King David, Innocent Blood, and Bloodguilt
DAVID J. SHEPHERD
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
David: A Man of War and Blood(s)
Reading the David Story/ies
What is the David Story About?
The David Story and Bloodguilt
The David Story and Retribution
The David Story and Homicide
The David Story and Ritual Violence
The Approach and Outline of the Book
‘Innocent Blood’: 1 Sam 16–22
The Sparing of David
The Killings at Nob
‘Blood without Cause’: 1 Sam 23–26
The Sparing of Saul
The Sparing of Nabal
The Sparing of Saul (Again)
‘Your Blood be on Your Head’: 1 Sam 27–2 Sam 1
The Killing of Saul
The Killing of Saul (Again)
‘His Blood at Your Hand’: 2 Sam 2–4
The Killing of Abner
The Killing of Ishbosheth
9.
‘The Sword Will Never Depart’: 2 Sam 5–12
The Killing of Uriah
The Killing of David and Bathsheba’s First Son
‘That the Redeemer of Blood Will Ruin No More’: 2 Sam 13–14
The Killing of Amnon
The Sparing of Absalom
‘Man of Blood’: 2 Sam 15–20
The Sparing of Shimei
The Killing of Absalom
The Sparing of Shimei (Again)
The Killing of Amasa
‘The Bloodguilt of Saul’: 2 Sam 21–24
The Killing of the Seven Saulides
‘Bring Back His Bloody Deeds’: 1 Kgs 1–2
The Killing of Adonijah
The Killing of Joab
The Sparing of Abiathar and the Sons of Barzillai
The Killing of Shimei
Conclusion: King David, Innocent Blood, and Bloodguilt
The Problem in David’s Rise
The Problem in David’s Reign
The Problem in David’s Succession
The Nature of the Problem
The Prevalence and Importance of the Problem
Problem without End
A Problem for Whom?
Bibliography
IndexofSubjects
IndexofBiblicalReferences
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the name my parents gave me, I am quite sure that ‘David’ was among the first words I heard upon entering the world. Being a David who was also a Shepherd ensured that my interest was especially keen when the subject of David came up in my youth and I am very grateful to those who acquainted me with the highlights of his story in those early years. The rest of David’s story in the Hebrew Bible was introduced to me by yet another David— Professor David Jobling—distinguished scholar and teacher of Old Testament language and literature at St. Andrew’s College. His close reading of Samuel during my days as an undergraduate student in his class set a standard which few since have matched, and influenced me in ways which became clearer to me only when I began to take a more serious interest in David a decade ago. This interest in David inevitably found its way into my own classroom in turn and I am grateful to my students for their insights on the David story over the years as we have explored it together at Trinity.
I am also very appreciative of the feedback offered in recent years by various scholarly audiences with whom I have shared papers in preparation for this book. Some of the ideas on David and Uriah which appear in Chapter 5 were aired at a meeting of the Society for Old Testament Study held in Manchester in 2012, while early thoughts on Abimelech were presented at the University of Lausanne in 2016. My reading of 2 Sam 21:1‒14 (Chapter 8) benefited from feedback offered at: the Society of Biblical Literature’s 2017 Annual Meeting in Boston, Cambridge University’s Divinity Faculty Senior Research Seminar in 2018 and, in that same year, the Doktorandenkolloquium in the Faculty of Theology of Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. Rather closer to home, my
treatment of 1 Sam 25 (Chapter 2) was refined with the help of those who attended a symposium on forgiveness in the Hebrew Bible at the Trinity Centre for Biblical Studies in Dublin. Finally, the treatment of Absalom which now appears in Chapters 6 and 7 was improved by comments and questions from those attending the joint meeting of the Society for Old Testament Study, the Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap and the Old Testament Society of South Africa held at the University of Groningen in 2018 and from members of the Divinity Faculty Research Seminars of the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, where I presented in October of 2019.
That various colleagues around the world have been kind enough to comment on drafts of chapters—and in some cases, the entire manuscript—of this book, has been truly humbling. For this, I owe debts of gratitude not easily repaid to Graeme Auld, Walter Dietrich, Hugh Pyper, Rachelle Gilmour, David Firth, Jeremy Schipper, Keith Bodner, George Nicol, Christine Mitchell, David Janzen, Stephen Chapman, Steve Wiggins, and Mark Awabdy. Together they have spared the reader a good number of deficiencies in what follows and certainly bear no responsibility for those which remain. The same must be said for Tom Perridge and the staff at OUP to whom I am very grateful for their patience and their professionalism in seeing this project through and affording me the scope to tackle it properly.
Finally, my greatest appreciation must be reserved for my dear wife, Hilda, and my three wonderful daughters, Anna, Sophie, and Sarah, not only for allowing this David to have spent so much time writing about ‘that’ David, but also for ensuring that our family life is thankfully much less fraught than his.
Introduction
David: A Man of War and Blood(s)
When the prophet Samuel is sent to Bethlehem to anoint one of Jesse’s sons to be king, David is not only the last, but also seemingly the least to appear. Even his own father summons David only grudgingly, and apparently for good reason, because as he advises Samuel, David is the youngest and a keeper of sheep (1 Sam 16:11). However, when King Saul requests that a musician be found to soothe his troubled soul and his servants suggest David, the reader soon discovers that the youngest son of Jesse is no ordinary shepherd. Indeed, the servants insist that David is not only divinely blessed, musically gifted, brave, and eloquent: he is also a ‘man of war’ ( 1 Sam 16:18).
The son of Jesse’s willingness to go to war is confirmed in the very next chapter, by the first words David utters in the books of Samuel: ‘What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes the reproach from Israel?’ (1 Sam 17:26). When Saul goes on to compare David’s mettle unfavourably to that of the seasoned warrior Goliath, the young shepherd reports proudly what he would do when a bear or lion had the temerity to turn on him after relinquishing a stolen sheep. David would not merely take the would-be predator by the hair and strike it; he would kill it for good measure (v. 35). David’s victory over Goliath, however, is much more than the killing of a beast. It is the triumph of youth over experience, humility over arrogance, and little over large. But it is also the triumph of sling over sword and the decisive blow in the Israelite army’s routing of their Philistine rivals. It is thus hardly
surprising that David’s killing of Goliath has cemented his reputation as a man of war. Indeed, this is underlined in the following chapter (1 Sam 18), when the women irritate Saul by eulogizing David for slaying ten times more Philistines than he has.
Yet if those in Saul’s orbit sing the young David’s praises in 1 Sam 16, by the time we reach 2 Sam 16, other Saulide voices may be heard expressing a rather different view. Here, as the now much older David retreats from Jerusalem to save his life and kingdom from his son Absalom, he is met by Shimei, son of Gera and a man of Saul’s tribe. Instead of celebrating David as a ‘man of war’, Shimei curses him as a ‘man of bloods’ ( 2 Sam 16:8 and cf. 7).1 In 1–2 Samuel and 1 Kgs 1–2, this language of ‘blood(s)’, or ‘bloodguilt’ as it is often translated, is invariably associated with David and often killings with which he is connected, including those of Saul, Ishbosheth, and Abner. Because David seems to benefit from these and other killings and seeks to dissociate himself from them, some have suggested that the tradition intends to rebut historical accusations of David’s responsibility for killing these men.2 Indeed, the reporting of Shimei’s accusations strongly suggests that such charges did circulate at some point and were perceived as problematic for David. Some scholars go further, concluding that the historical David was in fact guilty of the killings.3 Steven McKenzie, for instance, argues that the historical David not only sanctioned Abner’s death, but must be the prime suspect in Ishbosheth’s killing and must also have encouraged the Philistines into the conflict which claimed Saul’s life.4 In a similar vein, Baruch Halpern suggests that David commissioned the assassination of Ishbosheth, killed Abner (apparently himself) and was at least complicit in the killing of Saul by the Philistines.5
It is of course theoretically possible that the books of Samuel, as we now have them, have indeed omitted details of David’s actual involvement in these and other killings which work to his favour. However, such details are ultimately beyond literary analysis and outside our concern here, because they belong to the necessarily hypothetical histories reconstructed by McKenzie, Halpern, and
others, rather than the (also tendentious) history of David offered by the books of Samuel and 1 Kings.6 Instead, the interest of the present study is in how the story of David we do have in Samuel and 1 Kings is illuminated by attention to the shedding of innocent blood and the problems it has presented as posing for David and others within the narrative. But before explaining how earlier readers have engaged with the David tradition vis-à-vis bloodguilt and related issues, it is worth considering how and why we have arrived at a place where we may speak of these traditions as constituting a ‘Story of David’ at all.
Reading the David Story/ies
The rich afterlife of the biblical David in Western culture undoubtedly owes much to his associations with messianism and the Psalms, but there can be little doubt that David’s later fame is also very much due to the stories about him in the Hebrew Bible.7 Indeed, the tales of David’s unlikely anointing, his defeat of Goliath, and his liaison with Bathsheba have entranced readers over the centuries, including, of course, biblical scholars. Those within this guild, however, have also concerned themselves with stories of David which are less well-known—indeed known only to those inducted into the mysteries of biblical scholarship. In the case of David, these mysteries produced for many years what might be described as a scholarly ‘Tale of Two Stories’—a tale which can be told here only in a very abridged and imperfect way.
Amongst his many contributions, Julius Wellhausen long ago identified a story focused on David’s rise, the beginning of which is obvious (David’s arrival in 1 Sam 16) and the end of which Wellhausen found in 2 Sam 8.8 The similarity of some individual stories to each other within this wider narrative and various inconsistencies between—and intrusions within—them, persuaded Wellhausen that here in the books of Samuel, as elsewhere in the
Hebrew Bible, various sources had been collected and edited to produce the text as we now have it. Nevertheless, he argued that when taken together, the passages from 1 Sam 15/16–2 Sam 8 represented a ‘First story/history of David’, recounting David’s rise from shepherd in Bethlehem to king in Jerusalem at the expense of Saul and his house.9 Wellhausen’s ‘Second story/history of David’ ran from 2 Sam 9 to 1 Kgs 2 (excluding 2 Sam 21–24) and told the story of David’s subsequent reign and Solomon’s installation.10 The artistry and coherence of Wellhausen’s second story was increasingly acknowledged following Leonhard Rost’s influential analysis of these chapters as a ‘Succession Narrative’.11 Of course, some since have seen this narrative as beginning rather earlier than 2 Sam 9 and have rightly preferred the terminology of ‘Court History’ due to 2 Samuel’s initial lack of explicit interest in succession.12 However, the discrete division of the traditions about David into ‘two stories’—one account of his rise and another of his reign—enjoyed widespread scholarly support (with honourable exceptions) throughout much of the twentieth century.
The fact that scholarship on the David traditions as a whole did not remain entirely a tale of two stories is due in large part to a series of studies appearing in the late 1970s and early 1980s which explored the David narratives in new ways.13 Charles Conroy’s 1978 study of 2 Sam 13–20 as ‘story’ broke new ground by viewing these chapters through the lens of plot, character, point of view, etc.14 However, in that same year, a very similar furrow was also ploughed by David Gunn.15 Perhaps because of Conroy’s more technical focus on language in the later sections of his work, but probably also because of the greater scope and ambition of Gunn’s book, it was the contribution of the latter which would prove more enduring.
Gunn’s title, The Story of King David, might have suggested to some readers that he would begin with David established on the throne in 2 Sam 9. Instead, he argued that 2 Sam 2 (beginning in verses 8 or 12) through to chapter 4 offers a more satisfactory beginning to the story of the reign of David which unfolds in 2 Samuel. In making his case, Gunn pointed out that David’s request
to show kindness to a Saulide at the beginning of chapter 9 seems to presuppose the account of Ishbosheth’s death (and by extension chapters 2‒4). Gunn then showed that the style of these chapters has much in common with the much-vaunted style of Rost’s ‘Succession Narrative’. Finally, he joined his voice to those who had already suggested that Rost’s theme of ‘succession’ failed to capture the breadth of narrative interests in 2 Sam 9–20 and 1 Kgs 1–2, let alone the expanded story of King David for which Gunn was arguing. Thus, Gunn included in his story of King David not merely David’s retention of the throne (at Absalom’s expense) and Solomon’s accession to it (at Adonijah’s expense), but also now David’s accession to the throne (at Ishbosheth’s expense; chs. 2‒4). Moreover, Gunn argued that this larger story is not merely about succession, but also the interplay and consequence of David’s and others’ ‘giving and grasping’ of the kingdom, both for himself and other individuals.16
While Gunn’s careful thematic analysis has been cited less often than it deserves, his willingness to think in terms of a larger story of David instead of a ‘Tale of Two Stories’ was to prove influential. Gunn himself would go on to discuss the second half of 1 Samuel as very much Saul’s story rather than David’s.17 However, TheStoryof King David led others to consider whether the story of David might not begin even earlier than Gunn had recognized and whether the themes of a still wider story of David might differ from those which Gunn himself had identified.18 This influence is visible already in Walter Brueggeman’s slender and more accessible David’s Truth in Israel’s Imagination andMemory (1985). This study is still explicitly structured with reference to ‘the rise of David’ and the ‘Succession Narrative’, but insists on reading them together as a single story of David which includes and even goes beyond 1 Sam 16 to 1 Kgs 2.19 Brueggeman’s suggestion that this larger story illustrates David’s capacity for ‘receiving and relinquishing with some graciousness’ is itself an obvious illustration of Gunn’s influence, but also reflects Brueggeman’s wider scope.20
The extent to which scholarly interest in the larger story of David and its themes burgeoned in the years which followed may be seen in a series of studies which appeared before and after the turn of the millennium. While K. L. Noll’s The Faces of David (1997) is largely focused on the three poems in 2 Samuel (1:19‒27, 22, 23:1‒17), he begins by discussing the themes and characterization of David in the ‘prose story’ as a whole.21 Noll is critical of Shamai Gelander’s earlier argument that the books of Samuel are primarily about the capriciousness of God and David’s heroic domestication of him. Indeed, as Noll notes, the textual evidence offered by Gelander is slender and these books are much more about David than they are about God.22 More appealing to Noll, however, is David Damrosch’s passing suggestion that the David story’s ‘deepest concerns are with issues of knowledge and understanding’.23 In developing this to a greater extent than Damrosch does, Noll rightly points out that the David stories are often less than forthcoming regarding why things happen in the way they do and what characters do and do not know.24 While this may to some extent reflect the sort of narrative the books of Samuel offer (i.e. openended, indeterminate),25 we will see that others too have discerned the thematic significance of knowledge within the David story. At the same time, Noll suggests elsewhere in his study that the chief concern of the books of Samuel is ultimately that of divine election and rejection, as captured in the question: ‘Why has Yahweh rejected Saul and chosen David?’.26 While there can be little doubt this question is explored in 1 Samuel and the opening chapters of 2 Samuel, in the remainder of 2 Samuel, such a question is clearly less to the fore than those relating to Adonijah and especially Absalom. Two years after Gunn’s study appeared, confirmation of this growing willingness to explore the David traditions more holistically may be seen in Robert Alter’s commentary on 1 and 2 Samuel, advertised as TheDavidStory, despite David’s absence from the first half of 1 Samuel.27 Because Alter wishes to tell the story of David, he exceeds the boundaries of Samuel in tracking his protagonist into 1 Kings, but his reasons for commenting on the often excised
appendix (2 Sam 21–24) are worth noting. He acknowledges that these final chapters of 2 Samuel are ‘not of a piece’ in style or perspective with the rest and may have come from elsewhere. However, he also makes it clear that he comments on them not merely because they are part of 2 Samuel, but because he is persuaded of their coherence with the wider story of David. For Alter too, this wider story of David revolves around ‘knowledge’. While Saul seems to be consistently deprived of knowledge, David is initially well-supplied with it, before eventually succumbing to the fate of the ‘purblind Saul’.28
Still further, if slightly more oblique, evidence for the growing appreciation of the wider David story in the books of Samuel and 1 Kings may be found in Steven McKenzie’s King David: A Biography and in Baruch Halpern’s David’s Secret Demons, which appeared around the same time.29 Unlike some others, both Halpern and McKenzie set out in search of the David of history and both conclude that the latter is rather different from the David of Samuel and Kings. Allowing for later additions (including Solomon’s succession by the hand of the Deuteronomist), McKenzie divides the David traditions in these books into two parts along the broadly recognizable lines of David’s rise (1 Sam 16–2 Sam 5:3) and his reign (2 Sam 5:4–1 Kgs 2).30 However, while McKenzie exhumes a more ‘historical’ and rather less attractive David by frequently reading against the grain of the biblical traditions, he does largely treat them as a whole. In doing so, McKenzie sees the tendency to defend David in the history of David’s rise also reflected in the account of David’s reign in the remainder of 2 Samuel and 1 Kgs 1–2. This tendency McKenzie sees as complicated only slightly by the later addition of the Bathsheba affair to explain Absalom’s rebellion as a punishment.31 Halpern too understands the David traditions as containing two stories. However, Halpern’s two stories are not those of David’s rise and reign respectively, but rather two separate accounts of David with differing perspectives (called simply A and B) which have been woven together to produce the story of David as we now find it. Nevertheless, like McKenzie, Halpern’s interest in
David’s story as a whole in Samuel and 1 Kings (in addition to his own ‘Tale of Two Stories’) is made clear from his title and the extended treatment of ‘David’s History in the Books of Samuel’ which he offers at the outset of his study.32
The exploration of David’s story as a whole and in its ‘final form’ in Samuel and Kings has persisted even amongst those who are also and perhaps more interested in the compositional history of the David story.33 This may be seen in the still more recent work of two other eminent David scholars, Walter Dietrich and John Van Seters. Dietrich, one of the most prominent and prolific exponents of a redaction critical approach to the traditions about David, believes that what we have now in the books of Samuel and 1 Kings is the result of a long process of collection, expansion, and revision of sources beginning in the earliest period of the monarchy.34 Indeed, Dietrich now sees a large collection of texts comprising a ‘narrative opus’ as having existed prior to the work of the Deuteronomistic editor. Running from the beginning of 1 Samuel to 1 Kgs 12, Dietrich’s ‘maximal’ narrative collection includes the traditions of Saul and Solomon, but it has at its heart the traditions about David. It is worth noting, however, that in Dietrich’s view, this collection was sufficiently complete and coherent already in its pre-exilic form to allow for a ‘holistic appreciation of the present text, its poetic structure and its content’—not least in relation to David.35 For Dietrich, following the finishing touches of a pro-Davidic redactor, the portrait of David as he rises to power is positively glowing and only slightly tarnished as he reigns and is eventually succeeded.36
While Van Seters disavows the extensive and multiple redactional layers detected by Dietrich, he does share Dietrich’s interest in how the narratives about David came to be as we have them now.37 It is clear that Van Seters also shares Rost’s enthusiasm for the unity and artistry of what Van Seters would call the Court History. However, Van Seters is happy to abandon the ‘History of David’s Rise’ in favour of offering, as Halpern does, his own ‘Tale of Two Stories’ of David, which he too labels, ‘Account A’ and ‘Account B’. Van Seters’ Account A—part of an earlier and larger Deuteronomistic history—is basically
positive in its portrayal of David, coinciding in extent with Wellhausen’s first story of David’s rise (1 Sam 16–2 Sam 8). However, Van Seters’ earlier and happier portrait of David is much slimmer than Wellhausen’s. This is because large parts of it (e.g. 1 Sam 17, 1 Sam 25, etc.) are seen by Van Seters as belonging instead to his second story, Account B, which includes these and the Court History (2 Sam 9–20 and 1 Kgs 1–2) as part of the Deuteronomistic story’s radical revision in the Persian period. Yet, if Van Seters’ presentation seems at first glance to perpetuate the ‘Tale of Two Stories’ of David,38 he too is deeply concerned with the final form of the story of David as a whole, which he christens the ‘David Saga’ on analogy with later Icelandic texts. According to Van Seters, in the hands of the Saga’s author, David’s character and family are heavily tarnished in order to impress upon later readers how dangerous and undesirable a revival of the Davidic kingdom would be in their own time.39
What is the David Story About?
What becomes clear from this all-too-brief survey is that the story of David as a whole has been increasingly the object of scholarly investigation,40 even amongst those whose interests are also in the stories of David they find within it or behind it. Yet, while we have already seen that considerable effort has been invested in discerning the themes of these subsidiary stories of David, with a few exceptions, rather less progress seems to have been made in answering the question: what is the story of David, as a whole, about?
The most obvious answer to this question might seem to be that the story is about ‘David’—whose entrance in 1 Samuel marks the beginning of his story and whose exit in 1 Kings marks its end. However, it is clear that ‘David’ is a much better answer to the question ‘whois the story about?’ or perhaps even ‘who/what is the
subjectof the story?’. To suggest instead that David’s story is about David’s rise, reign, and succession might seem equally unexceptionable. Yet, again, while this summary captures what the story of David is about at the level of plot, it begs the question what the story of David is reallyabout at a deeper level? It is at this point that we begin to grapple with the question of theme.41 Indeed, Rost recognized as much when he famously argued that the Succession Narrative’s ‘theme (thema) is the question (frage): “Who will sit on David’s throne?”’.42 As we have seen, many since have been persuaded that 2 Sam 9–20 and 1 Kgs 1–2 are about rather more than merely succession and that this is even more true of the wider story of David. However, most would acknowledge not only the value of considering what lies behind or above the plot of this part of David’s story, but also the theoretical possibility that succession is one of the themes which does so.
That a story which is composed of multiple sources, as David’s surely is, might have more than one theme, seems rather likely. Indeed, this is recognized by David Clines in relation to the Pentateuch, even if he insists that one theme must be primary and others subsumed within it.43 This latter assumption is less evident in Gunn’s treatment of David’s story, which also argues for an overarching theme of the ‘giving and grasping’ of the kingdom, without explicitly insisting on its priority or primacy.44 Indeed, it seems probable that the story of David as a whole might be about a variety of things at a thematic level, including, for instance, ‘relinquishing and receiving’ (Brueggeman’s variation on Gunn’s theme), as well as ‘knowledge’ (so Noll and Alter). If so, it might be useful to think of assertions of the priority of a particular theme as answering not merely the question what is the story of David really about, but rather which of a variety of themes is this story more about?
Certainly, such a question makes some sense at the level of character, as most would agree that the story of David is moreabout David than it is about, for instance, Mephibosheth, or even more significant characters like Absalom. So too at the level of plot, the
story of David as we find it in Samuel and 1 Kings seems to be more about David’s struggle to rise, retain, and pass on the throne than it is about, say, his playing of the lyre, of which we read only a bit, or his shepherding of the flocks, about which we hear even less. So, it does not seem unreasonable that a thematic analysis which recognizes the possibility or probability of multiple themes, might still ask: which one of these themes is the story of David more about? And how might we determine this?45
In answer to these questions, it seems reasonable to suggest that the more evidence of the theme which may be found in the narrative, the more important it is likely to be.46 So too, the importance of a theme might also be suggested by where it appears —especially if it is referenced in prominent parts of the narrative and at its close.47 Yet Clines is surely right to insist that the most important theme is not merely the one that appears most frequently or prominently, but also the one that ‘most adequately accounts for the content, structure and development of the work’.48 Indeed, the recognition of the importance of theme for a work’s narrative development chimes with the recognition that a theme is concretized through its representation in the action of a work, as well as in the persons and images which populate it.49 We will see that the theme of illegitimate bloodshed traced in the present study would seem to be reflected in all of these. That being said, our exposition of it is very much offered in the spirit of both Clines and Gunn’s themes—as an invitation to readers to judge for themselves to what extent it ‘fits’ the story of David.50 Before explaining how this theme will be traced here, it is important to note the ways in which this work intersects with and builds upon previous studies related to it.
The David Story and Bloodguilt
Given how frequently the language of ‘blood(s)’ appears in the David story, it is not surprising that it has attracted the attention of those
scholars, however few in number, who have concerned themselves with ‘bloodguilt’ generally in the Hebrew Bible. The first serious and specific study of the subject, by Edwin Merz in Germany during the early years of the First World War, ranges widely across the canon, but draws regularly upon traditions associated with David, including many of those explored in the present study.51 No less than the present one, Merz’s work was a product of its own time, confident both in its Wellhausian understanding of the evolution of Israelite religion and in the direct relevance of later Middle Eastern culture for the interpretation of blood vengeance in the Hebrew Bible.52 Moreover, Merz’s desire to cover the breadth of the canon’s witness to these traditions, when combined with the brevity of his book, precluded the kind of detailed treatment which passages within the David story will receive here.53 Nevertheless, Merz’s mining of the traditions of bloodguilt associated with David, offers important ore for the present work, even if, as will become clear, such ore may need refining at various points.54
Further appreciation of passages from the David story for the understanding of ‘bloodguilt’ in the Hebrew Bible is to be found in Johannes Pedersen’s magisterial Israel:ItsLife andCulture, the first volume of which appeared only a few years after Merz’s work.55 In his short treatment, Pedersen, like Merz, only turns to legal traditions after beginning with narrative passages, including especially 2 Sam 2–3 (Asahel, Abner, and Joab), 13–14 (the Tekoite woman and Absalom), and 21 (the Gibeonite episode). While Pedersen’s work as a whole consciously resists the Wellhausian evolutionary understanding of Israelite religious thought and practice,56 like Merz, he sees the witness to blood vengeance in these narratives as reflecting earlier tribal traditions which are eventually superseded by later legal provisions.57 Pedersen’s interest in the psychological aspects of these narratives allows him to draw useful insights (especially in relation to blood vengeance within the family). But he deals with even fewer passages than Merz and, in some cases, reverts to the kind of conventional readings which more
attention to the language of ‘blood(s)’ elsewhere in the David stories might have allowed him to challenge.58
Finally, interest in the problem of bloodguilt in the David story may be found more recently in Catherine Sider Hamilton’s study of innocent blood in Matthew’s account of the death of Jesus.59 Sider Hamilton rightly and helpfully situates innocent blood in Matthew (e.g. 27:25) against the backdrop of interest in this notion in Second Temple and Rabbinic literature. In doing so, she is inevitably drawn back to texts and traditions of the Hebrew Bible concerned with ‘innocent blood’, including especially those associated with Cain and Abel (Gen 4) and Zechariah (2 Chron 24:25).60 However, given Matthew’s interest in Jesus as the son of David (e.g. 1:1, 1:9, 9:27, etc.), it is not surprising that Sider Hamilton also considers passages from 2 Samuel, including 2 Sam 11–12 and its account of David’s shedding of Uriah’s innocent blood.61 Here again, while Sider Hamilton’s thematic approach is helpful, her interest in Matthew understandably prevents her from attending to the significance of innocent blood in David’s story as a whole.
The David Story and Retribution
Interest in the language of ‘blood(s)’ in the stories about David and his house also appears in discussions regarding retribution in the Hebrew Bible—a debate prompted by Klaus Koch, whose work is indebted at least in part to Pedersen.62 Responding to what he perceived to be the misplaced assumption that ‘retribution’ in the Hebrew Bible was inextricably theological and juridical, Koch suggests rather that positive and negative consequences follow naturally and largely mechanistically from human actions. Thus, Koch notes that on many occasions when God is associated with such consequences, it is simply to hasten or allow the completion of the natural act-consequence nexus.63 In addition to buttressing his argument heavily with passages from Proverbs, Koch also draws
upon Hosea 4:1–3. There the prophet sees ‘bloodguilt’ as leading to the mourning of the land and the disappearance of the animals, but without obviously implying God’s active intervention or punishment.64 So too in Lamentations (4:13), Koch suggests that the shedding of the ‘blood of the righteous’ seems sufficient in and of itself to lead to the nation’s downfall, without requiring or even implying divine involvement.65 Koch suggests further that in Ps 38:5 [ET 4] and 40:13 [ET 12], the power exerted by one’s sins is not visited upon the sinner by God as a consequence, but simply weighs ‘upon a person’s own head’.
In responding to Koch, Henning Graf Reventlow’s interest in this formulaic language leads him to the stories of David and Solomon. He argues with some justification that Koch’s thesis is rather undermined when Solomon steels Benaiah’s resolve to take Joab’s life by reassuring him that ‘the LORD will bring back his blood upon his head’ (1 Kgs 2:32). Indeed, Reventlow suggests that Yahweh’s intimate involvement in ensuring that Joab’s bloodletting is revisited upon him is supported by Shimei’s invocation of the LORD in cursing David (2 Sam 16:8).66 Moreover, whether Solomon acts in his capacity as king or as a private citizen, Reventlow maintains that the context and language imply a procedure which is juridical and punitive in nature and inextricably bound up with the demands of the law/cult.67
With Reventlow’s response depending heavily on passages from Samuel, Koch’s surrejoinder inevitably also turns to the stories of David. In the case of Solomon in 1 Kgs 2, Koch is forced to admit that the language of the LORD returning blood on one’s head does require that the divine agent be understood as at least a ‘coexecutor’ (mitvollstrecker) in certain cases.68 Nevertheless, perhaps predictably, Koch prefers to emphasize that the guilty party is somehow haunted by their bloodshed in a manner which requires little by way of active divine involvement or juridical process.69 This he sees as proven by the case of Saulide bloodguilt (2 Sam 21), David’s cursing of Joab (2 Sam 3:28–29), and by Solomon’s
insistence that the blood shed by Joab attaches itself to his belt and shoes (1 Kgs 2:5).
Driven as they are by their prior interest in the wider phenomenon of retribution, it is understandable that Koch and Reventlow’s engagement with the language of ‘blood(s)’ in the David story is even more limited than what was offered by Pedersen and Merz.70 Nevertheless, their exchange in the middle of the twentieth century underlines the importance of passages in the David story for an appreciation of retribution generally and the notion of ‘bloodguilt’ within the Hebrew Bible.71 Indeed, their interrogation of these passages and attempts to enlist them in defence of their own contrasting views of retribution highlights the variegated and complex nature of the evidence. But it also raises important questions regarding the relationship between the language of ‘blood(s)’ and the divine in the David story—questions which, amongst others, the present study will seek to explore.
The David Story and Homicide
Later on in the twentieth century, interest in what the language of ‘blood(s)’ in the David story might tell us about retribution gives way to consideration of what it might reveal about the legalities of killing. This shift is well-illustrated by Henry McKeating’s influential article on the development of the homicide law in ancient Israel.72 For McKeating, passages in the David stories illustrate an understanding that the consequences of ‘blood(s)’ supernaturally attach themselves to ‘persons and their families’.73 If this sounds rather like Koch, McKeating’s analysis is in fact much more interested in the increasingly juridical system of dealing with homicide. He acknowledges the value of ‘supernatural’ sanctions for dealing with illegitimate bloodshed in a largely clan-based system. But he also argues that even in the David stories, such a system shows signs of modification towards more formal mechanisms including especially
the involvement of the king.74 McKeating thus sees in the prohibition of monetary compensation for murder, in Num 35:31, the same awareness and superseding of an ‘older’ system found in the Gibeonites’ demand for Saulide blood rather than payment in 2 Sam 21:4.75 Indeed, McKeating’s fresh analysis of 2 Sam 21:1–14 claims to find evidence of a combination of both a judicial notion of homicide and a sacral (and for him, Canaanite) notion of a bloodguilt which pollutes the land.76 McKeating’s attention to the roles of God, kin, and king in dealing with bloodguilt in the David stories is useful, as is his acknowledgement of the complexity of the textual evidence. This complexity also illustrates, however, the difficulties in sustaining a neatly legible and linear evolutionary account of the development of mechanisms for dealing with illegitimate killing even in the David stories, let alone the Hebrew Bible as a whole. Moreover, while McKeating’s analysis of Saulide ‘bloods’ and the Gibeonites in 2 Sam 21:1–14 is original, his failure to fully appreciate the relevance of ‘blood(s)’ language earlier in the David stories highlights both the limitations of his treatment and the importance of attending to such connections.77
In a more recent monograph on homicide in the Bible, Pamela Barmash is less optimistic than McKeating about our ability to trace the evolution of legal processes in these narratives.78 However, her conviction that law and narrative may be mutually illuminating encourages her to attend to the stories associated with David (1 Kgs 2 and 2 Sam 3, 11–12, and 21).79 For example, in discussing Israelite use of the formulaic language of blood ‘(coming) upon the head’ of either victim or perpetrator, she follows earlier scholars in noting the variable contexts in which this language appears in the David traditions (1 Kgs 2:33, 37; 2 Sam 1:16). Although Barmash’s observations are frequently insightful, the scope of her project understandably affords her few opportunities to scrutinize these in any sustained way or to relate them to each other.80 Thus, while Barmash’s treatment of 2 Sam 21 takes issue with McKeating’s interpretation of this passage, her own might benefit from closer attention to the relationship between this chapter and the
constellation of references to ‘blood(s)’ elsewhere in 1 Sam 18–1 Kgs 2.81 Similarly, Barmash’s reflection on the ‘indirectness’ of David’s involvement in the killing of Uriah offers an important insight on which the present study will build, even if the interpretation offered here departs from hers in various ways.82
A still more recent contribution by Klaus-Peter Adam shares Barmash’s interest in homicide in the David stories, but also anticipates in some respects the approach to be adopted in the present study. In a way which others have not, Adam helpfully recognizes that an assessment of homicide in the David stories depends on an appreciation of their literary character and their relationship to each other within the wider narrative.83 Admittedly, Adam’s initial cataloguing of episodes relating to homicide and bloodguilt in 2 Samuel and 1 Kings is neither entirely comprehensive84 nor fully appreciative of the importance of the sequence in which they appear.85 However, his subsequent close attention to homicide and bloodguilt in the sequence of 1 Sam 24–26 suggests the value of such an approach. Indeed, in the present study it will be extended beyond these chapters of 1 Samuel into the remainder of 2 Samuel and the opening chapters of 1 Kings. Adam’s greater sensitivity to the ‘situatedness’ of bloodguilt within the wider narrative is very much to be welcomed. However, his primary interest in the legalities (and legal traditions) of homicide still limits his appreciation of the language of ‘blood(s)’ within some of the episodes which he discusses. Thus, for example, while Exod 21:13–14 is undoubtedly concerned with the question of premeditation in cases of homicide, it is far from clear that this is the primary concern of the account of Abner’s killing of Asahel in 2 Sam 2:18–24.86 This is not to suggest that the legal traditions, properly understood, can never shed light on narratives or vice-versa, but rather to underscore the importance of first understanding the narratives in their own right and in relation to each other.
