Donald F. Murray, «Under Yhwh’s Veto: David as Shedder of Blood in Chronicles», Vol. 82 (2001) 457-476
As grounds for Yhwh’s veto on David’s building the temple, the charge of shedding blood, in Chronicles made against David alone (1 Chr 22,8; 28,3), poses questions both about what is being referred to, and how the charge explains the veto, given that in the Hebrew Bible no other Israelite warrior incurs the charge for killing in warfare. This article explicates the charge, highlights how surprising it is, and then develops a line of argument, drawn principally from Num 31 and 35, that can explain how the Chronicler understood the charge both to be warranted, and to justify Yhwh’s veto.
Moreover, in these texts David announces publicly, first to Solomon (22,8), and then to his assembled sons and officials (28,3), what Yhwh had already revealed to David privately. Clearly, for Chronicles the fact that Yhwh quite explicitly forbade to David something that he expressly chose Solomon to do (1 Chr 28,5-6) is a matter in need of explanation, not just privately to David, but also publicly to court and people. Hence, the double exposition shows how significant Yhwh’s explanation is for the Chronicler, and the very public nature of the second indicates that there is a communal dimension in the explanation that is also important to the Chronicler. This leads to the question, how exactly does the ground Yhwh offers David explain, in terms that concern court and people, why David could not build the temple? It is the main purpose of the present article to essay an answer to this question. But it will help our inquiry to deal first with the prior question, what was it Yhwh had said to David that Chronicles could take as a veto on David’s building the temple, grounded in his bloodshed in warfare?
2. The immediate sources
Whilst it is evident that the two addresses of David in 1 Chr 22,7-10 and 28,2-7 each give the gist of the oracle of Nathan already recorded in 1 Chr 178, neither 1 Chr 17 nor its source, 2 Sam 7, contains any explicit statement of the kind David attributes to Yhwh in 1 Chr 22,8 and 28,3. How, then, did the Chronicler arrrive at this formulation of Yhwh’s veto? He derived it from Yhwh’s response to David in the Nathan oracle (1 Chr 17,4b-10a // 2 Sam 7,5b-11a) as read in the light of two interpretions in Kings of the same passage9.The