King David born as an orphan or a bastard

Rey Perez

In King David youth, was he a bastard child or an orphan from the tribe of Jesse. Or does the bible stay silent.

Danny Parker

Had a professor at DTS that proposed in his doctoral thesis that he was a bastard child. Arguing especially from the visit of Samuel at his anointing and the disregard of him by father and sons (normally the last child would be special - like Joseph and later Benjamin). But besides these types of perceived inuendoes the Bible is silent on the matter.

Brad Hahn

This belief is normally taken from Psalm 51, David's prayer of repentance following his affair with Bathsheba and murder of her husband, where he claims to have been conceived in sin. I believe that this is an acknowledgement of the depth of his sinful nature, its having been established as far back as his conception. David was treated with contempt by his brothers, first at the visit of Samuel and second when Goliath was challenging the Israelites, because of his youth, not because of his parentage. Later, when David is fleeing from Saul, his father and brothers join him (I Sam. 22:1), and, in the same passage, he is said to have left both of his parents in the care of the king of Moab.

Justin Gatlin

Theological debates are not allowed under forum guidelines but a smart Bible search for "father of David" gives these results:

1 Sam 16:1
The LORD said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.”

1 Sam 17:12
Now David was the son of an Ephrathite of Bethlehem in Judah, named Jesse, who had eight sons. In the days of Saul the man was already old and advanced in years.

Ruth 4:17
And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.” They named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

1 Chron 2:13–15
Jesse fathered Eliab his firstborn, Abinadab the second, Shimea the third, Nethanel the fourth, Raddai the fifth, Ozem the sixth, David the seventh.

Matt 1:6
and Jesse the father of David the king. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah,

Luke 3:32
the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Sala, the son of Nahshon,

Francis

The popular amazon series on David does present him as having shady origins. He is called a bastard at some point, but the series (which acknowledges taking license on certain details) later says he was the son of the daughter of the enemy. This sort of popularization of biblical narrative can unfortunately be missed on watchers who do not know the biblical data and be assumed to be factual. But the points raised above are at best speculative and tenuous even though some scholars really have a taste for putting forward provocative hypotheses.

The All search (smart search against the entire Logos catalog) for "was David a bastard?" reads so:

"The provided articles do not contain any information about David himself being a bastard. Instead, they mention a child of David's as being a bastard. Specifically, one article notes that David had a child by Bathsheba who was considered a bastard. The articles also provide general information about the term "bastard" in biblical and historical contexts, but do not directly address the query about David's own status. Given the limited relevance of the provided information to the specific query, it might be beneficial to rephrase or refine the search question for more accurate results."

Garrell Calton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1364763#Comment_1364763

I found the above question legit, not a theological debate. No one is debating Rey. Brad and Danny are giving information. Not so different than a smart search.

Justin Gatlin

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1364794#Comment_1364794

Nobody was confrontational, but the forum guidelines are pretty clear:

Logos Focused

Please keep your discussions focused on Logos: our software, products, websites, company, tools, etc.

Avoid Theological Debate

Please do not discuss or debate biblical, theological, or other controversial topics. Use one of the many web forums or focused groups intended for these kinds of discussions.

I posted the smart search to try and tie it into the software.

MJ. Smith

Don't forget to consult the Rabbinic canon when asking Jewish questions. Okay, I lack the skill to find the references I was looking for but …

See David suspected to be a ‘mamzer’ (Bastard) - Psalms or King David’s Mother: She Stands for Us - Miriam Feinberg Vamosh's blog or Nitzevet, Mother of David - The bold voice of silence - Chabad.org

and also don't forget to use the definition of bastard in Jewish culture of David's time not contemporary usage.

A smart search on Was David illegitimate? produced

AN ILLEGITIMATE SON

To illustrate the justice of God, David was the first man in Israel who had a right to Israel’s throne. He was a descendant of Pharez, the illegitimate son of Judah. We have the sordid record in Genesis 38.
Judah the son of Jacob had married a Canaanitish woman who had borne him three sons, Er, Onan and Shelah. When Er was of age his father gave him a wife by the name of Tamar. But Er died before he had an issue and died childless. According to the law of redemption of a wife, the brother of the deceased was to take his brother’s wife. This the second son of Judah did, but he too died childless and left Tamar a widow again. There was one more son of Judah, Shelah, who was eligible to take the widowed Tamar. But Judah refused to give him to Tamar. It was then that Tamar the widow disguised herself as a harlot and enticed Judah, her own father-in-law, to become the father of her child. This baby was called Pharez. He was an illegitimate child, born of Judah and his own daughter-in-law.

M. R. De Haan, The Romance of Redemption: Studies in the Book of Ruth (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1996), 177–178.

So, the question appears to be well worth asking but poorly covered in my Logos library

xnman

Something Smart Search will not bring out but I wish it did is….

Genesis 8:21, Jeremiah 3:25, Ezekiel 18:20, Romans 14:12, Ecclesiastes 12:7, and Hebrews 12:9 and Psalm 51:5, Luk 1:31. It is things like this that causes me to take Smart Search with a grain of salt as I think it is biased "in it's theology". A good study of these verses will lead to a better understanding of the question "Was David born as an orphan or as a bastard".

But what Smart Search seems to do is give an answer based on what "database information" it has and since most of the information out there is written by what some call "worldly views" then Smart Search follows that thought process. Because that is the most "database information" that it has…. and "most makes right" when it comes to written data… right??? LOL 😎

MJ. Smith

@xnman

Thank you for this post. It gave me an aha moment in which I realized that I use theological in a narrower manner than a segment of the forumites use it - to the extent that for Biblical interpretation we don't always agree on the "raw data" available to the biblical scholar. It explains some of the complaints about theological discussion by some while others don't see the question or answers as theological.