Abishag: King David’s Sokhenet

At the end of David’s life, he is old and cold, and his advisors find him a beautiful young virgin to keep him warm. They appoint her as sōkhenet, an administrator of the royal household, allowing her to play a key role as an official witness to the court cabal ensuring Solomon’s succession.

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Prof. Daniel Bodi
Abishag: King David’s Sokhenet

David and Abishag, Bible illustration cycle, 1432-1435, Bohemia. IMAREAL at the University of Salzburg

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Chayei Sarah

Published: November 10, 2023

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Last Updated: September 7, 2026

  1. This article is based on Daniel Bodi, Abishag as Administrator of King David’s Household (HBM, 93; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2021).

  2. As I note below, the masculine form appears once in Isa 22:15.

  3. He uses Ecclesiastes 10:9 as his prooftext. With reference to 1 Kgs 1:4 and 1:15, an anthology of rabbinic commentaries known as Yalquṭ Me‘am Lo‘ez, adds in the name of Rabbi Eliezer bar Solomon that an (אילונית [’aylônît], androgynous or intersex person, warms better than a young female virgin. This is deduced from the Piel masculine participle form mšrt “he was ministering (the king),” referring to Abishag instead of the grammatically required feminine mšrtt. On ’aylônît, see Yebamot 64a.

  4. M. Cogan, 1 Kings. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB, 10; New York: Doubleday, 2000), p. 156.

  5. J. L. Wright, David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 7.

  6. M. H. Pope, Song of Songs. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB, 7C; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), p. 597.

  7. S. J. De Vries, 1 Kings (World Biblical Commentary, 12; Nashville, YN: Thomas Nelson, 2003), p. 2.

  8. Bodi, Abishag, ch. 2, 49-81: “Abishag as Administrator of King David’s Household, Hebrew sōkenet, West-Semitic sākinu, and Akkadian šākin bīti.”

  9. For more on this position, see N. Avigad, “The Epitaph of a Royal Steward from Siloam Village,” IEJ 3 (1953), pp. 137-52. A second epitaph is found on the tomb of Zeraʿyahu adjoining that of Shebna/Shevnayahu A. Reifenberg, “A Newly Discovered Hebrew Inscription of the pre-Exilic Period,” JPOS 21 (1948), pp. 134-37. S. C. Layton, “The Stewart in Ancient Israel: A Study of Hebrew (ʾašer) ʾal-habbayit in Its Near Eastern Setting”, JBL 109 (1990), pp. 633-49 (637). A bulla from Tell ed-Duweir has a two-line inscription lgdlyhw//ʾšr ʿl hby[t] “(Belonging to) Gedalyahu, the one over the house.” Bodi, Abishag, p. 51 n. 6

  10. The assumption that women were always and everywhere a universally oppressed group, continually occupying a subordinate status, does not bear the brunt of comparative ancient Near Eastern studies. Moreover, the idea of a uniform entity of patriarchy as a permanent ethnographic and historical framework that could be assumed for the entire ancient Near East is highly problematic. S. Svärd, “Studying Gender: A Case-Study of Female Administrators in Neo-Assyrian Palaces,” The Role of Women in Work and Society in the Ancient Near East, ed. B. Lion and C. Michel, SANER, 13 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 447-58 [p. 449]. Editor’s note : See also Carol Meyers, “The Shunammite Woman and the Patriarchy Problem,” TheTorah (2018).

  11. Sanna Svärd, Women and Power in Neo-Assyrian Palaces (State Archives of Assyria Studies; 23; Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2015), pp. 70-71, 91-105, 232-39.

  12. P. Abrahami and B. Lion, “Les femmes exerçant des fonctions administratives d’après les tablettes du palais de Nuzi,” Akkadica 143 (2022): 187-200.

  13. Editor’s note: See discussion of this story in Carl Ehrlich, “Bathsheba the Kingmaker,” TheTorah (2020).

  14. The use of the grammatically anomalous form (mešārat), usually translated with “she was ministering” (the king), represents a D-stem (Piel) masculine participle from the root šārat ‘to serve’, and means literally, “he was ministering” the king. The correct grammatical form of the Piel feminine participle should be mešāretet, maintaining the first taw of the root and the second taw for the feminine, vocalized with two seghols (vowel e) beneath the reš and the first taw. Probably to facilitate the pronunciation of this participle, the scribe omitted one taw and placed a pataḥ (short vowel a) instead of a seghol (e) under the reš. See Bodi, Abishag, p. 45

  15. There are 107 references to sākinu in Ugaritic texts. W. van Soldt, “Studies on the sākinu-Official (1). The Spelling and the Office-Holder at Ugarit,” UF 33 (2002): 579-99. Id., “Studies on the sākinu-Official (2). The Function of the sākinu of Ugarit,” UF 34 (2003): 805-28. Id., “Studies on the sākinu-Official (3). The sākinu of Other Ugaritic Towns and of the Palace and of the Queen’s House, and the Findspots of the Tablets,” UF 38 (2006): 1-24.

  16. For a series of seals of ancient Hebrew women, see M. Bar-Ilan, Some Jewish Women in Antiquity (Brown Judaic Studies, 317; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2020), 37-39. J. R. Bartlett, “The Seal of ḤNH from the Neighbourhood of Tell ed-Duweir,” PEQ 108 (1976): 59-61. B. Lion, “‘Ces femmes avec leurs sceaux…’ Quelques mentions des sceaux et de leur usage dans les tablettes de Nuzi,” (ed. J. Patrier, P. Quenet, and P. Butterlin, Mille et une empreintes. Mélanges en l’honneur de D. Beyer (Subartu, 36; Turnhout, Brepols, 2016), 215-28.

  17. N. Avigad, “The Contribution of Hebrew Seals to an Understanding of Israelite Religion and Society,” Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of F.M. Cross (ed. P.D. Miller, P. D. Hanson, and S. Dean McBride, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 195-208.

  18. N. Avigad, “A Note on an Impression from a Woman’s Seal,” IEJ 37 (1987): 18-19.

  19. J. R. Bartlett, “The Seal of ḤNH from the Neighbourhood of Tell ed-Duweir,” PEQ 108 (1976), pp. 59-61.An example of the latter is a scaraboid decorative seal with the four Phoenician characters yzbl “Jezabel,” dating from the 9th or 8th century BCE. N. Avigad, “The Seal of Jezabel,” IEJ 14 (1964): 274-76.

  20. Each one of David’s wives has received a book-length analysis, D. Bodi, The Michal Affair. From Zimri-Lim to the Rabbis (Hebrew Bible Monographs, 3: Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2005). Id., The Demise of the Warlord. A New Look at the David Story (HBM, 26: Sheffield: Sheffield: Phoenix Press, 2010); Id., (ed.), Abigail, Wife of David, and Other Ancient Oriental Women (HBM, 60; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013). Id., Abishag as Administrator of King David’s Household (HBM, 93; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2021).

  21. David has other wives, but these appear in lists, and do not function as characters in the longer David narrative.

  22. Bodi, Abishag, ch. 8, 213­–268, “The Four Wives of King David and the Four Women of Odysseus.”

  23. I. de Jong, A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 120. H. Foley, ‘“Reverse Similes” and Sex Roles in the Odyssey,” Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers (ed. J. Peradotto and J.P. Sullivan, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1984), pp. 59–78.

  24. They were gradually written down some centuries later when the Hebrew and the Greek scripts were sufficiently developed and generalized. W. Waal, “On the ‘Phoenician Letters.’ The Case for an Early Transmission of the Greek Alphabet from an Archaeological, Epigraphic and Linguistic Perspective,” Aegean Studies 1 (2018): 83-125. C. Rollston suggests the 9th century BCE as the time when the Hebrew script and writing were established in “Scripture and Inscriptions: Eighth-Century Israel and Judah in Writing”, in Z. Farber and J. L. Wright (ed.) Archaeology and History of Eighth-Century Judah (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2018), 457-73. W. M. Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), ch. 5, 64-90: “Hezekiah and the Beginning of Biblical Literature.”

  25. By the end of the 8th century, the originally oral songs began to be complied into a written form, and eventually combined into one long narrative. The process lasted probably until the 6th century B.C.E. See the study of M. Perry, translated by his son, A. Parry (ed.), The Making of the Homeric Verse. The Collected Papers of Milman Parry (Oxford: OUP, 1987), who argues for a protracted original oral transmission. The theory was popularized by his student, A. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, New York: 1960, 1981). M. West, “The Homeric Question Today,” PAPS 155 (2011): 382-93 (392), suggests that the Homeric Epic was written down between 750 and 600 BCE.

  26. Bodi, Abishag, ch. 9, 269-302, “The Stories of David’s Wives as a Hebrew ‘Advice to a Prince” (Fürstenspiegel).”

  27. In his book, David M. Gunn described the narrative as a “story in the sense of a work of art and entertainment.” D. M. Gunn, The Story of King David. Genre and Interpretation (JSTOTSup, 6; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 38.

  28. As Eva Cantarella explains:

    For all the centuries of the so-called Hellenistic Middle Ages, the aidoi and rhapsodoi, singing the deeds of their ancestors, fulfilled not only a recreational function but an important pedagogical one as well. They taught the Greeks what to feel and think, what they should be, and how they should behave. As men learned from the epos to adapt themselves to the model of the hero, so women listening to the poets learned what sort of behavior they should adopt and what they should avoid.

    E. Cantarella, Pandora’s Daughters: The Role and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity (Eng. tr. M.B. Fant, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 25.

  29. The classicist from Stanford, Richard Martin, identifies this them as a stereotypical Greek presentation of a Fürstenspiegel . R. P. Martin, “Hesiod, Odysseus, and the Instruction of Princes,” TAPA 114 (1984): 29-48 (33 and 38 on aidōs).

  30. D. Marcus, “David the Deceiver and David the Dupe,” Prooftexts 6 (1986): 163-171 [p. 167].

  31. On this concept and its uses in rabbinic literature see Ishay Rosen-Zvi, "Measure for Measure as a Hermeneutic Tool in Early Rabbinic Literature," Journal of Jewish Studies 56 (2006), pp. 269-286.

  32. Having been placed here by one of the Deuteronomistic redactors, it illustrates the outworking of the retribution principle in David’s final days anticipating some of the issues dealt with in the later Deuteronomistic Historiography (DtrH). J. Kaplan, “1 Samuel 8:11-18 as ‘A Mirror for Princes,’” JBL 131 (2012): 635-642 [pp. 630 and 639-40, Table 2, with parallels], referred specifically to the Babylonian Fürstenspiegel and attributed 1 Sam. 8:11-18 to this literary genre.

  33. Editor’s note: See discussion of this story in Carl Ehrlich, “Bathsheba the Kingmaker,” TheTorah (2020).

  34. In light of the legal role and responsibility of the šakintus at Nuzi and in Neo-Assyrian documents, Abishag, the sōkhenet, wielded some legal clout as old King David’s proxyholder or “fondé de pouvoir.”

Prof. Daniel Bodi is Professor of History of Religions of Antiquity at Sorbonne University in Paris. He earned his M.A. from Fuller Theological Seminary, M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Union Theological Seminary in N.Y., Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible from… Read More
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