Pinsky’s Life of David

Robert Pinsky, The Life of David . New York: Schocken, 2005. 209 pp.

I was prepared to dislike Pinsky’s book, and the howler on the first page of the text was not encouraging (“David and the Witch of Endor”!?). My dislike deepened as the book progressed: Pinsky, a widely admired poet who teaches in Boston University’s creative writing program, plays source critic for a few pages, gossips inconclusively that Jonathan and David might have been homosexual lovers (thus missing the point of Jonathan’s disrobing before David – namely, Jonathan abdicates as crown prince), passes on the bizarre legend that Goliath and David were cousins. Yet, the book has its strengths, as Pinsky captures the drama and passion of the David story, as well as the complex piety of the man after God’s own heart, that is missing from most commentaries on 1-2 Samuel.