David’s Rise And Saul’s Demise: Narrative Analogy In 1 Samuel 24-26 -- By: Robert P. Gordon

Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 31:1 (NA 1980)
Article: David’s Rise And Saul’s Demise: Narrative Analogy In 1 Samuel 24-26
Author: Robert P. Gordon


David’s Rise And Saul’s Demise: Narrative Analogy In 1 Samuel 24-26

Robert P. Gordon

Old Testament Lecture, 1979

The narrative segment which is the subject of this paper belongs to the so-called ‘Story of David’s Rise’, to use Leonhard Rost’s title for the second of the three major compositional units which he detected in the books of Samuel.1 In the event, the world of Old Testament scholarship was much more interested in Rost’s arguments for the existence of an originally independent Narrative of Succession - 2 Samuel 9-1 Kings 2, according to the classic formulation. When, in the late 1950’s, the unitary potential of David’s Vorgeschichte began to be recognized - witness the monographs by Nübel (1959), Mildenberger (1962), Ward (1967) and Grønbaek (1971)2 -

Rost’s starting-point was advanced to 16:14, or, with Grønbaek, to 15:1, and his fragmentary approach gave way to a more positive evaluation of the canonical material thus delimited.3

Even so, ‘David’s Rise’ does not represent the same homogeneous blending of sources as is the case with the Narrative of Succession.4 As we read we are more conscious of the individual narrative blocks making up the whole, and of the tensions which their conjoining has imposed on the composite work.5 But this is not the whole story. For whether or not we subscribe to the theory of a large narrative unit separable from the rest of 1 and 2 Samuel, we have to reckon with a high degree of interplay among the various sub-units contained in these chapters. J. T. Willis’s study of ‘comprehensive anticipatory redactional joints’ in 1 Samuel 16–18 neatly illustrates the point: even 16:14–23, which has stoutly defied attempts at harmonization with 17:1–18:5, can be shown to function programmatically in

relation to the larger context of the struggle between Saul and David.6 Some of the principal elements in the story are passed in review before the account proper gets under way.

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