by Bruce Feiler
So David could have gone up it. But did he?
I heard a slithering through the heart of the shaft, and a curl of rope landed at my feet. It was followed by a metal clang as a harness and ascenders splashed in the mud. There was only one way out: up. We were going to touch the tsinor ourselves. Gabi, I now realized, was standing at the top of the shaft in the part of the tunnel we had passed by earlier. Warren’s Shaft turned out to be a vertical shortcut, as in a game of Chutes and Ladders. As Gabi affixed the rope to a bar at the top, I stepped into an orange harness, tightened it around my waist, and clamped myself onto the rope. With virtually no experience in rock climbing, I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. I refastened my hard hat and took a tentative step toward the mouth of the shaft. Avner gave me a boost. With a few steps, jerks, and strained pull-ups from rock crevices, I managed to make it about a third of the way up the shaft. Look out, Jebusites, here I come.
This venture was particularly satisfying to me because, as a child, I was not blessed with physical strength. My deepest fears were of being wrestled, wrangled, beaten up. I am haunted by a memory of visiting a friend at age six when his much older brother answered the door. I was terrified he would punch me. “I’ve already had a broken leg,” I said wimpily. As an adult, I have wondered whether my sense of adventure is in part an attempt to purge this childhood fear, pushing myself to extremes but ones that can be navigated by wit, not strength. I’ve never been engrossed by acts of pure force. I like sports; I’m naturally athletic. But unlike my older brother, I was never particularly interested in the military. My father was in the Navy, but like so many things in my family, that interest seemed to pass to the firstborn son. I’m more like my mother; I’m attuned to pain in others and inclined to offer comfort.
This may be one reason David seems so unappealing to me. He clearly is steeped in the insecurities of being younger, weaker. But instead of responding with humility and the sensitivities that might come from being aggrieved, he overcompensates with the most brutal use of violence to consume power. He’s not Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he’s Napoleon. And if one appeal of the Bible is to contemplate oneself in the great historical moments of the Israelites, as readers are expressly commanded to do at Passover, then I do not find myself reflected all that much in the story of David. Unlike Abraham, Moses, or any number of biblical figures I might wish to be like, David seems repugnant. I don’t want to be him; I want to flee from him.
And I got my chance. About halfway up the sheer face of Warren’s Shaft, my foot slipped and my left hand sprang free from the rock. My right hand burned as it strained to hold the rope. My head cracked against the jagged stone. I howled. A chunk of flesh flew off my palm, and my hard hat fell to the ground. My legs sagged. I was left hanging limp on the rope, the eensy-weensy spider halfway up the waterspout. As the Bible declares upon David’s triumph of Jerusalem, “No one who is blind or lame may enter the House.” I was clearly not David.
A few minutes later, after I’d eased myself back down, Avner took his turn and got no farther than I had. It’s possible David snuck into Jerusalem through these tunnels; he, or his deputy, could have brought a ladder. Surely either one of them was stronger than either one of us. But given David’s history of distancing himself from the dirty handiwork of state building, the idea that he would have gone to these lengths, especially given the ease with which such an ascent could have been repulsed, including after they entered the city and went to open the gates, seems improbable. He would have wanted to march into the city only after others had done the killing, and then only with trumpets blaring.
On first glance the question of how David took Jerusalem may not seem to matter. As Avner said, “After he takes the city, everything changes. Jerusalem evolves into something much more than a geographical entity. It becomes a theological emblem. It becomes the chosen place of the Almighty. It becomes the holiest city on earth.”
Yet precisely because Jerusalem does become so important, the fact that the text is vague on how David conquered it seems emblematic. Similar moments of creation and re-creation in the Bible—those periodic new beginnings that propel the Israelites into fresh phases of history—are among the most dramatic in the text. The conception of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden gets seventeen verses, plus twenty-four for their expulsion. God’s call to Abraham and his departure for the Promised Land get eight verses, including a passionate, direct plea from the divine. Moses’ heart-stopping cleaving of the Red Sea and the Israelites’ escape to the wilderness takes thirty verses, an entire chapter.
David’s capture of Jerusalem is brushed over in three curt verses. What should be a heart-pounding climax is instead cryptic and obscure, shielded by a linguistic pall. The message the text is sending is piercing: David does not deserve credit for conquering Jerusalem. His character is too base to profane the elevation of God’s glittering city on a hill. Three thousand years later, it seems only fitting that leading experts speculate that he captured the place by coming up through the sewer. The Bible, as ever, gets the last laugh.
Certainly from us.
We had no choice. We had to turn back through the sullage.
Back at ground level, the bandage that had once been our Goliath’s sling now served to wrap my hand. We said good-bye to Gabi and went to a Palestinian kebab house to salve our wounds and to confront the most surprising twist in David’s life. His rise to power does not end in triumph; it ends in loneliness. The main reasons for his collapse: arrogance, divine providence, and women.
After he secures Jerusalem, David’s first act is to summon the Ark of the Covenant, which has been residing in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. This is another tactically brilliant maneuver to help secure the loyalty of the north, which is honored that its treasure has been elevated to national icon. David dances before the Ark to the tune of lyres, harps, timbrels, and cymbals. The text says he leaps and whirls before the Lord, which prompts Michal to accuse him of exposing his genitals before the multitudes—in effect, he flashes the Ark. “The Lord chose me instead of your father,” David says, “and appointed me ruler over the Lord’s people Israel.” His message: I will dance before the Lord and dishonor myself all day if I want to.
The act of bringing the Ark to Jerusalem has great symbolic power. The Ark and the Ten Commandments are the physical manifestation of the Laws of Moses handed down by God on Mount Sinai. They represent the covenant between God and the people of Israel—God promises to protect the people; they promise to uphold his code of conduct. It is the locus of Israelite religion. In the several hundred years between the promulgation of these laws and the rise of David, the Ark has been trapped in the feuding among the tribes, its influence diminished. By uniting the tribes and bringing the Ark to Jerusalem, David for the first time marries the political fortunes of the Israelites with their religious tradition. Again, putting it in contemporary terms, he fuses church and state.
Symbolically, David’s move brings the legacy of Mount Sinai to Mount Zion, one of the biblical names for Jerusalem. In some ways, this act is the culmination of the Conquest because the tribes are finally united with a single capital. But David is concerned his act is incomplete: He lives in a house of cedar, a sign of wealth for a wandering people, while the Ark abides in a tent. Shouldn’t he build a temple for it?
In a stunning rebuke, God says no: “From the day that I brought the people of Israel out of Egypt to this day I have not dwelt in a house, but have moved about in Tent and Tabernacle.” In effect God puts David in his place: “Who do you think you are building a house for me? I am still king of the world; you are merely king of a few territories.” God, whose relationship with humans has always been something of a courtship, stops short of consummating his relationship with David. They can move in together, but they’re not ready to build a house together.
But then God does something even more surprising. He promises to give everything he just denied to David, to David’s children: “When your days are done and yo
u lie with your father, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own issue, and I will establish his kingship. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish his royal throne forever.” God says that when the offspring does wrong, he will chastise him, but he insists he will never withdraw his favor. “Your throne shall be established forever.” God, whose earlier commitment to protect the Israelites is conditional on their upholding his laws, now makes an unconditional promise to protect the House of David. The covenant is now one-way. No matter what happens, David’s house will reign forever.
As is often the case, God offers no explanation for this gesture, which will have huge consequences for Jewish and especially Christian history. Some scholars suggest this covenant may be the work of biblical redactors, Jerusalem scribes who edited the story centuries later and were interested in promoting David’s ties to their city. Others suggest that kingship had become the norm in the Ancient Near East, prompting God to uphold this tradition. Either way, one irresistible conclusion is that God is clearly trying to have it both ways: keep his association with the shining new capital but distance himself from its cavalier king.
No matter the reason, the promise predictably emboldens David, who proceeds to expand aggressively across the region, marching south into the Negev, north to Damascus, and even east across the Jordan into Moab, Ammon, and Edom. The Israelites, the tiny family that began with Abraham wandering sonless from Mesopotamia, have suddenly become a mini-empire. The Fertile Crescent, which has long been marked by empires on either end, now has one in the middle. Most historians doubt that David ever enjoyed this kind of reach; the tiny kingdoms of Israel and Judah almost assuredly could not have provided the soldiers and resources required. But the notion that a united monarchy could have asserted some regional influence is tantalizing considering that in the tenth century B.C.E. both Egypt and Mesopotamia were in decline. History does not endorse the biblical story, but it does suggest its backdrop is accurate.
As for the morals of the story, they, too, are mixed. One reason for David’s popularity today, especially among Jews, is his extraordinary assertion of brute power. Many Jews see themselves collectively as that vulnerable child I was, afraid of getting beaten up. This view is understandable. Jews have been beaten up for centuries—and not by their older brothers but by their younger ones, Christians and Muslims. David is an appealing corrective. He beats others up first, and seems to do so not just with impunity but with God’s express blessing of eternal salvation. Even the savior of Christians claims descent through the King of Israel.
But the story of David also holds an important reality check for Jews, which I, for one, was uncomfortable to learn. The upside of being a small people—today, there are 12 million Jews, 2 billion Christians, and 1 billion Muslims—is that Jews have long considered themselves more tolerant than their fellow monotheists. Others may claim to be universal faiths; Jews are content with being a leading-edge minority. Yet David proves that Israelite religion was not always satisfied with being small. In its frisky, adolescent years, before being slapped back to size by the Assyrians and Babylonians, the Israelite nation, too, wanted to assert its power, and its way of life, on its neighbors. Even in the Jews’ own story—the Bible—David is the first king to impose his religion on others. Jews must be careful before accusing others of tyrannical behavior when their story blazes the trail. Long before Constantine, David makes the first play to establish monotheism as the universal faith of the Near East.
And he fails. After all, how can he control the entire region when he can’t control his own family?
The thing about David is he loved women.”
Yael Lotan was taking a sip of lemonade and speaking about the subject of her recent novel. A fiery-haired time bomb of a woman, Yael had been frequently under arrest for supporting Palestinians during her fifty-plus years as a British-born Israeli intellectual. In many ways, she was a classic radical. She didn’t much care for Zionism. She didn’t much care for men.
But she did care for David.
“David intrigued me enormously, because he’s so rich and complicated we feel he’s real. He’s got terrific strengths but also terrific weaknesses. My goal was to eliminate the mythology around him and write about him as an abandoned child who rose to become a very romantic king.”
“Romantic?”
One afternoon David rises from his couch and strolls to the roof of the palace, where he eyes a woman bathing outdoors. David summons the woman, who is identified as Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah. Bathsheba, who has just purified herself after her menstruation, lies with David and returns home, only to send word, “I’m pregnant.” David responds by sending not for Bathsheba but for her husband, who is away in the army. David bribes Uriah, then sends him home to sleep with his wife and provide cover for the king. Uriah refuses to visit his wife and sleeps at the entrance to the palace. “What’s the matter with you?” David asks. Uriah says that having sex would make him ritually impure for battle. “The Ark is at the palace,” he says. “Our men are at war. How can I sleep with my wife?” Flabbergasted, David gets Uriah drunk and once more sends him home, but the king is rebuffed a second time. Finally, in an act tantamount to usurping the life-and-death powers of God, David sends Uriah to the front line to be killed, making him yet another unfortunate cog in the king’s way disposed of at a convenient time. David then invites Bathsheba into the palace, where she delivers a son.
“I’m inclined to believe Bathsheba engineered the whole story,” Yael said. “In this kind of topography, anyone who takes a bath on top of a roof knows very well that others are looking. And David has the highest vantage point of all. She knows he’s a lecherous old thing, and she deliberately exposes herself to him.”
“If so, what’s her motive?”
Yael looked at me, pityingly. “To get into the king’s bed! It’s a damn good motive. It’s a whole lot better than being just the wife of a general. Such things happen. Look at Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Her older sister was his mistress, but she wanted a king for herself.”
“So are we supposed to be impressed that she’s as manipulative as the king?”
“In matters of women and children, David can be very naïve. And he probably thinks, Why not? She’s good looking. Why not take her to bed? But he doesn’t realize he’s met his match.”
To begin, God gets furious and sends the prophet Nathan to deliver a parable about a rich man who is too cheap to offer hospitality to a traveler, and a poor man who gives the traveler his only lamb. “The rich man who did this deserves to die,” David wails. “That man is you!” Nathan replies. God then delivers a curse on David for his behavior toward Uriah: Your house will always be at war. More immediately, “I will make a calamity rise against you,” God says. “You acted in secret, but I will make this happen in the sight of all Israel.” Soon Bathsheba’s son falls critically ill and, on the seventh day, dies. David ignores the customary postdeath fast, consoles Bathsheba, and she delivers him another son.
His name is Solomon, which means “the replacement.”
“This is where Bathsheba shines,” Yael said. “She’s wonderfully manipulative, and when she becomes the number one wife, she does everything in her power to make sure Solomon inherits the throne.”
David, meanwhile, is distracted by the fulfillment of God’s curse. Turmoil arises among his earlier sons, Amnon, who rapes his sister Tamar, and Absalom, who avenges the rape by murdering his half brother Amnon. Absalom is exiled by David and soon goes on to lead a coup against his father. David is forced to flee to Jordan on his bare feet, weeping. Absalom chases his father across the river, where David and his remaining loyalists strike back, killing twenty thousand of Absalom’s troops. David then looks the other way as Absalom gallops through the woods, gets his locks caught in a tree, and is murdered by David’s deputy. The defrocked king returns to Jerusalem to reclaim his tarnished throne.
But David is old. He lies around the pal
ace in his pajamas, disoriented, senile. His attendants search for a young virgin to perk him up. A beautiful girl, Abishag, is brought to the palace, but the king is impotent. Abishag stays around anyway. Bathsheba, concerned that she has been supplanted by Abishag and that Solomon won’t inherit the throne, sidles up to David and reminds him, “Dear, remember how you promised that Solomon would replace you?” Clearly David made no such promise, but Bathsheba executes a deft bedroom coup. Solomon is named sole heir.
“So where’s the romance in this story?” I said to Yael.
“Oh, my goodness, it’s very romantic,” she said. “First of all, Abishag is this girl from the north brought to this old king; she starts out as a foot warmer and rises to become majoress domo. Second, she’s the one person totally devoted to him in the midst of the power struggles within his family. Thus she’s the one person he trusts implicitly.”
“A lot of women have told me over the years that they don’t have a way into the Bible. The men have all the power. As a woman, do you think David offers you a way in?”
“No. The Bible is clearly patriarchal; women in that society played a very minor role. The Bible deals with a period in which women really were ciphers.”
“So given this, can we take lessons from these stories? Their legacy is supposed to be morality.”
“That’s bunk. It’s three thousand years ago. Europeans were still living in caves. Rome hadn’t been built. Athens hadn’t arisen. Why apply modern ideas to these guys? Especially since, in modern times, people don’t seem to be much better.”
“So you seem to have plenty of reasons not to like the Bible. It’s patriarchal. It’s used by moralists of all religions. And yet you’re passionate about it.”
“Because we are probably the only people in the world who can read with the greatest of ease a text written thousands of years ago. Modern Greeks can’t easily read Homer. Today’s Chinese can’t read Confucius. In India, a Hindi scholar must study Sanskrit. Europeans can’t simply read Latin. The one achievement of Zionism that didn’t come at anyone’s expense was the revival of the Hebrew language. I dedicated my book to my daughter, because she can read this story and realize that, as romantic as these women are, she doesn’t have to be like them. She’s not a cipher.
