David Asked God Why He Was Two Hundred Short

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The King Sat on the Floor

The hall was full and everyone in it had a seat. Benches along the walls, cushions for the elders, the usual arrangement for a session of study.

David taught from the ground. No cushion, no bench, no chair. He sat down on the bare floor in front of them and taught Torah out loud to whoever had come, and he did it for no reason anyone could see except that he wanted the words to be the only thing raised in the room.

Then the Shechinah (שכינה), the divine presence, came and stood over him while he talked.

"Speak, my son. These words suit you. They are yours, and you rule them the way I do."

God had one further remark about the seating. "You sit in a session with nothing to lean on. Be like Me."

Soft as a Worm, Hard as Wood

The lists of his fighting men give this same king a second name, and the sages pulled it apart into an instruction. In the study house, be soft as a worm. In the field, be hard as the wood of a spear.

He was both, and the record of the second half is exact. Eight hundred men killed in one engagement. Not eight hundred across a career. Eight hundred at one time, by one man, in one action, and the chronicler wrote the number down and moved on.

Two Hundred Short

David did the arithmetic himself, and it kept him up.

The Torah sets the rate. Five of you shall chase a hundred, it says, and that is the rate for people who have nothing but decency and Scripture. For a man who has the words themselves, the rate goes to a thousand. One of you shall chase a thousand.

He had killed eight hundred.

He asked. "Master of the universe. Why am I short two hundred?"

The answer came back without softening.

"David, my son. You did My will. You did not do all of My will." And then the phrase from the record, the one the chroniclers of the kings appended to his name forever after, the single exception in an otherwise clean verdict: except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.

That was the gap. Two hundred men he would never reach, subtracted at a fixed rate, for a woman on a roof and a soldier sent to the front line and a letter carried by the man it condemned. He had repented. He had wept in front of the prophet and written the psalm about it that Israel has been reciting ever since. The number still came out at eight hundred.

Abraham Was Not Let Off Either

He was not being singled out. That was the part he had to sit with.

Abraham stood ten trials and was not let off one of them. He asked a single question, how shall I know that I will inherit it, and the answer he got was four hundred years of slavery for his descendants. The man who said, shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice, got justice.

Solomon had the demons under his hand. He conquered them, ruled them, put them to work, and judged the whole country besides. In his old age he was the one who was afraid. The bed he slept in had armed men standing around it every night with swords on their thighs, because of the fear in the nights, and the things that had once trembled at him were the things he was listening for in the dark.

Saul was king and anointed and mourned by the daughters of Israel in a song, and the priests forgave him for what he did at Nov, but the Gibeonites did not. They came for the blood, and they named their price, and seven of his sons were handed over and hanged.

David knew all three cases. "Deliver me from bloodguilt, O God," he sang, and it was not a figure of speech.

What Was Left to Boast About

Long after him, Jeremiah stripped the room bare in one breath. Let the wise man not boast in his wisdom. Let the strong man not boast in his strength. Let the rich man not boast in his riches. What is left to boast in is knowing the One who does kindness and justice and righteousness in the earth, because those are the things He delights in.

Eitan the Ezrahite opened his psalm as if he had heard the prophet centuries early. He was wise enough that Solomon's wisdom had to be measured against his, and he did not open with wisdom. "The kindnesses of the Lord I will sing forever."

God answered him. "You have understood. Whoever praises Me, let him praise Me in these."

They asked Eitan afterward what the world stands on, and he said what he had already sung: the world is built out of kindness. Not the world only. The throne. A throne has four legs, and one of them was giving way, and they took a bundle and propped it, and that is what happened to the throne in heaven and mercy was the bundle.

David's own account of himself was not a doctrine. "My fear lives inside my joy," he said, "and my joy lives inside my fear, and my love is higher than both of them." For that, and not for the eight hundred, he was given a covenant that could not be taken back: the whole of the teaching, Scripture and Mishnah and law and story, and a mouth that would not be emptied of it.