Wolpe - David: the divided heart

DAVID

The Divided Heart

DAVID WOLPE

Frontispiece: David and Goliath, engraving by Gustave Dor, 1866.

Copyright 2014 by David Wolpe.

Quotations from 1 and 2 Samuel are taken from The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel, by Robert Alter. Copyright 1999 by Robert Alter. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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Set in Janson type by Integrated Publishing Solutions, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wolpe, David.
David : the divided heart / David Wolpe.
p. cm.(Jewish lives.)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-18878-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. David, King of Israel. I. Title.
BS580.D3W65 2014
222'.4092dc23
2014006335

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Steve, Paul, and Danny,
brothers and companions through life

IN MY HIGH SCHOOL, parents of graduating seniors were assigned a page in the yearbook to write a message to their children. Decades ago, right before graduation, I opened up my high school yearbook to see what my parents had written to me on their page. In the name of the whole family, my father submitted the following:

And David sang many songs.

The people listened and heard.

They sang his songs and were comforted.

They loved David and thanked the Lord for him.

He became a beloved gift unto all the people.

Deeply touched, I went right to the book of Samuel to find the source. I soon realized my father had selected, arranged, and added to create the message. It was also then that I became fascinated by my namesake. Aware of Davids story, I had never really wonderedwhat was his power to comfort and why was he beloved? The songs he sang echoed through the ages and Israel was blessed with their spirit. So who was this man?

Upon being invited by Yale University Press to write on an eminent Jewish figure, for me the choice was easy and obvious. I had since learned that David was no simple shepherd and songster. This king of Israel was the Bibles most complex character. His life was entangled with war, women, and offspring who both betray and succeed him. He won battles and feigned madness, founded a city and served an enemy ruler, slayed a giant and fled from his own child.

But my fathers essential message remained. The name David means beloved, and no character in the Bible is as loved as David. The first time in the Bible that a woman is said to love a man is when Michal loves David. Her brother Jonathan loves David. The people of Israel love David. Even Saul, who bears a murderous rage toward David, is said first to love him. Finally, we are told that David is a man after Gods own heart.

So a little less than forty years (a good biblical number) after my curiosity was first stirred about the biblical echoes of my name, I have distilled a lifetime of wondering into this short book about a remarkable man.

I am now much older than when my father, of blessed memory, wrote those words in my yearbook. Life has made David seem more realmore human. No longer persuaded or enchanted by the purism of youth, I have come to expect contradictions in every human soul, and to defend the stubborn integrity of the divided heart.

Who is David and who is the son of Jesse?
1 Samuel 25:10

WE WISH our heroes to be attractively flawed: brave but heedless, good but confused, wise yet inexplicably sad. A minor crack in character makes the vessel seem that much more precious. Still, while acknowledging the complexity behind the clarity of Lincoln, or the darkness that lurked beneath Churchills inspired eloquence, we fix on the uplift and ignore the down-drafts.

David confounds such simplicities. Other ancient figures have stories, powerful ones; but they are fragments of character, marked by tendentiousness and heavy symbolism. David is the first person in history whose tale is complete and vital, laced with passions, savagery, hesitation, betrayal, charisma, faith, familythe rich canvas of a large life. He is capable of great acts, expressions of lasting piety, and of startling cruelty. Davids failings are not slight or endearing. Whitman famously said of himself that he contained multitudes. Long before Whitman, the Bibles premier poet had a soul so large that thousands of years of interpretation have not exhausted its landmarks and byways.

From this distance we cannot know what is a literal recounting and what is invention or distortion. The character of David convinces, along with its shocks and incongruities. Surviving rebellions, fraternizing with the enemy, committing public adultery and proxy murder, David dies peacefully in bed. Scarred, still roiled by revenge untaken, having lived a hard life, he remains essentially unharmed. We read of his uneasy relationships with wives, children, his warriors, and the people. His story is like the Gestalt experiment: You can choose to see David as hero or knave. His enemies keep disappearing, but he disclaims any part in their death. He sustains enough loyalty to remain king but also endures rebellion, even from within his own family. The explanation of traditional piety is simple and elegant: God is with him. The modern reader suspects that while trusting in God, David is a man careful to secure himself a little earthly insurance nonetheless.

Novelists take advantage of the storys ambiguity. Stefan Heyms King David Report depicts a court historian trying to tell the truth about David but under constant pressure to exaggerate his righteousness. (One character says to the historian: If you know as much as I think you know, Ethan, I think you know too much.) The novelist, who lived part of his life in communist East Germany, understood what it was to try to tell stories with shadows about those in power. A powerful state versus the truth is the theme of Heyms tale, and he uses ancient Israel to indict the modern regime.

Historian Pieter Geyl wrote a book called Napoleon: For and Against, chronicling the opposing views of historians on Napoleon. A reader of the commentators and scholars on David could compile a similar book. One portrays him as a paragon of faith who fell but once, another as a Machiavellian villain who cannily rose to rule. Each has hold of a piece of what makes David so compelling. The drive to see Davids character as perfectly consistent betrays a blinkered view of human nature. David contains more than any single explanation can embrace. He is, in the words of historian Baruch Halpern, the first human being in world literature.