David, King

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.

Israel’s deity becomes a universal God and the political power behind human affairs. This is just one of seven historical shifts in how the Bible conceives of “theocracy,” divine political power.

Following King David’s appropriation of Bathsheba and his role in the killing of her husband Uriah, YHWH dispatches the prophet Nathan to present a parable (2 Samuel 12:1–4). The parable features a ewe-lamb adopted by a poor man, which highlights David’s attempts to evade responsibility for his actions.

The version of the story of David’s triumph over Goliath (1 Samuel 17–18) in the Septuagint (LXX) is missing many details present in the Masoretic Text (MT). The explanations provided by the Addition and Omission Hypotheses do not fully account for the differences. Taking into account how ancient scrolls were written and repaired offers a new approach.

In verses 2–31, YHWH is a mythic warrior, with smoke coming from his nostrils, riding a cherub and wielding weapons of lightning and thunder against the enemy. In contrast, in verses 32–51, YHWH strengthens and equips the psalmist to fight his own battles. The combined psalm celebrates YHWH’s complex involvement in human affairs.

The Amalekites in most of the Bible are unremarkable; they are just one of the several tribes which Israel battles. Why then do Exodus and Deuteronomy present them as Israel’s ultimate enemy, whom YHWH has commanded to wipe out?

To avoid accidentally showing their genitals, the Torah requires priests to wear underwear. Exodus 20, however, implies that priests don’t wear underpants, which is why they must access the altar via a ramp. Indeed, King David does expose himself when doing cartwheels before the ark, leading his wife Michal to rebuke him.

Before his death, David commands Solomon to kill two men: Joab, his loyal general, and Shimei, his enemy, whom he had sworn not to kill.

YHWH declares to the Davidic king, “You are my son; today I have begotten you” (Psalm 2:7). For the New Testament, this verse is a prooftext for Jesus’s divinity, but what did it mean in its original context, and how did Jewish interpreters understand it?

Bathsheba first appears as the object of David’s lust, then as the mother of Solomon, who pleads with the king to make her son his heir. And yet, a close look at her actions shows her to be someone with agency, able to manipulate her husband and even her son to ensure Solomon’s safety and rule.

The Akedah (binding of Isaac) takes place on a mountain in the obscure land of Moriah. When a Judahite scribe later revised the story to have the angel of YHWH stop Abraham from killing his son, he connected Moriah with the Jerusalem Temple, thereby giving it a new hieros logos—a sacred founding legend, to compete with the northern worship site Beth-El.

The story of Moses follows a pattern that is typical of ancient Near Eastern fugitive hero narratives. However, when Moses goes to Mount Horeb, the plot deviates from the usual “divine encounter” feature. What does this tell us about the composition of the story of Moses and the Burning Bush?

Genesis Rabbah surprisingly portrays Lot’s daughters and their choices in a decidedly positive light, while exacerbating Lot’s culpability.

Reading the Succession Narrative as anti-monarchic Greek tragedy.

Praise of heroic death is a trope in ancient Near Eastern and Greek texts, and in modern commemorations such as Israel’s Yom Hazikaron and America’s Memorial Day, yet it is conspicuously absent in the Bible. Why?

Jerusalem in the 14th century B.C.E. was a Canaanite city; by the 10th/9th century B.C.E. it was Israelite. The Bible records several different accounts of how it was conquered. What are we to make of these different traditions?

The book of Ruth tells the story of David’s great grandmother Ruth, a Moabite woman who attaches herself to a Judahite family. Could this have been designed as a positive spin for a persistent, problematic tradition about David’s foreignness—a tradition so controversial that it was excised from the rest of the Bible?

Copper has been mined in the Timna Valley since the 5th millennium B.C.E. Recent excavations reveal that the height of activity in the region dates to the 10th century B.C.E. and thus domination of this remote region during this period would have meant control of the lucrative copper industry. Could this be the unwritten backdrop to the Bible’s account of David’s conquest of Edom and Solomon’s great wealth?

In the Prophets, Israelite leaders such as Joshua, Saul, David, and Ahab use divination to help them make decisions, just as their ancient Near Eastern counterparts did. The Torah sidesteps the divinatory character of these objects and practices, and instead, emphasizes their ritual and religious character.

Census is a necessary and standard procedure for governing. Indeed, the Bible contains numerous stories of censuses that are mundane and unproblematic. Only two texts suggest otherwise: Exodus 30, and 2 Samuel 24, a census by King David.

A Time-Honored Tradition

Why is the Benjaminite city of Gibeah portrayed as another Sodom—and who is the anonymous Levite from Ephraim who arrives there with his concubine?

Deuteronomy envisions a king constantly reading torah and limiting his wealth and resources. Is this how kings are described in the rest of the Bible? What was kingship like in the ancient Near East?