The Lament for Saul and Jonathan

The Book of Second Samuel opens not with military triumph or political maneuvering but with grief. An Amalekite arrives from the battlefield where Saul and his sons have died and brings David the news along with Saul's crown and armband. Whatever the reader may have expected from David's response - relief, perhaps, or at least ambivalence - the narrative provides something else entirely. David mourns. He tears his clothes, fasts until evening, and then composes a poem. That poem, the Song of the Bow, is one of the most beautiful elegies in the Hebrew language and one of the most revealing documents we have about who David was at his best.

The Poem and Its Setting

The elegy is introduced with the notation that David ordered it taught to the people of Judah, and that it was written in the Book of Jashar - the same lost collection of ancient poetry mentioned in Joshua 10:13. The notation suggests that the poem was understood to be culturally significant, something worth preserving and teaching rather than merely a private expression of grief. Whether this reflects historical memory of what David actually composed or a later attribution of a traditional poem to David cannot be determined with certainty. What is certain is that whoever placed this poem at the opening of Second Samuel understood it to be essential to understanding who David is and what kind of king he will be.

The poem begins with the famous call to proclamation: "Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exult." This opening is not primarily about grief. It is about honor - the honor of Israel and of the men who died in Israel's service. The instruction to withhold the news from Philistine cities is a conventional expression of mourning in the ancient Near East, a refusal to provide the enemy the satisfaction of knowing that their victory is known and felt. But it is also the first indication of the poem's central concern: the dignity of the dead.

The Praise of Saul

What is remarkable about the elegy, from any perspective, is the generosity of David's praise for Saul. Saul spent years hunting David, drove him into exile, killed the priests of Nob who had aided him, and by the end of his reign had become a man consumed by fear and paranoia. David had every reason, human speaking, to feel at least some relief at Saul's death. Instead the elegy describes Saul as one of the beloved and gracious, as a mighty warrior who clothed the daughters of Israel in crimson and luxury and put ornaments of gold on their apparel. The praise is for Saul as king, as provider, as the man who used Israel's military success to enrich and adorn his people. It is the praise of a man who has thought about what kingship is for rather than merely what it feels like to hold.

This generosity toward an enemy is not incidental. It establishes something important about the kind of king David intends to be. He will not build his reign on the discrediting of his predecessor. He will honor what was honorable in Saul and mourn what was lost with him, even at the cost of setting aside whatever personal relief his death may have brought.

Jonathan

The elegy's most personally charged lines are reserved for Jonathan. "I grieve for you, my brother Jonathan; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women." These lines have generated centuries of interpretive debate, and they deserve honest engagement. The Hebrew word translated "love" throughout the elegy and throughout the Jonathan-David narratives of First Samuel is the same word, ahavah, used for the love between a man and a woman in the Song of Songs. Whether the relationship between David and Jonathan was understood by the text's original authors as erotic, as a covenant bond of political alliance formalized through the language of love, as an extraordinarily close friendship, or as some combination of these things, is a question the text does not resolve and interpreters have answered differently across the centuries.

What the text is clear about is the depth and the loss. The line "surpassing the love of women" is a comparative claim: whatever Jonathan's love was, it exceeded in some quality what David experienced in his relationships with women. Whether that quality is understood as erotic intensity, selfless loyalty, or covenant faithfulness, the claim is that something irreplaceable has been lost, and the poem mourns it without qualification or apology.

The Poem's Place in the Larger Narrative

Placed at the opening of Second Samuel, the lament for Saul and Jonathan does something important for how the reader understands everything that follows. It establishes David as a man capable of grief, capable of generosity, capable of honoring what was good even in those who opposed him. The contrast with the David of chapters 11 and 12 - who will engineer the death of a loyal soldier who has done nothing to deserve it - is deliberate and devastating. The man who composed this elegy and the man who sent Uriah to his death are the same man, and the text insists that both be held in view simultaneously.