David Steals Goliath’s Sword?
Samuel I 21:10
Image: Arent de Gelder: Ahimelech Giving the Sword of Goliath to David, 1680. Getty Collection
״David is the master of walking the fine line between innocence and manipulation. The author of the Book of Samuel is less interested in deciding on which side of the line to locate David than in showing what it is to walk that fine line: what it means to defend one’s power by exploiting ambiguity, and by fostering a habitual uncertainty in public perceptions of one’s underlying character and motivations. ..The author of the Book of Samuel narrates some incidents early in David’s political life that reveal his capacity to manipulate the situation to save himself while forcing others to pay the ultimate price. One such incident is described in detail when David, while fleeing Saul’s court, still lacked a power base of his own.”
In The Beginning of Politics: Power in the Biblical Book of Samuel, Halbertal and Holme delver deeper into David’s multiple and increasingly violent path to power. After his hurried departure from Jonathan, with no arms or helpers, David arrives at Nob, the shrine that seems to have replaced Shiloh, where the priest Ahimelech presides over the Ark and the sacred vestments. David fabricates the reasons for his surprising solo appearance and convinces the priest to hand him over the consecrated bread that is only supposed to be consumed by those presiding in the sanctuary. He then asks him, almost innocently -- do you happen to have any weapons I can use? Most scholars suggest that he knew exactly what he was looking for - and so did the priest:
וַיֹּ֣אמֶר הַכֹּהֵ֗ן חֶ֩רֶב֩ גׇּלְיָ֨ת הַפְּלִשְׁתִּ֜י אֲשֶׁר־הִכִּ֣יתָ ׀ בְּעֵ֣מֶק הָאֵלָ֗ה הִנֵּה־הִ֞יא לוּטָ֣ה בַשִּׂמְלָה֮ אַחֲרֵ֣י הָאֵפוֹד֒ אִם־אֹתָ֤הּ תִּֽקַּח־לְךָ֙ קָ֔ח כִּ֣י אֵ֥ין אַחֶ֛רֶת זוּלָתָ֖הּ בָּזֶ֑ה וַיֹּ֧אמֶר דָּוִ֛ד אֵ֥ין כָּמ֖וֹהָ תְּנֶ֥נָּה לִּֽי׃
The priest said, “There is the sword of Goliath the Philistine whom you slew in the valley of Elah; it is over there, wrapped in a cloth, behind the ephod. If you want to take that one, take it, for there is none here but that one.” David replied, “There is none like it; give it to me.”
Wasn’t it David who left it there, after his triumph, some time ago? However the story is spun, the hidden sword, now revealed, hints at deeper secrets here that do and don’t get exposed to the public eye. The sword was not the weapon with which David killed the giant - that was his slingshot. But now it serves as the magical tool that will propel him onwards - like King Arthur’s Excalibur - for better, or worse.
David’s double deception will lead to Nob’s ruin and the vengeful massacre that follows in the following chapter, though executed by Saul, is very much David’s fault.
Halbertal and Holme unpack this incident in the larger context of the book - and of political realities and their accompanying deceptions:
“Manipulated into supplying David with food and arms, Ahimelech became an inadvertent accomplice to a crime, helping an aspiring usurper escape the punitive hand of the established authorities. As in many such cases, one lie does not suffice. Pushed by the circumstances at the sanctuary, David had to add other layers of deception, this time instrumentalizing not only the priest’s discreet respect for state secrets but the sacred itself.
..The sacred is one of the most difficult concepts to grasp. Yet sacredness has a constant and essential feature. Like love, the sacred is essentially noninstrumental. It is the realm that is normatively protected from human manipulation and use.
Here our author reveals another deep truth about political power. The concealed realm that inevitably accompanies power politics unavoidably allows and even invites deception, crime, and cunning. By invoking the excuse of state secrets, nominally subordinate and obedient political agents can behave in unmonitored and unaccountable ways, because investigating the sincerity of their claims and plans could rend the veil of secrecy that is always presumed to be necessary—because it sometimes really is.
The deceptive acquisition of the consecrated bread was therefore another boundary that was transgressed by David, who was driven, by a winner-take-all political competition in which the alternative to victory is death, to embrace without compunction the uninhibited instrumentalization of that which, viewed morally, should never be instrumentalized.
David made Ahimelech a disposable instrument of his survival at a morally unconscionable and politically typical human cost.
Summoning the courage to confront a giant in single combat may be easier than overcoming an innate sense of entitlement or belief in one’s providential mission, however steep the cost to others.”
With Goliath’s sword in hand, David goes on to find refuge in the enemy territory - Gath, the Philistine city where Goliath was from. It’s a strange choice, born of despair, and a bad choice. The King’s people recognize the general of whom the women of Israel sing praises and David realizes his life is at risk. He pretends to be insane, drooling into his bears with another act of deception and flees to his next stop on his fugitive road, leaving behind him a trail of lies, drool, and blood.
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