The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero (29 page)

But why would the biblical authors feel the need to make this case? None of David’s other sons are provided with detailed proofs of paternity, and no one would ever question them. Someone must have thought that Solomon was in fact not David’s son, and it is to this charge that the Bible responds.

Why would Solomon’s descent from David be in question? The most significant issue is Solomon’s name.
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It was the custom in Israel for the mother to name her children. We see this, for example, in the naming of Jacob’s twelve sons by their mothers, Leah and Rachel. Bathsheba therefore was the one to name her son Solomon.
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The child was born, as the Bible admits, after Uriah’s death in Ammon—to which we will return presently. It is thus telling that Bathsheba should name her newborn son Solomon, which means “his replacement.” Bathsheba gives her son a name that memorializes her deceased husband. If David were the father, this would be problematic. In the first place, we would expect David’s son to be named after him, if anyone. Beyond this, we may well wonder what David would make of his son being named in honor of Bathsheba’s first husband. Such a name would practically announce to the world that Bathsheba’s affection still belonged to Uriah. It may have been the mother’s right to name her child, but it is hard to imagine David allowing Uriah’s memory to live on in David’s son.

It is the discomfort that such a situation produces that probably led to Solomon being given a second name in the Bible, Jedidiah. Perhaps lost in translation is the wordplay inherent in this name: Jedidiah, “Beloved of Yahweh,” is etymologically linked to David, “Beloved.” This second name for Solomon—which is never used again—is an attempt to erase the connection to Uriah and replace it with a connection to David.

There is another reason to suspect that Solomon was not really David’s son. Bathsheba was not merely a random beautiful woman. She was the daughter of Eliam, one of David’s warriors. And Eliam, in turn, was the son of Ahitophel—the same Ahitophel who defected from David during Absalom’s rebellion. Solomon was Ahitophel’s great-grandson. If Ahitophel thought that his great-grandson stood in line for the succession to the throne, he hardly would have supported Absalom, which would all but guarantee that Ahitophel’s offspring would never attain the kingship. Ahitophel would defect to Absalom only if he had no reason to think that Solomon might someday be king—because Solomon was not one of David’s offspring.
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The biblical authors tried their best to disguise Solomon’s true father. They created a scenario in which Bathsheba is virtually obligated by biology to become pregnant by David. They created a story in which David acts on the assumption that he is Solomon’s father and in which Uriah acts in a way that publicly ensures this to be the case. But the authors could not overcome two unchangeable facts: Solomon’s name and Bathsheba’s genealogy. Both of these testify to Solomon’s being Uriah’s son, not David’s.

No matter what stories the authors invented, Solomon’s name still identified him as Uriah’s son—and it is safe to say, given the Bible’s detailed rendering of an alternative scenario, that there were those in Israel in David’s day who recognized this fact. The story of the death of the firstborn son was created and inserted to address this lingering problem. Not only does the story make it chronologically impossible for Solomon to be Uriah’s son, but it provides, quite cleverly, a new explanation for Solomon’s name. Now he could be seen as the “replacement” not for Uriah, but for his ill-fated older sibling. This sort of naming is known from the Bible and elsewhere in the Near East. In Genesis 4 Eve gives her third son the name Seth, meaning “God has provided me with another offspring in place of Abel” (4:25), who had died at the hands of Cain. The eighth-century
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Assyrian king Sennacherib, famous for his attacks on Judah during the reign of King Hezekiah, bears a name meaning “Sin [a Mesopotamian deity] has replaced brothers for me.”
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The biblical authors provided an alternative referent for Solomon’s name and thereby removed the last potential link between Solomon and Uriah. They did so, however, at the cost of narrative logic. And in compounding the Bible’s insistence that Solomon, despite his name, could not be Uriah’s son, these authors lead us only more firmly to the conclusion that he was.

The biblical authors present David and Bathsheba’s affair as the story of their child(ren). The reality is that the affair was just like any other: it was about sex. The Bible’s presentation of Bathsheba as unknown to David is probably false. Most likely, David had known her, and had his eye on her, for nearly her entire life. She was, after all, the wife of one of his chosen warriors, the daughter of one of his chosen warriors, and the granddaughter of his trusted advisor. David was always one to take what he wanted, regardless of the claims of others. This is especially true of women, as Ahinoam, Abigail, and Michal could attest. We may imagine that with the army, and Uriah, engaged in a lengthy siege abroad, David saw the opportunity to take for himself the beautiful Bathsheba, whom he had long coveted. It was undoubtedly a surprise to discover that she was already pregnant with Uriah’s child. But this would have been little more than a passing disappointment—after all, he had little invested in the baby, who was not his own. Bathsheba would enter David’s harem as one of his many wives and concubines. The child would become whatever he would become. It was—so David thought—none of his concern.

Solomon had no deceased older brother. He was the first child born to Bathsheba after David took her into his harem. But he was not David’s son; he was Uriah’s. The Bible’s attempts to persuade us otherwise are part of the standard biblical genre of apology. But this is not an apology for David—it is an apology for Solomon. Solomon would become king after David, but he had no right to the throne. Just as pro-David authors created an apology for how David came to reign in place of Saul, so too pro-Solomon authors created an apology for how Solomon came to reign in place of David. How this actually happened we will see presently. The Bible very much wants us to think that it was a natural succession, the son following the father. But it was not.

Adonijah

T
HE STORY OF
S
OLOMON’S
succession—the next time we hear of Solomon after his birth—comes naturally at the end of David’s life. After all his battles, against Israel’s enemies, against Israel itself, and against his own son, David was old and tired. His body, which had carried him to so many victories, had finally broken down: “they covered him with bedclothes, but he was not warmed” (1 Kings 1:1). Even the notion that David needed others to put blankets on him testifies to his physical decline. His courtiers tried to comfort him with the company of a beautiful young girl, named Abishag. There is some irony in this: the man who had used so many women for his own ends now required a woman merely to keep him warm. But to no avail—“the king did not sleep with her” (1:4). No depiction of David’s decline can be more pointed than this: his virility has abandoned him. Although the Bible makes no mention of it, it is only natural to wonder not only about David’s physical health, but about his mental health as well. The Bible’s silence is probably meant to suggest that David was still mentally sound, but the course of events would suggest otherwise.

After Absalom’s death, the next in line for the throne was David’s fourth son, Adonijah. He had only to wait for David to die, and he would become king. Yet for Adonijah—as for Absalom before him—waiting was unacceptable. He declared his intention to make himself king, in both words and actions that will be familiar: “he provided himself with chariots and horses, and fifty men to run before him” (1 Kings 1:5). This is precisely what Absalom had done, and with the same intentions. To make the comparison even clearer, the biblical authors tell us that Adonijah “was very handsome; he was born after Absalom” (1:6). Knowing that Solomon will be the one to succeed David, we can recognize all of this as foreshadowing: Adonijah will be more like Absalom than he might prefer.

As with Absalom, David does not prevent any of this. But this time it is not because Adonijah lives elsewhere or is preparing a coup in secret. Everything was out in the open—and yet David did nothing. Perhaps David did not know—he was, after all, confined to his bed—or perhaps he was incapable of knowing, senility having crept upon him. But everyone else knew, and took sides. Adonijah had important supporters: Joab, David’s general, and Abiathar, one of David’s priests. These were not just two members of David’s court; they were two of David’s oldest and most reliable friends, men who had been with him since the wilderness. For them to abandon David, they must have recognized that the end was coming. If Adonijah was to be king one way or the other, they had a chance to ingratiate themselves with him, to ensure that their status would be maintained in the new administration. Others, however, seem to have found Adonijah’s actions precipitous. The priest Zadok, the general Benaiah, and, crucially, David’s private army refused to follow Adonijah.

Adonijah threw himself a feast to celebrate his coronation. Unlike Absalom, who went to Hebron to have himself crowned, Adonijah had no need to be secretive. He held his feast just outside Jerusalem itself, right under David’s nose. His disdain for David—or at least his belief that David was powerless to stop him—is evident. The guest list for the feast comprised the royal family, though obviously not David, including all of Adonijah’s younger brothers and all of the king’s courtiers. It is clear that Adonijah had every expectation of being crowned and that much of the royal establishment shared his expectation. Naturally, Zadok and Benaiah were not invited, as they did not support Adonijah’s cause. We are also told that Solomon was not invited, which appears to be an insult. All the rest of the princes were there, why not him? According to the biblical narrative, Adonijah would have no reason not to invite Solomon, no reason to think that Solomon alone would be against him. Solomon was not even listed in the Bible’s own record of Adonijah’s opponents. But when we remember who Solomon really was—a relative nobody, not a son of David—the lack of an invitation is easily understood.
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Although the Bible makes out Adonijah to be committing a coup, his self-promotion was probably justifiable. David was in no shape to be in command anymore. If he was unable to get out of bed, he was certainly unable to lead the nation to war. If he was unable to respond to Adonijah’s actions, then he was unfit to make decisions about the fate of Israel. The fact that so much of the royal house supported Adonijah suggests that it was common knowledge that David’s rule, for all practical purposes, had come to an end.
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It is not necessarily the case that Adonijah planned to become king in David’s place, however. It was not uncommon in the ancient Near East for two kings to rule together because one was unable to rule adequately alone. Often this happened when a child attained the kingship—as in the case of the famous fifteenth-century
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Egyptian queen Hatshepsut, who ruled alongside her young son Tuthmosis III. But it also happened when a king became too old to rule effectively and his son became coregent to take up the reins of power—as in the case of Tuthmosis III, who ruled for more than fifty years, and his son Amenophis II, who joined him on the throne for the final two years of his father’s reign.
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The aim of the coregency was to ensure a smooth succession from one monarch to the next, for the sake of both the royal family and the nation. If this was Adonijah’s plan—and since he did not expect to have long to wait for David’s death, it seems reasonable—then he should not be considered a rebel. He was, in fact, acting in the best interests of Israel, and most of David’s court thought so as well.

Bathsheba’s Request

A
DONIJAH’S CORONATION,
whether well-intentioned or not, would never come to pass. According to the Bible, the prophet Nathan told Bathsheba of Adonijah’s plan and advised her to intervene with David on Solomon’s behalf, “so that you may save your life and the life of your son Solomon” (1 Kings 1:12). The biblical authors thus make Nathan out to be the driving force behind Solomon’s rise, while Bathsheba is merely Nathan’s messenger and Solomon knows nothing about any of it. The first puzzling feature here is Nathan’s suggestion that Bathsheba’s and Solomon’s lives would be in danger if Adonijah became king. There is no reason to think that this would be the case. Even if Solomon were Adonijah’s younger brother, at least three steps removed from the throne according to the list of David’s sons in 2 Samuel 3, he would be no threat to Adonijah’s rule. And since Solomon was in fact not part of the royal family, there is no reason that Adonijah should have cared about him in the slightest. Nathan’s warning about an unexplained threat to Solomon’s life seems to serve only as a basis for the competition between Solomon and Adonijah to come.

More important, perhaps, we may wonder: what stake does Nathan have in Solomon in the first place? Even if Solomon were a member of the royal family, why should Nathan prefer that Solomon become king rather than Adonijah? Nothing indicates that Adonijah was ill-equipped to rule; on the contrary, he seemed to have all the ambition and support necessary to take over. Solomon, on the other hand, had not shown in any way that he was prepared for the throne. As one of David’s youngest children—considerably younger than Adonijah, at least—he probably would not have received extensive training to be king. When Adonijah first begins planning for the kingship, we are not told that Nathan and the others sided with Solomon, only that they sided against Adonijah, and thus presumably with David. Nathan’s sudden support for Solomon comes out of nowhere and makes little historical sense—especially when we remember that Solomon was not, in fact, one of David’s sons.