Nakedness & Saul

Then Saul’s anger was aroused against Jonathan, and he said to him, “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness? For as long as the son of Jesse lives on the earth, you shall not be established, nor your kingdom. Now therefore, send and bring him to me, for he shall surely die.” 

There's an awful lot packed into Saul's insults in 1 Samuel 20:30-31. Initially, it may seem odd that when he is angry with his son Jonathan, he attacks the character of Mrs. Saul. Actually, he's making a subtle, although highly offensive, dig at Jonathan. By making a covenant with David, now Saul's enemy, Jonathan is faithless toward Saul, as though Saul were not in fact his father. Saul alleges that Jonathan's choice suggests he is the product of adultery, which would make Mrs. Saul a perverse and rebellious woman. The only way Jonathan can restore his mother's reputation (in Saul's opinion) is to break his covenant with David and turn him over to Saul.

That reference to "your mother's nakedness" puts me in mind of the Law's various commands that "the nakedness of your [insert category of family relation here] you shall not uncover," the vast majority of which are found in Leviticus 18. Since these are all variations on adultery and already clearly prohibited by the 7th Commandment, one might wonder why they need to be enumerated in such exhausting detail.

The context of Leviticus 18 provides illumination. It prohibits all consanguineous adultery, child sacrifice, and homosexual and bestial sex acts. These were the grave abominations of the Canaanites who the Lord rejected from the land, and can be grouped together as fertility cult practices. Leviticus 18, then, is a specific warning to Israelites to not break covenant with the Lord by adopting the fertility cult religion of the Canaanites.

Fertility cults are attractive because they make the propagation and welfare of the family of central importance, which seems intuitive to most people. And by "most people," I mean "especially men" because the  head of the family, the patriarch, becomes a virtual object of worship. After all, it's his name and reputation that are being preserved and propagated. The recent resurgence of  polygamy in scripted and reality television provides many examples of how the man is the center of his vast family's universe.

Ironically, although his insult against Jonathan is remarkably witty, it's Saul who violates the intention of Leviticus 18. As the patriarch, he considers his will to be inviolable and binding on his son. In commanding Jonathan to break a lawful covenant with David and conspire in his murder, Saul demands he be obeyed rather than the Lord of Israel. He is just another in a long line of fathers who insist their families serve them rather than the Lord's Anointed.