Episode #28 The Sweet Singer of Israel

In this episode, Rabbi Reinman describes the secret anointment of David and his relentless persecution by Saul until his ultimate triumph.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Sweet Singer of Israel

The first of the kings of Judah, and the greatest, did indeed find that perfect balance between king of his people and servant of God. David was the ideal Jewish king, a righteous soul bonded with steel chains of love to God and His Torah, drawing his wisdom, his emotions, his courage and his aspirations from the eternal fountainhead of the holy Torah.

In the synagogue, he prayed and studied with heart-dissolving fervor. In his audience chamber, he was gentle and compassionate. On the battlefield, he was God’s fearless instrument plunging into battle with weapons of the soul even as his hands wielded a sword. He was in love with God and His people, and his love was returned in equal measure.

David was one of the greatest men who ever lived. He appeared at a time when his people had fallen to their lowest point since becoming a nation, when the experiments of the Judges and the interim monarchy had failed, when the future looked bleaker than it ever had. In those dark days, David burst upon the scene like a flash of lightning that illuminates Jewish life to this very day. The passionate verses of the Psalms, most of which he composed,[1] reverberate with such intense spiritual yearning and sheer poetic beauty that they have become an inexhaustible source of solace and inspiration throughout the ages. From the pages of the Psalms springs the vivid image of David, the Sweet Singer of Israel,[2] greeting the dawn with the sweet strains of his harp and the sweeter sounds of his words of love for the Creator.

He was also among the greatest Sages of his time, the head of the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of the Jewish people. The Rambam, in the Introduction to his magisterial Mishneh Torah, enumerates the august custodians of the Oral Tradition as it was passed down from Moses to generation after generation. The great prophet Samuel received the position from Eli Hakohein and passed it on to David, who passed it on to Achiah Hashiloni. And so forth down through the ages. He is also listed among the forty-eight prophets of Jewish history;[3] some of his Psalms are clearly prophetic in nature.

This was the man God chose to sit on the throne of Israel. This was the man whose reign would inaugurate the eternal dynasty of the House of David from which the future Messiah will be descended. This was a man so utterly bonded with God that his kingship would be an extension of the Kingship of God. David was the perfect choice for King of Israel. Had the Jewish people successfully established during the Period of the Judges a unified and stable national community, loyal to God and governed by the Torah alone, David could have become their king and spiritual guide immediately. He could have brought them to the highest levels of spiritual achievement, perhaps even to the messianic fulfillment of the destiny of the world. He could have been the Messiah.

But the Jewish people were not unified in their loyalty to God and His Torah. They were a fragmented, fractious people that needed a conventional king to govern them. God had chosen Saul for that role, and he had failed. Now, David would have to fulfill that role as well.

At first, David had been anointed secretly by Samuel in Bethlehem, but the time for his actual accession to the throne was yet to come. The doomed reign of Saul would first have to play itself out to its tragic end.

As Saul’s reign entered its waning days, he began to suffer from bouts of severe melancholia, and he asked for the services of a harp player to ease his mental torment. His advisors recommended David of Bethlehem, a fine musician, a courageous fighter and a man of wisdom. Saul developed a great affection for the young David. He appointed David to the coveted post of royal arms bearer, keeping him constantly by his side. When Saul fell into one of his black moods, David would play for him and give him some measure of relief.

Meanwhile, the war with Philistia was heating up. The Philistines invaded Judah, and the Philistine and Jewish armies prepared for battle at Socoh. But the battle never materialized. According to the military custom of the time, individual champions would sometimes fight in lieu of the armies, and on this occasion, young David met the dreaded Philistine giant Goliath in single combat. David struck him down with a well-placed stone from his slingshot, and the Philistine army withdrew. Saul then gave David a military command and sent him out into the field, where he conducted one successful campaign after another until his reputation for valor and prowess soon outstripped that of the king.

Before long, Saul realized he was witnessing the prophecy of Samuel unfold as David’s rising star eclipsed his own fading star. Saul’s misstep in Gilgal had derailed his blossoming career and brought him to the point where he was forced to watch his life unravel before his eyes. The painful clarity of his downfall was too much for him to endure. He became even more depressed, and during his bouts of melancholia, he tried to assassinate his brilliant heir apparent, who remained ever loyal and devoted to his sovereign.

In 877 b.c.e., Samuel passed away, and during the funeral of the venerated prophet, the gathered multitudes were electrified by a sensational disclosure. Samuel’s disciples revealed that the prophet had already anointed David as the future king.[4] Afraid that the news would further enrage the king, David fled to the Paran Desert far to the south, where he stayed for three months, until the king again discovered him. From there, he went with six hundred followers to the Philistine city of Gath, hoping that perhaps in Philistia he would finally be beyond the reach of the king.

In Gath, David duped King Achish into believing he was a Jewish renegade ready to side with the Philistines. King Achish granted David’s group the outlying town of Ziklag as a place of residence, confident that he had found a loyal ally in his war against the Jewish kingdom. But when the next battle loomed four months later, the distrustful Philistine generals, who shared authority with Achish, as explained in Chapter 25, refused to allow David and his men to join them at the front. Thus, David found himself back in Ziklag when the climactic battle was fought at Mount Gilboa.

For the Jews, the battle was a major disaster. The Jewish forces were routed and scattered, and the Philistine armies occupied parts of Trans-Jordan and the Valley of Jezreel. Saul and his son Jonathan were among the numerous battlefield casualties. When the tragic news reached David in Ziklag, he delivered a heartbroken eulogy over the two fallen men; parts of this memorable lament are often quoted in eulogies for great Jewish figures to this very day.

At last, the throne was vacant, but still the House of Saul refused to yield. When David, now thirty years old, returned from Ziklag, he took up residence in Hebron and was acclaimed as king in his native land of Judah. But through the manipulations of Saul’s chief minister, the rest of Israel accepted Ish-Boshess, Saul’s surviving son, as the new king; he was crowned and installed in the strategic city of Machanaim in Trans-Jordan. Thus was the nascent Kingdom of Israel temporarily divided into two separate kingdoms, Judah under David and Israel under Ish-Boshess, foreshadowing the future permanent division after the death of Solomon.

For two years, civil war raged, with David’s forces steadily gaining the upper hand, until Ish-Boshess was assassinated by two members of his own palace guard, bringing the conflict effectively to a close. Nevertheless, five more years passed before David made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem in 869 b.c.e. and was acclaimed as the king of all Israel.[5]

The first foreign reaction to the installation of the House of David in Israel came from King Hiram of the Phoenician city of Tyre. Hiram extended the hand of friendship by sending cedars from the forests of Lebanon along with carpenters and stonemasons to assist in the construction of the royal palace, initiating a long period of cordial relations and close cooperation between Phoenicia and Israel.

Philistia, however, reacted by sending two expeditionary forces into Israel, both of which David destroyed. David then carried the war into the homeland of the Philistines, decisively defeating them and capturing the city of Gath.[6] The last tentacles of Philistine occupation had finally been severed.

After eight long decades, the Philistine War had come to an end. The misery and heartbreak Israel had suffered during this climactic war could finally fade into blessed forgetfulness, but the wrenching changes it had wrought in Jewish society would forever change the course of Jewish history. The old society of the Judges, with all its strengths and deficiencies, no longer existed. A new society stood poised in its place, ready to travel an unknown road to an uncertain future.

For the moment, however, the future would have to wait until the present was safely secured. With Philistia defeated, David turned on the other enemies on the perimeter of Israel. He attacked Moab, making it a tributary vassal of Israel. He defeated King Hadadezer of the Aramean kingdom of Zobah in Syria, who had been encroaching on the northern borders of Israel. He conquered Damascus in the north and Edom in the south, placing both under the administration of Jewish governors. He then defeated an Ammonite army reinforced by Aramean mercenaries.

Stung by the defeat, the Aramean kingdoms united against Israel. Calling on the support of the Aramean principalities of Mesopotamia, King Hadadezer mustered a large army and penetrated into Trans-Jordan, where David dealt him a crushing blow at Helam. In the wake of the defeat, the Aramean kings sued for peace and agreed to pay tribute to Israel. Stripped of its Aramean support, the kingdom of Ammon was isolated, and after a long siege of its capital city, it too fell before the Jewish armies.

Israel had now become a formidable regional power, secure within its borders and feared by its neighbors. The wars were finally over for David, except for several subsequent eruptions of hostilities with Philistia, and his remaining years were occupied by the difficult work of unifying his headstrong people, unaccustomed as they were to being governed by a king. But the healing process had begun, and under the guidance of the determined and courageous king, it continued uninterrupted. The society remained free of pagan influences, and the spiritual level began to rise once again. The inauguration of the spiritual monarchy of Judah had been a cautious success, but its future prospects were still much in question.

[1] For the exact divisions of the authorship of Psalms, see Baba Bathra 14b.

[2] II Samuel 23:1.

[3] Rashi, Megillah 14a.

[4] Malbim, I Samuel 25:1

[5] Malbim, I Samuel 25:1

[6] Rashi, II Samuel 8:1