Torah for Christians: King David

TORAH FOR CHRISTIANS

SEASON 5   EPISODE SIX

DAVID

          Everybody knows about King David. But was he real? Did he do what the Bible says he did? And how would we know?

          I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr and on this episode of Torah for Christians, we’ll look at one of the most important people of the Bible, King David of Bethlehem. Let’s get started.

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          Welcome to Torah for Christians. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr.

          David, the son of Jesse, became the second King of Israel. We know him as a man of many talents: musician, warrior, composer, King, womanizer, and progenitor of the future Messiah. But just who was he?

          When God took the kingdom away from King Saul after he failed to kill the Amalekite King Agag, God commanded Samuel to seek out David and anoint him king. This did not happen immediately but eventually, David replaced Saul, for the reasons we discussed in last week’s podcast about King Saul. 

In I Samuel, Chapter 17, we first hear of David’s exploits: his battle with the Philistine giant and warrior, Goliath. Not only is this chapter instructive about David as a warrior, but it also shows David’s charisma. The Israelites absolutely fell in love with David, not just because he defeated the Philistine giant but also because he became Saul’s court musician and confidante. 

Taking my cue from Malcolm Gladwell’s book, David and Goliath, it wasn’t really much of a contest. In fact, we might say that Goliath might have been the underdog. As a slinger, David was able to hit a target perhaps from as far away as 200 feet. With that type of accuracy, all he had to do was stay far enough away from Goliath’s sword and spear. Since Goliath wore heavy armor and David wore light clothing and sandals, David was much more mobile. And with his accuracy, hitting Goliath between the eyes, the only exposed part of his body, was relatively easy – especially since Goliath’s armor mandated that others had to help him move around; he was in essence a statue waiting to be hit. Once the Giant went down, David took Goliath’s sword and beheaded the apparently unconscious Philistine.

As we discussed last week, David’s popularity quickly soared, prompting Saul to try to kill him, perhaps out of jealousy, perhaps out of madness. With the help of David’s dearest friend and Saul’s son, Jonathan, David managed to escape.

This brings us to another aspect of David’s life: the writer of Psalms. Jewish tradition ascribes most of the Psalms to David. Exceptions of course are Psalms specifically attributed to Solomon and Psalm 137, which starts “By the waters of Babylon…”, obviously composed during the Babylonian Exile. I bring this up here because of Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd …”, which Jews and Christians alike read at times of mourning; most of us can probably recite the King James version of the Psalm by memory.

Jewish legend tells us that during one of Saul’s rages, David escaped and hid in a cave. As Saul’s troops converged on his hiding place, God sent a spider to spin a web at the front of the cave; Saul’s troops went past the cave since they thought that it could never be David’s hiding place. 

But in that cave, David was alone. There, he composed Psalm 23 – because it was there that he found God. And as I often say when introducing this Psalm at a funeral, when David lost everything, he found God and so lacked nothing or, as the KJV says, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.”

Whether David composed most of the Psalms is not the point; we won’t discuss this here. But we can say that the Psalms as a collection represent the hymnal of ancient Israel; many of them were recited as the Levites ascended the steps of the Temple and at other occasions. But I see no reason to deny David pride of ownership over at least a few of the Psalms; the specific ones, I’ll leave to the scholars.

Speaking of the Temple, this brings us to another aspect of David’s reign. In II Samuel 4.4, we learn that David was 30 years old when he became king. For the first 7 ½ years of his reign, he ruled from Hebron. For the remainder of his life, David ruled over “all Israel and Judah”.

But how did David conquer Jerusalem? We first learn about Jerusalem way back in the time of Abraham, when in Genesis Chapter 14.18, King Melchizedek of Salem, i.e., Jerusalem, allied with Abraham after Abraham had defeated the five kings who had captured Lot. Then, we didn’t hear much more about Jerusalem – until now.

Neither Joshua nor the Judges were able to conquer Jerusalem. It was a walled city, situated at the top of high hills, impregnable to a frontal attack. But in the 5th Chapter of II Samuel, David found a way. Knowing that a frontal attack was suicidal, David discovered a water tunnel, with its origins in today’s Arab village of Silwan, that ran under Jerusalem and gave the city its water. David led his armies through that tunnel and conquered the Jebusite town from the inside. He renamed the city Ir David, the City of David, and then expanded and fortified the surrounding territory. Today, the City of David still exists, sitting just outside the Jaffa Gate at the southern end of the walled city, close to the Western Wall, the Dome of the Rock, and the Via Dolorosa.

While King Hiram of Tyre, a Phoenician king to the north, sent cedars of Lebanon to David to build himself a palace, God still did not give God permission to build a Temple. In II Samuel, Chapter 7, David consults with his court prophet Nathan, whom we will encounter again in a very different way, about building a Temple. God appeared to Nathan and said that David, as a man of war, was not to build the Temple. Instead, David’s son would build the Temple; we know from our readings that the chosen son would be Solomon. More on him on our next podcast.

Still, God does give David quite a consolation prize. In II Samuel 7.16, God said, “Your house and your kingship shall ever be secure before you; your throne shall be established forever.”

This is the Davidic Covenant, one of the most important statements in the entire Bible. With these words, the Bible lays the foundation for the Jewish concept of the Messiah, so critical to both Jewish and Christian thought.

In practical terms, the Davidic Kingdom was an unbroken lineage of rulers that lasted about 400 years, until the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem. For reference, this is far longer than the House of Windsor, currently on the throne of Great Britain.

The idea of the Messiah might have begun here but it was expanded in Jewish thought during the Babylonian Exile. After all, it was next to impossible for the Jews of Judah to conceive of a world without a Davidic king; when the Exiles returned from their captivity, they expected that a descendent of David would again ascend to the throne.

We see this in the very last words of the very last Prophet, Malachi. 3.23, “Lo, I will send the Prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the LORD. He shall turn the hearts of the children to the hearts of the parents, and the hearts of the parents to the hearts of the children, so that when I come, I will not strike the land with destruction.”

As we will soon see in a coming podcast, the Prophet Elijah becomes the herald of the Messiah. The day of the LORD is the day when the Messiah arrives. Combined with the Divine promise we just read in II Samuel, these two verses form the basis of Messianic theology. 

We are not debating if David actually had any descendants past King Jehoiachin, the last king of Judah, whom the Babylonians took captive after they destroyed the Temple. But we do know David’s ancestors. When we examine his lineage, we discover something incredible.

At the end of the Book of Ruth, we learn that David’s father, Jesse, is a direct descendant of Boaz and Ruth. That sounds great – and it is. But their ancestry teaches us another lesson.

Boaz is a descendant of Judah, the eponymous founder of the Tribe of Judah. While Judah had several sons, only three survived. In Genesis 38.29, we learn that his twin sons were named Peretz and Zerah, Peretz being the ancestor of Boaz. But the twin’s mother was Tamar, the widow of two of Judah’s sons,  a widow whom Judah did not give to his third son, as the laws of levirate marriage demanded. Tamar disguised herself and seduced Judah, perhaps as an act of revenge. With this in mind, we can see that Boaz is a descendant of a forbidden sexual encounter.

Ruth’s backstory is even stranger. In Genesis 19.30 ff, we read of the aftermath of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. In this story, Lot’s daughters feared that they were the last women alive on earth. For two nights, they incested their father Lot, getting him drunk and then sleeping with him. Both daughters became pregnant; the older daughter gave birth to a son named Moab. Ruth as we know was a Moabite, a descendent of this incestuous relationship. The younger, by the way, gave birth to Aman, the father of the Ammonites and the namesake of the modern capital of Jordan.

David then is the descendent of illicit sexual relationships. To me, this is not an indictment of the future Messiah, who will carry the same ancestry. Rather, this shows God’s mercy, that children should not suffer for the sins of their parents and that what we do in the present is far more important for the future than what our ancestors did in the distant past.

But there is one final story about David that begs discussion. Again, it’s a story with which we are all familiar. We’ll talk about it after our break.

I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr and this is Torah for Christians.

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Welcome back to Torah for Christians. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr. Before we return to our discussion of King David, I want to thank you for listening to this podcast. Please remember to review and rate this episode on Apple, Spotify, or whatever service you are using. Also, please go back and listen to previous episodes if you have not done so already. A transcript is also available on our website, www.torahforchristians.net . 

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All of us know at least three things about King David: he killed Goliath, he was the progenitor of the Messiah – and he had a torrid affair with a woman named Bathsheba. Let’s get into that story now.

Our locus is II Samuel, Chapters 11-12. To set the stage, David was a womanizer; he had many wives and many affairs. But none were as famous as Bathsheba. Who was she?

Bathsheba was the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite. People in the Middle East often lived on their roofs since the air was cooler there than indoors. David, strolling on his roof that overlooked the lower city, spied Bathsheba bathing on the roof of her house. Neither walking on a flat roof nor bathing on the roof was unusual.

And it probably would not be unusual for David to be aroused when he saw a beautiful, naked woman bathing just a few feet away. He inquired as to who she was and, upon learning that she was the wife of Uriah, he sent Uriah on a suicide mission. But before he did this, he seduced Bathsheba and impregnated her.

The Prophet Nathan learned of this horrible scheme and condemned David. He decreed that this child would die as an infant but that their next child would assume the throne upon David’s death. Furthermore, God decreed that David’s sons would fight amongst each other for control of the kingdom, even while David was alive. David would see only strife and civil war during his remaining days.

This child did indeed die shortly after birth. But Bathsheba’s second child was Solomon, who we know assumed the kingship – but only after a brief but bloody battle against his half-brothers.

What then can we make of King David, one of the most consequential characters in the entire Bible? First, we are pretty sure that he lived. In Northern Israel, at the excavations at Tel Dan, where the people of the northern kingdom of Israel set up a Golden Bull, workers discovered a pottery shard with the word l’David, to David, written on it. Second, his story is fundamental for both Jewish and Christian theology. 

Third, as the supposed composer of the Psalms, he wrote the hymnal of both the First and Second Temple; even today, the Psalms comprise a large percentage of Jewish worship.

Finally, as much as we consider David a historical figure, he also represents our future. Belief in the Messiah as a descendant of David is ultimately a statement of hope. We know that at some point in the future, God will return, and the Messiah will usher in an era of Divine Rule, when the dead will come to life, there will be peace on earth and an end to hunger and suffering. As Jews, we invoke this thought when, at the end of both our Passover Seder and Yom Kippur services, we say, “L’shanah ha’ba’ah B’yerushalayim,” Next year in Jerusalem. This is not an ad for the Israeli Tourism Bureau, it is really a prayer for bringing the Messiah, David’s descendant to earth. Every Saturday night during Havdalah, the beautiful service that ends the Sabbath, we invoke Elijah, who we pray will herald the Messiah during the coming week. And finally, we welcome Elijah into our homes when we have a Brit Milah, a ritual circumcision of our 8-day old baby boys. We welcome Elijah because we hope and pray that finally, this boy is the one. It hasn’t happened yet, of course, but that does not mean that we should give up hope.

Next week, we will talk about King Solomon, the one who built the First Temple. He was of course renowned for his wisdom and judgement. But there was also a very dark side to him; we’ll look at both the good and the bad. Stay tuned.

 I want to thank you for listening to Torah for Christians. Please be sure to check out our website, www.torahforchristians.net, for a full list of podcast episodes; I’m sure that you will enjoy listening to all of them. In addition, you can subscribe to my Substack columns, Wednesday Torah – an occasional weekday musing about the world around us, based on the principles of the Torah – as well as Bible Stories They (Never) Taught You in Religious School, a weekly Torah Study, which is published every Friday morning. I’m sure that you will enjoy all these offerings.

Have a wonderful week and remember; Hinei Mah Tov … L’hitra’ot, till we meet again. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr and this is Torah for Christians.