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David's life

David

Dr R. W. L. Moberly from the University of Durham writes:

David was the first king in Jerusalem whose reign was later looked back on as a golden era. He is known both as a great fighter and as the "sweet singer of Israel", the source of poems and songs, some of which are collected in the book of Psalms.

The date of David's enthronement is approximately 1000 BC. The context of his life is a time of transition within the history of Israel. Because of the lawlessness of this period there was a growing desire to have a king. A king can give strong leadership and bring victory over enemies. But a king can also cream off his people's wealth and resources to promote his own power.

The scene is set when Saul, Israel's first king, is rejected by God for disobedience. God sends the prophet Samuel to the house of Jesse to anoint a successor at God's direction. When David his youngest son appears, God tells Samuel to anoint him.

David and Goliath, Osmar Schindler, 1888 ©

David's qualities "after the Lord's own heart" are perhaps best displayed in the famous contest with Goliath. The people of Israel are confronted by their enemies, the Philistines, and are terrified of their champion, Goliath. Goliath is huge and carries overwhelming military technology. He is the ancient equivalent of the Terminator and calls for a single combat to decide the battle.

David, still a shepherd, is bringing provisions for his brothers in the Israelite army. He is dismayed by Israel's fear of Goliath. King Saul hears of David's attitude and sends for him. When David offers to fight in single combat, Saul dismisses the idea as a joke. But, as a shepherd, David has learned to trust God in the face of terrifying opposition.

David stuns Goliath with a stone from his sling, and when Goliath falls to the ground David makes his triumph complete by cutting off Goliath's head with Goliath's own sword. This is the story of a young person who trusts God against all the odds, and to whom God gives success.

The Shepherd David, Elizabeth Jane Gardner ©

The next phase in David's life is far from straightforward. Saul takes David to court, and sends him out on military campaigns. Saul becomes envious of David and becomes suspicious that David might want to usurp him. This is not helped by the fact that Saul's son and heir, Jonathan, has become deeply attached to David, and Saul's daughter Michal loves him. Saul's suspicions quickly become paranoia, and David has to flee for his life and live rough.

After a while David decides that there is little point in constantly being on the run from Saul, and he moves to the territory of Israel's enemies, the Philistines. Here he agrees to serve as a mercenary, in return for a whole town for himself and his men to live in.

Then the Philistines go to war against Israel. David is expected to come with them and fight Israelites on their behalf, and is in no position to refuse. Yet some of the Philistine generals become suspicious of David; perhaps he might change sides in mid-battle. At their insistence David is dismissed from the Philistine army - providentially now he is spared from shedding Israelite blood. He is not there when the Philistines defeat Israel and Saul and Jonathan die.

King of Israel

David nobly and movingly laments Saul and Jonathan, leaves the Philistines, and returns to his home territory of Judah where he is made king.

Map of the locations in David's story

It seems that David has 'made it' - with as much success, prosperity, and peace (not to mention several wives and numerous children) as anyone in the ancient world could ever hope for. Yet at this point David becomes complacent. Living "after the Lord's own heart" ceases to be his priority and a terrible unraveling of his achievement sets in. The following chapters tell of David's household falling apart in the pattern of sex and murder that he himself has initiated.

David the great king finally appears as a rather pathetic old man, shivering uncontrollably in bed, while his court and family manoeuvre and jockey for position around the dying king. A power struggle between supporters of two of David's sons, half-brothers to each other, Adonijah and Solomon, ends with Solomon on the throne and some rather dismal settling of scores (1 Kings 1-2). The political wheelings and dealings have a hardy perennial feel to them.

The story of David in full is found in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 Kings 1-2.

Goliath - the evidence

Aftermath of the battle with Goliath

David, Camillo Boccacino, 1530 ©

The legendary battle between the overgrown Philistine warrior Goliath and the humble shepherd boy David is an archetype which has resonance well beyond the Old Testament account. Whenever a lower division football club thwarts a premier squad in a giant-slaying encounter it is celebrated as a 'David and Goliath' event. The defiant courage of the underdog appeals to our deep-seated emotional need to witness the powerless turning the tables, for once, on the powerful.

But for Christians and Jews the story of David is far more than an implausible folk-legend. The Old Testament recounts not only David's heroic deeds as a young boy but chronicles his whole eventful life as the first King of Israel to really unite the nation. After Jesus, his is the most complete biography in the Bible and is packed with schismic political events, epic battles and great personal drama.

Samuel 1 and 2 document David's testing time on the run from the mentally unhinged King Saul, his pitched battles with the heathen Philistines, his triumphant taking of Jerusalem as his capital, the adulterous affair with Bathsheba and the rebellion of his son Absalom. And if that wasn't enough, Christians believe that 1000 years later, as prophesised, Jesus was born into the house of David.

Statue of David situated in Copenhagen, sculpted by F.A. Jerichau, 1860 ©

David is celebrated as a warrior, prophet, musician and lover; the ultimate Renaissance man if you like. He is credited with writing many of the Old Testament Psalms, composed no doubt on his famous lyre on which he was said to be a virtuoso.

His brilliant strategic mind enabled the Israelite army to crush the 'barbaric' Philistines on numerous occasions. The canny leader sent a crack squad of his troops through the ancient water systems underneath the hill-top fortress town of Jerusalem. In a heroic Trojan-horse style attack his forces took the strategically important position and made it his capital.

From here he united the 12 tribally disparate regions in Judea and Israel to form a united nation of Israel. David consolidated his territory by beating back neighbouring tribes and providing strong leadership.

Goliath - the evidence

However, closer examination of the Samuel account suggests that there was a lot more to David's rule than meets the eye.

The Near East of 1000 BC was a lawless place and some Biblical academics are convinced that many of the explanations and alibis which appear in the ancient account of David's life indicate that he was a ruthless leader whose reign was riddled with assassinations, subterfuge and double-dealing. Even the famous battle with the great Philistine Goliath fails to stand up to closer scrutiny.

Davide e Golia, Tanzio da Varallo, c.1625 ©

David, it appears, was not the naïve shepherd boy at the time of the infamous duel, but an experienced apprentice-warrior. His sling wasn't simply a tool for sheep herding but was also a deadly military weapon, the exocet of the ancient world.

If Goliath was as tall as the Bible claims then he would probably have been suffering from a growth condition called pituitary gigantism, which has debilitating side-effects including tunnel-vision. So perhaps David's victory wasn't quite so implausible after all. When the factors are taken into consideration it is increasingly likely that it was actually Goliath who was at a disadvantage.

David was undoubtedly a great leader, but recent evidence and analysis is providing far more complex interpretations of his life. This documentary reveals that by looking beyond the two-dimensional image of the tenacious shepherd boy who became king, we can now see a far more complicated, fascinating man; a fallible and sometimes ruthless pragmatist.

David's significance

A successful king

Dr Paula Gooder ©

Dr Paula Gooder, tutor at the Queen's Foundation in Birmingham, writes:

One of the reasons David is so successful as a king is that he weaves the relationship with God into the very life of the people. So when David establishes his capital in Jerusalem he establishes it with the Ark of the Covenant.

One of the most important features of the establishment of the capital is that the Ark of the Covenant is taken in a joyful procession into the capital. So the capital becomes not only the political heart of the nation but also the religious heart of the nation.

David, however, does not build a temple, because he is told by God that he is not the person who is called to build it: it's his son Solomon who will build the temple.

Nevertheless David establishes the worship of God in a single place. This is very important because until this point God has been worshipped wherever the Ark of the Covenant is, and the Ark of the Covenant moves round wherever the leaders of the people are based, so it is discovered in various different places in Israel.

David places the Ark of the Covenant in a single place in the capital, and it is there that the people must come to worship God. David's capital is so successful because the people have to come and worship God in the one place. It's as though David gives those twelve disparate tribes a focus that they can all look to. They can come and worship and have their political life at the centre of the nation.

David's relationship with God

Nick Page, author of The Bible Book and The Tabloid Bible, writes:

David, Frederick Leighton, 1865 ©

By the time of David, God is in some ways a more distant figure from His people, and in other ways He's a lot closer. Physically, he's more distant. He doesn't seem to appear in the way that He appeared before Moses and certainly the way He appeared before Abraham, when he came to them as a figure. When God appears in the time of David, it's as a cloud filling the temple. It's a much more ethereal kind of presence.

Nevertheless he seems to speak as directly as before, if not more so. The way that David talks about God, if we take the Psalms of David as representative of his thought, is closer and much more personal than in previous times.

Although Abraham and Moses both argued with God, David pleads with God. He cajoles Him, he upbraids Him for not doing things.

The Psalms really are like a spiritual diary. There's a sense of closeness with God, the ability to question Him, to ask what's going on and to have the faith that He'll sort it out. And to have a very kind of personal relationship with God, whilst at the same time God is certainly not present in the same way that He was in the time of Moses.

David was a great king - the greatest king in Israel's history - despite what he did rather than because of what he did. His greatness is shown through his humanity, through his weakness, through his vulnerability. But for his willingness that even though he was a king, to come before God, just as a human being, and say "sorry".

Solomon's temple

Dr Edward Kessler ©

Dr Edward Kessler, executive director and lecturer at the Centre for Jewish Christian Relations, Cambridge, writes:

The reason there was a Temple was that people need something tangible. We all need something tangible. Just look at my walls - I have pictures on my children on them. It's a tangible reminder of people who are important in my life. And so for the Children of Israel, the Temple gave them something tangible.

The act of sacrifice in a temple was a physical act. It wasn't just a mental or a spiritual act.

This is part of our progression as people, moving towards a monotheism, and then moving away from sacrifice and temple cults because that in itself is not necessarily what God wants.

It may have been what we thought God wanted thousands of years ago, but once the temple was destroyed, we realised that actually there are other ways to serve God and the service of God may be through the heart rather than through the sacrifice of animals.

The Psalms

What are the Psalms?

Dr Sue Gillingham ©

Dr Sue Gillingham, Lecturer at Worcester College, Oxford, writes:

The Psalms are much like an anthology: they are full of poems, hymns, prayers and requests for God to help, from many different ages. They have all been associated with David, who was seen as the founder of Psalmody partly because he is associated with music and with singing and creating Psalms to King Saul when Saul was briefly king. The heading of the Psalms to David in Hebrew really could simply mean 'for David or 'in honour of David' - in honour of his memory.

If you put David at about 1000 BCE - roughly the beginning of the Iron Age - that would probably indicate the earlier stage of the Psalms. But they go right through not just David's reign, but also the reigns of different kings during the 'monarchic' period as we call it. That lasts until the 6th century really. Other Psalms were still written after that. So in all it's about a seven or an eight hundred year period.

If they were used during the time of King David and in the times of later kings, then they would have been used at public accession ceremonies, when the king was crowned or perhaps annually, commemorating his accession to the throne. They would have been used at times of battle celebrating victory or lamenting defeat. They would have been used at times of harvest, praying for the good crops to come in the year ahead. They would all have been used for more public and official occasions.

If you think of them being used at the time of the Exile, they would have been used when there's no temple, no king, no court. Probably just simply out in the open or in homes without any structure at all, where they would just have been sung and prayed very much detached from an institution. And then finally, when the people return from Exile to Babylon and the temple was rebuilt, they would have been returned to some sort of public and official use again, with the priests and cultic officials being much more in charge of speaking on behalf of the people.

David dictating the Psalms, ivory book cover, 10th/11th century ©

The experience of the more familiar and popular use that came out of the Exile would undoubtedly have continued. So gradually, the people themselves began using them as much as the public officials and those at the top of society.

Not the original collection

Dr Sue Gillingham, Lecturer at Worcester College, Oxford, continues:

People think that when they open the book of Psalms it's a collection of just 150 Psalms, but there's much evidence, certainly from just before the time of Jesus, that there were lots of different copies of Psalms going around, and there weren't always just 150.

There's a place called Qumran by the Dead Sea, and in two or three of the caves there - particularly caves 4 and 11 - copies of Psalms have been found. And the order of the Psalms is quite different than the one in our Old Testament.

This is dating probably from the 2nd or 1st century, just before the time of Christ. So it's quite late after you'd expect the collection to have been finalised. But they're in a different order and other Psalms have been incorporated into them, which we haven't even got in our Psalter. Some actually from other bits of the Old Testament, such as in Samuel, from Kings and from the Book of Isaiah.

So it's as if the collection in the Psalter took quite a long time to be finalised and so we have to be careful that we don't just assume that here are 150 Psalms and it all came from the time of David and was a solid, fixed collection from very early days.

The Psalms' value as literature

The Lord is my Shepherd, Eastman Johnson, 1863 ©

Professor Valentine Cunningham, Professor of English Language and Literature, Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, writes:

One mark of the literary power in any text from the past is the way in which it enters the language and one of the most striking things about Shakespeare is the way in which our language is filled, whether we know it or not, with phrases, with lines, with words from Shakespeare.

And something similar happens with the Psalms. Phrases like "labour in vain" from Psalm 127 or "out of the mouths of babes and sucklings" from Psalm 42, or "deep calleth unto deep" from Psalm 42 again.

A grand mark, if you like, of poetic memorability and poetic power in the way in which such phrases enter into our language, and a clue to the extraordinary force of the Psalms.

Further reading

Further reading

Handbook on the Historical books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther, V Hamilton, Baker Bookhouse Company (2001)

The David Story: A translation with commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel, Robert Alter, W W Norton (2000)

Samuel, Sidney Brichto, Sinclair-Stevenson (2000) - a translation into colloquial English of the book of Samuel

The Collegeville Bible Commentary: Old Testament: First and Second Samuel (The Collegeville Bible Commentary: Old Testament Series), Paula J Bowes, The Liturgical Press (1985)

How are the mighty fallen?: A dialogical study of King Saul in 1 Samuel, Barbara Green, Continuum International Publishing (2003)

Reflections on the Psalms, C S Lewis, Fount (1983)

The Bible Book: A user's guide to the Bible, Nick Page, Harper Collins (2002)