Slog - Comments on Bad King David http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/01/post_113 This man is Pierre Bayle: He lived a long time ago (November 18, 1647 – December 28, 1706), he was French, a Calvinist, and author of Historical and Critical Dictionary, a book that was enormously popular in his day. Bayle is now forgotten. Little thought is spent on his turbulent life and the great influence his writings had on the enlightenment. Why dig up this forgotten thinker now? For the eyes and edification of forgetful American Christians. Central to all of Bayle's brilliant ideas and opinions was his position that reason could not explain God. Human reason was too limited... Copyright 2008 Tue, 30 Jan 2007 13:43:11 -0800 Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:48:36 -0800 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.34 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Comment by Gitai King David was punished. After his affair with Bat-Sheva, and carefully arranging the death of her husband, the prophet Nathan told him an allegory about a man who stole a sheep despite having plenty of his own. David realized it was an allegory and exclaimed, "Ben-mavet hu!" meaning "He's a capital criminal." He then asked who this criminal was, and Nathan explained that he, David, was the criminal.

If you look in Dvarim (I forget the name in English, but it's the fifth book of the Torah), you find that the punishment for the theft of a sheep is that the thief must pay back four sheep. For causing the death of Uriah the Hittite, Bat-Sheva's husband, G-d took from David four sons, the child he conceived with Bat-Sheva; Amnon, killed by his other son Absalom after Amnon raped Tamar, his half sister and Absalom's full sister; Absalom, when Yoav killed him after Absalom attempted to seize David's throne; and Adoniyah, killed after he tried to steal the throne from Solomon.

Also, as he had too much blood on his hands from the conquest of the Philistines, he was denied the honor of building G-d's Temple in Jerusalem. That honor was left to his son, Solomon.

]]> Gitai http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/01/post_113#c604402 http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/01/post_113#c604402 History Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:12:50 -0800 Comment by keshmeshi Most of that punishment was meted out to other family members, who were nasty pieces of work in their own right, not to David himself.

]]> keshmeshi http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/01/post_113#c604410 http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/01/post_113#c604410 History Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:23:44 -0800 Comment by Gitai Yes, but the losses were horribly painful to David as well. He wept and fasted to repent in the hopes G-d would not kill the child, and famously said, "My son, Absalom! My son, my son, Absalom! Would God I had died instead of thee, Absalom, my son, my son!" That's the most dramatic one, but he was pretty upset over the death of Amnon and Adoniyah as well.

]]> Gitai http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/01/post_113#c604433 http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/01/post_113#c604433 History Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:39:12 -0800 Comment by Dakota Solberg There is a gaping hole in Bayle's argument and it goes like this: Comprehensible knowledge is prepositional. Knowledge of why God favors David would take the form of knowing "that God favors David because of x". If such prepositional knowledge as "that God favors David because of x" is impossible because one cannot know the mind of God, then such prepositional knowledge as "that God favors David" is similarly impossible.

I agree with Bayle's conclusion, but his argument is incohesive.

]]> Dakota Solberg http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/01/post_113#c604454 http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/01/post_113#c604454 History Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:48:36 -0800