The Gifts of the Jews

by Thomas Cahill

  Saul proves himself an outstanding general, making war not only on the Philistines but on Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Amalekites, and all of Israel’s neighboring enemies, for “whichever way he turned, he was victorious.” But then Saul disobeys YHWH, first by offering sacrifice in Samuel’s absence, then by sparing the Amalekite king and the most precious Amalekite booty from “the curse of destruction”—that is, from universal extermination, one of YHWH’S less pretty injunctions. There probably lies behind these stories a tug-of-war for ultimate power between the old prophet and the young king. But the upshot is that Saul loses the favor of YHWH, who “regrets having made Saul king.”

  Then YHWH says to Samuel, “Fill your horn with oil and go. I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem, for I have found myself a king from among his sons.” At Bethlehem Samuel meets seven of Jesse’s sons, but YHWH warns him to take no notice of their striking appearance or height, suggestive that they would all make fitting successors to Saul: “God does not see as human beings see; they look at appearances but YHWH looks at the heart.”

  “Are these all the sons you have?” asks Samuel of Jesse.

  “There is still one left, the youngest; he is looking after the sheep.”

  “Send for him.”

  When the youngest arrives—barely beyond childhood but “ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to,” according to King James—Samuel knows that this shepherd boy is God’s unlikely choice. “At this, Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him, surrounded by his brothers; and the spirit of YHWH seized on David from that day onwards.”

  Ruach YHWH—YHWH’S spirit, or, more literally, his wind or breath—is as unpredictable as wind itself. On whom it will alight no one can say. And as with YHWH’S other choices—of wily Avraham, dissembling Yaakov, tongue-tied Moshe, the carping Chosen People themselves—his election is always a surprise. But most surprising of all is what the man on whom this Spirit alights will have to say. The modern word charisma, taken from the Greek for “grace” or “divinely conferred gift,” exactly describes what the Israelites expected from their leaders: a kind of inner glow, perceptible in a man’s physical demeanor, that captures the observer’s imagination and converts him to a partisan. But, more than his appearance, the charismatic’s divine inspiration is proven by the words he speaks. In Israel’s history, these words had always related to immediate need—as prophetic road maps to direct the people. Now, with the permanent settlement of the ex-nomads and the establishment of the monarchy, inspiration can take a new turn—as poetry.

  Despairing Saul, who knows nothing of this second anointing but who imagines himself to have lost God’s favor, sinks by degrees into madness. He calls for a musician to assuage his troubled spirit; and the musician drafted for this purpose is none other than David, the secret shepherd-king. Whenever “an evil spirit from YHWH afflicted [Saul] with terrors,” David would be called to play his harp and sing his songs for the troubled king. “Saul would then be soothed; it would do him good and the evil spirit would leave him.” David’s music is completely lost; but his lyrics are still collected in the Book of Psalms, though we are no longer certain which psalms are David’s and which were attributed to him over subsequent centuries.

  Though David first achieves fame as a skilled harpist and poet—“the sweet singer of Israel,” as later generations will call him—it is not long before he is tested on the field of battle. As Saul’s earlier successes against the Philistines are gradually reversed, David’s three eldest brothers are called to military service and find themselves in the Valley of the Terebinth in Judah, the Philistine battle line drawn up against them across the valley. At his father’s behest, David comes loaded down with farm products—loaves of bread for his soldier brothers, rounds of cheese for their commanding officer—arriving on the scene just as the Philistine champion steps forth to issue a challenge to Israel. The man, named Goliath, is a giant who stands almost nine feet tall: “On his head was a bronze helmet and he wore a breastplate of scale-armor; the breastplate weighed five thousand shekels [about 125 pounds] of bronze. He had bronze greaves on his legs and a bronze scimitar slung across his shoulders. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and the head of his spear weighed six hundred shekels [about 15 pounds] of iron.” He shouts across the valley, “I challenge the ranks of Israel today. Give me a man and we will fight it out!” Single combat, instances of which we also find in the Iliad, was often used in ancient times to avoid the bloodletting of group combat—and to decide who would be subject to whom, as Goliath roars: “If he can fight it out with me and kill me, we will be your servants; but if I can beat him and kill him, you will become our servants and serve us.”

  Saul and “all Israel” are “dismayed and terrified.” But David, learning that the man who slays Goliath will receive riches, the king’s daughter, and exemption from all taxes (in that order), puts himself forward, declaring: “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, to challenge the armies of the living God?” This sequence provides our first insight into David’s character, bold, relying on God in all simplicity, but always with an eye to the main chance.

  Saul, at first, will not allow such unequal combat: “You cannot go and fight the Philistine; you are only a boy and he has been a warrior since his youth.” But as he listens to David’s recital of his complete faith in YHWH, who enabled this shepherd boy to batter to death both lions and bears who attacked his sheep, he cannot help but be impressed. “YHWH,” says David, “who delivered me from the claws of lion and bear, will deliver me from the clutches of this Philistine.” Saul consents, even dressing David in the oppressive royal armor. “David tried to walk but not being used to them, said to Saul, ‘I cannot walk in these; I am not used to them.’ ” So David is stripped and goes forth armed with only a sling and “five smooth stones”—and, like the wonder-boy of Michelangelo’s statue, full of relaxed strength ready to spring.

  Goliath laughs him to scorn, but David retorts: “You come to me with sword, spear, and scimitar, but I come to you in the name of YHWH Sabaoth [the heavenly host or army], God of the armies of Israel, whom you have challenged. Today, YHWH will deliver you into my hand; I shall kill you, I shall cut off your head; today, I shall give your corpse and the corpses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the wild beasts, so that the whole world may know that there is a God in Israel, and this whole assembly know that YHWH does not give victory by means of sword and spear—for YHWH is lord of the battle and he will deliver you into our power.”

  This is a wonderful speech—and a wonderful moment in the history of Israel and of the human race—a resounding assertion that God is on the side of the small and powerless, not the high and mighty. This is a confrontation that has fixed itself permanently in human imagination; and who could count how many supposedly hopeless causes it has given strength and comfort to? There is every reason to presume that David, Israel’s sweet singer, was capable of delivering such words. It is of a piece with his character as it will unfold throughout the historical Books of Samuel and Kings. With a wiliness more convoluted than Avraham’s, a charm more compelling than Joseph’s, a faith as deep as Moshe’s, and a confidence all his own, this born politician, always playing to the crowd, captivates us as does no other figure in the whole of the Hebrew Bible.

  Of course, he wins the day. The death of Goliath, felled by one well-directed stone to the forehead, panics the Philistine army, who are easily butchered in their flight. David, bearing Goliath’s great head, returns in triumph with Saul. As the army marches along, “the women came out of all the towns of Israel singing and dancing to meet King Saul, with tambourines, sistrums and cries of joy; and as they danced the women sang:

  “Saul has killed his thousands,

  and David his tens of thousands.”

  Saul’s angry reaction (especially in the King James Version) has the rhetorical quality of a Shakespearean soliloquy:

  “They have ascribed unto David
ten thousands,

  and to me they have ascribed but thousands:

  and what can he have more

  but the kingdom?”

  “And Saul,” concludes the chronicler, “eyed David from that day and forward.”

  Saul offers David the hand of his daughter Merab in marriage, provided David “serve me bravely and fight YHWH’S wars,” but thinking to himself: “Better than strike the blow myself, let the Philistines do it!” David expresses reluctance, saying only: “Who am I in Israel, for me to become the king’s son-in-law?” David, indeed, as a southerner, a member of the tribe of Judah, will need northern connections if he is ever to rule effectively—and Saul’s Benjaminite family would be ideal in providing such. But before David can shed his ritual modesty, Saul humiliates him: “When the time came for Merab daughter of Saul to be given to David, she was given to Adriel of Meholah instead.”

  When Saul’s second daughter, Michal, falls in love with David, he is ready to take advantage of the opportunity. But Saul proposes an odd exchange: “The king desires no bride-price except one hundred Philistine foreskins.” Since it is a tricky business to take the foreskin of a man without his consent, Saul’s proposal is meant to spell certain death for David. But David, rising to the challenge, thinks “it would be a fine thing to be the king’s son-in-law. And no time was lost before David got up to go,” returning in record time with two hundred Philistine foreskins, which he counts out before the king. By this savagely hilarious feat, David endears himself to the Israelites even more than by the slaying of Goliath.

  But having humiliated the king, called his bluff, and married his daughter in the bargain, David has put himself in greater danger, for “Saul could not but see that YHWH was with David, and that the whole House of Israel loved him. Saul, more afraid of David than ever, became his inveterate enemy. The Philistine chiefs kept mounting their campaigns but, whenever they did so, David proved more successful than any of Saul’s staff; consequently he gained great renown.”

  David, loved by all, is oblivious of the king’s resentment. But among his most fervent admirers is Saul’s son Jonathan, who “delighted much in David” and who tips him off to the royal plans for David’s assassination—as does Michal, who saves his life by placing a life-sized idol under the cover of David’s bed while he escapes. David, now in full flight before the king’s wrath, stays briefly with a Philistine king, who also grows to resent him for his prowess. David’s ploy for escaping the jealousy of this king is to feign a madness reminiscent of Hamlet’s, till the exasperated king kicks him out: “Have I not enough madmen, without your bringing me this one to weary me with his antics?”

  David the outlaw comes to live among the outlaws of the Judean hill country, gradually building up a band of cutthroat mercenaries, fiercely loyal comrades who will one day become the nucleus of King David’s enormous personal bodyguard—an essential element in his later political success. Meanwhile, David has become an obsession with Saul, who sends his men to hunt David down—and even sets out on the hunt himself. During the course of one of these hunting parties, Saul, who has three thousand men scouring the desert of En-gedi, finds himself impelled to relieve nature and, spotting a cave along the route, enters it alone “to cover his feet,” as the Bible euphemistically puts it—that is, to let his loincloth drop around his ankles while he squats down in the cave.

  And who should be occupying the recesses of the cave at that very moment but David and his merry men. David creeps up on Saul, intending to kill him, but at the last stays his hand and silently cuts off the border of Saul’s cloak, which the king had taken off and hung on an outcrop. After Saul has finished the royal business and left the cave, David leaves too, calling after the king: “My lord king!” Saul swerves around, astonished to see his prey bowing to the ground like any obedient subject.

  David then declaims across the desert distance between them: “Why do you listen to people who say, ‘David intends your ruin’? This very day you have seen for yourself how YHWH put you in my power in the cave and how, refusing to kill you, I spared you saying, ‘I will not raise my hand against my lord, since he is YHWH’S anointed.’ Look, father, look at the border of your cloak in my hand. Since, although I cut the border off your cloak, I did not kill you, surely you realize that I intend neither mischief nor crime. I have not wronged you, and yet you hunt me down to take my life. May YHWH be judge between me and you, and may YHWH avenge me on you; but I shall never lay a hand on you!”

  Another eloquent speech from a master wordsmith, who, though he may be canny enough to appreciate that his refusal to lay a hand on the present king may have most positive implications for the next king, seems unable to believe that anyone could actually dislike him, David, the wonder-boy. This young man’s sense of entitlement long preceded his anointing.

  At David’s sudden appearance and startling speech, Saul, already unhinged, becomes incoherent, weeping loudly and calling David his son: “You are upright and I am not! … Now I know that you will indeed reign and that the sovereignty of Israel will pass into your hands.” He begs David not to kill his family or blot out his name “once I am gone”; and then he goes “home while David and his men went back to the stronghold.” For all its emotion, this is not a reconciliation scene; and the evidence for what happens next is equivocal. There is a second story of David’s sparing Saul, which is probably just a tamer, alternative account of the cave episode, but which the scrupulous chronicler could not bring himself to omit. Then David, who despite Saul’s hysterical confession does not feel it safe to go home, finds himself a job as vassal warlord to the Philistines. He has also picked up two new wives along the way—Ahinoam of Jezreel (of whom we are told nothing) and Abigail, “a woman of intelligence and beauty” whose rare pluck, generosity, and wisdom saved David and his men from hunger and brought her to the attention of this warrior chieftain, who never fails to respond to feminine beauty. Before David can consummate their union, her inconvenient husband, a churl named Nabal (whose name in Hebrew means something like “brutal fool”), providentially dies from fear of David, who never touches him. Michal, David’s first wife, we learn at this point, has been given to a new husband by the vengeful Saul.

  David’s position as vassal to Israel’s enemies the Philistines is a most uncomfortable one, but it is hard to imagine how he could have survived without such protection; and, in any case, he uses his position to overcome such tribes as the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites, who are at least as noisome to the Israelites as they are to the Philistines. When at last the Philistines muster all their forces for a final attack on Saul’s now-weakened kingdom, the desperate king consults a medium in order to raise the ghost of the recently dead Samuel, who tells Saul that all is lost and that “tomorrow you and your sons will be with me.” Luckily for David, the confederation of Philistine chieftains rejects his participation in the battle, “in case he turns on us once battle is joined. Would there be a better way for the man to regain his master’s favor than with the heads of these men here?” David, who has been pretending to be eager for Israelite blood, is secretly relieved. He could never have fought his countrymen.

  The Israelites are routed at Mount Gilboa; and both Saul and Jonathan, David’s loving friend, die in the battle. The Book of Samuel records David’s lament on hearing this news, in words that are almost certainly authentic, magnanimous in victory, respectful of the kingship, and full of the camaraderie of Bronze Age and Iron Age warriors, who valued the fellowship of men far above the love of women. David’s description of his love for Jonathan is virtually a direct quotation from Gilgamesh’s lament for Enkidu:

  “The beauty of Israel is slain

  upon thy high places:

  how are the mighty fallen!

  “Tell it not in Gath,

  publish it not in the streets of Askelon;

  lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice,

  lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.

&nb
sp; “Ye mountains of Gilboa,

  let there be no dew,

  neither let there be rain, upon you, nor fields of offerings;

  for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away,

  the shield of Saul,

  as though he had not been anointed with oil.

  “From the blood of the slain,

  from the fat of the mighty,

  the bow of Jonathan turned not back,

  and the sword of Saul returned not empty.

  “Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives;

  and in their death they were not divided;

  they were swifter than eagles,

  they were stronger than lions.

  “Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,

  who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights,

  who put on ornaments of gold

  upon your apparel.

  “How are the mighty fallen

  in the midst of battle!

  “O Jonathan,

  thou wast slain in thine high places.

  I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan:

  very pleasant hast thou been unto me:

  thy love to me was wonderful,

  passing the love of women.

  “How are the mighty fallen,

  and the weapons of war perished!”

  David is publicly consecrated king at Hebron, where the bodies of his Abrahamic ancestors lie and which now becomes the capital of the southern kingdom, for he is, as yet, acknowledged only by his own people—by Judah. A war ensues between the northerners and southerners—between the House of Saul and the House of David—but it is not long before the northern kingdom of Israel capitulates and David is anointed once more at Hebron, this time with the warrior nobles of the north in attendance. The politically astute king, now but thirty years old, realizes that Hebron, deep in southern territory, will not do as capital of the United Kingdom of Israel. He marches on the Jebusite town of Jerusalem, an enclave between north and south—and a capital that will suit his purposes admirably. He captures the town, also known as the “citadel of Zion,” strategically situated on a hill and ever after called the “City of David.” He meets a final Philistine attack, and victory again is swift. David is now the unchallenged ruler of Canaan, a land which can for the first time be called Israel and which will soon stretch south into the Sinai and north to the Lebanese mountains, west to the Mediterranean (along a part of which the defeated Philistines are contained in a narrow coastal strip) and east of the Jordan to the borders of Gilead. Farther southeast lie the kingdoms of Edom, Moab, and Ammon from which David exacts tribute; to the northeast Aram, from which he may have done the same even as far as the Euphrates.