Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bruce Gardner <b.gardner AT abdn.ac.uk>]

From Harold to Ian, earlier..

>>It seems likely that David would have secured a site
before drawing up
>>plans.
>
>You cannot get beyond the text, but I was dealing with the text. I
was
>making what may be called a reasonable hypothesis for correlating the
data
>from 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles.

Well, Harold, I go away for a week-end and you have been busy! Let me
just, then, return to the point about 2 Samuel 24 and 1st Chronicles 21
(i.e. the price paid by David for 'something' from Ornan/Araunah the
Jebusite). Here is a translation of the two accounts, in part. The
altar/site differential is noted in the text, of course, and you write as
if to show that out could be enough to settle the issue, but that is
not the point:  It is this: they are variant accounts of
the same event and the variations are significant. so that even if
'reconciled' they raise redactional issues.

A COMPARISON OF 2Sam 24 and 1Chron 21.

1] The Simple Agenda.

 2Sa 24:18 

                                 And Gad came that day to David, and said unto him, Go
                                 up, rear an altar unto the LORD in the threshingfloor of
                                 Araunah the Jebusite.

1 Chron 21:18   

Then the angel of the LORD commanded Gad to say to

                                 David, that David should go up, and set up an altar unto
                                 the LORD in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite.

This introduces a single event: David is to buy the threshing floor of Araunah/Ornan in order to set up an altar there. If you say the other account means he buys the site too, that is beyond what the Lord actually orders him to do, because Chronicles, at first, simply repeats the instruction of the 2nd Samuel version. It would be a convenient, but unconvincing interpretation to argue for two almost identical speech-events, and there seems little or no evidence - apart from the discrepancies themselves - that it is not one occasion.

Here, then, is David's stated agenda, as given, expressed with a little variation, as in the following verses:

                                2Sa 24:19 
                                 And David, according to the saying of Gad, went up as
                                 the LORD commanded.

1Ch 21:19 

                                 And David went up at the saying of Gad, which he
                                 spake in the name of the LORD.

Both suggest David dropped everything and went, in the same emergency event, at the plague moment.
        
                2]  Seeing the king:
                    
                                2Sa 24:20 
                                 And Araunah looked, and saw the king and his servants
                                 coming on toward him: and Araunah went out, and
                                 bowed himself before the king on his face upon the
                                 ground.
                    

1Ch 21:20 

                                 And Ornan turned back, and saw the angel; and his four
                                 sons with him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing
                                 wheat.

                        1Ch 21:21 
                                 And as David came to Ornan, Ornan looked and saw
                                 David, and went out of the threshingfloor, and bowed
                                 himself to David with [his] face to the ground.

In both cases, the owner of the threshing-floor is in the floor itself. Chronicles tells us helpfully that he was engaged in using it for the purpose for which it was built.  Chronicles emphasises the angel for effect, but Araunah/Ornan's reaction to David is the same: as he comes out, he bows himself with face to the ground

                3]  The Opening of The Transaction:

                                2Sa 24:21 
                                 And Araunah said, Wherefore is my lord the king come
                                 to his servant? And David said, To buy the
                                 threshingfloor of thee, to build an altar unto the LORD,
                                 that the plague may be stayed from the people.

1Ch 21:22 

                                 Then David said to Ornan, Grant me the place [maqom] of [this]
                                 threshingfloor, that I may build an altar therein unto the
                                 LORD: thou shalt grant it me for the full price: that the
                                 plague may be stayed from the people.

Here, the writer is quite awkward. He has to honour the source, and he cannot be cavalier in changing it, but he also wants to add to the dimension of the sale.  He omits the question of Araunah, perhaps since it seems to the Chronicler - having emphasised the angel  - that Ornan could not exactly ignore its presence,  nor therefore be in any doubt that the presence of the king might have soemthing to do with it, a factor which Samuel doesn't take into account: the presence of the angel is not so emphasised there. Or maybe he simply misses it out because he wishes to stress the pro-active authority of David the hero/victim. This last element is because Chronicles represents the event not as a work of God but of Satan (see both, v1).

Introduction of the word maqom (place) enlarges the reference; maqom may also have a cultic implication, but still the specific request is to build an altar.  No reference is made here to any Temple-building vision or plans, because after all this is an emergency response to divine command, not to an evolved long-term policy. The agenda above is clearly to buy an altar, and the ambiguous maqom appears a subtle editorial modulation allowing the writer to build into a later version of events tradition(?) that Samuel doesn't have.

                4] The Courtesies.

                            2Sa 24:22-23 
                                 And Araunah said unto David, Let my lord the king take
                                 and offer up what [seemeth] good unto him: behold,
                                 [here be] oxen for burnt sacrifice, and threshing
                                 instruments and [other] instruments of the oxen for
                                 wood.  All these [things] did Araunah, [as] a king, give unto the
                                 king. And Araunah said unto the king, The LORD thy
                                 God accept thee.

                          1Ch 21:23 
                                 And Ornan said unto David, Take [it] to thee, and let
                                 my lord the king do [that which is] good in his eyes: lo, I
                                 give [thee] the oxen [also] for burnt offerings, and the
                                 threshing instruments for wood, and the wheat for the
                                 meat offering; I give it all.

Araunah/Ornan's response is about the same, with elaborate courtesies seen also in buying the cave of Machpelah (Gen 23:11) where an owner pretends to give it away and a buyer insists on a fair price.  David's request, in both cases, focuses on an altar; the templar extension is prepared for by implication only. 

This is done so that the Chronicler can adapt the text without wholesale changes to the sacred passage in view.  The writer is opening up the reference, to allow a later, Temple dimension to David's purchase, in the purchasing of a larger site than the narratives themselves require in either case, since it is the clear aim of the Chronicler to edit the story in order to form a bridge to the grandiose Davidic Temple plans of later.  It is notable here that 2 Samuel 24 ends the Books of Samuel, whereas, 1 Chronicles 22-29 is a lengthy coda in which the son of david, Solomon, is made king in a smooth succession in which the fratricidal troubles of Samuel-Kings little intrude. Then again, David continues to organise the Temple with a robustness that is absent in 1 Kings 1 where he is a sad, regretful, pathetic old man pleading for revenge, and requiring the presence of a young woman, Abishag, to keep warm at nights. Kings contrast with the robust visionary of Chronicles could not be more obvious.  In the Chronicler, while the Temple is central the kingship has been rehabilitated too, so that David, weak and vicious at the end, and touchy Solomon too, are securely great.

                5] The Price:             
      
                        2Sa 24:24 
                                 And the king said unto Araunah, Nay; but I will surely
                                 buy [it] of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt
                                 offerings unto the LORD my God of that which doth
                                 cost me nothing. So David bought the threshingfloor and
                                 the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.
                  
                        1Ch 21:24-25 
                                 And king David said to Ornan, Nay; but I will verily buy
                                 it for the full price: for I will not take [that] which [is]
                                 thine for the LORD, nor offer burnt offerings without
                                 cost.  So David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred
                                 shekels of gold by weight.

NOTE AGAIN: The point is that the one conversation has been changed in order to expand the reference for the editor's purpose. This is an obvious redaction, building on the ambiguity of the word maqom, place.

The later price is intended to reflect the prestigious Babylonian number, 600, in the context of gold, and the extension to the maqom built into the text gives the writer the excuse to introduce this higher value. Yet all this is done without any internal reason in the text for that extension, which seems to contradict the first instruction which was to build an altar. In the Samuel version, David is not to build a Temple: all is to be left to his son after his death. The Chronicler wants an idealised David associated with the temple because he is going to elevate David so much in planning the Temple, Solomon will be reduced to a mere proxy. It is clever, but because the writer is so respectful of his source text he dare not change it enough to hide what he is doing, which is giving David a site for the Future Temple, with (as you say) the site preparation one would expect for the building program. The problem is that this is an invention of the Chronicler to give the building program an apparent genesis in events in David's life, which Samuel contradicts (2 Sam 7:1-17). In fact, even Chronicler's David is forced to refer (1 Chron 28:3) to this after a fulsome description of his role in creating the cultic life of Israel all while his son is ruling, apparently because he is young (1 Chron 29:1).

                6] The Result.

The result of the transaction is tellingly in keeping with the source, not the extension of meaning, because when all is said and done the Chronicler wants to introduce maqom avoiding merely blatant contradiction.

                        2Sa 24:25 
                                 And David built there an altar unto the LORD, and
                                 offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the
                                 LORD was intreated for the land, and the plague was
                                 stayed from Israel.
 
                        1Ch 21:26 
                                 And David built there an altar unto the LORD, and
                                 offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called
                                 upon the LORD; and he answered him from heaven by
                                 fire upon the altar of burnt offering.

In Chronicles, there is an added dimension which seems to confer priestly grandeur on David, linking the figure around whom Messianism grew, in literary terms, to a specifically religious vision. The fire coming from heaven is part of the new, elevated position that idealised kingship is to have in some later traditions.

Thus, the result of the transaction is not a Temple, of course, but an altar. The end of both accounts is to fulfil the agenda set earlier, which includes no mention of a site for anything else. All is the introduction of the Chronicler, grafting onto his source a subtle hook on which to hang his next set of chapters, without changing the structure of the story as he found it in his source, only alteringa detail in midrashic style, as a prelude to what - to me - is an obvious midrash on the relationship between ideals of Kingship and Temple.

Contradiction?  Not exactly. Revision. Revision which tries to affirm the past but move on from limitations that past traditions impose.  Of course, looking at the versions of David's end, as with the two versions of Solomon's (the wise and the foolish) both ethical and literary arguments can be used to reconcile then. It is the nature of life itself that human beings are weak and contradictory, and the Christian tradition regards such conflicts as part of its theological bread and butter. So, no. It's not difficult to get round it, especially as the HB/OT itself was plainly, to some extent, a unified tradition which accepted these different inputs.

But that is quite a different thing from a scholar closing his eyes to the obvious. And I suppose, when I think of you, Harold, and Dan, with your reasonableness and sane comment, the one question which I have is: are you capable of concluding that there is ever a ripple in the text, ever an editorial hand and a different theological perspective? The fact that you might not ever be, well, that's what I find disturbing, because it means that you are theologically fortified only to deny that which must be denied, rather than prepared to look at the evidence as you would if it were any other book than the Bible which is before you, because - to me - if a person enters in a debate with a counter-analytical agenda, he is an apologist but not a true scholar. He has a prior agenda, of which others might well approve, but which betrays honest sight, and evangelicals have become expert in inventing pseudo-scholarship to prove what they already believe.
 
Sincerely,

Bruce Gardner,
Department of Divinity and Religious Studies,
University of Aberdeen,
Scotland. UK.
AB24 3UB.

                     

------------

Bruce Gardner

b.gardner AT abdn.ac.uk