Al Sundel

New.  Modern.  Fast.  Describes Vol 2 of a breakout 4-volume epic novel, the first toddler-to-death coverage of King David. The most up-to-date comprehensive book about him.  Including relations to his father Jesse, to King Saul, Queen Rizpah, King Achish, Joab, Hushai the Arky, Jashobeam, Gad, his children, etc.  It follows traditional lines, except where a novelist’s imagination sees a good dramatic turn, with the same liberties all adapters of the complex David tale always took.  But in depth.  Because we now have more modern commentary at hand.  Color guide maps are included. It was a watershed time in world religion.  As Judge Barzelai the Younger of Gilead tells Queen Rizpah, “We need no more Commandments.  No more discourse with the Above.  No more Jacob’s ladders.”  He is in search, 3,000 years ago, of more justice.  As we still are today.   For this was the Formative stage of a breakaway new populist faith with strong democratic strains.  Different than divine kingship.  Among a people with the richest traditional tales of that time.  They would come to be led by a commoner sheepcote boy who grew to be a more human king than the dawn of history had seen.  In a region where all faiths cooked choice meat for their gods, as Abraham did after sparing Isaac.  David faced endless hurdles and challenges.  Finding love where he could. So that his first 3 children were born to him close in age: Amnon, Chileab the Mother Killer, and Tamar. In the modern view, he was 51 when he met Bathsheba, who was 16, married and the granddaughter of his vizier. In Vol 1, we saw much of King Saul as a bumbler, while teenagers David and Queen Rizpah trysted all over the palace.  Like Romeo and Juliet.  Except they lived in the same palace and Juliet was married to the king.  And David was often out making a name for himself at war and rising to prince through a-plot-to kill-him that he survived. A slanderous whisper hit on the truth, and Prince David fled to the Badlands. We pick him up in Vol 2 of KING DAVID: The Golden Age of Ancient Israel.  The Inner Rim of civil society in Canaan was surrounded by Badlands.  Spoiler gangs roamed freely who kept invading the Inner Rim to loot, rape, kill, etc.  David’s better angels soon made him a leader of an outlaw gang that preyed on far worse gangs.  Even as he was repeatedly hunted by Saul.   In time, his followers grew to over 600.  And now Saul came after him all the harder, having heard of David’s amazing success in the Badlands.  Even to gaining half of a lerge large estate through marrying a young widow, Abigail. Then King Achish of Philistia and his new landowner neighbor David saw how useful each could be to the other. They came to a pact of mutual false-face friendship.    David hid from Saul inside the lowland walled city of Gath and its Leviathan worship. He witnessed their Day of the Dead parade. He helped Achish gain control of the central highlands city of Jebus.  Now Achish and Saul were the powers in Canaan, eyeball to eyeball.  Their earlier battles had been tragic comedies of utter madhouse confusion.    So Achish laid a well-planned trap for Saul at Mount Gilboa with his many iron war chariots.  If he won, Achish would control a sizable portion of Canaan to tax.  His goal.  Saul walked into the trap like a mouse to cheese.  The tragic fall of the House of Saul set all of Canaan buzzing as to whose hind would sit on the throne as the second king of Israel.  A halfwit had the highest claim but the least ability.  Queen Rizpah and David were also in the running, as rivals now instead of lovers.  It was an age of blood and ruthlessness.  And the slow growth of conscience.  Yea, even in war-coarsened David.  For his mature cry of anguish would resonate through 3 millennia to come.  The only one recorded by a powerful ancient king.   To be continued in Vol 3 Conquest of Jerusalem.