The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero

by Joel S. Baden

  This battle between David and Israel ended without a decisive victory, as most battles did. David’s military forces proved their strength in driving Abner and his men away from Gibeon, though they seem not to have had the resources to capture any Israelite territory. This is the only battle between the two sides recorded in the Bible—we are told after this only that “the war between the House of Saul and the House of David was long-drawn-out, but David kept growing stronger while the House of Saul kept growing weaker” (2 Sam. 3:1). The battle at Gibeon thus may be taken as representative of the war as a whole: nothing decisive, but a clear advantage to David’s side. This is to be expected, since Abner’s army was probably significantly diminished after the defeat of Saul, and David’s army substantially stronger both by controlling all of Judah and by virtue of Philistine support. The course of the war, tilting slowly but inexorably in David’s favor, would have made Abner’s decision not to become king look better and better. At the same time, it made Ishbaal weaker and weaker. Eventually, the power dynamic in the north would come to a head, with unpleasant consequences for both the king and his master.

  Abner’s Betrayal

  EVERYONE SEEMS TO HAVE seen where things were headed. Ishbaal, however, was stuck—he was the king of Israel, and like any good captain, he had to go down with the ship. Not so, Abner. The biblical story of how Abner broke with Ishbaal is a strange one. Ishbaal accuses Abner of having slept with one of Saul’s concubines—a seemingly trivial matter, but in fact one with significant symbolic import, as we have seen already in the case of David and Ahinoam. For Abner to sleep with one of Saul’s concubines was as good as Abner declaring himself king. Abner’s response to Ishbaal’s accusation is equivocal: he castigates Ishbaal for doubting his loyalty to Saul’s family and kingdom, yet doesn’t quite deny the charge. But Abner’s anger leads him to change sides, to “do for David as Yahweh swore to him—to transfer the kingship from the House of Saul, and to establish the throne of David over Israel and Judah” (2 Sam. 3:9–10). That the dialogue between Ishbaal and Abner is not historically accurate is proved by the reference to God’s promise to make David king, which Abner could not have known about. And some have argued that the entire episode is an invention, simply a mechanism for explaining Abner’s disloyalty.11 Yet it seems a strange story to invent. Given all the possible ways for the break between Abner and Ishbaal to have happened, this accusation and nondenial, complete with the details of the concubine’s name, is not the most obvious. Thus while we may set aside Abner’s speech as a literary construction, the episode may well have a historical basis. Abner was, after all, the real power in Israel, and he may have felt himself entitled to some of the perks that came with that power. He also may have been testing Ishbaal’s resilience—would the king have the courage to oppose him? As it turned out, the answer was no: after leveling the charge, Ishbaal “could say nothing more in reply to Abner, because he was afraid of him” (3:11). All of this would have been reasonable preparation for Abner’s next step: full betrayal.

  Abner sent a message to David: “Make a covenant with me and I will lend my hand to bring all Israel over to your side” (3:12). The Bible gives us no details of what this “covenant” may have been, but we may reasonably conjecture. Abner would not have simply given up his power for nothing. It seems likely that he would have supported David’s nominal kingship in the north, but with himself as a vassal king, ruling over Israel—just as David was a vassal king of the Philistines, ruling over Judah. Abner would maintain his power in the north while preventing any further military advances by David. With the war going badly for Abner, this would have been a prudent move to make. Note, however, that in sending this message, Abner has taken on the role of the king, even without the official title. He feels himself empowered to present Israel on a platter to David. It seems quite possible that Abner’s dalliance with Saul’s concubine was his way of establishing that authority, at least in his own eyes.

  Even without specifics, David would have recognized Abner’s overture immediately for what it was. Across the ancient Near East, a population on the verge of being conquered commonly relinquished its independence to maintain some internal stability. Given the options of putting up a fight and risking wholesale destruction on the one hand and accepting the yoke of vassaldom on the other—which frequently meant only paying regular tribute and providing troops for military actions—the choice was a fairly easy one. For the conquering nation, such a deal would spare the significant expense of full-fledged military preparations and war.12 For much of their history, both before and after David, Canaan and Israel took this subservient role, being vassals of the Egyptians during the second millennium BCE, of the Assyrians during the eighth to seventh centuries BCE, of the Egyptians and Babylonians during the seventh to sixth centuries, the Persians during the sixth to fourth centuries, the Greeks during the fourth to second centuries, and finally the Romans beginning in the first century BCE and culminating with the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. Periods of Israelite independence were the exception, not the rule, and usually coincided with the decline of the previously dominant foreign empire.13 Revolts against the foreign overlords were occasionally successful, as with the Maccabees, but more often they ended in defeat and significant punishment—as was the case with the destruction of the northern kingdom in 722 BCE and of the southern kingdom in 586 BCE.

  David would have received Abner’s message in this light. He would have known that Abner was offering himself as a vassal, hoping to avoid further military conflict and willing to recognize David’s power and perhaps maintain some of his own, even if in a limited capacity. David’s response was positive but came with an interesting condition: that Abner come before him in person and bring along Michal, Saul’s daughter. We have already discussed the probability that the story of David marrying Michal while he was still in Saul’s service is fictional.14 This moment, however, seems eminently plausible. Whether they were married in the past or not, David’s summons of Michal is a highly charged symbolic gesture. He is establishing his kinship right to Saul’s throne, as son-in-law of the deceased king. David is removing an avenue of objection from the north and simultaneously following the established ancient tradition of using royal marriage for diplomatic ends. Now, however, the marriage is truly between two royal houses, for David is an acknowledged king. The marriage to Michal consummates the joining of the two houses into one, with David at its head.

  If, however, David was in fact not married to Michal previously, then this is more than mere diplomacy—it is yet another demonstration of David’s incontrovertible power over the north. He felt himself strong enough to demand that Saul’s daughter be stripped from her rightful husband—who is portrayed pathetically as weeping while following her out of his house—and, evidently, he was right. Even more interesting, David made his demand not only of Abner, but also of Ishbaal. In some ways, this was the more logical avenue, since Ishbaal was the king, at least nominally, and more important was Michal’s brother. In the end, according to the Bible, it was Ishbaal who sent Michal off to David. And this, too, would have had political significance: though Abner was the one who approached David to relinquish the rights to the Israelite throne, Ishbaal, in sending Michal, signaled his complicity in the decision. And, in the end, what choice did he have? His general had just offered to turn his nation over to David, and he could do nothing to stop it. Denying Michal to David would have been inviting military retribution at a moment when Ishbaal had no power to withstand it. The defection of Abner meant the practical dissolution of Ishbaal’s kingdom. Perhaps “man of shame” is an appropriate name for him after all.

  When Abner arrived in person before David, the meeting seems to have been relatively brief. In part, this is because the visit was mostly symbolic: the subjugated vassal presenting himself before his new overlord, presumably bearing some sort of gift and pledging his fealty. However, the meeting was brief also because it came to a rather abrupt end. Abner never made it
back to Israel, because Joab, David’s general, struck him down and killed him. The question that both the biblical text and the modern historian need to answer is why.

  The Bible, as already mentioned, suggests that Joab killed Abner as revenge for Abner’s murder of Joab’s brother Asahel. Since, however, it seems that Abner did not really kill Asahel—and even, perhaps, that Asahel was not really Joab’s brother at all—this explanation must be rejected. But it ties into the larger theme of the David story that we have already seen over and over: the exoneration of David for the deaths of his enemies. This case is a particularly tricky one, however, as even the Bible admits that it was David’s own general who killed Abner. To deal with this, the Bible gives Joab a personal motivation for the murder quite apart from any connection with David, and David is portrayed as being appalled at Joab’s actions: “May the guilt fall upon the head of Joab and all his father’s house. May the House of Joab never be without someone suffering from a discharge or skin disease, or a male who handles the spindle, or one who falls by the sword, or one lacking bread” (2 Sam. 3:29). And later: “Those men, the sons of Zeruiah, are too savage for me. May Yahweh requite the evildoer for his evil!” (3:39). Yet, for all his talk, David takes no action against Joab; he remains David’s commander for the entirety of David’s reign. The over-the-top condemnation of Joab is exceeded only by David’s own proclamations of innocence: “I and my kingdom are forever innocent before Yahweh of shedding the blood of Abner son of Ner” (3:28). As he did with Saul and Jonathan, David intones a dirge over Abner—the man he had been fighting against for years. And as with Saul and Jonathan, David puts on a public display of mourning, rending his clothes, wearing sackcloth, lamenting, and fasting. David even personally walks behind Abner’s body as it is taken to be buried, and he weeps aloud by Abner’s grave.15 If all of this weren’t enough, the biblical narrators remind us again and again that David had nothing to do with Abner’s death—that when Abner left David’s side, he was absolutely fine: “David dismissed Abner, who went away unharmed” (3:21); “Abner was no longer with David in Hebron, for he had been dismissed and had gone away unharmed” (3:22); “Joab was told, ‘Abner son of Ner had come to the king, was dismissed by him, and went away unharmed,’ ” (3:23); “That day all the people and all Israel knew that it had not been the king’s will to kill Abner son of Ner” (3:37)—and if “all Israel” in the story knew it, then “all Israel,” the story’s audience, is expected to know it, too. This defense of David, reformulated and reiterated in almost every verse of the narrative, is simply too much to believe.

  Far more likely is the simpler solution: that David instructed Joab to kill Abner, perhaps after Abner had left his meeting with David so as to avoid suspicion.16 This is the counternarrative that the Bible is trying to defend against, and it is also sensible from David’s position—if, by this point, we have come to accept that David regularly finds murder to be a sensible solution to a problem. At first, it does not seem like a wise choice on David’s part: wasn’t Abner about to turn all of Israel over to David? Isn’t this what David wanted, in the end?

  David did want control of the north, but he was smart enough to see that Abner was negotiating from a position of weakness. After years of war, Abner’s overtures signaled that the Israelite forces were on the verge of complete defeat. This was a last-ditch effort, though it was probably the best move Abner had. David hardly needed or wanted to share power with anyone. Tribute and military service are valuable substitutes for warfare when the dominant party is far away and the cost of moving troops to the conquered territory is high. But David was close enough that he could enter Israel at a moment’s notice, and even return to Judah in the same day, as in the battle at Gibeon. In short, Abner could not offer anything that David could not take for himself. What’s more, if Abner really was the power in Israel, then David would have recognized that the best way to slay the beast is to cut off its head. Without Abner to lead Israel, the northern kingdom would be utterly lost, with only the figurehead Ishbaal in place—and Ishbaal, by sending Michal, had already effectively signaled his abdication of the throne. With Abner’s death, the north lay open to David.

  The Death of Ishbaal

  THE EFFECT OF ABNER’S death on the north was precisely what David would have anticipated: “When the son of Saul heard that Abner had died in Hebron, his courage failed and all Israel was terrified” (2 Sam. 4:1). The killing of Abner would have been most terrifying to Ishbaal, for through it, David signaled clearly that he was not interested in concluding this conflict by diplomatic means. David would give no consideration to Ishbaal, who had been willing to relinquish his throne in the name of peace. That option was now clearly off the table. Ishbaal had rendered himself a nonentity—and now he was about to realize that fate in the most tangible of ways.

  Without a figure of power at the head of Israel—Abner being dead, and Ishbaal being ineffectual—any last attempt to save the north would logically come from the remaining national institution: the military. But there was little the military could do to spare Israel from being overwhelmed by David’s army. Only one path remained, only one option for avoiding the inevitable. And so it should not be a surprise that two of Ishbaal’s officers, Rechab and Baanah from the tribe of Benjamin, entered Ishbaal’s house at night and killed him, removing his head and taking it to David with an obsequious message: “Here is the head of your enemy, Ishbaal son of Saul, who sought your life. This day Yahweh has avenged my lord the king upon Saul and his offspring” (2 Sam. 4:8). Their intentions are clear enough: by killing Ishbaal and taking his head to Hebron, Rechab and Baanah would have been presenting the kingdom to David. They had performed the dirty work, leaving David free to enter the north without further bloodshed.

  The two officers also had personal motives: they displayed their loyalty to their new sovereign, and they may have hoped for some preferential treatment as a result. They also may have been motivated by their tribal affiliation. Benjamin was the territory farthest to the south in the northern kingdom, directly bordering on David’s kingdom of Judah. If David did decide to engage in a full-out assault on the north, Benjamin would be the first area to bear the brunt of the action. What’s more, Saul was from Benjamin, and therefore Ishbaal was also. It thus may have been Benjamin’s responsibility to take care of the Ishbaal problem. Or at least Rechab and Baanah may have thought that David would trust that all of Israel supported the decision only if it was Saul’s own tribe that did the deed.

  Unfortunately for Rechab and Baanah, they did not realize the depth of David’s concern for appearances. The death of Ishbaal was all to David’s good, but if it looked as if David had happily accepted Ishbaal’s head, won not in battle but by cowardly subterfuge, the ramifications for public perception would be unacceptable. Rechab and Baanah died on the spot, struck down by David’s men, their bodies mutilated and publicly displayed as if to say, as usual, “David did not approve of this.”17

  This episode should be very familiar to the reader of the David story, its course almost predictable: it is a nearly perfect parallel to the story of the Amalekite who claimed before David responsibility for Saul’s death and was killed for it. Indeed, the Bible even refers directly to that earlier episode in this one. David says: “The man who told me that Saul was dead thought he was bringing good news. But instead of rewarding him for the news, I seized and killed him in Ziklag. How much more, then, when wicked men have killed a blameless man in his bed in his own house?” (2 Sam. 4:10–11). Since we have already seen that the story of the Amalekite looks very much like a literary invention, we may be tempted to think the same in this case: that David was in fact responsible for Ishbaal’s death and that this story is a cover-up by the biblical authors.18 Yet this story has certain features that suggest it might be more believable than would first appear.

  Unlike the story of the unnamed Amalekite, this narrative clearly identifies Ishbaal’s killers by name and by tribal affiliation. If the story were inve
nted, then this would be akin to biblical slander: the families of Rechab and Baanah, and the entire tribe of Benjamin, would be tagged with the guilt of having killed the rightful Israelite king. But there is no obvious justification for such slander—unlike in the case of the Amalekite, Israel’s constant enemy and a common target for the biblical authors. Furthermore, whereas in the story of Saul’s death there seemed to be no good reason for the Amalekite to have gone to David—as David was merely a Philistine vassal at the time—now that David is king of Judah, and embroiled in a lengthy war against Israel, the taking of Ishbaal’s head to him makes perfect sense. Finally, the motivation of Rechab and Baanah is understandable on every level: personally, tribally, and nationally. They were simply trying to accomplish what Abner had been unable to do.

  When we come to this story in the biblical text, we read it in light of the earlier narrative of Saul’s death. But in fact, we should do the reverse: this story is the historically accurate one, and the story of the Amalekite is constructed on the basis of the story of Rechab and Baanah. This is a clever move by the biblical authors: since Ishbaal’s death does actually appear not to have been David’s direct responsibility, then by the literary parallel it is made to appear as if the same is true of the death of Saul.