Finally, when the Israelites ask God to designate the tribe that will lead them into battle against the Benjaminites, God says: “Judah first.” Saul, the first king of Israel, is a member of the tribe of Benjamin—and David, the man who will succeed him on the throne, is a member of the tribe of Judah.
The Book of Judges, then, can be understood as one long argument in favor of monarchy among a people who have been governed so far only by patriarchs, prophets, and judges. The Israelites have acted abominably, we are given to understand. They have strayed from the strict faith of the patriarchs; they have been preyed upon by their pagan neighbors; and, at the end, they have fallen upon each other with a degree of barbarism that exceeds the worst excesses of their enemies. Only a king will be able to save them from their enemies and them’ selves—but, as the Book of Judges seems to predict, the first man to sit on the throne of Israel will fail. And so the scene is set for the greatest king in the history of Israel and the real hero of the Bible.
* In retelling the story of the Levite traveler and his concubine, I have imagined that the father-in-law insists on entertaining the Levite day after day, thus delaying his departure, only because his daughter has not yet consented to return with the Levite to his home in the hill-country of Ephraim.
* Jael’s weaponry—a hammer and tent peg—complies with the dictates of Deuteronomy 22:5 (“A woman shall not wear that which pertameth to a man”), which the rabbis interpreted to mean that a woman is forbidden to use a sword, a spear, or a dagger. Elsewhere in Judges, a wicked Israelite prince named Abimelech is grievously wounded by a millstone dropped on his head by a woman; Abimelech orders his armor-bearer to finish him off with a sword lest it be said: “A woman slew him” (Judg. 9:53–54).
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TAMAR AND AMNON
“Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house….”
—2 SAMUEL 12.11
Amnon sat glumly at the far end of the long banquet table, chewing on a crust of bread and glaring now and then at his father, the king, who held forth with broad gestures and grand words at the head of the table.
Even though he was the king’s oldest son and heir apparent to the throne of Israel, Amnon was plainly a troubled young man. A scowl was fixed on his dark features, and his brown eyes glowed with a certain strange light, as if a fire burned inside him. Everyone in the court of King David saw Amnon’s unhappiness—his wives, his generals, his priests, even his servants, all of them except the king himself.
David had many sons, and seldom did he bother to look at any of them. More often than not he was surrounded by a small crowd of courtiers, all of whom noisily competed for his attention. Even when the king found himself at table with Amnon, which happened rarely, he had much else on his mind. The long war against the Ammonites had finally ended in a victory, to be sure, and David now wore the gold crown that had once crowned the head of the king of Ammon himself. But David could not forget the dire words of that dour old prophet, Nathan, who afflicted him with unsettling messages from God even at his moments of greatest glory.
“Wherefore hast thou despised the word of the Lord, to do that which is evil in My sight! Uriah the Hittite thou has smitten with the sword, and his wife thou hast taken to be thy wife, and him thou has slain with the sword of the children of Ammon. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from thy house…. Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house….”
—2 SAMUEL 12:9–11
“‘The sword shall never depart from the House of David,’” Nathan had said, quoting the words of the Almighty as uttered to the prophet in yet another one of his dismal visions. “‘I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house.’”
These words of warning were never far from David’s thoughts, even as he held forth at the banquet table with yet another wry and slightly ribald tale about the days when he was but a humble shepherd and not yet a king. Distracted by his own tale, bloated with rich food and perhaps a bit drunk, the king surveyed the table without pausing to glance at Amnon.
Nor did Amnon watch his father with the keen interest displayed by the others around the table, who listened to the king’s familiar story as if hearing it for the first time and laughed admiringly at his old jokes. What held Amnon’s attention was the young woman sitting at the king’s right hand, where Amnon felt he ought to be seated. Tamar was the king’s daughter, Amnon’s half sister, and she smiled with obvious pleasure whenever the king inclined his head to whisper something into her ear. Now and then, the two of them laughed at a secret joke—and something burned in Amnon’s heart every time he saw their foreheads touch.
The king clearly took pleasure from the company of his daughter, whose sweet disposition and undemanding nature were such a contrast to the grasping and carping of his sons. David had so many sons, and all of them needy and troubled in one way or another, but he had fathered only one daughter. Her name was Tamar, and everyone—even the king himself—remarked on how very beautiful she was.
And it came to pass at eventide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s house; and from the roof he saw a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon. And David sent and inquired after the woman. And one said: “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her … and she returned unto her house.
—2 SAMUEL 11-2-4
The king did not know it, but the gloomy words of the prophet Nathan were being whispered all over Jerusalem as the latest bit of gossip about the king’s sordid affair with the woman named Bathsheba. Amnon had been among the first to hear of the incident, if only because more than one of the courtiers had already begun to cultivate Amnon in the confident belief that he would one day follow King David to the throne.
As the rumors had it, King David had first spied Bathsheba from afar as she bathed on the roof of her house. No one blamed him for that—indeed, one sniggering priest suggested that Bathsheba had fully intended to catch the king’s eye by brazenly showing herself, naked and wet, within plain sight of the palace roof, where David was known to take the night air from time to time. Indeed, it was not unusual for some of the excitable young women of Jerusalem to lie in wait for David in the streets leading up to the palace and to shriek with excitement when the handsome king was spotted on the ramparts above their heads.
When it came to Bathsheba, however, it was the king himself who was smitten and lovesick. So he dispatched one of his more discreet attendants to invite Bathsheba into the royal bedchamber, and—like so many other women on so many other warm summer evenings—she did not refuse. Still, apart from David’s wives and a few of the fussier priests, no one in the royal palace regarded the fling as much of a sin, even if Bathsheba’s husband, a soldier named Uriah, was serving in the king’s army in the war against Ammon while she reclined on the king’s bed.
And the woman conceived; and she sent and told David, and said: “I am with child.” And David sent to Joab [saying]: “Send me Uriah the Hittite….”And when Uriah was come unto him, David asked of him … how the people fared, and how the war prospered. And David said to Uriah: “Go down to thy house, and wash thy feet….” But Uriah slept at the door of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and went not down to his house…. And Uriah said unto David: “… [T]he servants of my lord are encamped in the open field; shall I then go into my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? as thou livest, and as thy soul liveth, I will not do this thing.”
—2 SAMUEL 11:5–11
And when David had called him, he did eat and drink before him; and he made him drunk; and at even he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord, but went not down to his house.
—2 SAMUEL 11 13
But the whispers grew hotter when it was the time of the month for Bathsheba to purify herself at the ritual bath, and she
declared herself to be with child. Now the king panicked, and he devised a devilish plan to blame the pregnancy on Uriah. The king summoned Uriah all the way back from the battlefield to the royal palace on the laughable pretense of asking him if the army was well and the war was going well. “Yes, well,” replied the puzzled but dutiful soldier. His curiosity satisfied, David urged Uriah to avail himself of his own bed and his own wife as long as he was in Jerusalem. Uriah, still puzzled, refused the king’s suggestion.
“My comrades are camped on the battlefield,” said Uriah. “How, then, can I eat and drink in comfort and then sleep with my wife?”
So, night after night, the loyal soldier insisted on sleeping at the door of the royal bedchamber along with the servants, much to the consternation of the king himself. Not even an abundance of the king’s wine weakened his resolve: the stalwart soldier drank himself drunk but did not stray from the king’s door. Finally the king abandoned his goal of seduction and sent Uriah back to the battlefield in service of an even more sinister plan to solve the problem of the pregnant Bathsheba.
On the night before Uriah returned to the front, the king scribed a short letter to Joab, general of his army in Ammon. “Put Uriah into battle where the fighting is fiercest,” the king wrote, “and then order your men to fall back so Uriah is alone.” The message was unmistakable: Uriah was meant to die alone at the hands of the enemy. David sealed the letter himself, handed it to Uriah with complete confidence that he would not even try to pry it open and read it, and sent the obedient soldier back to the front with his own death sentence in his hand.
And it came to pass in the morning, that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. And he wrote in the letter, saying: “Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die.”
—2 SAMUEL 11:14–15
And the messenger said unto David: “… [T]hy servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.” Then David said unto the messenger: “Thus shalt thou say unto Joab: Let not this thing displease thee, for the sword devoureth in one manner or another; make thy battle more strong against the city, and overthrow it….”
—2 SAMUEL 12.23-25
Later, when Joab sent word to King David that Uriah had been killed in the fighting under the walls of the Ammonite fortress, David painted an expression of sorrow on his handsome features.
“Don’t fret about Uriah—sometimes the sword devours one way, sometimes another,” the king instructed his messenger to tell the general back at the front. “Just strengthen your assault on the city and raze it to the ground!”
The general did as he was told, the Ammonite fortress fell at last, and the rich plunder was soon on its way back to Jerusalem. David crowned himself with a victor’s crown—and he took Bathsheba, now well along in her pregnancy, as his latest wife. Except for the gloomy predictions of the prophet Nathan, the future of David and his royal house seemed glorious indeed, just as glorious as God himself had promised.
Whenever Amnon pondered the vile way his father had secured Bathsheba as his latest wife, he experienced a palpable disgust that seemed to ball up in his stomach and rise into his throat. Here was yet another wife in the royal harem, yet another son in the noisy brood of royal mouths to feed. The man was an insatiable beast, Amnon told himself, a shameless philanderer who had no place sitting on the throne. When the king finally died—one way or another—and it was his turn to reign, Amnon told himself, the people of Israel would recognize and honor him as a righteous man and an upright king.
Such thoughts burned in Amnon’s head as he spent long hours at the window of the house allotted to him in the royal compound. Since the king gave him little else to do, Amnon watched the minions who scurried back and forth across the courtyard around which the royal houses were clustered—captains, priests, and scribes in abundance, sometimes the lord of some great estate on his way to the throne room with a petition in hand, now and then a convoy of concubines headed toward the palace under an escort of armed soldiers, and always a teeming crowd of random servants and servitors. Amnon watched as if in a trance, and he imagined the day when they would be serving him instead of his father.
From time to time Amnon’s eye fell on one man in particular who simply could not be overlooked even in a crowd—the commanding figure of Absalom, one of his many half brothers, the son of one of David’s wives, Maacah. Absalom was younger than Amnon, but he seemed to outshine his older brother in so many other ways: Absalom was taller, he was fairer, he was stronger and yet more graceful, he was more genial and thus better-liked among the courtiers. To Amnon’s consternation, Absalom was regarded by more than one of the busy* bodies in the court of King David as a more promising candidate to be the next king of Israel than Amnon himself, the rightful heir.
To Amnon’s relief, he did not encounter Absalom except on formal occasions, and he never found reason to seek out his half brother. Only when Amnon spotted him in the crowded courtyard was he forced to ponder why Absalom always seemed so good-natured and high-spirited when he himself, the future king of Israel, was always so angry and despairing.
One day, as Amnon stared down from his window, he spotted Absalom and the equally familiar figure of Tamar as they emerged from the palace and headed across the courtyard in the direction of Absalom’s house. Like Absalom, Tamar was the daughter of Maacah, and she shared her brother’s appealing features and graceful bearing. Amnon had grown up in the same household with the two of them, but Tamar had always clung to Absalom and allowed him to shield her from the playful attention of the other sons of the king. Now Absalom and Amnon had been allotted houses of their own by the king, but Tamar was not yet married and still lived in the palace. So Amnon did not encounter his half sister except on formal occasions when everyone gathered to listen to the king’s tired old tales.
Today, however, Amnon found himself staring at Tamar with new interest. He watched from his high window as she walked with long strides across the courtyard, looking up at Absalom and laughing at something he said. Amnon noticed that she was taller than he remembered, her hair longer, her body more womanly. She wore the gown of a royal princess—rich, colorful, and concealing—but the long sleeves and the generous folds of the skirt did not entirely hide from Amnon’s eyes a certain voluptuousness in her limbs and hips. Indeed, Amnon did not take his eyes off his half sister until she disappeared into Absalom’s house on the far side of the courtyard.
And it came to pass after this, that Absalom the son of David had a fair sister, whose name was Tamar; and Amnon the son of David loved her.
—2 SAMUEL 13:1
And Amnon was so distressed that he fell sick because of his sister Tamar; for she was a virgin; and it seemed hard to Amnon to do any thing unto her. But Amnon had a friend, whose name was Jonadab, the son of Shimeah David’s brother; and Jonadab was a very subtle man. And he said unto him: “Why, O son of the king, art thou thus becoming leaner from day to day? Wilt thou not tell me?” And Amnon said unto him: “I love Tamar, my brother Absalom’s sister.”
—2 SAMUEL 13:2–4
Amnon felt vaguely ill at ease as Tamar disappeared from sight. He swallowed involuntarily, as if something were caught in his throat—a sensation not unlike the one he felt when he recalled his father’s exploits with Bathsheba and the baby that grew even now in her womb. But he was aware of something else, too: a certain breathlessness that came upon him when he envisioned the movement of Tamar’s long legs as she walked across the courtyard and imagined what it might be like to stroke her long black hair or touch her smooth skin with his fingertips.
A servant interrupted his reverie, but Amnon waved away the food and drink that was offered. Later in the afternoon, the servant appeared with another meal. Amnon waved him away again, and the dish of food simply gathered flies on the floor of the corridor outside his door. At last, Amnon undressed and slumped into his bed. The next morning he was up early and spent the day at the window, hoping to ca
tch a glimpse of Tamar in the courtyard below. By the third day of his vigil, the servants were concerned enough at Amnon’s inexplicable fast to send for the only man they knew to be his friend, a cousin by the name of Jonadab.
“Son of the king!” Jonadab said with mock formality as he bulled his way into Amnon’s quarters. “Why do you sit so glumly morning after morning? You are wasting away for want of food! What’s wrong with you?”
“It’s Tamar,” said Amnon without turning away from the window.
“Tamar?” repeated his cousin. “Your sister? What about her?”
Amnon sat in silence for a moment, then stood up and faced his cousin.
“Tamar,” he said in an insistent voice, “is Absalom’s sister.”
“So tell me what it is about Tamar,” Jonadab persisted, “that makes you act like you are sick with a plague.”
“I think,” said Amnon slowly, “that I am in love with her.”
Jonadab laughed out loud—and then, when he saw the grave expression on Amnon’s face, his laughter turned into a sudden fit of coughing and he looked away in embarrassment. “Better the plague,” he muttered to himself, “than to be lovesick over your own sister.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do about it?” Amnon demanded. “I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. All I can do is think about how to get her into my bed. But I can’t even get her to talk to me, much less to come into my bedchamber!”
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