Was King David, son of Jesse, gay? And was Jonathan, son of Saul, his lover?
Disclaimer
As always, discussing the Bible, or any other religious text is a delicate matter. My conclusions are based on facts that are as correct as I can find them. These facts when it comes to the Bible very often boil down to believing or not believing that it’s actually the unchangeable word of God. I look at it from a historical, and anthropological point of view… Not from a religious standpoint.
Who was King David?
In the Bible King David was the youngest son of Jesse and became King of the Jews after the death of Saul. He was picked by the prophet Samuel, who sent by God, traveled to Bethlehem. There he inspected all of Jesse’s sons only to ask if there wasn’t yet another. So, they called the youngest, not more than a boy, And Samuel declared that this youngster shall be the King of Israel.
Then there is the story about how David kills the giant, Goliath with a sling and a stone. After that, he suffers the jealousy of Saul, who tries to kill him for quite some time before he himself dies by the hand of the Philistines. Actually, he kills himself at the end of the battle as a result of the defeat.
David and Jonathan
Jonathan is the son of Saul, the first King of Israel. Jonathan is a very close friend of David’s and he defends him and helps him when his father, in his jealousy, tries to find David and kill him. And it is in this context that the supposedly homosexual relationship between David and Jonathan appears.
The friendship/love between David and Jonathan is described in
- 1 Samuel 18, 1-4
- 1 Samuel 19, 1-7
- 1 Samuel 20
- 1 Samuel 23, 16-18
- 2 Samuel 1, 17-27
Of these, the most interesting is the passage in 2 Samuel. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.
And the 1 Samuel 18, 4. And it came to pass when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. 2 And Saul took him that day and would let him go no more home to his father’s house. 3 Then Jonathan and David made a covenant because he loved him as his own soul. 4 And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.
David and Jonathan, were they really homosexual?
The friendship of David and Jonathan is problematic for Christians, as well as for Hebrews, to say the least. It’s none other than King David, one of the most important figures in the whole Bible, and the forefather of Jesus Christ. And he turns out to be gay…?
Some modern scholars claim that the mentioning of the covenant, and the thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women, makes it passionate love rather than just friendship. Covenant meaning marriage.
On the negative side are the facts that David had many wives and many children. God is punishing him for his adultery affair with Bathsheba, but God doesn’t say anything about Jonathan.
Text analysis
The Hebrew word used when describing the love between David and Jonathan is aheb. Aheb means love, but all kinds of love… passionate love as well as friendship. In the original Latin Bible Vulgata, the word used is Diligĕre. This also indicates all kinds of love, brotherly, fatherly, as well as erotic love. Diligĕre is used when Jesus talks about love for your neighbor, love for God, and love for his disciples.
Both words are used many times in the Bible indicating both passionate and non-passionate love. For example, when Abraham is told by the Lord that he must sacrifice his beloved son, the word aheb is used. So this doesn’t get us anywhere.
What the Old Testament says about homosexuality.
There are a few verses commenting on this:
Leviticus 18, 22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
Leviticus 20, 13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
There is also the story about Sodom and Gomorrah where two angels visit Lot and all the men in the city of Sodom shows up to rape them.
Keep in mind that many other things in the Bible are abominations.
- Eating with an Egyptian.
- Eating shrimps or pork.
- For a woman to wear men’s clothes or for a man to wear women’s clothes,
- To wear linen and wool together….
We can’t say for sure what the general idea was back then. Though, It’s beyond doubt that both Christians and Jews during the centuries that followed, all the way until the last decades have treated homosexuality with resistance, disgust, and even violence.
The scholars’ opinion – David and Jonathan as friends
The mainstream view among scholars has been that this is an excellent example of platonic love between two men. Close friends who love each other for no gain or winning’s sake. But again, most scholars are believers, Christians, or Jews.
Being close and expressing it, isn’t something that automatically would imply a sexual relationship in the ancient Levant culture. North Americans and Europeans sometimes have a hard time understanding how people (men) can be very close, even touching each other without that having any sexual implement whatsoever. But in many parts of the world, men can be close without being gay.
Abraham Rihbany, a Bible scholar of Lebanese origin writes about this in his book The Syrian Christ: Easterners can use “terms of unbounded intimacy and unrestrained affection” to one another: “my soul,” “my eyes,” “my heart”. with no homosexual intent.
Israel Weisfeld calls the love between David and Jonathan the “classic description of genuine unselfish love”
Jerry M. Landay (1998): “The friendship of Jonathan and David was the embodiment of the sheer love of man for man, an intimacy based on shared experiences and danger.”
The scholars’ opinion – David and Jonathan as lovers
Tom Horner wrote his book Jonathan Loved David, in 1978. In it, he argued for a homosexual relationship and motivated it as following a path of close friendship/love relationships between men in ancient literature. “The love of Jonathan does not have to be nailed to the mast of a late capitalist liberation front whose members, after centuries of sinister suppression of homosexuals, wish to designate homosexual love the highest form of humanity. It would be even less sound to assure us in suspiciously strong tones that Jonathan and David were most definitely not gay.”
Danna Fewell and David Gunn wrote the book In Gender, Power, and Promise, in 1993. “Until recently, most writing on the Jonathan and David story has come out of a strongly homophobic tradition” … “On the contrary, far from stretching probability, a homosexual reading … finds many anchor points in the text.” for example Jonathan’s covenant of love made with David (1 Sam 18:1-4), Saul’s sexual insult hurled at Jonathan (20:30-31), and David’s lament for his lost beloved (2 Sam 1:26).
So, why is the story even there?
Before we decide if it’s true or not, let’s look into what it all means. Why is this so important?
The Book of Ruth and the Book of Samuel tell the story of David, how he was chosen to be King and his ancestry. To both Jews and Christians, this is of extreme importance. Jesus is of the house of David, and the Gospels go through lengthy measures to put him at Bethlehem, the city of David.
But David isn’t the legitimate King, because he is not the son of Saul. If you keep this in mind, the story about Jonathan becomes logical. Saul is described as jealous, unbalanced, vindictive, and not following God’s commands. We can easily agree to David being a much better King than Saul. But he’s still not legitimate.
The story isn’t about love. it’s about the legitimacy of David as King
So, the story about Jonathan describes how the legitimate heir to the throne practically gives away his right in favor of David. The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David. and Thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto thee; and that also Saul my father knoweth, are verses that confirm this. The covenant would be a pact to pass the crown to David. As would the following verse, And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.
It’s not David who strips himself, but it is Jonathan.
There are other analogic verses in the Bible e.g.Numbers 20, 28 And Moses stripped Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son; and Aaron died there in the top of the mount: and Moses and Eleazar came down from the mount.
The long story about David, Jonathan, and Saul is supposed to legitimize the Kingdom of David.
The authenticity of the old testament.
The Old Testament is very old. But unfortunately, we don’t have the original, and we’re not even close. The oldest complete Hebrew Bible is from around the year 1000 A.D and it’s called the Leningrad Codex. Another complete Hebrew bible was the Aleppo Codex about 100 years older. This latter was damaged during the Aleppo fire in 1947 and is now incomplete. The Leningrad Codex has been corrected against the Aleppo Codex and is regarded as less accurate.
David lived around 1000 B.C. From that time, the tales of him and his life were told through generations for some five hundred years. It was then written down together with much of the other stories of the Old Testament during the Babylonian exile or shortly after. Approximately 500 B.C. (500 years. That’s as distant as from today as to when Columbus discovered America…).
After that is was copied by hand for 1500 years (that’s as far back as the fall of the Roman Empire). And we know that copying by hand generates errors, misinterpretations, and simple changes.
There are many older fragments like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Silver Scrolls, but these are fragments. They are not complete.
David and Jonathan – Vulgata
The Christian tradition has its Vulgata from the 4th century, probably based on the contemporary Greek uncial codices, as well as ancient Hebrew texts. But it’s still handwritten from a handwritten copy. And it is at least partly from texts transferred into Greek from the original narratives in Hebrew… And it is written in Latin.
If you want an English Bible, you can choose the King James Bible… Or you can have one of the 60 (!) other versions available in English.
All this to explain that the text has been changed. We don’t know exactly how much, but knowing that the early Catholic church made quite an effort to create a book that they could promote by editing the material.
It is not controversial to imagine that the story about David and Jonathan has been edited, changed, and overhauled during the centuries, just like many of the other stories in the Holy Bible.
The authenticity of David, Saul, and Jonathan.
On the Tel-Dan Stele, there is an inscription that could be interpreted as … House of David, This is about all of the historical evidence we have. And there’s nothing that suggests that he was King over more than a small people in southern Palestine. The great United Kingdom of Israel could have been a myth about an ancient, powerful, and united Jewish Kingdom. Just like the King Arthur Myth in England.
We have no historical evidence that Saul ever existed.
We have no historical evidence that Jonathan ever existed.
Conclusion
In the end, it comes down to if you believe that the Bible you read today, after 3000 years, is the word of God, or not. If you do, then you will have to determine what God wants to tell you with this story.
If, on the other hand, you look at the long line of circumstantial evidence I’ve put up here, then it is obvious that there is no homosexual relation between David and Jonathan. And the reason is this:
There is no way first the Hebrew scribes, and then the Catholic church would have let these small fragments of Gay love live on for 3000 years. There’s just no way the censorship could have allowed it, knowing what effort the religious community has made to prevent homosexuality during the centuries.
This is a story about how the King of all Kings, the creator of the glorious Kingdom of Israel and Judah, came to be. From his ancestors in the Book of Ruth, until the death of Saul and the resignation of the throne by Jonathan. It just couldn’t have lived on if it was about Gay love. It would have been cut out long before it first came into writing if it was meant as anything else than the legitimate King renouncing his throne to David
Then again, does it really matter? We don’t even know if they existed, let alone if they were this or that, tall or small, gay or straight. It could have been a story to tell us that Gay love is Okey, It could have been a way for God to say: “Your love is as good as anybody else’s. I’m totally cool with that”… But it’s not. Homosexuality is not widely accepted. Not among Christians, not among Jews, and not among Muslims.
We can just hope that all the different religions of this world evolve.
No, King David, son of Jesse, did not have a homosexual relationship with Jonathan. He just wanted the throne.
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