Jonathan and David: When elections turn friends into enemies

Because Rosh Chodesh falls on Sunday, this week we set aside the regular haftarah for Parashat Bereishit and read Machar Chodesh (I Samuel 20:18-42), the extraordinary story of David and Jonathan.

At first glance, it is a story about friendship. But it is really about what friendship demands when loyalty comes at a price.

King Saul has become convinced that David is a threat, and intends to kill him. David turns to Jonathan, Saul’s son, and asks him to discover whether the danger is real.

Jonathan agrees.

Jonathan is not simply helping a friend escape an angry king. He is helping the man who may one day take his own place on the throne.

Saul himself makes that painfully clear. When Jonathan defends David, his father explodes at him: “For as long as the son of Jesse lives upon the earth, neither you nor your kingdom shall be established” (I Samuel 20:31).

Saul is telling his son, in effect: You are protecting the man who stands between you and the crown.

Jonathan knows that his father may be right. And yet he protects David anyway.

The two devise a secret signal. Jonathan will shoot arrows near David’s hiding place. If he tells the boy accompanying him that the arrows are on this side of him, David will know it is safe to return. But if Jonathan says that the arrows are beyond the boy, David will know that Saul intends to kill him and that he must flee.

When Jonathan gives the second signal, David understands that he is in danger.

That is a difficult lesson in any election season

JONATHAN KNEW perfectly well what was at stake. He simply refused to let it determine how he saw David. He would not reduce his friend to what David’s rise might cost him.

That is a difficult lesson in any election season, and perhaps especially in Israel today. 

As the Jewish state prepares to go to the polls on October 27, political divisions are sharpening, and arguments over the country’s leadership and future are becoming increasingly intense.

There is nothing wrong with disagreement. Jews have never had a shortage of it. The danger begins when disagreement changes the way we see the person on the other side.

David was far more than Jonathan’s political opponent

Someone who votes differently is no longer simply wrong but suspect; his motives and character open to question.

David, of course, was far more than Jonathan’s political opponent. If Saul was correct, David’s success meant the end of Jonathan’s own hopes for the throne. Yet when the moment of decision came, Jonathan chose loyalty over self-interest.

The haftarah makes that choice explicit in its closing scene. After Jonathan warns David to flee, the two men do not part as rivals for the throne. They reaffirm the covenant between them.

“Go in peace,” Jonathan tells him, “since we have both sworn in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘May the Lord be between me and you, and between my descendants and your descendants, forever’” (I Samuel 20:42).

Jonathan does not know what the future will bring. He does not know when, or even whether, he will meet David again. But he knows that their covenant must survive whatever happens next.

The kingdom would change hands. Saul would fall, and David would rise. But Jonathan had already made his choice: the struggle for the crown would not decide whom he called a friend.

In the weeks ahead, Israelis will argue fiercely about the election and the country’s future. Jews elsewhere will have their own arguments – about Israel, politics, and the direction of the Jewish community.

Those disagreements matter. But they need not determine how we see one another.

If Jonathan could refuse to let politics turn a friend into an enemy, surely we can do the same. 