Jeremy Rosen
King David and the Limits of Monarchy

Rabbi Jeremy Rosen - King David and the Limits of Monarchy

- Hello, everybody. We are back to talk in the series that deals with primarily, whoopsie, I’ve lost you for a moment, so I’m going to have to get back. I apologise for this. There we are. Okay, we’re back again. So this is a lecture in the series of leadership and David, King David is the ultimate model of the Jewish monarchy and Jewish leadership. And in fact, in our daily prayers, we ask for the return of King David and his monarchy, which has always struck me as being seriously problematic. But then, the character of David is fascinating because the Bible starts off with certain forms of leadership. I’ll go through them in a minute. And these all lead up to the idea of a king, of a monarch and a heredity monarchy, which again, is a problem for me. The first example of leadership, of course, is Moses, which one would call a theocracy. He is the voice piece of God on earth, but he does include within the Bible, certain other elements that are necessary for leadership. So he’s told by his father-in-law, “Don’t hold all the reigns of power in your hand. You can’t cope if you do. You need to delegate.” And so he delegates. The first thing that he delegates is the priestly role to his brother. And this is very important because in the ancient world, the king and the priest worked together.

The temple was next to the palace. The priests supported the king or got into trouble with the king, but they were part of the king’s party. In addition to that, he talks about judges, the judicial system. And again, in the ancient world, the judicial system was linked to the religious system, was linked to the monarchy, and the monarch was the representative of God on Earth. And then, he goes even further and talks about expanding into the elders, these different people appointed to deal with local problems and personal problems. And they broke down from leaders of thousands to leaders of hundreds, to leaders of tens. So that there was a direct link between the leadership at the top and the ordinary people lower down. And then in addition, there were tribes and each tribe had its own tribal leader. When Moses died, Joshua carried on that tradition. But soon after Joshua’s death, that whole system falls apart. And instead, you have the ruling of tribes. The tribes were divided. They couldn’t come together. And each leader of a tribe emerged, either on the basis of charisma or on the basis of, shall we say, democratic vote. And parallel with tribes, you have the beginning of the role of the prophets. The prophets were not managers, they were not rulers, they were advisors, they were inspirers. Their role was to deal with the spirit rather than the law and the political structure. But very soon, it became clear that both, the tribal leaders, and in fact, the priests were betraying their tradition. And this feeling of losing grip of the people splitting into different units, tribal units, joining other nations got them to get the last of the judges, Samuel, to appoint the first king. Interestingly enough, Samuel’s sons had betrayed, they were corrupt, betrayed their father’s authority and it was this corruption that led to a change in the system of administration. The first king appointed was Saul. Again, David hasn’t come on the scene yet.

And Saul, as we know, was a failure. And he was a failure on several counts. Count number one was he did not accept the authority of the church, so to speak. The Bible has already said that if you appoint a king, the king has to have a copy of the law, of the constitution and it should be with him all the time. He should be aware of it. And this constitution was designed to act as a brake on the king. And at the same time, you had the prophet whose role was to act as a brake on the king when it came to ethical issues, not necessarily political issues. After Samuel has appointed Saul, Saul has shown himself to be weak. He was told to take a firm stand, but he failed to take a firm stand. And although in a sense, he understood the importance of taking this firm stand, he essentially was chosen to be a military leader. He was chosen ‘cause he was tall and strong, head and shoulders above everybody else and that was why he was chosen. But soon, he showed himself to be weak in other areas, moody and jealous, and particularly jealous of King David, who ended up as his son-in-law, but he tried to kill several times and David had to flee. David was shown already at this stage to have certain qualities. He was a musician. He played in the royal court. People fell in love with him. He was popular. And the daughter of Saul, the king fell in love with him. And Saul’s son, Jonathan, fell deeply in love with him. There’s a whole question of when Saul got to know David.

We won’t go into that here, but at any rate, this period of the first king ended with the death of Saul and the death of Jonathan, which seemed to leave David as the sole heir. And that’s the assumption. David had already been appointed by Samuel as king when he realised that Saul wasn’t going to be there. But it seems from the Bible that David didn’t tell anybody, nobody else knew about it, this is a secret he kept to himself. Maybe his family knew. But nevertheless, even so knowing it and even being pursued by Saul who tried to kill him, he exercised enormous restraint. And he had several opportunities to kill Saul. Saul had tried to kill him, but he did not, because he took this position it’s not for me to challenge the anointed one of God. So he had enormous respect for the kingship, for the monarchy before he was actually crowned king. Saul and Jonathan both die on Mount Gilboa when they are attacked by the Philistines and they die. And the story of Saul’s death is an interesting one, because according to the official text, Saul said as he was about to lose the battle, he said to his armour brother, “Please kill me 'cause otherwise, they’ll get me, they’ll torture me, they’ll make fun of me.” He couldn’t do it, but in the end, there was a kind of a suicide pact. Saul died. His body was taken away by some of his loyal followers and put somewhere else. When David heard about this death, he mourned it tremendously. There’s this beautiful, beautiful poem of his that opens up the second Book of Samuel with mourning the loss of Saul and saying all nice things about him.

And then interestingly enough, one of the non-Jewish guys turned up and thought, “Oh look, if I can show that I killed Saul, then maybe I’ll get a reward.” And he came to David and thought David would reward him, but in the end, David did not, put him to death on the grounds that this is disrespect for the king. Now, when they died, as I said, one would’ve thought that David would automatically become appointed the king of all of Israel, but it didn’t work out that way. He was only anointed king in the south, in Judea together with Benjamin and he was crowned in Chevron, Hebron. But meanwhile, there was another son of Saul that we hadn’t heard about before, a man called Ishbosheth, and he was crowned king of the 10 other tribes, which are going to be eventually the 10 northern lost tribes. And his general was Abner, whereas as David’s general was his uncle Joab. David went out of his way to be nice to the 10 northern tribes, but this was a political division. And although for four and a half years, he was able to carry on in Chevron, he carried on in Chevron while the north had gone in a different direction. This shows something about David. It shows that he was not prepared to make war, even though his general Joab advised him to go and attack and forced him to come together. He avoided war, if he possibly could.

It’s true that he had to go to war to survive while Saul was still alive by allying himself with the Philistines, which shows that he was prepared to make treaties and become friend with people who were potential enemies, so he was a diplomat as well, and he knew how to play different roles. And at one stage, he was worried he’d be attacked if he took refuge in a Philistine city and he pretended to be mad, so he was a bit of an actor as well. So he’s shown himself to be a fighting man, somebody who is also a singer and a poet, so he has a spiritual dimension, somebody who is a diplomat, but also somebody who in a sense, has strong people around him who he needs as political allies, his uncle Joab, the general. And this was, if you like, the first strike against him in the sense that he recognised the limitations of power. If you don’t have the right people around you, no matter how good you are, you’re not going to be able to cope. And it was Joab who was involved in trying to incite David to war, whereas David tried his best to resist. Actually in the end, it was Abner, the general of Ishbosheth in the north, who ended up being insulted by Ishbosheth. And he as a result went to negotiate with King David a merger of the two kingdoms, to which David agreed. The trouble was that Joab, his uncle, had a grudge against Abner going back a long time because Abner had actually killed brothers. And when Abner was on the way out after the negotiations, which Joab wasn’t part of, he killed him. David was distraught. Again, he made an act of public contrition in order to show the extent to which he did not approve, even though he could not take action against his uncle.

So this was one of the weaknesses of his position. Parallel with this, there was the weakness of his position morally. And this came about in a famous story of Bathsheba. He’s out on the roof of his palace one day, looking around and there, because the towns and cities were small and constricted and people used their roofs a lot, he looked out and he saw this beautiful woman taking a bath on her roof. And being the king, good to be the king, he invited her. We know what he invited her for back to his palace and he slept with her. And having done that, he sent her back home. A few months later, she sends a message to him saying, “I’m pregnant.” Well, where was her husband? Her husband was Uriah the Hittite. Now, the Hittites were not Jews. The Hittites were a very powerful nation to the north. And so we already learned from this that David is appointing mercenaries. The Hittite is a strong member of the Judean army and he is out fighting a battle out against the enemies, and so King David sends a message to Uriah, “Come home and take a break and spend time with your wife.” So you see he’s deviously planning already that he goes home, has sex with his wife, so we can blame him for a birth of a child. He must have heard that there was something afoot because when he comes back to the palace and the king says, “Go back home,” he says, “No sir, how can I do this? My soldiers are out there fighting in the war. How can I possibly go home and enjoy my life with my wife? I’m going to spend the night here.”

So David speaks with the problem. And what does he do? He writes a letter to Joab, which he asks Uriah to take, in which the letter says, “Would you, please make sure this guy is killed? Put him in the front of the battle and when he’s in the front, withdraw everybody else and he will die. Please do this as a favour to me.” At first, Joab didn’t want to. He resisted. But in the end, he conceded and this is what happened. Uriah went into the battle and he was killed, at which the news came King David took Bathsheba into his palace. She became one of his favourite queens. And the baby unfortunately, died. But before the baby could die, the prophet Nathan, there were two prophets about this time. One was called Gad, the other was called Nathan. Nathan came into the king and he said to the king, “King, look, horrible thing has happened. Just outside Jerusalem, there’s a poor little man and he has only one little sheep. This is his only prized possession. He lives with this sheep, he keeps it warm at night. That’s all he has. Up the hill, there’s a very wealthy landowner. He’s got lots and lots of sheep, lots and lots of goats. He’s very wealthy. Visitors come for him for a meal and he goes and he takes the sheep of this poor little man and slaughters it and feeds it up for the meal. What should I do? King David says, "That’s terrible! That’s horrible! What a corrupt, awful man! Kill him!”

And Nathan said, “That’s you. This is you. You could have any woman you like. Why do you have to go and kill somebody in order to take another man’s wife?” To his credit, David broke down. He said, “Look, I realise how terrible I’ve done. This is something terrible, and went into a state of mourning, of prayer. And unfortunately, the baby dies and he in the state of mourning, recovers and then he has another child with Bathsheba and he becomes King Solomon, of course. This is an important story because in the Bible, it’s asserting the fact that the king is not an absolute monarch. He cannot be an absolute monarch. He has to abide by a moral code, by a constitution of some sort. And so this is the important aspect of the moral stature of David that he was able to accept rebuke, imagine somebody trying to stand up to put it in this day and age. And this is a marker in his favour, but it’s also a definition of the fact that a monarch cannot be absolute. There’s another feature that is mentioned in the Torah about the nature of this man. Despite his charisma, despite his popularity, and he was extremely popular for most of the time, he was an utter disaster when it came to his family. And it’s interesting. We’ve already seen Samuel as a disaster when it came to his sons before him. Eli, high priest, one of the early judges, he, two sons were corrupt. And some people even say that the children of Moses were corrupt because they’re not mentioned afterwards, not directly, only indirectly in the Book of Judges, there is a hint that the grandson of Moses was a pagan. And so the idea emerges that leadership can be so involved in the community that in the end, the family suffers. And to some extent, you could see that with the late Queen of England’s family and other royal families. But the failure of his family is illustrated by three important events.

One of them is the famous rape of Tamar. David has all these sons from different wives and one of them, a man called Amnon, is in love with his half-sister, Tamar and he wants to sleep with her. Son? Why not? So you see, the sense of entitlement that the royal family had. And he goes to David and he says, "David, look,” I mean actually he had an advisor, not a very nice man who advised him, advised him why don’t you go to the king and ask if his daughter can come and feed you because you’re ill and sick. And then if she comes to you, you’ll be able to grab her and have your way with her. And so this is what happens. He goes to David, he says, “Please, can my sister come and serve me?” Should have been a warning note. Why does he need the sister to come and serve him? He’s not well, he’s ill. There are plenty of other people who could minister to him. David doesn’t seem to notice or even care. So he gets Tamar to come. She comes to him and he grabs hold of her. She pleads not to rape her. He rapes her, and as soon as he rapes her, he’s disgusted and he throws her out into the street and she goes to her brother, Absalom.

Absalom tells what happens and Absalom says, “Look, don’t make a fuss about this. We don’t want a public scandal, we had this before. Come into my home, stay with me. I look after you and I’m going to deal with him.” Why isn’t King David dealing with him? Why is there no evidence that David took this case up altogether? Well, Absalom waits a year and after a year, he goes to David and he says, “Look, I’m having a sheep shearing party out in the countryside. I’d like all my brothers and half sisters also to come and join me.” One wonders whether David wondered about this altogether, but clearly did not. When Amnon arrives, Absalom looks for an opportunity and he kills him and he avengers his sister. Now on this, David is distraught and he exiles Absalom from the court, but not for very long because Joab, his general, convinces him or gets a woman to pretend that she’s lost a son and wants him back again, and under some device, gets him back to court. So is David doing this to please Joab or is he doing it because he believes let bygones be bygones or is madly in love with his son? And Absalom was his favourite son. And Absalom paid him back at a later date by rebelling against him. And not only rebelling against him, but getting him driven out of Jerusalem and about to send an army to kill him. And despite all this, despite the exile of David from Jerusalem, a threat to his life with Absalom’s belief, in the end, thanks to advice given by an agent of David in the Palace of Absalom, which shows another important aspect to him, the importance of having agents, of having people who can advise you well and can act on your behalf of espionage.

And as a result, when the battle came, David said in advance to Joab, “Whatever you do, don’t kill my son. Whatever happens.” Well in the battle, Absalom is defeated. He flees through the forest, his hair gets caught in the trees and he’s dangling there and Joab arrives and he stabs him to death defying David’s orders. When David hears this, he’s distraught, he weeps. “Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, I wish I’d have died instead of you.” Very strange, but anyway, that’s what he says. But again, no action against Joab. He can’t, Joab is too strong, too powerful. The third example, towards the end of his life. Towards the end of his life, he is old, lying in the palace. They bring this lovely girl, Abishag the Shunammite, to lie on him, to keep him warm. And the Torah, the Bible is very clear, he didn’t have sex with her, she was just keeping him warm, lest you might think otherwise. And while he’s there in this position, another son, an older son and Solomon, Adonijah goes down and has himself crowned in Chevron where David was originally, and proclaimed king. And this is in defiance of the fact that David is still very much alive. And so the prophet Nathan, together with Bathsheba, find a way of getting into King David and asking him, Have you appointed Adonijah to be the king?“ And he said, "No.” And Bathsheba says, “You promised me that Solomon would be the king.”

And he says, “Definitely Solomon is the king,” and he gave instructions to take Solomon and get him down to the right place in Jerusalem and have him anointed and appointed king. And then, conveniently David dies. But again, you see another one of his sons rebelling against him. This is constant, should we say conflict, political disagreement within the palace. And so, here is another example of the weakness or the limits, if you like, of the monarchy. As David is dying, he gives instructions to Solomon. And the instructions he gives to Solomon are to kill two people who he didn’t have the strength to kill. One of them was Joab. He resented Joab. He made Joab considered that he was guilty of ignoring David’s wishes, both in terms of killing Abner and in terms of killing Absalom. And he also asked David to take care of a man called Shimei Ben Gera who had cursed David at his moments of weakness, but again, David didn’t want to show personal revenge for somebody like this. And he also asked him to reward certain people who had supported him in the course of his life. And then he expired. So you see, he was not in a position to wreak vengeance, or he didn’t feel he wanted to for those people who he had good cause to in his terms because of the fact they rebelled against the king. So we have this nuanced picture of King David. The one problem we have of David is that he was clearly a religious man. He brought the tabernacle back to Jerusalem from its being a wandering centre of no fixed abode.

And Nathan said to him, “I know you want to build a temple, but no, the temple cannot be built by somebody who has a record of going to war.” Which shows that they held against him the fact that he was a warrior, and it was left to Solomon who did not have a military approach. Indeed, Solomon then develops the country of the combined Judah and the 10 northern tribes known as Joseph into the biggest estate that it ever was, which reached up into northern Syria and down to the borders of Egypt. So Solomon achieved this, he achieved this through treaties. And in those days, how did you make a treaty? You made a treaty by negotiation and then taking one of the other side’s daughters or sisters as your wife and you would give one of your hierarchy a daughter sister to them and this would cement the relationship. And that’s how Solomon worked. The result is, according to the Bible, he had 700 wives and he had 300 concubines, which means he must have got round to them if he did once every two years, if he was lucky going every night, which is unlikely. But anyway, that was his approach. The trouble was that in order to please them, he then started building them palaces and he allowed them freedom of religion, which in one way, we’d think is very praiseworthy. But each one of these pagan princesses had their own pagan temples. And the pagan temples kind of being quite attractive in that society, particularly because idolatry was much more permissive sexually. And so Solomon, in a sense, was more successful than David, in another sense, he was less successful than David.

And whereas David was able to combine the south Judea and the north of the 10 northern tribes into one kingdom, when Solomon died, they split so that you now had two kingdoms instead of one. And again, we have to put this to blame at some stage at the feet of Solomon because the reason for the split is he built the temple and he built all these palaces and he got everybody to contribute, pay taxes coming to Jerusalem and he got all the families and all the tribes to give annual tributes in terms of sending people to work in the building process and to support the whole structure of government in Jerusalem, so he already failed to understand the importance of giving significance to the people around the periphery. It’s very interesting that the other example of this is King Ahasuerus of the Persian empire, much later because King Ahasuerus, for all his faults, did indeed have feasts in the capital for the outlying states and the outlying counties of his empire, as well as those in the centre. Whereas what happened with Solomon is he placed too much emphasis on the centre, another example of the failure of monarchy, but at least he built the temple. And so David’s uniqueness is that he established the House of David. The house of David was ruled over apart from one brake, where a Phoenician princessa Talia who’d married into the family, assassinated her children and took control for a couple of years until she was deposed.

All the kings of the south were descended from King David. Whereas in the northern kingdom, which started soon afterwards, not one of them was and one followed the other in pretty quick succession, all of them were pagan. Whereas interestingly, even in the south, half of the kings who were descended from David were themselves pagans too. Of course, the Northern Kingdom, which was conquered by the Assyrians in 720, 722, there’s an argument. they were scattered and they lost their identity. The Judeans who lived together for another couple of hundred years and were conquered by the Babylonians, they were taken off most of them, to Babylon where they succeeded in establishing a new Jewish community. Their captured king was taken out of prison. And so they had there, in Babylon, a Jewish centre which thrived and they did very well and they integrated and became advisors and part of the royal court, which explains why then we are called Jews because we are descended from the House of Judah that reestablished itself in Persia and then was able to send people to rebuild a temple in Jerusalem. I mention this because this is where the idea of reestablishing the House of David, mashiach, meaning an anointed one, would bring back the Kingdom of David, which explains why in the liturgy that developed at that stage, David was a symbol and became a symbol of Jewish independence in the past. And the nostalgia of going back to that period where we were in charge of our own fate, we were in charge of our own community, led to this idea of the importance of King David.

And of course over time, the idea of Magen Davi, the star of David 'cause David was the protector. Magen means a shield, but David protected us. So this explains why David holds this important role, also because the Book of Psalms. The Book of Psalms is attributed to David, although even the Talmud agreed lots of other people wrote Psalms and went on writing Psalms long, long, long after and certainly King David never sat and wept by the waters of Babylon. But he did combine the features, probably more than anybody else, as close as you can get to an ideal monarch. And the ideal of monarchy was until relatively recently, the ideal that most of the civilizations of the world adhere to and thought was the right way to rule. The question is do we have to think this is the right way to rule in the future? And the truth of the matter is no, I don’t. I don’t think that monarchy is necessarily the best form of government. I don’t know what a better one is, but I don’t particularly like the monarchy and I have certain disagreements with the idea of democracy in theory. But as Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is a terrible form of government, but it’s the best one we’ve got. Don’t know of a better one I’d rather live under.” And so in praying and thinking about returning King David, I do not think in terms of reestablishing the monarchy, I do think in terms of his being an important symbol of the past and I do think it’s important in establishing certain fundamental principles that whatever form of government we have, we need to have an ethical counterbalance.

The two have to work together. You can’t allow politics to have the only say because politics is corrupt it self interest, whether because you want to be employed again and win the next election or because the sort of people who go into politics are not necessarily the best examples of how to govern or how to rule or people. Wherever we’ve seen it, monarchies have been disasters one way or another. They’ve had their good points, without any question, some better than others, but I certainly don’t think that monarchy is the model. But I do think a model is this combination of the political and the ethical, and it saddens me that ethics don’t come into this at all. On the other hand, I’m not in favour of religion because religion has its own specific agenda, and its own agenda is mainly for its own followers. And most states now have people from multi different religions. And so I think it’s very important to have a form of spirituality that is not necessarily associated with a particular religion, which is why I believe in the separation of state and religion. But I don’t believe in the total divergence between religion or ethics rather and monarchy and government. So I look at this as a symbol, a recognition that leaders are human, that leaders make mistakes. This is the, if you like, the beautiful side of the Torah, of the Bible, that if you take it at face value, and I’m not talking about rabbinic interpretation here, which came much later. If you look at face value, all the major figures are people with flaws. They all make mistakes. Nobody is perfect. There is no such thing as perfection. And so in fact, there is no such thing as a perfect world or a perfect government.

We just have to do the very best we can with the material we have. And so therefore, I believe that King David, as we have him in our liturgy, as we have him in the Bible, as we have him in our tradition, and whether it’s a theological or a mystical or simply a historical tradition, is an important example of the theory of government and a pointer to what the best forms of government are, but at the same time pointing out the pitfalls of government. There are several cases in by the time you get to the Talmud where the rabbis are saying, “Beware of government, they’re only in it for their own interests.” Beware of power. Power corrupts. Try to find a balance between the two as best you can. And this is the dream we still pursue. And if you ask why we haven’t yet achieved it thousands of years after King David, my answer is, well, if you take the fact that human beings have been involving for millions and millions of years, what has happened in a couple of thousand is only a short little blip. And therefore, we have this idea that we should always be optimistic that we can make this world a better place and the idea of a dream of a perfect leader is a dream of decent government. And so at that point, I will conclude my presentation and see if we have any questions to pursue in the second part.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Elliot asks, “Dear Rabbi, how can one believe that kings were Hashems representative on earth? It is believed that a number of them were corrupt.”

A: Elliot in Cleveland. Well, yes, I have precisely mentioned this point that when we talk about God, we are only projecting from our position what God thinks and how God functions because God is not a human being. God is not, if you like, a superman in the sky. And all we have to go on are our texts. Other than the mystical experience that a lot of us have with a spiritual world. And so I look to the texts to be teaching us lessons. And the texts are teaching us that we must go on looking for different forms of government. There is no one answer. Moses didn’t have it, the judges didn’t have it, the kings didn’t have it, the prophets didn’t have it. There is no single form. Is socialism right? Is capitalism right? Both of them have certain good elements in them and certain negative ones. So I think we have to get away from the idea that there is some sort of perfect answer. The idea of absolute truth and perfect answer is the fault of the Western intellectual tradition that goes back to Socrates and the pursuit of the perfect, the absolute good. The Torah is one in which it doesn’t say there is no good. On the contrary, it says there are good models and the Torah gives some good models and some good roles. But at the same time, we have to be open and flexible and recognise the limitations. And so in one sense, when you talk about the Torah as the word of God, what you are really saying, the message that this is giving us is a guide to how we should live and which pitfalls we should avoid. And story of the Judean monarchy is a perfect example of that. Good ones and bad ones and horrible ones.

Q: Barios, “If Bathsheba was married to Hittite, does that mean she was not Jewish? And if that is the case, how was Solomon Jewish?”

A: Well, that’s a very good question. This whole question of how do you identify, first of all, if you take the traditional version that it goes by the mother and Bathsheba was Jewish, then in those days, people married across the board. And it seems that at the time then your identity depended on which society you lived in. So for example, there’s no record of Ruth actually going through a process of conversion. The process of conversion happens with Ezra, with a return from Babylon because in Babylon, so many people were marrying out an abandoning Judaism. But in the early biblical period, if you came to live in a society, you adopted their gods, and Ruth came to live in Judea and she adopted the God and says so very clearly, “Your God is my God.” And so in those days, it was where you lived that defined your identity as much as where and who gave birth to you. The idea of conversion comes later. So on one level, you could say even if Bathsheba was not Jewish, even if Uriah the Hittite a Hittite originally, but now was incorporated into Judaism, they were part of the Jewish structure and indeed, Ruth was the great-grandmother of King David, so it doesn’t seem to have been a problem. So you have to understand that Jewish identity was fluid then and it became more structured with formal conversion at a later date. Or you could say yes, there was a beit din in those days and she did come before the beit din and she was converted. Or Uriah the Hittite was converted. You choose.

Q: Arlene asked, “I was told that Uriah as was the custom at the time, divorced Bathsheba before going into battle. Please comment.”

A: You’re right. The Talmud. The Talmud completely whitewashes virtually all the biblical characters. And there is a famous statement in the Talmud that says, “Whoever said King David sinned is wrong.” How could David possibly have sinned? How could Solomon possibly have sinned? Despite the fact that in the Bible, David said, “I sinned, I did wrong and I’m sorry that I did wrong.” I think this is because very simply, by the time you get to the Talmudic period, you have the rise of Christianity with the idea of saints and that Jesus was a saint, that the apostles were saints, these were perfect people for us to muddle ourselves on. Whereas Judaism couldn’t say our people were imperfect. That would sound as something wrong with us. So they had to go back and reinterpret the Torah to say that they were perfect. Now, how do they do that? It’s true that the Torah says divorce is acceptable. So a biblical law says divorce is acceptable. It doesn’t define marriage, but it does say you may give a written get and the rabbis felt that wasn’t enough. We need to strengthen it and we need to introduce the idea of a ketubah, of a document of marriage. And we need this because if a husband dies, then there has to be care taken of the wife and there has to be care taken of inheritance and the children and the estate. And so they introduced this idea of the ketubah before you could get married. And they also clarified the laws of gittin, of divorce because from the Bible it looks as though it’s entirely up to the man, and they wanted to say no, a woman has to have a say as well.

Even if the legal procedure is male dominated, we need to give the woman certain rights. And so they developed the idea of marriage and deal with the question of divorce 'cause you’ve heard about the idea of an agunah, somebody whose husband has gone, disappeared, either dead, we don’t know where, or he’s just gone to hide or pretend he is dead and without evidence that he is dead, a woman can’t remarry. And what the rabbis did was they established something which rabbis today haven’t got round to doing, although they should get round to doing it, some do through a prenup. Whenever a person went out to war or went out on a dangerous mission, they insisted that he writes a bill of divorce before he goes out. And this divorce will say, “If I do not come back by a certain time, you are divorced.” And if she is retroactively divorced, then of course, that means she is free to marry anybody else she wants to. So the rabbi said at the time of King David, even though this is anachronism 'cause these laws didn’t come in until the Talmudic era. At the time of King David, every soldier wrote a bill of divorce before he went out, so if he didn’t come back, his wife was free and free to remarry, and that is their reason for saying that Bathsheba was okay. He didn’t commit any sin and stop making out that he was worse than he was.

Q: Shelly, “Jacob doesn’t deal with the rape of his daughter Dina either. Her brother Simon Levy do. What does this say about Jacob and David?”

A: And that’s an excellent point, Shelly. That’s true, Jacob also didn’t take action. He left it to the brothers. And maybe you might say David was following Jacob’s example. Either way, whatever it was, it wasn’t a good idea. “Supposedly,” Shelly continues, “David made Shimei the teacher of Solomon, which doesn’t make sense with the instruction of revenge.” No, it doesn’t. But the Talmud also said that Ahitophel, who was the advisor of Absalom, who advised Absalom to attack and kill David, is described in the Talmud as being the head of the beit din and he was the teacher of David and he taught him all the laws of kashrut and all the laws of how to be a good rabbi. So you can see this is part of the Talmudic tradition of trying to recast King David as a rabbi, instead of King David.

Q: Shelly, “Who paid for the palace and the temples of the foreign wives? The taxpayers?”

A: You bet, it was the taxpayers. It was also when you conquered a country or you made a deal, they helped with palaces. So for example, he made a deal with the Venetian kings to the north in Lebanon to provide wood and to provide manpower and to provide skills. And so a lot of the building was also done by contracting out to other peoples outside. But nevertheless, it was the taxation that the people, the 10 northern tribes resisted most of all and led to the split.

Q: “How historically accurate do you think the biblical account is about David, since it’s probably written a long time after the events actually occurred and perhaps with a certain goal in mind?”

A: Yes, I’m sure you’re right, Livia. I’m sure you’re right. I mean, history is written by the victors. History is usually his story, and there are different versions of the story of King David. There is the Book of Samuel, then there is the Book of Chronicles. And these biblical accounts, of course, are biassed. The north is biassed towards the south, the south towards the north. But that doesn’t mean to say all the traditions are wrong. And many of these traditions are passed down orally and not written down because remember, a lot of stuff wasn’t written down till much, much later. But when it comes to actual evidence, we have very little archaeological evidence. Most of the archaeological evidence is in the form of stones, pottery, something that doesn’t disappear and stones can be excavated, and we have stones going back to this time and we have stones, the Moab Stele and the Moab calendar and other sort of stone records that talk about the House of David, that talk about the House of Israel, talk about them going to war with them and conquering them. And we do have evidence of the House of David.

We do have evidence of the kings of Judea. And a lot of what is written in these stories we know from other stories is correct. The tribes they fought with, who they fought with, when they lost. And it’s interesting that whereas the Egyptians and the Syrians, the Hittites and the others only write about their victories, ours is the only text of this period that talks about our defeats and our mistakes, which I think gives it a greater degree of credibility than all the other archaeological evidence. But the truth of the matter is this is what archaeologists in Israel and historians still argue about. Everything that I’m saying is arguable. But nevertheless, the text that we have in the Bible, as I said, gives us some guidance as to what the traditions of the Jews were and what they wanted.

Thank you, Clara. Thank you, Mayra. That’s really nice.

Q: “Would you, please repeat,” Ruth says, why the Northern Kingdom of Judah split? I couldn’t quite catch what you said.“

A: Yes, I’m glad you asked. When King Solomon died, when King Solomon died, he left a son called Rehoboam. And Rehoboam was to continue. During Solomon’s reign, there were rebellions against him by those who thought his rule was too biassed towards the south. And one of them was a man called Jeroboam. When Solomon died, the northern tribes called back Jeroboam and said, "Will you come and negotiate for us to give us a better deal?” And so there was a meeting at which King Rehoboam went up north to the northern area to negotiate with the 10 tribes and Jeroboam said, “Lower the taxes.” And Rehoboam said, “Well, I hear what you’ve got to say, give me time to think.” And he went and he asked his wise men, “What should I do?” And his wise men said, “Compromise. Goodness sake, compromise.” Again, good advice to a monarch. The young people, the jet-setters around Jerusalem who were driving around in the Maseratis and clubbing all night, they said, “No! Don’t show your weakness. Stand firm!” And so in the famous phrase of the Bible, Rehoboam turned to them and said, “I’m not making any concessions. If my father whipped you with lashes, I’ll whip you with scorpions. My little finger will be thicker than my father’s thigh.” At which Jeroboam in the famous phrase said, “To our tents, Israel, we have no future with Judea, with the monarchy.” And he went and he set up the Northern Kingdom into which he set up two temples with golden calves. So the very beginning of the north was one of idolatry because he said, “I can’t have my people going back to the temple in Jerusalem.” That’s going to the opposition. And that’s when the Northern Kingdom split and Judea was left and the only tribe that stuck with it was the Tribe of Benjamin.

Q: Kelv12 asked, “Do you distinguish between the head of state and the head of government?”

A: Well, it depends. Some head of states are heads of government, some the head of government who are not. Either way, my point is whoever is the political head needs to have a spiritual dimension as well, or at least some sort of constitutional control, which is why a constitutional monarchy is far better than an absolute monarchy. One of the reasons probably why the British monarchy has done so well and survived that long because it is so strictly constitutional.

Q: Sorrel asked, “Shall the state of Israel continue to be a secular state with government supreme court as a brake?”

A: I do believe it should be a secular state with a government and supreme court as a brake. I also believe there should be a religious dimension, but this religious dimension can be encouraged by the state. After all, many states encourage a particular church, encourage a particular culture, a particular way of life. It should be supported by the state, it should be encouraged, and again, financially support, but it shouldn’t have a veto. It should have a role to play, a very important role to play because Israel is not just a state like any other. I believe it should be a Jewish state, but it also should be a state in which somebody who’s not Jewish has equal rights. And so that’s why I think there should be a change in the current structure. On the other hand, I believe in a democracy, the majority have a say in. The majority of Jews want to appoint an extreme right government. Even though I might not agree with it, it’s their electoral right and we shouldn’t start outside trying to tell the Israelites how to vote. If they can’t get their own political system in order, that’s their problem. And unfortunately, neither Ben-Gurion, nor Menachem Begin when they were of power and could have changed the electoral system to get rid of all these small parties, failed to do it. And so frankly, I blame them for the mess we have today.

Thank you, Carla. Thank you, Rita.

Q: Kelv again, “Didn’t God regard the Israelites’ desire for a king as a rejection of himself and theocracy?”

A: That’s an excellent point because in fact, that’s exactly what God said to Samuel when he didn’t want to appoint the king. God said, “Listen, they’re not rejecting you, they’re rejecting me.” And it’s ironic because in the Torah itself, in the Book of Deuteronomy, it says, “If you want to appoint a king, you may appoint a king. Just make sure he follows the Torah and doesn’t abandon it.” So it looks as though God changed his mind. Or you might say the text in the Bible was inserted at a later date, if you want to.

Thank you, 81555941365.

Q: Nanette, “What happens to women who got married and their husband never came back from the camps, but she had no proof of where she died.

A: She married again, had children, found out much later they weren’t mamzerim, that’s to say not illegitimate. Legitimacy doesn’t apply in Judaism. So a child born out of marriage is not a mamzer. It’s only someone who got married to someone they shouldn’t have done. And the fact of the matter is the rabbis bent over backwards to solve these problems. And for example, in the Talmud already whereas you need normal two witnesses, they said one witness will do, and we’ll take it from anywhere where we can get it, any evidence. And the rabbis, now of course, they go into all kinds of, I mean we have genetic testing, we have new tools can be used to avoid a mamzerim. And in fact, in fact in Israel itself, in Israel itself, they went out of the way not to. There was the famous Langer case of twins in Israel in a situation not very removed from yours, in which the by and large Rabbi Goren, who was the chief rabbi at the time, was happy to solve the problem. The trouble was it became a political issue because the secularists wanted to undermine the religion and instead of accepting the compromise, they said, "No, this a matter of principle.” And so in fact, although technically this may be the case, in practise, in almost as many cases as you can find, the rabbis go out of their way to remove the stigma. But of course, in a modern world, even if they refuse, most people in this situation find other ways of solving the problem and getting on with their lives.

Q: Mark Talamau said, “Did the northern tribes have a deficient geology, economy and thus pit themselves against the south?”

A: Yes, the northern tribes were bigger, they were stronger. When they invaded the tribes of the south, they often won. And the only way the south survived was by going into an alliance with Damascus and the power of Damascus was able to force the north to withdraw. But yes, the northern tribes were bigger and richer and more powerful, and Judea was the younger of the two partners.

Thank you, Sorrel. Thank you, Paul and thank you, Helene. So thank you, everybody, and bye-bye till the next time.