Of Kings and Prophets – episode six
Of Kings and Prophets – episode six
David raises an army, while Saul murders priests and a prophet, in 'Honor in the Dust'.
Season 1, Episode 6 — ‘Honor in the Dust’
I Samuel 19, 21-23
Synopsis. Three weeks have passed since David and Michal fled the palace with Joab and Jarri. Jonathan is in prison, and his wound is getting worse. Merav confronts Rizpah, the concubine who sparked Saul’s anger, and Rizpah replies that she knows a powerful healer who can give them what they need to save Jonathan’s life. David and his friends visit Samuel at the sanctuary in Nob, and Samuel gives him Goliath’s sword. David learns that the Philistines have captured Keilah and are planning to sell the Israelite soldiers into slavery. He and his friends infiltrate the slave auction and set the men free, and then he and the men liberate Keilah itself. Saul goes to Nob, kills Samuel, and orders the death of all the priests. Eitan, whose daughter married Jonathan just a few weeks earlier, tells Ahinoam they should convince Jonathan to take the throne while Saul is out of the city. The people of Keilah celebrate their liberation under David in a joyful ceremony that resembles a coronation.
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Editing Samuel. This episode covers David’s visit to Samuel (I Samuel 19:18), David’s visit to the priests in Nob (I Samuel 21:1-19), Saul’s slaughter of the priests (I Samuel 22:9-23), and David’s liberation of Keilah (I Samuel 23:1-5). It also depicts the death of Samuel (I Samuel 25:1, 28:3).
Samuel is staying with the priests in Nob, and the priests, we are told, are “bound to the prophet”; this allows the episode to combine David’s visit to Samuel with his visit to the priests. The biblical Samuel was certainly raised by priests, back when the Tabernacle was stationed in Shiloh (I Samuel 1:24-28, etc.), but as an adult, he lived in his parents’ hometown Ramah (I Samuel 7:16-17; cf. I Samuel 1:19), and that was where David went to find him after fleeing Saul (I Samuel 19:18). There are no biblical stories in which Samuel himself went to Nob, and no biblical stories in which he interacted with the priests as an adult.
Samuel gives David the sword that used to belong to Goliath. The biblical David got this sword from one of the priests at Nob (I Samuel 21:8-9). David also got some consecrated bread from the priests and pretended to be working for Saul (I Samuel 21:1-6), but those details are omitted in this episode, which largely sidelines the priests to keep its focus on Samuel and his relationship with the current and future kings of Israel.
Saul comes to Nob when he hears that David has been there to see Samuel. The biblical Saul pursued David when David visited Samuel in Ramah, but Saul’s efforts to capture David were thwarted when he and his men were overcome by the Spirit of God (I Samuel 19:18-24). The biblical Saul did not go to Nob, but summoned the priests to his capital city, Gibeah, and killed them there; after that, his men went to Nob to kill the priests’ families and livestock, too (I Samuel 22:6-19).
Saul meets Samuel and kills him. This is very different from what transpires in the biblical text, on a few levels. First, according to one passage, the biblical Samuel never met Saul again after condemning him (I Samuel 15:35). Second, another passage says that Saul and his men came to Samuel’s hometown to capture David, but they were overcome by the Spirit of God, and Saul even “tore off his clothes and lay naked on the ground all day and all night, prophesying in the presence of Samuel” (I Samuel 19:18-24). It is possible that that event does not count as a “meeting” between Saul and Samuel because Saul was not his normal self, but either way, Saul was thwarted by divine intervention on that occasion, which is not what happens here. And finally, the text gives no cause of death for the biblical Samuel; it simply says that he died, he was mourned by all of Israel, and he was buried in his hometown Ramah (I Samuel 25:1, 28:3). Presumably, this episode shows Saul killing Samuel partly because Samuel needs to die before Saul can summon his ghost (à la I Samuel 28), and the writers felt that the death of Samuel needed to be worked into the dramatic chain of events instead of being just some thing that happens off-stage, separate from the main story.
At the beginning of the episode, Joab wants to kill a bounty hunter named Doeg that Jarri the Hittite has captured, but David lets Doeg go because he, David, is not a killer like Saul. The biblical David was certainly very capable of killing—see my notes on Episode 4—but he publicly disagreed with Joab’s murder of key figures like Abner (II Samuel 3:22-39) and Absalom (II Samuel 18:9-19:8), and he made a point of sparing the life of Saul himself (I Samuel 24, 26). So the disagreement between David and Joab here definitely matches their characterization in the Bible.
Doeg the bounty hunter ends up snitching on David and is the only person willing to kill the priests when Saul orders their execution. This more or less matches the biblical account, where Doeg the Edomite, identified in the text as “Saul’s chief herdsman”, witnessed David’s visit to Nob (I Samuel 21:7), snitched on David (I Samuel 22:9-10), and killed the priests (I Samuel 22:18-19). The biblical David assumed responsibility for the slaughter when he heard about it afterwards, because he saw Doeg in Nob and knew that Doeg would snitch on him (I Samuel 22:20-23). While the David of this episode never explicitly takes the blame like that, the episode does arguably make him partly responsible for the slaughter: if he hadn’t let Doeg go free in the first place, the priests and everyone else in Nob might have lived.
David has only two men with him—Joab and Jarri—in addition to Michal when he goes to Keilah, and the soldiers he liberates there become his followers. The biblical David amassed a following of 400 men between his visit to Nob and the liberation of Keilah (I Samuel 22:1-2), and his following grew to 600 men soon after that (I Samuel 23:13). David apparently had 600 men in his entourage, plus their wives and children, for the rest of the period in which he was a fugitive from Saul (I Samuel 25:13, 27:2, 30:9-10).1
Joab says he has sisters. The biblical Joab had two brothers, Abishai and Asahel (II Samuel 2:18, I Chronicles 2:16), but if he had sisters, the Bible doesn’t mention them.
Ishbaal tells Eliab he would have assumed that, if Samuel had to anoint any of Jesse’s sons, he would have anointed Eliab rather than David. The biblical Samuel did, in fact, assume that he was supposed to anoint Eliab at first (I Samuel 16:6-7).
Saul is surrounded by soldiers and examining some flowers when Ishbaal joins him to move on Nob. This may be a nod to how the biblical Saul was sitting beneath a tamarisk tree and surrounded by his officers when Doeg the Edomite snitched on the priests (I Samuel 22:6).
David tells Michal it makes him sick to see women being sold into slavery, and he says he’ll outlaw the practice when he’s king. Ironically, the only reference to female slaves in the biblical David’s story comes after he became king, when Michal complained that David embarrassed himself in front of the slave girls by dancing before the Ark of the Covenant, and David replied by essentially choosing the slave girls over Michal, the latter of whom he condemned to childlessness (II Samuel 6:20-23).
Achish gets a merchant from Keilah to work for him, and the merchant proves his loyalty by killing two other merchants from Keilah. This may or may not reflect the treachery of the biblical people of Keilah, who were evidently willing to betray David to Saul even after David saved them from the Philistines (I Samuel 23:9-12). A future episode will also reveal that the merchant who works for Achish is Nabal, who is depicted in the Bible as a mean and wealthy man who insulted David and his men, such that David wanted to kill Nabal and all his household (I Samuel 25).
Achish notices that David has his own fighting force now, and he chooses not to fight back when David liberates Keilah because David’s activities there will attract Saul’s attention. The biblical Achish certainly sought to use David and his men against Saul, but more directly than this; I doubt he would have sacrificed his own Philistines (I Samuel 27-28:2; 29).
Joab says David and his men can go to En Gedi after they liberate Keilah, but David decides to stay in Keilah itself. The biblical David stayed in Keilah until he heard that Saul was coming for him there (I Samuel 23:7-13), but, after hiding in various other locations, he did end up going to En Gedi with his men (I Samuel 23:29-24:1).
Saul says Samuel crowned him because the people said he must, and Samuel replies, “I do not remember it that way”; David also recalls how the people rallied behind Saul when he was anointed. The biblical Samuel did give in to the people’s demand for a king (I Samuel 8), but it was God, not the people, who chose Saul to be that king (I Samuel 9:15-17). Also, the biblical Saul was anointed privately, not in the presence of the people (I Samuel 10:1), and he was chosen publicly by the casting of lots (I Samuel 10:17-25). The people did acclaim Saul after he was chosen publicly, and again after he rescued an Israelite town from the Ammonites (I Samuel 11:14-15). When Samuel finally gave his farewell speech and handed the country over to Saul, he reminded the people that their request for a king was still “evil” in his eyes (I Samuel 12).
Saul says to Samuel, “We were young together, we built this world together.” The biblical Samuel was already “old and gray”, with adult sons, when the people demanded that he give them a king (I Samuel 8:1-5, 12:2), and the biblical Saul was a “young man” when he became that king (I Samuel 9:2).
The murder of the priests is cross-cut with David being acclaimed by the people of Keilah, who wave palm branches and even put a crown made of twigs on his head. The biblical David probably would have resisted anything resembling a coronation at this point in his life—he kept emphasizing his loyalty to Saul, the anointed king of Israel—but he certainly had no trouble letting the men of Judah make him king of their tribe after Saul died and Ishbaal became king of the rest of Israel (II Samuel 2:4).
In addition to Nabal, this episode introduces one other character who does not appear in the biblical text until later: the Witch of Endor, who is depicted here as a sort of medicine woman who lives in Gibeah and comes up with a way to heal Jonathan’s wound. She will eventually foretell the death of Saul (I Samuel 28:3-25).
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Other scriptures. The episode’s title comes from Psalm 7:5.
David says God’s law doesn’t allow one shepherd to kill another shepherd. I have no idea which particular law he’s referring to. (There is, of course, a general law against murder, à la Exodus 20:13, Deuteronomy 5:17, etc.)
The people of Keilah are waving palm branches when David is hailed as their leader. I cannot find any reference to palm-waving in the Old Testament, but it definitely comes up in the New Testament, when Jesus is hailed as king on his way into Jerusalem (John 12:13), and when the martyrs from every nation worship God as he sits on his throne (Revelation 7:9-17).
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Fictitious elements. Jonathan is imprisoned and dying from his stab wound throughout the episode, until Rizpah and Merav get some healing stuff from the Witch of Endor. The biblical Jonathan was neither imprisoned by his father nor wounded by his brother, but the biblical Saul did attack Jonathan—both verbally and physically—for siding with David, and he even complained to his men that Jonathan had been “inciting” David against him (I Samuel 20:30-33, 22:8).
Eitan, whose daughter Sarah married Jonathan in Episode 5, tells Ahinoam they should claim the throne for Jonathan while Saul is out of the city. The biblical Saul faced no such coup from within his own house, but of course the biblical David had to deal with a full-scale rebellion by one of his sons, Absalom (II Samuel 15-19), and another attempted coup of sorts by another son, Adonijah (I Kings 1).2
David has spent most of the series so far avoiding and running from his destiny, but this episode shows him embracing his future role as king. Joab chastises David early on for not acting like a king, which Joab defines as someone who “protects his people, commands an army, makes a plan for how to get what he wants, puts that plan into action, and wins.” Later, when David commits to rescuing the Israelites in Keilah, he repeats Joab’s words and says, “It’s about time I started acting like a king.” The episode then ends with David being crowned, essentially, by the people he saved.
The Witch of Endor alludes to the death of Rizpah’s parents at the hands of the Edomites, a back-story that was previously introduced in Episode 3.
Michal says at the beginning of the episode that the priests in Nob have taken in refugees from Keilah. It is not clear whether Saul’s command to “kill them all” at the end of the episode applies to the refugees as well, or just to the priests.
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The supernatural. This episode omits any trace of the supernatural from the story about Saul’s pursuit of David. When the biblical Saul tried to capture David in Samuel’s hometown, he and his men were overcome by the Spirit of God and began prophesying, which essentially allowed David to escape them (I Samuel 19:18-24). David and Samuel were basically protected by divine intervention. Nothing of that sort happens in this episode; instead, Saul meets Samuel and kills him.
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Irony. Saul says Samuel turned him into an “animal” through his “vindictive jealousy”. But of course, Saul himself is incredibly jealous and paranoid of David now.
Ishbaal, who tried to have Samuel assassinated in Episode 2, now argues that killing Samuel would be a big mistake, because it would cause all Israel to rebel against the royal family. Saul ignores this advice and ends up killing Samuel anyway.
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Geography. Three weeks after David and his friends fled the palace, Saul’s scouts have been looking for them all over Israel, going as far north as Samaria (roughly 15 hours’ walk from Gibeah) and as far west as Joppa (roughly 12 hours’ walk from Gibeah). But it turns out David and his friends are actually going to Nob, which is only about five and a half hours’ walk from Gibeah—though Joab says Nob is about “a day’s journey” from where he and David are at the beginning of the episode.
At night in Keilah, Joab says they can walk to En Gedi “by sunrise”. The shortest walk between Keilah and En Gedi, according to Google Maps, is about 23 hours without any stops for sleep or rest. But the recommended route is fairly indirect, and the travel time could, in theory, be cut in half if a shortcut across the desert was feasible.
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Timeline. Michal says the slave auction in Keilah is taking place “this afternoon”. But between the scene where she says this and the scene with the slave auction itself—both of which clearly take place during the day—there are scenes set in Gibeah that take place at night. Are these scenes not being shown to us in chronological order? Or does “this afternoon” actually mean tomorrow afternoon somehow?
Doeg says he saw David in Nob “two days” before Saul got there. Doeg went to Gibeah and back in the interim, and since the journey between Nob and Gibeah takes about five and a half hours, that seems plausible: he could have gone to Gibeah one day, and then gone back to Nob the next day. But is David’s liberation of Keilah supposed to have taken place between those two days, i.e. between the day David went to Nob and the day Saul went to Nob? That would seem to be what the episode implies, as David spends an entire day liberating Keilah—checking the place out in the morning, interrupting the slave auction “this afternoon”, and then liberating the rest of the town at night—and his impromptu coronation seems to take place the next day, in daylight, while Saul is visiting Nob. But the walk from Nob to Keilah takes about 14 hours, so if David and his friends arrived at Keilah the morning after they went to Nob, they would have had to walk all night without any rest, and then they’d still have to have had enough energy to spend all day liberating the town.
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Women. Merav and Rizpah make a point of healing Jonathan’s wound and breaking him out of prison. The Witch of Endor implies that she is not really a “witch”, because that is something Rizpah calls her to “tease” her. Ahinoam asks Saul how he can complain about her fling with David when he, Saul, has so many women in his harem. Michal plays a key role in planning the liberation of the people of Keilah.
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Sex and/or nudity. The slave auctioneer tries to rip Michal’s shirt open.
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Violence. Nabal kills two fellow merchants to prove his loyalty to Achish. Rizpah poisons the guards outside Jonathan’s jail cell. David and his friends kill a lot of Philistines while liberating the Israelites in Keilah. Saul threatens Ahinoam, murders Samuel, and orders the execution of all the priests in Nob.
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God talk. Samuel says he anointed David because Elohim commanded it. He also says “Elohim always tests his chosen”. Ishbaal thanks “the Lord” that his earlier effort to assassinate Samuel failed. When Saul kills Samuel and orders the deaths of the priests, he says over and over that Samuel and the priests are only men, not gods.
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Miscellaneous. Another Bible-movie veteran joins the cast in this episode:
Sean Cameron Michael (Nabal) — Thomas in The Visual Bible: The Gospel According to Matthew (1993)
Saul, stung by Jonathan’s defense of David and by the actions of his own wife and daughters, says, “I don’t have a family any more.” He seems to be forgetting Ishbaal in that moment—though to be fair, Ishbaal is not present when he says that.
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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
Notably, the biblical David was the commander of 1,000 men in Saul’s army before he became a fugitive (I Samuel 18:13), but presumably most of those men stayed loyal to Saul at first. The men who followed David before he liberated Keilah were either his relatives, like Joab, or “in trouble or in debt or … just discontented” (I Samuel 22:1-2).
David was essentially on his deathbed, so I tend to see the Adonijah affair as an attempted coup against Solomon, who was David’s preferred successor. But the fact remains, David was still alive, and was still king, when Adonijah had himself proclaimed king. To the uninformed, it might have looked like Adonijah was becoming David’s regent—Adonijah did have the support of David’s general (Joab) and high priest (Abiathar)—but David didn’t even know the coronation was taking place, so it was still an attempt to usurp his power.