eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
David Wolpe, whom Newsweek called “the most influential rabbi in America,” takes a fresh look at biblical David in an attempt to find coherence in his seemingly contradictory actions and impulses. The author questions why David holds such an exalted place in history and legend, and then proceeds to unravel his complex character based on information found in the book of Samuel and later literature. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of an exceptional human being who, despite his many flaws, was truly beloved by God.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780300210163 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Yale University Press |
| Publication date: | 09/16/2014 |
| Series: | Jewish Lives |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 176 |
| Sales rank: | 544,472 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
David
The Divided Heart
By David Wolpe
Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2014 David WolpeAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-21016-3
CHAPTER 1
Young David
Our first glimpse of David is his absence. Saul, the king of Israel, has fallen into disfavor, and Samuel, the high priest, sets off in search of a new king. Samuel goes to the house of "Jesse the Bethlehemite" and asks him to present his children. Jesse marches the first, Eliab, a tall, handsome, strapping figure of a man, before the distinguished visitor. Samuel is convinced that he has met the new king. God's voice intervenes: "Look not to his appearance and to his lofty stature, for I have cast him aside. For not as man sees does God see. Man sees with the eyes and the Lord sees with [or 'into'] the heart" (1 Sam. 16:7). Jesse subsequently marches the rest of his seven sons before Samuel. Each in turn is rejected by God. Seven is the perfect number; the eighth is an afterthought.
Right at the beginning we find the ambiguity that will trail through David's story. Although in Samuel he is identified as the eighth son, in Chronicles, David is called the seventh son. The seventh is perfect in biblical numbering. So is David perfect and the shining star or an afterthought who is not worthy of being introduced? Samuel throughout offers spin-images—David as seven or eight; good or bad; innocent or schemer; hero or knave. Tell the truth, wrote the poet, but tell it slant. David's is the Bible's great slanted story.
The stage is set. All seven sons have been set aside. Samuel asks, "Are you sure you have no more sons?" Yes, replies Jesse, there is the youngest out back, tending the sheep. He is summoned; young, handsome, ruddy cheeked. We have met David.
Later, when the question of fathers and sons plays an enormous role in David's life, our minds naturally turn back to this first moment, when his father scarcely even thought of him. David was absent; not present in the scene, or in his father's mind. It took Samuel's question to bring him forth. The man who grows unseen by his father will struggle all his life with children.
The identification of David as a shepherd in this first scene recalls a biblical pattern: Jacob was a shepherd, as was Moses. The Rabbis, seizing on this, say explicitly, "When God wishes to choose a leader, God looks to see how he tends sheep" (Ex. R. 3:48-49). In other words, will this person be good to the powerless and the lost? Can he be a caretaker? In identifying David as a shepherd the Tanach is telling us: Here is someone with a steady hand and a compassionate heart. The subsequent tale complicates that image but never quite erases it.
In these early days we meet a David who is easy to love. His introduction is his anointing. There is no suspense about this young man's destiny. David will be king. And God dictates the drama—God, who is rarely direct in the story of David, speaks unambiguously about the divine choice. Samuel, confused at first about the worthiness of Eliab, receives his instruction.
How does Samuel arrive at Jesse's house? Saul, the first king of Israel, has disobeyed God by leaving Agag, king of the Amalekites, alive. Whatever Saul's motivation (humane or self-interested), it finally convinces Samuel, the priest who objected to the idea of kingship to begin with, that Saul must go. Under divine instruction Samuel is dispatched to the house of Jesse to choose a new king.
While we do not yet know that David will be a man of guile in his greatness, there is a hint in God's initial instruction to Samuel. When Samuel quite reasonably protests that King Saul will seek to kill him if he finds out he is on his way to anoint the new king, God instructs Samuel to lie: "Take a heifer with you and say, 'I have come to sacrifice to the Lord'" (1, 16:2). A white lie, to be sure. A lie to preserve a life. Still, it is worth noting that David is anointed in a cloud of mild deception. Does he at this moment learn to adopt the self-protective shading of the truth from the prophet who gives him his start?
Samuel pours the oil on David, and "The spirit of the Lord gripped David from that day onward" (1, 16:13). We are about to read a story of a king, beleaguered, at times desperate, who is nonetheless astonishingly lucky. Here is the Bible's explanation. God's spirit has gripped him. He can betray, he can sin and stumble, but he cannot fail.
What awaits David, newly crowned? We are witness to three separate introductions. The chronology is more interesting as a character study than as a literal ordering of narrative. The next incident in David's life is that he is sent to Saul, the king, who suffers from bouts of melancholy.
Half of David's story, the ascent, consists of his gradual displacement of the king of Israel. Saul has been a frequent subject of long-distance psychoanalysis. He is a man with an unprecedented task as Israel's first king, subject to manic mood swings and beset by an unsympathetic high priest in Samuel and a resolute and demanding God. Moreover, Saul is a paranoid with real enemies. Saul is tall and imposing, but his physique betrays him. His external size hides his timidity. Early in his kingship he is already hiding, a frightened man unfit for rule.
The first encounter between Saul and David is poignant or chilling. Saul's attendants, noting his dark mood, suggest finding a lad who is skilled in the lyre, an ancient musical instrument, to play and coax the melancholy king back to fitness. The initial recommendation is a powerful foreshadowing. Saul's attendant says he knows of a young man, "skilled in playing, a valiant fellow, a warrior, prudent in speech, a good looking man, and the Lord is with him" (1, 16:18). With that formidable list of virtues, Saul is convinced. He seems to know of David, for he sends messengers to Jesse asking him to send his son "who is with the flock." It reinforces our understanding of David as shepherd but also establishes the peculiar intimacy that will grow between the fading king and the rising one.
The most widely accepted meaning of the name David is "beloved." The first person who is said to love David is not his father or mother but Saul: "And David came and stood in Saul's presence, and Saul loved him greatly" (1, 16:21). Later, David will win the loyalty of Saul's family, marrying his daughter and befriending his son. Saul, however, will seek to kill David, not once but several times. David will finally succeed him. In this earliest encounter Saul sees what Israel will see: the charisma of that young man summoned to cheer him. Saul will never entirely lose that initial love, and the stark split in his feelings about David is one of the many forces that tears him asunder; Saul will always love the one he hates and fears. The man who evokes this mixed feeling in Saul will summon equally strong reactions in many who cross his path, as he does in those who read his story centuries later. From his first moments on the biblical stage David is marked both by the passions he feels and those he evokes.
After David is summoned to the house to play, his music helps soothe Saul, temporarily at least. "David would take up the lyre and play, and Saul would find relief, and it would be well with him, and the evil spirit would turn away from him" (1 16:23). Our first introduction to David is as the shepherd, musician, and attendant, an artist and an aide. There is a sweetness in the portrait of the early David, often belied by the man he will become.
The battle with Goliath is the best known of the David stories. It has an enduring appeal to the belittled and downtrodden. Phillis Wheatley, America's first published African American poet, chose "Goliath of Gath" as a subject for one of her works, published in 1773:
Thus David spoke; Goliath heard and came
To meet the hero in the field of fame.
Ah! fatal meeting to thy troops and thee,
But thou wast deaf to the divine decree.
As often happens, the memory of the story is less nuanced than the original telling. There is a powerful undercurrent present to the careful reader. Painter and historian Giorgio Vasari tells of young Leonardo in the workshop of the master Andrea del Verrocchio. Leonardo contributed an angel to Verrocchio's painting that was so masterful that the teacher laid down his brush and resolved never to paint again. The announcement of a prodigy is wonderful and painful in equal measure. David, like the young Leonardo, is gifted beyond anything Israel has seen. Saul, however, will not lay down his crown. The struggle to supplant him will be long, rocky, and painful.
The outline of the story is simple: Goliath, the towering Philistine champion, issues a challenge to Israel. No one will step forward to fight him until David, young and unimposing, challenges him, trades taunts, topples him with a stone from his sling, and decapitates the felled giant with his own sword. But this oak of a story has seeds that will grow in directions we might not expect.
Before taking on Goliath, David was sent by his father to take food to his brothers who were already at the front. While there, David hears from the Israelite men milling about, both of Goliath's challenge and of the possibility of reward for anyone who can defeat him.
For the first time David speaks. It is a biblical commonplace that a character's first words are defining: "What will be done for the man who strikes down yonder Philistine and takes away insult from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should insult the battle lines of the living God?" (1, 17:26).
Here is the characteristic Davidic combination of idealism and self-interest, mixed with stunning self-assurance. David wishes to know what is in it for him. He also feels the national and even theological affront of Goliath's impudence. Underlying both is the certainty that, should he choose to fight, he will win. Unlike other Jewish notables such as Moses, Jonah, or Jeremiah, David has no unease about his suitability and readiness for his mission.
His older brother Eliab, dismissive of David and upset that he has left the sheep behind, accuses him of voyeurism, a wish only to see the battle. David answers in the manner of younger brothers throughout the ages, "What have I done now? It was only talk" (1, 17:29). The following verse is unobtrusive but definitive: "And he turned away from him." David turns from Eliab, no longer a child, striking out on an independent destiny.
The troops hear David's words and report them to Saul. Saul naturally brushes aside the possibility that this stripling can fell a giant. David insists, boasting that he has killed both lions and bears in his years as a shepherd, but never mentioning his skill with a slingshot. In a piquant touch, the Rabbis further tell us that David's clothes are made from the wool of the sheep that he saved from the claws of beasts, in thanks to God for his deliverance. The rabbinic commentators of the Midrash suggest that David's triumph over wild beasts foretold the possibility of future greatness. Perhaps the tradition assumed he must have received the hint from his own experience, since God has not told David he must kill Goliath. David just knows.
Saul has been left with no other volunteers; he fits the young man with his armor. In a scene heavy (in all senses) with symbolism, David is unable to maneuver in Saul's armor and strips it off. Garments will play a role throughout the story: when Saul pursues David, David will, unbeknownst to the older man, cut off a piece of Saul's coat so that he can later prove to Saul that he was close enough to kill him. When Samuel ultimately strips Saul of the kingship, Saul will grab at a piece of Samuel's cloak, which will tear. The Hebrew word for coat, "beged," is related to the Hebrew word for betrayal, "boged." Clothes unmake the man.
Saul seems not to know who the young David is, even though David has already been attending him and playing music in his house. This could be a product of inattention, of Saul's depression, or of the Bible's tendency in Samuel to give us snapshots without regard for the narrative flow. Whatever the reason, Saul is now about to notice him.
Divested of armor, David is ready. Goliath takes him for a harmless lad, an insult to his own prowess. The reader knows better. English poet Edmund Blunden, in his memoir of World War I, called himself a "harmless young shepherd in a soldier's coat." David is quite the reverse—a skilled young soldier in the frock of a shepherd. David's skill is not unprecedented; the book of Judges tells us that an elite core of Benjaminites (Saul's tribe, in fact) "could sling a stone at a hair, and not miss" (Judg. 20:16).
Modern ballistics experts have calculated the lethal velocity of a stone hurled by an expert with a slingshot. David and Goliath trade imprecations and then David lets his stone fly. Unerringly hitting the one place on Goliath not covered by armor, the stone strikes his forehead and the giant falls forward. This apparent violation of physics—the force should have driven him back—has given interpreters some trouble. Perhaps he stumbled and fell forward. But it may also be the Tanach's way of reminding us that David's actions evoke contraries: Saul, whom he will usurp, loves him. Saul's son Jonathan, whose place David will assume, loves him. He will fraternize with the enemy and neither they nor Israel seem to turn on him as a result. His adulterous affair will produce a son who grows to be his successor. David does not operate by the normal physics of human consequence. His stone hits and the stricken fall forward.
Scholars who study ancient armor have posited that Philistine helmets in fact left a gap at the forehead. The Rabbis, also bothered by this detail (why was Goliath not better protected?) give a slightly more fanciful explanation. When David, during the trading of insults, tells Goliath that he will give his flesh to "the birds of the heaven and the beasts of the earth" (1, 17:46), Goliath looks up involuntarily at the mention of birds, and his helmet, slipping, gives David his chance. The Septuagint, the early Greek translation of the Bible (also known as LXX, for seventy) avoids the problem by saying the stone went through the helmet.
The Goliath story is a deliberate and subtle introduction to David. He plays the naïf with his brother. David's playacting will be a critical component in his personal arsenal as the story proceeds. He moves from innocence with his older brother to advertising his willingness to fight Goliath so effectively that the troops report his words to Saul. He then persuades Saul to send him as a representative of Israel, demonstrating the eloquence that will aid him many times in the future. Through it all, the young man's adeptness at combat is decisive. When he says to Saul that he has bested beasts, he is reminding us that he is a skilled killer. Finally there is an element of deception that displays clear cunning. David, it is assumed by everyone, will attack with a sword. When he does not, Goliath taunts him, "Am I a dog that you come at me with sticks?" This is presumably David's staff, and perhaps Goliath is assuming David will use his staff to attack. But David is concealing his real weapon, the slingshot. Had Goliath anticipated it, a shield would effectively have rendered it useless. David's eloquence, nerve, deception, ruthlessness (he wields Goliath's own sword to cut off the Philistine's head; the stone only knocked him out), and triumph are all elements of the king we will come to know.
The coda to the story is also telling. David brings Goliath's head to Jerusalem (though this seems an anachronism, since Jerusalem was not yet an Israelite city) and puts Goliath's weapons in his tent. In part this is foreshadowing (Goliath's sword will play a role later in the story), but it reminds us that David is already claiming the prizes of victory. This may be convention, but it is also character. More striking than if David recounted the story as a fireside yarn on a cold night, the symbol of the legendary warrior he slew is visible to any visitor. David's proverbial mantelpiece tells his story.
Heroic moments are irresistible to artists. The slaying of Goliath has drawn some of art's greatest masters: Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Rubens, Rembrandt, and countless others. In each rendering David is a shining youth, self-assured in triumph. In the twentieth century, the image of young David served in antifascist and Holocaust art to represent resistance to the more powerful foe.
Three people are described as "big" in the David story: his older brother Eliab, rejected for the kingship; Goliath, slain by David; and Saul, whose kingship will be lost to David. David is, by contrast, small but beloved, symbolic of Israel. The ability to overcome those who are apparently more formidable provides a backdrop of God's favor. Younger sons will triumph over the older and small nations over the larger, for when earthly expectations are confounded, God's hand is shown.
After David's triumph it is natural for Saul to be somewhat wary of the boy. Of course, even should Saul prove inadequate to the task of leadership, kingships are generally hereditary. What will Saul's children think of this upstart who seems poised to cause disruption in the royal house?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from David by David Wolpe. Copyright © 2014 David Wolpe. Excerpted by permission of Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Preface, ix,Introduction, xi,
1. Young David, 1,
2. Lover and Husband, 15,
3. Fugitive, 29,
4. The King, 57,
5. The Sinner, 75,
6. Father, 89,
7. Caretaker, 119,
8. Death of a King, 125,
9. The Once and Future King, 137,
Suggested Reading, 143,
Acknowledgments, 145,
Index, 147,