‘Once upon a time’ is how the prophet Nathan begins what will become one of the most powerful and effective parables in the biblical canon. The creative use of storytelling as a mirror into the darker corners of our personal and public hidden lives continues to be the sharpest of tools towards criticism and correction of norms.
Nathan, sent by YHWH, traps King David into angry admission of his own guilt, even if the parallels between the parable and the king’s crimes are puzzling. A rich man steals a poor man’s only sheep, instead of using one of his own to entertain a guest. The blatant injustice invoked by the tale provokes David to proclaim that the rich man is guilty and should be punished four-fold. That’s when Nathan hits home:
וַיֹּ֧אמֶר נָתָ֛ן אֶל־דָּוִ֖ד אַתָּ֣ה הָאִ֑ישׁ
And Nathan said to David, “You Are That Man!”
Is Bathsheba the sheep in this parable? Or is it her dead husband? The facts don’t add up but perhaps they don’t matter. Art does what it does by opening wide the windows of awareness, and in this case, wake up David’s heart:
Robert Alter explores this story further, including why the story’s strange details still manage to stir the king to honesty reflect on his wrongdoing:
“Nathan may be counting on the possibility that the obverse side of guilty conscience in a man like David is the anxious desire to do the right thing. As a king, his first obligation is to protect his subjects and to dispense justice, especially to the disadvantaged. In the affair of Bathsheba and Uriah, he has done precisely the opposite. Now, as he listens to Nathan’s tale, David’s compensatory zeal to be a champion of justice overrides any awareness he might have of the evident artifice of the story.”
In other words, the use of storytelling manages to move David to a moral stance of reckoning — and deal with what is one of the most severe of human traits, especially perhaps among our leaders - dissociation.
Halbertal and Holmes analyze this moment through the lens of political and personal discovery:
“The extent to which David has dissociated himself even from his own moral responses is then brought out dramatically when Nathan tells him ‘You are the man!”. In response, David becomes momentarily capable of returning to the moral self previously silenced by the weight of his sovereign persona and accepting the guilt… Our author drives home the uncanny power of dissociation of its capacity to generate violence, therefore, precisely by giving us such a rich portrayal of David’s complexity as a human being - and not merely as a king.”
Now that the king seems to show actual signs of repentance - what will the consequences be? The aftermath is dire - both for his family and future dynasty. Nathan’s curse, in the name of YHWH, will echo through the rest of the book, sharp as a sword.
Halbertal and Holme continue:
“Terrible suffering will now strike David’s household, and interpreting that suffering as God’s punishment for David’s crime is natural enough. But what makes the next phase of the David story so interesting is not the way it fulfills Nathan’s morally outraged prophecy but rather the way it unfolds naturalistically from the structures of David’s crime itself. Nathan’s ominous words ‘The sword shall not swerve your house evermore” - mirror and mock David’s attempt to hide his own hand in Uriah’s death by telling the messenger that the sword of war kills for no human reason. The sword that David described as operating autonomously will go far towards devouring David’s own house.”
The baby birthed in sin dies despite David’s fervent prayers.
But he consoles Bathsheba, again in his bed, and despite the curse, she gives birth to yet another boy - in fact she will give birth to four, at least.
But this baby’s special. She’ll name him Solomon - Shlomo - the Man of Peace. But oddly, Nathan shows up once again to give the boy another name - Yedidya - Divine Ally.
Without too much of a spoiler alert it’s safe to assume that this birth has a significant purpose here - a foreshadowing of the future, with prophetic present and all, -complete with its many human faults.
Careful readers are once again puzzled by the later author’s choice to paint this Davidic dynasty with all its flaws intact.
Alter helps to frame this fact in the big picture of this complex history and its depiction through the lens of storytelling:
“One of the most extraordinary features of the whole David narrative is that this story of the founding of the great dynasty of Judah is, paradoxically, already a tale of the fall of the house of David.
The author of the David story continually exercises an unblinking vision of David and the institution of the monarchy that exposes their terrible flaws even as he accepts their divinely authorized legitimacy… In place of David the seeker and wielder of power, we now see a vulnerable David, and this is how he will chiefly appear through the last half of his story.”
The four-fold price tag, beginning with the death of Bathsheba’s first baby, is about to play out, big time, in the chapters ahead.
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I have had a luxury our genius-host does not: namely, stepping away for a while from these almost daily deep dives into our Bible. My biblio-vaca highlights for me the discipline Amichai has imposed on himself, and my respect for this discipline is enhanced.
This practice is spiritual in its force and intent, for there will be days when he must feel the desire to lay his burden down. A spiritual practice is by definition something undertaken for the sake of the good that you do whether you feel like it or not. And so it is and must be for this project.
Its benefits accrue over time: knowledge grows; a level of self-respect; unknown and unforeseeable blessings arrive. It is also an ethical enterprise, for it exercises a man's discrimination: How to read a sacred text critically, with an questioning, open mind, and to face the mirrors that this process will present. For whatever price that man pays for strapping himself to the wheel of this commitment, he also has the structure of a process that becomes a ritual into which, daily, he can pour an unselfish desire to learn and write and thereby share. If pursued with a desire to find and to tell the truth, such a man will grow stronger.
Amichai, "You are that man."
As a footnote to this post, I am reminded of Hamlet's play within the play wherein he seeks "To catch the conscience of the king," his uncle who murdered his father. He achieves his goal: for Claudius, the usurper, sees himself in the playlet's mirror and knows "I am that man."
Very much enjoying this entire series and evaluating David in a new light.