Abomination- The Story of David and Jonathan

Prologue

Alongside a small patch of acacia trees covered in golden-yellow spikes, a pale sun beat down on an open bedouin tent. The sides were lifted so as to allow air to flow through, lest its inhabitant be suffocated in this land of dusty mountains and wadis. Though the camel-hair hides it was constructed of were suited to these harsh conditions, an almost unnatural, hell-like heat lay across the land, stifling it like a fiery hot blanket. Even the riverbeds, which had recently bloomed—as they had every year since the days when the Nephilim walked these lands—had died off, and the pastel roadways in the desert, accustomed to clay-baking heat, had been replaced by deep, barren craters of fine, grains of sand.

Inside the tent, which stood on top of a small hill on the edge of the nearby village of Ziklag, a ruddy man reclined, his body laid across a large cushion dyed the same reddish yellow as his hair. He was deep in thought when a servant brought in a young man, who collapsed onto his knees.

“Are you David?” he asked tentatively from the ground.

“Yes,” came the firm but simple response.

“Then please, have mercy on me,” the young man cried out, throwing his arms in front of him and resting his chest against the carpet.

David stood up so that his muscled body towered over the prostrate figure on the floor of his nomadic dwelling. “What need would I have to show you mercy?” he asked curiously.

“They are dead,” the young man answered into the ground.

“Stand up and tell me your tale,” David commanded. “But first, I must know your name.”

“Eliphaz, a descendant of Esau.” The man pushed himself off of his knees and stood upright.

“An Amalekite . . . which makes your journey to my tent more confounding.” David’s brows furrowed, and his eyes, the same azure as his loose tunic, bore down onto this ally of the Canaanites.

“You must know, I only did what he begged of me.”

“He?”

Eliphaz lifted his hands, which shook with tremors. “Saul, your Israelite king.” His voice rose in fear.

“And this means?” David pressed.

“King Saul is . . .” The young man hesitated to finish his sentence.

David’s eyes widened. “Saul is dead?”

Eliphaz nodded. “That’s not all.” His whole body was convulsing now.

“What could be worse?” Concern laced David’s voice.

“Jonathan—” Eliphaz began, but David put his hand up to silence the Amalekite.

“Do not say it.”

The tent was silent except for the scurrying sound from the short legs of a mottled sandgrouse that was wandering along the edge of the shelter. Something startled it so that its wings rustled in a beat, and it took off into the air with a high-pitched whistle. It screeched, then it was gone. In its absence, David released his own twisted groan before he fell to his knees and cried.

הַמִּשְׁחָה (HA-MISHCHAH) – THE ANOINTMENT

Youthful Ignorance

The echo of fists beating against countless breastplates rattled across the hot desert air. It could easily have been mistaken for thunder, except that the morning sky was clear from Socoh in the east to Azekah in the west.

“I will make a chain out of your snipped Israelite cocks to wear around my neck if someone doesn’t come down and fight me soon,” a giant covered in bronze-scaled armor yelled out across the Valley of Elah.

Every day for weeks, Jonathan had watched from the edge of his father, King Saul’s, encampment on the opposite knoll as the morning light tore at his eyes. Even the sun fled in terror as it reflected back against the polished helmet on top of the head of that Philistine they called Goliath, who stood as tall as two soldiers, one on top of the other.

Yet where celestial bodies had the safety of distance, the king’s army had only the space between two hills. There stood this creature so fearsome who freely mocked an army of thousands and not one of them did more than tremble in response.

A palm pressed against Jonathan’s shoulder and forcefully pushed him a few steps forward. “Why don’t you go down and face Goliath,” snickered a familiar voice, and another cackled at the prospect.

Jonathan turned around and glared at his annoying half-brothers, Armoni and Mephibosheth. With their large heads and bulging eyes, the twins looked like a pair of matching desert spadefoot toads, though where Mephibosheth was squat and thick, Armoni was long and thin. The incessant croaking from the real nocturnal amphibians each night was less irritating than these two, who plagued Jonathan constantly.

“I don’t think his balls have dropped yet, and you want him to play the role of a warrior?” Mephibosheth said, his double chin shaking with laughter.

“And yet he thinks that he is better than us because his mother, Ahinoam, lay with our father first?” Armoni spit.

“Doesn’t that just make him the son of a loose harlot?” the other twin teased.

“Piss off,” Jonathan replied as the two of them marched away, arms across one another’s shoulders, in fits of pubescent tittering.

Jonathan and his full-blooded brothers, Abinadab and Malchi-shua, had certain privileges that came with being born of a true wife, and his father’s concubine, Rizpah, had raised her twin sons to be scornful of their place and to seek gain wherever they could. So, Armoni and Mephibosheth were ever the hair that lurked in the morning curds. Not a day went by when they did not bring some unpleasant sensation to his life, from the time of waking until he was once more wandering asleep through dreams, there was an incessant desire to cough them out. But they were family, and as such, Jonathan could not escape their presence, however loathsome he found them to be.

While his half-brothers were tiny gnats that constantly bit at his neck, Goliath’s voice thundered in this moment as if he were a god, and the knees of the many men who were just behind Jonathan knocked together at the mere thought of being sent down by their king to face him.

Across the valley, on the hill of Ephes Dammim, another army stood, and they hooted and howled at each taunt their massive brother hurled up at the Israelites.

“I think they must have sent their women out to fight us,” one of the Philistines called, and Goliath’s chest heaved as his mouth released a guffaw of thick bass notes. Its sound vibrated up the nape of Jonathan’s neck, and he ran into the tent where his father sat among a mountain of cushions, his head in his hands.

“Is there not anyone in this whole land who will fight on my behalf?” Saul moaned. “I’ve offered great wealth and would even seat them at my side if only someone would go out there and kill that cursed beast!” He stood up and began to pace. “What was the point of being anointed a blasted king anyway if I’m to sit here and be made a fool of day after day?” Spittle sprung from the corners of his mouth. “Am I forsaken altogether?”

He lifted his eyes to the ceiling. His servant stepped forward to appease him, but Saul pushed the man away. “And where in Shiloh is Samuel?” He stomped over to his brother, Abner, the general of the Israelite forces. “We are staring down an army of twice as many Philistines as you had told me to expect, and our so-called prophet isn’t even here to pronounce something—anything—or do a damn thing for us!

“You are all useless,” he shouted again, then turned on his heels and paced.

Saul was frantic now, as he’d been more frequently these past few months, so Jonathan tiptoed back out and into the camp, where he found a place on the edge of the hill to squat down, watch, and think.

He had just settled when, behind him, he heard the cracking voice of a young man going through a familiar hormonal awakening. “Aren’t any of you brave enough to do something other than stand here and look like washerwomen?” The boy’s pitch dropped low, then rose to a high note.

Jonathan didn’t bother to turn around to see who was speaking. It was just another rambling dissenter wondering aloud why they’d been camped out here for weeks rather than rushing into battle.

What does anyone, let alone a boy, know about leading a nation? Jonathan shrugged. Only he knew how the decision weighed on his father, and this youth’s criticism was nothing compared to the crushing pressure King Saul himself felt to act.

But the teen’s voice grew louder, until with a shrill declaration, he squeaked, “I will do it myself!”

Suddenly, the lanky young man rushed past on Jonathan’s left side, almost knocking him into the sand. Jonathan steadied himself, then stood all the way back up. His mouth fell open in disbelief as he watched the boy head straight down the hill. Scores of men came up behind Jonathan and began to yell out at the rusty-headed adolescent as he carefully zigzagging down between rocks and dirt.

“Come back here, child,” someone called.

“You will get yourself killed and make us all into slaves, you stupid boy!” cried another.

A great roar rose up from the Philistine camp on the other side as they gathered at the edge of their own hilltop.

“What is going on here?” Jonathan heard his father call out from nearby. “And why is there a young boy walking down this hill?”

“That’s David. He’s the son of Jesse, an Ephrathite, I’ve been told,” Abner answered.

“I didn’t ask who he was,” King Saul barked. “I want to know why this babe who is barely off his mother’s tit has taken it upon himself to head toward the lair of the lion. How can this be happening?”

Saul’s screams rang out, and Jonathan felt his father’s fear. After all, he knew of the Philistine offer. If someone killed Goliath, the battle would be over and the Philistines would pledge themselves as slaves to his father’s crown. But if a man were to face the giant and lose, the Israelites would have to bow to the Philistines, and it was certain that this boy, descending the slope at his own urging, had now sentenced them all to a life of chains and shackles.

“Damnit.” Saul grumbled.

“What the hell is this?” Goliath laughed from down below. “I know the great King Saul, who claims to be protected by his god, did not send a boy out to meet me—unless he’s come to rub my feet and wipe my ass after I devour all of his people, then shit them out!” Goliath’s broad shoulders shook with delight as the Philistines behind him laughed in glee at his words.

“I’ve killed bears fiercer than you,” David replied with youthful arrogance as he neared the bottom of the hill and stepped out onto the valley floor.

“Is that so?” The giant sniggered. “I think I have a boil on my ass bigger than you . . . though less irksome.”

But David continued his approach, and a look of satisfaction spread across Goliath’s face. “Come closer, then, so that I can shove my javelin down your throat and roast you over an open fire like a venison steak,” he said. Then he pulled a mammoth spear out from behind his back.

Jonathan looked on with a mix of fear and wonder as he watched the young man swoop his hand down across the ground and scoop up a few rocks without slowing his approach. David then pulled a slingshot out from the small bag he had strapped across his body and loaded it with one of the stones.

Goliath released another howl from his belly at the sight of the weapon. “This has to be some kind of jest.” He threw his head back with laughter, which caused his helmet to slide off and land on the hot sandy ground near his enormous feet.

Just as he did so, David lifted his slingshot and let loose the small stone, which whistled as it flew through the air. It landed with a thud directly against the giant’s forehead, by his left temple.

Goliath’s laughter faded, and he straightened his head and glared down at David. Then he dropped his spear and lifted his right hand, pressing it to his face. Liquid began to drip out between his fingers until it flowed steadily, the color as red as the Nile when it was hit with the first of the ten plagues.

“You little sh—” he started to say, but his legs gave way midsentence, and he wobbled from side to side.

He swayed like a cypress tree in a storm before he teetered and tipped. The air shook with a crash of metal and flesh that ricocheted across the valley and onto the two hills of the opposing camps, until at last all went silent.

Jonathan could not hear the sound of his own breathing; his lungs had ceased to contract. For just a moment, it seemed as if all of earth waited breathlessly for the stirrings of the giant. But they did not come.

No one moved as they watched David walk forward and kneel down beside Goliath’s body. The boy clumsily pulled out the large sword from the sheath that rested against the giant’s right hip, straining greatly to lift the weapon up over his head. Suddenly, there was a loud swoosh, initiated more by the force of gravity than by the strength of the blade’s wielder, and it fell downward. The squelch of flesh and bone ricocheted as it sliced through the neck of the giant, until at last, David stood and held up Goliath’s head, which had been removed from his body.

Jonathan’s ears were at once filled with shouts of jubilation, and he was all but trampled by the surge of men that ran past him and down the hill with their own swords extended. From across the way, he watched as the Philistines turned on their heels and ran frantically in retreat across the plains and back toward the entrance to the city of Gath, from where they had originally come. Then his eyes fell back down to where the men searched for David, but the young hero was nowhere to be found. Only a mass of humanity now covered the broken figure of Goliath, which lay at the valley’s center, though the memory of the boy Jonathan had watched sever its form in two was burned forever into his mind.

#

There was a wild rush of sound and vibration. Unsure of where he was, David turned around in confusion to see thousands of soldiers. The rushing crowd broke upon his body like he was a bulwark splitting the ocean waves in two. Their guttural cries released a wind as forceful as their movement, which carried on for several minutes, until at last they were gone. He looked up at the empty Israelite camp, and the realization of what had transpired roared back into his mind.

Turning back around, David looked down to see the split form of Goliath. The giant’s head and sword both lay by his feet.

Tempestuous. That was how his family often described him, and he could hear them reprimand him with the word now. You are prone to act first and think later, his father might say, as he had so many times before. None of this would be wrong.

All David could recall was being infuriated. When he first arrived at the encampment only a few hours earlier, he’d been mad at his brothers. There they were, far from home, having been sent to save the land of milk and honey that their God had given to them. Instead, he’d found them full-bellied and idle. And they weren’t the only ones. Tent after tent—so many temporary homes that they seemed to go on forever—had sat there filled with Israelite soldiers. David’s fury had shifted to these lazy cowards, their feet up as they drank beer and waited, all too patiently, for someone else to save them.

“Your wives and daughters will be sold off,” he remembered yelling at a group. They’d laughed and flung the bones of waterfowl, which they had picked clean with their teeth, at his feet.

One of the men chided at him, “Go home to your mother and come back when you have hair around your shteikh.” The others howled with laughter.

Another lifted up his robes and dropped his ezor to reveal his manhood. “Like this,” he teased as he grabbed hold of his piece and twirled it around in the air.

It was this insult that made David’s eyes go dark with rage and they had remained clouded until now.

He could find the traces of memories of his actions in between spots of pure redness, the color one saw when one stared into a fire.

There were the steps and stomps down the hillside, and the fury that had shot through him like an arrow through a lion’s heart when the giant likened him to an ass-pimple.

“I guess I lanced it,” he thought aloud, then chuckled into the air at this. That was followed by a guffaw that led to a burst of pure hilarity as he threw his head back. At last, all of the tension that had surged through his lanky limbs poured out through fingers and toes.

“I just killed a giant,” he said with wonder when his laughter ceased. His hands shook with fear as he knelt down and took hold of the incredible sword that he had somehow managed to wield. “Good Gideon.”

With effort, David heaved it into the air. Once he had control of it, he rested the sword so that its blade sat gently against his shoulder. The weight of the iron was a burden on his young body, and it caused him to bend at the knees. This shortened him just enough to sweep his fingers along the ground and find the coarse locks of the bodiless head, but not enough to render him immobile. As he passed, he gripped the hair tightly and then pushed up as hard as he could until he stood back up fully. Sword and head in hands, he clumsily wobbled away.

For a few moments, he limped on, his burden slowing his pace, until at last he reached a large tree beside a small stream. There he dropped the head and sword down with a crash, sat down next to them at the water’s edge, and exhaled.

David tried to catch his breath. Once he felt calm, he cupped his hands down into the coolness and lifted the refreshing water to his mouth.

“Ahhh,” he moaned as it rejuvenated him. Rehydrated, he moved his body back, leaning against a tree and closing his eyes.

You are willful and not easily restrained, he imagined his father yelling at him as he disciplined him harshly. After all, he hadn’t asked permission to leave his home in Bethlehem and run off to join his brothers in battle.

“Then again, there was no battle,” he said.

Perhaps it was his brothers that his father would scold. It did take their youngest sibling to show them what it meant to be a man of Israel, he thought proudly to himself.

“Meh,” David answered himself with a shrug.

It didn’t matter much what his father would say—he knew it was more than likely that they would all froth at the mouth and gnash their teeth at his actions. In fact, he would not be surprised if his father asked that smelly old man in rags to come back to their home and dump another clay jar of oil over his head.

“You are blessed,” the frail creature had uttered. But David knew that his father was so worried about his temperament that he’d brought the kook out to give some kind of false sense of protection to his own mind, not David’s.

“Maybe he believes that this kind of oil repels lions,” David had said to his brothers, laughing.

“They wouldn’t eat you before the oil,” Eliab teased. “There’s no meat on your bones!”

“I don’t know,” David answered in jest. “Some creatures find me incredibly edible.”

Well, the giant did. That did not go to well for him, I suppose. Once again, he laughed heartily at his own humor.

David liked to laugh . . . a lot. It did not matter if it was with his brothers or alone. In fact, maybe it was better alone. When you spent as much time alone as he did, unless you called a herd of sheep company, you learned to be your own amusement and to allow yourself the right to be perfectly amused by your own musings.

“Not even my brothers realize just how hilarious I am,” he assured himself.

In the far distance he heard the clanking of weapons, and he wondered how his brothers were faring in the battle.

I suppose I’ll just go home now, he thought, but his body decided otherwise. Killing giants and saving nations was hard work, and so as his ears moved away from the battle and toward the gentle sounds of the stream rolling over the bed of rocks beyond his toes, his eyes became heavy, and he slept.