“The Lord has demanded a sacrifice,” a voice said so softly that its very softness compelled like wrath or indignation. “Let me die in Jonathan’s place. I am only his armor-bearer. In the heat of summer, when our swords are turned again into plowshares, I till the fields beside my brothers or tread the grapes. I have seven brothers. I will be no loss to Israel. Only to my mother and perhaps-perhaps-to Jonathan, who has treated me always like a brother. Jonathan whom I 1-love.” The boy stumbled over his words. He was not used to speaking to his king.
More than a king had heard him. The host of Israel, the men around the campfires, the guards patrolling the camp, shouted their indignation:
“Accept Nathan, spare Jonathan!
“It is Yahweh’s will, or why did he walk with Jonathan oh the slopes of Michmash?”
Saul looked doubtfully to Elim. “Is such a thing possible?”
“The Lord has been known to accept a scapegoat.”
Jonathan’s face was fixed with resolution. “It is I who have offended Yahweh. It is I who must suffer the punishment Not my friend, who has loved me well and saved me from Philistine arrows and the bite of vipers.”
“Enough of this, Elim. Ask the oracle if Yahweh will accept a substitute,” demanded Saul.
The wind sang sulkily through the branches, the bells cooed like a flock of turtledoves, as if the tree remembered a greener time, a youth when she wore a mantle of fine-spun leaves instead of metal bells and received the rain like the sweet embrace of love.
“So be it,” said Elim, grimacing disappointment. “Let Nathan die in place of Jonathan.”
“It shall be done,” said Saul. Large tears welled in his eyes; tears of gratitude.
Everyone looked to Nathan. A plump-cheeked boy with a slow, drawling voice, he was neither bright nor brave. But he was Jonathan’s friend, and Jonathan hugged him with a desperate tenderness.
It was Saul who separated the youths. “It is time, my son,” he said to Nathan.
Jonathan thrust himself between Nathan and Saul. “You are not to have him,” he said to his father in a low but deadly voice. “He is my friend.”
“Would you question the ways of Yahweh?”
“Yes, my father, I question his ways. Or rather, the manner in which you interpret them. I would worship a pitying Brother or Mother instead of a heartless Father who hurls thunderbolts to vent his displeasure and kills young boys for the mistakes of their masters.”
“You’re speaking like a Canaanite,” said Saul with dignity but without reproof. Then, to his men, “Proceed with the sacrifice.”
Six men struggled to keep Jonathan from his friend.
No men were needed to lead Nathan to the bloodstained stone beneath the tree or tell him where to lay his head or comfort him when Elim raised his knife. The boy spoke a single word:
“Jonathan.”
Ahinoam looked into her son’s face to seek the predictable pain for the loss of a friend. She was not prepared for the intensity of what she saw: anguish for the loss of a beloved.
Far away, at the far edge of the camp, a lyre trembled across the demon-haunted labyrinths of the night, and a single voice, yearningly sweet, a boy’s voice, rose in a psalm of hope:
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no eviclass="underline"
For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
The Lord is my shepherd:
I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters…“
CHAPTER TWO
Before the battle of Michmash, David had visited the Israelite camp to bring food to his brothers, Ozem, Nethanel, and Elihu, who had fought with Saul for more than three years. At seventeen, he was forbidden by his oversolicitous father Jesse, familiarly known as the Ass of Bethlehem, to remain with his older brothers and fight the Philistines, though he had fought both the wolves and the lions which had harassed his flock.
“Linger in the camp only long enough to exchange tidings with your brothers,” Jesse had said, sweetly adamant. “Elihu had a toothache when he left home and your mother is much concerned. Then return to your flocks. The battle promises ill for Israel.”
In spite of the difficult walk, David did not protest; ho happened to like asses. Furthermore, he would glimpse Saul’s army and foresee the impending battle with a vision akin to genius. The rocky terrain would help the Israelites; warriors in sheepskin tunics could clamber among the rocks like desert mice; warriors riding in chariots or walking in heavy armor would long for the flat terrain beside the Great Green Sea. Finally, heroic Jonathan was the captain of a thousand men. David had never met him; once he had glimpsed him, the swiftest runner in Israel, from a great distance and thought: If Yahweh were such as Jonathan, I would become his priest.
David donned his one good tunic, blue Egyptian linen embroidered with scarabs, and, at the insistence of his mother, ran a tortoiseshell comb through his red, unruly hair. He was not in the least aware of his appearance-the poppy-red hair which he and no one else in his family had inherited from Ruth, the woman of Moab; the small muscular body which made him the envy of every wrestler in Bethlehem; the eyes as blue as the waters of Lake Chinnereth. He was, in a popular phrase, “as handsome as Sin,” the Canaanite god of the moon, and as indifferent to his looks as he was fastidious in caring for his sheep, his sling, and his shepherd’s crook.
When David arrived in camp with the cheeses and the almond cakes patiently prepared by his mother, he hoped for an enthusiastic welcome from his brothers, whom he loved, and perhaps-who could say? — a chance to enter the battle in spite of admonitions from a well-intentioned ass. After all, he had brought the sling with which he had killed a lion (small to be sure, but a killer of many sheep).
But the brothers were less than cordial. “Must we play nursemaid to the runt even in camp?” hirsute Elihu had sighed. David, who hoped that he would grow as tall as Elihu, decided that he would grow like a trim cedar instead of a shaggy tamarisk tree.
“Go about your business as usual, whatever that is,” he had answered, adding loftily, “I’m writing a new psalm.”
“Write one about killing Goliath,” Ozem said dourly. “He’s down with a fever demon. You’ll know he’s risen when the earth starts to shake.”
“I’ve heard he’s twelve feet tall-”
“Nine.”
“With legs like pillars in the temple Samson toppled.”
“More like roof beams.”
“And one big eye in the middle of his forehead.”
“True enough.”
“How is your tooth, Elihu?”
“Hurts like Sheol.”
Then, with neither thanks nor leavetaking, Elihu, Ozem, and Nethanel departed to play knucklebones with their friends.
David did not intend to waste his visit to the camp by sitting on a pile of cloaks. Concluding that no one would care to steal such disreputable and odorous garments, he wandered among the men, carrying his lyre, his rarest possession, and explored the camp: the black sheepskin tents of Saul, Jonathan, Riapah, and Abner; the roofless encampments of the foot soldiers. In Israel, every able-bodied man was a soldier during the Philistine invasions, but the rest of the time he was a farmer, a shepherd, or an artisan. There were few Israelite merchants; commerce was left to the sea-roving Phoenicians or the desert-striding, camel-riding Bedouins, who numbered among them the Midianites and other tribes.
“Get you home, son,” said a man with a white streak meandering through his black hair like a rivulet through a desert. He had the keen eyes of a shepherd and the air of a man who is his own best company. He looked as if he would like to be tending sheep on the slopes of Mt. Hebron. “The battle promises to go against us, and they threaten to split our forces in the hills of Ephraim and the Judah Valley. Three thousand chariots, our scouts report! And nobody knows how many foot soldiers. You know how the Philistines fight.” (Indeed, he knew how the Philistines fought; he had memorized every detail of every battle since the days of Joshua and Jericho.)