Of Kings and Prophets – episode seven

Plots are uncovered, allegiances are swapped, and David gets a marriage proposal from the widow of a man he killed, in 'Train My Hands for War'.

Nov 15, 2022

Abigail makes a business—and marriage—proposal to David.

Season 1, Episode 7 — ‘Train My Hands for War’
I Samuel 23, 25

Synopsis. Saul is losing the support of his people. Eitan is secretly stirring up the mobs against him, and an entire regiment of Israelite soldiers—including David’s brother Eliab—have deserted their posts and joined David in Keilah. Eitan tells Ahinoam to kill Saul before Saul can kill her, but Jonathan intervenes, killing Eitan with his own poison and claiming, falsely, that Ahinoam was the one who saved Saul. Ishbaal rescues Rizpah from a rape attempt in the streets, and she initiates an affair with him. Merav asks the Witch of Endor to teach her how to protect herself. David, who is preparing Keilah for a probable attack, asks Nabal for access to the grain reserves, and ends up killing Nabal when Nabal insults him. Nabal’s widow Abigail declares that she will marry David, and all of Nabal’s possessions will become David’s. Saul and his army go to Keilah to retrieve Michal. David learns that Eliab was planning to betray him, but Eliab changes his mind when he learns that their father has died of the wounds that Ishbaal inflicted on him weeks ago. Michal rides out to negotiate with Saul, but then the Philistines attack, and Saul escapes, taking Michal with him. David welcomes Achish into the city—and then kneels before the Philistine king.

Editing Samuel. This episode covers David’s efforts to protect his family (I Samuel 22:1-4), Saul’s pursuit of David in Keilah (I Samuel 23:7-13), and David’s encounter with Nabal and Abigail (I Samuel 25)—but it reverses key elements of all three plot threads.

David sends Jarri to Bethlehem to fetch his father Jesse and bring him back to Keilah, but Jesse dies of his wounds en route; David also welcomes his brother Eliab when Eliab arrives at Keilah. The biblical David was joined by “his brothers and all his other relatives” before he came to Keilah (I Samuel 22:1), and he arranged for his parents to live in Moab under the protection of the Moabite king (I Samuel 22:3-4).

David stays in Keilah because Saul might punish the town if he leaves, and the people of Keilah stand with him when Saul arrives; David also declares that he is staying in Keilah because “I will not run any more.” The biblical David left Keilah because God told him the people there would betray him to Saul, and he continued to hide in a variety of locations after that; as for Saul, when he learned that David was no longer there in Keilah, he abandoned his plan to go to that town (I Samuel 23:7-13).

David kills Nabal because Nabal insulted him. The biblical David wanted to kill Nabal and everyone else in Nabal’s household (I Samuel 25:21-22), but Abigail intervened and persuaded David to spare her husband’s life (I Samuel 25:32-35)—and then, after Abigail returned home, Nabal was struck dead by God (I Samuel 25:37-38).

Nabal controls the grain reserve in Keilah, and David ultimately kills him—and agrees to marry Abigail—to get access to that grain. The biblical Nabal owned animals, including 3,000 sheep and 1,000 goats, and David expected Nabal to give him and his men some food because David’s men had voluntarily protected Nabal’s flocks (I Samuel 25:2-8, 15-16). Also, the biblical Nabal was from Maon near Carmel, both of which are about ten hours’ walk south of Keilah (I Samuel 25:2, 40).

The newly widowed Abigail tells the people of Keilah her husband was “a fool”. The biblical Abigail told David her husband was “a fool, just as his name suggests”—because the Hebrew word nabal actually means “fool” (I Samuel 25:25).

Abigail surprises David by declaring, before the crowd, that she will marry him, and in her private conversations with David, she underscores the sexual and business aspects of their marriage-to-be. The biblical David summoned Abigail and asked her to become his wife, and she accepted, replying that she was willing even to be his slave, washing the feet of his servants (I Samuel 25:39-42).

Michal, as the daughter of a concubine, accepts the possibility that David, as a king in the making, might turn to polygamy, but she is taken away by Saul himself before David and Abigail can get married. Interestingly, whenever the Bible mentions David’s marriage to Abigail, it always mentions that he was married to someone named “Ahinoam from Jezreel”, too—and because this Ahinoam is usually mentioned before Abigail, and because this Ahinoam evidently gave David a son before Abigail did, it is possible that David married this Ahinoam before he married Abigail, even though there are no stories about how he met this Ahinoam (I Samuel 25:43, 27:3, 30:5; II Samuel 2:2, 3:2-3; I Chronicles 3:1).1 The biblical Michal, for her part, was assigned to another husband after David fled the palace (I Samuel 25:44), and she did not meet David again until after he became king of Judah (II Samuel 3:12-16).

David welcomes the Philistines into Keilah and kneels before Achish. The biblical David never welcomed the Philistines into Israelite territory, but he did seek sanctuary in Philistine territory. His first attempt didn’t go so well, and he ended up faking insanity so that he would be released from Philistine custody (I Samuel 21:10-15), but once he had hundreds of men following him, he and his men lived under Achish’s protection for over a year (I Samuel 27), and Achish even expected David to join him in his military campaigns against the Israelites (I Samuel 28:1-2; 29:1-11).

Ishbaal starts an affair with his father’s concubine, Rizpah. There is no evidence for this in the text, but after the biblical Ishbaal became king, he did accuse his father’s cousin Abner of sleeping with Rizpah—which caused Abner to turn against Ishbaal (II Samuel 3:6-11).

The people of Gibeah riot over the murder of Samuel at Saul’s hands. The biblical text says nothing about how, exactly, Samuel died, but it does say that Samuel was mourned by “all Israel” after he died (I Samuel 28:3; cf I Samuel 25:1), so if Saul had been responsible for Samuel’s death, it stands to reason that there would have been widespread social unrest over that.

David says Saul killed 86 priests in Nob. The biblical Saul—or, more precisely, the Edomite who was working for Saul—killed 85 priests from Nob (I Samuel 22:18). One priest, Abiathar, did escape the biblical slaughter (I Samuel 22:20-23), but the series has not acknowledged that at all. Did the writers change the number of slaughtered priests from 85 to 86 as a subtle way of adding Abiathar to the death toll?

Eitan says Saul killed a bloodline of priests that has been with the Israelites since Moses; the implication seems to be that Israel does not have any priests any more. As noted above, the biblical Saul did kill a family of priests, but the bloodline didn’t quite die out, as Abiathar escaped and went on to be the high priest when David was king (II Samuel 20:25, etc.). What’s more, Abiathar represented only one branch of the priestly bloodline, and when David’s son Solomon deposed Abiathar many years later—thus fulfilling Samuel’s prophecy that Abiathar’s family, the house of Eli, would lose its claim to the priesthood—he was replaced by Zadok, a priest from a different branch of the priestly bloodline (I Kings 2:26-27, 35; cf I Samuel 2:27-3:18).2

Other scriptures. The episode’s title comes from Psalm 144:1. It also resembles a line from one of the few songs of David’s that appears in both the poetry (Psalm 18, especially verse 34) and the history (II Samuel 22, especially verse 35) sections of the Old Testament.

Fictitious elements. Eitan and Ahinoam plot against Saul by stirring up the crowds and poisoning Saul’s drink. Jonathan thwarts the plot by switching the drinks, thus poisoning Eitan instead. Jonathan then sends his own wife—Eitan’s daughter Sarah—away.

Ishbaal plots against David by getting David’s brother Eliab to join David’s militia, the idea being that Eliab will open the gates and let Saul into Keilah when Saul arrives with his army. Eliab originally convinces David that he’s on David’s side by saying he abandoned Saul after the mass murder in Nob, but Eliab doesn’t truly take David’s side until he learns that their father has died as a result of Ishbaal torturing him.

Irony. David kills Nabal because Nabal would not kneel to him. By the end of the episode, David himself is kneeling to Achish because Achish told him to.

Women. Rizpah continues to spy on the house of Saul for Achish, and she warns Lahmi not to call her a “whore”. Michal leads the delegation to negotiate with Nabal, and tells Nabal to let Abigail speak. Abigail speaks up when David addresses the people of Keilah, and she takes credit for turning Nabal’s inheritance into a fortune. Abigail and Rizpah take the initiative in starting relationships with David and Ishbaal. Merav asks the Witch of Endor to teach her what she knows.

Sex and/or nudity. David and Michal have sex at the beginning of the episode—the first time we’ve seen them together like this since the wedding ceremony in Episode 5.

The relationship between David and Michal is soon complicated when Abigail declares that she will marry David, too—and there is, perhaps, some innuendo at play when David comes to Abigail’s house while she’s still married, and she says he may “enter” any time he wishes.

Rizpah kisses Ishbaal, and it’s implied he stays in her room to have sex with her.

Violence. Nabal strikes Abigail for giving their grain to David without his permission. David kills Nabal for refusing to kneel to him. Rizpah slaps Lahmi for calling her a “whore”. Rizpah is attacked in an alley and rescued by Ishbaal, who kills her attackers. Ahinoam tries to poison Saul, but Jonathan ensures that Eitan drinks the poison instead—and Eitan’s decapitated head is then raised on a pike. Achish’s Philistines shoot flaming arrows at Saul and his soldiers outside Keilah.

God talk. One of David’s men tells the people of Keilah that David has Elohim on his side. Jonathan says he helped David escape on the night of the double wedding because he wanted to protect the house of Saul from the Lord’s anger. Jarri says David makes him believe there is a power greater than what we can see and touch. The Witch of Endor says the prophets denounce what she does as a “dark art”, but she says what she has is a “key” that can “open the firmament of the heavens”. Michal says it was the Lord, not Samuel, who chose David to be king in Saul’s place.

Miscellaneous. Another Bible-movie veteran joins the cast in this episode (or at any rate, this is the first episode that he appears in according to the IMDb):

Dale Jackson (Abner) — Philistine Sergeant in Samson (2018)

Also, honourable mention to an actress who first appeared one episode ago, though I don’t believe she had any dialogue until this episode:

Amy Louise Wilson (Abigail) — Susannah Axelrod in Redeeming Love (2022), which is not a Bible movie per se but a modernization of the story of Hosea

“Consequences” are a recurring theme. Merav says there will be consequences for the royal family if the rioters are punished too harshly, while Eliab says Nabal doesn’t think there will be any consequences for standing up to David.

Ishbaal says David’s archers are “ready to fire”, and a Philistine commander tells his archers to “fire” their arrows. This is the language of firearms, not bows and arrows—although when the Philistines attack, they are using flaming arrows.

Abigail and David are standing before a crowd when she surprises him with the declaration that she’s going to marry him. This fits a recurring pattern in the series, where people make surprising declarations in front of crowds, as when David rejected Merav’s hand in marriage and said he would rather marry Michal in Episode 4.

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

As I noted re: Episode 2, Ahinoam is also the name of Saul’s wife, and some interpreters have inferred that Saul’s Ahinoam and David’s Ahinoam were the same person; that may be why the David of this series has an affair with the king’s wife. But it’s also quite possible that the two Ahinoams were different people; indeed, that may be why David’s wife is consistently identified by her hometown in the text, to distinguish her from the other Ahinoam. There are certainly other examples of multiple women with the same name; e.g., David had a wife named Abigail and a sister named Abigail, at least according to I Chronicles 2:16-17. (The latter Abigail is also mentioned in II Samuel 17:25, but there she is identified as a “daughter of Nahash”, not Jesse, which complicates matters).

Abiathar and Zadok were both descended from Aaron, but from different sons of Aaron. Zadok was nine generations down from Aaron’s son Eleazar (I Chronicles 6:4-8, 50-53), while Abiathar was descended from Aaron’s son Ithamar (the full genealogy is never spelled out, but Abiathar was the son of Ahimelek, as per I Samuel 22:20, and Ahimelek was a descendant of Ithamar’s, as per I Chronicles 24:3).

Thoughts and Spoilers

Discussion about this post