Hi all!

This coming Saturday, we (Jews all over the world) will read Genesis 23:1-25:18 and I Kings 1:1-31.

The reading from I Kings is a very detailed account of Adonijah's attempt to push aside his half-brother Solomon & seize power while their father David is close to death, and the efforts of Bathsheba (Solomon's mother) and Nathan to foil Adonijah's designs. Note that the reading relates what Adonijah was up to no less than 4 times: The account of the text itself in 1:5-10; Nathan's version to Bathsheba in 1:11-13; Bathsheba's version to David in 1:17-19; and Nathan's version to David with Bathsheba present in 1:24-26. Note the differences in the 4 accounts. Everything Nathan told Bathsheba to say to David, everything Bathsheba said to David with Nathan not around & everything Nathan said to David in Bathsheba's presence was calculated for effect. Nathan wanted Bathsheba to be alarmed, he wanted her to alarm David & he wanted to reinforce that alarm in the king. The late Prof. Nehama Leibovitz, in her Studies in Bereshit/Genesis (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books), writes:

What prompted Scripture to elaborate at such length on the details of the story and its recapitulations? Evidently it wished to show how each one strove with all his might to set at nought Adonijah's designs that the word of the Lord through His prophet should be fulfilled (as recounted in I Chronicles 28:5). [Our 15th century Sage, Don Isaac] Abravanel (see http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/bio...Abravanel.html) however still has the following question to ask: "How came Nathan the prophet to doubt his own prophecy that Solomon would be king that he should feel that all this effort was necessary to further it?" It is very likely that the unusual detail into which the chapter enters was meant to answer the above question, to show that neither the prophet not those who received his message, relied on miracles, that the prophecy would be fulfilled by itself. They did not regard prophecy as freeing them from action, absolving them of responsibility for their destiny. On the contrary, they accepted the promise of God as obliging them to work and strive to the best of their ability and understanding towards its fulfillment.

In other words: God helps those who help themselves.

(Compare Adonijah's failed coup attempt with Jehoiada's successful one in II Kings 17:4-16 and II Chronicles 23:1-21. The principle still holds. Jehoiada did not around like a bump on a log for God to oust Athaliah & crown Joash, he took decisive action.)

There is also a very good lesson for us parents in the reading from Kings. I Kings 1:6 says:

And his father [David] had not grieved him [Adonijah] all his life in saying: 'Why have you done thus?

David never challenged Adonijah, never reproved him or disciplined him. This terribly negligent parenting helped sow the seeds of the discord that was to disrupt David's family life again & again. (Proverbs 13:24 tells us, "He who spares the rod, hates his son..." I've seen this distorted in all kinds of ways by all kinds of people, some of whom cite it to justify systematic corporal punishment. Israel's former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau notes that the (original) Hebrew word translated as "rod" is shevet, which may also be translated as "sceptre" (as it, in fact, is in Genesis 49:10). He points out that in the Biblical usage, rulers carried rods/sceptres as symbols of their authority; they didn't beat their subjects with them. Rabbi Lau says that Proverbs 13:24 must be seen in this context, i.e. that a parent must provide authority for, and be (inter alia) an authority-figure to, his/her children; the verse is NOT a wholesale license to beat children, an occasional whack on the tush notwithstanding.)

Be well!

ssv