Glory of the Man

1 Kings begins with a brief story about David, aging and cold, unable to stay warm at night. It’s pathetic, and also thematic, because throughout 1-2 Kings, a king’s health symbolizes the health of his kingdom.

But the roots of the story go deeper. When God first created Adam, he was of earth, made from the adamah. By Greek reckoning, he was cold and dry. It’s not until Eve appears that he is called ish, a word related to esh, fire. The man of earth becomes a man of fire when he encounters the fire of the ishshah, the woman.

Abishag warming David is a riff on Adam. David is not newborn from earth; he is old and tired, but he is still warmed, fired, by the presence of a woman.

Paul said it like this: The woman is the glory of the man. She is the glory of the man in part because she is the glorifier of the man. And that, according to Genesis and Kings, is because the woman makes the man burst into flame. He is a man of earth, and the woman transmutes earth into a gem, a precious metal.

Every married man knows that this is not “mere symbolism.”