Before we set out, I gathered my brigade of mighty men before me for the traditional pep talk and read aloud to them from a short scroll the artful and inspiring proclamation I had devised expressly to thwart the aspirations of my nephew Joab. Whoever would be first up the gutter of the large well into the city to smite the Jebusite defenders and open the gates for the rest of us would be, for the rest of his life, chief and captain for me over all the rest--a post which Joab had taken for granted was safely his and to which he tacitly assumed he was on the verge of being officially appointed. I saw his shudder of choleric surprise when he heard my words. I stared right back at him.
Guess what happened. You hit the nail on the head.
My strategy worked and my stratagem backfired. Wouldn't you know it? Fucking Joab was the first one up the water shaft of the main well of the city, and stood sniggering insolently with his brawny arms folded after he had hewed apart the bolts and swung open the gates to allow the rest of us to charge in. Of course I did everything I could to break my word.
'Now I am legitimately the captain and the chief,' he flaunted with no loss of time, as soon as the Jebusites had capitulated without resistance and the occupation of the city was complete. 'I am commander of all your host for the rest of my life, right?'
I affected a breathless and displeased astonishment at so bald and unwarranted a proposal. 'No way, Joab,' I exclaimed. 'What in the world are you prattling about?'
You should have seen the look on his face. I have to laugh to myself each time I recall it. We conducted our altercation in starlight amid a circle of subjugated Jebusite administrators looking on wide-eyed.
'What am I talking about?' It was an incredulous yelp Joab finally emitted when he was recovered from his initial jar. He went on in a voice made so shrill by distress that he sounded almost effeminate. 'You promised, didn't you? Didn't you promise?'
'I promised?' I objected coolly. 'Promised, you say? What did I promise, when did I promise? Who promised? Not me.'
'You did so,' he spluttered, fuming. 'You gave your royal word.'
'I gave my royal word?' I shook my head slowly and adamantly. 'Not me.'
'You said it, you said it,' he insisted almost hysterically. 'You said that whoever getteth up to the gutter first and smiteth the Jebusites and the lame and the blind would be chief and captain.'
'I said all that? When?'
'Before.'
'Before what?'
'Before now. Don't try to weasel out of it, David. You know you said it.'
'I did no such thing,' I informed him with majesty, lying in my teeth.
'You did so!' he screeched. 'It's written down. Everyone knows it. In a proclamation. Your own proclamation. Where's the parchment? Who's got the fucking parchment?'
I watched my chances of pulling it off disintegrating when someone handed him the cylinder of papyrus from which I had read aloud. I thought for an instant of having slain on the spot the man who had passed him the scroll. Joab thrust the paper under my nose in a shaking fist, fumbling to unroll it.
'Here!' he boomed. 'See? Read it.'
I peered down my nose in silence, then turned away with an air of lofty distaste. 'It's not my writing,' I informed him in chilly reproof.
Again he responded as though he found it impossible to believe his ears. 'Everyone heard you!' he screamed in a mixture of impotent wrath and fear, and seemed ready to dissolve in tears.
In the end I had to give up. This time he had the witnesses. And Joab has been captain over all my host ever since, withstanding every attempt of mine to dislodge him. Except for my personal palace guard of Cherethites and Pelethites, who are in service only to me and are commanded by Benaiah.
How strange it is that I have grown so old and Joab has not. We used to be the same age. I lie in bed with the chills, whining for love from my robust wife Bathsheba and shivering in passionless decrepitude with my shrunken arms hugging Abishag, and he sows barley, flax, and wheat and helps preserve the peace as a stalwart of Adonijah's. I have found him impossible to demote, even after his near-fatal blunder in Transjordan of plunging headlong with all his men into the empty area between the army of Ammonites outside the city of Rabbah and the army of Syrians of Zobah, Rehob, Ishtob, and Maccah hired by the Ammonites to come down to ally with them against us when the Ammonites saw they stank before me. Joab never could get into the obtuse military mind of his the obvious proposition that in war one side's salient is the other side's pincer. He plowed right into the middle and sent word to me cockily when he had established himself in that position.
'I have advanced unopposed and taken up my station between the two armies. What do you think of that?'
Strategy, on the other hand, has always been my middle name. 'I think that you had better watch your ass,' I responded at once, 'because now you can be attacked from both sides, you moron, no matter which way you face. Divide your men.'
Joab saw the light at once, deducing from my prompting that the battlefront was against him now both before and behind. He snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by doing at once what he does best: fighting. He picked the strongest men for himself and put them in array against the Syrians, and the rest he delivered to his brother Abishai to go against the children of Ammon. His directions to Abishai were uncomplicated:
'If the Syrians be too strong for me, then thou shalt help me. But if the children of Ammon be too strong for thee, then I will come and help thee. Be of good courage. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.'
Lo and behold, the Syrians fled as Joab drew nigh into the battle against them. And when the children of Ammon saw that the Syrians were fled, they turned also and fled into the city. So Joab was able to withdraw intact from Ammon and return to Jerusalem, having achieved nothing for Israel from his mission into Jordan but the saving of his skin.
I took charge then, to show how it was done and to demonstrate the superiority of brains over brawn. I personally led my army north to Helam against Hadarezer and the other Syrian kings, boldly bearding these lions right in their den by striking them where they were enmassed on their home ground. What was the point in leaving them free to assemble and move south against me? I smote them there with a power that devastated them. Oh, what a field day I had. It was a picnic. We slew the men of seven hundred chariots of the Syrians, and forty thousand horsemen, and even smote Shobach, the captain of their host, who died there. They had nothing left. And when Hadarezer and all the kings that were servants to him saw that they were smitten before me, they made peace with Israel quickly and agreed to serve us, and they have been serving us meekly ever since. And they feared to help the children of Ammon anymore, leaving them at our mercy; but the summer was ended, the showers of autumn were falling back home, and it was time to return to our country to harvest our dates, olives, and grapes, and sow our wheat and our barley at the beginning of winter, and to change into fresh, dry clothes. For everything there is a season, you know.
So it came to pass after the year was expired and the almond trees were again coming into blossom, at that time when kings again made ready to go forth into battle, that the Ammonites were shutting themselves up once more inside their city of Rabbah, in anticipation of the siege they expected we would renew, and the stage was set for my meeting with Bathsheba and the nearly cataclysmic liaison that followed. By that time my reputation was large and glamorous and I could get just about every woman I wanted, simply by taking her. Joab arrived at my doorstep on hearing the first cuckoo of spring and enthusiastically unveiled his plans for invading both Europe and Asia. I thought them farfetched. I turned him down and watched him bare his teeth and growl at me in furious irritation again. That's some Joab I've got, isn't it? I have to shake my head and marvel every time I remember Absalom's setting fire to the barley field of this quick-tempered, heartless warrior and swearing he would put the torch to his other crops as well. That's some Absalom I had too. Who could help loving him, if only for that, and even for his unbelievable in
solence in rising up to usurp my throne? The ambiguous pity is that he did not succeed. The one chance he had of conquering me he negligently threw away, thank God.
By the time of Absalom's insurrection, I had created, over the vociferous opposition of Joab, my personal palace guard of Cherethite and Pelethite mercenaries and given sole control of these soldiers to Benaiah the son of Jehoiada. The theory was originally Joab's that an elite corps of hired alien fighting men uninterested in domestic conflicts and immune to the influences of subversion would be a good thing for us to have. The idea to construct one and then put Benaiah at the head was entirely my own. Of course my nephew Joab was shocked.
Benaiah, a well-knit man with a deep chest and thick, bronzed neck, was one of my thirty mighty men of legend. Once, bearing just a staff, he had gone down to close with an armed Egyptian five cubits tall, wrested the spear from his grasp, and dispatched the fellow with his own weapon, he said. Another time, he related, he descended into a water pit to slay a lion. Why he elected to descend into a water pit to slay a lion is a question I have not bothered to put to him. Benaiah is a strong and simple man without a mind of his own, which was another factor recommending his selection: I wanted him responsive only to mine. It did not surprise me that Joab was apoplectic when I chose Benaiah to command my palace guard and made him responsible only to me.
'You're a lousy uncle!' he blurted out when he bulled his way in to see me. 'I'm supposed to be chief and captain over all of the host. The head of the palace guard should be under me.'
'The head of the palace guard,' I replied temperately, 'should be, I feel, under the head of the palace. Me.'
'I am under you,' he tried reasoning with me. 'So Benaiah would still be under you if you put him under me.'
I found that reasoning specious. 'You're away too often,' I said in opposition.
'What do you need him for anyway? You must tell him to rely on my authority whenever you're not near to instruct him.'
'I will always be near to instruct him,' I let Joab know in a level voice. 'Benaiah will go wherever I go.'
'Well, talk to him anyway.' Joab gave up the argument with a pout. 'Tell him he can always trust me. Remind him that I am the one who is commander over all the host, and not him.'
There some concord was possible. 'I will talk to him,' I agreed laconically. 'I will tell him how he can trust you.'
I had already observed the deadly hatred with which my nephew Joab, through slitted, venomous eyes, was regarding Benaiah, and I judged it best to lose no more time in putting that sinewy young man of war on the alert.
'Joab. Joab?' I began with Benaiah, speaking in a kind of hurried abbreviation, with a voice dropped low enough to approximate a furtive whisper which I hoped would not travel. Taking Benaiah's elbow in a compelling grip, I conducted him in a very brisk and hasty march from one side of this room in my palace to another, as a precaution against any eavesdropper treasonably concealed behind an arras or any of the walls. 'My nephew Joab?'
'I hear you.' Benaiah was waiting attentively.
'Should he ever give you orders, as though you were subordinate to him 'Yes?'
'Ignore them. Or carry instructions to you as though they were issued by me
'Disobey them?'
'Benaiah, Benaiah, you've got such a fine Jewish head on your shoulders. Your mother must love you. Now if you ever catch him looking at you strangely . . .'
'I think I often do see him looking at me strangely.'
'Strangely in a much different way.'
'I think he may be beginning to approve of me.'
'That's the way I meant, the warning I want to give you. If you ever find him looking at you with unexpected warmth, if he starts to treat you with glad affection, as though you were the one dear friend in the world he wanted most at that moment to see, if he throws an arm upon you amiably as though to take you aside for a choice state secret or the newest dirty joke...'
'Joab?'
'Yes, don't be fooled. Especially the one about the traveling knight in armor and the wife of Bath. Or greets you suddenly like a long-lost favorite cousin.'
'Joab and I are indeed distant cousins, through his second wife's first husband's mother's father's side, the son of--'
'Like his nearest and dearest cousin, with an overflow of warmth that leads you to believe he would make you his heir, that impels him to embrace you in one or both arms. If he inquires with greatest solicitude about the state of your health and takes your beard in his hand as though to kiss you, even if he does it with his right hand...'
'Yes? You're pausing. I'm holding my breath.'
'Leap for your life! Jump back from him as quickly as you're able and as far from him as you possibly can get. As though he were poison. Give the biggest damned jump you ever took, by God, and go for your sword as though facing your end. Don't wait to see if you're mistaken. don't give him that chance. It's curtains if you try to play fair. Never take your eyes from his hands whenever he's with you, never. Watch both as though each were an adder. Joab can strike with the left as swiftly as the right. Strive not with an angry man and go not with him to a solitary place. Remember Abner? Remember what happened?'
'He killed him. In the gate of the city.'
'Under the fifth rib he got him. With Joab, you must always make certain to guard your fifth rib.'
He killed Amasa too, in exactly the way I described, when we had returned victorious after slaying my son and my enemy Absalom and I found myself with new trouble on my hands in the form of another defection, by that Israeli Benjamite rebel Sheba. In placating Israel with the honors owed Judah, I had come near alienating both, and if it was not one half of my country that was repudiating me, it was likely to be the other. It's sometimes hard figuring out the high reputation as a ruler I enjoy today. Sheba blew a trumpet to call the tribes of Israel to renounce me and depart from me. To put an end to this Sheba, I delegated a large body of men and appointed to command them my nephew Amasa, who'd served so lately as captain of mutinous Judah on the side of my slain son Absalom. He proved a poor choice, even as an act of appeasement. I gave him three days to set out. He was late getting started. Elevating Amasa was the first step in a scheme I'd devised for placating Judah and, simultaneously, superseding Joab for having violated orders and killed my son Absalom. There was never to be a second step. I might have foreseen that Joab would take exception to my plan. I might have foreseen that Joab would await him along the way and register his disapproval in a method impossible to overrule.
He waylaid Amasa at the great stone which is in Gibeon, and he said to his tardy cousin, 'Art thou in health, my brother?'
Amasa never suspected a thing when Joab grasped him by the beard with his right hand to kiss him. And he never knew what hit him when Joab ran him through the fifth rib with the sword in his left, shedding his bowels to the ground so that he did not have to strike him again. Amasa wallowed in blood in the midst of the highway. And all the people he commanded stood still, as though petrified, until one of Joab's men removed Amasa out of the highway into the field and cast a cloth upon him. Then, of course, Joab himself took over the leadership of the chase and ruthlessly tracked Sheba down and destroyed him.
Benaiah still has not ceased thanking me for alerting him to the danger of Joab. He was certainly grateful when reports of the murder of Amasa got back to us in Jerusalem. 'I am indebted to you still one more time,' taciturn Benaiah said. 'Again and again I owe you my life.'
'What can I do with that Joab?' I implored with a shrug.
To tell you the truth, I cared no more for Amasa than I had for Abner. If anything, I liked him less, for what was complacence in Abner was impertinence in the younger man. What galled me most about both these slayings was Joab's deliberately going against my will. He pays hardly any attention to my wishes when his wishes vary from them. That's what really still sticks in my craw: his independence. I always wanted to feel like a king, and Joab has never let me. I imagine that God Himself frequ
ently wants to feel like a king. Why else would He create the world? He did us a favor? But if it's up to me, He won't feel like a king again soon, not until I get my apology. I would settle for that. What would it hurt Him to apologize: 'David, I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking of when I murdered your baby. Forgive me.'
Yes, murdered is the word. When the good Lord made my baby die in order to have me repent my sin, that was murder, wasn't it? God is a murderer, imagine that. I told you I had the best story in the Bible, didn't I? I have always known that He was. Sooner or later He murders us all, doesn't He, and back we go to the dust from which we came.
So I'm no longer scared to defy Him. All He can do is kill me.
What I did do with Joab from the day I made Jerusalem mine and found him ensconced irrevocably as captain over all my host was to put him to good use in all of my military exploits. In the field we worked well together; my expeditions came off in rapid succession. In war he would do anything for me, lay down his life for me, discreetly send out Uriah to the Ammonite wall to lay down his own. I was glad for the wars as well back then, when I still had the vigor to fight in them, before I waxed faint that day in a minor action against a wayward band of diehard Philistines and had to be saved by Abishai. Right then and there my men swore to me, saying, Thou shalt go no more out with us to battle, that thou quench not the light of Israel.'
They were telling me in tactful words that my right hand had lost its cunning. That was the beginning of the end. There comes a time in the affairs of men when you cease striving to ward off the encroaching and unavoidable truth that you are no longer merely aging but are growing old, and that you're already embarked on that downhill journey from which no traveler ever returns.
I was glad for the wars back then because I always had faith I could win them easily. I instigated almost all of them, including those decisive two against the Philistines on the plain of Rephaim. Wars took me away from home. They gave me someplace to go while my palace was under construction and something stimulating to do, for to tell you another truth, Jerusalem was not much of a city either when I first moved in.