Of Kings and Prophets – episode one

Detailed notes on where the first episode of the Saul-and-David series matches the biblical account, and where it doesn't.

Of Kings and Prophets, a TV series about David and his relationship with the house of Saul, premiered six years ago. It was cancelled in North America after only two episodes had aired, but the remaining seven episodes were shown in other parts of the world, and the entire series is now available for digital purchase or rental in the US and other countries, so I figured I should complete the episode-by-episode analysis that I began back then. The recap below is adapted from this post. I also wrote a regular review of the first episode before it aired.

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Season 1, Episode 1 — ‘Offerings of Blood’
I Samuel 13-17

Synopsis. Saul, the first king of Israel, is trying to unite the tribes to defend the nation from the Philistines. To that end, he has arranged a marriage between his daughter Merav and a weapons broker from the tribe of Judah named Mattiyahu. But when Saul seeks God’s blessing for the marriage, the prophet Samuel tells him he must exterminate the Amalekites first—and when Saul fails to complete the job, Samuel declares that God will take the kingdom away from him. Meanwhile, a lion is terrorizing the countryside, and a shepherd named David tracks it down and kills it, which catches the attention of Saul’s other daughter, Michal, as well as Saul’s wife Ahinoam, who asks David to join the court and play his harp there. Finally, the Philistine king Achish has Mattiyahu killed for conspiring with Saul—and we learn that Saul’s concubine Rizpah is spying on Saul for the Philistines.

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Editing Samuel. The series skips past the stories about Samuel’s early life (I Samuel 1-7) and the role he played in making Saul king (I Samuel 8-12) so that it can tackle the middle of Saul’s reign and the rise of young David simultaneously.

Accordingly, this episode takes bits and pieces from I Samuel 13-17 and rearranges the chronology somewhat. The episode begins with Saul and his sons fighting the Philistines (I Samuel 13-14) and David waking up to discover that a lion has killed his sheep, which kicks off a plot thread that ends with David killing the lion (as per I Samuel 17:34-37). Samuel tells Saul to exterminate the Amalekites, which kicks off a plot thread that ends with Samuel telling Saul that God has rejected him as king of Israel (I Samuel 15). And, finally, Saul’s wife Ahinoam gets David to stay in the palace and play the harp for Saul (a loosely reworked version of I Samuel 16:14-23).

This episode introduces us to various members of Saul’s household: his wife Ahinoam, his sons Jonathan and Ishbaal, his daughters Merav and Michal, and his concubine Rizpah. Saul’s wife and children are listed in I Samuel 14:49-50 and I Chronicles 8:33, though Ishbaal (aka Ish-Bosheth) is not mentioned in the books of Samuel until after Saul’s death (II Samuel 2-4). (Saul had three other sons—Ishvi, Abinadab, and Malki-Shua—who are not depicted in this series.) Rizpah is also not mentioned in the Bible until after Saul’s death (II Samuel 3:7), but she did bear him two sons who were killed when David was king (II Samuel 21:8-12).

This episode also introduces us to David and his kinsman Joab. In the Bible, Joab is David’s nephew, the son of David’s sister Zeruiah (I Chronicles 2:13-16). Here he seems to be more or less the same age as David—but that isn’t necessarily so odd, as David was the youngest of seven or eight brothers (I Chronicles 2:15 says seven, I Samuel 16:10-11 and 17:12 say eight), and David had at least two sisters besides (I Chronicles 2:16), so if Zeruiah was one of the older siblings in the family, she could very easily have reached childbearing age by the time David was born.¹

Ahinoam says Saul has been working for years to bring the tribe of Judah into the fold. In the Bible, Judah had already contributed soldiers to some of Saul’s campaigns (I Samuel 11:8), and they contributed soldiers to his attack on the Amalekites too (I Samuel 15:4), though it’s worth noting that the tribe of Judah is singled out in those passages as though the men of Judah were separate from “the men of Israel”.

Gath is identified in this episode as the “capital of the Philistines” and the home of Achish. The biblical Achish did indeed live in Gath (I Samuel 21:10), and Gath was one of the five main Philistine city-states (Joshua 13:3, I Samuel 6:17), though it’s not clear to me that any of those cities ruled the others. In the Bible, Gath was also one of three cities where the giants known as the Anakim still lived (Joshua 11:21-22)—and sure enough, this episode introduces Goliath, who was from Gath (I Samuel 17:4).

One extra note about Gath: The Bible seems to indicate that Gath was conquered by Samuel before the Israelites had a king (I Samuel 7:14). But the Bible also clearly states that Gath was a Philistine stronghold during King Saul’s reign; it was there that David lived when he fled Saul and sought sanctuary with Achish (I Samuel 27:1-4). So either the story of Gath’s defeat under Samuel is a bit exaggerated, or the Philistines recaptured the city. I suspect the series won’t get into any of that back-story.

The Philistines control the production and distribution of iron and forbid its use in Israel, but they do send iron to nations on the other side of Israel with the help of traders from Judah, which is not yet allied with Saul’s kingdom. The Bible does say it was impossible to find a blacksmith in Israel in those days because of the Philistines (I Samuel 13:19-21), but as far as I can tell, the deal with Judah is fictitious.

The Amalekites are portrayed here as a small-ish nomadic tribe whose caravan is attacked by Saul in the Negev desert. The biblical attack began at “the city of Amalek” (I Samuel 15:5) and continued “all the way from Havilah to Shur, near the eastern border of Egypt” (I Samuel 15:7), which is indeed in the Negev desert.

Samuel seems to go from Gilgal to the capital city of Gibeah to confront Saul and kill the Amalekite king, but in the Bible, Saul took the Amalekite king to Gilgal and Samuel killed him there (I Samuel 15:12-33). Gilgal was one of the four cities in which the biblical Samuel held court, but his home was in Ramah (cf. I Samuel 7:16-17).

Notably, the scene where Samuel disowns Saul does not include Samuel’s famous lines about the sound of sheep and cattle (I Samuel 15:14) or obedience being better than sacrifice (I Samuel 15:22-23). The Samuel of this series also doesn’t seem to “mourn” Saul’s disobedience the way the biblical Samuel did (cf. I Samuel 15:35).

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Other scriptures. The episode’s title comes from Psalm 16:4.

This series is based almost entirely on the Old Testament, without any reference to the New, but an opening title card does link the two by saying that the story takes place “1000 Years before Christ”—which is accurate, if approximate.

Saul arranges a marriage between his daughter Merav and the son of Eitan of Judah. The biblical Judah had a grandson named Eitan, or Ethan (I Chronicles 2:4-6), but that was several generations ago, so this is obviously a different character.

Eitan says the Israelite tribes “have fought long against our enemies, and sometimes against each other.” The book of Judges describes a number of civil wars that took place before the Israelite monarchy was established, such as the war that was fought when Gideon’s son Abimelek tried to make himself king (Judges 9), Jephthah’s war against the Ephraimites (Judges 12:1-6), and the war that nearly resulted in the extermination of the tribe of Benjamin (Judges 19-21). Notably, Eitan addresses his remark to Saul, in Saul’s palace in Gibeah, and Saul himself is a Benjaminite (I Samuel 9:21), and that last war was fought over an incident that took place in Gibeah.

Saul says the Amalekites attacked the Israelites “ten generations ago.” The attack is described in Exodus 17:8-16, but it might not have happened quite as long ago as Saul suggests. The leader of the tribe of Judah back then was Aaron’s brother-in-law Nahshon (Exodus 6:23, Numbers 2:3), and Nahshon, an ancestor of David’s, was only five generations ahead of David on the family tree (Ruth 4:20-22).

Ahinoam says Moses called for punishment for the Amalekites when Israel was at rest from its enemies (Deuteronomy 25:17-19)—and right now Israel is not at rest.

Saul says the Israelites “are meant to be a light to the nations,” which is a concept that comes from the much later book of Isaiah (Isaiah 42:6, 49:6, 51:4, 60:3).

Samuel tells Saul that God “made you in his image.” In the ancient Near East, kings and even priests often said they were “images” of their gods, but Genesis 1:26-27 and 9:6 make the point that God created all of humanity in his image.

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Fictitious elements. Saul is trying to arrange a marriage between his daughter Merav and a Judean trader named Mattiyahu. Mattiyahu is a fictitious character, but the biblical Saul did arrange marriages for both of his daughters.

Ahinoam mentions that Michal’s mother was a Cushite concubine of Saul’s. The biblical account gives us no reason to think that Michal was not Ahinoam’s daughter, but we do know that some ancient Israelites (such as Moses, as per Numbers 12:1) were married to Cushites, and that some Cushites worked for King David (II Samuel 18:21-32) and at least some of his successors (Jeremiah 38:7-13).

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Geography. Ahinoam says the Philistines got as far as Kadesh, and she says they have exposed Israel’s weakness on its northern border. It’s not clear which city she’s referring to, but Kedesh in Galilee would make more sense than Kadesh in Syria, which is where the battle from Exodus: Gods and Kings took place.

Gath is portrayed as a coastal city. Some Philistine cities were indeed located on the Mediterranean coast, but Gath appears to have been about 40km inland.

Mattiyahu is killed in Gath, and his body is found by Saul and his men being dragged behind a horse in the Nahal Arabah, a stretch of desert that runs along the Israel-Jordan border between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqabah. Was the body dragged the whole way, two or three hundred kilometres from the Mediterranean coast?

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Women. The female characters play much more prominent roles in this episode than they do in the Bible. Up until the final scene, when Saul walks in on him in the throne room, all of David’s dealings with the royal family are with Queen Ahinoam and her daughter Michal. Ahinoam has authority to forgive David’s family’s debt.

Also, it turns out Rizpah is not just a concubine—she’s a spy for the Philistines!

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Sex and/or nudity. David and Joab talk about going to Gibeah for the women and wine, but we only see them partake of the latter once they get there. However, in the background of the pub or brothel that they visit before dealing with the tax collector, we do see people who appear to be having sex in public. Later on, Joab teases David that there are easier ways to get women than by killing a lion.

Mattiyahu and Merav have sex while their betrothal is not yet complete. Merav later bathes in a mikvah as a sort of pre-wedding ritual.

Rizpah appears to perform oral sex on Saul shortly before he attacks the Amalekites.

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Violence. Saul and his sons battle the Philistines at the beginning of the episode, and they slaughter the Amalekites—men, women and children—near the end. Samuel then beheads the Amalekite king in full view of the people.

David discovers that his sheep—including one whose head is almost completely severed from its body—have been killed by a lion. Blood drips from David’s hands. David sets out to kill the lion with his sling, and he ultimately succeeds.

People who can’t pay their taxes—which almost includes David—are flogged.

Mattiyahu is literally stabbed in the back—and through the chest—by Achish.

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God talk. There is plenty of God talk between Samuel and Saul, but—surprisingly—there is none so far from David.² Saul’s daughters are also prone to God talk: Merav tells Mattiyahu “only God could have arranged” their mutual passion, and it is Michal, rather than David, who says David killed the lion because the Lord was with him.

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Miscellaneous. The cast for this series includes a number of Bible-movie veterans, e.g.:

• Ray Winstone (Saul) — Quintus Arrius in Ben-Hur (2010), Tubal-Cain in Noah (2014)

• Mohammad Bakri (Samuel) — Mordecai in Esther (1986), Herod Antipas and the Devil in The Savior (2013)

• Haaz Sleiman (Jonathan) — Jesus in Killing Jesus (2015)

• David Walmsley (Joab) — Marcus Decimus in Ben-Hur (2016)

• Nathaniel Parker (Achish) — David in The Bible Collection: David (1997)

• Garth Collins (Goliath) — Jailer in Samson (2018)

• Joe Vaz (Tax Collector) — Sennacherib and Paul in Andrew Marr’s History of the World (2012), Priest of Dagon in Samson (2018)

And that’s just in this episode. I’ll note other Bible-movie veterans as they appear.

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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

1. I have been exploring my own family history lately via a Mennonite database, and you don’t have to go back very far to find families with a dozen kids or more, spread out over two decades, the oldest of whom had already started having families of their own by the time their youngest siblings were born. The age gaps within a generation can be so great after just a generation or two that you get situations like the one where my great-great-grandfather married his first cousin’s daughter, who was born the same year as him.

2. In March 2015, there was a trailer for an earlier, never-seen version of this episode in which David did talk about his faith, telling Ahinoam he felt confident he could hunt the lion because he was “certain of God’s grace and care.” But then the network re-shot the episode—with new actors as Merav, Rizpah, and Goliath—and lines like that were left out.