Together in Guilt: David, Jonadab, and the Rape of Tamar

Abstract

Jonadab, friend and very wise (חכם מאד‎) confidant of Amnon, is often blamed for arranging Amnon’s rape of Tamar. David, Amnon’s doting father, likewise bears responsibility for neither preventing nor punishing Amnon. While David’s guilt is more obvious, the justifications offered in narrative readings for Jonadab’s guilt lack sufficient evidence. This article employs a narrative analysis focused on repetition in order to explain Jonadab’s situation vis-à-vis the rape. A close look at the narrative repetitions in the text reveals the curious alignment of Jonadab and David and distances the two of them from Amnon. In a fourfold repetition of events, the first (Jonadab) and third (David) iterations hold together, whereas the second (Amnon) and fourth (narration of Tamar) act as a pair. This does not indicate that David and Jonadab are innocent, but are guilty rather of the loss of royal authority (David) and its associated wisdom (Jonadab).

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.