The Story of King David – Inspired or Propaganda?

The story of David is one of the most popular in the Bible.  Many of us learned the biblical story of David and Goliath as children, in which the hero – David, slays the villain – a giant named Goliath.  Theologians often mention that Yahweh called David “a mighty one איש after his own heart” 1 Samuel 13:14. David is hailed as an example of how true, heartfelt repentance results in God’s forgiveness even for a serial sinner whose sins include murder and adultery.  But is all of the story true?

There is evidence propaganda was interwoven into the historical accounts of David, but most importantly the foundation of the narrative, that Yahweh anointed kings over his people, is untrue.

When Samuel is old, he appoints his sons as judges over Israel, but “his sons, however, did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after dishonest gains and took bribes and perverted justice” in 1 Sam 8:1 – 3.  This gives the elders of Israel the opportunity to ask for a king to be appointed “to judge us like all the nations” v 4 – 5.  Samuel prayed to Yahweh, and Yahweh said to Samuel “Listen to the voice of the people in regard to all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them. Like all the deeds which they have done since the day that I brought them up from Egypt even to this day– in that they have forsaken Me and served other gods– so they are doing to you also. Like all the deeds which they have done since the day that I brought them up from Egypt even to this day– in that they have forsaken Me and served other gods– so they are doing to you also.” v 7 – 9.

Samuel told the people the words of Yahweh in v10 – 18, “This will be the procedure of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and place [them] for himself in his chariots and among his horsemen and they will run before his chariots. He will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and of fifties, and [some] to do his plowing and to reap his harvest and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will also take your daughters for perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves and give [them] to his servants. He will take a tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants. He will also take your male servants and your female servants and your best young men and your donkeys and use [them] for his work. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants. Then you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”

Yahweh told Samuel “Listen to their voice and appoint them a king” v22.

In his book Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel, J Wellhausen notes in Chapter VII – Judges, Samuel, and Kings p. 228, in these books “we are not presented with tradition purely in its original condition”, but “overgrown with later accretions”, such that “the earlier narrative has become clothed with minor and dependent additions”.  He goes on to identify inconsistencies in these books, which are quite eye opening.

Wellhausen divides the Davidic narrative into two parts p. 262.  The first, in 1 Sam 14: 52 – 2 Sam 8:18, which contains David’s ascension to the throne, his principal achievement as king – the humiliation of the Philistines and the foundation of Jerusalem, concluding with other remarkable events.  The second, in 2 Sam 9 – 2 King 2, “tells chiefly of the latter years of the king, and carefully traces the steps by which Solomon, whose birth, with its attendant circumstances, is narrated at the outset, reached the throne . . .”.  Wellhausen considers both parts of the narrative to be historical in nature, the first preserved “but with many interruptions and alterations”, and the second ‘mutilated at its commencement, but otherwise almost completely intact”.

In what Wellhausen sees as the old narrative p. 263, David was introduced in 1 Sam 16:18 as “a man of courage and prudence, and of a skilful tongue, and recommended, moreover, by his skill on the harp, came to the king’s court and became his armour-bearer”.  He believes the legend of the encounter with Goliath, in which David is a shepherd boy, to be an accretion.  Also, in 1 Sam 18:6 – 7 women sang at the victorious return of the army “Saul has slain his thousands of the Philistines, and David his tens of thousands”, showing David as a leader in Israel beside the king, a well-known man, not an unknown young man.

Wellhausen states on p. 264, “The insertions are most varied and confusing in the account of the outbreak of the hostility of Saul and David’s flight”.  He calls 1 Sam 19:1 – 7 “a pointless and artificial passage”, continues in v. 10 with Saul casting a spear at David, after which he takes flight for the first time, but at v. 11 he is still at home.  Also, when David makes his escape for the second time, going to Samuel at Ramah in v. 18, in chapter 20 he is at Gibeah as before.  Then David takes flight recognizing King Saul’s hatred toward him, ending up at Nob on his way to Judah, but at 21:10 David departs from Saul, for what appears to be the first time.  Wellhausen believes “in the original narrative the flight took place only once . . . to Judah.”

Wellhausen on p. 266 considers David’s speech in 1 Sam 17:45 – 47 as he goes out to meet Goliath to be “religious language of the post-Deuteronic time”, that is not in the parallel version, but in place of it, a formal act of recognition which Saul pays to his successor.  What’s more, in 2 Samuel 21:19 Goliath was killed by a warrior of Bethlehem named Elhanan, not a shepherd boy named David.

The inconsistencies in the ‘David slew Goliath’ account in particular are evidence that it was an interpolation, to make David look like a mighty warrior of Yahweh.