An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 55: It all goes a bit Game of Thrones (2 Samuel 1-5)

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP
And now:

2 Samuel 1-5

It all goes a bit Game of Thrones.

2 Samuel 1
“It came even to pass on the third day, that, behold, a man came out of the camp from Saul with his clothes rent, and earth upon his head: and so it was, when he came to David, that he fell to the earth, and did obeisance.”

A messenger reaches David’s camp with news of Saul’s defeat, but oddly the messenger turns out to be an Amalekite, and the very one who killed Saul, so David has him killed. The messenger also carries the royal insignia, which I’m guessing ultimately David will don, but he doesn’t do so yet, instead singing a lamentation (including “how are the mighty fallen”). Like a lot of other “songs” in the bible so far this has some good heft and poetry to the writing, which makes me wish that more of it had been written in that idiom instead of the rather childish form “And then he got up and went to a river, which was called the River Gush, and there was a man, and the man said to the other man what is this river and he said it is the river gush (because the man asked the man what the river was called)” kind of drivel. Come on, you can write well when you want to.

Oh, there’s also a strange little parenthetical jammed in the middle of this chapter that the people of Judah learn how to use a bow. Which is completely unconnected with the rest of the chapter.

2 Samuel 2

“But Abner the son of Ner, captain of Saul's host, took Ishbosheth the son of Saul, and brought him over to Mahanaim”

David travels to Hebron after some divination, and is made king by the people of Judah. However, Saul’s general, Abner, is still alive and he raises up Saul’s son Oshbosheth as a king. Eventually the two sides meet either side of a pool – it reads as if this is meant to be a parley but it turns into a fight (they even say “let the young men play” as if they are speaking euphemistically). Several brothers pursue Abner. Abner kills Asahel with the butt of his spear, but Asahel’s brother continues the chase. Eventually Abner calls for a truce (“shall the sword devour forever?” – nice turn of phrase), and the two sides go their separate ways. The greater loss of life is on Abner’s side.

2 Samuel 3

“Now there was long war between the house of Saul and the house of David: but David waxed stronger and stronger, and the house of Saul waxed weaker and weaker.”

David has six sons by six different women, but meanwhile the war between his followers and the followers of Saul continues. Saul’s former general, Abner, rises in power amongst the Saul camp, taking one of Saul’s former concubines as wife and cowing Saul’s son Ishbosheth, but then he also makes an envoy to David offering to reconquer the whole of Israel for him.

David agrees to this, on the basis that he gets his old wife Michal back; I’m not sure what game Abner is playing here, but it seems that he’s playing David false, and Joab thinks so too, as he tells David that Abner just came to spy. Joab and Abishai track down Abner and kill him, in vengeance for the death of their brother Asahel. David is angry at this and curses the house of Joab, forcing Joab and his brother to don mourning accoutrements and holding a grand funeral for Abner.

2 Samuel 4

“And when Saul's son heard that Abner was dead in Hebron, his hands were feeble, and all the Israelites were troubled.”

Ishbosheth, Saul’s son, is troubled. His five year old nephew, the son of Jonathon, is carried away by a nurse to safety, but made lame on the journey. I suspect we’ll hear of him again.

Two of Ishbosheth’s captains conspire to kill him when he’s taking a mid-day nap, and they bring his head to David. David, however, is not impressed with this kind of treason even if it gets rid of an enemy, so has the two captains killed, their head and feet cut off and their bodies strung up. Nice.

2 Samuel 5

“So all the elders of Israel came to the king to Hebron; and king David made a league with them in Hebron before the LORD: and they anointed David king over Israel.”

David is anointed king of all of Israel and moves his seat to Jerusalem. He’s been referred to as an anointed king before, but this is probably only over Hebron, it would seem. There he brings in builders to build a “house”, which could be a temple or a palace or both. He has loads more wives, concubines and children (I notice the name Solomon in there) and defeats the Philistines a couple of times.

I don’t understand the bit about the Jebusites refusing David entry to Jerusalem unless he “take away the blind and the lame”. It’s kind of implied that David has all the blind and lame killed; either that or he names the Jebusites blind and lame and has them killed. I don’t understand it, and neither seems like the actions of a just and fair ruler to me.