At the end of days, the Rabbis of the Talmud (Bava Batra 75a, Pesachim 119b) tell us, the Holy One will set a great banquet for the righteous. The main course will be the flesh of the Leviathan, the primordial sea-beast held in reserve since the sixth day of creation. The feast is so central to Jewish imagination that its mention is woven into the Morning Service for the middle days of Sukkot.
After the meal comes the climactic moment — the Cup of Blessing. The cup will be handed first to Abraham, the father of the nation, so he may recite the blessing over the whole gathering. But Abraham will decline. "I begat Ishmael," he will say. "Let the cup pass."
The cup will be offered to Isaac. He will decline as well. "I begat Esau. The cup must pass." It moves to Jacob, who will say he married two sisters in their lifetimes — against a commandment Torah would later give. To Moses, who will say he was denied entry to the land. To Joshua, who will say he had no son to inherit his name. One by one, the pillars of the tradition find some reason to refuse the cup.
At last it comes to David. David takes it. "I am fit to bless," he says, "for it is written, I will raise the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord (Psalms 116:13)." And he blesses, and the banquet is sanctified.
The teaching, preserved in the 1901 anthology Hebraic Literature, carries an almost uncomfortable honesty. The greatest figures of the Hebrew Bible are not exempt from their own failures. Each one sees his life's ledger clearly. Only David — who sinned, confessed, wept, and kept singing — can hold the cup without flinching. The Rabbis are quietly telling us that the Messianic Age will not be inherited by the blameless. It will be led by the ones who could name their wounds out loud.