An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 57: Incest, murder, rape and child sacrifice. Old Testament business as usual (2 Samuel 11-15)

2 Samuel 11-15
Incest, murder, rape and child sacrifice. Old Testament business as usual.

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 11

“And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king's house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.”

So far, David has behaved fairly honourably; here his philandering gets the better of him. The plot of this chapter is very familiar but I can’t put my finger on where it’s also been used. Probably somewhere in the trail of tales from Boccaccio to Chaucer to Shakespeare. Dunno.

Anyway, whilst his army is away besieging the city of Rammah, David seduces Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite, and she ends up pregnant (I’ll throw in some more literary references here as these names first make me think of Hardy and Dickens respectively. Actually, Uriah (Heep) doesn’t make me think of David Copperfield first, but prog rock, ‘cos I’m low-brow really). Uriah doesn’t seem to suspect, at least it isn’t stated overtly, but he ends up hanging around David’s palace more than he ought, and eventually David sends him with a message to Joab on the front lines that tells Joab “put this man in the most dangerous part of the battle.” Joab does, Uriah gets killed. Joab is worried that David will be angry over the military loss, but David is more concerned about getting rid of a love rival. He ends up marrying Bathsheba and she gives him a son, and God is displeased.

2 Samuel 12

“And the LORD sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor.”

Nathan the prophet makes a re-appearance and he gives David a little parable about a rich man stealing a poor man’s sheep (really subtle metaphor, Nathan). This is the first biblical parable, at least one presented as a tale told by a character in the text; some commentators could take the text itself as parable. David gets the message (once it’s been explained to him) and begs forgiveness. David’s sin is transferred to the infant child who dies in his stead. There’s a lot of NT parallel in this chapter, and so far in Samuel itself. If you wanted to I guess you could take these chapters as prophesying the arrival of Jesus. Otherwise you could look at it as the composers of the Christ myth looking back on these chapters and using them as a jumping off point for metaphor.

David mourns for the child whilst it is sick, but stops when it dies, basically saying “Oh well, done now” to his advisors. Then he impregnates Bathsheba again and this time the child is Solomon. The chapter ends incongruously with Joab taking the city of Rabbah, but asking David to enter it is victor lest the glory go to Joab. I’m sure there’s some metaphor there as well.

2 Samuel 13

“And it came to pass after this, that Absalom the son of David had a fair sister, whose name was Tamar; and Amnon the son of David loved her.”

I’m assuming here that Amnon is therefore Tamar’s half-brother and that they are children of different mothers by David. What follows in this chapter is a tawdry tale, and it feels like David’s transgressions in the last chapter have opened the door to rape and murder in his family. Haven’t we had a character called Tamar already? Was she the one who disguised herself as a prostitute so that she could have a child by her dead husband’s brother, as required by law? Maybe “Tamar” means “she who is entangled in a fraternal love-triangle”.

So, Amnon loves Tamar from afar, and he advised by a “subtil” friend to pretend to be sick and request that Tamar nurse him. This happens, Amnon sends away everyone else and then rapes Tamar. Absalom finds out and after a couple of years of grudge-bearing pass he sees his chance during sheep-shearing. All of the sons of David head out for sheep-shearing (there’s a somewhat pointless scene with Absalom trying to persuade David to do this), and Absalom has his servants kill Amnon when he is drunk (I imagine shears in the face or something gruesome, but the method isn’t detailed).

When news is bought to David it first gets skewed that all his sons have been killed, but shortly he learns the truth of what happened and why Absalom did it he … well, the text says that David’s “soul longed to go forth to Absalom”, which implies forgiveness to me, but might just mean that he wonders where he is, for Absalom has fled to another nation.

2 Samuel 14

“And Joab sent to Tekoah, and fetched thence a wise woman, and said unto her, I pray thee, feign thyself to be a mourner, and put on now mourning apparel, and anoint not thyself with oil, but be as a woman that had a long time mourned for the dead:”

Joab tries to build bridges between David and Absalom, and he sends a wise woman to the king after coaching her to give some tale about a son exiled for killing his brother and how she wants a reconciliation. David spots Joab’s hand in this and relents, agreeing that Absalom can return from exile as long as he doesn’t see him.

Absalom returns, but feels that if he can’t meet David he may as well have stayed in exile. He tries to contact Joab to arrange a meeting but Joab doesn’t return his calls, so in order to get Joab’s attention Absalom sets fire to one of his fields of barley. That does the trick, and eventually Absalom and David are reconciled.

2 Samuel 15

“And Absalom rose up early, and stood beside the way of the gate: and it was so, that when any man that had a controversy came to the king for judgment, then Absalom called unto him, and said, Of what city art thou? And he said, Thy servant is of one of the tribes of Israel.”

Absalom insinuates himself into the hearts of the people and it looks like he puts it upon himself to be a kind of intercessor for the king. Eventually he begs leave to head off to Hebron to devote himself to God, since he made a vow to do so if he was returned to David. However, he leaves spies behind and it seems as if he is conspiring to take power from David.

Certainly David thinks so, and he takes the strange action of leaving the city for the wilderness (leaving ten concubines in charge of things). He sends Zadok the priest back to Jerusalem with the ark, and also sends away the Gittites from amongst his people as they are strangers. It’s a bizarre move that doesn’t make a lot of tactical sense to me.

David also sends Hushai the Archite back to Jerusalem with the mission of spying on Absalom’s allies and giving them poor counsel.