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Divine Violence in the Book of Samuel
Rachelle Gilmour
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Divine Violence in the Book of Samuel
Divine Violence in the
Book of Samuel
R AC H E L L E G I L M OU R
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gilmour, Rachelle, author.
Title: Divine violence in the Book of Samuel / Rachelle Gilmour. Description: 1. |
New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, [2021] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021013878 (print) | LCCN 2021013879 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190938079 | ISBN 9780190938093 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Violence—Biblical teaching. |
Bible. Samuel—Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Classification: LCC BS1325.6.V56 G55 2021 (print) |
LCC BS1325.6.V56 (ebook) | DDC 231.7/6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021013878
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021013879
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190938079.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
The Lord Kills and Brings to Life: Introduction  1
1. He Shall Repay the Lamb Fourfold: Retribution and Curse  19

1.1. Retributive and Consequential Violence in 2 Sam 11–20  24
1.2. The Characterisation of God and the Retributive Punishment
of David  54
1.3. Reading Retribution in the David Story Politically  62
1.4. Retribution and 1 Sam 12  71
1.5. Bloodguilt, Curse, and 2 Sam 21  82
2. God has Become your Enemy: Upheavals in Divine Retribution  87
2.1. Saul’s Rejection in the Book of Samuel  90
2.2. The Ethics and Characterisation of God, and the Rejection
of Saul  119
2.3. Reading the Rejection of Saul Politically  131
2.4. The House of Eli and God’s Delight  140
3. Who is Able to Stand before the Lord, this Holy God?: The Irruption
of Divine Violence  151
3.1. The Violence of the Ark  154
3.2. The Characterisation of God in the Stories of the Ark  167
3.3. Reading the Ark in Beth-shemesh and Perez-uzzah Politically  186
The Lord will Exalt the Power of his Anointed: Conclusion  191
Bibliography  201
General Index  217
Scripture Index  221
Acknowledgements
This work was made possible through generous grants from the Centre for PaCT
at Charles Sturt University, and from the University of Divinity, and through
the support and time made available to me while on faculty at Trinity College,
Melbourne.
My special thanks are due to Gili Kugler and Mark Brett, colleagues who have
given me encouragement and wise, insightful feedback throughout the pro-
cess of writing, and Shira Golani, David Neville, and Scott Kirkland for lending
their expertise to sections of the manuscript. Thank you to Christina Petterson
and David Shepherd for giving me access to their unpublished work; and to the
SBL committee for Book of Samuel: Narrative, Theology and Interpretation, in-
cluding co-chair David Firth and all our presenters over the past years, for the
opportunities to try out ideas and benefit from many stimulating conversations
on the book of Samuel at the SBL Annual Meetings. Jonathan Thambyrajah
stepped in as an outstanding research assistant in the final stages of completing
this manuscript, and the wonderful faculty, staff, and students at Trinity College
Theological School have ensured an energising work environment for my re-
search. Thank you also to Steve Wiggins at Oxford University Press for a smooth
publication process and the manuscript’s readers for their constructive com-
ments. My family—David, Stephen, and Emily Gilmour—has been a source of
unending support through all the life changes of the past years.
Finally, this book is dedicated to my husband Dan Fleming whose brilliant
work as an ethicist was my initial inspiration for this reading of the book of
Samuel; whose unfailing reassurance and encouragement enabled me to perse-
vere; and whose love and practical support, especially in these last months as we
await a precious arrival to our family, have made it possible to bring the manu-
script to completion.
The Lord Kills and Brings to Life
Introduction
Just as it belongs to the king to govern his people, it belongs to the sub-
jects to be the servants of the king, both of which he speaks about in
the aforementioned place, where he particularly lists the king’s right
and supremacy as well as the people’s dutiful submission, which con-
sists in the king’s rule over the subjects’ persons, i.e. to use the men’s
service among his cavalry and entourage in times of war, and for sow-
ing, harvest, and other work in times of peace, but the women’s par-
ticular service to the necessities of the royal household. Likewise, that
he (the king) shall rule over their estates and property, as well as over
their fields and vineyards, their best olive estates, their seed, cattle and
beasts, wherefrom he may either demand tithe according to his will or
in times of need take all of it to the conservation of himself and his men
of war, and to the protection of the general prosperity of the kingdom
against his and its enemies.1
—Bishop Wandel, Coronation of Christian V of Denmark, 1671
This excerpt comes from a sermon by Bishop Wandel in Copenhagen, Denmark,

in 1671 at the first coronation ceremony of a Danish absolute monarch in
Frederiksborg church. As part of a sermon on Rom 13, Wandel’s description of
the power and rights of the monarch draws upon 1 Sam 8:9–17, a text usually
read in contemporary biblical scholarship as a condemnation of the excesses of
kingship,2 but here read at face value as an endorsement of monarchic power.
1 Translation from Christina Petterson, ‘The Ideology of Kingship from Saul to Frank Underwood’
(unpublished paper presented at 2018 SBL Annual Conference, Denver, Colorado, November 17,
2018), with great thanks to Christina for explaining the context for this excerpt and her exploration
of how it relates to my work on Saul. On further medieval and Renaissance appropriations of 1 Sam 8
in political thought, for the most part against monarchy, see Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish
Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2010), 23–56.
2 A reading of 1 Sam 8 as deriving from an anti-monarchical source was brought to prominence
in modern scholarship by Wellhausen (see Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient
Israel [Gloucester, MA: Smith, 1973], 253–55). Many contemporary readings, predominantly influ-
enced by the Deuteronomistic History theory, interpret 1 Sam 8 in conjunction with Deut 17:14-20,
Divine Violence in the Book of Samuel. Rachelle Gilmour, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190938079.003.0001
2 Divine Violence in the Book of Samuel
Closely related to the endorsement or condemnation of monarchic power,

is there a limit on divine rights and power to be violent, to be merciful, and to
choose and to reject kings in the book of Samuel? Is God bound by law, such as
God’s commitments to the people of Israel or divinely created natural law? Or
is God bounded by God’s own character, that God is ‘just’? From an ethical per-
spective, is there a divine exception for undue violence? And from a political per-
spective, does divine exception for violence give scope for monarchic exception?
If the king is subject only to God, but God’s sovereign action, including God’s
violence, may be capricious, the king’s position is precarious, as is the position of
the people at the mercy of a king answerable only to God.
Human violence and divine violence have been linked through many ages.
Divine violence may act as a deterrent for violent transgression; but divine vi-
olence may also be used as a model or justification for human violence, so
prevalent in crises of our contemporary age.3 In the book of Samuel, where the
sovereignty of God and king are both in play, so also divine violence may license,
or place limits upon, the power of the monarch.
This study is concerned with the mechanics and characterisation of divine ac-
tion in the book of Samuel, particularly acts of divine violence, in ethical, literary,
and political perspectives. In many ways, the concluding narrative of the book,
2 Sam 24, epitomises the ubiquity, as well as intricacies, of God’s violence in the
book of Samuel;4 and a survey of this narrative’s contours introduces many of the
issues that will be explored in more detail throughout this study.
In 2 Sam 24:1, the anger of the Lord is inexplicably kindled against Israel, and
God incites David, to ‘go, count Israel and Judah’. David acts in obedience, but
then his heart is struck that he has sinned greatly, asking God to take away the
guilt of what he has done. Given a choice of three punishments, David does not
specify but asks instead in v. 14, ‘let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy
is great’. Accordingly, as the destroying angel of God approaches Jerusalem, God
has mercy and commands the angel to cease at the threshing floor of Araunah.
which limits the excesses of the king and subordinates him to the Law. Other approaches, literary
and historical, have emphasised limitations on kingship in 1 Sam 8 and throughout the book of
Samuel: e.g., Robert Polzin, Samuel and the Deuteronomist: A Literary Study of the Deuteronomic
History, Part Two: 1 Samuel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993, 86– 88); Walter
Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel, Interpretation (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox,
1990); Jonathan Kaplan, ‘1 Samuel 8:11–18 as “a Mirror for Princes,’ ” JBL 131 (2012): 625–42.
3 The link between theology of a violent God and systemic child abuse is an example in my own
context in the Anglican Church of Australia. See, e.g., Scott Cowdell, ‘An Abusive Church Culture?
Clergy Sexual Abuse and Systematic Dysfunction in Ecclesial Faith and Life,’ St Mark’s Review 205
(2008): 31–49.
4 Lying outside the main line of narrative in Samuel, 2 Sam 24 ‘concludes’ themes and motifs from
the book of Samuel as a whole. See Rachelle Gilmour, Representing the Past: A Literary Analysis of
Narrative Historiography in the Book of Samuel, VTSup 143 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 99–116.
The Lord Kills and Brings to Life 3
This story is both intriguing and mystifying: What is so problematic about a

census?5 Why is David given a choice of punishments?6 The account of David’s
census captures many of the complexities that we find in stories of God’s violence
throughout the book of Samuel. The anger of the Lord is kindled ‘again’ (‫)ויסף‬
according to 24:1, relating back to an earlier incident, possibly 2 Sam 6:7,7 an-
other story of inexplicable violence when God’s anger lashes out against Uzzah
(see Part 3). In 2 Sam 24:1, God incites David to conduct a census, only to punish
him for doing so. It is unlikely to be an accident that the parallel account in 2 Chr
21:1 names ‘satan/an adversary’ (‫ )שטן‬as the instigator of the census in place of
God, suggesting an early theological discomfort with the divine violence por-
trayed in 2 Sam 24.
God responds to David’s request for forgiveness in 2 Sam 24:10 with punish-
ment, a feature that aligns with a central difficulty in the story of David’s sin in
2 Sam 11–12 (see Part 1). In 2 Sam 12, David’s sins are forgiven, yet his new-
born child still dies at the hand of God. And finally, God’s mercy, more literally,
‘change of mind/regret’ (‫ )נחם‬in 2 Sam 24:16 echoes God’s change of mind re-
garding Saul that leads to his rejection as king (1 Sam 15:11, 35) and the torment
of Saul when possessed by God’s evil spirit (see Part 2).
W. Brueggemann has influentially interpreted 2 Sam 24 as part of a decon-
struction of royal power: David, he says, is acting in the role of absolute monarch
who uses the census to accumulate military power for oppressive ends.8 And yet,
this act of an absolute monarch is instigated by God in the Samuel account be-
cause of anger against Israel, confusing the issue of God’s support of, or opposi-
tion to, exploitative monarchic power.
This story of David’s census also highlights questions of perspective that are
present in any evaluation of violence, human or divine, in the book of Samuel: Is
this a story of unintelligible and unmotivated violence against Israel by God, and
the manipulation of the monarch David, trapping him in sin? Or is this a story of
God’s great mercy, God’s compassion for Jerusalem, and the foundational story
for the sacred site of the temple in Jerusalem on Araunah’s threshing floor? How
is such a God characterised in the portrayal of the book of Samuel?
5 The most prominent solution to this problem is that the census has military intent. See Walter
Brueggemann, ‘2 Samuel 21–24: An Appendix of Deconstruction?,’ CBQ 50 (1988): 383–97 (392–

93); Robert P. Gordon, I & II Samuel: A Commentary (Exeter: Paternoster, 1986), 316; Herbert H.
Klement, II Samuel 21–24 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000), 177).
6 See p.45 of this study.
7 E.g., A. Graeme Auld, I & II Samuel, OTL (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2011), 603–4.
See also Abravanel in A. J. Rosenberg, ed., Mikraoth Gedaloth: Samuel II, 2nd ed. (New York: Judaica
Press, 1986), 443; and P. Kyle McCarter, II Samuel: A New Translation with Introduction, Notes, and
Commentary, AB 9 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 509. They consider the link to be to 2 Sam
21:1–14, another story of divine violence that will be examined in this study.
8 Brueggemann, ‘2 Samuel 21–24,’ 392–93.
Divine Violence in This Study
In this study, I will examine the divine rejection of Saul and Eli, the punishment
of David, and God’s violence in the ark narratives as examples of divine violence
in the book of Samuel. Crucially, this study will suggest that divine violence is not
always associated with divine sovereignty, a point that will further elucidate the
connections between divine violence and monarchic sovereignty. In the course
of this examination, divine violence will be understood in a broad sense of the
term violence: interpreted as direct physical violence from God inflicting death
or suffering; indirect violence, inflicting death or suffering through an agent; and
non-physical violence, such as rejection, which in the book of Samuel ultimately
leads to mental or physical suffering.
On the one hand, this definition is problematically narrow. For example, in 2
Sam 24, there is arguably also divine violence in the structure of sovereignty that
compels David to choose his own punishment, not just experience that punish-
ment. There is structural violence inherent in the people of Israel’s dependency
upon David’s actions, and that Joab is compelled to carry out a census that he
knows to be wrong (2 Sam 24:4). In other words, the definition includes only
violence that can be seen and that is performed by an identifiable agent, what
S. Žižek calls ‘ “subjective” violence.’9 However, it does not include symbolic or
systemic violence, ‘objective violence,’ that is unseen but reproduced through
language or economic and political systems. Objective violence can even include
the imposition of law by a state or monarch, as will be raised in Part 3 when
discussing the work of Walter Benjamin. Objective violence is inherent in the
‘normal’ state of things, against which subjective violence is perceived, and this
backdrop must be taken into account to fully understand the visible acts of sub-
jective violence. Although this study is organised around instances of subjective
violence in the book of Samuel, attention will be consistently drawn to the sys-
tems of power and sovereignty that form the objective backdrop.
On the other hand, in the final stage of this study, the definition will prove
too broad. W. Benjamin, a conversation partner in the analysis of the violence of
the ark, defines Divine Violence10 as unintelligible violence that neither makes
nor preserves law. Using Benjamin’s much more narrow definition of the term
in Part 3, it will be demonstrated that God’s violence is not always an exercise of
God’s sovereignty.
My approach to investigating divine violence in the book of Samuel is at
heart a theological reading, interested in the God portrayed in the text, in the
9
Slavoj Žižek, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (London: Profile Books, 2008), 1.
10
The term “Divine Violence” will be capitalised only in reference to the concept as used by Walter
Benjamin.
context of ancient Israel. Three interlocking approaches will be drawn upon in

the analysis of each story of divine violence. Firstly, the story raises ethical ques-
tions regarding the nature of God’s violence, its mechanics, and ethical evalua-
tion. Secondly, there are literary questions regarding how God is characterised
in stories of such violence, whether, for example, as villain or merciful God. And
thirdly, the study raises political questions, regarding how this violence and por-
trait of God interacts with the wider political interests of different parts of the
book of Samuel. Is the violence of this story pro-David, anti-David, or an ide-
ology that lies complexly between these poles? My contention is that these three
types of questions, expounded further later in this chapter, interrelate with one
another towards a fuller account of divine violence in the book of Samuel, in-
cluding its portrayal, and arguably acceptance, by the authors and redactors of
this ancient text.
Reading divine violence ethically: dissecting the

so-called dark side of God
To chastise violence outright, to condemn it as ‘bad,’ is an ideological opera-

tion par excellence, a mystification which collaborates in rendering invisible
the fundamental forms of social violence.11
The first lens through which divine violence in the book of Samuel will be con-
sidered is an ethical one, exploring both the dynamics within the story that relate
to ethics, such as the narrative justification or condemnation of violence, and
ethical evaluations from recent interpreters of these texts.
In recent years, there has been increasing interest in a so-called dark side of
God in the Hebrew Bible,12 including an assessment of the ‘hostility’ of God in
11 Ibid., 174.
12 Although not a new phenomenon (see Paul Volz, Die Dämonische in Jahwe [Tübingen: Mohr,
1924]), recent theological formulations have begun to give so-called troubling texts increasing
attention. From a Jewish perspective, see Marvin A. Sweeney, The Hebrew Bible after the
Shoah: Engaging Holocaust Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008). From a Christian
perspective, see Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute,
Advocacy (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005). Interest is also evidenced by the simultaneous
rise of apologetics in Christian literature taking account of the violence of God. E.g., Christopher
J. H. Wright, The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith (Grand Rapids,
MI: Zondervan, 2008), 76–108; Eric A. Seibert, Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old
Testament Images of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2009); Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?
Making Sense of the Old Testament God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011); David T. Lamb, God
Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist? (Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011). For a survey of recent works in English, see Eric A. Seibert, ‘Recent
Research on Divine Violence in the Old Testament (with Special attention to Christian Theological
Perspectives),’ CBR 15 (2016): 8–40.
the book of Samuel. D. Gunn’s compelling reading of the Saul story, The Fate
of King Saul, challenges the assumption that God’s punishment and rejection of
Saul is just.13 He reviews earlier commentators on the rejection narratives in 1
Sam 13 and 15 and notes that while several observe that Saul’s condemnation is
arbitrary or the punishment is out of proportion to the sin, some justification is
found for Saul’s culpability, for example Saul ‘didn’t know true repentance.’14 He
suggests a plain reading of Saul has been rejected because it does not fit with the
character of God in the rest of the book of Samuel.15 Gunn concludes by sug-
gesting that God is acting with emotion and even states that ‘it is tempting to say
that this is the human face of God—but to say that would be perhaps to denigrate
humankind, which is not something this Old Testament story does; rather we
might say that here we see the dark side of God.’16 Gunn allows that God’s light
side might be more present in the book of Samuel as a whole, but in the story of
Saul God’s dark side is foregrounded.17
Building on Gunn’s reading of Saul, J. C. Exum applies a framework of tragedy
to the story of Saul, the fate of his household, and the fate of David’s household,
thus extending her reading to most of the book of Samuel.18 Exum demonstrates
that divine hostility is an essential ingredient in this tragedy. However, in con-
trast to Gunn’s reading of the Saul story, Exum proposes that Saul is a victim of
himself as much as a victim of God.19 In Exum’s reading of the Saul story, the
issue is not innocent suffering but that ‘the demands of the law operate unmer-
cifully in the Saul story.’20 The punishment exceeds Saul’s guilt and there is no
forgiveness from God.
L. Eslinger’s reading of 1 Sam 1–12, overlapping with several chapters of text
analysed by Gunn, also represents a God who ‘is too unpredictable (cf. 3:18), too
holy (cf. 6.20) for a regular, normal relationship with Israel’ without a mediator
such as Samuel in place.21 Eslinger’s reading strategy separates the point of view
of the omniscient narrator from the point of view of God, and this allows for a
13 David M. Gunn, The Fate of King Saul: An Interpretation of a Biblical Story, JSOTSup 14
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1980).

14 E.g., Gunn, Saul, p. 29 cites Gerhard Von Rad, Old Testament Theology, trans. D. M. G. Stalker
(Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1962–1965), 1:324–25; and on p. 35, Gunn cites Henry P. Smith, A
Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Samuel, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1899), 98.
Smith seeks an explanation in ‘unattested cultic law.’
15 Gunn, Saul, 35–38 on Hans W. Hertzberg, I & II Samuel: A Commentary, trans. J.S. Bowden,
OTL (London: SCM, 1964 [1960]), 105–6.

16 Gunn, Saul, 129.
17 Ibid., 131.
18 J. Cheryl Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative: Arrows of the Almighty (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992).

19 Ibid., 18.
20 Ibid., 34.
21 Lyle M. Eslinger, Kingship of God in Crisis: A Close Reading of 1 Samuel 1– 12 (Decatur,
GA: Almond Press, 1985), 247.
more unsettling reading of God’s actions in the ark narrative. He highlights that
God so desires to eliminate Eli’s sons, God no longer acts for the covenant people
when they are defeated in battle in 1 Sam 4, and God later treats Israel the same
way as God treats the Philistines in 1 Sam 6:19. He suggests ‘what emerges for
both the reader and Israel is the unpredictability of Yahweh, and for the reader
alone, the apparent irrationality and even injustice of Yahweh’s means of pun-
ishing the priests.’22 Unlike Gunn’s reading of the story of Saul, Eslinger identifies
the sin of Eli’s sons as justification for punishment but also recognises the per-
spective of Israel as caught in this suffering.
More recently, M. Steussy has brought together a number of troublesome
stories when building a portrait of the characterisation of God in the book of
Samuel.23 Steussy highlights the sheer force of evidence that the character of the
God of Samuel is problematic, and part of this is that God does not punish justly
as many readers of the book of Samuel expect or assume.
Steussy examines the characterisation of God by analysing the data on God’s
inner life, actions, speech, and the speech of other characters. Regarding God’s
inner life, she summarises that God is depicted as a ‘passionate labile God, whose
feelings and motives are more often negative than positive.’24 This trend applies
also to God’s actions. Steussy notes that many of God’s acts of generosity take
place only when solving ‘problems of his own making.’25 For example, God pro-
tects David from Saul seeking his life, but it is in part because of God’s evil spirit
that Saul pursues him in the first place. Similarly, God opens Hannah’s womb,
but the narrator is explicit that God also previously closed it. Most telling is her
claim of the inconsistency between merit of leaders and God’s treatment of them.
For example, God makes false charges against Eli, and God’s rejection speeches
outweigh election speeches.26
Steussy’s book Samuel and His God expands some of these ideas from the
Samuel story. 27 Here Steussy makes her starting point clear: for an ancient audi-
ence, God is the source of everything, both good and bad, but when bad things
happen to a person, this audience did not assume that the person deserved bad
fortune or that God had a good intention.28 This is illustrated through Hannah’s
song, where the reversal of fortunes is attributed to God, but this reversal is not
22 Ibid., 185.
23 Marti J. Steussy, ‘The Problematic God of Samuel,’ in Shall Not the Judge of All the Earth Do What
Is Right? Studies on the Nature of God in Tribute to James L. Crenshaw, ed. David Penchansky and Paul
L. Redditt (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 127–61.
24 Ibid., 130.
25 Ibid., 134.
26 Ibid., 142–43.
27 Marti J. Steussy, Samuel and His God, Studies on Personalities of the Old Testament
(Columbia: University of South Carolina, 2010).

28 Ibid., 52.
necessarily out of care for the vulnerable. She notes that Eli’s sons and Samuel’s
sons are both corrupt, but there is no consistency in how God responds to them.29
Notably, these readings almost all focus on 1 Samuel, and God’s hostility
towards Eli and Saul or divine violence associated with the ark. Whilst there are
troubling stories associated with David and David’s family in 2 Samuel, these
have tended not to prompt the same charges of a divine dark side as 1 Samuel.
There is inconsistency in divine violence, where divine hostility to Saul, for ex-
ample, is counterbalanced by favour to David.30
Other voices in scholarship have disputed these readings, pointing to over-
looked details in the text. V. P. Long engages with Gunn’s reading of the rejection
of Saul extensively, drawing attention to details which lead him to a harsher con-
demnation of Saul in 1 Sam 15. Long points out that, concerning the plunder of
war in 1 Sam 15:9, the narrator asserts that ‘all that was good’ was kept and ‘all
that was worthless’ was destroyed.31 Unlike Gunn, who takes Saul’s explanation
of returning to Gilgal to sacrifice the livestock at face value, Long subsequently
argues that Saul is ‘bluffing.’32
However, attention to different details is not the only difference in their anal-
ysis: Gunn’s and Long’s readings are also set apart by the seriousness with which
they consider the transgression of not following God’s command to the letter.
For Long, the disregard of the word of God and rebellion against God’s ‘theo-
cratic authority,’ even against a single commandment, is a grave offence.33 For
Gunn, and indeed Exum and Steussy, it is not an action worthy of the punish-
ments that Saul receives. In other words, the difference in evaluation is not only
based on their literary readings but also on the ethical judgements applied to
Saul’s actions.
A similar tendency is found in S. Chapman’s response to Steussy’s reading of
the dark side of God in the book of Samuel. When God closes Hannah’s womb,
Steussy sees this action as hostile, but Chapman reads the direct involvement
of God within the family, not just in the temple, as a positive action.34 Steussy
reads God’s response to Hannah’s vow as ‘transactional’; but is transactional nec-
essarily a bad characteristic? Chapman rereads the same actions as ‘responsive-
ness,’ reinterpreting them more positively.35
29
Ibid., 58–59.
30
E.g., Walter Dietrich and Christian Link, Die Dunklen Seiten Gottes: Band 1 Willkür und Gewalt,
6th ed. (Göttingen: Neukirchener, 2015), 17–71.
31 V. Philips Long, The Reign and Rejection of King Saul: A Case for Literary and Theological
Coherence (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989), 145.

32 Ibid., 145–46.
33 Ibid., 166–67.
34 Stephen B. Chapman, ‘Worthy to Be Praised: God as a Character in Samuel,’ in Characters and
Characterization in the Book of Samuel, ed. Keith Bodner and Benjamin J. M. Johnson, LHBOTS 669
(London: T&T Clark, 2019), 25–41 (32–33).
35 Chapman, ‘Worthy to Be Praised,’ 31–32. Note that Chapman (pp. 36–38) remarks on the diffi-
culty of evaluating the morality of actions in an ancient text, as will be discussed shortly.
In response to this wealth of work already undertaken, this study will first
offer fresh readings of stories of divine violence in the book of Samuel but do so
with a focus on the mechanics of important categories related to violence, such
as transgression, punishment, forgiveness, or the absence thereof. By bringing
precision to an account of these features in the text, these theological categories
will themselves be illuminated, as well as aiding an evaluation of the dynamics
of the text. Indeed, by dissecting the violence, a ‘positive’ side of some types of
punishment will be revealed, for example the role that proportional punishment
plays in forgiveness.36
Alongside fresh readings, this study will reassess the presuppositions and eth-
ical judgements that are used to evaluate them. It is unlikely that all readers will
agree with my interpretation of these stories (and in many cases, my interpreta-
tion remains ambivalent), nor will all readers consider the ethical accounts of
these stories justified (and whilst I consider the ethical reasoning valid, I may
not personally subscribe to it). Yet, an important contribution to the literature is
made by providing precision in an account of divine violence and delineating the
ethical issues raised.
For example, interpreters who find a ‘dark side’ of God and interpreters who
do not tend to share a common presupposition that God’s violence is justifiable
(and perhaps only justifiable) according to a principle of retribution.37 Thus,
Gunn claims God’s violence against Saul is unjustified because Saul has not
committed a transgression worthy of the punishment; Long refutes this claim
by claiming that the transgression is worthy of such punishment. Yet, both are
wedded to the principle of retribution.
There are good reasons for biblical interpreters to consider retribution, or ‘an
eye for an eye,’ as a default ethical framework of divine actions in biblical texts;38
however, the justification or appropriateness of retribution is highly debated in
modern philosophy and judicial theory,39 and there is no reason that ancient
Israelites would not also have perceived its problems and considered other types
of violence justifiable.40 Therefore, the portrayal of divine violence in the book of
Samuel may in several examples be better illuminated according to a framework
of ethical action different from retribution.
36 See Part 1.
37 See Part 1 for further definition of retribution.
38 See, e.g., Walter Brueggemann, ‘Some Aspects of Theodicy in Old Testament Faith,’ PRSt 26
(1999): 253–68.
39 See Part 1 for an overview of some of these issues.
40 See, e.g., James L. Crenshaw, Defending God: Biblical Responses to the Problem of Evil
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); ‘The Birth of Skepticism,’ in The Divine Helmsman: Studies
on God’s Control of Human Events, Presented to Lou H. Silberman, ed. James L. Crenshaw and Samuel
Sandmel (New York: Ktav, 1980), 1–19; ‘Introduction: The Shift from Theodicy to Anthropodicy,’ in
Theodicy in the Old Testament, ed. James L. Crenshaw (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1983), 1–16.
The concept of any kind of violence stemming from God is also one that can be
viewed from more than one perspective, not only as something that arouses sus-
picion of God’s character but also possibly comfort in God’s power. During the
COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, the context in which I now write, reportedly over two-
thirds of religious Americans believe the virus to be divine violence, God discip-
lining humanity on a global scale, and more than half believe God would protect
them from the virus.41 Rightly or wrongly, identifying divine violence in the world
can bring comfort and relief to one person, even if moral horror to another. So also,
ancient Israelite theodicy frequently found meaning in events, such as exile, by
attributing them to God.42 Despite the potential moral implications of this, divine
cause opens up avenues for divine supplication and hope for divine rescue.
This matter of perspective is made more complex by issues of objective and
subjective violence raised earlier and the need to pay attention to power dy-
namics within the text. What appears as unjustified, subjective violence, may be
in response to invisible social violence embedded in economic or political struc-
tures.43 In the book of Samuel, God’s violence is primarily directed towards the
most powerful: Eli, Saul, and David. The violence of God associated with the ark
and the collateral damage from punishment against these leaders are palpable
exceptions.
My purpose in this study is foremost to consider how divine violence in the
book of Samuel was understood within its ancient context. But in doing so, there
is good reason to utilise ethical reflections from a contemporary standpoint and
in dialogue with modern thinkers. Chapman highlights the difficulty with such
an endeavour, characterising many efforts as falling into either a ‘right-wing’ ap-
proach, which decides in advance that whatever God does must be right; or a
‘left-wing’ approach that decides ahead of time what is ‘good’ and measures the
text against this standard accordingly.44 I agree with these dangers and propose
a use of modern thinkers that is ‘diagnostic’ rather than ‘judgemental.’ For ex-
ample, by comparing the portrait of retribution in Samuel with that of Kant, at-
tention will be brought to features present in the text that may otherwise remain
unnoticed with a simplistic concept of retribution. The comparative exercise of
‘creating works that relate the one to the other in some intelligible fashion’45 is
41 Carlie Porterfield, ‘Two- Thirds of Religious Americans Believe Coronavirus Is a Message

from God,’ Forbes, 15 May 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/05/15/
two-thirds-of-religious-americans-believe-coronavirus-is-a-message-from-god/
42 Antti Laato and Johannes de Moor, ‘Introduction,’ in Theodicy in the World of the Bible, vii–liv
(xxix–liv).
43 So Dietrich and Link (Die Dunklen Seiten Gottes: Band 1, 129–30) argue vengeance in the Bible
is often part of the protest against wrongdoing, such as is found in the Psalms, and so, God’s venge-
ance is passionate action against injustice.
44 Chapman, ‘Worthy to Be Praised,’ 36–37.
45 Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1988), 148. See also pp. 129–49.

necessary for bridging the gap between our own cultures and another from the
past.46 Thinkers such as Kant, Nussbaum, and Benjamin will be brought into di-
alogue with biblical texts, not to justify the violence but to illuminate it.47 This
work is not intended as an apology, and neither my views nor the readers’ will
necessarily align with Kant, Nussbaum, or Benjamin. Yet these contrasts and
conversation partners suggest a logic in the formulations of divine violence in the
book of Samuel that points to sophistication in the text beyond simply relegating
the ancient storytellers to a primitive ‘pre-axial’ way of thinking.48 Moreover,
these thinkers, especially Kant and Benjamin, connect these ethical issues with
their political dimensions, especially notions of sovereignty, which is important
in light of the connections between divine violence and human violence.
Reading divine violence literarily: the characterisation of God
The inconsistency doesn’t matter; I myself manage to hold large numbers of

wholly irreconcilable views simultaneously, without the least difficulty. I do not
think others are less versatile.49
Having dissected God’s violence in Samuel, this study will turn to a fuller pic-
ture of how God is portrayed in these sections of narrative: God’s characterisa-
tion. Although the methodology and aims overlap considerably with the ethical
reading of divine violence described so far,50 the characterisation of God as-
sociated with divine violence demands particularly close engagement with lit-
erary critical methodology. This arises in light of ‘gaps’ inherent in a study of
46 See also Mark Brett, Locations of God: Political Theology in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2019), xi.

47 A notable omission from these thinkers on divine violence is René Girard. In part this is because
Girard offers a theory of violence, that might be applied to the text as a whole rather than individual
acts of divine violence. For interesting readings of Samuel stories in conversation with Girard, see
Marty Alan Michelson, Reconciling Violence and Kingship: A Study of Judges and 1 Samuel (Eugene,
OR: Pickwick, 2011); Joel Hodge, ‘ “Dead or Banished’: A Comparative Reading of the Stories of King
Oedipus and King David,’” SJOT 20 (2006): 189–215; Jans J. L. Jensen, ‘Desire, Rivalry and Collective
Violence in the “Succession Narrative,” ’ JSOT 55 (1992): 39–59.
48 So Steussy, Samuel and His God, 71–72.
49 Salman Rushdie, Shame (London: Vintage, 1995), 241–42.
50 If ‘literary reading’ of the text is defined only as a close reading of the final text (with due text
critical attention), within its ancient historical and literary contexts, then literary reading is a pri-
mary tool in the preceding section, reading divine violence ethically. Conversely, any interest in
virtue ethics will make a study of the divine character an essential element of the ethical reading.
Nussbaum’s work, utilised in Part 2, in particular, is an extension of Aristotle’s work in virtue ethics,
and so the ethical reading of divine violence will be tied closely to the characterisation of God in this
section.
characterisation, exacerbated by our modern standpoint, by inconsistencies

traceable to the book’s complex compositional process and by the divine subject
of the study.
B. Johnson has argued in a recent edited volume, Characters and
Characterization in the Book of Samuel, that characters are an ‘interpretive
crux’ for any reading of the book of Samuel.51 The characters in Samuel have
both ‘background’ and ‘complexity,’ drawing on Auerbach’s formulation of the
‘fraught background’ of characters in biblical narrative.52 Johnson argues that
evaluation of characters is necessary to any sense of what the book is about, and
moreover, the interlocking nature of the characters means a reading of any indi-
vidual character is dependent on the assessment of others.53 These claims can be
equally applied to the divine character as other human characters. For example,
as our survey earlier demonstrated, if God is considered just, then Saul, when he
is rejected, may be characterised as sinful or foolish; if God is considered hostile,
then Saul may be characterised as a tragic figure (and vice versa). Divine charac-
terisation is understood as part of the web of broader interactions of characters
in Samuel. Because interactions between divine and king, divine and prophet,
and divine and political subjects shape the text to such an extent, and are the
focus for our study, the little that is communicated about God’s character gains
significance.
Actions (including divine violence) and interactions of characters are among
the narrative means for characterisation in biblical narrative. To these, can be
added other categories that reveal character, proposed by W. L. Humphreys, for a
study specifically of God’s characterisation in the book of Genesis:54
1. External descriptions and what other characters say

2. Actions and speech
3. Inner thoughts and the narrator’s evaluation
The speech of other characters is treated with some caution because of ques-
tions of their reliability and standpoint.55 Yet, it supplies useful data in light of
51 Benjamin J. M. Johnson, ‘Character as Interpretive Crux in the Book of Samuel,’ in Characters
and Characterization in the Book of Samuel, 1–13 (2).

52 See Eric Auerbach, ‘Odysseus’ Scar,’ in Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Thought
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 3–24.

53 See Johnson, ‘Character,’ 5–13.
54 W. Lee Humphreys, The Character of God in the Book of Genesis: A Narrative Appraisal
(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 8–20. Humphreys adapts these categories from
Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 116–17 and 114–31
generally.
55 E.g., Lyle M. Eslinger, ‘Viewpoints and Points of View in 1 Samuel 8–12,’ JSOT 26 (1983): 61–76.
Humphreys (Character of God, 9) also urges caution for physical description because ‘God does not
see as humans see (1 Sam 16:7)’ and so little is said of God’s appearance. Yet if, for example, God is
unseen, this is itself part of God’s characterisation, in my view.
the interrelation of characterisations. These three categories provide a frame-

work for this study, although divine actions are largely covered in the ethical
reading of divine violence, and the narrator’s evaluation of God is sparse if not
non-existent in the book of Samuel.
Whilst this framework will be used in the following analysis, some underlying
assumptions made especially by Alter, whose work Humphrey’s develops, need
examination, and the application of this framework will be somewhat different
in this study from its original formulation. Returning to Auerbach’s ‘fraught
background,’ Alter argues that things not stated explicitly but alluded to and con-
jured by the text, give depth and complexity to the characters. The result is that a
literary reading of characterisation will necessarily be interested in ‘gaps’ in the
narrative, silences essential to the dynamics of the story through implication.56
The study of characterisation usually gives account of these important gaps,
extrapolating from data excavated through features such as speech and actions
delineated previously.
Nevertheless, what the work of Alter or Sternberg might consider a ‘gap’ in
the narrative, J. Kugel might consider a ‘blank.’57 Alter emphasises the author’s
intention revealed in the artistic features of the text as key to filling gaps;58
and Sternberg points to the universality of the human reader response to fea-
tures such as curiosity, surprise, and suspense as the basis for asserting how
gaps should be filled.59 On this basis they argue that the fraught background of
characters can reasonably be inferred in the reading process from at least some
gaps. By contrast, Kugel argues the intentions, as well as conventions, of bib-
lical authors are largely inaccessible, as are the ways in which a biblical audience
would have responded to gaps (and to other so-called literary features) in the
text.60 Moreover, he proposes that an ancient audience understood characters
as ancestors in history, their present projected into the past, rather than fictional
characters. For the ancient readers, all that they needed to know about these
characters was contained in the text, without assuming a ‘fraught background.’61
In general, when reading characterisation in biblical texts, Kugel’s posi-
tion is too pessimistic, assuming there are no universals in the human reading
56 Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 143–62, esp.
143–44.
57 James Kugel, ‘On the Bible and Literary Criticism,’ Prooftexts 1 (1981): 217–36; For a full discus-
sion, see James Adam Redfield, ‘Behind Auerbach’s “Background’: Five Ways to Read What Biblical
Narratives Don’t Say,” AJS Review 39 (2015): 121–50.
58 Alter, Art of Biblical Narrative, rev ed.,143–144.
59 Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 186–89. Note Sternberg (pp. 235–37) also recognises
that there are both gaps and blanks in biblical narrative, arguing that gaps are those holes that de-
mand closure, blanks may be discarded without loss.
60 Kugel, ‘On the Bible,’ 217–36.
61 Ibid., 230.
experience (without which texts would be completely unintelligible) and under-

estimating the role of literary techniques in history telling.62 However, when the
subject for our study of characterisation is God, the wariness of blanks rather
than gaps acquires additional justification. Although God is characterised sim-
ilarly to humans in some texts, it is not a given, and therefore the extrapolation
of human dynamics is risky.63 Moreover, the human tendency to seek coherence
and consistency in characters is often magnified when the subject is God, espe-
cially when many readers come with an understanding of God from later Jewish
or Christian traditions.64
As it stands, little work has been done on the character of God in the book of
Samuel. A collection of data, as well as correlation of this data with ethical dimen-
sions of God’s violence, has scope for a contribution to a reading of the book of
Samuel (and of God in Samuel) without the necessity of extensive gap filling. Such
an approach is attractive too, given the composite nature of the text of Samuel.
Unlike human characters found in just one or two proposed traditions, or found
in redactional work deliberately responding to earlier traditions, the character of
God spans almost all parts of the text (and the biblical canon). One expects the
character of God to have inconsistencies traced to these earlier traditions, a fea-
ture that will align with the differing formulations for divine violence associated
with God. This is not to say that this study will refuse to identify consistency or
patterns in divine characterisation; indeed, a marked feature will be the way that
certain characteristics of God correlate with features of divine violence. Yet, the
approach will be to assume a Bakhtinian polyphony; diverse voices and political
interests sit side by side in the text without need for harmonisation.65
Reading divine violence politically: beyond (or before)

the Deuteronomist in the book of Samuel
The meaning which [Dtr] discovered was that God was recognisably at work in
this history, continuously meeting the accelerating moral decline with warn-
ings and punishments and finally, when these proved fruitless, with total an-
nihilation. Dtr., then, perceives a just divine retribution in the history of the
people, though not so much (as yet) in the fate of the individual. He sees this as
the great unifying factor in the course of events, and speaks of it not in general
62 Cf. Gilmour, Representing the Past.

63 See especially the stories of the ark in Part 3.
64 See also Humphreys, Character of God, 14–20.
65 See Rachelle Gilmour, Juxtaposition and the Elisha Cycle, LHBOTS 594 (London: Bloomsbury
T&T Clark, 2014), 24–32.

terms but in relation to the countless specific details reported in the extant
traditions.66
The ethical and literary readings of divine violence and characterisation in this
study will focus little on the compositional history of the book of Samuel, but a
political reading realises possibilities through looking at the context in which
particular texts about divine violence may have arisen. It will ask of what circum-
stances and ideological framework is this violence a part?
M. Noth’s Deuteronomistic History theory, as well as more recent formulations
of the theory, has been a dominating paradigm for understanding the political
dimensions of divine violence in the book of Samuel.67 According to Noth, the
Deuteronomistic History, which includes the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel,
and Kings, heavily influenced by the theology of Deuteronomy, explained the
exile in terms of God’s repeated warnings to Israel of punishment for disobedi-
ence to Deuteronomic law. According to this paradigm, divine violence in these
books is primarily retributive punishment for sin and warning of coming exile as
a result of continued disobedience.
The book of Samuel undoubtedly contains connections to other so-called
Deuteronomistic books and to the book of Deuteronomy; however, the direc-
tion of influence is debated,68 and I will argue that Deuteronomic law should not
be presumed in a reading of Samuel.69 At any rate, Deuteronomistic material in
66 Martin Noth, The Deuteronomistic History, JSOTSup 15 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981), 89, trans.
of pp. 1–110 of Martin Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche: Studien Die sammelnden und bearbeiten-
den Geschichtswerke im Alten Testament, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, [1943] 1957).
67 See Noth quoted above. Noth’s formulation of divine punishment has been significantly re-
vised, e.g., observing a tension between collective and individual punishment: Steven L. Mackenzie,
The Trouble with Kings: The Composition of the Book of Kings in the Deuteronomistic History,
VTSup 42 (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 140–43; Antony F. Campbell and Mark A. O’Brien, Unfolding the
Deuteronomistic History (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2000), 19–20; Moshe Weinfeld,
Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 316–19; Richard
D. Nelson, The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History, JSOTSup 18 (Sheffield: JSOT
Press, 1981), 100; Rudolf Smend, ‘Das Gesetz und die Völker: Ein Beitrag zur deuteronomistischen
Redaktionsgeschichte,’ in Problemen biblische Theology: Festshrift Gerhard von Rad, ed. H. W. Wolff
(Munich: Kaiser, 1971), 494–509, translated into English by Peter T. Daniels, as Rudolf Smend, ‘The
Law and the Nations: A Contribution to Deuteronomistic Tradition History,’ in Reconsidering Israel
and Judah: Recent Studies on the Deuteronomistic History, ed. Gary N. Knoppers and J. Gordon
McConville, trans. Peter T. Daniels, Sources for Biblical and Theological Study 8 (Winona Lake,
IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 95–110. There are also those who have discarded or radically reformulated
the Deuteronomistic History theory, see, e.g., Auld, I & II Samuel, especially pp. 9–14; most re-
cently, Life in Kings: Reshaping the Royal Story in the Hebrew Bible, Ancient Israel and its Literature
30 (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2017); and Kurt L. Noll, ‘Is the Scroll of Samuel Deuteronomistic?,’ in Is
Samuel among the Deuteronomists?, 119–48.
68 See esp. A. Graeme Auld, ‘Reading Deuteronomy after Samuel: Or, Is “Deuteronomistic’ a Good
Answer to Any Question?,” in Is Samuel among the Deuteronomists?, 93–104.

69 See p. 67. Most Samuel texts probably predate Deuteronomic law, but it is also possible
that the law was simply not influential in these texts. For example, according to Hutzli, whoever
produced the Samuel–Kings composition were not properly Deuteronomistic but employed a
‘more open ideological conception that could bring together different views of the past’ (p. 199).
Samuel is by consensus minimal, a position held by Noth himself; he read the

content of Samuel as being in line with the larger project of the Deuteronomist,
and therefore not in need of editing.70 A more recent study by D. Janzen71 has
sought to take into account the evident disruptions to Deuteronomistic the-
ology in Samuel, unrecognised by Noth, whilst essentially maintaining the
Deuteronomistic History theory. Reading through the lens of trauma, Janzen
argues that there is a dominating narrative of God’s justice through punishment,
salvation, and repentance. He highlights ruptures in this programme, which he
calls the subversions of trauma, that challenge the master narrative of divine jus-
tice. However, in the book of Samuel, there are more disruptions than master
narrative, and the master narrative is never established in the book, unless it is
read within the overarching narrative sequence of Deuteronomy to Kings.
There is merit in reading the book of Samuel from the point of view of a post-
monarchic period, either during or after exile,72 as Noth originally advocated,
and in several cases, I will do so because the development of the overall text
extends into this period. However, when it can be argued these texts were devel-
oped to a great extent prior to the exile, and there are vast amounts of material
in Samuel that do not fit a Deuteronomic notion of divine punishment,73 there is
value, too, in situating these texts in their earlier contexts that have had signifi-
cant impact on the detail and shape of these particular narratives.
My approach to situating these texts in political contexts is to find common-
alities in the diverse redaction and source-critical conclusions of scholarship,
rather than arguing for any one overall reconstruction of the composition of the
book of Samuel, the result being that the contexts proposed tend to be broad
rather than specific. Inevitably, some positions will find dissenters, but my hope
is that those who disagree with dates and locations of textual composition will
find appreciation in the approach and ideological analysis that may be applied to
other periods of authorship.
More controversially, using the textual analysis as foundation, I will argue that
the text is in most cases ideologically driven by a pro-Davidic stance, endorsing
Jürg Hutzli, ‘The Distinctness of the Samuel Narrative Tradition,’ in Is Samuel among the
Deuteronomists?, 171–205.
70 Noth, The Deuteronomistic History, 77–90, esp. 86.

71 David Janzen, The Violent Gift: Trauma’s Subversion of the Deuteronomistic History’s Narrative,
LHBOTS 561 (New York: T&T Clark International, 2012).
72 See for example Polzin, Samuel and the Deuteronomist; and Robert Polzin, David and the
Deuteronomist: 2 Samuel: A Literary Study of the Deuteronomic History, Part 3 (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1993).
73 Note that there are also multiple voices concerning divine punishment in Deuteronomy.
See, e.g., the treatment of transgenerational punishment in Bernard M. Levinson, Legal Revision
and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 72–84.
Deuteronomy both confirms and denies the validity of intergenerational punishment.
and legitimising the Davidic dynastic rule and the type of kingship associated
with the southern kingdom of Judah, despite its intermittent failures. Just as
God’s character in the book of Samuel has been under recent scrutiny, so, too,
critical readings of David’s kingship have found some favour,74 for which ready
material can be found in David’s sin in 2 Sam 11–12.75 However, a text may grant
David’s moral weaknesses, or divine arbitrariness in his succession to Saul, but at
the same time use divine violence in the story to endorse fundamental Davidic
legitimacy and power.
An outstanding exception to a pro-Davidic stance, where the monarch is
largely ignored, is found in Samuel’s ‘farewell’ speech to the people in 1 Sam 12,
a text traced to a post-exilic period.76 Here we come back to the assumption that
the book of Samuel is a polyphonic text and there are voices critical of or neutral
towards Davidic dynastic kingship that have entered the text in its history; but on
the whole, many texts that are seen as highly critical of the Davidic monarchy can
be shown as more ideologically complex.
An emphasis on the exilic period in the Deuteronomistic History theory has
led to the tendency to focus on the monarchy as an institution (for example, ques-
tions of pro-monarchic or anti-monarchic texts) rather than on the particular
type of monarchy (for example, a southern or northern ideology of kingship);
but if monarchy is taken as a given in the pre-exilic period, the formulation of
the text is more clearly oriented towards the Davidic line of kings holding an en-
during power base in Judah and exercising a particular kind of monarchic power.
Prophetic figures challenge the actions of kings, but even sanction can be framed
in such a way to ratify monarchic power. Like the Danish coronation ceremony
in 1671, I will argue the book of Samuel endorses the hierarchy of kings, the
abundance of their possessions, and rule that does not listen to the people, but
nevertheless makes and maintains justice. This justice is not dispensed according
to a law book, but monarchical wisdom; and the accumulation of possessions
(and wives) must take place within the parameters of the characterisation of
God, a God who raises up the lowly and brings down the mighty, and who takes
from the master and gives to the servant.
To chart our course, each of these lenses, ethics, characterisations, and pol-
itics, will be applied to stories of divine violence in the book of Samuel. Part 1
74 E.g., Brueggemann, ‘2 Samuel 21–24’; Polzin, Samuel and the Deuteronomist and David and
the Deuteronomist. At the same time, some studies argue that a negative characterisation is found
primarily in the historical kernel of the book of Samuel, not the portrayal of the text, e.g., Steven L.
McKenzie, King David: A Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); and Baruch Halpern,
David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001).
75 E.g., John Van Seters, The Biblical Saga of King David (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009);
Jacob L. Wright, David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2014).
76 See Part 1.4.
will begin with retribution and the story of David in 2 Sam 11–12, followed by a
glance at other narratives that feature formulations for retribution in the book of
Samuel, namely 1 Sam 12 and 2 Sam 21. Part 2 will turn to upheavals of a prin-
ciple of retribution in the stories of Saul and Eli. Part 3 will examine the inexpli-
cable irruption of violence in stories of the ark. In the course of this exploration,
firstly, the formulations for divine violence are shown to range beyond simplistic
punishment for sin, and this diversity is, reflected in the complexity of divine
characterisations in the text. Secondly, divine violence cannot be understood
apart from questions of sovereignty: in Part 1, divine sovereignty; Part 2, monar-
chic sovereignty; and Part 3, the abdication of divine sovereignty.
1
He Shall Repay the Lamb Fourfold
Retribution and Curse
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
—Isaiah 40:1–2 (NRSV)
In 2 Sam 12:13–14, the prophet Nathan says to David, ‘Now the Lord has put
away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have
utterly scorned the Lord, the child that is born to you shall die’ (NRSV).
Accordingly, in v. 15, God strikes the child born to Bathsheba, and the child
becomes ill. To strike a newborn child as consequence for his father’s sins is,
according to many commentators, the most egregious divine violence of the
book of Samuel, violence that calls into question the justness of God’s character.
A. Campbell writes: ‘What troubles many readers is rather that while the sinful
king lives, the innocent child dies. Casuistry has to be at its mind-numbing worst
to offer a justification for the death of the first child and the favour shown the
second.’1 M. McEntire points out that the act of violence against David’s newborn
is the beginning of troubling ramifications for David’s house:
The declining side of David’s life reveals a divine character of a most troubling
nature, nowhere more clearly than in 12:11–15. There is no mincing of words
here, as YHWH kills David’s infant son as a response to David’s actions toward
Bathsheba and Uriah. During the remaining years of David’s life, the capacity
for YHWH to punish others for the sins of David knows no bounds.2
1Antony F. Campbell, 2 Samuel, FOTL 8 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 118.
2Mark H. McEntire, Portraits of a Mature God: Choices in Old Testament Theology (Minneapolis,
MN: Fortress Press, 2013), 121–22.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190938079.003.0002
Not only does David’s newborn son suffer as a result of David’s transgression
but also the whole of David’s house suffers and by extension all Israel who are
caught up in civil war. R. Bailey has argued that, ‘the reader is left with a vindic-
tive deity who waited until after the death of Uriah to intervene and is then going
to have other wives pay the price,’3 and regarding the rape of Tamar, ‘Yhwh not
only sanctions but promotes it.’4
The troubling death of David’s newborn is evocative of the many complexi-
ties of divine retributive violence that takes place in response to David’s actions
in 2 Sam 11. Many questions related to divine violence as punishment for
transgression are raised: Can the consequences of David’s transgression upon
David’s house and kingdom be properly termed retribution or even punish-
ment? For what purpose has God put away David’s sin if he and his household
still suffer? Why does God intervene personally in executing the violence against
David’s son?
In the background to these questions is a proposal by K. Koch that there is no
retribution in the Hebrew Bible, only natural consequences that proceed from
transgressions.5 Whilst the totalism of Koch’s proposal, that there is no divine
retribution at all, will be rejected here, his study prompts a careful investigation
of interpretive presuppositions about God in the Hebrew Bible acting according
to a principle of retributive justice (and in some cases, forgiveness) in a modern
legal or philosophical sense. Moreover, the validity of retribution itself is con-
tested in modern moral philosophy and legal studies,6 providing further impetus
to understand what is taking place in 2 Sam 12 and to lay bare the mechanism of
punishment for observation or critique.
Punishment, according to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, is pain or
other unpleasant consequences not occurring naturally but imposed on a person
who has been ‘found guilty by persons authorised to make such a finding.’7 For
3 Randall C. Bailey, ‘The Redemption of YHWH: A Literary Critical Function of the Songs of
Hannah and David,’ BibInt 3 (1995): 213–31 (229).

4 Ibid., 230.
5 Klaus Koch, ‘Gibt es ein Vergeltungsdogma im Alten Testament?,’ ZTK 52 (1955): 1–41 (23–25);
translated in part into English as Klaus Koch, ‘Is There a Doctrine of Retribution in the Old Testament?,’
in Theodicy in the Old Testament, ed. James L. Crenshaw, IRT 4 (London: SPCK, 1983), 57–87.
6 For a recent defence of retribution, see J. Angelo Corlett, Responsibility and Punishment, 4th ed.
(Dordrecht: Springer, 2013); for an example of classic criticisms of retribution, see David Dolinko,
‘Some Thoughts about Retributivism,’ Ethics 101 (1991): 537–59.
7 Hugo Adam Bedau and Erin Kelly, ‘Punishment,’ in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Winter 2017 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/

punishment/. See also Herbert L. A. Hart, Punishment and Responsibility: Essays in the Philosophy
of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 4–5, who defines retribution along the following
parameters:
• It must involve pain or other consequences normally considered unpleasant.
• It must be for an offence against rules.
• It must be for an actual or supposed offender for his offence.
• It must be intentionally administered by human beings other than the offender.
He Shall Repay the Lamb Fourfold 21
any consequences to be considered punishment, they must be judicially deter-

mined, through a declaration by an authority that the party is guilty, or that an
established law with known consequences has been broken. Moreover, guilt
entails that the offender is responsible for the actions, and if the crime was un-
intentional, then the offender is punished only for negligence for which they are
culpable. David’s newborn is therefore not individually ‘punished’ because the
newborn is not deemed individually guilty. Either the infant experiences collec-
tive punishment because he shares in a collective responsibility with David as
part of his household, or the newborn is the victim of ‘collateral damage’ in the
course of punishment upon David.
A definition for retributive punishment is more specific still.8 Firstly, retri-
bution is a punishment that is ‘backward looking,’ a ‘payback’ for transgression.
Retribution is therefore distinct from forward looking punishment that is ori-
ented towards a future good, such as restitution to the victim, deterrence of fu-
ture wrongdoing by others, prevention of the wrongdoer from offending again,
restoration of a relationship, or solidarity with a victim. However, retribution
is by no means incompatible with forward looking reasons for punishment.9
The punishment of David may be retributive, whilst also restoring God’s role or
‘status’ that David has usurped,10 or restoring or reconciling David’s terms of re-
lations with God. Indeed, the preservation of social relations through retribution
is a dynamic we will explore further in Part 1. By ‘paying back’ the debt of an of-
fender, retribution has a close relationship with the concept of forgiveness.
• It must be imposed and administered by an authority constituted by a legal system against

which the offence is committed.
The absence of ‘rules’ or a formal legal basis in Samuel is a potential objection to considering any
consequences for transgressions in Samuel a punishment. However, see Leo Zaibert, Punishment and
Retribution (London: Routledge, 2006), 7–37, for the argument that punishment can take place out-
side of a legal system. See also Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor, Texts
in German Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 140–41 (6:331).
8 In modern philosophical and legal literature, retribution is commonly discussed as a justifica-
tion for punishment rather than a type of punishment. As justification, the literature is extensive and
concerned with philosophical subtleties that are not all relevant for a descriptive study of an ancient
text. The word retribution etymologically means ‘repayment,’ and although the idea of repayment
does not justify retribution, it remains the basic definition.
9 On retribution as ‘backward looking’ or retrospective, see George P. Fletcher, ‘Punishment
and Responsibility,’ in A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, Topics and Disciplines
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 504–12 (505–6). There is significant dispute whether both re-
tributive and utilitarian arguments can be used to justify punishment, but there seems little doubt
that punishment can achieve both retribution and a forward looking good. For the argument that
not even Kant is purely retributive, see Thom Brooks, ‘Kant’s Theory of Punishment’ Utilitas 15
(2003): 206–23.
10 Martha C. Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2016), 41 argues that divine anger (which according to her definition includes pay-
back) is status driven.
Secondly, retribution is proportional to the offence, although a precise defi-

nition or means of determining what is proportional has proved problematic in
modern legal and philosophical theory of punishment.11 The concept of lex tali-
onis, found in Biblical law, ‘an eye for an eye,’ is one such measure for retribution
and a central feature of Kantian retribution.12 Many theorists since Kant assert
lex talionis is either impossible, because the punishment cannot be exacted, or
is often in some way morally abhorrent, for example inflicting rape on a rapist.13
The notion of lex talionis will be an important one as it is precisely this abhor-
rence that occurs in 2 Samuel: David has taken a wife, and so his wives will be
taken. Moreover, the concept of poetic justice has been shown to be an important
indicator of retribution in the Hebrew Bible,14 a notion that reflects a lex talionis
principle.
Kant is considered the paradigmatic retributionist, and so out of the mire of
modern studies on retribution, Kant will be my primary reference point for com-
parison with 2 Sam 11–20, especially 2 Sam 11–12.15 Certainly, punishment in
the Hebrew Bible lacks the clear definition, distinction, and relative consistency
of Kantian retribution,16 and the retribution in 2 Samuel is equally interesting
for its diversions from Kant’s formulation. Yet his logic will attune our reading
to features relevant to retributive punishment and suggest that seeming tensions
in the text may indeed be an intuitive component of proportional, like-for-like
punishment.
There are many reasons to dispute that retribution is a good foundation for a
modern-day justice system or an ethical response to wrongdoing; nevertheless,
retribution remains a common, even standard, measure of justice even in today’s
11 For a discussion of proportionality, see Corlett, Responsibility and Punishment, 83–115. Note
that proportionality in retribution is often overlooked in biblical studies, and the term becomes a ge-
neral one for punishment in response to sin. However, the term ‘retribution’ will only be used in this
precise sense in this study.
12 Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 141 (6:332).
13 For discussion on lex talionis, retribution, and the importance of not conflating the two, see
Zaibert, Punishment and Responsibility, 105–7. Kant observes that an eye for an eye cannot always
be exact, but a court can specify ‘the quality and the quantity of the punishment’ (141, 6:332). See
also, Rachelle Gilmour, ‘King David and the White Bear Justice Park,’ in Black Mirror and Theology,
ed. Amber Bowen and John Anthony Dunne, Theology and Popular Culture Series (Minneapolis,
MN: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, forthcoming).
14 Ka Leung Wong, The Idea of Retribution in the Book of Ezekiel, VTSup 87 (Leiden: Brill, 2001),
esp. 25.
15 Kant’s primary text on retribution can be found in Metaphysics of Morals 6:331–37 (140–43). For
helpful essays on Kantian retribution, see Mark Tunick, ‘Is Kant a Retributivist,’ History of Political
Thought 17 (1996): 60–78; Arthur Shuster, ‘Kant on the Role of the Retributive Outlook in Moral and
Political Life,’ The Review of Politics 73 (2011): 425–48; Corlett, Responsibility and Punishment, 63–81.
16 This is not to suggest that Kant is entirely clear and consistent either. So writes Jeffrie Murphy,
‘Does Kant Have a Theory of Punishment?,’ Columbia Law Review 87 (1987): 509–32 (509): ‘Ί am not
even sure that Kant develops anything that deserves to be called a theory of punishment at all. I genu-
inely wonder if he has done much more than leave us with a random (and not entirely consistent) set
of remarks—some of them admittedly suggestive—about punishment.’
He Shall Repay the Lamb Fourfold 23
world. The analysis of 2 Sam 11–20 in terms of retribution does not propose that
retribution is an appropriate moral norm; but it demonstrates how God’s actions
in the narrative could be conceived as just in their ancient context and may bring
comfort to monarchic and post-monarchic generations troubled by the ‘sin’ of
the Davidic kings.
To explore these issues, we will dissect the transgression, punishment and
consequences, removal of sin, and signs of God’s favour and restoration in 2 Sam
11–20; and consider the character portrayal of God in association with divine
violence in this story. Broadly speaking, the punishment of David is retributive,
at least in the sense that it involves proportional payback for sin committed with
full responsibility for actions; and these features will distinguish the divine vio-
lence from divine violence we will consider in the following Parts 2 and 3. The
horror of divine violence against David’s newborn son finds a context within
retribution and its logic of justice and maintenance of social bonds. From this
vantage point, the resonance of this story in a time of exile can be considered,
a period when the legitimacy of punitive violence and the justice of God’s char-
acter were acutely at stake. And finally, the focus will turn to two other texts with
related formulations of divine violence: 1 Sam 12, an example of educative vio-
lence alongside the rhetoric of retributive punishment; and 2 Sam 21, an example
of mechanistic punishment for transgression.
1.1
Retributive and Consequential Violence
in 2 Sam 11–20
The Transgression
In 2 Sam 11, while Joab and his soldiers are at war, David walks on his palace
roof and sees a beautiful woman bathing (11:2). After inquiries, he sends for
Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, who comes to him
and ‘he lay with her’ (11:4).1 Bathsheba becomes pregnant, and David makes
a number of attempts to give her husband Uriah the appearance of paternity.
When this fails, David writes to Joab to place Uriah in the front line of battle
against the Ammonites so that he is killed.
God sends Nathan to David to tell him a parable in 12:1–4 and to condemn
David for his sin. The parable focuses upon ‘taking’: a rich man has ‘taken’ (‫)ויקח‬
the treasured ewe lamb of a poor man to provide hospitality for a stranger.
Although the narrative in 11:4 describes David as ‘taking’ (‫ )ויקחה‬Uriah’s wife
in adultery while Uriah is still alive, when Nathan states David’s transgressions in
12:9–10, lying with another man’s wife is not included:
Why did you despise (‫ )בזית‬the word2 of the LORD, to do what is evil in his
eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and you took (‫ )ויקח‬his
wife as your own wife, then you killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.
So now a sword will never turn from your house, because you despised me
(‫)בזתני‬, and took (‫ )ותקח‬the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own wife. (2
Sam 12:9–10)
According to Nathan, David has struck down Uriah the Hittite, and he has
taken Uriah’s wife to be his wife, but David is not condemned for initially taking
1 On the complexity of Bathsheba’s characterisation in 2 Sam 11–12, and the ambiguity whether
the sex between David and Bathsheba is adultery or rape in a modern sense, see Sara M. Koenig, Isn’t
This Bathsheba? A Study in Characterization, PTMS 177 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011), 27–76.
2 ‘The word of the Lord’ is probably a euphemism for ‘the Lord’ cf. LXXL and Theodotion which
read ‘despise the Lord’ (P. Kyle McCarter, II Samuel: A New Translation with Introduction, Notes, and
Commentary, AB 9 [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984], 295). Alternatively, ‘the word of the Lord’
may reference Nathan’s oracle in 2 Sam 7.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190938079.003.0003
Retributive and Consequential Violence in 2 Sam 11–20 25
Bathsheba when Uriah was still alive. The phrase used in vv. 9 and 10 ‘take as
your wife’ (‫ )לקחת לך לאשה‬is a common idiom for marriage (e.g., Gen 34:21;
Deut 21:11) and parallels the vocabulary of the rich man taking (‫ )ויקח‬the ewe
of the poor man in Nathan’s parable in 12:4. The report of David’s marriage to
Bathsheba in 11:27 is juxtaposed with the evaluation ‘the thing David had done
was evil in the eyes of the Lord,’ also implying that the marriage is a primary part
of David’s offence. The condemnation of David taking Bathsheba to be his wife
is intriguing in light of the apparent morality in providing for a pregnant widow.
Arguably, David’s sin would have been morally worse if he murdered Uriah and
did not marry Bathsheba, although not providing for Bathsheba could have com-
promised his intent to act ‘secretly’ (v. 12) and thus bear no recrimination.3
The focus on David’s marriage to Bathsheba, rather than the initial act of
forcing adulterous relations, can be explained by understanding murder and
marriage to be constitutive of David’s primary sin: he ‘despised’ God. The verb
‘despise’ (‫ )בזה‬is used in Nathan’s rhetorical question in v. 9, introducing the other
crimes, and is repeated in v. 10. Different terminology, but a similar meaning, is
repeated in v. 14, that David has ‘utterly scorned the [enemies of] the Lord’ (‫כי‬
‫)נאץ נאצת את איבי יהוה‬.4 As D. Janzen shows, these terms, ‘despise’ and ‘scorn,’
are related to not recognising God’s power and treating God as ‘nothing’ or in-
significant.5 He also suggests that when David acts ‘in secret’ (‫)בסתר‬, he assumes
that he could act without God’s knowledge, also underestimating God’s power.6
The logic for the formulation for David’s sin as primarily despising God is pro-
vided by 12:8: ‘I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your
breast’. God has given David everything he needs, and the prerogative to take
houses and wives and give them to another lies with God. David is condemned
for taking Bathsheba as his wife, rather than forcing adulterous relations, be-
cause the marriage encapsulates David’s usurpation of God’s prerogative to give
David wives. Bathsheba is Uriah’s wife, a point repeated in her designation as
‘his wife’ (v. 9) and ‘the wife of Uriah the Hittite’ (v. 10) rather than by her name.
Only when David takes Bathsheba to be his wife has he thoroughly despised God
who had formerly made possible David’s usurpation of Saul: Saul’s kingdom,
Saul’s house, and, most importantly, Saul’s wives.7 Similarly, the allusion to Saul
3 On the gaps in 2 Sam 11 regarding whether David’s actions were indeed in secret, see Meir
Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading, Indiana
Studies in Biblical Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 190–222.
4 ‘Enemies of ’ is thought to be a euphemism to avoid charging David with scorning God
(McCarter, II Samuel, 296). 4QSama reads ‘word of the Lord,’ (‫ )את (ד)בר יהוה‬but LXX follows the
MT reading.
5 David Janzen, ‘The Condemnation of David’s ‘Taking’ in 2 Samuel 12:1–14,’ JBL 131 (2012): 209–
20 (216–17).
6 Ibid., 216.
7 It is not mentioned elsewhere in Samuel that David married Saul’s wives nor that Saul
had more than one wife, Ahinoam, and one concubine, Rizpah. Nevertheless, the tradition
is plausible (e.g., McCarter, II Samuel, 300; Antony F. Campbell, 2 Samuel, FOTL 8 [Grand
suggests why killing Uriah is ‘despising’ God: whereas David repeatedly withheld
his hand from killing Saul (e.g., 1 Sam 24, 26), waiting for God to give him the
kingship, David has now not withheld from killing Uriah, taking rather than re-
ceiving from God. In sum, David is not condemned for murder and adultery per
se. Rather, he is condemned for these crimes as far as they constitute ‘taking’ and
violating God’s prerogative to give.8
The claim in v. 8 that God had already given another person’s houses and wives
to David highlights a potentially disturbing parallel between the actions of God and
David.9 The parallel is supported by similarities in the way David was anointed king
and the way David has taken Bathsheba to be his wife. David is anointed king by
stealth in 1 Sam 16, and David takes Bathsheba by stealth in 2 Sam 11. Saul dies at
the hands of a foreign army, the Philistines, in 1 Sam 31–2 Sam 1, so that David can
become king; David has Uriah killed at the hands of a foreign army, the Ammonites,
in order to take Uriah’s wife in 2 Sam 11.10
Nevertheless, there is a key difference between the actions of God and David.
According to Nathan’s parable, David is a ‘rich man’ (‫ ;עשיר‬12:2)11 who takes from
a ‘poor man’ (‫ ;רש‬12:3), Uriah. In contrast, according to 12:8, God has taken the
house and wives of David’s ‘master’ (‫ )אדניך‬and given them to the servant. In other
words, God takes from the rich man and gives to the poor man. The principle that
God effects reversal between poor and rich is articulated in Hannah’s song in 1
Sam 2:7–8:
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005], 117, see also Robert P. Gordon, I & II Samuel: A Commentary
[Exeter: Paternoster, 1986], 257–58).
8 Janzen (‘David’s “Taking,” ’ 219) writes they are ‘tangential to David’s taking and usurpation of
God’s place in their relationship.’

9 Marti J. Steussy, David: Biblical Portraits of Power (Columbia: University of South Carolina,
1999), 63.
10 The parallel dynamic of ‘taking’ between God and David finds expression in Polzin’s multilay-
ered reading of Nathan’s parable (Robert Polzin, David and the Deuteronomist: 2 Samuel: A Literary
Study of the Deuteronomic History, Part 3 [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993], 122–26).
In a secondary reading of the parable, Polzin proposes that God is the rich man who has taken wives
and kingship (the ewe) from Saul and given them to the wayfarer, David. And a final layer is added
to the parable when God will take David’s wives: God is still the rich man, but now David is the poor
man. Delekat, seeking an identity for the wayfarer, offers another reading that God is the rich man,
David is the wayfarer, and Uriah is the lamb, on account of Uriah and the lamb being the only ones to
die (Leinhard Delekat, ‘Tendenz und Theologie der David-Salomo-Erzählung,’ in Das ferne und nahe
Wort: Festschrift Leonhard Rost zur Vollendung seines 70. Lebenjahres am 30. November 1966, BZAW
105 [Berlin: Töpelmann, 1967], 26–36).
11 Despite other possibilities offered by Polzin, David is the rich man in the primary reading of
the parable. This is revealed because the rich man is the one who ought to be condemned in the nar-
rative, and therefore ‘the man’ that has inflamed David’s anger in v. 5. When Nathan says, ‘you are
that man’ in v. 7, he is referring to the previously mentioned ‘man’ in v. 5 (Gillian Keys, The Wages
of Sin: A Reappraisal of the ‘Succession Narrative,’ JSOTSup 221 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
1996], 130).
The Lord makes poor12 and makes rich (‫;)מעשיר‬

he humbles, and also lifts up.
He raises up the poor from the dust;
he lifts the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with nobles
and inherit a throne of honour.
God turns around humanity by making the poor rich; God does not make the
poor poorer by taking what little they have. David despises God not only by
usurping this role but also by going about it in the wrong the way, by taking from
the poor instead of from the rich.
The Punishment and Consequences of Transgression
In a 1955 article provocatively titled ‘Is There a Doctrine of Retribution in the

Old Testament?’ K. Koch argued that the Hebrew Bible contains no retribution
theology.13 His conclusion was based upon a definition of retribution as a judi-
cial model, where God is a judge who decides on appropriate punishment for sin.
In its place, Koch proposed an ‘act-consequence’ model where, like the laws of
nature, evil actions have disastrous consequences.14 In his discussion on the his-
torical books, he focuses only on the dynamics of bloodguilt in Judges, Samuel,
and Kings, without mention of any other formula of reward for obedience and
punishment for disobedience.15 In a later article, Koch revised his argument to
claim that God is a co-worker in the execution of bloodguilt but not a judge.16
In other words, God may be an agent of violence (Koch calls God a ‘midwife’)
without that violence constituting God’s punishment. The deed itself produces
the consequences.
The literature refining Koch’s arguments is extensive, and the totalizing state-
ment that there is no judicial punishment in the Hebrew Bible at all has been
thoroughly refuted.17 Nevertheless, Koch’s argument prompts closer attention
12 On translating ‫ מוריש‬as ‘make poor’ rather than ‘dispossess,’ see David Toshio Tsumura, The
First Book of Samuel, NICOT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 139. Cf. HALOT, s.v. ‫ירש‬. ׁ
13 Klaus Koch, ‘Is There a Doctrine of Retribution in the Old Testament?,’ in Theodicy in the Old
Testament, ed. James L. Crenshaw, IRT 4 (London: SPCK, 1983), 57–87.

14 He termed this ‘schicksalswirkende Tatsphäre,’ roughly translated as ‘fate-producing sphere of
the deed.’
15 Note this section is not in the English translation cited earlier. See Klaus Koch, ‘Gibt es ein
Vergeltungsdogma im Alten Testament?,’ ZTK 52 (1955): 1–41 (23–25). Bloodguilt refers to the con-
sequences, often as part of the created order, that fall upon a person who has shed innocent blood.
16 Klaus Koch, ‘Der Spruch ‘Sein Blut bleibe auf seinem Haupt’ und die israelitische Auffassung
vom vergossenen Blut,’ VT 12 (1962): 396–416.

17 See Ka Leung Wong, The Idea of Retribution in the Book of Ezekiel, VTSup 87 (Leiden: Brill, 2001),
3–21 for a detailed analysis of the development and criticisms of Koch. Note also other conceptions,
to consequences for sin that come about through a mechanism other than di-
vine judgment, albeit intertwined with and even inseparable from retributive
punishment.18
Retributive punishment
According to a strict definition of retributive punishment, there must be a ju-

dicial determination of guilt and backward-looking payback proportional to
the transgression. The judicial aspects of the story will be explored through
two means: First is the judicial setting of the parable, which implies that David’s
actions have been similarly judged before God (indeed they are judged by David
himself). Second is the appropriateness of the punishment to the sin, including
its proportionality.
In his parable, Nathan tells David of a rich man with many flocks and herds,
and a poor man with one lamb which was like a daughter to him (v. 3). When
a traveller comes to the rich man, the rich man takes not one of his own flock
but the poor man’s lamb to prepare for the guest (v. 4). There is some argument
whether this story is framed by Nathan as a judicial case that he is bringing to
David for judgment or as a parable. U. Simon influentially classified the story as
a ‘judicial parable’: a realistic story about a legal violation told to someone in the
hope that they do not detect the parallels and pass judgment on themselves.19
such as Janowski’s, who proposes a principle of mutuality where social relations bring about the
consequences for deeds. God sometimes enters these social relations and brings about the conse-
quences but there is no guarantee that they will take place (Bernd Janowski, ‘Die Tat kehrt zum Täter
zurück: Offene Fragen im Umkreis des “Tun-Ergehen-Zusammenhangs,” ’ ZTK 91 [1994]: 247–71).
There have also been a number of development models proposed, where mechanical outworking of
consequences developed into a personalised concept of God’s agency, e.g., Henning Graf Reventlow,
‘Sein Blut komme über sein Haupt,’ VT 10 (1960): 311–27; John G. Gammie, ‘The Theology of
Retribution in the Book of Deuteronomy,’ CBQ 32 (1970): 1–12. In response to developmental theo-
ries, Feder has argued there is no evidence in ancient Israel or the ancient Near East that mechanistic
models of retribution necessarily preceded theistic models. Nevertheless, both conceptions can be
found in the Israelite literature, and instead should be understood as having developed out of dif-
ferent types of literature, namely mythological versus divinatory and ritual texts. (Yitzhaq Feder, ‘The
Mechanics of Retribution in Hittite, Mesopotamian and Ancient Israelite Sources,’ Journal of Ancient
Near Eastern Religions 10 [2010]: 119–57). From a theological perspective, Barton points out that
if deeds producing consequences within themselves is an assumed underlying principle in ancient
Israelite thought, then any statement of coming punishment for sin is tautological, and the question
‘will I suffer if I sin?’ is nonsense (John Barton, ‘Natural Law and Poetic Justice in the Old Testament,’
JTS 30 [1979]: 1–13 [12]).
18 On the coexistence of dynamic consequences and judicial punishment, see Stephen B. Chapman,
‘Reading the Bible as Witness: Divine Retribution in the Old Testament,’ PRSt 31 (2004): 171–90; and
Yair Hoffman, ‘The Creativity of Theodicy,’ in Justice and Righteousness: Biblical Themes and their
Influence, ed. Henning Graf Reventlow and Yair Hoffman, JSOTSup 137 (Sheffield: JSOT Press,
1992), 117–30 (121–22).
19 Uriel Simon, ‘The Poor Man’s Ewe-Lamb: An Example of a Juridical Parable,’ Bib 48 (1967): 207–
42. Followed by Janzen, ‘David’s “Taking,” ’ 209–20.

A judicial case is also implied in the LXXL reading in 12:1, where Nathan intro-
duces the story with the words, ‘Pass judgement in this case for me.’20 If Simon is
correct, the judicial setting of the parable suggests that David has in effect tried
his own case. David’s judgment that the rich man ought to repay the poor man
fourfold is turned upon David’s own head.
J. Schipper, however, has made a compelling case that the story is presented
by Nathan as a parable, and David is not fooled into thinking that the story is a
legal case, unlike Simon.21 Following Pyper, he has argued that the story lacks the
specifics of a judicial case, namely concrete details and the presence of relevant
parties who are bringing the case to the king for justice.22 As Schipper argues,
‘Nathan does a very poor job of disguising his parable,’23 and its poetic style and
vocabulary link it closely with proverbs, especially the coupling of rich (‫)עשיר‬
and poor (‫)ראש‬. Overall Schipper argues that the parable invites allegorical in-
terpretation from David.
Moreover, according to Schipper, David’s reaction and anger can be attrib-
uted to his ‘overinterpreting the parable’: David considers himself the wayfarer,24
and he therefore understands the rich man as Joab. Joab arranges the murder
for David, just as the rich man arranges the lamb for the wayfarer. In David’s
response, he either believes or tries to convince Nathan to believe that he is dis-
tanced from Uriah’s murder, similar to how he distances himself from Joab’s
murder of Abner (2 Sam 3:38) and Amasa (2 Sam 20:10). When David responds
to the parable in 12:6, he says that the rich man should repay fourfold ‘because
he did this thing’ (‫)הדבר הזה‬, echoing his message to Joab in 11:25, ‘do not let this
thing (‫ )הדבר הזה‬be evil in your eyes.’
Schipper’s argument is persuasive but can be clarified in one respect: Nathan’s
story is indeed a parable, and David knows it is a parable, but it is a parable which
requires judgement alongside allegorical interpretation.25 It is framed in a way
20 McCarter (II Samuel, 294) follows this reading and does not consider it secondary. He suggests
that this reading was followed by ‘say to him’ and was omitted through haplography.
21 See Jeremy Schipper, ‘Did David Overinterpret Nathan’s Parable in 2 Samuel 12:1–6?,’ JBL 126
(2007): 383–407; idem, Parables and Conflict in the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2009), 41–56.
22 Schipper, ‘Nathan’s Parable,’ 384. See also Hugh S. Pyper, David as Reader: 2 Samuel 12:1–15
and the Poetics of Fatherhood, BibInt Series 23 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 102–3. Contra Jan P. Fokkelman,
Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel: A Full Interpretation Based on Stylistic and Structural
Analysis. 1. King David (II Sam. 9–20 & I Kings 1–2), SSN 20 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981), 72, 76.
23 Schipper, ‘Nathan’s Parable,’ 385.
24 Note that Schipper’s reading explains the rhetorical function of the wayfarer: the wayfarer does
not correspond to anyone in David’s scenario, but he is necessary for David overinterpreting the
parable with himself as the wayfarer and Joab as the guilty rich man. Cf. the multi-voiced reading of
Polzin (p. 26, n. 10) which also takes account of the wayfarer.
25 So also David M. Gunn, The Fate of King David: Genre and Interpretation, JSOTSup 6
(Sheffield: University of Sheffield, 1978), 41. Gunn says ‘the legal element is merely an accident of
these particular cases where the one to whom the parable is addressed happens to be a king with (im-
plicit) judicial powers.’
that uses the competing claims of two parties, albeit as a rhetorical device, and
demands a response from the hearer who is placed in the role of judge. David’s
first outburst in v. 5 is one of emotion: he is angry with the man (‫)ויחר אף דוד‬,
presumably the man whom he thinks the parable allegorically refers, Joab; and
he calls the man ‘a son of death’ (‫)בן מות‬, a phrase I follow Pyper in under-
standing as having a number of possible meanings including death-dealing and
death-deserving.26 However, his second statement is a measured judgment: ‘he
will repay the lamb fourfold (‫ )ואת הכבשה ישלם ארבעתים‬for he did this thing
and because he had no pity’ (v. 6). The judgement ‘he will repay’ (‫ )ישלם‬echoes
examples from legal codes, including Exod 21:37 [22:1]: ‘When someone steals
an ox or a sheep, and slaughters it or sells it, the thief will pay (‫ )ישלם‬five oxen for
an ox, and four sheep for a sheep. The thief will make restitution, but if unable to
do so, will be sold for the theft.’27 By passing this judgement, David is passing a
sentence from a position of judge, repayment fourfold. Even if David thought he
was judging Joab, he has instead judged himself.
Just as David decrees a proportional punishment on the rich man, the con-
sequences for David’s sin announced by Nathan are in correspondence to the
crime, a kind of lex talionis, or poetic justice. David has ‘struck down Uriah the
Hittite with the sword’ (2 Sam 12:9) and now ‘a sword will never turn from your
house’ (v. 10); David has ‘done evil (‫ )הרע‬in the eyes of [the Lord]’ (v.9) and now
God will ‘raise up evil (‫ ’)רעה‬against him (v. 11); David has ‘taken the wife of
Uriah the Hittite’ (v. 10) and now God will ‘take [David’s] wives’ (v. 11).
There have been a number of attempts to interpret how the ‘fourfold’ repay-
ment is reflected in David’s punishment in Nathan’s oracle. There is one tradition
that the deaths of David’s newborn, Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah correspond
to David paying fourfold (b. Yoma 22b). Another possibility is that repaying four-
fold links to the four punishments: the sword will not depart from David’s house;
trouble will be raised up against David from within his house; his wives will be
taken, given to his neighbour who will lie with them; and he or his son will die.
However, 12:6 in the LXX reads ‘sevenfold,’28 suggesting that the significance for
26 Pyper, David as Reader, 159. The phrase is also interpreted as ‘death dealing’ by McCarter, II
Samuel, 299; Campbell, 2 Samuel, 116. Auld, like Pyper, suggests that the phrase is deliberately flex-
ible, as the question is whether the one accused of bringing death is deserving of death (A. Graeme
Auld, I & II Samuel, OTL [Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2011], 466).
27 Campbell (2 Samuel, 116–17) also interprets ‘son of death’ as a statement of outrage and fourfold
restitution as a judicial sentence.

28 Most LXX manuscripts (Codices Alexandrius, Vaticanus, Coislinianius, and Basiliano-
Vaticanus; see McCarter, II Samuel, 299) read ‘sevenfold,’ but MT, LXXL (the Lucianic manuscripts)
and the Peshitta read ‘fourfold.’ McCarter further suggests that it was adjusted to fourfold to align
with the compensation in Exod 21:37 [22:1]. ‘Sevenfold’ (‫ )שבעתים‬generates a word play with the
name Bathsheba (‫)בת שבע‬. Cf. David G. Firth, 1 & 2 Samuel, AOTC 8 (Nottingham: Apollos, 2009),
424; contra Samuel R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel,
2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), 291. Firth points out there is no reason David could not
have made a connection to Exod 21:37. As there are potential literary connections for either reading,
we will follow the MT for convenience and when the number is unimportant, but refer to LXX where
David’s punishment is that it is ‘multiplied’ rather than specifically fourfold (or

sevenfold). David has struck down Uriah once with the sword of the Ammonites,
but the sword will remain upon his house forever. David has taken Uriah’s one
wife, now all of David’s wives will be taken. David did this in secret, but David’s
wives will be taken before all Israel before the sun (v. 12).29
Significantly, the multiplication reflects David’s status as the rich man in con-
trast to the poor man. The rich man has only taken one lamb, but in doing so has
taken all that the poor man has. Therefore, a proportion of fourfold or sevenfold
reflects the inequality that exists between the men. This is how retribution differs
from restitution: in restitution, only the one lamb would be replaced; in retribu-
tion, a punishment appropriate to the act of stealing is imposed. The retributive
punishment is in like manner to the offence (payment of lambs as punishment
for the taking of lambs), but it is punitively multiplied. Indeed, the principle ‘eye
for an eye’ in Exod 21:24–25 for bodily damage is contiguous to the fourfold re-
payment for stealing a sheep in Exod 21:37. These principles hold together be-
cause they are applied in different contexts, bodily damage and theft.30
The rhetoric of Nathan’s oracle points to the conclusion that the punishment
of David is judicially determined and corresponds to his crime; however, it is
not yet clear in this discussion whether David’s death is a proportional pun-
ishment for his sin. In other words, is the pronouncement that David ‘will not
die’ a remission from retribution or a remission from consequences that exceed
retribution?
Admittedly this question cannot be decided with certainty. In fact, this is pre-
cisely the role of the sentencer in retribution: to determine what punishment
is proportional to the offence because there is not an obvious eye for an eye.
Potentially, both possibilities are each proportional to David’s crime, the death
of David and the death of his newborn. God has determined that the second will
be applied because of the devastating effects on the Davidic covenant from 2 Sam
7 if David is retributively punished through his own death. I will return to this
question in the context of God’s forgiveness of David (see ‘Why Retribution and
Forgiveness’), and will argue that even if the death of David is proportional to his
crime, it would inhibit the function of retribution for maintaining social relations.
relevant. The number may also have been influenced by theological understandings of transgenera-
tional punishment, as we will discuss on pp. 67-68 and 85.
29 On the ‘sun’ as all-seeing judge, and therefore another judicial element in this oracle, see Ellen
van Wolde, ‘In Words and Pictures: The Sun in 2 Samuel 12:7–12,’ BibInt 11 (2003): 259–78.
30 There is an interesting parallel in Kant’s argument that difference in wealth and social rank
should be taken into account when the punishment is determined by the court (Immanuel Kant, The
Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor, Texts in German Philosophy [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991], 141 [6:332]).
By contrast, the death of David’s newborn is both proportional to David’s sin,

and also allows the possibility of David’s restoration.
Moreover, there are a number of reasons for supposing that retributive pun-
ishment does not require David’s death, at least according to the formulation of
David’s offences in 2 Sam 11–12. Regarding a charge of murder, David has used
the sword of the Ammonites and thus avoided directly incurring the charge him-
self. Although there is a death penalty according to Israelite law for adultery (Lev
20:10; Deut 22:22), this is never imposed throughout the corpus of the Hebrew
Bible,31 nor is it evident that these laws were presupposed in this passage. And,
as noted earlier, David is not charged with adultery by Nathan in the oracle, only
taking Bathsheba to be his wife.32 Like-for-like punishment has already been
declared for the offences akin to murder and adultery: the sword against David’s
house for the sword of the Ammonites against Uriah, and the taking of David’s
wives for the taking of Uriah’s wife. Usurping God’s prerogative could potentially
deserve death.33 Yet, the framing of 2 Sam 12:14 suggests that the death of the son
(not the death of David) is the direct response to despising God: ‘nevertheless,
since you utterly scorned the [enemies of] the Lord in this matter, the son that
is born to you will surely die.’ Finally, the death of David’s son may have an ele-
ment of poetic justice if not like-for-like punishment: in David’s crime, he gives
life to a child, and so in God’s retributive punishment, God takes the life of the
same child.
In conclusion, the punishment of David in the rhetoric of Nathan’s oracle, in-
cluding the death of David’s child, is judicial, backward-looking to David’s trans-
gression, and proportional to the offence.
A curse
S. Chapman34 has argued that ‘in 2 Sam 12 both the judicial and the consequential
models of divine retribution exist side-by-side within a subtle dialectic, shaping
the narrative in complex ways.’ This is a conclusion that I will also reach, albeit via
a different line of argument. Chapman suggests that the act-consequences in this
story can be attributed to the dynamic of bloodguilt. However, as D. Shepherd
points out,35 act-consequences cannot be attributed here to bloodguilt on
David’s house because Uriah is killed at the hands of the Ammonites. Through
31 Gordon, I & II Samuel, 258–59.

32 So also, Janzen (‘David’s “Taking,” ’ 219) proposes that Nathan does not charge David with
murder. God is lenient because David was.
33 Cf. Num 16:30.
34 Chapman, ‘Bible as Witness,’ 183.
35 In private correspondence; see David Shepherd, King David and Bloodguilt (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, forthcoming).

strategy, David has ensured that he is clear of bloodguilt, just as he ensures he is

clear of bloodguilt throughout his reign when Saul, Jonathan, and Ishbosheth are
all killed by others. David has not personally shed innocent blood, nor is any of
the language normally associated with bloodguilt, notably the word ‘blood,’ ‫דם‬,
found in this story.
Nevertheless, Chapman’s reading prompts a related proposal, that there is a
curse, not specifically bloodguilt, upon David’s house. Evidence for a curse can
be found by reference to 1 Sam 2:30 where God says to Eli ‘Far be it from me; for
those who honour me I will honour, and those who despise me will be cursed
(‫)ובזי יקלו‬.’ So also, in 2 Sam 12:10, David has ‘despised [the Lord]’ (‫)בזתני‬, and
this sin is cited as the reason why the sword will not leave David’s house. These
are the only two passages in the book of Samuel where someone despises God,
and, according to the logic of 1 Sam 2:30, David is cursed as a result. The passive
construction for cursing ‘they will be cursed’ (‫ )יקלו‬in 1 Sam 2:30 highlights how
a curse might be considered an act-consequence rather than punishment. The
curse (unlike honour) is a consequence triggered by despising God.
Another connection to a curse arises from David’s oath in 12:5, ‘as the Lord
lives, the man who has done this is a son of death.’ H. Pyper has argued that a
key characteristic of oaths is their polysemy and so they can be fulfilled in unex-
pected and multiple ways.36 There are a number of possibilities for the meaning
of the term ‘son of death’ (‫ )בן מות‬in David’s oath. The phrase could simultane-
ously mean David has caused death, that he is deserving of death, and/or that
he is the son-in-law of Saul, who has died.37 However, the phrase finds one fur-
ther echo in the death of David’s son (v. 18), an unintentional fulfilment of a
polysemous oath.
The unexpected fulfilment of David’s oath in the death of his son comes about
because of an implicit curse that accompanies the oath. Curses are closely associ-
ated with oaths, and biblical oaths usually contain an explicit or implicit curse in
event of their violation.38 Two examples are salient for a reading of David’s oath
in 2 Sam 12. The first is in Josh 6:26:
At that time, Joshua took this oath (‫)וישבע‬, saying:

‘Cursed (‫ )ארור‬be the one before the LORD who tries
to build this city, Jericho!
At the cost of his firstborn he will lay its foundation,
and at the cost of his youngest he will set up its gates!’
36 Pyper, David as Reader.

37 Ibid., 153.
38 For a survey on scholarship relating oaths and curses, and examples where the link is made
explicit, see Yael Ziegler, Promises to Keep: The Oath in Biblical Narrative, VTSup 120 (Leiden: Brill,
2008), 32–37.
If the oath that Jericho should not be rebuilt is broken, then there will be a curse
upon the one who rebuilds it, that his firstborn and youngest will die. Another
example comes from Judg 21:5, ‘For there was a great oath (‫)השבועה הגדולה‬
concerning whoever had not gone up to the Lord to Mizpah, saying, “He
will surely be put to death (‫’ ”)מות יומת‬. The curse (cf. Judg 21:18) has similar
wording to the pronouncement upon David’s son in 12:14, ‘he will surely die’
(‫)מות ימות‬.39
In the same way, David’s oath ‘as the Lord lives’ in judgement on the rich man
has an implicit curse of death.40 The rich man has not directly brought blood-
guilt upon himself, and so David pronounces an oath over him so that death
will be associated with him: the polysemy allowing that it may be the rich man
himself who should die (comparable to Judg 21:5) or his son(s) (comparable to
Josh 6:26). Although David does not curse the rich man explicitly, an unspoken
curse accompanies the oath. Then, the oath that David has placed upon the rich
man is applied to David himself when Nathan demonstrates ‘you are that man.’
David has unwittingly entered a double bind. The oath declares that he is a ‘son of
death’; if his oath is broken, then he is equally deserving of divine repercussions
having sworn ‘as the Lord lives.’
The reading that 2 Sam 12 is a curse on David’s house is highlighted by verbal
links between 2 Sam 12 and 2 Sam 7, the blessing of God through Nathan on
David’s house.41 For example, the word ‘house’ ‫בית‬, repeated throughout 2 Sam
7 as a wordplay on temple, palace and dynasty, also features in David’s punish-
ment in 12:10 ‘a sword will never turn from your house (‫ ’)מביתך‬and 12:11 ‘I will
raise up trouble against you from your house (‫)מביתך‬.’ David’s house or dynasty
is central to both blessing and curse. Similarly, the use of ‘forever’ (‫ )עד עולם‬in
12:10 recalls the repetition of the phrase in 2 Sam 7:13, 16, 24, 25, 26, and 29
(‫)לעולם‬. Both texts take the form of a prophetic oracle spoken by the prophet
Nathan (his only two appearances in Samuel), drawing 2 Sam 7 and 2 Sam 12
closely together as a literary pair. David’s request in 2 Sam 7:29 that God would
‘bless’ (‫ )ברך‬the house of David forever finds its antithesis in a ‘curse’ that falls
upon David’s house in 2 Sam 12.
In the previous section, it was suggested that David’s death is not required by
retributive punishment. However, David is conceivably fated to die because of
the curse from his own oath. In the mitigation of the curse upon David, David
39 Cf. 4QSama reads ‘surely he will be put to death’ (‫ )מות יומת‬in v. 14. Note, too, that this phrase
is often also used in a judicial context, but only with other oath or curse language does it indicate
a curse.
40 Notably the root ‫שלם‬, used in 12:6, can also be used in a blessing or curse formula, but in these
cases the subject of the verb is God repaying a person for their good or evil (e.g., 2 Sam 3:39).
41 On these parallels between 2 Sam 12 and 2 Sam 7, see Bernd Biberger, ‘ “Du wirst nicht ster-
ben”: Vergebung und Vergeltung in 2Sam 12,13–14,’ BN 151 (2011): 47–62.

is not a son of death, but his son will die.42 The words uttered in the oath are hon-
oured, but they are reinterpreted so that the curse aligns with the retributive
punishment determined by God. This observation highlights that curse and re-
tributive punishment are not divisible in the story: the curse is retributive pun-
ishment, and the punishment is a curse. Both judicial and act-consequential
frameworks are operative in this story, but the consequences/punishment are
one and the same.
Divine violence?
Two distinct but related questions emerge from this analysis: Firstly, to what ex-
tent is God the agent for the violence against David and his house? Secondly, to
what extent is God responsible for the violence against David and his house, that
is, the cause of the violence even if not the agent carrying it out? Both questions
relate to the ways in which God’s sovereignty and natural law interact in the text,
and they are relevant for evaluating the characterisation of God implicated in
this violence. In other words, does God actually determine to kill a newborn, in-
cite a brother to rape his sister and so on?
Firstly, we examine God’s agency. The rhetoric of Nathan’s oracle in 2 Sam 12
interweaves statements of God’s direct agency with impersonal formulations for
punishment. The first consequence of David’s sin in 12:10 is that ‘a sword will
never turn from your house,’ where the grammatical subject is ‘sword’ rather
than God. In v. 11, God’s agency is emphasised by the repetition of the first-
person singular, ‘Behold, I will raise up (‫ )הנני מקים‬trouble against you from
within your own house; and I will take (‫ )ולקחתי‬your wives before your eyes,
and I will give (‫ )ונתתי‬them to your neighbour.’ The death of David’s child is also
prophesied, without stating an agent, ‘the child that is born to you will surely die,’
but the illness of the child in 12:15 is a result of God’s direct agency, ‘the Lord
struck the child.’
Throughout 2 Sam 12–20, there are many close connections, including verbal
parallels, between the prophetic pronouncements against David and the events
in David’s house and kingdom, implying that these are the fulfilment of Nathan’s
oracle.43 The fulfilment of the sword in David’s house is palpable when Absalom
42 See Shawn W. Flynn, Children in Ancient Israel: The Hebrew Bible and Mesopotamia in
Comparative Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), esp. 154. Flynn describes, using
comparative evidence from the ancient Near East, how children were commonly the targets for
curses, and the sickness of a child was commonly interpreted as a curse.
43 See my own study Rachelle Gilmour, Representing the Past: A Literary Analysis of Narrative
Historiography in the Book of Samuel, VTSup 143 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 200–206. Also, Gillian
Keys, The Wages of Sin: A Reappraisal of the ‘Succession Narrative,’ JSOTSup 221 (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1996), 136–37.
murders Amnon and Joab murders Absalom, although intriguingly a literal

sword is mentioned at neither point. The ‘trouble’ within David’s house is ful-
filled by Amnon raping Tamar and Absalom staging a coup of David’s kingship;
and David’s wives are taken when Absalom rapes his concubines in 2 Sam 16:22.
However, God’s agency is not mentioned throughout this entire period, with the
exception of divine intervention to turn the advice of Ahithophel into foolish-
ness (17:14), a turn for David’s advantage not disadvantage, taking place after the
other aspects of the punishment have already been fulfilled.44
The absence of explicit divine agency does not necessarily imply the absence
of divine agency altogether. The way in which these events fulfil prophecy sug-
gests that they may be directed by divine sovereignty in some way. Even a curse
can be carried out by divine agency.45 For example in Deut 28, the curses are
initially phrased in passive constructions in Deut 28:16–19, followed by further
curses where God is an explicit agent in 29:20–29, and then oscillation between
the two constructions.
Divine agency is, in any case, accompanied by human agency and sin.
M. Avioz demonstrates that the suffering of David’s house is consistently pro-
pounded by the consequences of further sins committed within David’s house-
hold. Tamar suffers because of Amnon’s sin, Amnon dies because of Absalom’s
sin, and the civil war is a result of Absalom’s ‘bad nature.’46 Later, when God frus-
trates Ahithophel’s advice in 2 Sam 17:14, the reason given is ‘so that the Lord
might bring evil upon Absalom’ (‫)לבעבור הביא יהוה אל אבשלום את הרעה‬. This
recalls God’s punishment of David, bringing evil upon him (‫)הנני מקים עליך רעה‬
in 2 Sam 12:11, and suggests the turn of events is a judgement upon Absalom.
David’s house suffers because of divine punishments; but it also suffers as a direct
result of the sins of David’s sons.
Divine responsibility for the violence against David’s house is partly realised
through elements of divine agency, and partly through God judicially deter-
mining David’s punishment; but it is ameliorated in two key ways. Firstly, the
act-consequence model, portrayed through the curse upon David, suggests that
David’s suffering comes through natural law as much as through divine decision.
44 This marks a turn in David’s favour, and yet it is only after this intervention that there are mass
casualties in Israel beyond David’s house in the final battle against Absalom in 2 Sam 18:17–18. Thus,
further and widespread suffering results from God’s favourable intervention for David rather than
his punishment against David.
45 Cf. Jože Krašovec, Reward, Punishment, and Forgiveness: The Thinking and Beliefs of Ancient
Israel in the Light of Greek and Modern Views, VTSup 78 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 136–37. Krašovec
suggests that God is directly responsible for the death of the child, but the problems with Absalom’s
rebellion look like an inherited curse. However, as I have argued, divine agency and divine judicial
responsibility are not the same thing.
46 Michael Avioz, ‘Divine Intervention and Human Error in the Absalom Narrative,’ JSOT 37
(2013): 339–47.
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CHAPTER XL.
ORIENTAL CLEANLINESS.
Wash and be clean.—II. Kings.
On the subject of cleanliness, Orientals’ ideas are the very reverse

of what, to a time within the memory of the present generation of
Englishmen, we entertained. Our idea used to be that it meant a
clean shirt; theirs is that it means a clean skin. The Mr. Smith, who,
some forty years ago, obtained, during his University career, his
differentiating epithet from his practice of changing his linen three
times a day, would probably, from unfamiliarity with the bath, have
been regarded by Orientals, as might many a beau of that, and of
the preceding generation, as an insufferably dirty fellow. The
annoyance Thackeray represents an old lawyer in chambers as
feeling at the daily splashings of the young barrister over his head,
and his inability to imagine how sanity of mind, or body, could be
compatible with such a practice, fix the date, now about thirty years
ago, when our manners and customs were changing on this point.
The old oriental ideas, which go so much further towards satisfying
the requirements of the case, are still carefully maintained. In order
that they may become habitual and universal, they have been made
imperative by religion. The when, the where, and the how have all
been prescribed. The shaving also of the head, the plucking out of
hair, the use of depilatories, and circumcision, which is practised
even by the Christian Copts, are customs which, though not imposed
by religion, are generally observed, because they contribute to the
same object as their frequent and scrupulous ablutions.
With these practices we must class their ideas about the
uncleanness of dead bodies, and the defilement contracted by
contact with them; for, of course, the idea of defilement had its origin
in the fear of what might engender, or convey disease.
The persistent oriental aversion to knives and forks may be
connected with this subject. The disinclination to use them may arise
out of an uncertainty as to whether they may not have contracted
defilement, which might sometimes mean the power of conveying
infection. The leprosy of the East, and the cutaneous diseases of
that part of the world—almost all the diseases mentioned in the Old
Testament are more or less of this kind—are at the bottom of these
ideas and practices. On the whole, we can have no doubt but that, if
they were as uncleanly, and careless about these matters, as a large
portion of our own population, the range of many bad diseases—
climate and meagreness of diet being their predisposing causes—
would be very greatly extended. As things, however, are, it is
pleasing to observe how carefully all classes in the East attend, in
their way, to personal cleanliness. The poorest, even those who
cannot afford a change of clothes, do not appear to neglect it. The
stoker of an Egyptian steamer does not look like a stoker throughout
the whole of the twenty-four hours; nor would, if there were such
people, an Egyptian chimney-sweeper never be seen without the
grime of his work.
It must have been for reasons of the kind I have referred to
(though doubtless religious grounds were imagined for the practice,
for those were times when there was no other way of thinking about
or of putting such matters) which led the Egyptian Priesthood to
abstain, in their own persons, from the use of woollen garments.
Habiliments of this material, from their condition not being readily
ascertainable by the eye, and from their not being chilly to the skin
when saturated with perspiration, are less likely to be frequently
washed than those which are made of vegetable fibres. It is much
the same with silk and leather. We know that in the Middle-Ages,
woollens, which were then very much in use next to the skin, were
not very frequently washed, though the soap which would have
thoroughly cleansed them, had then been known for centuries, for it
had been an old invention of the Germans, among whom the
Romans had found it in use. The same negligence we may be sure
had existed to an equal, or greater, extent in all the old world. At that
time the washing, especially, of woollens was costly, and could only
have been insufficiently accomplished. The Egyptians, we know,
used alkaline preparations for rendering soluble the animal matter
their clothes had contracted by being worn, that is to say for washing
them. They were probably also acquainted with the solvent and
detergent properties of the animal appliance which the Emperor
Vespasian was bantered for having excised. We may suppose this
because its washing power is referable to the alkaline matter
contained in it, which was just what they were in the practice of
collecting for washing their clothes; and also because the supply
derived from the camel was known to be particularly effective for this
purpose. In passing, the unsavoury tax just referred to was imposed
as a method of making the scourers, so large and important a trade
at Rome that they had their own quarter of the city, pay for licences
to carry on their business, in such a manner that in each case the
cost of the licence should be proportioned to the amount of business
carried on. This was effected by taxing the chief material employed
in the trade. The impost must have been productive, for it was
retained as an item of Roman excise for two centuries. These were
means, however, which were never likely to have been turned to
much account, anywhere, by the mass of the people. The
consequences, of course, would be serious. The animal matter that
accumulated, and was decomposed in such clothing, so used, must
to some extent have been reabsorbed through the pores of the skin;
and so have been the fruitful source of cutaneous, and other
disorders. Probably this was the very cause why our forefathers
were visited so frequently by the plague, and jail fevers. The priests
of old Egypt quite understood how prejudicial to health, particularly in
that climate, are all practices of this kind; and they felt that it
behoved them, as the teachers of the people, to set an example of
cleanliness in such matters. To do this was also pleasing to their
thought, because it symbolized, and appeared to have some
connexion with, the analogous virtue of moral purity; and so they
imposed on themselves the ceremonial observance of abstaining
from woollen garments. There could be no question about the
perfect cleanness, such as became a Priest, of their robes of
glistening white linen. This was a lesson to every eye. Such were the
thoughts and practices of men, on these subjects, in the valley of old
Nile, at least six, no one can tell how many more, thousand years
ago.
Orientals’ regard for cleanliness I said is shown in their way,
because, as might have been expected of ceremonial practices, it
does not extend beyond the letter of the law; the object and spirit of
the law, as is usual in such cases, having been lost sight of. The
letter of the law is compatible with untidiness and dirt in their houses,
and does not exact anything from children, who are as yet too young
for religious observances. Their houses, therefore, and children are
singularly untidy and dirty. Why make burdens unnecessarily
severe? Why go beyond the letter? If they submit to the law in what it
directs, surely they may indemnify themselves by compensatory
neglect in what it does not direct. This element of feebleness and
failure is inherent in all religious systems which undertake to think for
the whole community in every matter. It is as conspicuous in
Romanism as in Mahomedanism. The letter killeth: the spirit it is that
giveth life. Up to a certain point, but it is one that is soon reached,
they elevate and give light. When that point has been reached, they
arrest and abort moral growth, and extinguish light.
CHAPTER XLI.
WHY ORIENTALS ARE NOT REPUBLICANS.
That grass does not grow on stones is not the fault of the rain.—Oriental Proverb.
It seems strange that Republicanism should never have

commended itself to the minds of Orientals. Some of the conditions
to which they have been subjected, and some of their ideas ought,
one might have thought, to have engendered the wish to give a trial
to this form of polity. Socially, ideas of aristocratic exclusiveness
have little weight with them, and, politically, none at all. The
expression of ‘taking a man from the dung-hill and setting him
among princes’ is old, and represents an old practice; and it is a
proceeding with which they are to this day in their government, and
the hierarchy of office, quite familiar. This ultra-democratic idea of
the equal fitness, even for the highest places, of men taken from any
class in society, offends none of their sentiments, or instincts. They
would not be shocked at seeing one who had begun life as a
donkey-boy, or a barber, so long as he was an Arab, or Osmanlee,
and a true believer, raised to be a Pasha. Then, too, no people in the
world have suffered so much, and so long, from their respective
governments as the Orientals have from their despotic monarchies,
administered by a descending series of hardly responsible
governors. And as to general manners and ideas, there is probably a
greater amount of uniformity in the East among all classes, than is to
be found elsewhere. One might have supposed that all this, at one
time or another, sooner or later, would have disposed them to take
refuge in Republicanism. We have, however, no instance of the idea
having been entertained. It seems as if they had no capacity for
apprehending it, for the account Herodotus gives us of the proposal
to democratize the Government of Persia is a transparent Greek
fable. At all events, taking the story as we have it, the mover was
unable to find a seconder for his proposal.
This phenomenon in their history surprises us: it is, however, their
history which enables us to understand it, and to understand it
completely. They never possessed a legislature. This, which every
little Greek city possessed, which was the very soul of Greek political
life, and has ever been, more or less, a necessity of European
political life, never could have been known in the East. There the
idea never had any place in men’s minds; or, if it had, was aborted in
the embryo stage, and never saw the light. In short, with them a
legislature was an impossibility; for, as their laws have always been
a revelation from God, any attempt to legislate would have been
nothing less than a direct and formal denial, and renunciation of their
religion.
In their systems, therefore, there has been room only for the
administrative, and executive departments of government. These, of
course, are secondary. With that which was first and highest, and
regulative of the whole, man had nothing at all to do. Under such a
state of things the administrative, and executive would naturally fall
into the hands of those who were best acquainted with the law, that
is, of those who were its constituted guardians, as priests, elders,
doctors of the law, &c., and of those who in any way, by force or
favour, could attain to power and office. Here is no place for
republican, or democratic ideas. The whole ground in every man’s
mind is pre-occupied with ideas that are antagonistic to them. If
Orientals had had to make their own laws, Republicanism would
have been as common in the East as in the West; perhaps more so.
In the Mosaic polity, though it was in some respects very
favourable to democracy, we see the absence of the legislative
function leading necessarily in the end to a monarchy; the monarchy
having been preceded by a rude exercise of administrative and
executive functions, based in the main on such moral and intellectual
qualifications as the system required. That the people in general
assemblies, or through any other machinery, should take into their
own hands the management of their own affairs was an idea that
never at any time appears to have occurred to them. It was alien to
their system to imagine that the will of the people was the source of
power, or that law was the best reason of the community made
binding on all.
One can hardly understand, without some personal observation,
and thinking out what has been observed, how completely these
oriental systems extinguish liberty in every matter. Not only do they
deny to nations the right to frame their laws in conformity with the
varying needs of times and circumstances, but they even abrogate
the liberty of the individual to exercise his own judgment with respect
to almost everything he has to do, and almost to say, throughout life.
Law being a fixed immutable thing, it becomes unavoidable but that
customs and manners should be equally fixed and immutable. The
extent to which this is carried is, till one has witnessed it oneself,
something difficult to believe, indeed to comprehend. Every thought
and emotion must be swathed up in a certain prescribed form of
words. The mummy of an Egyptian of the old times tightly bandaged,
stiff and lifeless, is the image of the modern Egyptian’s mind. He has
no kind of freedom. He is but a walking and breathing mummy.
Everything in the political, social, moral, and intellectual order has
been arranged and settled for everybody; and everybody thoroughly
and completely accepts the whole settlement, because it comes to
him from God, because it is the same to all classes and individuals
as to himself, and because the reasons, and, as far as they go, the
advantages, of the settlement are obvious, and commend
themselves to his understanding. In no mind, therefore, is there
anything to give rise to the germ of a desire to disturb the settlement.
Here, then, there is nothing which can cause the idea of political
liberty to germinate. Let the seed be sown again and again, it will fall
always upon the rock.
CHAPTER XLII.
POLYGAMY.—ITS CAUSE.
Presto maturo, presto marcio.—Italian Proverb.
The traveller is struck with the various ways in which the relation of
the sexes, that obtains throughout the East, has modified the
manners, and customs, and the whole life, of the people. Female
society is impossible. Women are not seen in the Mosks at times of
prayer; and, we are told, are seldom known to pray at home, never
having been taught the ceremonies requisite for prayer. One may
walk through a crowded street and not see a woman among the
passers by. A woman cannot, in the regular order of things, see the
man who is to be her husband, or hold any converse with him, till the
marriage contract is executed, and she has entered his house. Nor
after marriage can she, with the exception of her father and brothers,
have any social intercourse with men. One cannot but ask what it is
that has given rise to manners, and customs, so opposite to all we
deem wise and desirable in this matter. We see at a glance that they
are the offspring of distrust and jealousy, and of a distrust and
jealousy, which, though unfelt by ourselves, exist in a high degree
among Orientals. What, then, is it that gives rise in them to these
unpleasant feelings? It must be some fact which not only has the
power of producing all this distrust and jealousy, drawing after them
consequences of sufficient reach to determine the whole character of
the relations of the sexes to each other, but it must also be
something that is peculiarly their own. Now, all these conditions are
fulfilled by polygamy, and by nothing else.
The fact that a man may possess a plurality of wives, and as many
odalisques as he can afford, and may wish to have in his
establishment, is the one element in oriental life to which everything
else must accommodate itself. Reverse the case, and, setting aside
exceptional instances, consider what, on the ordinary principles of
human conduct, would be the general working of the reverse of the
practice. What would be the state of things, and the customs and
manners, which would naturally arise, if the wife had to retain the
affection of a plurality of husbands? Would not, in that case, each
woman, supposing they had the power of establishing, and
enforcing, what regulations they pleased, take very good care that
their husbands should have as little as possible to do with other
women? Would the singular wife allow the plural husbands to see, or
converse with, any woman but herself? Would she not confine them
in the men’s apartments? Would she allow them to go abroad
unveiled? The distrust and jealousy the women, under such
arrangements, would feel, have, under existing arrangements, been
felt by the men. They have acted on these feelings, and hence have
been derived the manners and customs of the East in this matter.
There is nothing in the objection that all do not practise polygamy.
All may practise it, and that is the condition to which the general
manners and customs must adjust themselves. What all recognize
as right and proper, and what all may act upon, is what has to be
provided for.
But we have not yet got to the bottom of the matter. Certain
manners and customs may be seen clearly to be the consequences
of a certain practice: the subject, however, is not fully understood till
we have gone one step further, and discovered what gave rise to the
practice. The attempt is often made to dispose of this question
offhand, by an assumption that passion burns with a fiercer flame in
the East than in the West. This is what a man means when you hear
him talking of the cold European, and of the fiery Arab; the supposed
excessive warmth of the constitution of the latter being credited to
the fervour of the Eastern sun. There is, however, no evidence of this
in the facts of the case, nor does it account for them. If this is the
true explanation, we ought to find polyandry practised as well as
polygamy. But there is no evidence that this flame burns with a
fiercer heat in Asia than in Europe. The probability is that it is what
may be called a constant quantity.
In investigating this, just as any other matter, what we have to do
is to ascertain the facts of the case, and then to see what can be
fairly inferred from them. Now, undoubtedly, the main fact here is that
there is a certain polygamic area. It is sufficiently well defined. It
embraces North Africa, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, and Persia. I do not
mean that polygamy has never been practised elsewhere. Like all
other customs it may have been carried beyond its proper
boundaries: we know that it has been. What I mean is that the area
indicated is, and ever has been, its true and natural home. The
monogamic area of Europe is equally distinct. Asia Minor is an
intermediate, indeterminate region, which, though it is an outlying
peninsula of Asia by situation, approximates more closely to Europe
in its general features.
Now this polygamic area has one pervading, predominant,
physical characteristic: it is a region of dry sandy deserts; or, rather,
it is one vast sandy desert, interspersed with habitable districts. This
renders its climate not only exceptionally dry, but also, from its
comparative cloudlessness, exceptionally bright, which is not an
immaterial point, and, too, exceptionally scorching. An excess, then,
of aridity, light, and heat, is its distinguishing peculiarity. These
influences are all at their maximum in Arabia, which is in every way
its true heart and centre; and, in particular, the seed-bed and nursery
of the race best adapted to the region, and which, at last, flooded the
whole of it with its blood, its customs, and its laws. These are all
thoroughly indigenous, and racy of the soil—as much its own proper
product and fruit as the date is of the palm, or the palm itself of the
region in which it is found.
But of the woman of this region. It is an obvious result of the aridity
of the air, its almost constant heat, and of the floods of light with
which everything living is ceaselessly bathed, and stimulated, that
she is, in comparison with the woman of Europe, forced into
precocious development, and maturity, and consequently, which is
the main point, and, indeed, the governing element in the matter, into
premature decline and decay. To signalize one particular that is
external and visible, this climate appears to expand, to dry, to wither,
to wrinkle the skin with a rapidity, and to a degree, unknown in our
more humid and temperate regions. A woman, under these trying
influences, is soon old. Between nine and ten is the age of
womanhood. Marriage even often takes place at this age, or soon
after. She is quite at her best at fifteen; decay is visible at twenty;
there are signs of age at twenty-five.
Men, too, from reasons easily explained, marry much younger
there than is customary—I might say than is possible—with us. Our
civilization is based on intellect far more than theirs; and it takes with
us a long time for a youth to acquire the knowledge he will find
requisite in life. School claims him, with those who can afford the
time, till he is eighteen; and with many the status pupillaris is
continued at the university for three years longer: and no one would
think that even then the age for marriage had arrived. And here,
again, much more is required for supporting life through all ranks of
society. This is another prohibition against a young man’s marrying
early. He must first work himself into a position, in which he will have
the means of maintaining a family in the way required here, or wait
till he has a fair prospect of being able to do so. All this requires time;
but in the East, where wants are few, and not much knowledge is
needed, a youth may marry very early. I saw at Jerusalem the son of
the Sheik of the Great Mosk of Omar, who was then, though only a
lad of sixteen years of age, already married to two wives.
And so it follows that, in this region, before men have attained to
even the prime of life, their wives are getting old. A necessary
consequence of this must be that polygamy will come to be as
natural as marriage itself. It has, at all events, been so hitherto.
The facilities for divorce which law and custom provide in these
countries (all that is needed is a writing of divorcement) are a result
of the same causes: they are, in fact, a corollary to the practice of
polygamy. They enable both the man and the woman to escape from
what, under the system of polygamy, must often become an
insupportable situation, and have the practical effect of making
marriage only a temporary arrangement. Indeed, sometimes even
before the marriage contract is entered into, the law of divorcement
is discounted in this way by the mutual agreement of both parties.
That ‘age cannot wither her’ is, then, precisely the opposite of
being a characteristic of the Arab, or even of the oriental, woman.
Had it been otherwise with them, polygamy would never have been
the practice over this large portion of the earth’s surface.
In our cold, humid, dull climate opposite conditions have produced
opposite effects. Here the woman arrives slowly at maturity; and,
which is the great point, fights a good fight against the inroads of
age. Man has no advantage over her in this respect. And when she
is marriageable, she is, not a child of ten years of age, but a woman
of twenty, with sufficient knowledge, and firmness of character to
secure her own rights. The consequence, therefore, here is that men
have felt no necessity for maintaining a plurality of wives; and if they
had wished for it, the women would not have allowed them to have it.
Voilà tout.
Nature it is that has made us monogamists. No religion that has
ever been accepted in Europe has legislated in favour of the
opposite practice, because it was obvious, and all men were agreed
on the point, that monogamy was most suitable to, and the best
arrangement for, us. The exceptional existence of the Arabic custom
in European Turkey is one of those exceptions which prove a rule.
Suppose that, in the evolution of those ups and downs to which
our earth’s surface is subject, it is destined that the waves of the
ocean shall again roll over the vast expanse of the Sahara, which, as
things now are, is one of Nature’s greatest factories for desiccated
air. Then every wind that will blow from the west, or the south-west,
over the present polygamic area, will be charged with moisture, and
will bring clouds that will not only give rain, but will also very much
diminish the amount of light which is now poured down upon it.
Suppose, too, something of the same kind to have been brought
about with respect to the great Syro-Arabian desert. Northerly and
easterly winds will then also have the same effect. What now withers
will have become humid. There will be no more tent life. Better
houses will be required, more clothing, more food, more fuel. Men
will not marry so early. Women will not get old so soon. Polygamy
will die out of the region. Religion will be so modified as to accept, to
hallow, and to legislate for the new ideas, which the new conditions
and necessities will have engendered. Religion will then forbid
polygamy.
CHAPTER XLIII.
HOURIISM.
Married, not mated.
There are some aspects and incidents of the subject of the

preceding chapter which, though one would prefer passing them by
unnoticed, cannot be omitted from an honest attempt to sketch the
peculiarities of Eastern life. For instance, in the Christian heaven
they neither marry, nor are given in marriage. Of this everybody
approves: at all events one never met, or heard of, a Christian who
wished it otherwise. In the Mahomedan heaven, however, those who
have kept the faith, and lived holy lives, will be rewarded with houris,
damsels whose earthly charms have been perfected for the hareems
of Paradise. This article of his faith is of such a nature, that it colours
all the believer’s conceptions not only of the life that is to come, but
also of the life that is now. The vision of these companions, as bright
as stars, and as many in number, is so attractive, and so engrossing,
that all other thoughts of Paradise die out of the mind and heart by
the side of it. It is enough. It is Paradise. And if so, then the houris of
earth are the Paradise of earth.
I have been told by men who have resided long in the East, and
have had good opportunities for knowing the people well, that the
facts of life there have conformed themselves to this anticipation.
The houris of earth are the end-all and be-all of oriental life. Unlike
anything amongst ourselves, it is with a view to them that even the
arrangements of oriental houses are designed. No wonder men think
they cannot make too much of, or guard too carefully, this treasure,
for what more can heaven itself give them? Each, therefore, at once
makes for himself in this matter, as far as his means allow, a present
Paradise. The Sheik of the Great Mosk of Omar at Jerusalem
introduced me to his son, a lad of sixteen, who was, as I have lately
mentioned, already the master of two houris. It is said at Cairo that
this part of the present Khedivé’s household does not at all fall short
of what might be expected of the ruler of Egypt. To oriental thought
there is nothing incongruous, nothing unbecoming, in their prophet,
the chosen recipient of the Divine mind, and of all men the most
absorbed in holy things, having been a matrimonial pluralist.
This is the very opposite to a sentiment with which the European
world has been made familiar: the sentiment that husband, or wife,
cannot be loved, except at the expense of the love of God; that it
would be well if love were no worse than of the earth earthy; that
those who do life-long violence to this master sentiment of our
youthful nature, who trample upon it, and endeavour to extinguish it,
and who put in its place such feelings as minds, that do this despite
to nature, can alone originate, are better, and purer, and holier, than
those who accept the duties, and cares, and happinesses of wedded
life. It is strange that these ideas, which, through a natural reaction,
had their birthplace in the East, are now most alien to oriental modes
of thought.
Orientals are not more luxurious than ourselves. The difference is
that their luxury is directed more exclusively to one object; and that
that one object is of such a nature as to make their luxury more
enervating than ours. Their luxury is houris, and all that appertains to
them; and all that contributes to investing their society with a halo of
sensuous delights; gorgeous apartments; plashing fountains; shady,
and colour-enamelled gardens; exquisite odours. Our universal
luxury does not relax the fibre of our minds, and bodies, as much as
their one particular luxury does theirs.
We may bring ourselves to understand, to some extent, how this
system acts on Orientals by picturing to our thought how it would act
on ourselves. Take the first fifty men you meet in the Strand, or see
coming out of a Church. Look into their faces, and endeavour to
make our what you can about them from their appearance. They are
evidently most of them married men. This means with us that their
bark of life, as respects one most important matter at all events, is
now moored in harbour. Hope and fortune are words that, in this
matter, have no longer any meaning for them. They have accepted
the situation, and have ceased to think about houris. Each has taken
his wife for better, for worse; for sickness and for health, till death
shall part them. Their thoughts are now about their business, their
families, their pursuits, their society. But what a change would come
over the spirit of their dreams, if each could have as many houris as
he pleased, and could afford, of one kind or another, houris ever fair
and ever young; and could dismiss at any moment any he wished,
for any reason, to be rid of, by the simple form of a writing of
divorcement: no more trouble in it than in making an entry in one’s
pocket-book, and as exclusively one’s own affair; and could dismiss
some without even this small formality of the writing of divorcement.
Under such circumstances the houri question, which now has no
place in the thoughts of one of these worthy members of society,
would straightway occupy in the minds of many of them the first
place of all. It would then become necessary that a complete end
should be put to many things that no harm comes from now. These
staid and respectable gentlemen would soon find that houris must be
excluded from Churches, as Orientals have found that they must be
from Mosks, during the time of Divine Service, because, under the
new system, it would be impossible for them to be devout when
surrounded with houris. Neither could houris be any longer domestic
servants in our fashion. Houris also must be excluded from society.
Nor would it be admissible for houris to appear in public, or
anywhere, except in the presence of their lords, with unveiled faces.
A little exercise of the imagination enables us to see what the
metamorphosis would be in ourselves. And on the Oriental the
effects of the system are even greater, because he has no political
life, less pre-occupation from business than we have, and none of
those pursuits, and employments for the mind, which our education,
and the state of knowledge amongst us give rise to here.
As we were returning to Cairo by the river, we passed the corpse
of a woman floating on the water. Every European of the party felt
pity for her fate, and for her fault. Had it been possible we would
gladly have given sepulture to these dishonoured remains of our
common humanity, from which the Divine inmate had been expelled
so cruelly. Such sentiments, however, are unintelligible to the Arab
mind. The dogs and the vultures, they think, will give sepulture good
enough to one who has brought disgrace so stinging on father,
brothers, and husband. No pity have they for the fallen. No
consciousness of failings of their own.
This is evil. But perhaps it might be more evil to care for none of
these things. Indifference might be worse than hardness.
Indifference would mean moral decay and rottenness. Hardness
here is moral indignation, kindling up into an uncontrollable flame,
which burns up, like stubble, all other feelings. These are simple-
minded people, and they feel strongly within their narrow range of
feelings.
Something perhaps might be said in extenuation of the fault of this
poor frail one, whose punishment, if it were not greater than her fault,
was still the extremest man can inflict. What agonizing moments
must those last ones have been when, not weakened by slow
disease, nor broken by days spent in long imprisonment, but fresh
from her home, in the flower of youth and Nature’s pride of strength,
with the blood quick and warm, she was being dragged away to the
dark river, and by those God had made nearest and dearest to her.
Her brothers are foremost in the work. There is not a heart in all the
world, except, perhaps, of one whom she dare not think of now, that
is touched with pity for her. Brothers are turned to worse than tigers,
for they never did to death their own kin, or even their own kind.
But under such a system there will be some, among those who
have wealth and leisure more than enough, who must fall. Women,
like men, are only what the ideas in their minds make them. Every
idea that is implanted, or springs up in the mind, may be regarded as
a living thing. It has the attributes of life. It roots itself in the brain; it
feeds, and assimilates what it feeds on; it grows; it ramifies; it bears
fruit: it propagates itself after its kind; it carries on the Darwinian
conflict for life with other ideas. If not killed itself, it may kill them. It
may develop itself abnormally. It may get possession of an undue
proportion of the ground.
These are general properties. But each particular idea has also,
precisely as the various species of plants have, its own special
properties. Some are beneficent, and these are beneficent in various
ways. Some are poisonous, and these are poisonous in various
ways. Some bear little fruit, some much. Some are serviceable to all,
some only to a few. Some are feeble, some strong. Some are bitter,
some sweet. Some burn, some soothe. Some are beautiful, some
unsightly. Some can stand alone, some need support.
Every brain is a world any of these may grow in, and in which
some must grow. For the seeds of some are carried about in the air.
The seeds of others circulate in the blood. Others come from the
heart. Some also are the growth of good seeds deposited in the
mind by human intention and care.
What, then, are the ideas which have been implanted, or have
somehow come to exist, in the minds of these inmates of the
hareem? As a rule they have been taught nothing. Not even their
religion. They have not been permitted to enter a Mosk at the time of
prayer. All the ideas which get established in the minds of educated
women in our happier part of the world, through some religious
instruction, through some acquaintance with history, or art, or
science, or poetry, or general literature, have never had a chance in
the minds of the ladies of Cairo. They were left to those ideas, the
germs of which float about in the air, or circulate in the blood, or
come from the heart. And the only air that could convey ideas to
them was that of the hareem; first of the hareem in which they were
brought up, then of the hareem in which they must pass the
remainder of their days. They have never breathed, and will never
breathe, any other air. And as to the ideas, the germs of which are in
the blood, and which come from the heart, they never had any
chance of regulating them. Womanhood came upon them at the age
of ten. Many were married at twelve. Why, before it could have been
possible, had the attempt been made, for them to receive the ideas
that come from religion, literature, poetry, science, art, or history, the
germs that come from the blood, and from the heart, had got
possession of the whole ground, and had absorbed all the nutriment
the ground contained. There was no room for, nor anything to feed,
any other ideas: for them time was necessary, and that, precisely,
was the one thing it was impossible to have.
No wonder, then, that the lords of the hareem suppose the ground
incapable of producing anything better. Under the circumstances
perhaps they are right. Hence comes their thought that a woman is a
houri, a toy: nothing more. But a toy that is very liable to go wrong:
perhaps they are right again under the circumstances: and so must
be carefully guarded. All experience, however, teaches that there is
nothing so difficult, almost so impossible to guard. This is a case in
which no bars or sentinels can save the shrine from profanation,
unless the goddess within herself will it. The supple and soured
guardians, too, are often useless; often, indeed, the intermediate
agents in the very mischief they were to guard against. And so the
toy goes wrong. And then it must be ruthlessly crushed. The men
have their business, their money-making, their ambition, their
society, their religion. In their minds all these implant counteracting
ideas. And yet all these we are told are with them sometimes feeble
in comparison with the ideas that come from the blood. How, then,
can we wonder that the frailer, and more susceptible minds, being
absolutely deprived of all counteracting influences, should at times
become the victims of their susceptibility and frailty? Nor need we be
surprised that, when detected, their brothers, and fathers, and
husbands should avail themselves of the permission, given both by
law and custom, to wipe out their disgrace, by putting out of sight for
ever the cause of it. Disgrace they feel keenly; and pity is not one of
their virtues.
CHAPTER XLIV.
CAN ANYTHING BE DONE FOR THE EAST?
Well begun is half-done.
Can the oriental mind be roused into new life and activity? Can it
be made more fruitful than it has proved of late, in what conduces to
the well-being of communities, and of individuals? I see no reason
why Egypt and Syria should not, in the future, as they did in the past,
support populous, wealthy, and orderly communities, which might
occupy a creditable position, even in the modern world, in respect of
that moral and intellectual power, which is the distinguishing mark of
man. But what might bring about this desirable result among them
could only be that which has brought it about among other men.
The first requisite is security for person and property. No people
were ever possessed of this without advancing, or were ever
deprived of it without retrograding. The pursuit of property is the
most universal, and the most potent of all natural educators. It
teaches thoughtfulness, foresight, industry, self-denial, frugality, and
many other valuable, if secondary and minor virtues, more generally
and effectually than schools, philosophers, and religions have ever
taught them. But where the local Governor, and the tax-collector are
the complete lords of the ascendant, the motive to acquire property
is nearly killed; and where it does in some degree survive, it has to
be exercised under such disadvantages, that it becomes a discipline
of vice rather than of virtue. Such, for centuries, has been the
condition, under the rule of the Turk, of these by nature, in many
respects, highly-favoured countries. The first step, then, towards
their recovery must be to give them what they never have had, and
never can have, we may almost affirm, under Eastern despots,
perfect security for person and property. That would alone, and in
itself, be a resurrection to life. It would lead on to everything that is
wanted.
An auxiliary might be found in (which may appear to some equally,
or even more prosaic) a larger and freer use of the printing press,
that is, of books and newspapers. This would, of course, naturally,
and of itself, follow the security just spoken of. It would, however, be
desirable in this fargone and atrophied case, if some means for the
purpose could be discovered, or created, to anticipate a little, to put
even the cart before the horse, and to introduce at once, I will not
say a more extended use, but the germ of the use, of books and
newspapers. I am afraid the effort would be hopeless, as things are
now; and I know it would spring up of itself, if things were as they
ought to be. Still the effort might be made. It is the only useful
direction in which there appears to be at present an opening for
philanthropic work.
And, to speak sentimentally, what country has a more rightful
claim to the benefits of the printing press than Egypt? It is only the
modern application of the old Egyptian discovery of letters. To carry
back to Egypt its own discovery, advanced some steps farther, is but
a small acknowledgment that without that discovery none of our own
progress, nor much, indeed, of human progress of any kind, would
ever have been possible. There are a printing press, and even a kind
of newspaper at Cairo, and, of course, at Alexandria; and at
Jerusalem it is possible to get a shopkeeper’s card printed. But what
is wanted is that there should be conferred on the people, to some
considerable proportion—if such a thing be possible—the power of
reading; and that there should be awakened within them the desire
to read. No efforts, I think, would be so useful as those which might
have these simple aims.
The great thing is to stir up mind. Great events and favouring
circumstances do this naturally, by self-acting and irresistible means;
and literature is one of the spontaneous fruits of the stirring of mind
they give rise to. And the work does not stop there; for literature re-
acts on the mental activity which produced it. It stimulates to still
greater exertions; and, what is more, it guides to right, and useful,
and fruitful conclusions. Perhaps it is hopeless to attempt to get
literature to do its work, when the conditions which are requisite for

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Divine Violence in the Book of Samuel

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2021

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Lord Kills and Brings to Life: Introduction  1

1. He Shall Repay the Lamb Fourfold: Retribution and Curse  19

This excerpt comes from a sermon by Bishop Wandel in Copenhagen, Denmark,

Closely related to the endorsement or condemnation of monarchic power,

This story is both intriguing and mystifying: What is so problematic about a

Brueggemann, ‘2 Samuel 21–​24: An Appendix of Deconstruction?,’ CBQ 50 (1988): 383–​97 (392–​

Divine Violence in This Study

context of ancient Israel. Three interlocking approaches will be drawn upon in

Reading divine violence ethically: dissecting the

To chastise violence outright, to condemn it as ‘bad,’ is an ideological opera-

(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1980).

OTL (London: SCM, 1964 [1960]), 105–​6.

University Press, 1992).

(Columbia: University of South Carolina, 2010).

Coherence (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989), 145.

41 Carlie Porterfield, ‘Two-​ Thirds of Religious Americans Believe Coronavirus Is a Message

University Press, 1988), 148. See also pp. 129–​49.

Reading divine violence literarily: the characterisation of God

The inconsistency doesn’t matter; I myself manage to hold large numbers of

University Press, 2019), xi.

characterisation, exacerbated by our modern standpoint, by inconsistencies

1. External descriptions and what other characters say

51 Benjamin J. M. Johnson, ‘Character as Interpretive Crux in the Book of Samuel,’ in Characters

and Characterization in the Book of Samuel, 1–​13 (2).

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 3–​24.

the interrelation of characterisations. These three categories provide a frame-

experience (without which texts would be completely unintelligible) and under-

Reading divine violence politically: beyond (or before)

62 Cf. Gilmour, Representing the Past.

T&T Clark, 2014), 24–​32.

Answer to Any Question?,” in Is Samuel among the Deuteronomists?, 93–​104.

Samuel is by consensus minimal, a position held by Noth himself; he read the

70 Noth, The Deuteronomistic History, 77–​90, esp. 86.

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

Hannah and David,’ BibInt 3 (1995): 213–​31 (229).

(Winter 2017 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://​plato.stanford.edu/​archives/​win2017/​entries/​

any consequences to be considered punishment, they must be judicially deter-

• It must be imposed and administered by an authority constituted by a legal system against

8 In modern philosophical and legal literature, retribution is commonly discussed as a justifica-

Secondly, retribution is proportional to the offence, although a precise defi-

God’s place in their relationship.’

The Lord makes poor12 and makes rich (‫;)מעשיר‬

The Punishment and Consequences of Transgression

In a 1955 article provocatively titled ‘Is There a Doctrine of Retribution in the

Testament, ed. James L. Crenshaw, IRT 4 (London: SPCK, 1983), 57–​87.

vom vergossenen Blut,’ VT 12 (1962): 396–​416.

According to a strict definition of retributive punishment, there must be a ju-

42. Followed by Janzen, ‘David’s “Taking,” ’ 209–​20.

restitution as a judicial sentence.

David’s punishment is that it is ‘multiplied’ rather than specifically fourfold (or

By contrast, the death of David’s newborn is both proportional to David’s sin,

31 Gordon, I & II Samuel, 258–​59.

University Press, forthcoming).

strategy, David has ensured that he is clear of bloodguilt, just as he ensures he is

At that time, Joshua took this oath (‫)וישבע‬, saying:

36 Pyper, David as Reader.

ben”: Vergebung und Vergeltung in 2Sam 12,13–​14,’ BN 151 (2011): 47–​62.

The Lord Kills and Brings to Life: Introduction  1

1. He Shall Repay the Lamb Fourfold: Retribution and Curse  19

Brueggemann, ‘2 Samuel 21–24: An Appendix of Deconstruction?,’ CBQ 50 (1988): 383–97 (392–

OTL (London: SCM, 1964 [1960]), 105–6.

41 Carlie Porterfield, ‘Two- Thirds of Religious Americans Believe Coronavirus Is a Message

University Press, 1988), 148. See also pp. 129–49.

and Characterization in the Book of Samuel, 1–13 (2).

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 3–24.

T&T Clark, 2014), 24–32.

Answer to Any Question?,” in Is Samuel among the Deuteronomists?, 93–104.

70 Noth, The Deuteronomistic History, 77–90, esp. 86.

Hannah and David,’ BibInt 3 (1995): 213–31 (229).

(Winter 2017 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/

Testament, ed. James L. Crenshaw, IRT 4 (London: SPCK, 1983), 57–87.

vom vergossenen Blut,’ VT 12 (1962): 396–416.

42. Followed by Janzen, ‘David’s “Taking,” ’ 209–20.

31 Gordon, I & II Samuel, 258–59.

ben”: Vergebung und Vergeltung in 2Sam 12,13–14,’ BN 151 (2011): 47–62.