KING DAVID IN THE DOCK:

King David on trial at university event
By Chris Emery
[Baltimore] sun reporter
Originally published December 18, 2006

King David, the second monarch of the Israelites and a hero of the Bible, was defiant during his trial in a Northwest Baltimore courtroom. Wearing a golden crown and facing charges of adultery, murder and coveting another man's wife, he maintained his innocence on all counts.

"I was at my palace when he was killed," said David - being portrayed by Daniel Kirsch, a biblical scholar - when asked by the prosecuting attorney if he murdered the husband of a woman with whom he had had an affair. "I did not lay a glove on him, and if I had, it would not fit."

[...]

I'm not sure what the glove is all about, but this reaction is most uncharacteristic of the biblical David, who confessed immediately when confronted by the prophet Nathan (2 Samuel 12 [RSV]):

7: Nathan said to David, "You are the man. Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, `I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul;
8: and I gave you your master's house, and your master's wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if this were too little, I would add to you as much more.
9: Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? You have smitten Uri'ah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have slain him with the sword of the Ammonites.
10: Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uri'ah the Hittite to be your wife.'
11: Thus says the LORD, `Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun.
12: For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.'"
13: David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD."

UPDATE: Reader Joshua Waxman e-mails:

the glove reference is an OJ Simpson reference.
"If the glove don't fit, you must acquit"

UPDATE (22 December): Reader Gary Greenberg e-mails:

Also, David was the third king of the Israelites, not the second. Eshbaal, son of Saul, was the second king of the Israelite

True. The reference is 2 Samuel 2:10 ("Ish-bosheth," "Man of Shame," is probably an unfriendly bowdlerization of "Esh-baal," "Man of Baal").

Also, Seth Sanders e-mails:

As for David, the full narrative context of the II Sam 12 story suggests he would be as shrewd as Kirsch implies--after all, it is only after Nathan drew him into a brilliant poetic and legal trap, and then made an elaborate pronouncement, in the voice of the Lord himself, that David had betrayed the divine trust and would be punished, that David admitted guilt. Indeed, it is only after the Lord proclaims that David has been caught, is guilty, and will incur terrible consequences that David even confesses--note well, not explicitly to the crime itself, but only to having "sinned against the Lord" (David's centire confession is only two words in Hebrew). Even here, one could consider it more an attempt to gain forgiveness (which is immediately, though only partly, granted) than a sincere apology. David's strange act of fasting only before his son's death, could be read as a totally pragmatic attempt to escape the consequences of his actions, followed as it is by no show of remorse once his pragmatic gambit fails, upon the boy's death.

Perhaps the real anachronism here is the idea that a formal human institution like a court, rather than a prophet deploying the full arsenal of Israelite poetics and divine justice, could hold the king responsible for his actions. Anyway, fascinating stuff!