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| David creepily watching Bathsheba. Image source. |
I've been writing some posts recently about King David, inspired by the book "Womanist Midrash"- about David and Michal, and David and Abigail. In this post, I just want to post a few quotes from the book, about how David had a huge number of wives.
From page 203:
There is a perception among my students that David had a couple of wives, but certainly not a couple dozen, and that Solomon's legendary marriage volume is de novo and not a generational pattern. These commonly held assumptions do not hold up under close reading of the biblical text. There are ten named individual women to whom David is either engaged or married or with whom he fathers children-- in addition to at least two different groups of women whose numbers and names go unrecorded. These numbers regularly come as a shock to students and congregants. Most are aware of David's notorious transgression with Bathsheba but are not familiar with the extent to which the Bible chronicles his womanizing. Table 1 on the next page is a quick and dirty list of David's women.
The collective categories "Saul's former wives" and "other primary wives and secondary wives taken in Jerusalem" could have included a handful, dozens, or hundreds of women on a Solomonic scale. There is simply no way to know how many marriage and sexual partners David had.
From page 211:
That Maacah, Haggith, Abital, and Eglah join Abigail and Ahinoam, marry David, and give birth to his children at Hebron means David has at least six wives with whom he is living, sleeping, and making babies before he ever lays eyes on Bathsheba; this is in addition to his banished but still legal and accessible wife, Michal. What was life like for all of them?
From page 197:
See 2 Sam. [12]:8, where God through Nathan acknowledges giving David "his master's women," as though that should have kept him from having Bathsheba abducted so that he could rape her.
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And a couple bible references about David's wives who were raped by David's son Absalom:
Then David said to all his officials who were with him in Jerusalem, “Come! We must flee, or none of us will escape from Absalom. We must leave immediately, or he will move quickly to overtake us and bring ruin on us and put the city to the sword.”
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The king set out, with his entire household following him; but he left ten concubines to take care of the palace.
Absalom said to Ahithophel, “Give us your advice. What should we do?”
Ahithophel answered, “Sleep with your father’s concubines whom he left to take care of the palace. Then all Israel will hear that you have made yourself obnoxious to your father, and the hands of everyone with you will be more resolute.” So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof, and he slept with his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel.
When David returned to his palace in Jerusalem, he took the ten concubines he had left to take care of the palace and put them in a house under guard. He provided for them but had no sexual relations with them. They were kept in confinement till the day of their death, living as widows.
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Follow-up post: Motivated By Inerrancy Or Sexism?
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Posts about the book "Womanist Midrash" by Wilda C. Gafney:
Womanist Midrash
The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus
The Second-Worst Bible Story
Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I
Why did I think David was the good guy in the story of Abigail?
David's Womanizing
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