King David an Israelite?
by Craig Hamilton on Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 7:05pm
Was King David an Israelite?
Very importantly, King David is a descendent of Ruth and Boaz. Ruth was most certainly not an Israelite. Ruth descended from Lot, the brother of Abraham, as she a Moabite. Moab was a son of Lot (and a daughter of him no less), such that in the book of Ruth there are no listed generations between Ruth and the Moabites. Ruth 2:(2) And Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi: 'Let me now go to the field, and glean among the ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find favour.' And she said unto her: 'Go, my daughter.'
According to legend, Abraham was the first Jew. While Abraham and Lot where brothers, Lot was not a Jew. Though it is true that the word Jew is a derivative of the word Judah, the two are only related to each other and the letter j is not even a Hebrew letter. Perhaps, the English letter j should be replaced by a y if it is a transliteration of a Hebrew word. Thus, the word Jew does not necessarily mean, “Someone from the tribe of Judah.”
Ruth was a convert. Jewishness is inherited maternally, while tribal distinction is inherited paternally. That is, a convert is not an Israelite, but is a Jew. The word Jew is inclusive of the 10 Talmudic castes (Kiddushin 4:1), not to be mistaken with the 12 tribes of Israel, while an Israelite is a caste that is a notch above the caste of which converts belong to. According to the Talmud, converts are permitted to marry Israelites, but it is only after 10 generations of Jewishness that Moabite daughters may convert to gain full Israelite status Deuteronomy 23: (3) A bastard shall not enter into the assembly of YHWH; even to the tenth generation shall none of his enter into the assembly of YHWH. (4) An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter into the assembly of YHWH; even to the tenth generation shall none of them enter into the assembly of YHWH for ever;. Thus, all converts are Jews, but not all Jews are Israelites. Ruth was apparently an exception to the rule of Deuteronomy 23:4, as when she converted; she was no longer a Moabite. And, a female descended of Moab or a Moabite that has not married another Moabite might possibly have had tribal distinction change, as tribal inheritance is paternal.
The following are the generations – or at least the recorded generations - between Abraham and David:
From the genealogy above, there are only four generations recorded from Ruth to David. Thus, Obed is not a Moabite, but a convert, and is as generation 1. There may have not been the 10 necessary generations in order for David to become a part of the Israelite caste. Given the information available to me, I don’t believe that there were. So, I anticipate an objection: Perhaps, there were names left out. For example, the Jewish Bible records the following lineages:
And,
One genealogy has Mahol; one does not. However, with the ancestry of David there is no evidence that names were left out, such that conservatively, one must conclude that though David was Jewish that he was not an Israelite. In fact, it is uncertain in the Bible whether or not anyone in House of David gained Israelite status. This is such that since I myself am unsure of the origin of my mother, an Orthodox Rabbi won’t permit me to call myself a Jew, such that I don’t see how the rule should have been bent in the case of David. The Torah commands that male Jews only appoint an Israelite to the status of king. www.jewfaq.org relates:
Not to appoint as ruler over Israel, one who comes from non-Israelites (Deut. 17:15) (negative).
Thus, it is such that by appointing David king over the Israelites that the Israelites possibly transgressed the Torah. David was a Jew, but he was most likely not an Israelite. In fact, this line of conversion possibly breaks with King Abijah, the 6th generation from the marriage of Ruth and Boaz, as the origin of his wife is again uncertain according to record.
The wife of King Abijah is not listed in the Bible. She is not listed in Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus. She is not listed in The Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginsberg. These are the three most reliable sources for that sort of information. Thus, the line of conversion that started with Ruth ends with King Asa for the kingdom of Judah (2 Chronicles 11:17.) Then, the son of Asa marries a Jew, Azubah (1 Kings 22:42), possibly beginning the counting of generations again before certainty of Israelite status. In fact, during this time period no Jew is certain of their tribal status; the ancestries not going back for enough generations.
There is an alternative, where the word “generation” means “year.” The years/generations would be then:
Generation 1 Obed
Generation 2 Jesse
Generation 3 to 73+ David
In that translation, that would make the reign of David a minimum of 70 generations old (2 Samuel 5:(4) David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. 1 Kings 2:(11) And the days that David reigned over Israel were forty years: seven years reigned he in Hebron, and thirty and three years reigned he in Jerusalem.) * 120 (Genesis 6: (3) And YHWH said: 'My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for that he also is flesh; therefore shall his days be a hundred and twenty years.') years old, meaning that David was a minimum of 8,400 years old when 1 Chronicles 3:4 was written. Additionally, since it is unlikely that the Israelites would transgress the law in order to appoint a king that means that David was not appointed king until the 32 generation, when he was 120*30 years old, such that the kingship of David presents no problem with Deuteronomy 23:4; David having passed the requirement at generation 8 of his life.
David may have been resurrected, as the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) does contain resurrection (for example 1 Samuel 2) [JPS 2004 the Jewish Study Bible differs claiming only a near death experience. Thus, the phrase, “And was buried,” which occurs 25 times in the 1917 JPS Hebrew Bible and is thought to refer to Sheol, which is a place beneath the earth (1 Samuel 2:6 commentary on the 2004 JPS Study Bible), which occurs 2 times in the 1917 JPS translation and is put more accurately in the 1917 JPS translation, “1 Samuel 2:(6) YHWH killeth, and maketh alive; He bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up,” such that the following does not necessitate a permanent death of David (2 Kings 2: (10) And David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David.) In further support, Maimonides claimed belief in resurrection from the dead to be the thirteen among the 13 articles of faith. Additionally, in the book of Revelation there are 144,000 from the tribe of Judah, “Sealed,” and it should be taken note that Sheol are phonetically similar. And finally, the Talmud says that there will not be peace until Shiloh comes (Genesis 49:(10) The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, as long as men come to Shiloh; and unto him shall the obedience of the peoples be.) Shiloh is also close phonetically to Sheol and it might be thought of as, “Not until there is peace in Sheol,” a place which the prophet Daniel claims is where some awaken to everlasting life and everlasting contempt, will the age of messiah come. Sheol is also a place of anarchy (2004 JPS Study Bible). In Sheol David would be as a commoner, like anyone else.
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