Canter Bridge

Rarely does an ancient document explore the nuance and pathos of human experience as probingly as the so-called ‘History of David’s Rise’. This deep current in the Deuteronomistic History gives us not only the hero-in-waiting story of David’s encounter with the Philistine miscreant Goliath but also the deeply moving parting of David and Saul’s son Jonathan.

The latter narrative is followed by the brief vignette of David’s appearance in the court of King Achish of Gath. Warned by a predetermined signal that Saul’s anger against his youthful and sometime rival had grown hot, David flees the scene and takes up company in the shadow of this ‘Philistine’ king. David’s entrée is undignified:

David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of King Achish of Gath. So he changed his behavior before them; he pretended to be mad when in their presence. He scratched marks on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle run down his beard. Achish said to his servants, ‘Look, you see the man is mad; why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?’

It is routinely queried why David’s profile remains that of a hero in the biblical narratives and their afterlife in piety and study. He was certainly not a flawless leader. In fact his outrages seem almost preternaturally public, both in their initial manifestation and in the loud remorse they provoke. Probably it is in what one struggles to call anything other than the profoundly human dimension of David’s persona that his enduring attraction is to be located.

If that is seen in the bone-jarring penitence that is assigned to David in Psalm 51, it is also apparent in feigned madness in Achish’s court. The man is a survivor and will do what it takes to stay alive.

Drooling, moaning, groveling madness hardly sets David up for his eventual role as Israel’s heroic, anointed leader. It is the very paradox of the matter that lends to the History of David’s Rise and its wider cradle, the Deuteronomistic History, the uncommon historiographical character that it possesses. Much theological hay will be made of the Historian’s sun and rain, for one sees in David a living, breathing assertion of what in moments of heady abstraction will be called ‘the grace of God’.

David is an unlikely king, indeed an unlikely survivor from the pitfalls into which he habitually stumbles. Or perhaps he is led there.

YHWH’s invisible hand lurks behind the events as they are portrayed. No human scripter could control the odd sequence of events that lead to David’s eventual coronation. In Israel, no one should. This is a place for hard hats, orange cones, and warning signs. Be warned: theology in the making.