3.3 David: a Hero’s Journey
Again this week, we shift from Gilgamesh to the chronicles of Jewish history. After the death of Moses, the people of Israel continued their sojourn, led by divinely inspired prophets and judges. In time, they found their way to the “land of milk and honeyed” promised them by Jehovah. Unfortunately, this land was filled by settled peoples, leading to conflicts and intercultural clashes.
Although the prophets and judges sent by God led the people into increasing safety and prosperity, it wasn’t enough to still their restlessness and envy. Wise and effective, their leadership lacked the glory of the royal courts that flourished among their neighbors. Against the advice of the prophet Samuel, the people demanded regal splendor.
Grudgingly, Samuel anoints Saul as King of the Israelites. When Saul’s reign turns sour, Samuel anoints a successor, David, chosen by God and hero to Jews and Christians alike:
The Lord said to Samuel, “Fill your horn with oil and be on your way; I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem. I have chosen one of his sons to be king.” …
When Samuel arrived at Bethlehem, the elders of the town trembled when they met him. They asked, “Do you come in peace?”
Samuel replied, “Yes, in peace; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. Consecrate yourselves and come to the sacrifice with me.” Then he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed stands here before the Lord.”
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” …
Jesse had seven sons pass before Samuel, but Samuel said to him, “The Lord has not chosen these.” So he asked Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?”
“There is still the youngest,” Jesse answered. “He is tending the sheep.” Samuel said, “Send for him; we will not sit down until he arrives.”
So he sent for him and had him brought in. He was glowing with health and had a fine appearance and handsome features. Then the Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; this is the one.”
So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David.
In the ancient world, good fortune was always associated with divine patronage. Shifts in prosperity were understood to have been triggered by a god removing from one place or leader to another. The pattern holds in the case of David.
Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. Saul’s attendants said to him, “See, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the lyre. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes on you, and you will feel better.”
So Saul said to his attendants, “Find someone who plays well and bring him to me.”
One of the servants answered, “I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the lyre. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the Lord is with him.”
Then Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, “Send me your son David, who is with the sheep.” So Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine and a young goat and sent them with his son David to Saul.
David came to Saul and entered his service. Saul liked him very much, and David became one of his armor-bearers. Then Saul sent word to Jesse, saying, “Allow David to remain in my service, for I am pleased with him.”
Whenever the spirit from God came on Saul, David would take up his lyre and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him (1 Samuel 16).
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| Rembrandt van Rijn. (1655). Saul and David. Oil on canvas. |
Our last section of readings has prepared you for this development. We said that, for Joseph Campbell, many of the mythic traditions in scores of times and places reduce structurally to an archetypal monomyth, the Hero’s Journey. Young David fits the profile neatly. Safe and secure in a safe, comfortable, commonplace world, he is suddenly called to an adventure that promises danger, glory, and a great boon for his people.
The Agony of the Agon
At this point, David is doing well, having exchanged shepherd’s duties for those of a king’s court. But what sort of hero hangs around, waiting for a chance to play a lyre? Surely, David is destined for greater heroics than this? Indeed he is. His story forms the structure of a plot as he finds himself entangled in conflicts.
Plot: a meaningful sequencing of story events that builds suspense through conflict and rising tension culminating in a climactic resolution
Conflict: a core source of energy and action in many narratives, fueled by a struggle between characters whose agendas oppose each other
Not all stories are driven by plots centered in conflicts between characters. But many are, and David’s story fits the template elegantly. His story corresponds to the ancient Greek concept of the agon:
Agon: a narrative’s central conflict driving the story’s mysteries and actions
Protagonist (or Hero) the rival in a story’s agon with whom we positively identify and sympathize
Antagonist (or Villain): the competitor in a story’s agon with whom we negatively identify and sympathize
David is clearly the protagonist in this plot line, at least from the point of view of the narrative. An ominous Saul broods on his frustrations and quickly begins to resent the charisma of this young shepherd. Like many another narrative hero, David has to hide in a cave from the evil king (1 Samuel 24).
Of course, villain and hero are matters of perspective and can be tricky. When Enkidu battles Gilgamesh to protect brides from the king’s predatory habits, which is the hero, which the victim? As David’s story flows on, we find him warring against Israel’s enemies. But who are they? Even while making his promise to Moses, God had acknowledged that the “land of milk and honey” was inhabited by “Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites” (Exodus 3.8). To these peoples, the Israelite migration is an invasion, and generations of warfare follow.
In any event, Saul’s campaign against the neighboring Philistines is not going well. David is about to take on the ultimate antagonist.
The Hero’s Triumph
The Israelites’ war with the Philistines has encountered a terrifying obstacle, the hulking, menacing Goliath.
The Philistines gathered for war and assembled at Sokoh in Judah. … [King] Saul and the Israelites assembled and camped in the Valley of Elah and drew up their battle line to meet the Philistines. The Philistines occupied one hill and the Israelites another, with the valley between them.
A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span. He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels; on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod; its iron point weighed six hundred shekels. …
Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.” … On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified (1 Samuel 17.2-11).
With battle lines dominated by the massive warrior Goliath and Israelite courage flagging, our hero arrives at the front, “glowing with health and handsome.” The sun glints on the armor that the youth disdains, relying on innocent faith. The tension culminates in flash of combat and a grisly finale repeatedly envisioned in Christian paintings of later centuries.
David ran to the battle lines and asked his brothers how they were. As he was talking with them, Goliath, the Philistine champion from Gath, stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance, and David heard it. … David said to Saul, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.” Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth.”
But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.”
Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you.” Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.
“I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.
Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. He looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health and handsome, and he despised him. He said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” The Philistine cursed David by his gods. “Come here …and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and the animals!”
David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All … will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”
As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead.
The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground. So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him.
David ran and stood over him. He took hold of the Philistine’s sword and drew it from the sheath. After he killed him, he cut off his head with the sword (1 Samuel 17).
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| Caravaggio. (1602). David and Goliath |
Vital Questions
Context
For Jews, Christians, and Muslims, the contextual significance of David’s story is straightforward. David represents the summit of glory for the people who define themselves by the call to follow the leadership of the Lord God Jehovah. The victory over Goliath led to further military victories and a temporary dominance over the region and its peoples. For Christians, David’s lineage forms a crucial thread in the identity and authority of Jesus.
On another level, however, David’s story shares a global context of heroic narrative. The Judeo-Christian tradition commands a unique contextual resonance for its faithful, yet it does share structural parallels with the narrative traditions in many contexts.
Content
Reading David’s story, we can clarify our understanding of core narrative structures. We often use the terms hero and villain loosely and often with a moral significance: good character/bad character. Yet these moral characterizations are relative to perspective and often complicated.
Although not all narratives are structured in these terms, the notion of agon, or a central conflict, can stabilize our readings of many stories. Narratives establish Point of View by which we characterize opponents: the Protagonist as the rival in the central conflict with whom we sympathize and the Antagonist as the one whose agenda we sympathetically oppose. Once we understand that core structure, we are ready to explore the complexities through which great story tellers explore narrative’s possibilities.
Form
Looking a bit more deeply into the structure of narrative, we can keep in mind Joseph Campbell’s notion of the Hero’s Journey. Narratives from around the world present heroes called from a commonplace world into a world of adventure. They pass through adventures and challenges and find support from allies and resources. In the end, they win through to a resolution with some level of blessing, even if it ends in defeat or even mortality.
Notice that, technically, David does not go on a journey as Gilgamesh does. The notion of a journey is a metaphorical way of describing a series of trials that lead to a resolution. Narratives of many varieties can be mapped on Campbel’s plan: mystery stories, romantic comedies, war stories, melodramas, fantasies and more.
As you read stories and watch dramas and films, watch for the hero’s journey. You’ll be amazed how often you’ll find it.
By the way, our use of the term hero does not in any way reflect a gender distinction. Heroes can be men or they can be women. They can be persons of any gender designation and the core structural characteristics of call, challenge, and return will apply equally well.
the perspective from which story characters, events, and setting are told, pictured, or filmed
(or Hero) the rival in a story’s agon (central conflict) with whom we positively identify and sympathize
(or Villain) the competitor in a story’s agon (central conflict) with whom we negatively identify and sympathize
an immensely widespread narrative template in which a protagonist is called from ordinary life to an adventure in a challenging or dangerous realm and returns bearing a treasure of some kind