forced David and most of his loyal retinue out. As David is leaving Jerusalem, before Absalom with his army can arrive in order to get rid of him. On the way out, he has got the ark with him and he turns to the high priest with the ark and says, “look, I don’t want the ark to be with me. Take it back to Jerusalem. That’s where it belongs. I want you and two of your sons to be in Jerusalem and let me know espionage, what’s going on there.” But otherwise, with a few people, he starts moving from Jerusalem down to cross over the River Jordan.

On the way down, there’s a man called Shimi ben Gera. Shimi ben Gera is a supporter of Saul. And as King David is going down, he curses him from the mountaintop and says, “you deserve everything you’re getting for what you did to Saul, for taking over the kingdom.” And curses , it’s a running curse all the way down the hill until David’s out of earshot. Again, some of the soldiers say to him, “let me go and kill him. "No,” says David, “leave him be, leave him be.” He goes down the hill, while he’s going down the hill, Absalom is calling a conference in Jerusalem to decide what to do. And David has asked one of his civil, older civil men, a man called Hushai to stay in Jerusalem and give evidence and and keep track of what’s going on. And Hushai comes before Absalom and says, “look, you know, I know I’m supportive of David, but you know, he’s an old man, he’s wrong. I want to be part of your group now.” So as to get into Absalom’s favour. And the main advisor that Absalom has is a man called Ahithophel. And Ahithophel comes in the Bible to be a nasty, mean character, a disloyal, a evil guy. By the time he gets to the Talmud, Ahithophel is a wonderful, a righteous man. He’s the head of the . He’s King David’s tutor and everything like that. But here in this story, as written in this text, he’s against David. And he advises Absalom to send his army right down now and grab him while he’s too weak, while he’s on the defensive. Hushai says, no, that doesn’t make sense. There’s still a chance that he can gather some people round in order to defend himself.

And then you’ll be in a losing position. Wait a little bit longer till you can get more reinforcements from the other tribes around to come and support you. And then when you’ve got a massive army, you can go and get him. And in the end, Hushai wins the argument. Ahithophel is so disgusted, he goes and commits suicide. David carries on down, manages to gather enough support to have an army, and there’s a final showdown between his army and Absalom’s army. And he gives instructions to Joab, and he says to Joab, “if the battle goes our way, whatever you do, do not kill Absalom. I want Absalom, my son, don’t kill him.” Well, the battle takes place. The battle takes place in a forest. And Joab’s team win. Absalom realise he is losing and riding away through this forest on a donkey or whatever it was, his hair gets caught in a low hanging branch with forms and he is trapped and the animal goes forward underneath him and he’s left dangling by his hair from the tree. Joab catches up with him and kills him, blatantly disregarding the instructions of David. All the people around him had refused to. He told him to kill him, kill him, kill him, none of them would, he did it. When David hears this, he’s distraught. Absalom says, “but he was your enemy. He tried to kill you.”

David was distraught and in the famous phrase, which sounds better in Hebrew than it does in English, Absalom, beni beni, Absalom beni beni. My son, Absalom, my son. Again, beautiful poetry, bewailing a serious loss. But this shows the Achilles heel of David. He didn’t discipline his sons. And there’s going to be another rebellion on his deathbed. He didn’t keep them under control. And the result of this is that he all but destroyed his household and his dynasty, and would’ve done 'cause Absalom certainly was not going to maintain, if you like, the religious position that his father David had. He had no scruples. I mean, David never killed anybody in cold blood in that same way, although earlier on the course, he killed the Philistines in battle, but not members of his family at any rate. And so this, all these events show the multifaceted character of this man, that he’s a fighting man, as I mentioned before, that he is, on the other hand, a family man, but he can’t control his wives children. He’s a politician, knows when to act politically. He preserves the monarchy, he supports the religion, he knows how to make compromises, but sometimes that shows him out to be weak. And all this in a sense is a kind of a paradigm of the challenge of all political leaders, all political leaders of court between their loyalty to their family and to their people. How they prepare for succession, how they don’t, when they’re political, when they are moral, when they try to balance them.

And of course, the one most famous, most famous incident of all that I’ve left to the last is the incident, or not the last, nearly the last, is the incident of David and Bathsheba. and the story of David and Bathsheba goes like this. David is in Jerusalem, meanwhile his army are out fighting a battle. And one of the generals in his army is a man called Uriah, the Hittite. So he had mercenaries in his army, including Uriah. Uriah happens to have a Jewish wife called Batsheva or Bathsheba. One day, David during the war campaign is on the roof of his house. And imagine sort of the cities of those days were small and concentrated and one house on top of the other, just like some extent, when you go through the old city of Jerusalem, you can go on rooftop from almost across the whole of the old city. And some people have done this, including Julian Barnett, who lectures and has lectured here on this series. And you can look down from these buildings and see into other buildings. And he looks down from his palace and he sees this beautiful woman taking a bath on a rooftop. And he is filled with admiration or with lust, probably with lust. And he sends his representative to go and bring her to his house. You might say he… I was going to compare Epstein Maxwell of somebody pimping somebody else, but that’s not appropriate so I shouldn’t have said that. So he sends somebody to bring Bathsheba to his palace and he sleeps with her and then sends her back again.

No commitment, no promise, no nothing. Several months later, Bathsheba is pregnant and she sends a message to the king and says, “what am I going to do?” The king then has a plan. He calls Uriah the Hittite to find out what’s going on. And he says to Uriah the Hittite, “listen, I want a report. So come back to Jerusalem. and since you’re back in Jerusalem, go back and sleep with your wife, spend some time at home with your wife, why not,” in the hope that he would be the one who would be the father of the child. Uriah says, “I couldn’t possibly. My men are suffering in the front and I’m going to look surely with my wife, and I can’t, I’m waiting here by the door until morning and then I’m going back to war.” David can’t do anything. One possible solution out of the window. The other possible solution, he sends a message with Uriah to the general in the front line, his usual man who does the dirty business saying, “listen, put him in the front line.” Normally the generals or the captains would be bit before. “Put him in the front line and then as soon as you’re in the battle, pull everybody back. He’ll be alone, he’ll be killed.” Uriah isn’t very happy about this, but that’s what he has to do and that’s what he does. And Uriah the Hittite is dead. As soon as David hears that, he calls Bathsheba into his palace. He comes to the palace, becomes another one of his wives and eventually gives birth to King Solomon. But pregnant with his baby, this baby becomes very, very sick. And David goes into a terrible state and he cries and he prays. And then with a child’s death he says, this is my fault. I did the wrong thing. I was terrible at what I did.

Actually before that, Nathan comes in the prophet to King David and says to him, “look, I want to tell you a story. I want to tell you a story about this little shepherd who lives out in the countryside, who’s got one little lamb. And this little lamb, he keeps him in his home, he looks after him, he sleeps with him, he sort of caresses him, he gives him the best food, he loves his little sheep. Near him, there’s a massive rich landowner. This rich landowner has guests. And instead of taking one of his own sheep, he goes and he takes a sheep of this poor man and kills him and offers him up as a meal. What should we do?” “Oh,” says David, “kill the man. That rich bastard you’ve got to put him to death.” And Nathan turns round to David and says, “that man is you. You could have had any woman, any woman in this country. Why do you have to take the married woman of another man and have him killed into the bargain? It is not what God wants.” Now any other Middle Eastern potentate, probably in our day, if he was challenged his way, would have the prophet’s head chopped off immediately. David accepts his rebuke. He bursts into tears, he cries, he begs for forgiveness. And again, this shows the duality of the man’s character. On the one hand, he has passion, he has lusts, and on the other hand, he accepts rebuke of this prophet of his and he accepts that he’s done wrong, which at least is better than nothing, even though it can’t bring the dead back to life or make up for what he did. So it’s this son who eventually is going to take over when finally the end comes to the reign. So when we go back and compare the two of them, what have we learned from this? One of them is that A, to be a successful king, you have to be strong.

This doesn’t mean to say sometimes you won’t have to compromise and it doesn’t mean sometimes you will realise that there are powers you can’t control. I can’t control your health. I couldn’t control him. He did lots of things I didn’t approve of. And yet I did rely on him and he was faithful to me and he did certain things for me. But on the other hand, the character who can be sensitive in the way he treated Saul’s family, who realises he has to protect the institution of the monarchy by getting rid of anybody who disrespects the monarchy. These are all ways of showing the evolution of a monarchical system which has started on such a shaky basis. Saul’s was a very shaky basis. And so in a sense, David has to restore respect for the monarchy, restore the monarchy, and maintain the fact that the king is subject to two constraints. Constraint number one is the constraint of the priesthood. The priesthood contains the oracle, the priesthood represents the religious system of the state. And the religious system is a very important control mechanism of the state. Just think of how important the priests were in Egypt and in Babylon, always ally to the king. But then you have a third element and that is the prophet. The prophet is not beholden to anybody, never appointed by anybody, which is why you have women prophets of the only have male priests 'cause it’s heredity.

But anything based on meritocracy in those days went to women way ahead of later years. And he was subject to them and he accepted that position. So these constraints were intended to keep the king under control. They didn’t always work, but they were there. He respected them, he encouraged them and he supported them. So for all these reasons, he is in a sense special. But I have to mention the fact that David is regarded by the Bible as the composer of the Psalms. Now this doesn’t mean to say he composed all of the Psalms. Some of the Psalms were written in Babylon. By the waters of Babylon, we sat and we wept, that happened after the exile, hundreds of years after David and David never went to Babylon to the best of my knowledge. And there were other, in fact the text says, this is , these are psalms that were done by the son of Korah who are priests. And there were other people who wrote these psalms. But the fact that he is considered to be means that he must have had this reputation in his day of being a poet and a psalmist and somebody who composed beautiful religious poetry, which has not been better to this very day and is still the foundation of praying in Judaism and in Christianity. Psalms are hallelujah or all go back to this original source that is considered to be King David. And in addition to that, we have his role of trying to rebuild the temple even though he wasn’t allowed to, of restoring the tabernacle to Jerusalem.

And finally the association that was not there in his time at all of being the Messiah. In his day he was anointed. That means Mashiach, Messiah anointed with oil. But and he was anointed with oil, that didn’t make him king immediately 'cause he had to wait until Saul died years afterwards, even after he initially being anointed, anointed maybe in a way was just if you like, an expression of good intention. But then after David, the ointment only came when there was a break in the David Dynasty or when a king was disputed. And so the idea of Mashiach being the appointment of a king where there’d been a break in the dynasty was something that was very important in Babylon 2,500 years ago during the exile 'cause they hoped to go back. And in fact under Cyrus some of them did go back and they did reestablish, not the monarchy, but they reestablished Jewish life and temple life at that moment. The monarchy wasn’t restored controversially until the Maccabees later on. So in Babylon, the idea of a Mashiach, a messiah was a new idea that simply meant somebody’s going to bring us back home to Jerusalem. No more than that. No stipulation who would be. But interestingly enough, there were two Messiahs in Babylon. There was the Messiah of David and there was the Messiah of Joseph who represented the 10 northern tribes. So these two messiahs were tribal, if you like, emblems of returning to power, but nothing to do with what we call a Messianic era.

However, today in our prayers, the Messianic era has been developed probably in significant competition to the Christian idea of a messiah, but also because of the hope in the biblical prophets of a period when the world will be at peace that David is the symbol of that. Mashiach Ben David, we sing every Friday night after we make Havdalah, that we will have David as the Messiah coming back, which is another reason why David holds a unique position in the history and in the religious significance of the Jewish monarchy.

And so having ended with that particular point, we’ll now turn to any questions if there are. And so let’s see what we have. And if you haven’t asked one yet, there’s plenty of time to ask one yet.

Q&A and Comments:

So the first question I have here is from Esther who says, I find it interesting that the Joseph story, there was first did not last Saul was the only one Judah’s line on the other hand did not die. I really don’t understand quite what that question means, so I can’t really give a fair answer.

Q: Ellie asks, how did Jonathan die?

A: He died with Saul on Mount Gilboa at the hands of the Philistines. Rose asks, Joab was an able warrior but was a Machiavellian. And that’s why he meets his end eventually. Yes, he is a Machiavellian. He will meet his end eventually, but not while King David is alive as we will learn the next session when we turn to King Solomon. Rodney Stanger asked, did David not send someone to battle and die as he desired this man’s wife. Yes, that’s the story of Uriah the Hittite. I mentioned it eventually, but not in chronological order. A very human Messiah says Romania. Yes, and we think of the Messiah in that period as being very, very human. Now, there are different opinions within Judaism about whether the Messiah is a person or an era or whether it is somebody coming back from the dead or somebody completely new. There’s a whole debate about it in the Talmud, in the chapter Sanhedrin. There are about 25 different theories about who the Messiah might be, will be, or might not even be something the Messiah has already come in the past and is not going to come again.

Q: Why was Solomon chosen to be the new king?

A: We’re going to deal with that next time. Please God, that’s going to be at the end of the month. We’re not going to meet for another three weeks or so. Thank you for bringing the biblical text alive.

Q: Thank you. Jonas, what happened to the ark of the covenant after it was sent back to Absalom’s Jerusalem?

A: It remained in Jerusalem and then was transferred into the temple that King Solomon built. King Solomon built the temple and it had a place in the temple and was there, It disappeared. Officially, it disappeared with the Babylonian exile of Nebuchadnezzar in 586. But in fact there were three other invasions of Jerusalem before that. One from Egypt, one from Babylon, and one from Assyria in the sense that all the holy vessels were taken out because they were so precious and in fact were handed over in order to buy off the enemy 'cause life was more important than physical possessions. And so we don’t know what happened to the ark of the covenant. It seems to me logical if it was still there, and I’m not certain it was still there by the time the Babylonians came. The ark of the covenant basically was a wooden box which was laid over in gold with two golden cherubs over the top. And in this wooden box were by tradition kept the 10 commandments, both the broken version and the unbroken version. And at the side is . If you are conquering an artefact, you want the value of it probably. And so the likelihood is that the wood would’ve been burnt down, the gold would’ve been melted and it would’ve been taken off to Babylon. There is a story told in the Talmud that in fact what happened was the ark was then when the invasion took place, was buried underneath the temple. And there was occasion during later temple times when somebody, a priest walked over a particular spot was burned to death. And that’s because he walked over the spot where the thing was buried. The trouble with that is that the Romans when they conquered the temple, demolished it completely and dug down. And there was no chance of something like that not being found if it was there because they ploughed the Jerusalem and sewed it with salt. So everything came afterwards and anything of value would’ve been picked up at that stage. But there are people who say, no, it was taken earlier by the Egyptians or taken earlier on an earlier Babylonian invasion. So we don’t know. The one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that anybody who is looking for the ark nowadays outside of Hollywood is wasting his time. I don’t care what any theories anybody gives about where it is in North Africa, South Africa, North Southern America, south, China, India or everywhere else, it ain’t there. So Miriam, thanks for bringing .

Robin, yes. Esther, what I mean is the Judas line did not die. Judas line didn’t die. No Judah’s line remained the line from Jacob saying that Judah will be the leader. So on Jacob’s death dead he says, Ruben, the first one, you’re not up to it. Judah is going to be the leader. But on the other hand, Joseph is remarkable and very, very special. And so some people say he’s alluding to the fact that there will eventually be two Jewish kingdoms. The kingdom of Judah from the Judah family and the kingdom of the North Israel from the Joseph family in the northern kingdom was indeed called either Aphrai, Manasa or Joseph because it was from that family. Azad, Ahithophel is bad advice. Yeah, well actually Ahithophel’s advice was good. It’s just that Ahithophel wasn’t a very nice guy.

Q: Ralph, were the kings of the time considered to have divine rights enabling to create their own moral codes. How did that common found a Jewish rule?

A: No, absolutely Ralph. They had no divine right of kings. That was not a Jewish concept at all. It’s probably as divine right of kings not there till the early Christian era with the Pope claiming a divine right and the Holy Roman emperor is claiming a divine right. But no, there was no such thing. The Torah itself says the king is subject to the law. He is never above the law. And that was maintained in principle even though there were plenty of kings, certainly under the Maccabees who overruled the law, overruled the rabbis and didn’t give a damn about it.

Is there anything else? Is the land story referred to of . Honestly, I don’t know what you are talking about. Yes, it would make sense, you know, the sacrifice of the poor that would make sense, but I haven’t found that a common expression.

Okay, I think there being no other questions, I think I’ve covered everything, in which case, Hanukkah is over. There are holidays ahead and I wish you all happy holidays and I will see you towards the end of the month.