By Jack Forman
LA JOLLA, California — King David’s rich and full life is meticulously detailed in Samuel I and II and Chronicles, and his last years are described at the beginning of Kings I.
He is a larger-than-life figure who plays a central role in Judaism because it is from King David’s lineage, according to the Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, that the Messiah is destined to come. Because of King David’s importance in Jewish history and in the origins of Christianity, there have been many books written about him.
Rabbi David Wolpe, the Rabbi of Sinai Temple – a large Conservative synagogue in Los Angeles — and author of eight books, spoke earlier this month at the San Diego Jewish Book Fair to an engaged audience in an almost filled auditorium at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center on November 13 about his recently-published book on King David entitled David: The Divided Heart (Yale University Press, 2014).
(Rabbi Wolpe noted in his talk that his book has been recently optioned to Hollywood and plans are in place for a film to be made based on his book).
Since his book is organized thematically by the different roles David played during his stormy, action-filled life, not chronologically as most biographies are written, Rabbi Wolpe used the same approach to talk about King David’s “divided heart” as a king, soldier, husband, lover, sinner, poet, musician and – most importantly — believer whose actions often contradicted his strong connection to G-d. In his talk, Wolpe highlighted only two or three of the Davidic roles he described in detail in his book.
The Hebrew name of David, as Rabbi Wolpe pointed out, early in his speech, means “beloved”. And David was one of the most loved characters in the Bible, even by some of his adversaries and members of their families. For example, King Saul before he began to fear David as a threat to his power after Samuel anointed David as King Saul’s successor to be king of Israel, had love and admiration for him. He was also loved by Saul’s daughter and son – by Michal who helped David escape her father’s attempt to kill him and whom David married and by Jonathan who warned David about his father’s murderous intentions.
Despite the fact that David as king did relatively little fighting in his life, his reputation as a warrior was set early in his life. King Saul’s army was fighting the Philistines, and David had been sent by his father Jesse to bring food to his brothers who were on the front lines. When he heard about Goliath’s taunts and threats to Israel, he assumed the responsibility himself of fighting the giant Philistine. Wolpe says that the narrative in Samuel indicates he did this equally for the sake of G-d and to further his own political standing. In an interesting take on the David and Goliath encounter, Wolpe claims David calculated that despite the size difference, the future king of Israel actually had the advantage because all Goliath had was a spear – a short-range weapon – while David, a slingshot sharpshooter who developed these skills when he was a shepherd protecting his herd from animal predators, had a fast-speed, accurate “long-distance” weapon.
Regarding David’s relationships with women as a lover and a husband, Wolpe characterized David as a man with a clearly divided heart, which in his book the author defines as a heart combining “desire and design”. He stated that King David’s relationships were permeated with strong emotional feelings which were encased in a hard shell of detachment and self-interest. The author questioned whether David had ‘the maturity and vulnerability to love”. He referred in his talk to the three women David loved most – Saul’s daughter Michal, Abigail whose wealthy sheep-owner husband Nabal refused to cave in to David’s demand for material support in return for David’s “protection services”, and Bathsheba whom David impregnated while her husband Uriah was fighting against Ammon for King David – and indicated how much they loved David. David, however, responded by eventually having Uriah die in battle and making Nabal persona non grata; soon after this, Nabal had an unexplained fatal attack. The king was thus able to “clear the field” so to speak by using his royal powers so destructively to enable him to marry Abigail and Bathsheba.
As an example of David’s failed role as a father, Wolpe mentioned the tragic stories of his first son Amnon’s rape of Tamar, David’s beautiful daughter and of his third son Absalom’s revenge killing of Amnon and of Absalom’s unsuccessful rebellion against his father and his death getting caught in the boughs of an oak tree while riding his mule in battle against his father.
Why then, Wolpe asks, would G-d look so favorably on David that He would instruct Samuel to anoint him as King and as the head of a family dynasty from which would emerge the Messiah? In his book, the author argues that it is precisely because of David’s human character and his flaws – not in spite of them — that G-d tells Samuel to anoint David. Wolpe quotes the Prophet Samuel when he is admonishing King Saul to indicate why David’s “divided heart” makes him so special in the eyes of G-d. “Your Kingdom will not stand”, Samuel says to Saul. “The L-rd has already sought out for Himself a man after His own heart.”
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Forman is a college librarian and freelance writer specializing in literature and the arts.