Lessons in Sin and Redemption

Now I heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord,
But you don’t really care for music, do you?

IT IS SAID that Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” has been covered more than 300 times by various artists since its 1984 release. Perhaps one of the reasons it has endured is because of the stories it tells about tragic biblical figures such as King David, who was simultaneously murderer and a “man after God’s own heart.”

Inspired by her son, who played an arrangement of “Hallelujah” on the harp for his bar mitzvah, Geraldine Brooks explores the profoundly paradoxical character of David in her novel The Secret Chord (paperback edition out this fall). Brooks’ unwillingness to resolve this paradox invites readers into the story to wrestle with the categories of good and evil and the nature of repentance. After the dust settles, however, readers will find that it is not the depth of David’s repentance but the abuse of power that defines his kingship.

The timeline in Brooks’ novel roughly spans David’s early ascent to power through his death and Shlomo’s coronation (Brooks uses the transliteration of the Hebrew to spell names, for example Shlomo instead of Solomon). Drawing upon the tradition that the histories of 1 and 2 Chronicles were written by the prophet Natan, David’s story is told from the perspective of the prophet. During the first battle that David is not on the battlefield with his men, the frustrated, middle-aged king commissions Natan to write his biography, so that David’s descendants may know “what manner of man” he was. David gives Natan a curious list of people to interview, including individuals that David knows will be severely critical of him, such as his estranged wives and brother. This narrative detail—like many others in the novel—serves as an explanation for scripture’s curiously flawed portrait of Israel’s most powerful king.

Natan’s interviews with these people from David’s past offer varying perspectives on and insights into David’s character. It is also during this restive period that the king commits his basest abuse of power—an adulterous night with Bathsheva and the murder of her husband, Uriah. Its multiple perspectives, moral complexity, political intrigue, and violence give the novel a texture not unlike George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series (aka Game of Thrones).

Brooks weaves together scripture, historical research, and Jewish tradition to reimagine David’s story. Readers will recognize the basic narrative thread of the David story found in 1 Samuel through 1 Kings. But Brooks expands well beyond that, as she teases out the rough edges, gaps, and oddities found in the Bible’s narrative.

What is perhaps most compelling about The Secret Chord’s portrait of King David is his abuse of power. Brooks boldly depicts David as a man who is as utterly ruthless as he is devout with no attempt to harmonize this dichotomy. In the end, however, it is the ruthlessness of a young king who unhesitatingly slaughters innocents that remains in the minds of readers. It is the oft-repeated phrase Brooks puts in David’s mouth—“by any means necessary”—that best captures David’s rule in the novel.

And it is this same rhetoric that is found in current political discourse.

In an election season fraught with concerns about the misuse of power, The Secret Chord invites readers to reflect upon its leaders and the means by which they govern. In particular, it invites readers to critically reflect upon leaders who invoke religion to support their candidacy and to sanction malfeasance. The only question that remains to be answered is whether or not those vying for power today can, like Israel’s leader, publicly repent of their abuses.