An alternative reading
Submitted by Dirk Gently on December 22 1999 at 01:08:51
In reply to about David Submitted by F.O.D. on December 21 1999 at 20:58:14
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Whatever the nature of David and Jonathan's love for one another may have been, it's quite clear that David did not intend to denigrate "the love of women." Take a look at the number of children he had! His meeting with Abigail is quite the story, and the biblical record includes the detail that she was both intelligent and beautiful. (1 Samuel 25:3) An important point to keep in mind when trying to interpret a passage is its genre. This great declaration of love was part of a lamentation for Saul and Jonathan, apparently called the Song of the Bow. (2 Samuel 1:17) In verse 23, David said "Saul and Jonathan were beloved and pleasant in their lives," and yet Saul tried to kill David repeatedly, and even chucked a spear at Jonathan once. (1 Samuel 20:23) Clearly David was taking some liberties in his desire to honour the dead. Flowery praises and exaggeration aren't enough to topple your hypothesis, but I think the question of genre gives it a bit of a shake. Earlier Jules commented about the "over-sexualising" of man-boy relationships, and I commented in a follow-up post that all of our relationships in this culture have been over-sexualised. Platonic friendships are considered to be one of two things: a joke or an alibi. The ancient Israelites were not ancient Greeks. There is no evidence to support a toleration of any type of homosexual behaviour within Israelite society. Why, then, would David's lamentation be held as a model to be studied? Perhaps nobody in that culture almost 3000 years ago understood what he "really" meant. Or perhaps we are reading something into the passage which was never there to begin with. It's true that Jonathan loved David "as his own soul" (1 Samuel 18:1,3), but isn't that precisely how Christ loves the Church? In fact, by submitting to David as the future king of Israel, and by making a covenant with him, I think Jonathan was demonstrating the kind of love described in Ephesians 5:22-33. The only exception would be that David and Jonathan were knit together in the soul (1 Sam. 18:1), whereas Ephesians refers back to the creation of man and woman to affirm a union in the flesh. "This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church." Our culture has proven time and again that we can have sex without love, and yet the possibility of love without sex is rarely, if ever, mentioned. Yes, Jonathan's love for David surpassed that of a woman's. But didn't Christ say that no man has greater love than to lay down his life for a friend? And isn't this also a part of your own relations with your yf's? And so instead of sexually expressing his love towards Jonathan, David reprojected that love on to someone where it could be expressed sexually while at the same time being as close to Jonathan as physically possible. Being not permitted to "fall in love" with Jonathan, he made himself fall in love with Jonathan's sister, instead. Thank you, Dr. Freud! :^) The biggest problem with this hypothesis is that it isn't supported by the biblical record. Go back and read the story of David and Saul's daughters, and you'll see that in every case, it's Michal who is described as loving David, and there is never any explicit evidence that this love was reciprocated. No wonder she turned against him later! Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned. When I read 1 Samuel 18:12-29, I see a story of power politics. In the ancient near east, marriages were a common way of forming political alliances. I'm a king and I want to secure my borders? I'll arrange for my neighbour's sons marry my daughters, and I'll arrange for my sons to marry my neighbour's daughters. That's one of the reasons the kings of Israel were forbidden to have "many wives" in Deuteronomy. Rather than relying on God, they would have relied on political arrangements to secure the nation. But that's all beside the point. The point is, in 1 Samuel 18, King Saul is feeling threatened by David's popularity, so he offers his oldest daughter to him. David refuses. It so happens that Saul's younger daughter is quite taken with this mighty warrior, so with the help of some rumour-mongering, Saul persuades David to enter into alliance with him. The Philistine foreskins was a brilliant stroke, since of course David couldn't have afforded to pay a royal dowery, and the whole point of Saul's exercise was to remove David as a threat. And when Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David, and that Michal, Saul's daughter, loved him, Saul was still more afraid of David. So Saul became David's enemy continually. Dirk |