Of Kings and Prophets – episode five
Secrets and lies lead to violence at a double wedding in 'Little Lower than the Angels'.
Season 1, Episode 5 — ‘Little Lower than the Angels’
I Samuel 18-20
Synopsis. Saul and Ahinoam have rekindled their relationship, inspired by the upcoming marriage of their daughter Michal to David. Michal, however, is troubled by the revelation that David had sex with Ahinoam, which both David and Ahinoam reluctantly confirm. Ishbaal tortures Jesse and confirms that Samuel anointed David the next king of Israel. Saul learns about the anointing mere hours before the double wedding, in which Jonathan marries Sarah and David marries Michal. Saul is already feeling paranoid about David’s new role in his family when Rizpah whispers that Ahinoam cheated on him with David. Saul confronts Ahinoam and throws a spear at David in the presence of all the wedding guests, and David flees the palace with Michal and Joab. Ishbaal pursues them but is attacked in the street by some Philistines, who snuck into the city with Rizpah’s help. While Ishbaal and Eliab fight the Philistines, Jonathan helps David escape the city. Ishbaal confronts Jonathan and wounds him in a sword fight, and Saul has Jonathan thrown in the dungeon.
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Editing Samuel. The episode is mostly about the events leading up to the wedding, but it climaxes with a sequence that combines the marriage of David and Michal (I Samuel 18:27), Saul’s paranoia about the marriage (I Samuel 18:28-29), Saul throwing a spear at David (I Samuel 18:10-11, 19:9-10), and David’s escape through Michal’s bedroom window (I Samuel 19:11-17), which is identified here as “the wedding chamber”. The episode also depicts Jonathan’s defense of David (I Samuel 19:1-7) and Saul’s violent anger at Jonathan for helping David escape his wrath (I Samuel 20:30-34).
In the episode, Saul’s paranoid outburst is prompted by the twin revelations that Samuel anointed David and Ahinoam slept with David. Neither of these motivations is part of the biblical story: Saul never learned about the anointing, as far as we know, while the affair between David and Ahinoam is completely fictitious (or, at best, speculative; see my notes on Episode 2 for more on that). The biblical Saul was paranoid because David was more popular than him (I Samuel 18:6-9, 12-16), and because he was afflicted by an evil spirit (I Samuel 18:10, 19:9).
Saul’s paranoia seems to be exacerbated by a headache of some sort. This may be a nod to the biblical tradition that he was afflicted by an evil spirit.
Saul throws his spear at David just once. The biblical Saul appears to have thrown his spear at David at least three times (twice in I Samuel 18:10-11, once in I Samuel 19:10-11), and David still served Saul after the first two throws. The biblical David was playing the lyre to soothe Saul’s nerves on at least two of those occasions when Saul threw his spear, but the David of this episode has just consummated his marriage when the spear-throwing happens. Also worth noting: The biblical Saul threw his spear at Jonathan, too, for coming to David’s defense (I Samuel 20:33).
David escapes the palace, and then the city, with Michal. The biblical Michal stayed behind in the palace and pretended that she had let David escape because he threatened to kill her (I Samuel 19:17). She was then forced to marry another man (I Samuel 25:44), and she was not reunited with David until after Saul’s death (II Samuel 3:12-16), by which time the relationship had soured (II Samuel 6:16, 20-23).
Ishbaal asks Jonathan what kind of “unnatural affection” he has for David. This may be a nod to the theory that Jonathan had a romantic interest in David and, indeed, that David and Jonathan were lovers. This theory is based, in part, on passages in which Jonathan loved David “as himself” (I Samuel 18:1, 3; 20:17), and in which David himself said Jonathan’s love was “more wonderful than that of women” (II Samuel 1:26). The David and Jonathan of this series have not known each other long enough or well enough to form quite that sort of connection, but other adaptations of the biblical story have played with this theory, e.g. Michal hints at something between David and Jonathan in King David (1985), while Jonathan himself is gay—but not in a relationship with David—in the modernized TV series Kings (2009).
After Jonathan helps David and Michal escape from the city, Saul accuses Jonathan of “perverse rebellion.” The biblical Saul called Jonathan “You son of a perverse and rebellious woman!” just before throwing a spear at him (I Samuel 20:30). Interestingly, the biblical Saul’s insult was technically aimed at Jonathan’s mother—which is one of the reasons some people have speculated that David had an affair with her—whereas in this series, where David really did have an affair with Jonathan’s mother, Saul accuses Jonathan himself of being the perverse and rebellious one.1
Interestingly, Eliab does not learn about Samuel anointing David until the events of this episode. The biblical Eliab and all of his brothers were present when Samuel came to anoint David (I Samuel 16:5-13)—indeed, Samuel thought he was supposed to anoint Eliab at first—and I have always assumed that being snubbed by Samuel was one of the reasons Eliab was so rude to David when they met again shortly before David’s duel with Goliath (I Samuel 17:28).
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Other scriptures. The episode’s title comes from Psalm 8:5.
The Philistine king Achish says he will take “an eye for an eye” from the Israelites. This phrase is best known for its appearance in the Law of Moses, where it is part of a list of reciprocal actions including tooth for tooth, burn for burn, life for life, and so on (Exodus 21:23-25, Leviticus 24:17-22, Deuteronomy 19:21). However, variations on the principle also appear in the Code of Hammurabi, which predates the Law of Moses by a few centuries. The principle is eventually challenged by Jesus when he preaches forgiveness and nonviolent resistance (Matthew 5:38-42).
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Fictitious elements. The revelation that David was anointed by Samuel inspires a range of responses from Saul’s family. Saul focuses obsessively on the idea that David has betrayed him, period, just like Samuel betrayed him. Ahinoam and Michal both say it explains why David has risen to national prominence so quickly. Ahinoam and Jonathan speculate that David could be content to wait until Saul is old and a peaceful transfer of power is possible. Ishbaal rejects this optimistic view because Samuel originally said that God would “tear” the kingdom from Saul—suggesting that the transfer of power, if it happens, must inevitably be a violent one.
Ishbaal imprisons Jesse, tortures him, and implicitly threatens the life of his son Eliab until Jesse finally confirms that Samuel anointed David the next king of Israel. There is no evidence in the biblical text that Ishbaal or anyone else from Saul’s family tortured David’s relatives, but the text does say that David’s parents left the country to hide from Saul after Saul turned against David (I Samuel 22:1-4).
Secrets are a recurring theme throughout this episode. Michal tells David her parents keep secrets from each other, and she does not want her relationship with David to be like that. David lies at first when Michal asks him if he slept with Ahinoam, but eventually he tells her the truth voluntarily, and, in the interests of full disclosure, he also volunteers that Samuel anointed him. Meanwhile, Saul comes unhinged when he realizes that people have been keeping these secrets from him.
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Philistine culture. When Achish plots an attack on the day of the double wedding, his wife Zaphra says the laws of the Philistine gods forbid bloodshed at a wedding. Achish says he isn’t inclined to heed those laws because the gods have failed him.
We learned in Episode 2 that Zaphra was scarred years ago by the plague that struck the Philistines when they captured the Ark of the Covenant (as per I Samuel 4-6). Now we learn that Zaphra and Achish had a son who died in that plague. Zaphra, who is barren now, says Achish could have sons with other women from the royal court, but Achish says he does not want that—so the Philistine king is more devoted to his wife, and less inclined to cavort with concubines, than the Israelite king.
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Geography. Achish plans an attack on a town called Keilah while Saul is distracted by the double wedding. Keilah is between Achish’s capital city Gath and Saul’s capital city Gibeah, and slightly closer to Gath. The biblical David liberated Keilah from the Philistines while he was hiding from Saul, but he fled the city when God warned him that the people of Keilah would turn him over to Saul (I Samuel 23:1-13).
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Sex and/or nudity. There is a lot of sex in this episode, much of it between married couples: It begins with Saul and Ahinoam rekindling their relationship in bed (much to Rizpah’s chagrin, it seems), and it features the ancient ritual whereby newly married couples—such as David and Michal, or Jonathan and Sarah—had sex in a private space during the ceremony and then showed all the wedding guests the bloodied bedsheets that would confirm that the brides had been virgins. (As it turns out, Sarah was not a virgin, but Jonathan sheds some of his own blood to cover for her.)
The sex between the newlyweds takes place in a tent called a chuppah. Over time, the chuppah evolved into the canopy that modern Jewish couples are now married under; if the chuppah was originally a tent that symbolized the couple’s home, it is now basically a symbol of the tent that symbolized the couple’s home.
Incidentally, the light shines through the walls of the chuppah quite brightly, such that the guests can tell what the couples are doing from their silhouettes.
Merav dances suggestively with David’s Hittite friend at the wedding. (Merav is not a virgin, as we saw in Episode 1, and she has been engaged to two different people already this season—one of whom she had slept with, the other of whom she had not. One wonders how she planned to get through the chuppah part of the ceremony.)
This episode features a flashback to David’s affair with Ahinoam, which is much more graphic than what we saw when it happened in Episode 2. At the time, David was arguably depicted as a victim of Ahinoam’s advances, but now, he confesses to Michal that he was an active participant—and the flashback footage bears this out.
Before Saul learns about David’s affair with Ahinoam, he discerns that there is tension between David and Michal, and he asks if Michal witnessed David committing an “indiscretion” with one of the handmaids. He then tells David not to worry about it, and says that women always forgive “the ways of men”.
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Violence. Ishbaal beats Jesse in prison and implicitly threatens to kill Jesse’s son Eliab if Jesse doesn’t tell what he knows about Samuel’s visit to Bethlehem.
Ahinoam takes Merav to watch as an adulteress is stoned to death. The adulteress is buried in the ground up to her neck, so that there is no way for her to dodge the stones, and all of the stones that hit her strike her in the head. The Bible does not specify that this is how stoning was done back then, but it is how some Middle Eastern cultures perform stonings today (as reflected in films like The Stoning of Soraya M., which takes place in modern Iran).
The double wedding erupts into violence when Saul throws a spear at David, Ishbaal chases David and his friends through the streets, and Lahmi and his fellow Philistines attack Ishbaal. Eventually, after Jonathan helps David escape, Jonathan gets into a swordfight with Ishbaal and is stabbed by his brother, and then he is sent to the dungeon by their father Saul.
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God talk. Saul says Elohim is laughing at him and tormenting him by sending David into his family to steal the throne from him.
The Hittite wears figures of his gods around his neck. Joab tells him he will have to take those gods off if he comes to David’s wedding, but the Hittite says the king doesn’t tell his gods what to do.
Zaphra says the gods are fickle but their laws—such as the law forbidding bloodshed at weddings—must be respected. Achish, for his part, doesn’t care about Dagon’s laws because Dagon let him down when his son died.
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Miscellaneous. The cast for this episode includes another Bible-movie veteran:
Sven Ruygrok (Elder’s Son) – Orum in Samson (2018)
Ahinoam takes Merav on an impromptu visit to a part of the city where a woman is being stoned to death for adultery. Ahinoam seems very certain that she’ll find a woman being stoned there. Are women always being executed for adultery in that part of the city?
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Episode recaps: one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | scripture index
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TV show recaps:
Prophet Joseph | The Bible | A.D. The Bible Continues | The Chosen
Movie scene guides:
Risen | The Young Messiah | Paul, Apostle of Christ | Mary Magdalene
In the original version of the Living Bible, a paraphrase (not a translation) of the Bible that was published in 1971, Saul says to Jonathan, “You son of a bitch!” This tended to cause awkward moments in Sunday School classes where kids took turns reading the stories of David aloud. Later editions of the Living Bible changed this to, “You fool!” and the New Living Translation, which was based on the Living Bible, changed it to, “You stupid son of a whore!” Similarly, Saul calls Ahinoam a “traitor” and a “whore” in this episode.