David’s Great Escape (1Sam 19)

So Saul is still intent on killing David but luckily Jonathan comes to the rescue. He convinces Saul that it would be wrong to kill David since he has done nothing but good for Saul in killing Goliath and the rest. Right away Saul loses his cool. He is besotted with a bad spirit from YHWH, throws a spear at David and misses.

Sound familiar?. That’s because the exact same incident happened last chapter. Amazing: I read this book last about 12 years ago. I didn’t specifically identify as an atheist then (although I was very skeptical of religions) and to me Samuel was a very coherent book. Now all the textual problems in Samuel are more apparent.

I can’t see a reason to have this story twice. Rashi says nothing about this passage at all, if you know of anyone else I’d be very interested to know. According to the Documentary Hypothesis* the name YHWH (King James: LORD) is typically associated with one source tradition, Elohim (King James: God) with another. Just now I looked at the 2 versions of SpearGate side by side. And what do you know, they used different language AND different names for the god of Israel. It’s obviously not a proof but at least suggests to my ill-informed self that there were two versions of the story that both made it in.

When blogging about the book of Job, I kept seeing mobster movie parallels in the Bible. This continues heavily in Samuel. Eventually David will grow into a Godfather-like figure. For now Saul is the Don. David’s escape sets the scene. Saul sends some hitmen to David’s house. However his wife Michal (who is, remember, Saul’s daughter) finds out. She tells him he must escape or he’s done for. She lets him out the window in a rope (see picture at the top). This suggests the henchmen were already downstairs and he had seconds to spare. In the meantime, she places one of her lifelike idols in the bed, covers the sheets and attaches some goat-hair to make it seem believeable. When the guards burst in** expecting to find David, they find this doll instead. Finally Saul asks Michal why she let his enemy escape. Michal lies that David forced her.

Two things of interest here. Firstly, the idols. The Main Message of the Hebrew Bible (repeated over and over and over) is that idolatry is the single worst wost worst thing anyone could ever ever do. Far worse than child rape, murder, torture, slavery and grinding puppies into sausages. And yet there are isolated incidents scattered throughout the Bible when a major character would casually whip out a household idol. Usually this is NOT explained. And yet compare to tales of campaigns to purge Israel of every last idolater! And there’s no narrator comment like “at the time, the children of Israel were exceedingly wicked and lusted after idols of wood and stone; and not for YHWH”.

Now, the book of Samuel is fairly free of preaching, which is why it’s a well-written story. But still, I’d expect at least something about idolatry. Of course this just shows that religious pluralism in ancient Israel was fairly complicated. Stories like this one just subvert the it’s-always-been-this-way religious narrative.

Secondly, Michal is shown as treacherous. Whereas earlier in the chapter Jonathan stands up to his father about David (and succeeds), Michal does not. I think this starts a trend in Samuel: women are treacherous and cause a good man to stumble; manly relationships are good etc. Spoiler: David will later say Jonathan’s love was more valuable to him than the love of women; the story here is setting this up. So there may be more than a gay love affair here but a case of mysogynistic male bonding, because women are too contemptible for them. It’s all very [ancient] Greek to me!

*Like the “theory” of evolution,I think “hypothesis” is a bit of a misnomer in this case. Or at least when speaking non-academically.
**The first time she sends them away saying David is sick but soon they burst in again on Saul’s strict orders to unHippocratically kill him.