"The King Lifted Up His Voice and Wept": David's Mourning in the Second Book of Samuel

This study is the first monograph that subjects to investigation all the pericopes relating David’s mourning connected with human death in 2 Sam, namely for Saul and Jonathan in 2 Sam 1,1-27, for Abner in 2 Sam 3,26-39, for the infant born of Bathsheba in 2 Sam 11,27b–12,25, for the princes/Amnon in 2 Sam 13,23-39 and for Absalom in 2 Sam 18,19–19,9. Another unique feature of this project is that these stories are read and interpreted primarily through the lens of the Hebrew mourning rituals — an approach that has been hitherto rarely embraced. This thematic study, adopting a synchronic approach and focusing on its literary world, first conducts a close reading of each aforementioned text and then takes a collective look at them in the end. Besides allowing new meanings to surface in the reading of the individual stories, it has yielded at least the following general insights: 1. The primarily ceremonial mourning acts are not to be taken as literal expressions of the mourners’ genuine emotion — an insight that is of paramount importance in the interpretation of certain figures at various places in the text. 2. The arrangement of the texts betrays a concentric design which strongly favors the reading of 2 Sam as one integral unit. 3. The study of the mourning texts also supports the view — noted as well by other scholars — which sees the portrait of David as a dynamic one, evolving and developing with the progress of the narrative plot of 2 Sam.