The month of Av, with its deceptive weather. Summertime snares the hikers and sends them running to any available spring, stream or puddle. We have arrived in the Beit Shean Valley on the way to Mount Gilboa. The children are familiar with the area from previous trips. Over the years, they have added a layer of biblical knowledge to their familiarity with the northern landscape. Children who are used to hearing classic texts do not differentiate between literary and conversational Hebrew. They connect naturally with the language of the ancients and slide easily from it into modern Hebrew. The whole region breathes both ancient and modern history. On the highway, we pass signs for one name after another. Ein Harod, Gilboa, Beit Shean, Jezreel, and even a tower and stockade peek out at us through the fences of Kibbutz Nir David, which is also known as Tel Amal.
From every place in the valley, Mount Gilboa looms over us, enormous and awe-inspiring, half green, half bare. As we climb toward it, we read the last chapters of the first book of Samuel. Saul knows that his fate is sealed, yet he still goes out to battle wearing royal insignia. The valley war goes poorly and the Israelites retreat toward the mountain, hoping that the Philistines iron chariots will not manage the upward climb. It is no use. Many fall, many flee, and Sauls three sons are killed, while the king of Israel is mortally wounded in an ambush of arrows.
Saul fears being killed by the Philistines, together with the far-reaching consequences of such a death. He orders his arms-bearer, Draw your sword and stab me with it lest these uncircumcised men approach and stab me and torment me. But this awful order is too much for the loyal servant. He refuses. So Saul took the sword and fell upon it.
Mount Gilboa became the scene of defeat, as the poet Natan Alterman later wrote: Blood covered the feet of the mothers, but the nation shall arise seven times if it is defeated upon its own soil. Fate brought the king low, but a successor shall arise in time, for upon his land he set his sword, upon which he died ... and David heard. Alterman understood the biblical course well. Israels hope was not lost. Even before Saul fell, the kingdom of David was already taking shape.
I love the character of Saul. Modest and heroic, demon-ridden and turbulent, even with his behavioral problems he was able to create, out of nothing, a kingdom that would serve David when the time came. Saul and David provide two examples of political leadership that resonate with followers of Israeli current events.
Sauls tragedy was that he internalized the fact that he was the king of Israel only on the day he died. This is why he fell upon his sword. His entire life, he was a man searching for strayed female donkeys, and then by happenstance, he was made king. As he received his crown ,and the entire nation shouted Long live the king! he looked behind him hidden among the stuff, wondering where was the man the crowd was cheering for. Samuel, who at first opposed the appointment of a king, fell in love with Saul -- how could he not? -- and therefore was terribly, painfully disappointed by Sauls ongoing failure of leadership. Even if you seem small in your own eyes, Samuel said, reprimanding Saul, you are the leader of the tribes of Israel, and God anointed you king of Israel. Meaning: Get out of your own mindset and instead think like a leader. You are supposed to lead the nation. The nation is not supposed to lead you.
But Saul was mercurial. Sometimes he succeeded and sometimes he did not. In one of his pitiful pursuits of David, David himself called upon Saul to pull himself together and forget about his private issues for the sake of his kingdom. Whom is the king of Israel chasing- reads the book of Samuel. A dead dog, a flea.
The Bible presents us with Sauls leadership style and then contrasts it with Davids. Even while he was still a young man, David thought like a king. This is how he faced the terrified Israelite troops when they heard the curses hurled at them by Goliath, the Philistine hero. When Saul and all Israel heard this Philistines statements, they were frightened and overawed, it says. They were frightened (in Hebrew: Va-yechatu) means that they were broken; their spirits were broken. The new king of Israel was facing a test of leadership the like of which he had never known, and he had no idea what to do. So he waited for a miracle.
What that redheaded boy saw during his quick trip to the battlefield was the loss of Israels honor, a sure sign of impending defeat and loss of independence. He preaches to them with the brashness of youth who plugs a dike with his finger, saying that they must remove shame from Israel. David does not give up, and reaches Saul. He convinces him that he is capable of defeating Goliath, and for some reason, the king puts his trust in him. Did those two opposing political outlooks meet during that conversation in the kings tent? The consciousness of Saul, who became king by happenstance, against the ambition of David, who saw leadership as a natural thing. While one was still speaking, the other entered. The sun of Saul had not yet set, and Davids sun was already beginning to shine in secret.
The ease of political leadership finds expression, among other things, in the ease of admitting mistakes -- in other words, in not hiding behind excuses. David said to Nathan: I have sinned before God. But even the awful story of Batsheva and Uriah shows this consciousness in an inverted and extreme way: For David, everything belongs to the king, even a woman bathing on the roof.
Many times, it is the extreme expression that reveals the norm. The very thought that if the nation did not choose you it is the nation, not you, who must be replaced, is such an expression. The immediate meaning is not important here, because there is no such meaning; no one is going to change the peoples will. But this manner of thinking shows the political consciousness of a natural leader: We built, we acted, we led, everything belongs to us, and without us everything will collapse. We should compare this to Sauls excuse for why he did not carry out the task that Samuel had given him: Because I feared the people and listened to them. Today, we would call that fear of public opinion, fear of conflict with the old intellectual elite, fear of conflict with the media. The desire to show that he, too, was part of that same elite and that its opinion of him was inaccurate, because he actually shared the same ideas. The philosopher Hegel called this kind of relationship the master-slave dialectic. The master always needs the slave, since without him, he cannot remain a master. Therefore, he acts to preserve his status as master. The slave, on the other hand, is a prisoner of his consciousness. He has no independent existence except in the masters gaze, which approves his actions. Every slave and his own master .
Let us turn from current events back to David. He is no outsider, but rather the very flesh and blood of long-time leadership. He also realizes that he has gone too far and immediately accepts the reprimand of Nathan the prophet. He takes responsibility for the series of personal and general disasters that befall him after the affair. Yet still, perhaps the book of Samuel, with its two protagonists, teaches that in order to reach the consciousness of a David, one must pass through that of a Saul. Only when a person internalizes the consciousness of leadership, when he realizes that the nation wants him to lead and take charge without fearing what others will say, can he reach both the earthly and the heavenly Jerusalem.
טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו