If midrashim and folktales are to be credited, David’s posthumous activities do not end with his interment. Many stories are told about the king’s restless afterlife within his tomb. They speak of him dispensing salvation and justice to the downtrodden, wreaking bloody punishment upon the arrogant and powerful, and uttering dire oracles at moments of national crisis. A man too perplexing to forget, he exerts a hold on our imaginations that will live on when we who ponder his acts have returned to dust.
Among the writers worth consulting---and perhaps you have and I missed it---is Robert Pensky who did a book on David for Jewish Encounters. What I remember most from it in the light of your recent commentaries is how richly the image of the Mafia served Pensky in idenitfying the kind of p ower that was prevalent in this phase of Jewish history.
The suspense. The intrigue. Last night I was reading about this former FBI agent Piro, who spent a year interrogating Saddam Hussein before he was executed. And he seemed to make a similar point about Hussein to this... "Anyone who expects that this formulaic invocation of truth and justice will be followed by a genuine reckoning by a remorseful king on the point of death, repenting and warning his son not to repeat his own mistakes, would be wrong."
The similarities in the story of a dying King David and a man who aspired to be a Warrior King are interesting. Fascinating that a story that's over 1000 years old is played out again and again.
If midrashim and folktales are to be credited, David’s posthumous activities do not end with his interment. Many stories are told about the king’s restless afterlife within his tomb. They speak of him dispensing salvation and justice to the downtrodden, wreaking bloody punishment upon the arrogant and powerful, and uttering dire oracles at moments of national crisis. A man too perplexing to forget, he exerts a hold on our imaginations that will live on when we who ponder his acts have returned to dust.
Among the writers worth consulting---and perhaps you have and I missed it---is Robert Pensky who did a book on David for Jewish Encounters. What I remember most from it in the light of your recent commentaries is how richly the image of the Mafia served Pensky in idenitfying the kind of p ower that was prevalent in this phase of Jewish history.
The suspense. The intrigue. Last night I was reading about this former FBI agent Piro, who spent a year interrogating Saddam Hussein before he was executed. And he seemed to make a similar point about Hussein to this... "Anyone who expects that this formulaic invocation of truth and justice will be followed by a genuine reckoning by a remorseful king on the point of death, repenting and warning his son not to repeat his own mistakes, would be wrong."
The similarities in the story of a dying King David and a man who aspired to be a Warrior King are interesting. Fascinating that a story that's over 1000 years old is played out again and again.