With Skilful Hand: The Story of King David

A.J. Pell is editor of the Canadian Evangelical Review and an instructor
of Liturgy, Anglican Studies Program, Regent College, Vancouver.

A key figure in the Hebrew Scriptures and in subsequent Jewish thinking
is David, the shepherd/musician who became a warrior king. David is a
very human figure, full of faults and failures, who nevertheless was
used by God to establish Israel as a nation-state and to create the
royal patterns that were copied or rebelled against for hundreds of
years. Scholars grapple with the complexities of David’s life and
person, but the average Jew or Christian often knows David at very basic
levels—killer of Goliath, conquerer of Jerusalem, psalmist.

David Barnard seeks to present David in all his complexities to average
religious folk by creating a book of purported personal letters written
during David’s lifetime interspersed with actual poem songs of David
from the scriptures. The letters, written by people in David’s life
(wives, religious officials, generals), are organized into four chapters
dealing with the different eras of David’s career. “Preparation”
covers the time up to the death of Saul. “Foundation” takes the
reader from the beginning of David’s kingship to his making Jerusalem
the capital and focus of the new nation. “Reign” covers the
consolidation of national boundaries and turmoils in the royal
household. “Dynasty” is about David’s selection of Solomon as his
heir prior to his death.

Barnard provides his own commentary on David’s career, faith, and
personality in two ways. First, he creates notes by Zadok, a scribe from
Israel’s post-exilic period hundreds of years later, to pose questions
and offer interpretations about David’s behaviour at each step of his
career; these are offered at the beginning of each chapter. Second, a
final chapter, “Reflection,” presents the transcripts of supposed
talks by an elderly David to the school of liturgical singers in
Jerusalem explaining how his psalms and poetry arise from his life and
faith. The reader might quarrel with the degree of importance Barnard
gives to David’s affair with Bathsheba in his overall life and career,
but there can be no doubt that through these fictitious documents,
Barnard has brought to life a multi-dimensional David.