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The Crisis-Solving Process of King David in Light of the Substitute King Ritual

Dong-Young Yoon 1

1서울장신대학교

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ABSTRACT

The present study purports to analyze the crisis solving process of King David (2 Samuel 12 and 24) in light of the motif of the substitute king ritual. The substitute king ritual is “an arrangement in which, briefly put, the ruling king temporarily abdicates his throne for a surrogate who, having ruled his predetermined period, is put to death, after which the king reascends his throne and continues ruling as if nothing had happened.” The account of the death of David’s son (2 Sam 12:13-14) implies a kind of substitution. Nathan tells David that his first-born by Bathsheba will die as a consequence of his adultery and murder of her husband. The shameful and wicked deeds of David must to be punished. The text, however, says that David will not die for his misdeeds but rather his son. YHWH has transferred (he‘ebîr) David’s sin to the newborn baby. Because his son died in his stead, David was able to maintain his kingship and to have a second son who became his successor. Regarding the census narrative (2 Samuel 24), there is no evidence that Gad initiates and intermediates David’s prayer and substitution ritual. However, the substitutional motif and context are evident. Manipulating divination to draw a choice among three punishments, Gad transfers David’s sin to the people of Israel. Seventy thousand people of Israel die in place of King David. The episodes concerning the death of the infant and people of Israel are properly speaking not instances of the substitute king ritual, but they contains all (or some of) the essential elements of it: a divine message threatening the king, the magical transfer of the king’s person upon another individual by robbing and enthronement rites, and the irrevocability of the fate decreed by the gods both for the king and the substitute. It can hardly be doubted that both instances have been inspired by the ritual. The same mental climate that fostered the performance of the rite in the Near East is illustrated in the episodes.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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