King David and a Good Death

Yizkor 5784, Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ 

I’ve been thinking lately about King David, a remarkable figure in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, and an even more potent person in Jewish rabbinic lore and legend.  David began life as a shepherd and the youngest son of a huge family of mostly older brothers—he was either the 7th or 8th boy, and he had two sisters—and of course rose to prominence after boldly and shockingly killing the giant Philistine, Goliath in the Vale of Elah.  He soon became the court musician to King Saul.  A good-looking guy—maybe very good-looking; red hair and perhaps blue eyes works well in this regard—he was a rock-star in Israel.  His songs, the Psalms, became wildly popular, sung throughout the land and used to this day.  After great success as a warrior, too, he ended up on the outs with the temperamental, jealous, and slightly insane King Saul.  Fleeing Saul, David turned into an outlaw, leading a mercenary band of outcasts as a kind of Iron Age Butch Cassidy or Jesse James.  Through chance, skill, chutzpah, and a remarkable gift for good luck, he ended up rising to become King of Israel, Saul’s replacement after the battlefield deaths of the old king and his sons. 

That meteoric rise alone would have been remarkable but David’s story was far from done.  As king he led the Israelites to greater power and military success than they had ever enjoyed, including the conquest of Jerusalem, David’s new capital.  He built a great royal palace there and planned to build the First Temple, only to be told by God that he had a little too much blood on his hands to do so.  David transformed Israel from a minor, tribally fractious region into a true nation with a powerful army.  And at every point in his life David was deeply committed to his belief in God, and demonstrated that monotheism throughout all 70 years of his life.

David’s private life was more complicated than a Kardashian’s: he had 7 or 8 wives—accounts differ—and at least 18 children, and his sons caused him a great deal of tzoris, either through their personal misconduct or by rebelling against David as they tried to depose him and make themselves king.  

One of David’s most famous acts was an adulterous one, in which he seduced—or perhaps, was seduced by—Batsheva, and when he learned she was pregnant he deviously sent her husband to certain death in battle so he, himself could marry her.  His life should have made a great biopic, but sadly the movies based on David’s life do not do it justice.  He was charisma and color personified, for better and worse.

In later Jewish lore David is treated as the ideal warrior-king, and the royal line he established considered to be the source of the only true kings of Israel.  In Midrash David’s manipulative and immoral acts are reinterpreted to show amazing virtue instead, and he is white-washed into a great noble figure.  Tradition even moves him into the role of the ancestor of the Messiah, mashiach ben David, and places the return to prominence and success for the people of Israel as his ultimate legacy.  David’s influence continues to be demonstrated by the fact that David is far and away the most popular Jewish boys’ name today, 3,000 years after his death.

Christianity takes David even further, seeing him as foreshadowing Jesus’s life.  I’ve always found this a curious connection.  While David was born in Bethlehem, almost literally a stone’s throw from Jerusalem, by all logic Jesus must have been from the Galilee, and the unlikely story of his birth in a stable far from his parents’ home only makes sense when you see the later literary need for a Davidic connection for the “King of the Jews.”  It’s also rather hard to see much of David’s persona in Jesus: Jesus composes no music and plays no instruments, nor does he pick up sword and spear, don armor and charge out to battle—let alone marry 8 different women, father a brood of children, or build and rule a nation.

In any case, I come today, on Yom Kippur, not to praise David, but to bury him.  Or, to put it more directly, I want to talk about David’s death. 

For all of his incredible talent, charisma, looks, and accomplishments, David has a rough going-away party in the Bible.  As he ages he declines—we all do, don’t we?—and his sons see him as weakened from the great warrior he was and ripe for replacement.  First his beloved, spoiled oldest son Absalom rebels, initially leaves David in distress but is ultimately defeated and killed; then another favorite son, Adonijah does the same with the same result.  Some of his most faithful warriors desert him to support various rebels.  It’s not pretty. 

As David, this great paragon king of Israel, is drawing near to death, he gives a last statement to his courtiers and aids, and especially to his youngest son Solomon, who will now succeed him.  We would like to report that David dies with grace and ease, with tranquility at the end of an impressive life. 

But he does not.

As David approaches death, weakened by illness and age and unable even to connect with Avishag, the last of his women, he instructs Solomon this way:

“I am about to go the way of all the earth. Be strong, be manly, and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in God’s ways and keeping God’s statutes, commandments, ordinances, and testimonies, as written in the Torah of Moses, so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you turn. Then the Lord will establish his word that God spoke concerning me: ‘If your descendants take heed to their way, to walk before me in truth with all their heart and with all their soul, your line on the throne of Israel will never end.”

So far, so good.  If David stopped his final statement there we’d have nothing but praise for a good end to a complicated but heroic figure.  But he didn’t.  David kept going:

“Further, you know what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me, what he did to the two commanders of Israel’s forces, Abner son of Ner and Amasa son of Jether: he killed them, shedding blood of war in peacetime, staining the cloak of his loins and the sandals on his feet with blood of war.  So, act in accordance with your wisdom, and see that his white hair does not go down to the grave in peace.”    And now, on his deathbed, he makes Solomon swear to execute him.

But wait, there’s more:

“You must also deal with Shimei son of Gera... He insulted me outrageously when I was on my way to Mahanaim; but he came down to meet me at the Jordan, and I swore to him by GOD: ‘I will not put you to the sword.’  So do not let him go unpunished; for you are a shrewd man and you will know how to deal with him and send his gray hair down to Sheol in blood.” 

It's rough.  This great paragon, David, ends his days by dumping on his son Solomon the responsibility to take revenge on two of David’s old enemies—one of whom was actually David’s close friend and battlefield commander for much of his career, responsible for many of his victories, including capturing Jerusalem.  His very last words are commands to enact brutal revenge, executions that David swore not to perform in his own lifetime—"But now that I’m going to die,” he appears to say, “let’s see if I can get them eliminated by my successor without violating that oath.”

It's an ugly ending, isn’t it?  Talk about visiting the sins of the parents on the children for the third and fourth generations…  Or at least the second and third generations.  It’s disappointing that after apparently having finally ended all the feuding in his family, reaching the end of his long life and reign, David returns to the theme of vengeance and brutal punishment.  It’s just another reason I can’t quite wrap my head around the extreme idolization of David in Midrashim and in Zohar, where he mostly appears as an ideal king, warrior, poet, and unsullied hero.  David was great at a lot of things, but that’s not enough reason to forgive him his egregious acts.

Not least of them is this failure to let go of all those resentments at the end.

Sometimes great examples from our tradition teach us to do what they did not.

My friends, unlike King David we don’t always know how or when we are going to die.  We can’t always know the time or place.  But there are certainly different ways to act as we prepare to die, and we each make choices as we near the end. 

There are people who, like David, never really let go of the tzoris they experienced in their lives.  They may not call for the murder of their enemies when they pass away—God forbid—but they remain embittered by their frustrations and even defeats, unable to release that bile from their bodies and souls.  They do not die well.

Because there are those people who choose to end their lives in a state of tranquility, who seek to resolve old grudges or resentments before they go.  These people die in a state of calm and harmony, and the way they handle themselves before they go is a gift to their surviving family and friends. 

I have had the privilege this year of officiating at the funerals of people who made their peace with the world and its inhabitants before they died.  These funerals and shivas are indeed sometimes sad, but they also have the feeling of a gentle release.  That makes for, I would suggest, a truly good death.

When we remember the people who died at peace with their family and friends, but also at peace with the world, there is always a sense of peace, of shalom, of shleimut, wholeness in those memories.  There is a quality of sanctity to remembering those we loved who died in this way.

In the Tractate Shabbat in the Babylonian Talmud there is a particularly relevant passage.  Rabbi Eliezer says: "Repent one day before your death."

His disciples ask him, "Do a person know on what day he will die?"

"All the more reason he should repent today, lest he die tomorrow."

That idea should also be applied to forgiveness as well.  For if we are to make peace, to prepare to die well, we must forgive those who have wronged us.  And if we are to live well, the examples of those who have died well, at peace with the world, should remind us of this essential act.

Yizkor is a time not only of remembering, of memorializing those we love who are gone.  It is also a time to forgive any resentments or bitterness we have retained about them—and perhaps about anyone in our lives now.  It is a service with the capacity to bring us back to shleimut, to wholeness.

May your Yizkor prayers and thoughts help you to achieve this state of blessing and peace.