David Observed: A King in the Eyes of His Court

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Winter, 2006 by Carol Stuart Grizzard

DAVID OBSERVED: A KING IN THE EYES OF HIS COURT. By Keith Bodner. Hebrew Bible Monographs, edited by David J. A. Clines. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2005.

This book begins with David's first named appearance in 1 Samuel 16 and ends with 1 Kings 2, the chapter in which he dies. It does not cover everything in between but does explore closely several pivotal incidents and characters involved in David's life. It will be helpful for anyone studying or teaching in this area; throughout his work Bodner offers a good sampling of scholarly thought on the text, providing extensive quotations and a lengthy bibliography. He makes use of literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of pseudo-objective motivation, Pamela Reis' analysis of 1 Samuel 21, and J. L. Austin's speech-act theory of language in addition to doing a good bit of constructive textual criticism. Bodner adds humor to the mix (his chapter on Abner's murder in 2 Samuel 3, in which Abner angrily asks if he is "a dog's head in Judah," has sections entitled "The Unleashing of Abner in the House of Saul," "Who Let the Dog Out," and "Reservoir Dogs").

Bodner's first topic is David's oldest brother Eliab, who appears in two scenes and has one speech. He may not seem worth the fourteen pages Bodner spends, but by the time he's through you'll believe that this apparently minor character serves a major function: before the fight with Goliath, Eliab tells his little brother "I know your presumption and the evil of your heart" (1 Sam 17:), the first time David's intentions and the nature of his heart--crucial throughout the entire book of Samuel--are questioned.

We are given a similarly detailed analysis of 1 Samuel 21-2 concerning the interactions among David, Ahitophel, Doeg the Edomite, and Saul. It is Bodner's contention (following Reis) that Ahitophel is one of David's many allies and that he chooses to save David rather than himself.

The complications surrounding Abner's murder have always been my favorite part of 2 Samuel and Bodner offers a careful analysis of the text, including the politics in Israel and Judah, Joab's negative assessment of his king's understanding of Abner's threat and his probable multiple motives in the killing, and David's complicated public mourning for a man he never cared for.

I found his chapter on Nathan particularly interesting. Bodner analyzes the three scenes in which Nathan appears (2 Samuel 7 and 12; 1 Kings 1) and presents him as a careful speaker who knows how to create a fiction that will elicit the desired response Bodner sees this in the story of the lamb in 2 Samuel 12 and of David's "oath to Bathsheba" in 1 Kings.

Four chapters are given to analyses of 2 Samuel 11: the first looks at the ambiguity in (and textual variants of) its first verse, the second deals with the 4QSam identification in 11:3 of Uriah as "the armor-bearer of Joab," the third presents Joab as a reader-response critic changing David's orders about how to kill Uriah in order to make them more practical, and the fourth looks at the different presentations of Joab's messenger to David in MT and LXX. (There is also a chapter on Ahitophel's reaction to what happens here.) These chapters are all interesting, particularly the third one dealing with Joab's relationship with David, but I was disappointed that in 46 pages of text dealing with 2 Samuel 11 he did not deal with Bathsheba's experience: was this an affair? Was it rape? He asks on p. 87 if she were "in any degree complicit in the matter" but does not follow that up. He does later illuminatingly compare her role in 1 Kings 1 to Rebekah's in Genesis 25 and provides a helpful analysis of her part (along with others) in the oaths--genuine or not--in 1 Kings 1-2, but the controversial way in which she became part of David's household is not a topic.

This book offers several different approaches to the texts in question and resolves the complicated issues of textual variants, complex characters, and the nature of the narrative itself in interesting and helpful ways.

Carol Stuart Grizzard

Pikeville College

Pikeville, KY 41501