The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

I know that from a legal perspective, a dead person cannot be defamed or slandered. This is the position of the judicial system in the United States.

Yet it bothers me that the character of the Old Testament King David, who has been dead now for nearly three millennia, continues to be defamed by members of the LGBTQ community in The Bahamas.

According to them, David and Johnathan were homosexual lovers. This was implied by Mr Natino Thompson on Beyond the Headlines with host Shenique Miller and panelist Cassius Stuart.

By adamantly asserting that this ancient king of Israel was a homosexual, LGBTQ members are apparently looking to give biblical validation to their sexual orientation with their customary biblical hermeneutics.

I will start by stating that had David been a practising homosexual, he would’ve been executed, as prescribed by the Old Testament Mosaic penal code in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. Old Testament scholars have stated that the practice of homosexuality was unheard of in Israel during the time of David, who was a heterosexual polygamist, as I will document below. In 1 Samuel 18:1, it reads that the soul of Johnathan, son of King Saul, was knit to the soul of David; and that he loved him as his own soul. Two chapters later in 20:42, both men kissed each other at the stone Ezel.

Yet this was customary in ancient times. In 2 Corinthians 13:12 and 1 Thessalonians 5:26, Paul admonished the churches to greet one another with a holy kiss. There was nothing sexual about this ancient custom. Even in recent times men engaged in practices we in the twentieth-first century would automatically view suspiciously. Abraham Lincoln shared the same bed as a traveling attorney with his male assistants, according to Dr Kevin DeYoung of Christ Covenant Church in North Carolina. Ironically, King James I of Scotland, who sanctioned the publication of the Authorised Version in 1604, was also posthumously slandered in similar fashion by one Anthony Weldon, who wrote a paper in 1650 accusing James of being gay. As is the case with King David and his Bahamian LGBTQ false accusers today, King James was not alive to defend his name. In Acts 13:22, Paul said that David was a man after God’s own heart, something a former strict Pharisee wouldn’t have said had David been a homosexual.

Moreover, in 1 Kings 15:12, it says King Asa banished the male Sodomites from Israel. Ironically, the next verse says that Asa did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord as did David his father -- a statement that would’ve been odd had David been engaging in the same practice as the male shrine prostitutes he expelled. In 1 Kings 22:46, King Jehoshaphat followed in the footsteps of Asa his father by expelling the remaining Sodomites from his territories. Bahamian LGBTQ eisegetes love to reference 2 Samuel 1:26, which records David’s eulogy of the slain Johnathan, stating that his love surpassed the love of women. Dr DeYoung made a shrewd observation about this verse when he said that David, who was married to Johnathan’s sister Michal, was simply saying that Johnathan did far more to assist him as a fugitive from the dangerous King Saul than Michal. When David uttered his eulogy, Michal was the wife of Palti of Gallim (1 Samuel 25:44). David must have felt betrayed by Michal. Furthermore, as a Near East king, David would amass a large harem of wives and concubines in order to ensure that he would have a progeny to inherit his throne. In 1 Samuel 18:27, Michal was given to him as his wife for executing 200 Philistines. In 2 Samuel 3, six of David’s other wives were named: Ahinoam, Abigail, Maacah, Haggith, Abital and Eglah.

In 2 Samuel 5:13, it reads that David took him more wives and concubines. In fact, when fleeing Jerusalem after learning of an attempted coup d’etat by his rebellious son Absolam, David would leave behind ten of his concubines to keep his house (2 Samuel 15:16). In addition to these women, David would marry Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite in 2 Samuel 11, in addition to a young damsel named Abishag in 1 Kings 1. In all, David may have up between 30 to 40 women in his harem, inclusive of his concubines. Interestingly, David was rightly judged by Yahweh for his adulterous affair with Bathsheba. Why would God judge David for his heterosexual affair with a married woman and not judge him for his homosexual relationship with Johnathan, as Leviticus 18:22 clearly calls for? Bear in mind that both David and Johnathan were married. So even, for the sake of argument, if homosexuality is morally permissible, there’s still the glaring matter of both men cheating on their respective spouses, seeing that the LGBTQ community claims to be a champion of monogamy.

While the Bible goes to great lengths in documenting David’s heterosexual polygamy, it has absolutely nothing to say about any homosexual dalliance he purportedly had with Johnathan. Bahamian LGBTQ eisegetes have to read this homosexual relationship into the biblical text, because it is simply not there. In closing, Mr Thompson would accuse the Beyond the Headlines panelist of not reading. Yet him implying that King David was a homosexual raises the question of how much of the Bible he has taken the time to read. I would suggest to him to read the Bible without using the lens of Troy Perry and the Metropolitan Community Church.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport,

Grand Bahama,

March 29, 2023.