James Bejon
As Robert Alter rightly points out, the Old Testament prefers to avoid indirect speech. By way of illustration, Alter considers the incident recorded in 1 Sam 24:1–5, where Saul strays into the cave in which David and his men have holed out. The text reads as follows:
And the men of David said to him, “Here is the day of which the LORD said to you, ‘Behold, I will give your enemy into your hand, and you shall do to him as it shall seem good to you.'” Then David arose and stealthily cut off a corner of Saul’s robe. (1 Sam 24:4)
In verse 6, when David returns to his men, they urge him to take more drastic action against Saul, but David declines. “God forbid that I should do such a thing to my lord,” he says, “to the LORD’s anointed,” at which point our narrator tells us, “With these words, David persuaded his men and did not permit them to attack Saul” (v. 7).
Here, a more modern narrator would probably not have reported direct speech. He would instead have continued the narrative with a statement like, “David explained it would be unacceptable to take drastic action against Saul.” But the biblical narrator has David speak directly.
The Difference of Direct Speech
Now, at first blush, that may seem a fairly trivial difference. Yet it has a number of important consequences. For one thing, it credits David with a speech act. It portrays David as a man with a desire to convey the solemn nature of his situation to his troops. As Alter says,
The text makes us feel the urgent presence of David saying: I am the king’s vassal; he is my master; he is God’s own anointed, the sanctity of whose election is an awesome thing. I will not, therefore, do what you and I may presently see as a possibility. I will not raise this hand of mine against YHWH’s anointed.”1
The use of direct speech also adds layers of ambiguity and complexity to Samuel’s narrative. “An avowal by David…reported in the third person,” Alter says, “would take on some of the authoritativeness of the reliable narrator” (which, for those who affirm the divine inspiration of Scripture is divine authority). But “as things are actually presented, we find ourselves confronted with David as he makes his public statement, and, as elsewhere [given the vexed relationship between David and Saul], we are led to ponder the different possible connections between his spoken words and his actual feelings or intentions.”2
In other words, the text merely tells us what David says. What David thinks and wants to achieve by his speech is another matter. The narrator presents David’s speech act to us rather than defining or interpreting it for us. Did a part of David share his men’s sentiments? Was his statement in 24:6 for his benefit as much as his men’s (cf. v. 7)? That is to say, might his statement have been intended to strengthen his own resolve? Might it even have been meant to function as a kind of oath or commitment?
These are questions which are raised by the biblical text, yet they are not explicitly answered by it. They are instead left for the reader to ponder. The reader is thereby encouraged to actively engage with the text. He or she is also encouraged to consider broader issues—for example, the general tenor of David’s character, David’s state of mind at the time of 1 Sam 24’s events, etc.—which requires 1 Sam 24 to be read not as an isolated incident, but as part of a wider narrative.
Direct Speech and the Question of Truth
Alter’s analysis of direct speech is important since the Bible contains a huge amount of direct speech. It also brings up a related issue: namely, the issue of speech acts which embody a disconnect not between what is said and what is felt (per David’s situation in 1 Sam 24), but between what is said and what is true. A well-known example is Eve’s first recorded speech:
And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'” (Gen 3:2–3)
Is Eve’s claim correct? Did God really forbid her (and Adam) to touch the tree? In Gen 2, Adam is simply told not to “eat” from the tree. Is that because chapter 2 is non-exhaustive and Eve’s speech in chapter 3 fills out its details? Or was no such command given in the first place? And, if not, why does Eve say it was? Did Adam misreport God’s command to Eve? Or is Eve’s statement an early example of man’s tendency to put “hedges” around God’s commands?
Again, these complexities and ambiguities are created by the Bible’s preference for direct speech.
A Dash of Intertextuality
Elsewhere in the text, complexity is created by the Bible’s intertextuality, which is often mingled with direct speech. Consider, for instance, the story below, which I have narrated in generic terms (for reasons which will later become clear).
An elderly and senior figure in Israel’s history is in the final years of his life. He is old and infirm and constrained in what he is able to do. As yet, the man in question has not revealed who should inherit his wealth and authority. He appears to favour his older son, who is the natural inheritor. But, due to the influence of his wife, things turn out differently. While the older son is away, the man is persuaded to bequeath his inheritance to a younger son instead of the older son, which causes the older son to “tremble” (חרד) when he finds out.
Whose story is described here? Jacob and Esau’s, right? In part. These events do clearly fit the story of Jacob and Esau. But they also fit the story of Solomon and Adonijah described in 1 Kgs 1–2.
At the time of 1 Kgs 1–2’s events, David is old and infirm, and he has not yet revealed who should inherit his wealth and authority. (Or, at least it seems.) David appears to favour his older son, Adonijah, whom he views as a replacement for his beloved Absalom. Indeed, ever since he was born, David has treated Adonijah with kid gloves (see 1 Kgs 1:6). But, while Adonijah is absent, Nathan sends Bathsheba to the palace to see the king, and Bathsheba persuades him to bequeath his inheritance to Solomon instead, which causes Adonijah to “tremble” when he finds out (1:49).
As such, the events of 1 Kgs 1–2 resonate curiously with those of Gen 27. Or at least they do in certain respects. But, at the same time, the stories seem quite different from one another. Rebekah and Jacob’s behaviour is clearly deceptive, but the same can’t be said for Bathsheba’s.
Or can it? The answer isn’t as clear as we might first imagine. Let’s consider the events of 1 Kgs 1 more carefully.
1 Kings 1’s events are triggered by Adonijah, who instates himself as king without David’s consent or knowledge. In response, Bathsheba and Nathan formulate a plan to have Adonijah removed. Bathsheba approaches the king and “reminds” him of his promise to leave the throne to Solomon. She then tells him about Adonijah’s coronation, which, she says, threatens not only Solomon’s kingship but his life. Then, right on cue, Nathan enters and seconds Bathsheba’s statement, at which point David agrees to instate Solomon in Adonijah’s place. And all, therefore, seems well and good.
But is Bathsheba’s statement about David’s promise as innocent and accurate as it seems? Did David really bequeath his throne to Solomon? David is old, and there are many things he is said not to “know” in chapter 1 (cf. vv. 11, 18), Abishag included (v. 4). Might Nathan and Bathsheba have convinced David to honour a promise he never actually made? At first blush, it doesn’t seem as if they did. But a number of aspects of our text complicate the matter. For instance:
• We are never explicitly told David bequeathed his throne to Solomon.3 That doesn’t mean that he didn’t, but it at least allows the possibility.
• When Nathan and Bathsheba formulate their plan, Nathan doesn’t tell Bathsheba to claim David has in fact promised Solomon the throne, but simply to ask David the question—that is, to plant the thought in David’s mind (1:13).
• When Nathan enters the throne room to “second/confirm” (מלא) what Bathsheba has said, he confirms every aspect of her story except her statement about Solomon.
• The question Nathan asks David reads rather oddly. “Has Adonijah already been instated,” Nathan essentially asks in 1:27, “when you haven’t yet told your servants who should sit on your throne?” This seems a reasonable enough question to ask at first pass, but didn’t Bathsheba just claim David had told her who should sit on his throne?
• A related issue rears its head in the next chapter. Adonijah tells Bathsheba all Israel expected him to succeed David (2:15), which Bathsheba concedes. Why, however, would people have expected Adonijah to succeed David if David had already bequeathed his throne to Solomon? Was David’s promise made in private? It certainly could have been. But then wouldn’t Bathsheba—who desperately wanted Solomon enthroned—have asked David to commit to it more publicly long ago and hence have guaranteed her son’s inheritance? Why would she have waited until David was old before she raised the issue?
All of these questions are subtly raised by this biblical text’s preference for direct speech and reinforced by its fundamental interconnectedness with a familiar deception story.
The text of Scripture reports what is said. Whether what is said is true, however, is often a question which requires more careful consideration.4
Ambiguity and Discernment
To close, a brief reflection on the matter. The biblical narrative contains many unknowns, and deliberately so. As Alter rightly notes, when the biblical narrative reports direct speech, the content of speech does not inherit the authority of the narrator. It may represent a mere expression of desire, a false belief, a cleverly transmitted item of misinformation, or an outright lie. As a result, the biblical narrative is often less transparent than it could otherwise be, and thus requires careful thought. Indeed, some of its narratives verge on the ambiguous-beyond-recovery.
Aside, therefore, from a commitment to biblical truthfulness and trustworthiness, the biblical narrative contains too many free variables for us to say much about it or for it function as an authoritative text that directs our lives. Put another way, if the claims made by the characters in the Bible have the potential to be false (since, like anyone else, the characters in the Bible can be mistaken, dishonest, deceptive, etc.), that is one thing. But if, in addition, the biblical narrative itself is not held together by coherent, divine authorial intent (and thus may contain various oversights, errors, inconsistencies, and even outright falsehoods), then all bets are off. Neither the characters in all their ambiguous speech nor the narrator’s careful literary presentation of them and their context are reliable guides to the conclusions we ought to draw about God, history, ourselves, reality. We are lost in a sea of unknowns, with too many interpretative degrees of freedom.
That does not, of course, prove the biblical narrative is held together by coherent authorial intent (or devoid of oversights, errors, etc.), but it makes the assumption of biblical inerrancy and truthfulness a highly pragmatic approach. The conviction that a trustworthy God communicates faithfully in Scripture—that the narrator’s perspective is the Narrator’s perspective—assures us that the task of exegesis is not a fruitless one. Specifically, it provides us with a divine guarantee that our interrogation of the sometimes ambiguous biblical text will not leave us adrift in an ocean of interpretative possibilities, but will indeed bring us into the truth that God would have us to discover and teach us about God and his world. We labor to listen to the narrative because, in the narrative, God in fact speaks.
Such a conviction also spurs us on to more determined—and ultimately transformative—interaction with the text. That the biblical text accurately reports the (potentially) inaccurate statements of its characters introduces an element of ambiguity to the text. That element of ambiguity, however, should not lead us to question the authoritativeness or reliability of the biblical text. Rather, it should stimulate us to consider it all the more vigorously and intentionally. Why? Because we believe the Narrator of Scripture does not write ambiguously by accident. Because we believe every detail of Scripture is present in Scripture for a reason.
As such, a high view of Scripture invites and in fact compels us to dig into the literary and theological details of the text—to carefully reflect on its characters’ stated and unstated motives, to exercise discernment and insight, to arrive at hard-won and mature conclusions about the text of Scripture, and to carry those same skills over into our daily lives.
James Bejon is a junior researcher at Tyndale House in Cambridge, United Kingdom. You can follow him on Twitter.
Image: Willem de Poorter, Saul and David in the Cave of En-Gedi
- Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 84. Emphasis added.[
] - Ibid.[]
- David does refer to Solomon as his “chosen son” (and hence successor) in 1 Chr 28–29, but only in the context of Solomon’s second coronation (cf. 29:22), which postdates Solomon’s first (and necessarily rushed) coronation described in 1 Kgs 1.[]
- Alter’s comments on 1 Kgs 1 helpfully bring out the way Nathan’s speech builds on what David has just been told. “Nathan,” he says, “faithful to the scenario he has sketched out, enters [the throne room] just at the point when Bathsheba has conjured up her prospective plight…Shrewdly, since he could not be presumed to know of a pledge given by David directly to Bathsheba, he takes the precise verbal formulas of [David’s] supposed vow (which he has in fact just dictated to Bathsheba) and turns them into a barbed question about Adonijah; ‘My lord the king, did you say, “Adonijah shall be king after me and shall sit on my throne”?’ (1 Kings 1:24). Then, without waiting for an answer, he plunges into an account of the usurper’s politically designing feast in which, following the pattern of incremental repetition, some pointed details appear…” It is not just Joab who has defected, Nathan says, “but the whole military elite….Nathan adds a little vignette of Adonijah’s company…shouting, ‘Long live King Adonijah,’ a scene certainly calculated to rouse the ire of the still reigning king [David]. In tactful contrast…Bathsheba at the end of this meeting will say to the age monarch, ‘May my lord King David live forever.’ The effect of this whole process of repeating and adding is to overwhelm David with a crescendo of arguments.” Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 124–5.[]