The Natural History of the Bible by Daniel Hillel

Author:Daniel Hillel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL006090, Religion/Biblical Criticism & Interpretation/Old Testament, REL006000, Religion/Biblical Studies/General
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2005-11-16T05:00:00+00:00

A view of Jerusalem from the south, showing the Temple Mount in the center right, the vale of Qidron below it, and the vale of Hinnom on the left. In the upper right, across the Qidron, are the Mount of Olives and Mount Scopus.

DAVID’S FATEFUL TRANSGRESSION

Except for Abraham and Moses, David is the most admired man in the Bible—his character lauded, his exploits praised, and his accomplishments exalted most lavishly. David’s eventful life—his early years as an obscure shepherd, his purported duel with the Philistine giant Goliath,1 his entry into the royal court as King Saul’s personal attendant, his subsequent banishment and resort to banditry, his refuge among the Philistines, his assumption of kingship over the tribe of Judah and, later, accession to kingship of all Israel, his conquest of Jerusalem and its establishment as the country’s capital, his military triumphs, and his establishment of a permanent Judean dynasty—is described with such romantic extravagance that some scholars have come to regard the entire saga as a work of fiction.

There is at least one incident in the life of David that is anything but laudatory. It reveals David to have been less than perfect, vulnerable to temptation and prone to treachery in the effort to cover up his own misdeed. The story itself is so well known that we need to recount only its bare outline (2 Samuel 11–12).

Alone one day, on the roof of his palace, David observed the enticing figure of a woman bathing nearby. He inquired and learned that she was Bathsheba, wife of Uriah—a Hittite soldier in the king’s service. Knowing that her husband was away fighting the Ammonites, David sent for the woman and lay with her. Consequently, Bathsheba informed David that she had conceived by him. David then contrived to have Uriah released and brought home in the expectation that he would lie with his wife and assume that he was the father. But Uriah, out of loyalty to his battlefield comrades, refused to indulge in the comforts of home as long as the war continued. So David sent him back into battle, secretly instructing his commander to put Uriah in harm’s way and arrange to get him killed. When that was done, David took the widowed Bathsheba to be his own wife.

But then the prophet Nathan intervened. He came to David and told him an allegorical story about a rich man with much livestock of his own who took a poor man’s only lamb and served it to his guest. Hearing that, David flew into a righteous rage and cried that the man who so mistreated his poor neighbor deserved to die. At that moment Nathan pointed to the king and declared: “That man is you!” (2 Samuel 12:7). David then bowed to Nathan’s reprimand and repented, but he was not absolved. The incident became a turning point in David’s theretofore charmed career. It was followed by a series of tragedies and reversals of fortune, leading to David’s gradual decline.

That dramatic moment of truth,

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