1 and 2 Samuel: same gender marriage (men)

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1 Sam 18-20, 2 Sam 6:

Marriage as a sacrament between a man, a woman (who he refuses to sleep with again after she rebukes him for dancing ½ naked in front of the help), and her brother with whom the man has made a lifetime commitment

1 Sam 17:58

* Saul said to David, “whose son are you?  The youth, David, answered “the son of your servant Jesse of Bethlehem.”  He finished speaking to Saul and the soul (nefesh) of Jonathan  was bound (niqsherah) with the soul of David, and he loved Jonathan as his own soul  (canaphsho).

The verb qasher is usually translated “conspired.”  In this instance, it is in binyan nifal, the passive binyan, which would the translation “the soul of David was conspired with the soul of Jonathan.”  The conclusion of the verse is explicit:  David loves Jonathan as if they were one.  That should be referenced against Gen 2:24, in which man and woman become “one flesh” (“basar achad,. “  The fact that the text says David loved Jonathan as “nefehso,” “his soul,” suggests that this was more than simply an affair of the flesh, more than simply a matter of reproduction.

* That day, Saul took him and did not permit him to return to his father’s house. 

The verb in this verse is yiqachehu—the same verb we have noted in the Tamar/Judah narrative is indicative of acquiring a woman for the purpose of producing progeny.  Further, we note that Saul did not permit David (ntano) to return to his father’s house:  the language of the text is consistent with that of a contract between a patriarch and a female with whom he creates a contract for production of progeny.

In case there was any doubt about what was going on…

* Then Jonathan made a contract with David, as he loved him as his own soul.  Jonathan stripped off the robe that was on himself, and gave it to David, and his armor, and his sword, and his bow and even his belt.

Literally and metaphorically, Jonathan disarmed himself for David, making himself vulnerable.

* David went out wherever Saul sent him, he prospered, and Saul put him over all the soldiers, and it was good in the eyes of all the people, and also in the eyes of Saul’s servants.

We can infer from from this that the love and the contract between David and Jonathan did not mean that David was effeminate:  it did not make him less of a man as a warrior, and did not make him less of a man in the eyes of those he led, either the soldiers, the people, or those who were directly subservient to Saul.

* When they came, David returned from killing the Philistines.  The women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet Saul the king, with tamborines m with joy and with officers.

Shalishim has been translated as ‘musical instruments,” however this is the only instance in which it has been translated thus.  Elsewhere, it is translated “captains,” “officers,” “princes”  or “numbers.” The discrepancy in translation makes no sense.  It does make sense, however, that the women came out joyfully, and that they were joined by numerous members of Saul’s staff, since it has already been noted that David’s deeds were “good in the eyes of the people and of Saul’s servants.”

* The women answered and played and said:  Saul has slain his thousand, and David his ten thousand.  This was evil in Saul’s eyes, and he said “they give David ten thousand, and they give me a thousand.  More, for him, is only the kingdom.  And Saul faulted David from that day onward.

From this we learn that not only has David’s manliness not been affected by his love for and his contract with Jonathan, but his love for and his contract with Jonathan is NOT the cause of Saul’s enmity for him.  Saul’s enmity derives from David’s prowess.  The text makes no reference at all to David’s skill in warfare and his love for and contract with Jonathan.

* It came to pass the next day that an evil spirit from G-d came upon Saul, and he raved in the midst of the house.  David was playing with his hand, as usual.  Saul had a spear in his hand, as usual.  Saul threw the spear, saying “I will pin David to the wall.”  David escaped from him twice.  Saul feared David because G-d was with him and had departed from Saul.  Saul removed him from his presence and placed him [as] commander of a thousand and he went out and came before the people.  David prospered in all his ways and G-d was with him.  And when Saul saw that he prospered, he was in awe of him.  All Israel and Judah loved David, because he went and came before them.

* Saul said to David, “Here is my older daughter Merav.  I will give her to you as a wife, only be my superman (ben-cha’il, man of valor) and fight G-d’s battles. Saul said “My hand won’t be on him.  The hands of the Philistines will be on him.”  David said to Saul, “who am I and what is my life or what is the life of my father’s family in Israel that I should be bridegroom to the king?

            Chayay mishpahat avi is a complex smichut—the life of the family of my father—what is my heritage/pedigree?  It’s one thing for David, the shepherd boy, to construct a contract with Jonathan, the son of a king, if there is no intent for progeny to result from the contract.  However, Saul is proposing that David take a king’s daughter to produce his progeny.  David, the shepherd boy, asks Saul why he thinks David should enter into a contract whereby the daughter of a king should produce progeny for a shepherd boy.

* At the time that Saul’s daughter Merav should have been given to David, she was given to Adriel the Mecholathite as a wife.  Saul’s daughter Michal loved David, and they told Saul and the thing was agreeable in his eyes.  Saul said, “I will give her to him, and she will be a snare for him, and the hand of the Philistines will be on him.”  Saul said to David, “Today, you will be the bridegroom of the second daughter.”  Saul commanded his servants, “Speak to David secretly, and say the king delights in you, and all his servants love you, now be the king’s bridegroom.”  Saul’s servants spoke those words in David’s ears.  David said, “It seems trivial in your eyes to be the king’s bridegroom, but I am a poor man and taken lightly.”  Saul’s servants told him that David had spoken those words.

Michal is noted for being the only woman to say she loves someone:  David.  She says it twice.  Yet it seems that love is not sufficient inducement for David to marry her.  David has already given his soul to her brother.  She is offered to him as the producer of his progeny.  Yet he needs to be persuaded that he is of sufficient importance to have the king’s daughter produce his offspring.

* Saul said, “You will say thus to David:  The king does not desire a bride-price but a hundred foreskins from the Pbilistines, to take vengeance on the king’s enemies.” Saul thought to make David fall at the hand of the Philistines.  When his servants told David these exact words, it was clear in David’s eyes that the time to become the king’s bridegroom had not expired.

            It is evident that despite Michal’s love for David, he did not intend to acquire her by sex, and he was not going to obtain her by defeating Saul in battle.  The only other means of acquiring a woman to produce offspring was by purchasing her.  This is the source of David’s disquiet about his family’s background and his own lack of fortune.  “Mohar” has traditionally been translated as “dowry,” but a dowry is the money the bride brings to the marriage, not the price the groom pays to acquire her.  Thus it is preferable to translate it as “bride-price.” 

* David rose and he and his men struck two hundred men of the Philistines.  David brought their foreskins and they gave them to the king, to become the king’s bridegroom.  And Saul gave him his daughter Michal for a wife.  Saul saw and knew that G-d was with David, and Saul’s daughter Michal loved him.  Saul was more afraid of David and Saul was still David’s enemy.  The commanders of the Philistines went out, and as often as they went out, David prospered more than all of Saul’s servants.  His name was highly esteemed.

1 Samuel 19

* Saul told his son Jonathan and all his servants that they should kill David.  Jonathan, Saul’s son, delighted David greatly.  Jonathan told David, saying, “My father Saul seeks to kill you.  Now please protect yourself in the morning, and stay in a secret place and hide yourself.  I will go out and stand beside my father in the field where you are, and I will talk about you to my father.  If I see something, I will tell you.”  Jonathan spoke well of David to his father Saul, and said to him, “The king should not sin against David his servant because he has not sinned against you, and because his actions are good for you.  He put his life in his hand and struck the Philistine, and G-d brought a great deliverance to all Israel.  You saw and rejoiced.  Why would you sin against innocent blood, to kill David without mercy?”  Saul heard Jonathan’s voice and Saul swore “life of G-d, he will not be killed.”  Jonathan called to David, and Jonathan told him all those things.  Jonathan brought David to Saul and he was in front of him, as if it was yesterday.

            David was contracted to both of Saul’s children, both contracts that Saul knew of—the first with Jonathan, when Saul “took” him and refused to let him return to his father’s house, after he had made a contract with Jonathan, and the second with Michal, whom Saul provided to him for a bride-price in flesh. Both of Saul’s children helped him against their father.

* There was war again, and David went out and fought the Philistines and killed them with great slaughter,  and they fled from him.

* An evil spirit from G-d was on Saul.  He sat in his house, his spear in his hand.  David was playing with his hand.  Saul tried to pin David to the wall with the spear.  He slipped away before Saul, and the spear hit the wall.  David fled and escaped that night.  Saul sent messengers to David’s house to watch him and to kill him in the morning.  David’s wife Michal told him, saying “If you don’t save your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed.”  Michal let David down through the window, and he went and fled and escaped.  Michal took the household idols and put them on the bed and put a quilt of goat’s hair at its head and covered it with clothes.  Saul sent messengers to take David.  She said, “He is sick.”  Saul sent the messengers to see David, saying “Make him get up from his bed so I can kill him.”  When the messengers came in, the household idols were in the bed, with the quilt of goat’s hair at the head of it.  Saul said to Michal, “Why did you deceive me and let my enemy escape?”  Michal answered, “Let me go.  Why would I kill you?”

“Malachim” is the same word we found in Genesis 19:  the men who saved Lot from the hooligans of Sodom.  In this instance, the malachim are very definitely not messengers sent from G-d.

* David fled and escaped and came to Samuel in Ramah, and told him all that Saul had done to him.  He went and he and Samuel stayed in Naioth.  Saul was told, saying “David is at Naioth in Ramah.”  Saul sent messengers to take David.  When they saw the company of the prophets prophesizing and Samuel standing presiding over them, the spirit of G-d came on Saul’s messengers and they also prophesized.  When it was told to Saul, he sent other messengers, and they also prophesized.  Saul sent messengers again, a third time, and they also prophesized.  Then he went himself to Ramah, and came to a large well that is in Secu.  He asked, “Where are Samuel and David?  One said, “They are at Naioth in Ramah.”  He went there, to Naioth in Ramah.  The G-d’s spirit came on him, too, and he went on and prophesied until he came to Naioth in Ramah.  He  stripped off his clothes and also prophesied before Samuel, and lay naked all that day and all that night.  Afterwards, they said, “Is Saul also among the prophets?”

1 Samuel 20

* David fled from Naioth in Ramah, and came and said before Jonathan, “What did I do?  What was my wrong?  What was my sin before your father?  Because your father seeks my life.”  He said to him, “Far from it.  You will not be killed.  My father does not do anything, great or small, without disclosing it to me.  Why would he hide this from me?  It is not so.”  David swore and said, “Your fater knows well that I found favor in your eyes, and he has said, ‘Don’t let Jonathan know this, or he will truly be grieved.”  By G-d’s life and the life of your soul, there is only a step between me and death.”

David believes that Saul wants him dead because due to his military success, he is a threat to Jonathan’s inheriting the kingdom.  David believes that Saul believes that if David were to turn the army against him and take the kingdom, Jonathan would not stop him to defend his right of inheritance.  David does NOT believe that Saul wants him killed because he and Jonathan have made their own contract, because Saul was party to that contract.  Saul agreed to the contract between David and Jonathan because he believed if David and Jonathan loved each other and were contracted to each other, it would neutralize the possibility that David might use his military skill against Jonathan, and would ensure that Jonathan would inherit the kingdom.

* Jonathan said, “Whatever your soul says, I will do for you.”

            So much for claims that the contract between Jonathan and David was platonic. 

David said to Jonathan, “Behold, tomorrow is a new day, and I will sit down and stay to eat with the king.  Let me go and I will hide myself in the field until evening of the third day.  If your father misses me at all, say, ‘David begged me to run to his city Bethlehem because it is time for the yearly sacrifice there for all of his family.’  If he says, ‘It’s good,’ your servant is safe.  But if he is furious, know that he has decided to do evil to me.”

“Tara’e” is the verb we have seen twice before:  in Gen 19, it is the verb used by Lot, of the proposed actions of the mob against his guests; in Judges 19, it is the verb used by the old man of the proposed actions of the mob against the Levite.  This gives us the idea that David doesn’t merely believe Saul wants him dead:  David believes that Saul wants him dead in a very nasty, messy way.

“Therefore, deal kindly with your servant, because a contract with G-d brought your servant to you.  And if there is any wrong in me, kill me yourself, why bring me to your father?”

David understands that if he is a threat to Jonathan, it is Jonathan who should deal with him, not Saul.

* Jonathan said, “Far be it from you, if I am assured that my father had decided to do evil to you, wouldn’t I tell you?”   David said to Jonathan, “who will tell me if your father answers you harshly?” 

David believes that it is possible that Saul might order Jonathan to kill him.

* Jonathan said to David, “Come and go out to the field.”  They both went out into the field.  Jonathan said to David, “By the Lord, the G-d of Israel, when I have sounded my father around this time tomorrow, the third day, if there is good about David, I will send for you, and make you hear it.  So may the Lord do to Jonathan, and more, if it pleases my father do to evil to you, I will make you hear of that, and I will send you away, and you may go in peace.  The Lord will be with you as He has been with my father.  And if I am not still alive, you will not show me the kindness of the Lord, and I will not have been killed [by you].  You will not cut off your kindness from my house forever, not when the Lord cuts off David’s enemies from all of the face of the earth.”

The traditional translation of this:  “you will not only while I yet live show me the kindness of the Lord so I will not die…”  does not make sense.  My translation does.   Jonathan says if he learns that his father intends to kill David, he will let David know about it, so David can escape safely, and G-d will be with David as He used to be with Saul.  Jonathan knows if he gets word to David, and if David escapes, Saul will discover that he aided David in his escape, and Saul will kill him instead of David, for disloyalty.  Jonathan says he knows if Saul kills him for aiding David, David will avenge his death, and G-d will help him defeat Saul.

The command to not bear false witness means “do not enter into a contract you have no intention of keeping.”  The command to not take G-d’s name in vain do not mean “do not use G-d;s name as a bad word;”  it means do not invoke G-d as a witness to a contract you have no intention of keeping.  Jonathan takes David outside to make this contract in the open, where they are available to the eyes of G-d. Jonathan wants G-d as a witness to this contract he is making with David against his father.  In making G-d a witness to the contract, Jonathan is indicating his sincerity to David: 

* Jonathan made a contract with David’s house:  “G-d require it from the hand of David’s enemies.” 

Jonathan not only invokes G-d as a witness, he involves G-d in the contract:  that G-d will compel Saul to keep the contract Jonathan made with David.

* Jonathan made David swear again to his love for him, for he loved him as he loved his own soul.  Jonathan said to him, “Tomorrow is a new day, and you will be missed:  your seat will be empty.  On the third day, you will go quickly, and you will come to the place where you hid on that workday and you will stay next to the stone Ezel.  I will shoot three arrows to the side, as if I shot at a target.  I will send the lad:  Go find the arrow.  If I say to the lad, ‘The arrows are on this side of you, get them,’ come because it is safe and there is nothing [bad], by G-d’s life.  But if I say, ‘The arrows are far from you,’ go, because G-d has sent you away.  And the agreement that you and I have spoken of, G-d is with us forever.”

Jonathan makes David reconfirm their contract, reasserting their love, and tells David how he plans to signal Saul’s intent to him.  Jonathan concludes, as Ruth did in her contract with Naomi, saying that G-d is with both of them.

* David hid himself in the field.  When the new day came, the king sat to eat.  The king sat in his usual seat, the seat by the wall.  Jonathan stood, and Abner sat by Saul’s side.  David’s place was empty.  Saul did not say anything that day.  He thought, “It is fate,  He is unclean.”  On the day, the second day. David’s place was empty.  Saul said to his son Jonathan, “Why has Jesse’s son not come either today or yesterday to the meal?”  Jonathan answered Saul, “David begged me to go to Bethlehem.  He said, ‘Please let me go, because our family sacrifice is in the city, and my brother has commanded me [to go].  If I have found favor in your eyes now, let me get away and see my brother.’  And that is why he has not come to the king’s table.”

* Saul’s anger burned at Jonathan, and he said, “You are the son of perverse rebellion.  Do I not know that you choose Jesse’s son to your own confusion and the confusion of your mother’s nakedness?”

In this reference to “confusion” we see echoes of Lev 18:  the confusion of family line and inheritance.  That understanding is reinforced by Saul’s reference to Jonathan’s mother’s nakedness:  Jonathan’s descent from Saul, his right of inheritance from Saul, is unquestioned.  Yet he is choosing to defend David, the son (and inheritor) of another family line, over his own inheritance interests.  The “perversion” Saul refers to is not a matter of sexuality, but the perversion that an uncontested heir might voluntarily renounce his claim to inheritance to of another family line.

* “For as long as Jesse’s son lives on the earth,  you will not be established nor your kingdom.   Now send and bring him to me, for he must die.”  Jonathan answered his father, saying, “Why kill him?  What did he do?”  Saul threw his spear at him to hit him.  Jonathan knew that his father had determined to kill David.  So Jonathan rose from the table in fierce anger, and did not eat on the new day, the second day, because he grieved for David, and because his father dishonored him.

This is traditionally translated “he dishonored his father.”  But the subject of the sentence is “avi:” his father, not Jonathan.  It was Saul who dishonored Jonathan, by determining to kill David, who had done no wrong, to protect Jonathan’s claim to inheritance. 

* In the morning, Jonathan went out into the field at the time appointed with David, and a little lad was with him.  He said to the lad, “Run, please find the arrows that I shoot.”  The lad ran and he shot the arrow past him.  When the lad came to the place of the arrow that Jonathan had shot, Jonathan  said, “Isn’t the arrow beyond you?”  And Jonathan called after the lad, “Hurry, be quick, don’t stay.”  Jonathan’s lad picked up the arrow and came to his master.  The lad did not know anything.  Only Jonathan and David knew the matter.  Jonathan gave his weapons to the lad and said to him, “Go, bring them to the city.”  The lad went.  David rose out of the south side and fell on his face to the ground, and bowed to the ground three times and they kissed one another and wept for each other, but David more [than Jonathan].  Jonathan said to David, “Go safely, for both of us have sworn in the name of G-d saying, ‘G-d will be between us and between my seed and your seed forever.’

With this we are back at Leviticus 18 and the book of Ruth, and the fact that the matter at issue is not sexuality, but of progeny and inheritance.  In this, Jonathan makes the same declaration to David that Ruth made to Naomi:  that not only are THEY joined before G-d, but their progeny are united, too.

1 Samuel 21

* And he rose and  left, and Jonathan went to the city.

We see from this that not only did David enter into contracts with both of Saul’s children, but also that both of Saul’s children protected him, both lied for him, both deceived their father for him.  We see that David understood the importance of the matter of inheritance:  he was reluctant to accept Michal as the producer of his progeny, because he knew his family was less exalted than Saul’s.  We also see that Jonathan recognized the significance of the matter of inheritance, and nullified it by re-constituting the contract with David to join their family lines, rather than disowning himself and giving his inheritance to David, or by compelling David to do the same.  As with the contract in the book of Ruth, this is marriage equality at its finest.