Lawful Neutral
Jan. 18th, 2026 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseA friend from church and I do a semi-regular Bible study on a Saturday evening via Zoom; this varies from fortnightly to monthly, depending on people's availability, so it's quite a low-key thing. This particular friend is fascinated by the life of King David and wanted someone to study it with, so it started out being her and another older lady in the church (there aren't many people over 50, let alone over 60), then I joined them, then the other lady had to drop out; and at the moment we have someone else interested so there are supposed to be three of us, but the third person has been struggling to make it, so in practice it seems to be just two.
Anyway, so we've been working through 1 and 2 Samuel, generally two chapters at a time. I have always enjoyed these particular books of the Bible because, even apart from theological considerations, they are just so well written. This is a writer from thousands of years ago who absolutely knew how to construct a gripping narrative, handle characterisation, and make his story flow (I'm going to say "his" because I suspect a woman writing it would have dealt with some of the recorded incidents rather differently) with a commendable economy of words. Let's face it, at the time, you couldn't just produce a huge word processor file (or set of files), or even use any number of sheets of paper. It'd be "here's your scroll, it's this big, fit the story into it to the best of your ability". The modern novel was not invented until very much later, but the writer of the books of Samuel would have had no trouble at all in writing one.
And so David, and the other characters who surround him, are very human and very relatable. It's not like the Egyptian inscriptions where you can read that such a pharaoh built this, conquered that, founded the other, but you have no idea what sort of person he was. David, however, is someone you know pretty well by the time you've finished reading the books of Samuel. He's a fair-minded man; he trusts God even when things seem impossible; he's capable of failing spectacularly, but when he does, he truly repents rather than trying to justify himself; he's a much better king than he is a father; and so on.
And then there's Joab son of Zeruiah. Now there's a character for you.
Joab is David's nephew, which is why, very unusually for an Old Testament character, he and his brothers have a matronymic rather than a patronymic. Zeruiah was David's sister, and that was more important than whoever her husband was (for once we never find that out, which is a tiny little bit of counterbalance to all the times someone's wife is mentioned in the Old Testament and you think "but what was her name?"). Joab is also David's number one general, and this isn't mere nepotism; he's earned it. He's a very clever man, a first-class strategic thinker, and a brave soldier, plus he is 100% loyal to David (even if that loyalty shows itself in some less than wonderful ways from time to time).
There's just one very big problem with Joab. He has, basically, no morals.
This is usually all right as long as he is directly doing what David (who does have morals, even if he occasionally fails to live up to them) has told him to do. However, Joab is probably brighter than his uncle, and he's certainly a great deal shrewder in worldly terms. He knows this very well. Therefore, he's quite prepared to go behind David's back and do something David wouldn't dream of doing, if he calculates that that will benefit David. So, for instance, fairly early in the story, not long after Saul and most of his sons have been killed in battle, the Israelites crown his remaining heir, whose name is Mephibosheth (actually it's Mephi-Baal, but that's another side track), and who is still alive because he's lame in both feet and therefore can't fight. Mephibosheth has inherited his father's top general, a man called Abner, who is also very good at what he does; but Mephibosheth manages to antagonise Abner, so Abner says "right, you don't trust me, so I can't work for you", and promptly defects to David. David welcomes him, rightly perceiving his value; but Joab isn't having this. There are probably several factors at play here. Abner killed Joab's brother Asahel (in battle, and very reluctantly), and revenge for that is the motivation given in the account; but I suspect Joab was also afraid that David might put Abner in charge of the army in his place, and also (as he himself says to David) he isn't inclined to trust a defector. Anyway, Joab murders Abner behind David's back, leaving David in a highly embarrassing situation - people are going to think he ordered Joab to do it, so he has to make it very clear that it was nothing to do with him and very much not what he wanted to happen.
An even clearer example of Joab bulldozing straight over David because he thinks David isn't acting in his own best interests comes later on, when David's son Absalom rebels and sets himself up as king. (One can easily argue that this was David's own fault, as he had never disciplined Absalom properly.) Obviously a pretender to the throne has to be dealt with in some way, and Joab didn't hesitate to deal with Absalom in an extremely final way, causing David to go into mourning (this was, after all, his beloved son, even if he had committed treason). At which point Joab tears a strip off David, and tells him he's going to lose the backing of the people if he carries on like this. There was a threat to his throne, that threat has been removed, so he ought to be glad, or at least act like it. Joab isn't in the least concerned about David's love for his son. He's interested in making sure he stays king, after all the trouble it took to get him on the throne in the first place.
I could go on; but it strikes me that Joab son of Zeruiah is, basically, Lawful Neutral. He has one "law", which is "be loyal to David at all costs, even if he himself gets in the way of that", and he obeys it come hell or high water, with no regard at all for any ethical considerations. It's what makes him a fascinating, if pretty dislikeable, character. I think he's more of a kind of antihero than an actual villain, while David, for all his flaws, is the actual hero.
Shortly after David's death, Joab meets an untimely end. It seems remarkably fitting, in the circumstances.
Anyway, so we've been working through 1 and 2 Samuel, generally two chapters at a time. I have always enjoyed these particular books of the Bible because, even apart from theological considerations, they are just so well written. This is a writer from thousands of years ago who absolutely knew how to construct a gripping narrative, handle characterisation, and make his story flow (I'm going to say "his" because I suspect a woman writing it would have dealt with some of the recorded incidents rather differently) with a commendable economy of words. Let's face it, at the time, you couldn't just produce a huge word processor file (or set of files), or even use any number of sheets of paper. It'd be "here's your scroll, it's this big, fit the story into it to the best of your ability". The modern novel was not invented until very much later, but the writer of the books of Samuel would have had no trouble at all in writing one.
And so David, and the other characters who surround him, are very human and very relatable. It's not like the Egyptian inscriptions where you can read that such a pharaoh built this, conquered that, founded the other, but you have no idea what sort of person he was. David, however, is someone you know pretty well by the time you've finished reading the books of Samuel. He's a fair-minded man; he trusts God even when things seem impossible; he's capable of failing spectacularly, but when he does, he truly repents rather than trying to justify himself; he's a much better king than he is a father; and so on.
And then there's Joab son of Zeruiah. Now there's a character for you.
Joab is David's nephew, which is why, very unusually for an Old Testament character, he and his brothers have a matronymic rather than a patronymic. Zeruiah was David's sister, and that was more important than whoever her husband was (for once we never find that out, which is a tiny little bit of counterbalance to all the times someone's wife is mentioned in the Old Testament and you think "but what was her name?"). Joab is also David's number one general, and this isn't mere nepotism; he's earned it. He's a very clever man, a first-class strategic thinker, and a brave soldier, plus he is 100% loyal to David (even if that loyalty shows itself in some less than wonderful ways from time to time).
There's just one very big problem with Joab. He has, basically, no morals.
This is usually all right as long as he is directly doing what David (who does have morals, even if he occasionally fails to live up to them) has told him to do. However, Joab is probably brighter than his uncle, and he's certainly a great deal shrewder in worldly terms. He knows this very well. Therefore, he's quite prepared to go behind David's back and do something David wouldn't dream of doing, if he calculates that that will benefit David. So, for instance, fairly early in the story, not long after Saul and most of his sons have been killed in battle, the Israelites crown his remaining heir, whose name is Mephibosheth (actually it's Mephi-Baal, but that's another side track), and who is still alive because he's lame in both feet and therefore can't fight. Mephibosheth has inherited his father's top general, a man called Abner, who is also very good at what he does; but Mephibosheth manages to antagonise Abner, so Abner says "right, you don't trust me, so I can't work for you", and promptly defects to David. David welcomes him, rightly perceiving his value; but Joab isn't having this. There are probably several factors at play here. Abner killed Joab's brother Asahel (in battle, and very reluctantly), and revenge for that is the motivation given in the account; but I suspect Joab was also afraid that David might put Abner in charge of the army in his place, and also (as he himself says to David) he isn't inclined to trust a defector. Anyway, Joab murders Abner behind David's back, leaving David in a highly embarrassing situation - people are going to think he ordered Joab to do it, so he has to make it very clear that it was nothing to do with him and very much not what he wanted to happen.
An even clearer example of Joab bulldozing straight over David because he thinks David isn't acting in his own best interests comes later on, when David's son Absalom rebels and sets himself up as king. (One can easily argue that this was David's own fault, as he had never disciplined Absalom properly.) Obviously a pretender to the throne has to be dealt with in some way, and Joab didn't hesitate to deal with Absalom in an extremely final way, causing David to go into mourning (this was, after all, his beloved son, even if he had committed treason). At which point Joab tears a strip off David, and tells him he's going to lose the backing of the people if he carries on like this. There was a threat to his throne, that threat has been removed, so he ought to be glad, or at least act like it. Joab isn't in the least concerned about David's love for his son. He's interested in making sure he stays king, after all the trouble it took to get him on the throne in the first place.
I could go on; but it strikes me that Joab son of Zeruiah is, basically, Lawful Neutral. He has one "law", which is "be loyal to David at all costs, even if he himself gets in the way of that", and he obeys it come hell or high water, with no regard at all for any ethical considerations. It's what makes him a fascinating, if pretty dislikeable, character. I think he's more of a kind of antihero than an actual villain, while David, for all his flaws, is the actual hero.
Shortly after David's death, Joab meets an untimely end. It seems remarkably fitting, in the circumstances.
