What really happened with David and Batsheva? Did David sin, or were the couple true soulmates destined to be together since Creation? And what does it all have to do with Adam and Eve, the Forbidden Fruit, and the forthcoming Messianic Age? Find out in this class, where we also explore the mechanics of soulmates, the origins of Lilith, the battle with Goliath, and conclude with a fascinating Zohar passage where the angel Dumah, the “warden” of Gehinnom, argues with God and attempts to incriminate King David.
For the class on Tu b’Av, see here. For the class on the Star of Jacob prophecy, see here. For more on the mechanics of soulmates, see here.
An 1873 illustration of King Josiah (Yoshiyahu) listening to a reading of the Torah
In this week’s parasha, Shoftim, the Torah relates the laws pertaining to Jewish kings. According to the Torah, the king of the Jews is not, and should not be, like the king of other nations. His primarily role is not to be a dictator or a conqueror. Rather, he must act like a divine messenger of God, and his duty is to ensure the observance of Torah law throughout the Holy Land. This is why we read across the Tanakh how the best Jewish kings—like Hezekiah and Josiah—were the ones that expunged idolatry from Israel and restored proper spirituality.
It is also why we see on several occasions in the Book of Shoftim (not to be confused with this week’s parasha of the same name) that the time before kings was lawless: “…there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25) The Jewish king, therefore, is like God’s representative on Earth. In this regard, he is likened to an angel, which is why the term for a king, melekh (מלך), is nearly identical and shares the same root with the word for an angel, malakh (מלאך).
Not surprisingly, the Jewish king is held to a very high standard. The Torah (Deuteronomy 17:16-20) tells us that he:
may not acquire many horses for himself… And he shall not take many wives for himself, and his heart must not turn away, and he shall not acquire much silver and gold for himself. And it will be, when he sits upon his royal throne, that he shall write for himself two copies of this Torah on a scroll, before the priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear Hashem, his God, to keep all the words of this Torah and these statutes, to perform them, so that his heart will not be haughty over his brothers, and so that he will not turn away from the commandment, either to the right or to the left, in order that he may prolong [his] days in his kingdom, he and his sons, among Israel.
The Talmud discusses the finer points of these rules. One of the questions the Sages ask is: How many wives is too many? (Sanhedrin 21a) The Mishnah states the maximum is eighteen wives. Rav Yehuda then opines that a king can take more wives, as long as they will not “turn his heart astray”. Rabbi Shimon insists that even a single wife might turn her husband’s heart astray, and thus, the king must not take more than eighteen “even if they be women like Abigail”. Abigail, of course, was one of the righteous wives of King David, who is listed among the seven female prophetesses of Judaism.
In fact, the Talmud derives the maximum of eighteen wives from the case of King David:
Whence do we deduce the number eighteen? From the verse, “And unto David were sons born in Hebron; and his firstborn was Amnon of Ahinoam the Jezraelite; the second, Khilav of Abigail, the [former] wife of Naval the Carmelite; the third, Avshalom the son of Maacah; and the fourth, Adoniyah the son of Hagit; and the fifth, Shefatiah the son of Avital; and the sixth, Ithream of Eglah, David’s wife. These were born to David in Hebron.” (II Samuel 3:2-5) And of them the Prophet [Nathan] said: “And if that were too little, then would I add unto thee the like of these, and the like of these” (II Samuel 12:8), each “these” implying six, which, with the original six, makes eighteen in all.
Scripture tells us that David had six wives while he reigned from Hebron during his first seven years: Ahinoam, Abigail, Maacah, Hagit, Avital, and Eglah. When his court prophet Nathan recounted how he had once blessed him, he said he would multiply the king’s wealth (and wives) kahena v’kahena, more and more “like these”. This implies that David would have, or potentially could have, eighteen wives.
The Talmud continues to cite the opinion of Ravina, who believed that each kahena refers not to six, but twelve. He holds that David had six wives, the blessing was to double that to twelve, and “if that were too little”—as Nathan said—then he would multiple them kahena v’kahena. Thus, Ravina reasons that the maximum is twenty-four wives, not eighteen. The Talmud admits that there is an alternate Mishnaic teaching that 24 is the maximum, and yet another teaching that the maximum is 48. The latter comes from the fact that there is a letter vav in the term, meaning 24 and another 24! Nonetheless, the accepted tradition is a maximum of 18 wives, and no more.
The Talmud interestingly points out a potential flaw: wasn’t David also married to Michal, the daughter of King Saul, while in Hebron? The Sages conclude that Michal is the same person as Eglah. They then raise the following issue: how could Michal be Eglah if the Tanakh states Michal was childless while Eglah gave David a son? In a classic Talmudic interpretation, the Sages take the verse “Michal the daughter of Saul had no child until the day of her death” (II Samuel 6:23) to mean that she did not have children until her death, and died in childbirth. So, she finally had a child on the day of her death.
The Kabbalah of Soulmates
The Arizal (Rabbi Itzchak Luria, 1534-1572) gives a deeper, mystical answer to why the maximum number of wives for a king is eighteen. The implications of his teachings are not just relevant to kings, but to every Jew. While we generally think of a person as having a single soulmate, the Arizal explains that a person actually has eighteen soulmates (see, for example, Sha’ar HaMitzvot on this week’s parasha). Why would a person need eighteen soulmates?
The Talmud (Sotah 2a) famously states that “forty days before conception a Bat Kol [Heavenly Voice] proclaims: the daughter of so-and-so is destined for so-and-so…” The same passage states that pairing a person with their soulmate is “as difficult as the Splitting of the Sea”. The Midrash adds to this that ever since the Splitting of the Sea, God is busy making matches between people (Pesikta d’Rav Kahana 2:4). The Sages conclude that a person’s first match is pre-destined, while a second or subsequent match (if the first marriage fell through) becomes as difficult as splitting a sea.
The central issue that all of this rests on is free will. While a person does have a perfect, pre-destined match, free will can very easily get in the way and ruin things. For example, person A is destined to be with person B, but A makes some really poor decisions in life and ends up in a bad place (or dead). Does that mean B is now condemned to spend the rest of their life without their rightful soulmate? Must they now hopelessly struggle in search of the “right one” or be miserable in a series of failed relationships for the rest of their life, through no fault of their own? Surely, the Most Merciful God would not allow this to happen. And so, He spends all of His time “making matches”, finding alternate soulmates.
For this reason, a person has up to 18 different soulmates designated for them. If, due to free will, the match of A and B doesn’t work, there is always A and C. And if C, too, decides to move to the other side of the world, there’s a D behind them. Granted, the Arizal puts the soulmates in hierarchical fashion: D is not as good as C, nor is C as good as B—but they are all matching souls for A nonetheless. Of course, each of B, C, and D have 18 of their own soulmates, so one can see how complicated this matchmaking game becomes—“as difficult as the Splitting of the Sea”. The Arizal notes that 18 is a maximum, and not necessarily will there be 18 soulmates for a person alive all at once. Elsewhere, the Arizal explains that a person who does not find one of their soulmates will reincarnate to try again in a future life, as might one who needs to unite with a better soulmate, higher up on the chain of 18.
This brings us back to the first question: why is a king allowed up to, but no more than, 18 wives? A king, like every person, has up to 18 soulmates. He may choose to seek out and find all 18 of them, to unite with all of his soulmates. However, he must not take even a single wife more, for a nineteenth wife would certainly not be a soulmate. A king should not be taking a wife or concubine solely for pleasure. He may have more than one (and this may even be a political necessity), but only on the condition that she is one of his soulmates anyway.
The Kabbalah of David and Batsheva
The above discussion helps to explain the Talmudic dictum that one who believes David sinned with Batsheva is mistaken (Shabbat 56a). Recall that Batsheva was the wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of David’s generals. When Uriah was away in battle, David spotted Batsheva bathing and ended up sleeping with her. She would become pregnant, and to hide the sin, David ultimately placed Uriah in a situation where he would die in battle.
‘David and Goliath’ by Gustave Doré
From a mystical perspective, Batsheva was one of David’s 18 soulmates. In fact, she was his #1, and the two had been matched by God all the way back in the “six days of Creation” (Sanhedrin 107a). The Midrash relates that it was David’s own hubris that prevented him from marrying her. When David had defeated Goliath, he wanted (or needed) to decapitate the giant with his own sword. At the time, Uriah the Hittite happened to be the attendant of Goliath. David promised Uriah the best woman in Israel if Uriah would only provide him with Goliath’s sword. Uriah did so. He later became a righteous convert, and one of David’s greatest warriors. (This is why he is called a Hittite, for he was not originally Jewish.)
At the same time that David made the promise to Uriah, God made a decree in Heaven: Because of David’s haughty and immodest offer to distribute the daughters of Israel, God will mete out his punishment by giving away his very own soulmate to Uriah! What David did with Batsheva was certainly a sin, and the Talmud (ibid.) recounts how severely he was punished, including six months of intense leprosy in addition to the punishments already enumerated in Scripture. Yet, Batsheva was his rightful soulmate, and would go on to produce his rightful heir, King Solomon. The Talmud concludes that David simply rushed to be with her. Uriah was destined to die soon enough anyway, and then David could marry Batsheva with no issues.
The Kabbalists see David and Batsheva rushing to be with each other as a replay of Adam and Eve rushing to consume the Forbidden Fruit. Had Adam and Eve waited until Shabbat, they would have been permitted to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. David and Batsheva, too, needed only to wait a little longer. The connection between the two couples is deeper than that, for David and Batsheva were none other than the reincarnations of Adam and Eve. They had the opportunity to complete a great tikkun, a rectification for that primordial sin. (In some ways, so does every young couple that must wait until marriage to be intimate in holiness.) Alas, they failed, and the same souls will return one last time in Mashiach and his wife to finally fulfil the task.
(For more on the Adam-David-Mashiach connection, see here.)
Terumah relays God’s instructions to the Israelites for constructing the Mishkan, the Holy Tabernacle. The most important part of this elaborate structure was undoubtedly the Aron HaKodesh, the Ark of the Covenant. Throughout the centuries, this gold-plated Ark has often been depicted in art, history, and even film (most notably with Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark). However, what the Ark actually looked like is hard to discern. The Ark disappeared two and a half thousand years ago when the First Temple was destroyed. Since then, many different versions and interpretations for its appearance have been proposed, both by Jewish Sages and secular scholars.
The issue is not so much with the Ark itself, since the Torah is pretty clear on its description: a box two and a half cubits long, one and a half cubits wide, and one and a half cubits high, made of wood and plated with gold from the inside and out. (A cubit is roughly two feet long.) What’s not so clear is the Ark’s cover, with its two golden Cherubs.
What is a “Cherub” (kruv, in Hebrew)? The only descriptor the Torah gives is that the Cherubs had wings. Rashi, drawing from the Talmud, comments on Exodus 25:18 that they had the face of a child. The Torah describes the two as being set on the cover ish el echav, literally “a man facing his brother”. This suggests a human form to the Cherubs, along with their child-like face and wings. Indeed, this is how the Cherubs are generally depicted. The reality may be quite different, though. A look at the historical and Biblical evidence may shed some more light as to the true identity of the Cherubs.
The Evidence
A similar word for the Hebrew term kruv is found across the languages of the Ancient Near East: kuribu in Akkadian, karabu or kirubu in Babylonian and Assyrian. These refer to very large statues placed at entrances to important venues which served as guardians. They had the body of a bull or lion, with wings, and a human head. At times, they were worshipped as guardian deities.
This parallels the Torah’s original description of Cherubs. The very first time Cherubs appear is in Genesis 3:24. Following Adam and Eve’s banishment from the Garden of Eden, God placed Cherubs to guard the entrance to Eden so that man could not return. Like the Mesopotamian kuribu, the Cherubs are guarding an entrance.
All of this is reminiscent of a famous passage in the Tanakh: Ezekiel’s Vision of the Chariot.This could be why the Cherubs were placed atop the Ark, again as guardians of the holy vessel. When the Tanakh describes how King Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem (I Kings, chapter 6), it states that Solomon had two massive ten-cubit high Cherubs placed at the entrance to the Holy of Holies (the room in which the Ark of the Covenant was kept). The following chapter describes them as kruvim arayot, “Cherub-Lions” (7:36). Not only do we once again see the Cherubs as guarding an entrance, but we now have some evidence that the Cherubs had a lion-like appearance, just as the Mesopotamian kuribu (or lamassu) often had.
Kuribu were also known as lamassu. This is a photo by Kees Scherer, taken in the Louvre Museum in 1968, of a massive lamassu statue from King Sargon II’s palace, dated back to the 8th century BCE. It is from nearly the same time period as King Solomon’s giant Cherubs, which would have been about the same size.
Ezekiel’s Chariot
In the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, we are given a detailed description of the Merkavah, the Divine Chariot:
And I looked, and, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, a great cloud, with a fire flashing up, a brightness was all around it; and from within the appearance of electrum, out of the midst of the fire. And from within it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces, and every one of them had four wings. And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf’s foot… As for the likeness of their faces, they had the face of a man; and all four had the face of a lion on the right side; and all four had the face of an ox on the left side; all four had also the face of an eagle.”
(Ezekiel 1:4-10)
Ezekiel describes his angelic vision, with winged figures that have attributes of a lion, an ox, an eagle, and the appearance of a man. The figures are part of the Divine Chariot, again serving as sentries or guardians.
This description allows us to potentially synthesize the Torah’s description of Cherubs with the historical and Biblical evidence: human-like winged creatures with aspects of a lion and a bull or ox. Although Cherubs are not explicitly mentioned in Ezekiel’s account, the Merkavah shares the same root letters (k-r-v or r-k-v) as Cherubs, kruvim.
We can draw further proof from the Psalms 18:11, which states that God “rode upon a Cherub, and flew, and swooped down upon the wings of the wind,” as well as from II Samuel 22:11, which says God “rode upon a Cherub, and flew, and was seen upon the wings of the wind.” Clearly, the Cherubs are associated with the Divine Chariot upon which God rides, as described by Ezekiel.
So, are the Cherubs innocent child-like, winged angels—as commonly depicted in artwork—or are they powerful Heavenly guardians with the hybrid qualities of various majestic beasts?