The Mirror in my Mind

My attempt to watch the new series House of David came to a swift end when about twenty or so minutes in, we were told by Michal in voice over that the Amalekites and their King were evil Cannibals (in addition to being evil tormentors of the Israelites). Now it's been years and years, but as far as I remember from Deutoronomy, a) the Amalekites/Israelites conflict sounds pretty standard for ancient world warfare between neigbouring tribes, with neither having the upper hand for long, until b) Samuel, speaking for God, orders Saul to wipe them out (as in, men, women, children and livestock) and Saul doesn't do that completely but lets the King and some of the livestock survive, and that is why God's favour is taken from Saul and transferred to David. Now, divine orders to commit genocide sound quite different to 20th century onwards people for all the obvious reasons, but making an entire group of people into essentially fantasy Orcs is surely not the answer in how to tackle that narrative. I remember the 1985 movie King David (starring Richard Gere, not exactly a cinematic masterpiece, but actually trying to do engage with the biblical story beyond the "plucky little guy vs giant, little guy wins" narrative of David vs Goliath) making the repeated clashes between Prophets and Kings (not just Saul vs Samuel, but also later David vs Nathan) be a power struggle similar to the medieval Emperors vs Popes ones, with neither side the eternal good guys or eternal villains, each side sometimes is in the wrong and sometimes in the right from our then 20th century perspective), with the order to wipe out an entire people exactly as appalling presented as it sounds like.

From what I remember, the aborted series Kings which tranferred the entire Saul, his family and young David saga to the 20th century, didn't really do an equivalent of the Amalekites story but did not present anyone as evil cannibals, either, but heavily leant into the "everyone is shades of grey" interpretation. In German literature, the most famous work engaging with the David story is probably Stefan Heym's Der König David Bericht. (Stefan Heym: German Jewish writer, escaped 1935 to the US, post WWII returned to East Germany, had a complicated relationship with the East German government from 1956 onwards.) To simiplify a complicated book, in Der König David Bericht, Solomon after David's death commissions a book glorifying his father, our investigating hero inevitably comes across all the crappy stuff David did as well, and despite him already toning this down in his report, Solomon decides to while not killing the investigator surpress the report entirely and to add insult to injury steal Ethan the investigator's wife and claim authorship of a love song Ethan wrote about her. This novel was published in West Germany first in 1972 despite Heym still living in East Germany, in East Germany a year later, and in the Westt definitely was seen as Heym tackling Stalinism, the rewriting of the past and censorship by the state in his present via the biblical story.

The second most famous German written novel engaging with these biblical stories is Der Brautpreis by Grete Weil. Like Heym, Grete Weil (who was friends with Klaus and Erika Mann in her youth) was a German-Jewish writer who escaped the Nazis but in harder conditions - she went to exile in the Netherlands, not the US, which meant that once the Nazis arrived there, she could only survive in hiding. Which she did, but her husband was captured, sent to a concentration camp and murdered. Der Brautpreis is written from Michal's pov, and in Weil's interpretation, Michal's falling out with David whom she hid and saved his life when her father Saul persecuted him is not because, as in the bible, she scorns his dancing; she stops loving him out of disgust when he pays the bride price her father demanded as part of the power struggle between the two men, said price (biblically) consisting of a hundred Philistine foreskins. By doing this (and even doubling the price), David stops being who Michal fell in love with and reveals himself no better than who he fought against.

Note what both writers have in common: they don't focus on the "David vs Goliath" part of the story, though it is in there. Just not as the main story. What I find fascinating about the biblical David is how complex a person he comes across, because the biblical version does heroic as well as ruthless or egotastic things, and not just from the 20th century onwards pov; obviously David sending Uriah to his death so he can have sex with Uriah's wife Bathseba is meant to be a bad thing in the contemporary context as well.

For me, the most compelling part of that particular story and what makes me never entirely lose sympathy with David is the aftermath, i.e. when God according to Nathan punishes David and Bathseba by taking their first born child. As long as the child is sick, David does penance and is on his knees praying and fasting. When the child dies, he stops doing this, gets up and starts eating again, to the confusion of his attendants. And then we get this:

21 His attendants asked him, “Why are you acting this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat!”

22 He answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ 23 But now that he is dead, why should I go on fasting? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”

24 Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba, and he went to her and made love to her.

This reaction to loss and grief is so viscerally relatable to me.


On a personal level, this also why the young David in Kings is the least interesting character in the show to me - he's too good to be true golden retriever boy, with not even a hint of the moral ambiguity to come - and why I'm still looking for a fictional David who fine, can start out as a well meaning youngster, but should show the potential for the future ruthless King, while conversely older and old David should be not just another tyrant, that would be going too far in the other direction. (And okay, obviously the relationship with Jonathan should be there and important, looking bewildered at you, Kings, for letting the two be hostile rivals instead of bffs with at the very least homoerotic undertones.) Because this new show on Amazon Prime had been called House of David, not David, I had been hoping they were aiming for the entire story, including later on the complete mess that are David's children. But I can't get over the Amalekites as bloodthirsty cannibals in the very first episode to find out, and the fact the show felt it needed to do that doesn't augur well for future complexity anyway.