June 27, Ordinary 13B (2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27)
When David praises Saul and Jonathan, is he acting out of expediency, faithfulness, or both?
Biography may be my favorite genre of writing. In his biography of the ancient king David, David Wolpe writes that the first biography of David, the book of Samuel, is arguably the first biography of anyone. Like any excellent example of the genre, Samuel is not only the story of one figure who achieved power or fame. It depicts the people whose lives shaped David’s as complex actors in their own right.
In this Sunday’s reading, we hear the Song of the Bow, David’s soaring elegy for Saul and Jonathan. It is a pivotal moment in David’s life, in which several threads of his story come together.
We stand at the midpoint of the two-part book of Samuel. We have already met a bevy of fascinating characters in addition to David, including Hannah and her son Samuel, the priest-prophet-judge, and Saul and two of his children, Jonathan and Michal.
