62 pages • 2 hours read
Geraldine BrooksThe Secret Chord
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 12-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary
David learns that Batsheva is pregnant. Since her husband, Uriah, has been away at war, there is no doubt that the child belongs to the king. When Batsheva begins to show, everyone will know of their shameful behavior. Natan tries to help David conceal this infidelity. He advises that Uriah be called back to meet with the king. If Uriah takes the opportunity to sleep with his beautiful wife (even though doing so violates the religious custom for men on active duty), then the child can be passed off as his. Uriah, however, proves too honorable and chooses to stay at the army barracks. David sends him back to the army with secret written orders.
Several days later, an army messenger comes to the king to report a bungled sortie in which Uriah has been killed. Natan suddenly has a vision of the orders and realizes that David has written Yoav to arrange Uriah’s death in battle. Natan sees with new clarity that David is no longer doing what can be justified as necessary for the kingdom; instead, he is simply taking what he wants and treating even his most loyal followers as disposable. It is “simple abuse of power” (192).
Natan wanders into the desert in a daze, doubting all his past actions and his service both to king and God—wondering the point of his actions if this is the kind of ruler that all his work has helped create and what kind of God would have this ruler as part of his plan. After months of suffering and reliving past horrors, Natan finds clarity. He sees the future. He now understands the messy path that will both fulfill the glorious hopes of past prophecies and at the same time render justice for the evil David has done. He returns to his flawed king both to challenge him and to help his kingdom endure.
Chapter 13 Summary
On Natan’s return from the desert, he finds David joyful. He has once more gone out with the army to victory. He has created plans for a grand temple in Jerusalem. He has married the pregnant Batsheva, whose beauty captivates David like no other. He reiterates the comment he made when he first took Batsheva, that her beauty “makes me feel like man” (197) and contrasts it with his earlier partnership with Avigail that he now says made him feel like a boy. David is still unconsciously glorying in unchecked power.
Natan replies by saying he has a court case for David to hear. A poor man has a single little lamb that he cares for in his own home—something that David says he remembers doing in his own poor youth. A rich man with flocks of sheep seizes the poor man’s single ewe to slaughter for a visiting guest. David, moved to anger by the injustice, vows that the rich man will pay four times over for his crime and demands the man’s name. Natan replies, “The man is you” (198). The “court case” is an allegory for David’s own crime.
Natan sweeps the model of David’s proposed temple to the ground and for the first time proclaims God’s prophetic word while being conscious of it. He tells David that his bloodstained hands cannot build the temple and the sword will afflict his house (meaning his family) for the rest of his life. It will begin with the death of the baby he conceived in adultery with Batsheva.
Instead of punishing the unwelcome messenger in anger, David falls to his knees in repentance. Even though David has performed many false acts of contrition in the past, Natan believes in this one. David proclaims his sin publicly. More revealing of his soul, he writes a song of contrition, “one of the finest he ever composed” (200). Natan knows David will still need to pay for what he has done, but he acknowledges the positive changes in David’s character: “He became a better man in the small matters of his days, an even better, wiser king in the greater matters of state” (200).
Chapter 14 Summary
Natan meets Batsheva for the first time and is shocked by her youth and beauty. Despite her tall figure, she has the “face of a child” (201). This is Natan’s (and the reader’s) first opportunity to confront her as a person and wonder what her story is. She is naturally concerned for her baby. Natan sadly tells her that there is no escape: The child will die. David engages in penance, begging God for deliverance, but to no avail.
Natan, knowing the future sorrow lurking in the palace, asks for a house just outside Jerusalem. As he physically distances himself from the king, he is surprised by a new vision, this one of a beautiful, thoughtful boy. This future child is, “The promise. The reason” (204). Natan will be given this child to teach, and the child will grow into a king so wise that Natan can finally rest and entrust God’s people to him. Though not yet named, this is the King Shlomo—the king held up in the Prologue as the one whose achievements can make the violence of past years worthwhile.
Chapters 12-14 Analysis
The climax of David’s story occurs here, though it also becomes clear that this book’s narrative is bigger than just David’s story. One might expect that becoming king and securing peace for Israel would be the climactic moment of David’s career, but Brooks has warned us since the Prologue that this is a story of who he is, not what he does. In Chapter 11, she passes over 10 years of wars in a single page. David’s rupture with Mikhal and his petty murder of her nephews overshadows his triumph with the Ark. Chapter 11 ends by explicitly telling the reader that the true “turning point in David’s life” (185) comes in his dealings with Batsheva and Uriah. Chapters 12 and 13 then fulfill that promise. David’s capacity for ruthless violence, his willingness to manipulate others, his callous use of women, and his pride have existed in tension with his desire to protect his people and to be the just king that God wants. In Chapter 12, David reaches his moral nadir. In Chapter 13, he returns to God.
Up to this point, David could always turn to Necessity as a Justification for Violence. Everything he did, he could at least plausibly claim, was necessary for his followers’ protection and to become the ideal king God wants him to be. Now, that is no longer the case. He rapes Batsheva for reasons that are purely personal: to prove to himself he is still a “real man.” He sends his loyal follower Uriah to his death rather than suffer the embarrassment of his crime being known. Yet, in keeping with Brooks’s theme of The Hidden Complexity of Character, David also genuinely repents. It is too late for him to avoid punishment for his flaws, but he can move forward and accept his fate, trusting in God’s promise that a child will continue his line and his kingdom forever.
For the rest of the book, David is mainly passive or reactive. His story has reached its climax and descends to its inevitable resolution. However, the novel itself has not yet reached its climax. The novel becomes the story of the kingdom, not just of David. As such, it will find its climax in the ascension of a new king who can fulfill the hopes of the people. Chapter 14 reveals the approach of that king: the boy in Natan’s vision, who will be later revealed as King Shlomo. Once again, Brooks explicitly tells the reader that this boy is “the reason” for Natan’s story.
As the narrative focus shifts from David to the community, Natan’s personal story reaches a turning point. When he sees David feign grief at Uriah’s death, he suddenly realizes just how often he has seen this before, sarcastically remarking, “I had seen him tear his garment so many times it was a sudden wonder to me that he had an intact tunic to lay upon his back” (191). Natan is the one who had just counseled David in the previous chapter to simulate grieving for Merav’s sons; now he is filled with self-disgust at the actions he has aided. He even questions what kind of “black-hearted deity” (193) had raised up such a king. The irony is that, like David, Natan is not yet ready to take responsibility for his own complicity in David’s crimes and instead focuses his anger on the king and God.
Natan resolves his inner conflict in the desert. Wrestling privately with his own conscience, Natan reveals another side of The Hidden Complexity of Character. Up to this point, he has played a mostly passive role, doing what David or God commands. Now he will actively work for a better future. He no longer idolizes the king but has come to realize that the very fact of the king’s flaws means that David needs Natan. For the sake of serving the kingdom (instead of blindly following a single man), Natan chooses to stay as David’s advisor. The contrast with Shmeul, the prophet who abandoned his king, implies that Natan truly does have a choice here in how he puts his prophetic vision into practice. The fictional court with which Natan forces David to confront his wrongdoing comes from his own creativity, not from God. When Natan does speak God’s word, for the first time he is a conscious participant in it. It is Natan’s own personal growth in taking responsibility for his life that allows David to take responsibility for his own actions and repent. It also prepares Natan to take on the loving responsibility of raising a child.
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By Geraldine Brooks
