Customer Reviews

The Life of David (Jewish Encounters)

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This latest by Robert Pinsky is perhaps his best work. The author's goal is to understand the complex, paradoxical life of David, not to deconstruct David according to post-modern analysis, biblical hermeneutics, or text-criticism. It's a lovely book to read since its subject is actually Pinsky's love affair with the biblical portrayal of David. As others have loved David, despite his faults, so too does the author.

Part of the charm of this volume is Pinsky's luxurious prose. Thus, for example, the author comments on David's lament when David learns that his general Abner has been murdered: "Where the lament for Saul and Jonathan is like a fountain, this poem is like an engraved amulet, implicit and enigmatic, where the earlier dirge is full-throated. A lament for one who is betrayed rather than one who falls in battle..."

If the reader is looking for analysis of what the Bible "means",
this is not the book for you. For those who have always been
irresistibly attracted to the Bible's poetry and want to find a soulmate, this is a volume to read and treasure.

Reading Robert Pinsky's work, one finds great difficulty placing the book in any particular genre. Biographic analysis of biblical characters seems something of a rage at the moment, some excellent, some not. "The Life of David," however, does not fit well with the genre. Unlike the Biblical scholar Baruch Halperin's brilliant "David's Secret Demons" Pinsky eschews footnotes or deep textual analysis. Instead, taking a poet's view, we see here a sort of emotional/artistic portrait of this most complex of biblical characters. Some may find frustrating the way the author moves over the story often moving down strange tangents only to circle back later.

To call the prose of a former laureate poetic may seem odd, but one must consider how well Pinsky textures his words. Perhaps given David's own poetic nature, only one who shared his great love of language could bring the King of Israel to life. While the trip may on occasion grow strange, those who wish to deepen their understanding of King David will find much here to give food for thought.

Was King David pious? Was he a holy man who was divinely inspired to compose the biblical book of Psalms, the charismatic ideal leader whose offspring would never cease to lead Israel because he was so good, whose descendant would be the messiah who would save the world, a man chosen because of David's praiseworthy behavior? Or was he, like all men and women, sometimes good, sometimes ruthless, sometimes embarrassingly bad? Did he commit adultery with Bat Sheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite and have Uriah murdered, as the prophet Nathan berated him? Did he raise children who killed their brothers, one of whom raped his sister, and at least one of whom, Solomon, built temples for idol worship? Was he responsible for the death of his infant child when it was born and for the death of tens of thousands of his people in a plague?

Or, as the majority of people claim, did he do no wrong. Did Bat Sheba have a divorce decree that made David's liaison with her legal, and besides, did Uriah force David to give him Bat Sheba as a wife by blackmailing him when he was killing the giant Goliath, and therefore the marriage was illegal, as the Talmud contends? Robert Pinsky portrays David as a human being as the plain meaning of the biblical text in this beautifully written, lyrical, presentation of his life.

Pinsky is not alone in seeing the human fault-filled David. Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz in his Biblical Images tells his readers that they shouldn't expect an idealized portrayal of biblical figures because: "The great men and women who serve as examples and models for all generations are not described only in terms of glowing admiration. Their failings, failures, and difficulties are described."

Pinsky describes the events in David's life and comments on them. He also highlights difficulties in Scripture; how, for example, there are sometimes two accounts of an episode with different details in each of them, such as I Samuel 26:10-25 and 24:1-22, where David has an opportunity to kill King Saul who was chasing him to kill him, but David spared his life. Scholars conclude that there is an early source (chapter 26) supplemented by a later one (24). And there are other kinds of problematical texts that Pinsky addresses. Since David had served as King Saul's aid in playing music when the king became depressed, why didn't he recognize David when he asked permission to fight the giant Goliath?

Pinsky tells facts most people don't know. David's sling, for example, was a well-known, efficient weapon in those days and for centuries thereafter. "The slinger was more mobile than the archer, and with a greater accurate range, some say with a more damaging projectile. The Romans had medical tongs designed specifically for removing the stones or lead bullets shot by sling to penetrate a soldier's body, as David's stone penetrated the skull of Goliath."

Why then do many Jews and non-Jews see David as an unsullied hero? David was not the only biblical figure who was totally reinvented and injected with a new gregarious legendary personality, made pure, and sanctified totally out of character. There is, among others, the prophet Elijah, who during his biblical life was an impatient, youthful, anti-government, vigorous personality - he ran after his king and kept up with his fleeting horses. God, says the Bible, was so displeased with Elijah's overzealous anger against his people's idol worship that he ended his prophetic mission and killed him - in the metaphor of Elijah rising to heaven in a fiery chariot. Yet, legends resurrected Elijah as an old man with a flowing beard dedicated to helping the distressed, and preparing to solve human problems by bringing the messiah. Why were David and Elijah transformed?

The new David and Elijah represent the needs of the new tormented, weak, and exiled generations for caring, not debased, ever-successful heroes. Thus the focus on David switches from his mundane and shocking acts to his successes. He united the tribes of Israel in the past, fought for his people, and never lost a battle, and his descendant can lead Israel and do so now.

In this book Robert Pinsky makes a Biblical story most of us know (or at least think we know) come to life for he makes David, the poet-king, and his world (a world of clans and the bloodshed that goes with it that was in the process of becoming a nation of laws) somehow familiar to us. Here is the young David who nimbly kills Goliath who (among other things) is his cousin. (David is descended from Ruth the Moabite who followed Naomi while Goliath is descended from Ruth's sister Orpha, who stayed in Moab.) Here is David sending his parents to Moab and safety from Saul and here is David killing two thirds of the Moabites. And then, when told that he can no longer go out and risk himself on the battlefield (that's just not what kings do), David has a mid-life crisis with Bat-Sheba. And here is David, so old he can no longer find warmth, not only finding a way to out-smart his general Joab and his priest and make Bat-Sheba's son his heir but to ensure that his legacy endures.

But this is more than a story about one man (even a great if flawed man) growing from youth to old age. It is also a story about a king who somehow forges of disparate clans a nation of Judah and Israel. Here is David moving his capital from Hebron (where he ruled for seven years) to Jerusalem (a city claimed by neither Judah nor Israel). Here is David taking a census of the people (not counting the tribes but the people); here is David building his city--making of it a true capital, though it will be left to his son Solomon to finish the job. And here too is resistance to David. Resistance that, we are told, comes even from God with the census. And here is David triumphing over all of that in the end. For by the time he lies on what will be his death bed, his wife bat-Sheba can tell him truly that "the people" are watching. (Not this tribe or that, but the people.) An amazing accomplishment.

And, in the end, it is this triumphing over all the odds that I think so attracts Robert Pinsky to David. Pinsky is often repelled by what David does--he more than once compares his actions to that of a Mafioso--but he is in some awe of what this poet-king achieves. For against all the odds, this youngest son of Jesse, this descendant of a Moabite, forges together a people. And sings of it too.

This is in a way a surprising work. One would have expected a poet like Pinsky to have somehow concentrated on the work which was the Jewish Tradition attributes to King David, the work which is arguably the greatest body of religious poetry ever written, Tehiilim( Psalms). Instead Pinsky retells the whole story of David chronlogically.He retells the story and often artfully reinterprets it .He does this by making wide-ranging and often telling literary comparisons. In the course of this he rejects a basic apologetic line which sees David only as king of virtue, and ancestor of the Messiah to come. He tries instead to see David whole in all his flawed greatness.
In the course of reading this work I learned much about David some of which I should have known about before. I believe that the great share of readers will find much to learn here not only about David, but about the Biblical world of which he is a part.
Nonetheless there are essential perhaps most essential elements in the life of David , that I believe are not fully treated here. Above all David's relation to G-d , a relation so intensely and powerfully given in Tehillim is not really studied here.

A challenge to digest perhaps for the intellectual lazy,but well worth the effort. As some one already summed " About a Poet,For a Poet,By a Poet" In short Mr. Pinsky, Bravo!

All you could ever want to know about David and a little more...Fascinating insight and information such as the fact that David may have been/probably was related to Goliath...

It's a shame it couldn't have been presented in a more readable style. That diminishes the book, but doesn't offset the value of reading the book to learn more about David, one of the Bible's most intriguing, most human characters.

Still, the best discripton of David comes from the Psalms, one not written by him: "He ruled with integrity of heart..."

Doesn't say he was a perfect person or that he was anything but human...but he had "integrity of heart..." That says a lot about David's life condition and, we hope, ours, too.

As a previous poet laureate of America,Pinsky is naturally attracted to the psalmic musical reputation of Kind David and his fairytale rise from shepherd boy to king in three easy stages - kill a giant, befriend a king,take his throne. This perspective runs throughout the book as the author rhymes his way along in no particular order immersing and sometimes drowning the reader in the violent, pathos ridden, sexual exploits of our hero.
In 'The Life of David'one has to agree with the view that King David was a deeply flawed character. The Biblical sentiment that his throne 'shall be established forever' does not imply an endorsement of David himself as a role model for a Messiah and in fact the prophet Nathan roundly condemns King David for his evil acts aganst God and tells him his descendants will suffer as a result of his murderous deeds. Having had Uriah killed so he could marry his wife, he also brought destruction on 70,000 Israelites through his misbehaviour. Hardly an exemplar for a future Messiah. Pinsky chooses, in my view wrongly,to discount these Davidic faults as not outweighing his golden features.
In fact in normative Judaism of biblical times messianism did not appear until the time of Daniel in the second century BCE, so King David cannot be the basis for a Messianic figure for previous and present generations. Unfortunately for conventional scholarship there is no one else to look to.

When it comes to the descriptions of Messiahs seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we perhaps see a clue to the real figures that originated messianic ideas. Messiahs, because the Qumran-Essenes, possesssor/authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls,wrote about two, and possibly three Messiahs. One royal, one priestly and one like Moses. The royal figure was certainly not King David and the priestly figure is not suggested in the Pentateuch or any succeeding Hebrew text. As Professor Joseph Fitzmyer, of the Catholic University,Washington, notes " it is a surprise to see a priestly figure become part of the Qumran community's messianic expectations, because there is little in the Hebrew Scriptures itself about a future priest". He finds no reasonable explanation for this phenomena.
Of course there has to be an explanation and that is another story,but Pinsky does not try and look for one on behalf of David,let alone for a priestly figure, outside of this Davidic world.
Nevertheless, granting the author poetic licence,he gives us revealing angles on a fascinating if devious sexually avaricious character who reminds one of quite a few contemporary politicans.

This book was very disappointing. It was written in a stream of consciousness style with bizarre attempts to integrate modern analogies and to compare David to modern figures from unrelated fields. I had the feeling that it was written in one weekend without the scholarly research for which I would have hoped.

I thought this book was written in poor taste and I don't know where the author got his information. I know he definitely did not receive it from the Bible. He twisted some of the details of David's life around. Some people should just never write about certain topics. I would never recommend this book to anyone.