Abelard: David's Lament for Jonathan

A friend notes that Peter Abelard (1079-1142) composed a Lament (Planctus) of David for Jonathan. A snippet:

...You now, my Jonathan, 
I mourn above all,
among all delights
there will always be tears.

 Woe, why am I
followed by evil counsel, 
and could give you 
no protection in battle?

 If I had fallen by your side
I would have died happy
for there is nothing greater
than what love will do.

 and living after you
would mean continual dying
since half a soul
is not enough to live.
...

So I have won
an unhappy victory:
what emptiness, 
what short-lived joy
have I had from it.

...

I silence my lyre:
if only I could silence too
my mourning and weeping.
My hands hurt from playing,
my voice is hoarse from crying
and my breathing faint.

       --Peter Abelard (1079-1142)

A more complete version here.

Interesting as a predecessor to the recruiting of Biblical, pagan and historical figures in the Divine Comedy - Dante certainly would have read Abelard. Also, a kind of Christian parallel to Ovid's Heroides, which offer imagined scenes and speeches of mythical women.

Also notable: David's remorse for relying on "the worst counsel."

A note on Michal

Samuel is a book largely about succession -- how one kind of order succeeds, and in so doing, succeeds another. Eli the priest is followed by Samuel the Prophet. Saul's failed kingship is succeeded by David.

These figures would be large in any tapestry representing the stories of Samuel. Others would be smaller, set in the distance - the rather large cast of such characters in varying degrees of presence and importance giving the whole work a rich dimensional sense of space and time.

Take Michal - we see and hear of her only a handful of times, but what a richly suggestive figure she is:

• She becomes the bride of David - after he wins her by slaughtering 200 Philistines.
• She "loved David" and helps him escape through a window from Saul's hired killers.
• She is taken away from David and given to Paltiel by a paranoid Saul.
• She is taken from her husband, and is returned to David - her husband follows, weeping.
• She looks down through a window, "despises David in her heart," then castigates him for vulgarity.
• She dies childless.

Despite an apparent prohibition in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 on re-establishing a marriage with a previous spouse who has subsequently remarried, David demands the return of Michal after he is crowned in Judah following Saul's death. It is important to note by explanation that David had not divorced Michal at this point in time but rather Saul had made the act to break the marriage^[1]. Therefore they were not technically divorced and David had not issued a writ of divorcement according to the biblical law.

Thus she's been a pawn, a symbol of alliance and allegiance, a means of uniting the houses of Saul and David, and dividing them. A complicated and conflicted connector in the succession. We hear her voice once -- at the moment David arrives to bless his house, after the harmonies of his dancing before the ark. Whatever Michal feels, she seems to project the self-image of aristocracy. In her eyes, David has been vulgar - as such, he's beneath the station he's arrived at. His peasant roots are showing. (We've seen Saul's roots -- nothing to put on airs about. Yet the airs are there.) 

With this, the succession of David's house reaches a dead end in Michal. Solomon will be born to Bathsheba.

 

The world of Samuel

The transition from loose confederacy to monarchy in Samuel is fraught with complications.

In 1 Samuel, the story is set in motion by the importunate words of Hannah, the mother of Samuel (1 Samuel 11), to the Lord that he grant her a son, whom she promises to dedicate to His service. (Recall the priest, Eli, at first thinks she is drunk, when in fact she’s moved by inspiration).

Her prayer takes place within a context established at the outset through two opening statements, which, taken together as true, predicate a crisis:

1. In gratitude that her prayer is answered, Hannah offers a song that says, in effect, that the Lord is the author of change:

The LORD³⁰⁶⁸ killeth,⁴¹⁹¹ and maketh alive:²⁴²¹ he bringeth down³³⁸¹ to the grave,⁷⁵⁸⁵ and bringeth up.⁵⁹²⁷

As a result, she says:

The bows⁷¹⁹⁸ of the mighty men¹³⁶⁸ are broken,²⁸⁴⁴ and they that stumbled³⁷⁸² are girded²⁴⁷with strength.²⁴²⁸

(Which will, parenthetically, evoke the symmetrically balanced poem of David at the beginning of 2 Samuel, lamenting the fate of Saul and Jonathan:

How³⁴⁹ are the mighty¹³⁶⁸ fallen,⁵³⁰⁷ and the weapons³⁶²⁷ of war⁴⁴²¹ perished!^{6 )}

^{2. A second key statement is that access to the Lord, intelligence of his will, is intermittent, not always secure, in this time:}

“ …the word of the Lord was rare in those days, vision was not spread about.” (1 Sam. 3:1)

From Eli to Samuel to Saul to David to the House of David, the transition from loose confederacy to a "stable" dynasty lurches along. It's a hostile, murderous world full of unpredictable surprises and wrong turns. What comes about has much to do with the characters' intelligence of the ways of men, and of the Lord, in the many senses of the word.

A bit of knitting

It might be useful to bring together at this point a few of the many rich threads we've been following over the past year or so. The David story in Samuel is clearly about change -- from local tribal rule to the establishment of a nation under a king, for one.

We've talked about some parallels and differences between the Biblical narrative and Homer: Saul-David and Achilles-Odysseus.

In Plutarch we read the lives of Cato, Caesar and Alexander – all three narratives concerned central characters caught up in resisting, or bringing about, large scale changes to the state, society, and government. These stories involved relationships to power, human and divine.

· Cato – the quasi-prophet citizen who saw the inevitability of what flowed from Caesar. Critic of accumulated power. Shepherd of the common people.

· Caesar – agent who effected, but did not live to administer, the transition from Republic to Imperium. Gambler ("Toss the dice high"), strategist, huge risk taker, always calculating.

· Alexander – king who conquered and seduced kings, queens, all the powers of the known earth into the fragile harmony of the cosmos.

And in Plato we've looked at the vision of the philosopher king, whom we might at some point contrast with David, the warrior-poet king. (Something to think about: Plato intends to banish the poets, while David is Israel's chief poet.)

But the overarching story told in Samuel traces the transition from a loose confederation of tribes instructed and governed by priests, judges and perhaps prophets to the establishment of a house – a royal dynasty. What are some of the salient ways in which the basic "plot" of the Bible tale differs from those of Plutarch? The relation of human civil order to God in the Bible vs. that order vis a vis the gods of the Greeks and Romans? 

Opening 2 Samuel

There appear to be some major differences between 1 and 2 Samuel. For one, the triangle Saul - David - God is no longer generating story tension. David rises to what appears to be a seamless bond with the Lord - at least until he spies Bathsheba.

But 2 Samuel also begins with a man, a seeming wanderer:

2  It came even to pass¹⁹⁶¹ on the third⁷⁹⁹² day,³¹¹⁷that, behold,²⁰⁰⁹ a man³⁷⁶ came⁹³⁵ out of⁴⁴⁸⁰ the camp⁴²⁶⁴ from^4480 5973 Saul⁷⁵⁸⁶ with his clothes⁸⁹⁹rent,⁷¹⁶⁷ and earth¹²⁷ upon⁵⁹²¹ his head:⁷²¹⁸ and so it was,¹⁹⁶¹ when he came⁹³⁵ to⁴¹³ David,¹⁷³² that he fell⁵³⁰⁷ to the earth,⁷⁷⁶ and did obeisance.⁷⁸¹² 

He's about to spin a tale -- the tale will not be believed; in fact, speaking the death of Saul will occasion the death of this stranger. David is facing something more threatening than Goliath: a world of complex motives and lies that will demand from him -- and from us readers -- a hermeneutic of suspicion.

The scene of the cave in 1 Samuel 24

As we noted when reading Genesis and Exodus, elaborate descriptions of landscape and topography are conspicuously absent from much Old Testament narrative. So in 1 Samuel 24, the scene of Saul and David in and then outside of the cave, it might pay to consider why this scene occurs in a cave. What is suggested by the curious tale of the king being exposed, as Alter notes, in a double sense, to David, the future king?

Twice in this book, David has the opportunity to kill a very vulnerable Saul from a position of nearly total invulnerability, a quasi invisibility. Does this parallel with the Greek tale of Gyges seem relevant?