Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

Violent Grace
Tragedy and Transformation in the Oresteia and the Deuteronomistic History

L. Daniel Hawk
Ashland Theological Seminary
910 Center St., Ashland, OH 44805

The influence of the Oresteia on the literature and culture of Athens cannot be
underestimated. Simon Goldhill writes, for instance, that for the Greeks the Oresteia was
the most influential play ever written.1 Aside from its exceptional literary merits, its
enduring impact in Greek society may be explained in terms of its power in creating a
myth of origins for Athenian democracy. Following the conventions of Athenian
tragedy, Aeschylus reworked traditional material familiar to his audience, but in a
striking departure from established practice, he brought the action of the story to Athens
and set the climactic scene on the Areopagus.2
The playwright created a foundation narrative for the Athenian polis by reshaping
the legendary story of the House of Atreus into an elaborate drama that portrayed the
superiority of the mediating institutions of democracy over the kinship-based society that
preceded it.3 He did so by demonstrating that social justice provided a measure of social
equilibrium that the retaliatory justice of the family could not. In the Oresteia blood ties
unravel with shocking rapidity as the House of Atreus finds itself powerless to stop a

1
For an assessment of the trilogy’s impact, see Simon Goldhill, Aeschylus: The Oresteia (Landmarks of
World Literature; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), ix-x. The drama won for Aeschylus his
eighteenth and final first prize at the dramatic competition held during the Great Dionysiac, the most
important of the many festivals of Athens, and remains the only tragic trilogy from classical Athens to
survive intact to the present day.
2
Classical tragedy typically concerned people and places with no direct connection to Athens, enabling the
playwright to explore complex social and theological issues at a safe distance. The Oresteia is the only known
tragic work with a setting in Athens. The Great Dionysiac, during which the trilogy was first produced in 458
B.C.E., blended civic and religious celebration. The tragic competition presented during the second day
constituted a vital component of the festival and stimulated the public discourse considered essential fro the
development and maintenance of democratic society. For discussions of the connection between Greek tragedy,
the Great Dionysiac, and the life of the polis see Simon Goldhill, ―The Great Dionysia,‖ in Nothing to Do With
Dionysos: Athenian Drama in Its Social Contex (ed. John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin; Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1990), 97-129; Rainer Friedrich, ―Everything to Do with Dionysos?‖ in Tragedy
and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond (ed. M. S. Silk; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 257-283;
―Something to Do with Dionysos—Tragedy and the Dionysiac: Response to Friedrich,‖ in Tragedy and the
Tragic, 284-94.
3
The tragedians’ manipulation of legendary material is elaborated in Peter Burian, ―Myth into Muthos: The
Shaping of Tragic Plot,‖ The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy: 178-208 and Charles Segal, ―Greek

1
 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

horrific cycle of vendetta. Retributive justice perpetuates a spiral of violence as

Clytemnestra plots and perpetrates the death of her husband Agamemnon to avenge her
daughter Iphigeneia, Orestes plots the death of his mother to avenge the murder of his
father, and the Furies pursue Orestes to avenge the murder of Clytemnestra. In the course
of the drama, the social and cosmic order is restored only by a radical reconfiguration of
society that replaces the retributive justice of the family with the civic justice of trial by
jury, the quintessential expression of Athenian democracy. The drama thus prompts its
audience to redirect primary loyalty from kin (the nexus of the prior social order) to the
mediating institutions of democratic Athens.
The Oresteia finds a counterpart in biblical literature in the narrative of the rise of
the monarchy recounted in 1 Samuel 8 through 1 Kings 8. While the biblical story relates
a vastly different set of events, it too deals with a profound social reconfiguration,
wherein loyalties of blood (signified by tribal Israel) are redirected to the mediating
institutions of monarchy and temple eventually established in the city of David. Like the
Oresteia, it adopts a tripartite scheme that coalesces around three figures. A close
reading, moreover, reveals a more extensive correspondence between the two narratives.
In short, this paper argues that the biblical narrative constructs a charter narrative for the
Davidic monarchy by appropriating the same plot structure, character types, and themes
as those that configure the Oresteia. These may be summarized as follows. The
suffering and death of the king (Agamemnon and Saul), rendered with sacrificial
imagery, signifies the dissolution of an old kin-based society and anticipates the rise of a
new order. Paradoxical figures associated with the wilderness (Orestes and David)
facilitate and embody the transition from the older, fragmented social and cosmic order to
the new civic society that succeeds it. Agents of divine wisdom (Athena and Solomon)
then complete the transformation by establishing new institutions on the sacred hill of the
city.

Tragedy and Society: A Structuralist Perspective,‖ in Interpreting Greek Tragedy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1986), 21-47. For Aeschylus’ reworking of Homer, see Goldhill, Aeschylus, 46-53.

2
 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

Agamemnon and Saul: The King as Sacrifice

The contest between the competing claims of the oikos, or household, and the
polis, or the sphere of political life, underlies the plot of the Oresteia.4 The first play of
the trilogy, the Agamemnon, utilizes the metaphors of kingship and sacrifice to portray
the instability of the oikos and to present its disintegration. Both metaphors represent the
paradox that lies at the core of Greek tragedy. Sacrifice as metaphor both confirms and
dismantles the cosmic and social order, as well as the logic that supports it, creating an
in-between space where transformations occur. The oppositions that configure the
cosmos—those demarcating divine from human, human from bestial, domestic from
wild, the individual from society, innocence from guilt—converge within the context of
sacrificial ritual.5 In a similar sense, the king is rendered a paradoxical figure who stands
at the convergence of social and cosmic hierarchies and represents ―the symbolic point
where the human and the divine, the natural and supernatural worlds intersect.‖6 In
tragedy reversals and irony haunt the king and lead to intense suffering, expressing a
confusion of identities that collapses the distinctions by which the cosmos is held
together. When the suffering of the king takes on sacrificial overtones, the dissolution of
cosmic and social boundaries creates a particularly potent arena for transformation.7
Agamemnon opens by evoking cherished symbols of the oikos: the husband’s
return to home and hearth and to the faithful wife who has overseen the household in his
absence. The elders of Argos, however, counter this image by recounting a sacrificial
crisis that occurred ten years earlier (Ag. 44-256). At the outset of the campaign against
Troy, the king had encountered the classic double bind that initiates tragic suffering. In
order to appease the goddess Artemis and thus secure the favorable winds necessary to

4
While modern readers are generally drawn to the struggles of the characters within Greek tragedy, the
Greeks themselves perceived it in more corporate dimensions. Commenting on the Oresteia, F. T. Griffiths
puts the issue succinctly: ―early tragedy concerned itself more with cultural and religious evolution than
with the fortunes of a single hero‖ (―Girard on the Greeks/The Greeks on Girard,‖ Berkshire Review 14
[1979], 24).
5
For a summary of the role of sacrifice in Greek society and its appropriation as a metaphor in tragedy, see
Helene Foley, Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University, 1985), 16-
73; Goldhill, Aeschylus, 66-73; and Segal, ―Greek Tragedy,‖ 26-31.
6
Segal, ―Greek Tragedy,‖ 28.
7
Charles Segal observes that tragedy ―simultaneously validates and disintegrates the mythic system both as
a form of narrative representation and as a reflection of a coherent world order whose stable, hierarchical
interrelation of parts is encoded into myths.‖ ―Greek Myth as a Semiotic and Structural System and the
Problem of Tragedy,‖ in Interpreting Greek Tragedy, 48-74.

3
 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

launch the expedition against Troy, Agamemnon had heeded the words of a seer and
sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia.
The elders recount the event as Clytemnestra performs a series of rituals. As a
woman, Clytemnestra represents the domestic sphere that lies at the heart of Greek
society and more broadly the ties of blood that configure it.8 But as the plot develops we
realize that things have gone horribly awry. The home to which Agamemnon returns is
not a refuge but a slaughterhouse. Clytemnestra has been plotting his death in the long
interim since his departure. Although feigning love and fidelity, Clytemnestra executes a
carefully devised plan and butchers her husband in his bath. The appearance of
Aegisthus, Clytemnestra’s lover and co-conspirator, immediately after Agamemnon’s
death widens the scope of family violence, for he represents his father Thyestes, whose
children had been fed to him by Agamemnon’s father Atreus.9
The play thus presents us with an ordered world that has turned on itself. The
fundamental bonds that order the oikos have dissolved, and the retaliatory violence that
maintains kin-based society plunges the participants of the drama into a maelstrom from
which new realities may emerge.10 Agony is the path to this new reality, a point made as
the chorus reminds us of the law of Zeus, ―that we must suffer, suffer into truth‖ (Ag.
180).
Agamemnon the king is a contradiction of opposites. He is both the triumphant
victor over Troy and the scion of a house that bears the stigma of betrayal and
cannibalism. He is both a noble warrior and a savage killer. The act that has incurred his
condemnation, the sacrifice of his daughter, was at the same time an act of duty and a
horrible betrayal of paternal trust that appeased divine wrath but also precipitated it.
Though initially reluctant to tread on a red carpet laid out for him, he finally succumbs to
Clytemnestra’s cajoling and does so, committing the act of hubris which ostensibly
justifies his death and manifesting the fiction common in Greek sacrificial ritual that the

8
In classical Athens, women largely remained at home, and their activities outside the home were severely
restricted.
9
Soon after Agamemnon enters his house the crime of his father Atreus is cryptically recounted by
Cassandra, a Trojan seer whom Agamemnon has violated and brought back as a spoil of war.
10
For a concise discussion of the reciprocal conflicts in the trilogy, see Griffiths, ―Girard,‖ 24-29.

4
 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

victim assents to its own death (954-957).11 After murdering him in his bath,
Clytemnestra gloats in terms that render his death in distinctly sacrificial terms (1407-
1410, 1531-33, 1461), while the elders of Argos declare the act a sacrilege (1547).12 The
murder of the king, however, only plunges the oikos deeper into a chaotic spiral of
reciprocal violence, a situation foreshadowed by allusions to Orestes.
The motifs of sacrifice, kingship, paradox, and suffering converge as well in the
person of Saul.13 Saul’s story is also set within a larger chain of events marked by a
cycle of vendetta. Prior to 1 Samuel we find Israel caught in an escalation of retaliatory
violence marked by the perversion of family loyalties and expectations. In Deborah we
meet a woman who is Clytemnestra’s equal in gloating over the deaths of men, while in
Jael we encounter a juxtaposition of hospitality and murder as shocking as that presented
in Agamemnon.14 Stories associated with Gideon and Jephthah confront us with images
of internecine murder and the sacrifice of children that are strongly reminiscent of the
Greek legend (Judg 9:1-57; 11:34-40; 12:1-7). The spiral of familial disintegration
culminates in accounts of horrific violence as Judges comes to a close: in the Levites’

11
Greek sacrificial rituals attempted by various devices to demonstrate the victim’s assent to its death.
Sometimes a trail of grain would lead the ox to the altar where, transgressing the sacred space, it would be
slaughtered. More commonly grain was thrown into the air so that the animal would nod. For a summary
of sacrificial ritual see Foley, Ritual Irony, 29-30; Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (trans. John Raffan;
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1985), 55-58; – Homo Necans: The Anthropological of Greek
Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (trans. Peter Bing; Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1983),
1-12.
Agamemnon’s assent to his death is more contrived. Clytemnestra attempts to coax him to step on
the red carpet (an act of hubris) in the hope that the gods will then condone what she is about to do.
Inasmuch as Agamemnon clearly recognizes the import of his action, he thereby implicitly assents to his
death (Ag. 915-18). A cogent treatment of the scene is offered by Robert F. Goheen, ―Aspects of Dramatic
Symbolism: Three Studies in the Oresteia,‖ in Aeschylus: A Collection of Critical Essays (ed. Marsh H.
McCall, Jr.; Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972), 106-119.
12
The perversion of sacrificial ritual presents a potent image of social and cosmic disintegration. See
Froma I. Zeitlin, "The Motif of the Corrupted Sacrifice in Aeschylus' Oresteia," TAPA 96: 463-508; —,
"Postscript to the Sacrificial Imagery in the Oresteia (Ag. 1235-37)," TAPA 97:645-53; Walter Burkert,
―Greek Tragedy and Sacrificial Ritual, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 7 (1966), 119-120.
13
Saul’s story is widely regarded as tragic, although most writers are interested in his struggle against fate
rather than the larger role he plays in the story. The tragic elements of the narrative have been addressed
from a variety of perspectives. Important among these are: David M. Gunn, The Fate of King Saul
(JSOTSup 14; Sheffield: Sheffield University, 1982), which sets puts his story directly in conversation with
Greek tragedy; James G. Williams, The Bible, Violence & the Sacred (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,
1991), 134-141, which applies the thinking of René Girard to the story of Saul; W. Lee Humphreys, The
Tragic Vision and the Hebrew Tradition (OBT 18; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 23-42, which sees a tragic
vision at the earliest stage of composition; and J. Cheryl Exum, Tragedy and Biblical Narrative
(Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1992), 70-119, which views Saul’s heroic defiance against an
implacable deity as the quintessence of the tragic vision.
14
In Barak we also find a counterpart to the passive Aegisthus.

5
 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

wooing and subsequent abandonment (murder?) of his concubine and in her abuse by the
men of Gibeah, in the war that almost annihilates the tribe of Benjamin, in the destruction
of the Israelite city of Jabesh-gilead, and in the sacrilegious kidnapping of women for the
Benjaminites. It is by no means insignificant that the narrator comments on these events
by raising the issue of a new order (the monarchy) as the book comes to a close: ―there
was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in their own eye‖ (Judg 19:1; 21:25).
Like Agamemnon, Saul is both noble and base. Handsome, tall, and wealthy (1
Sam 9:1-2), he is a pedigreed Benjaminite who leads Israel to triumph over its enemies
(11:1-11). Yet he also hails from Gibeah, a village stigmatized by heinous crimes (Judg
19:1-20:48). Sacrificial imagery surrounds Saul with a density unmatched by the story of
any other biblical character. Sacrifices mark his selection and anointing as king by
Samuel (1 Sam 9:12-13; 9:22-10:1, 8) and his acclamation by the people after the victory
over Nahash (11:14-15). Saul also encounters the tragic double bind in the form of a
necessary but forbidden sacrifice. Like Agamemnon he is driven to transgress sacrificial
decorum and thus seals his doom. When Samuel does not arrive at the prescribed time
Saul offers sacrifice to invoke Yhwh’s help against the Philistines (13:8-15). This angers
the seer, who first accuses the king of disobeying the commandment of Yhwh and then
decrees that he will have no dynasty.15 In a related episode, Saul delays full
implementation of the herem in order to bring the Amalekite king and livestock back to
Gilgal for sacrifice (1 Sam 15:1-33). In this case Samuel accuses the king of rebellion
(merî) against Yhwh (a charge approximating the Greek concept of hubris) and declares
that he has been rejected as king.16 Situated between these episodes is the strange but
symbolically significant account of Saul’s construction of a makeshift altar (14:31-35).
In an act that portrays the utter collapse of order, Saul’s famished troops eat meat with
the blood.17 Saul immediately responds to the situation by instituting sacrifice on a

15
The role of a soothsayer (Calchas) is also prominent in the story of Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigeneia
(Ag. 111-258).
16
Although interpreters have conventionally read both instances as blatant acts of defiance on the part of
Saul (in line with Samuel’s assessment of the acts), the accounts themselves convey a high degree of
ambiguity. The slippery character of the biblically story has been described in detail by Gunn (33-56, 123-
31). Significant in Gunn’s reading is the assertion that Saul’s suffering at the hand of Yhwh facilitates a
shift in Yhwh’s attitude toward the monarchy.
17
The violation of sacrificial decorum functions in 1 Samuel, as it does in Agamemnon, as a powerful
symbol of disintegration. The image appears vividly at the beginning of 1 Samuel, where the corrupt

6
 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

hastily constructed stone altar, thus symbolically beginning the restoration of order
(14:31-35).18
King Saul represents the older, kin-based social order that characterizes Israel in
the era of the judges, and the theme of blood relationship therefore plays a prominent role
in his story. Blood ties are frayed to the breaking point after his rejection as king, when
both Michal and Jonathan accede to David, the nascent personification of the new civic
order. As the representative of the old tribal order Saul also becomes the focus of the
divine wrath and suffering that in Greek tragedy results from the downfall of the order.19
The tormenting activity of the evil spirit (whose presence coincides textually with the
alienation of Saul from his children) makes it clear that Yhwh intends for Saul to suffer
(1 Sam 16:14-15, 23; 18:10; 19:9). The king’s subsequent psychic deterioration mirrors
the demise of tribal Israel, while David’s growing power and influence point to the
dynastic monarchy that will mark the reconstituted Israel. Finally, surrounded by
advancing enemies on Mt. Gilboa, Saul takes his own life, echoing the Greek fiction that
the king dies willingly.20

David and Orestes: Rites of Passage

Orestes is a complex character who embodies the transition from oikos to polis.
He is a figure common in Greek tragedy and myth: the adolescent on the verge of
adulthood. For the Greeks, adolescence represented a liminal state between the domestic
sphere of the oikos (associated with the mother) and the civic sphere of the polis
(associated with the father), and youths commonly inhabit the uncivilized domain of the

practices of Eli’s sons is connected explicitly with the dissolution of the older order and its replacement by
a new one (1 Sam 2:12-17, 22-36; 3:11-14).
18
The narrator comments that this was ―the beginning of an altar‖ (14:35). The phrase signifies the
inauguration of a process that is completed later by another. It occurs previously in the narrator’s comment
that Samson will begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines (Judg 13:5), a task that David later completes.
19
One of the conventional concerns of Greek tragedy is the survival of the polis in the face of divine wrath.
The king’s suffering deflects wrath from the polis so that this can be accomplished. The framework is
illustrated well by Oedipus the King. In the play, Thebes suffers a plague that has been sent, we learn,
because the murderer of King Laius has not been apprehended. The issue becomes more complex when we
learn, in the course of the play, that the murder and its aftermath constitute an appalling contravention of
the family code. Only when the king willingly sheds his blood (by blinding himself) is the plague lifted.
20
Saul’s story actually ends with the dismemberment of his corpse (1 Sam 31:8-13), and his body is hung
on a wall, resembling the carcass of an animal hung for butchering. Dismemberment of the sacrificial
victim marks the final act of sacrificial rites. For more on sacrifice as a metaphor in the story of Saul see L.

7
 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

wilderness in Greek mythology. Because of his liminality, the youthful male is able to
hold the polarities of the family and the polis in tension, thus becoming an agent for
transformation.21 For this reason Orestes, the young son of Agamemnon and
Clytemnestra, is the most fully developed and ambiguous character in the trilogy.
We first encounter Orestes on the outskirts of Argos, where he has returned from
the wandering life of exile to claim his patrimony and to avenge his father. During the
ensuing drama this son of Agamemnon becomes the locus both of divine favor and divine
wrath. He returns to Argos, and later slays Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, in obedience to
the command of his protector Apollo, a representative of the Olympian deities that
oversee the polis. Yet after murdering his mother he is immediately pursued and
tormented by the Furies, the chthonic (and feminine) deities whose retaliatory justice
maintains the order of the oikos. Like Clytemnestra he employs subterfuge and betrayal
in the commission of sins against the oikos. But he executes vengeance against
Clytemnestra in an exchange that creates a high degree of ambivalence. While
Clytemnestra had blasphemously compared Agamemnon’s gory death to a libation
poured out to Zeus (Ag.1407-1410), Orestes is torn by competing loyalties to the mother
and the father at the moment he confronts and slays Clytemnestra (Cho. 779-917).
Themes of recognition, reversal, and hunting trace the transformations of Orestes’
character, and by extension, the social transformations he signifies. The Choephori, the
second play in the trilogy, begins as Electra, the sister of Orestes, recognizes her
brother’s footprint and locks of his hair at Agamemnon’s tomb outside Argos. As a
woman, Electra is symbolically aligned with Clytemnestra and thus with the domestic
sphere which she represents. Yet like Orestes she is a youth, and we encounter her as
well in the liminal space just outside the polis. Her appearance at this juncture of the
drama provides the mechanism by which the transfer of loyalties from oikos to polis is
legitimized. As she prays at her father’s tomb, she pleads for an avenger against her
mother (126-149). When Orestes appears she completes the turn away from her mother
by declaring her loyalty to him (―I turn to you the love I gave my mother,‖ 242) and to

Daniel Hawk, ―Saul as Sacrifice: The Tragedy of Israel’s First King,‖ BR 12, no. 6 (December, 1996): 20-
25, 56, as well as James G. Williams, ―Sacrifice and the Beginning of Kingship,‖ Sem 67 (1994), 73-92.
21
Segal, Greek Myth, 56-58.

8
 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

her father (―I am with you, calling through my tears,‖ 444).22 Electra thus becomes voice
of the oikos in the wild place of death and life, acceding to the new order of the polis that
Orestes signifies. As she urges him on in his mission, Electra implicitly authorizes it.
Orestes, for his part, cites obligations to Apollo, his father, and the citizens of Argos as
reasons for the deed he is about to commit.
By slaying Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, Orestes seizes his patrimony and steps
into manhood (278-79). Yet the murders also signify his initiation into suffering, and he
flees the stage into exile again pursued by the Furies, the hunter now the hunted.23 As the
Eumenides, the third play, opens Orestes continues to embody paradox. At Delphi
Apollo purges him of bloodguilt (the bridge, Robert Fagles remarks, from blood vendetta
to social justice).24 The purges restore his sanity but prove ineffective in warding off the
Furies, the agents of retaliatory justice, who pursue him again into the wilderness.
Orestes is therefore cleansed of his sin but cannot escape the cycle of reciprocal violence
(now continued by the Furies) that engulfs his house; a deity removes his sin, but deities
also drive him back into the wilderness. Although the recipient of divine pardon he
nonetheless continues to suffer the consequences of his sin.
Like Orestes, David is a transitional figure who embodies the struggle of loyalties
as old yields to new. The text introduces him by emphasizing his youthfulness; he is the
youngest of the sons of Jesse and not considered old enough to be king (1 Sam 16:11-12)
or even to join his brothers in combat (17:12-30). Saul emphasizes his youth by
repeatedly calling him a naar (youth), in contrast to Goliath, whom by contrast he calls
an experienced warrior (17:33, 55, 58; cf. 38-39).25 Like Orestes, the young David is
associated with the wilderness, where he becomes both the hunted and the hunter as Saul
pursues him (23:15-29; 24:1-22; 26:1-25) and as he disguises his loyalties in order to gain
the confidence of his enemies (21:10-15; 27:1-28:2; 29:1-11). As with Orestes retaliatory
violence propels the hero through the wilderness. David avenges the destruction of
Ziklag (30:1-26), threatens to slaughter Nabal for insulting his emissaries (25:2-35), and

22
The translations are those of Robert Fagles, Aeschylus: The Oresteia (New York, Penguin Books, 1984),
189, 197.
23
Hunting may also have served as a transformative metaphor for conveying the death of the old and the
birth of the new. See Burkert, Homo Necans, 35-48 and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, ―Chasse et sacrifice dans l’
Orestie d’Eschyle,‖ in Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne”(Paris: F. Maspero, 1972), 133-58.
24
Robert Fagles, ―The Serpent and the Eagle,‖ in The Oresteia, 74.

9
 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

calls for the execution of the alleged killer of Saul (2 Sam 1:1-16) and the murderers of
Ishbosheth (4:1-12). Agonistic strife continues through David’s surrogates at the pool of
Gibeon (2:12-17) and in the deaths of Asahel and Abner (2:18-3:39).
A series of recognitions facilitates the redirection of loyalty from kin to king.
Jonathan, who meets David in the wild, fills the role that Electra plays for Orestes.
Although Saul’s heir, Jonathan takes David’s side against his father. Echoing Electra’s
declaration for Orestes, he tells David that he loves him as he does his own life (1 Sam
18:1-2; 20:17). By giving David his clothing and armor (18:4) he implicitly
acknowledges the transition of loyalties from blood ties to monarchy. And he later
confirms the transference explicitly with a blessing, ―may Yhwh be with you as he has
been with my father‖ (20:13).26 After the death of Saul, the elders of Judah and Israel
affirm David as Saul’s legitimate successor (2 Sam 2:1-7; 5:11-15), much as the Argive
chorus celebrate Orestes’ return to Argos and pray that he will succeed in his mission
(Cho. 779-836).27 After David takes Jerusalem, Yhwh confirms his ascendancy through
an oracle that establishes his dynasty but accentuates his transitional status. (Yhwh
pointedly declares the David is not the one to build the temple [2 Sam 7:1-17]).
The turning point in David’s story comes, as it does for Orestes, when David sins
against the household through betrayal, deception, and murder (although the seduction of
Bathsheba and murder of Uriah are not the morally ambiguous acts that Orestes
commits). Here too, as in Orestes’ confrontation with Clytemnestra, the climax of events
takes the form of dramatic recognition. In The Choephori Orestes hides his identity in
order to murder his mother, but at the death of Aegisthus Clytemnestra recognizes that
the stranger to whom she has offered hospitality is actually her son. As he calls her to
account for her crime she suddenly realizes that he is the serpent in the nightmare that has
terrorized her (Cho. 872-914). David, for his part, attempts to conceal adultery and
murder, but in a dramatic confrontation with Nathan, he is unmasked and forced to
recognize his sin (2 Sam 11:1-12:15). 28 Prior to that event David lives under the favor

25
Saul also refers to David as a ―stripling‖ (`alem); v. 56.
26
Michal, Saul’s daughter and David’s bride, plays a similar though less dramatic role (1 Sam 18:17-29;
19:11-17).
27
The transfer of loyalties from the house of Saul to the house of David is facilitated by Abner, Saul’s
kinsman (2 Sam 3:17-19).
28
On the theme of recognition in the Oresteia see Fagles, 55-70.

10
 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

of Yhwh, much as Orestes enjoys the favor of Apollo. Yet after the deed is revealed
David experiences the fury of Yhwh. With a divine ambivalence that mirrors that
experienced by Orestes, Yhwh absolves David of sin but declares that its consequences
will be replicated throughout his household (2 Sam 12:7-14). The sword does not depart
from David’s house as Yhwh’s fury generates another cycle of reciprocal violence that
ultimately drives David once again into the wilderness.29

Athena and Solomon: Wisdom Ensconced

The Oresteia concludes with the institution of a new social and cosmological
order. Hunted relentlessly by the Furies, Orestes finally flees to the Temple of Athena on
the Acropolis, where he appeals to the goddess for deliverance and vindication. When
Athena appears Apollo defends Orestes while the Furies accuse him. The ensuing
interrogation leads to an extended debate on matters of justice, obligation, and the basic
principles that define and govern the oikos. To resolve the debate Athena creates a jury
of ten citizens, the Court of the Areopagus, to decide the issue of Orestes’ guilt. Yet
when the jury cannot render a verdict Athena decides for Orestes, thus initiating a new
cosmic and moral order. This inflames the Furies who, incensed that the ―younger gods‖
have destroyed the ancient laws and robbed them of their birthright, threaten to destroy
Athens itself (Eum.795-804, 820-832). Athena, however, personifies the wisdom and
order that sustain the polis and its institutions. She is yet another paradoxical figure, both
chthonic and Olympian, a goddess of war who sprang full-grown from the head of Zeus.
Utilizing the power of persuasion, an important concomitant of Athenian democracy, she
convinces the Furies to turn their powers toward the blessing of Athens (893-926). They
finally assent and accept Athena’s invitation to make Athens their home. Social justice
thus replaces retaliatory justice, and obligations to the polis subsume those due the oikos.

29
See Exum’s discussion of the working out of nemesis in David’s house, there expressed as Yhwh’s
relentless determination to enact judgment on the house of David for his hubris in the matter of Bathsheba
and Uriah (Tragedy, 120-149). Focusing on the issue of character, she asserts that David’s acceptance of
his suffering makes him seem small, while Saul’s struggle against Yhwh makes him a towering figure.
When seen as a function of the plot, however, and particularly when compared to the role of Orestes,
David’s actions can be seen to convey rich symbolic import. Saul is a much more conflicted figure,
expressing his role as sacrificial victim, and his struggle against God implicitly supports the sense that he
willingly suffers the consequences. David is chosen but ultimately not rejected, for he represents the new
order that will shape Israel and receive divine blessing. His passive submission to Yhwh affirms the role
the monarchy will play in the new order of things.

11
 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

A reconfiguration of the divine realm takes place as well as the chthonic Furies
accede to the Olympian Athena. The wandering, uncontrollable Furies ―take root‖ in
Athens and become the guardians of the polis. Their role and disposition reversed, they
become the Eumenides (the Kindly Ones) and speak blessings instead of threats (927-38,
949-959). With the new institution in place under divine sanction, the drama concludes
with a ritual procession that praises both the Eumenides and the newly constituted polis
and anticipates the prosperity of Athens.
The establishment of Solomon’s kingship in Jerusalem follows similar lines. As 1
Kings opens we encounter two factions in conflict. One comprises officials who hold
their office because of blood ties (Joab, Abiathar) and who back Adonijah, the heir who,
by right of birth, should be king. The second, including newcomers who have no
ostensible blood connection to David or the prior priestly order (Zadok, Benaiah, and
others), support Solomon. The accession of Solomon is accomplished by distinctly
political mechanisms, demonstrating the triumph of political concerns over those of
primogeniture. In one last burst of violence Solomon eliminates those associated with the
old system, the execution of Joab – David’s kinsmen, general, and provocateur –
receiving particular attention (1 Kgs 1:1-53; 2:25-35).30
With the vestiges of the old kin-based system removed, the narrator next presents
Solomon as the embodiment of divine wisdom. The new king prays for and receives
wisdom at Gibeon (3:1-15) and confirms his wisdom, fittingly, by resolving a seemingly
insoluble case involving the problem of determining blood relationships (3:16-28). The
story of the two prostitutes ends pointedly with the comment that ―(all Israel) revered the
king, because they recognized that divine wisdom was within him for accomplishing
justice‖ (v. 28). From this point, the text reports the prosperity the wise king brought to
Jerusalem and extols the scope of his wisdom (4:20-34). Like Athena, Solomon
establishes a mediating institution on a holy hill of the city, in this case the temple on its
mount in Jerusalem. The dedication of the temple is celebrated with pageantry, prayers,
and ritual commensurate with those that conclude The Eumenides (1 Kgs 8:1-66). And

30
In a sense Joab has been David’s Fury. He seems to be the one individual David cannot control,
prompting David to remark that he along with his brother ―are too violent for me‖ (2 Sam 3:39). Joab’s
insistence that Absalom be reinstated lays the groundwork for the suffering David will experience through
exile and the murder of his son.

12
 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

corresponding to the transformation of the Furies into the Eumenides, the mobile,
uncontrollable God of tribal Israel embraces the new city as his home, pronounces
blessing on the monarchy, and thereafter turns his powers toward blessing and protecting
Jerusalem.

Summary
Although relating vastly different stories, the biblical account of the rise of the
monarchy and the Oresteia of Aeschylus exhibit a remarkably similar narrative
infrastructure. Both tell of transformations in their respective societies, during which
fundamental loyalties are redirected from ties of blood (the oikos in Greece, the tribal
system in Israel) to obligations to social institutions (democracy, represented by trial by
jury in the Oresteia and the Davidic monarchy and Jerusalem temple in the Bible). Each
follows a tripartite scheme. In the first segment repeated references to retaliatory
violence and the disintegration of blood ties depict a society descending rapidly into
chaos. The king embodies the disintegrating social order (Agamemnon returns ―home,‖
Saul receives the acclaim of the Israelite tribes) and becomes the locus of the divine
wrath that accompanies it. The suffering and death of the king, cloaked in sacrificial
imagery, brings together opposing forces and creates a space wherein the old order dies
and a new one begins. In both cases the king’s doom is sealed by a sacrificial act that is
both necessary and freely chosen (the sacrifice of Iphigeneia and Saul’s preemptive
sacrifice before the Philistine campaign), and the king ostensibly assents to his sacrificial
role by committing an act of hubris that legitimizes his death and rejection by the
gods/God (Agamemnon by treading on the red carpet, Saul by withholding some of the
banned Amalekite plunder). The death of the king redirects divine wrath away from the
nation, signifies the end of the dissolute social order, and clears the way for the
inauguration of a new social configuration.
The second (and most extensive) segment effects a transition by focusing the
opposing forces of kin-based and civic orders in the person of the ―sons‖ (Orestes and
David). Both occupy the liminal state of adolescence, and the bulk of their story takes
place in wilderness areas, outside the boundaries of organized society. Because they
embody conflicting tensions, they are particularly ambivalent characters, and the

13
 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

narratives reveal their interior struggles and emotions to an extent not given to other
characters. Both struggle with the competing loyalties due the family and the group. In
each case, representatives of the family explicitly affirm the rise of the new order they
anticipate (Electra to Orestes, Michal and Jonathan to David) and in so doing signify the
accession of kin-based loyalties to those of civic society. Each receives the divine
blessing that will be accorded to the new order (Orestes by the Olympian Apollo, David
by Yhwh), but both also experience the suffering and retaliatory justice characteristic of
the old one. The turning point comes when both sin against the family, and the climactic
scene occurs in a dramatic unmasking and recognition, after which their situations are
reversed. The hunter becomes the hunted as Orestes is pursued by the Furies and David
is driven into the wilderness by Absalom.
The departure of these transitional characters from the story (Orestes by leaving
the stage, David by death) signals the completion of the transformation. The agents of
wisdom (Athena and Solomon) now take center stage, dispense with residual challenges,
and demonstrate the superiority of the justice they offer by resolving perplexing
dilemmas. Both establish mediating institutions on the sacred hill of the city (the Court
of the Areopagus in Athens, the temple in Jerusalem). The narratives then conclude on
the same note, with celebrations of the new institutions and intimations of their benefits
to the city.31
The correspondence between the two works demonstrates that the
Deuteronomist/s possessed a highly developed sense of metaphor. The conventional
predilection for regarding Samuel and Kings as ―historical books‖ may diminish our
appreciation for the intentional and sophisticated use of metaphor and mythic themes
within them. Our study of the works of Aeschylus and the Deuteronomist/s indicates a
deliberate and skillful use of metaphor in the presentation of received materials, calling

31
Many individual episodes in 1-2 Samuel also have counterparts in the Oresteia. A few may be
mentioned in passing. First, the invocation and appearance of Samuel to Saul, an episode unique in biblical
literature, has a counterpart in the invocation of the father’s spirit and the appearance of Clytemnestra’s
ghost in The Choephori. Second, when David is initially driven from Saul, he feigns insanity at the court
of Achish, echoing the experience of Orestes who is driven away from Argos and into madness by the
Furies. Third, Saul’s slaughter of the priests of Nob (1 Sam 22:6-19) accentuates the king’s savagery and
supports the sense that he deserves to die, functioning much like the reports of Agamemnon’s sacrilegious
destruction of the Trojan temples and slaughter of their priests (cf. Ag. 65, 1118, 1293, 1310).

14
 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

for a greater degree of appreciation for the mythic architecture of the works. 32 In
addition, the scope and specificity of the parallels between the two works suggests a high
degree of literary cross-pollination, pointing to the possible influence of Greek literature
on the composition of the biblical narrative. The parallels raise the possibility that the
putative Deuteronomist/s found in the Oresteia a model that effectively conveyed the
complex theological and social paradoxes present in received traditions concerning the
Israelite monarchy. If this was the case, the Oresteia provided the framework by which
various source materials would have been combined and edited. By extension the books
of Samuel (and more generally the Deuteronomistic History) could have been composed
no earlier than the mid-5th Century B.C.E.
The implications of this scenario, however, raise questions that lie outside the
scope of the present study.33 I have been concerned here to establish the extensive
correspondences between the two narrative works. While scholarship has typically
looked to the ancient Near East for narrative parallels, the similarities between the

32
This study confirms the corporate dimensions of the Bible’s tragic vision. Modern studies of the Bible’s
tragic vision display an emphasis on character, manifesting a perspective prominent since the Elizabethan
and Jacobean tragedians, to view tragedy in terms of individual flaws or existential struggle. When read
alongside Greek tragedy, however, the dilemmas, struggles, and suffering of the tragic characters in the
Bible can be viewed as a function of the plot. The ambivalent characterization given to Saul, his struggle
against implacable deity, and David’s rise and fall, all can be viewed against the backdrop of the survival
and transformation of Israel. While Saul becomes the quintessential tragic hero for an age imbued with
existentialism, within the context of the biblical narrative the paradoxes of his story are necessary to cast
him in the appropriate sacrificial role. On the relationship between plot and character in Greek tragedy see
Jean-Pierre Vernant, "Tensions and Ambiguities in Greek Tragedy," in Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-
Naquet, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (trans. Janet Lloyd; New York: Zone, 1988), 10-19. For a
discussion of the differences between classical tragedies and those of the Christian West, see David H. Hesla,
―Greek and Christian Tragedy: Notes Toward a Theology of Literary History‖ (Journal of the American
Academy of Religion Thematic Studies 49, no. 2 [1983]), 71-87.
33
Although the topic will be addressed in a future study, a few preliminary observations are perhaps in
order. The Oresteia was first produced in 458 B.C.E., after the Persian wars, during a period of lively trade
with peoples under the hegemony of Persia, and coincidentally in the same year traditionally ascribed to
Ezra’s mission to Jerusalem. The period of high literary activity that characterized the latter half of the 5 th
Century in Persian Yehud provides a likely setting for the kind of literary interaction that may have
contributed to the affinities between the texts. Further exploration of this line of inquiry must address at
least four questions: 1) Is the biblical narrative dependent on the Oresteia? 2) What cultural factors shaped
the respective narratives? 3) How does the question of literary dependence impact models of the
composition of the Deuteronomistic History? 4) Why was the story of Israel’s first kings rendered
according to a pattern that asserted the superiority of civic loyalties over those due to the family?

15
 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28 (2003): 73-88

Oresteia and the rise of the kingship in Israel encourage a more extensive conversation
with the literature of the Aegean world.34

34
Scholarly interest in the relationship between Israel and the Aegean world has increased significantly.
The Greek historian Herodotus has been the focus of particular attention. See, for example, J. Van Seters,
In Search of History (New Haven: Yale University, 1983); S. Mandell and D. N. Freedman, The
Relationship between Herodotus’ History and Primary History (SFSHJ 60; Atlanta: Scholars, 1993); F. A.
J. Nielsen, The Tragedy in History (JSOTSup 251; Sheffield: JSOT, 1997); N. P. Lemche, The Canaanites
and their Land (JSOTSup 110; Sheffield: JSOT, 1991), 156-173. More generally, see L. L. Grabbe, ed.,
Did Moses Speak Attic? (JSOTSup 317; Sheffield: JSOT, 2001); M. Weinfeld, ―The Promise to the
Patriarchs and Its Realization: An Analysis of Foundation Stories,‖ in Society and Economy in the Eastern
Mediterranean (c 1500-1000 BC) (ed. M. Heltzer and E. Lipinski, Louvain: Peeters, 1988), 353-369; G.
Hamel, ―Taking the Argo to Nineveh : Jonah and Jason in a Mediterranean Context,‖ Judaism 44 (1995),
341-359, as well as J. P. Brown, Israel and Hellas (3 vols.: Berlin, Walter de Gruyter), 1995-2001.

16