{"id":60335,"date":"2019-07-31T09:42:04","date_gmt":"2019-07-31T06:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=60335"},"modified":"2023-02-22T11:00:22","modified_gmt":"2023-02-22T09:00:22","slug":"david-dissociates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/david-dissociates\/","title":{"rendered":"David Dissociates"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[834,700,436,571],"acf":{"old_id":"60335","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":56443,"related_cahpter":"275","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"His very capacity for repentance reveals how David\u2019s political existence has overridden his moral sensibility as a man\u00a0\r\n\r\n","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nathan\u2019s reproach elicited David\u2019s palpably sincere repentance, thereby deepening our understanding of dissociation. His very capacity for repentance reveals how thoroughly David\u2019s political existence has overridden the moral sensibility he retains as a man. We catch a glimpse of David\u2019s politically smothered moral impulses in his angry reaction to Nathan\u2019s fable of the rich man who, instead of taking a beast from his own ample flock, sacrifices a poor man\u2019s only ewe to feed a traveler. David is genuinely incensed that the rich man had no pity. The extent to which David has dissociated himself even from his own moral responses is then brought out dramatically when Nathan tells him \u201cYou are the man!\u201d (12:7).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In response, David becomes momentarily capable of returning to the moral self previously silenced by the weight of his sovereign persona and accepting his guilt: \u201cI have offended against the Lord\u201d (12:13). In the same repentant spirit, David implores God to save his newborn son who, soon after Bathsheba gave him birth, fell gravely ill, supposedly as God\u2019s way of punishing the father for his sins. For seven days, David would not eat or rise from the ground. When the baby finally succumbed, the king\u2019s servants were afraid to be the bearers of bad news. But when David learns that the child is dead, he returned to his house and ate, recognizing the finality of the child\u2019s death, which he grimly associates with the inevitability of his own: \u201cI am going to him and he will not come back to me\u201d (12:23).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">David\u2019s underlying capacity for heartfelt grief, which we will encounter again at the end of the Absalom episode but which has been suppressed in David\u2019s plot to save his public reputation and thus his throne by having Uriah killed, makes the grip that sovereign power exerts over its wielder all the more harrowing. Had David been a cold-blooded tyrant, his quest for deniability would have little moral significance. As a calculating attempt to dupe the public, it would not have involved David\u2019s need to silence his own conscience. Our author drives home the uncanny power of dissociation and its capacity to generate violence, therefore, precisely by giving us such a rich portrayal of David\u2019s complexity as a human being and not merely a king.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Excerpts from <em>The Beginning of Politics: Power in the Biblical Book of Samuel<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 Moshe Halbertal and Stephen Holmes, Princeton University Press, 2017, pp. 96-97.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":56668,"id":56668,"title":"halbertal-book cover.jpg","filename":"halbertal-book-cover.jpg.png","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg.png","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-fine-grained-phenomenology-of-political-power\/halbertal-book-cover-jpg\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"halbertal-book-cover-jpg","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":56661,"date":"2019-06-02 14:58:58","modified":"2019-06-03 03:02:25","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/png","type":"image","subtype":"png","icon":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":2000,"height":2000,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg-150x150.png","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg-300x300.png","medium-width":300,"medium-height":300,"medium_large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg-768x768.png","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":768,"large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg-1024x1024.png","large-width":1024,"large-height":1024,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg.png","1536x1536-width":1536,"1536x1536-height":1536,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg.png","2048x2048-width":2000,"2048x2048-height":2000,"post_full_size":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg-1200x1200.png","post_full_size-width":1200,"post_full_size-height":1200,"home_baner":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg-420x420.png","home_baner-width":420,"home_baner-height":420}},"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"Excerpts 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