Easter is coming up next Sunday, so in honor of Holy Week I thought I’d go a more spiritual direction with the book reviews this week.  I’ve been thinking about what I’ve read and enjoyed that would have a fairly broad appeal, and the story of David came to mind.

I decided several years ago to read the entire Bible.  Some parts are, um, slightly more difficult going than others.  Leviticus, for instance.  I actually sort of like the genealogies; they’re soothing, in a meditative kind of way.  But if you want an exciting story, my favorite part of the Old Testament is definitely anything involving David.  I heard David described somewhere as a great warrior and a great poet, and how can you go wrong with a hero like that?  The poet part is because many of the Psalms are attributed to David; the warrior part comes up mostly in the stories.

I think most people know “David and Goliath”–the boy who defeated the giant with his slingshot.  But that’s just one story, and there are a LOT of good ones.

It starts when Samuel, a prophet, is told by God to annoint one of the sons of Jesse as the next king of Israel.  After looking at Jesse’s crowd of sons, none are right so they have to send out to the field for the youngest and least important, who turns out to be David and the chosen one.

Later on David goes to the court of Saul, the current king, where he marries Saul’s daughter but also becomes so popular that Saul feels threatened and keeps flinging his spear at him, eventually driving him away from the court (I think that would make me leave court too!)

One of my favorite threads in the David story is his friendship with Jonathan, Saul’s son.  Jonathan helps David when he begins to suspect that Saul wants to kill him.  When David flees the court, Jonathan tells him, “Go in peace, for we have sworn friendship with each other in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord is witness between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants forever.'” (1 Samuel 20:42)  Much later in the story, after Saul and Jonathan die in battle and David is king, he asks if there are any of the house of Saul left, and ends up taking in Jonathan’s son.

David’s story is full of friendship, war, love, betrayal.  My other favorite part, after Jonathan, is about David and his son Absalom.  Absalom rebels against his father, and leads an army against him.  Despite this betrayal, David’s chief concern is to order his generals that Absalom is not to be harmed.  David’s forces win the battle, and, despite the order, one of the generals kills Absalom.  When David learns his son is dead, he has this heartbreaking lament, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom.  Would God I had died for you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Samuel 18:33)

David and Bathsheba is probably the other most famous story, after David and Goliath.  David has an affair with the wife of one of his generals, then arranges things so that the general will die in battle.  Definitely not one of David’s better moments!  But that’s one thing I love about Old Testament figures–they’re so human and imperfect!  And they still achieve great things.

As you can see from the citations above, and my title, most of David’s story is in the two books of Samuel.  The last bit is in the Book of Kings, which then goes on to talk about David’s son, Solomon.  If you’re religious (I’m Catholic myself) there’s a lot of good religious aspects to the story of David, and even if you aren’t, it’s a wonderful story.