© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2003 Biblical Interpretation 11, 3/4Also available online – www.brill.nl

IN WORDS AND PICTURES:THE SUN IN 2 SAMUEL 12:7-12

ELLEN VAN WOLDEUniversity of Tilburg

A biblical narrative offers words and images, thus setting thescene for a world different from ours. In reading, we create amental representation of a story world, using textual complexesof meaning and letting them interact with our knowledge andexperience of the real world. Neither the biblical presentation northe reader’s representation, however, are directly related to theextra-textual worlds, only indirectly, bound as they are to culturalideas and categorisations, linguistic prototypes and time- andspace-bound mental arrangements. Until recently, these cognitivecategories were reduced to rational categories, to grammar andmeaning, to literary style and structure, to history and ideology.However, emotional categories are also present in and evoked bya text, such as anger and fear, happiness and joy, sorrow andsadness. It is difficult for us, in the twenty-first century, to gaininsight into the emotions and views as presented in the biblicaltexts. Nevertheless, we can feed our imagination not only by re-flecting on words as the single entrance to biblical thoughts andtexts but also by taking into consideration the pictures on seals,in archives or in stone, because they offer as good an access tothe cognitive world of the ancient Near East as words.

I will concentrate here on one single aspect to illustrate this,namely, on the role of the sun in 2 Sam. 12:7-12. In Yhwh’s dis-courses, embedded in Nathan’s speech to David, the sun is men-tioned twice: “He will sleep with your wives before the eyes of thissun” (v. 11) and “because you did this secretly, I will do this thingin the sight of all Israel and in the sight of the sun” (v. 12). Manyexegetes are of the opinion that the term “sun” does not signifyanything special or that it is just a nice image (cf. Fokkelman 1981:83; McCarter 1984: 306; Polzin 1993: 126-27). My question is: canwe achieve a better understanding of the meaning of the imageof the sun in 2 Sam. 12:11-12 and of the text’s cognitive and emo-tional values when we take into account textual, linguistic, andiconographic information?

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Textual Information: The Judicial Framework of 2 Sam. 12:1-15a

Reference is made to the sun by Yhwh after the episode in whichNathan makes his appearance in David’s palace and confronts theking with a parable about a rich man and a poor man and aboutthe rich man’s behaviour. Both the king’s reaction and the re-ported speeches of Yhwh show that the textual framework of 2Sam. 12:1-15a is a judicial one (cf. Simon 1967: 230).

A first building block of this framework is visible in David’s re-action to Nathan’s parable: he immediately acts as a judge, pro-nouncing a judgement on the rich man. In doing so, he appealsto Yhwh (“As Yhwh lives,” v. 5a), so that it appears that he placeshis verdict against the background of a court in which Yhwh isthe Chief Justice. Because David judges the rich man as someonewho lacks compassion, his punishment fits the man’s crime: thisman acted without pity because he did not want to take a lambfrom his own flock (v. 4a), now judge David shows no pity towardhim (v. 6b).

Yhwh’s first speech, presented by Nathan (vv. 7-10), reflects areaction to David’s verdict. After having identified the rich manas David, the prophet communicates the judgement of Yhwh andrefers to the crime as “Yhwh’s thing or business” (v. 9a), thus show-ing that David’s case has become Yhwh’s case. Inevitably, Yhwhtakes over the judging job from David: as a king, David s mainfunction is to be an impartial judge, but David is suspended fromthis function because he himself has become the accused party.

Subsequently, Yhwh pronounces his sentence in v. 11a: “I willraise up evil against you from within your own house.” This phraseevaluates in advance Yhwh’s behaviour still to be described in thefollowing clauses of v. 11. The two clauses 9a and 11a are related.Both speak of “evil”: the first time, it is the evil ( ) David hasbrought about “before my [that is Yhwh’s] eyes,” the second time,it is the evil ( ) Yhwh will bring about “before your [David’s]eyes.” Thus it is phrased (logically) as a causal consequence and(ethically) as retribution.

The execution of the sentence is described in v. 11b: an un-named male person will sleep with David’s wives. Since v. 11a refersto this future event as an evil coming “from your house,” the per-son indicated in v. 11b will be a relative of David. A remarkablething is that this relative “will sleep with your wives before the eyesof this sun.” The obvious similarity with v. 11a (“I will take yourwives before your eyes”) shows that David’s previously described

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position is replaced by the sun’s position: the perspective of “you”is taken over by the perspective of this sun and now this sun’s eyesreplace David’s eyes.

The last verse of Yhwh’s discourses, v. 12b, is a kind of finalevaluation; it does not provide information about new actions, butsummarizes in general words what was presented in specifiedterms before. Four arguments support this view.

1. Whereas v. 11 points to a specific situation in which speakerand hearer, that is Yhwh/Nathan, David and the sun, are actu-ally present, as is shown in the demonstrative “this,” which pointsto the context of the utterance, the discourse is much more gen-eral in v. 12. The particle functions as a marker of this transi-tion between these discourse levels. Whatever the reader’sgrammatical view of this particle, that is as a particle with a preva-lent causal function (“because”) or as a particle with an asseverativefunction (“indeed,” “truly”), in both cases, stresses a shift inviewpoint: “It is a discourse deictic sign of a proposition in whichthe cognitive viewpoint is switched from the character/speaker tothe propositional content of a clause itself in a self-reflexive man-ner” (Follingstad 2001: 306). This means that in v. 12 marksthe transition from a specific context-bound communicative situa-tion to a more general situation.

2. The two protagonists, David and Yhwh, are referred to herewith the explicit use of personal pronouns, “you” and “I.” WhatDavid did before and what was extensively described in vv. 9-10 issummarized here as “(what) you did,” and what Yhwh is going todo and was extensively described in v. 11 is summarized as what“I will do.”

3. The content of what Yhwh is going to do is merely referredto as “this thing” ( ), in which the demonstrative func-tions anaphorically and refers back to the previous verse, whichdescribes Yhwh’s plans concerning David’s wives. “His thing” isto take these wives away and give them to another male relative.

4. David’s behaviour is described as “what you did secretly” andis juxtaposed with “what I will do in the sight of all Israel and inthe sight of the sun.” The term “secretly” refers back to David’sactions described in detail in the previous chapters in 2 Samuel,the act of sleeping with Batsheba in his house and his efforts tokeep it secret afterwards. It is opposed to “in the sight of ‘all Is-rael’” and “in the sight of ‘the sun’.”

Therefore, v. 12 is to be considered as the concluding summaryin general terms of what was specified before, both with regard

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to the acts or crimes, and with regard to the consequences orpunishment.

In short, David, who acts as a judge before he discovers that heis the accused party, is addressed as the defendant from v. 7a on-wards (“you are that man”). He depends on the words of the“Lord Chief Justice,” whose point of view and judgement are de-cisive. Having thus analysed 2 Samuel 12, we are able to perceivethat the very last clause of the chapter before this narrative,namely, 2 Sam. 11: 27b, is a kind of summary of what will be toldin 2 Samuel 12.1 It says, . Herethe same words as in 2 Sam. 12:9-12 occur: “evil” (11:27; 12:9, 11),“the thing” (11:27; 12:6, 9, 12), “that David had done” (11:27; 12:9,12a) and “in the eyes of Yhwh” (11:27; 12:9, 11a, 11b). It is exactlythe repetition of these terms that point to the story’s main framein which Yhwh represents the all-seeing eye, the judge responsiblefor justice, who does not accept evil. This Chief Justice condemnsDavid’s behaviour, passes sentence, and twice mentions “the sun,”and even endows the sun with its own perspective. The sun is theword mentioned last in Yhwh’s second speech.

Linguistic Information: The Word “Sun”

A linguistic study of the word , “sun,” can offer some addi-tional information. The first element which draws our attention isthe gender of the noun . This term is normally masculine inthe Hebrew Bible, but sixteen times it is feminine. In 2 Sam. 12:11,the noun is feminine in gender, as the demonstrative in-dicates, but there is no clear indication for the gender of the nounin v. 12. The combination of the noun “sun” with an attribute israre in the Hebrew Bible: apart from 2 Sam. 12:11, it only occursin Mal. 3:20, where it is combined with “righteousness,” .In both cases, the gender of the noun is feminine, and thesetexts show a personified image of the sun.

Another aspect which requires a linguistic analysis is the collo-cation in which the term “sun” occurs. In 2 Samuel 12, the noun

occurs in collocation with the prepositions , “before theeyes of” (v. 11), and , “in the sight of” (v. 12). The collocation

1 This phenomenon, that a text commences with a general statement and thenproceeds to give a detailed account, occurs quite often in the Hebrew Bible (fora discussion of this phenomenon, see Van Wolde 2001).

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occurs fifty-two times in the Hebrew Bible, and always beforepersons. Only here, in 2 Sam. 12:11, the sun is linked to ,which points at the personified role of the sun in this text. A studyof the distribution of the preposition (with and without ), whichoccurs eighty-five times in the Hebrew Bible, shows that it is usedsixteen times before Yhwh, and fifty times before human beings,either as a group (twelve times) or as an individual person (thirty-eight times). It also occurs before place names nineteen times, asa spatial preposition. In the large majority of cases (sixty-six oc-currences out of a total of eighty-five, that is 78%), however, it isused before persons or before Yhwh and refers to a position inthe sight, face, or presence of a person.

A distinction can be made between , which is exclusivelylinked to an individual person, and , which is mainly linked topersons, either as groups or individuals, or to places. The term

is, therefore, used both in general and in specific situations,whereas is always a specific and person-related term. The useof the collocations in 2 Samuel 12 confirm these differences. In v.9a and v. 11a, is collocated with possessive suffixes: before“my” eyes, before “your” eyes; in v. 11, it is related to a noun witha demonstrative. The preposition , on the other hand, is placedbefore the whole of Israel and before the sun without any specifi-cation.2 In addition, v. 12b (only v. 12b, not v. 11) is contrastedwith “secretly” in v. 12a. Thus, “in the sight of all Israel” and “inthe sight of the sun” can be understood as a general descriptionthat is juxtaposed with the term “secretly” in v. 12a.

A third linguistic element is the combination of the noun withthe demonstrative: . The demonstrative , “this” or“that,” is a deictic particle, which by definition is “a feature oflanguage which refers directly to the personal, temporal, or loca-tive characteristics of the situation within which an utterance takesplace, whose meaning is thus relative to that situation” (Crystal1991: 96). It is characteristic of deixis that it receives its meaningrelative to a deictic centre in a particular context of utterance andthus “directly concerns the relationship between the structure oflanguages and the contexts in which they are used” (Levinson1983: 54). The speaker in v. 11 is Yhwh as represented by Nathan,and the person addressed is David. The locative deixis points at

2 A similar use of in a general judicial context is present in Num. 25:4.

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proximity or a close relationship to the participants’ context. Inaddition, the demonstrative suggests specificity. This extraordinarylinguistic combination must refer to the sun visibly present or tan-gibly manifest in the presence of David and Nathan in one formor another.

In short, from a linguistic point of view, the utterances in whichthe sun figures in 2 Samuel 12 differ. The first usage of the sun inv. 11 is context-bound, and the collocation with and the de-monstrative indicate that the sun referred to in v. 11 is a specific,possibly even visibly present phenomenon. The second usage ofthe term “sun” in v. 12 is much more general, as the collocationwith and the parallel position with all Israel show. Both usesof the term “sun” function in a judicial context, both are relatedto the story’s main protagonists, but the first is more specificallylinked to David and his position and the second is more gener-ally linked to the people of Israel and their position.

Iconographic Information: Ancient Near Eastern Solar Pictures andSolar Language

Iconographic studies of solar pictures offer us a view of the gen-eral horizon of ideas with regard to the sun in the ancient NearEast, which differs greatly from ours nowadays. Everywhere in theancient Near East, pictures can be found of winged sun disks, inwhich the wings on both sides of the disk refer to movement ofthe sun in the sky (cf. Mayer-Opificius 1984). They very often rep-resent deities. In the ancient and new Babylonian period, thenational god, Marduk, is called the “sun god of the gods.” When,in a god list, various deities are identified in reference to Marduk’sfunctions, the Assyrian sun god šamaš is referred to as “Mardukof justice.” In another Babylonian text, šamaš is also called“Marduk of the lawsuit” (Smith 1990: 29-39). In a long and beau-tiful Assyrian hymn, the sun god šamaš is pictured as the elevatedjudge, as guardian and helper of the afflicted, as the ultimateguarantee for justice and righteousness (Stähli 1985: 28 n. 147;Arneth 2000: 2). In another part of the Levant, in Ugarit, manytexts testify that the sun god šapaš is conceived of as the all-seeingjudge, responsible for the maintenance of righteousness. Gener-ally known, of course, is the important role of the sun and thesun deity in Egypt. In the Amarna period, Aton the sun god be-came the only god. In other periods, the Egyptian empire was

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considered in a political sense to be reigned by the god Amon,whereas the sun god Re was held responsible for the cosmic reignand, more often than not, these two deities appear in the ‘molecu-lar linked form, of one deity: Amon-Re.

In this Near Eastern setting, Judah’s and Israel’s conceptua-lisation of Yhwh took place. According to Keel (1994), the men-tal representation of Yhwh combines the features of the two mainNear Eastern deities, namely the weather, storm or war deity ofthe Levant (responsible for rain, fertility, and warfare), on the onehand, and the Egyptian sun deity (whose main responsibility wasto defend justice), on the other.3 When Yhwh, the God of Davidand his dynasty, became the resident of the temple of Jerusalem,he took over, Keel argues, not only the empty throne of the sungod as its main symbol but also the function of the sun god as theuniversal judge, the protector of righteousness ( ) and justice( and ).4

The sun in the ancient Near East not only represented deitiesbut also kings, and the view is generally accepted that the origi-nally solar characteristics of the sun deities were transferred to thekings. In the Codex Hammurabi, the king refers to himself as “thepowerful king, šamaš sun (god) of Babel”; in the Amarna letters,the Egyptian king is formally addressed by the Palestinian leadersas “the king, the sun, my Lord”; in Ugarit, šapaš is used as a titlefor the Hittite king, and, in Mari, the king is addressed with “mysun.”5 Epigraphic and iconographic material from ancient Judah

3 “Noch in der frühen Eisenzeit waren dies die beiden großen Gottheiten desVorderen Orients: der aktive, nahe, punktuell eingreifende Wetter-, Sturm- undKriegsgott Vorderasiens unter beständige, die Welt dauernd erhaltende underleuchtende, dynastische Sonnengott der Ägypter. In Jahwe sollten sich diesebeiden großen Gottheiten der altorientalischen Welt in der ersten Hälfte des 1.Jts. v. Chr. verbinden. Jahwe gewann so eine Statur, die ihn zu einer sehrbedeutenden Stellung prädestinierte” (Keel 1994: 82-83).

4 Keel’s argument is a well developed one. He argues that it is very probablethat Jerusalem was closely related to the sun god, and that Solomon’s temple maywell have had its origins in a solar temple. He also points to the fact that Davidhad two high priests, Abiathar and Zadok, and two military leaders (Joab andBenaiah), of whom Abiathar and Joab represent the people coming with David toJerusalem and Zadok and Beniah those originating from Jerusalem; the name ofthe Jerusalem high priest Zadok could possibly be related to . And Keel con-cludes: “Aber nicht nur in Personennamen, auch in narrativen Überlieferungenaus der Umgebung Jerusalems ist ursprünglich von dem mit Recht und Gerech-tigkeit engstens verbundenen Sonnengott die Rede gewesen” (Keel 1994: 87-88).

5 Stähli 1985: 27 n. 143; p. 28 n. 146; Smith 1990: 35.

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Figs. 1 and 2

Fig. 3

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express the same notions.6 More than twelve hundred royal jarswere found (all to be dated in Hezekiah’s reign in the eighth cen-tury bce), which had, on their handles, stamp seal impressions withthe inscription , “for the king” and with a two-winged sun em-blem or with a four-winged scarab, and both scarab and wingedsun disk are conceived of as royal solar symbols (Keel 1995). Sealshave also been found of the minister of the Judean king Uziah(779-738 bce), and of the minister of the Judean king Ahaz (736-721 bce), and from the time of Hezekiah (721-693 bce), present-ing winged sun disks as royal symbols (Keel 1994: 88): See figures1-3.

Well-known, too, are the texts in the Hebrew Bible which usesolar language in relationship to kings.7 Thus, it appears that, inthe Hebrew Bible, the sun’s cosmic, cultic and judicial functionwas delegated by Yhwh to the king: the king was not seen as theone who constitutes the cosmic order, but as the governor whoshould uphold and maintain this order(cf. Schmid 1968: 85).

Against this background, we can understand 2 Sam. 12:11-12, inwhich the collocations and are used ina judicial context. Yhwh discusses the criminal case in which Davidis the accused and concludes that his punishment will be executedbefore the forum of the sun. Having the meanings describedabove, this sun can be understood to represent the incorruptiblejudge, whose rays from zenith to horizon penetrate and discoverinjustice done to victims. This reference to the sun is made byYhwh addressing David at the moment he thought he had escapedfrom his murder of Uriah, and after he discovered that hisbehaviour is parallelled to that of the rich man in the parable. Inthis context, Yhwh’s use of the term “sun” cannot but fill the ac-cused person with fear. Nevertheless, a distinction should be madebetween v. 11 and v. 12. In the first verse, the sun is collocatedwith a demonstrative, which suggests a physical presence of the sunin some form or another in David’s palace. In the second verse,the term “sun” is placed in a parallel position to the whole of Is-rael; it has a more general meaning, such as “openly” or “pub-licly,” and appears to refer to the sun as all-seeing judge. In orderto demonstrate the plausibility of the sun’s distinct meaning in v.11, I will now concentrate on specific sun emblems.

6 ANEP 809; Welten 1969: 171; Stähli 1985: 11; Keel, Uehliger 1992: 314ff,449; Taylor 1993: 42-57; Keel 1995: 121.

7 E.g., Ex. 24:10; Judg. 14:20. 22; 1 Sam. 1:22; 2 Sam. 3–4; Pss. 11:7; 17:15;27:4, 13; 42:3; 63:3; 72:5, 17; 84:12; 89:37, and Isa. 6:1.

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Pictures of Ancient Near Eastern Thrones

There are quite a number of pictures of thrones in close rela-tionship with the sun, which I will discuss in chronological order.Figs. 4 and 5 present pictures of an Egyptian throne from the four-teenth century bce.8

This is Tut-ankh-Amon’s golden secular throne, the back ofwhich shows the king sitting on his throne, a woman standingbefore him and a shaft of rays spreading from the sun betweenthe king and the woman; behind the woman is a piece of furni-ture (a table, an altar, or pedestal) with a sun emblem placed

8 In full colour published in Riesterer (1965), plates 3 and 4. For the repro-duction of this photograph permission has been granted by the publisher,Kümmerly & Frey in Bern.

Fig. 4

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vertically on it. Thus the royal throne contains a picture in goldof a royal throne, which in its turn may contain another pictureof a throne with a king and a sun, etc., presenting a virtual mise-en-abyme with a repeatedly returning pattern of the image of thesitting king illuminated by the sun. The middle of the upper friezeof Tut-ankh-Amon’s sacerdotal throne also shows a sun disk abovethe king’s cartouches, and still other royal thrones contain simi-lar sun emblems (Metzger 1985: Pls. 250, 263; Riesterer 1965: Pls.17, 18). It can be concluded that, at least in Egypt at the time ofTut-ankh-Amon, the throne of this king contained pictures of thesun or of the sun disk. Because Amon-Re was held responsible for

Fig. 5

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the cosmic order (maat) and the king was considered to be therepresentative of the sun, his responsibility as a judge was to guar-antee the sun-protected order, which is represented by the solaremblem on his throne.

From elsewhere in the ancient Near East, images of kings andgods sitting on thrones are found, but usually they are painted orcarved in profile, so it is impossible to see whether the (backs ofthe) thrones have carvings or pictures. In a middle-Assyrian sealfrom the thirteenth century bce, however, a combination of a sunthrone and a king’s throne can be detected (Keel 1994: 87). Aclearer picture shows the stela found in Ugarit from the sameperiod, described by Wyatt (1983): See figure 6.

On this stela, on the right-hand side, the god El is seated on alion-legged throne. The person pictured on the left appears to beperforming some ritual act before the seated deity. The cap andact of worship lead to the conclusion that the king of Ugarit ispresented here. This king is holding a jug in his left hand, pre-sumably with a view to pouring a libation before the god, or evenfilling what looks like the cup the god proffers him. In his righthand, he holds a staff of some kind in the form of a sceptre, symbolof power and authority. And in the middle, we have the wingedsun disk, symbol of royalty and the Ugaritic emblem of šapaš , thesun god (or goddess). Wyatt (1983: 277) interprets this sun diskas an “expression of cosmic stability” that hovers over the sceneof many monuments in Ugarit and protects the kingdom of Ugarit.

On a ninth-century tablet from Mesopotamia, a similar scene canbe detected (Keel 1972: 153, Pl. 239): See figure 7. King Nabuapal-iddin (figure on the left), preceded by a priest who is led by aprotector deity, enters the solar temple of Sippar. On a table-likepiece of furniture, a large emblem of the sun god is presented. Itforms the centre of the scene and focuses the attention of theperceiver. The right-hand side of this scene takes place “in heaven”(behind the god on his throne are, from left to right, the symbolsof the sun, moon, and Venus); the left-hand side takes place “onearth,” and the waters underneath both can be discerned. On thetable-like piece of furniture in the middle of the scene stands anemblem of the sun, the representation of the sun deity on earth.The king approaches this table or altar, guided by the priest andhis protector, who hold hands on this piece of solar furniture.Apparently, the sun god lowers with ropes from heaven the tableor altar with the sun’s emblem. In this picture, all elements are

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Fig. 6

Fig. 7

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visible at the same time: the sun is represented on earth in amaterialised form and is presented as an intermediary betweenthe earthly and heavenly realm, with the king on the left and thedeity on the right.

In Israel, we can detect a similar image on one of the famousMegiddo ivories (Avi-Yonah, Stern 1977: 838): See figures 8-9. Thispicture is carved on an ivory handle and shows the king seatedon a throne which looks very much like Egyptian thrones. Beforehim, a victory procession is depicted: gifts and captives are pre-sented before him who sits and receives it all, and above them asun disk is visible. The ivories from Megiddo originate, accordingto the Chicago excavation team, from a Late Bronze Age Palace,but recently Finkelstein has argued that levels previously datedearlier in fact belong to the ninth century bce (Finkelstein 1996).Although the dating discussion still goes on, it is clear that, in Is-rael, as in other places in the ancient Near East, kings were imag-ined and pictured as sitting on a throne with a sun nearby.

These iconographic data lead to the following conclusions: (1)In the ancient Near East, deities and kings are often depicted assitting on thrones, and a sun disk is often visible in proximity tothese thrones. (2) The backs of Tut-ankh-Amon thrones containpaintings of the sun or of a winged sun disk. (3) In the Megiddoivory handle, a king is depicted seated on a throne which is verysimilar to Tut-ankh-Amon’s throne. (4) In general, in the ancientNear East and in Israel and Judah, the sun is conceived of as theall-seeing judge before whose eyes nothing is hidden. (5) In an-cient Israel and Judah, Yhwh is described as a judge. (6) Solarlanguage is, in this context, used for Yhwh, and his empty thronein the temple could (originally) be related to the sun deity’s throneand his function as a judge. Jars, jugs, and coins of ancient Judahcontain carvings or pictures of the winged sun disk with the in-scription “for the king,” so that the relationship between the mon-arch and the sun is, at least in the eighth century bce, a fact. (7)Because of the lack of sufficient material evidence, it cannot beproved that, in ancient Israel, the royal throne contained a pic-ture of the sun. However, it appears to be credible or even plau-sible to raise such a hypothesis.

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Fig.

8

Fig.

9

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Conclusion: Meaning and Emotion

The iconographic studies of the solar pictures offer us a pan-oramic view of the setting in which 2 Sam. 12:11-12 can be betterunderstood. Against this background, v. 11 and v. 12 focus onspecific aspects, thus evoking various meanings and emotions.

The textual study of 2 Sam. 12:11-12 demonstrated that Yhwhpasses sentence on David. He tells him that he will take his dear-est possession, namely his wives, before his very eyes and that hewill give them to a member of David’s family. This verdict hitsDavid in his face, and he is strongly emotionally involved. How-ever, David will not be present when this happens: “he will sleepwith your wives before the eyes of this sun.” Of course, the em-phasis is on “sleeping with your wives,” but the deictic particlerelates this horrific event to the deictic centre in this speech:David. Not only the sun’s physical presence, but also the presenceof David’s body is presupposed. Thus, the verdict reflects a prop-rioceptive viewpoint: it only functions through the body of thesubject of perception, that is, David.

The concept of proprioceptivity is derived from Jacques Fonta-nille (1998). In his view, a narrative text offers not only a neutraldescription but also shows how characters are engaged in what isdepicted: they maintain more or less distanced relationships andthese dynamic relations are the buildings blocks of the text as anemotionally charged space. The extent of the character’s involve-ment in this charged space and the way his or her body is engagedcan differ: when the character is the centre of reference in a deicticrelation, the body is directly involved in the perceptions andemotions. If this is the case, the textual positions are called “prop-rioceptive”: the physical presence of the character’s own body(within the textual world) is the operator between the logical andthe affective, between the concepts and the passions in the text,and functions as the indispensable intermediary between the storyworld (in the text) and the discourse world (in the communica-tion between the text and the reader). An exteroceptive position,on the other hand, is detached from a physically present body.The text provides information from an outsider’s position, and thecharacter’s own body is not involved. Thus, the concepts of“proprioceptivity” and “exteroceptivity” reflect the extent to whichthe character’s body is involved.

The linguistic study indicated how proprioceptivity is semanti-cally expressed in 2 Sam. 12:11, namely by (1) the deictic sign

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“this” in “this sun,” (2) the collocation of “this sun” with the prepo-sitional phrase “before the eyes of” ( ) which usually occursonly before persons, and (3) the placement of “before the eyes ofthis sun” parallel to the previous “before your eyes” (same nounand preposition but with a possessive suffix), which shows that thematerialised “sun” represents David and that he is physically en-gaged. Every word in Yhwh’s speech underlines the severe judge-ment, but the proprioceptivity makes it tangible: it is the visibleskin of the text.

The iconographic study showed to what kind of material object“this” sun could refer. The demonstrative indicates specificity anddenotes a sun visibly manifest in the presence of David in oneform or another. It can be the royal throne on which David issitting at that moment, with a sun painted on it, in a way similarto Tut-ank-Amon’s throne. It might refer to another piece of fur-niture with a sun emblem above it (a table, a pedestal). It cannotrefer, however, to Yhwh’s empty throne in the temple, which(from the narrative’s point of view) still has to be built by David’sson Solomon. The reference to a royal throne appears to be themost attractive possibility, representing the king’s and the deity’sresponsibility for righteousness and justice, but we cannot be surethat it refers to an actual seat. However, what we can be sure of isthat the function of the expression “this sun” in v. 11 is based onthe assumed relationship between David and the object. In otherwords, the collocation refers, in the story world of 2 Sam. 12:11,to a tangible object, and functions in the discourse world as ametonym, as a language sign that receives its meaning by the con-tiguity of the subjects. To understand the emotional contents ofthis contiguity, knowledge of the material culture and its culturalrepresentations are indispensable.

To summarize, “this sun” in v. 11 is not just a nice image, nora metaphor or another term for “publicly,” nor just a way of speak-ing, but functions as a metonym which activates the contiguitybetween the character David and a material object, possibly thesun emblem on the royal throne, in a way that makes it possiblefor the contemporary reader to understand and even experienceit as a meaningful language sign charged with strong emotionalfeelings. It is before the vigilant eye of this all-seeing judge, therepresentative of the king, that Yhwh’s verdict will be executed.David is shattered, as is shown by his immediate reaction, “I standguilty before Yhwh” (12:13). No more long statements as in v. 5

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and v. 6, but in two words he admits his guilt and acknowledgeshis sin. Now he has to face the consequences.

The term “sun” is twice used in 2 Sam. 12:11-12, but what a dif-ference in meaning and emotion! In v. 12, the sun figures in amore general context and is neutrally described from an extero-ceptive position, without any involvement of an observer; the wordrefers to the sun as the righteous judge for whom nothing remainshidden. The particle at the beginning of v. 12 marks the shiftin viewpoint from the proprioceptive to the exteroceptive positionin the text. Verse 11 presupposes a proprioceptive position inwhich the sun acts as an intermediary between concepts and pas-sions. The reader, then, does not only learn about David’s wordsand actions and about the sun’s and Yhwh’s judicial and religiouspower, but, as soon as the emotional curtain of the text opens,also experiences the sparks of thrill and fear in this text.

Abstract

A cognitive web with different layers of emotion spreads over the text of 2Samuel 12, in which the sun plays an important role. The unique linguistic com-binations in vv. 11-12 show the sun’s personified role. Iconographic study clari-fies the sun as an image loaded with strong emotional feelings. Thus, it becomesunderstandable why the sun could function for the contemporaneous reader as ametonym which activates the contiguity between the character of David and amaterial object, possibly the sun emblem on the royal throne. It is before thevigilant eye of this sun, as the all-seeing judge, that Yhwh’s verdict will be ex-ecuted. Every reader since, all those who know of the sun’s cultural and religiouspower as well as of Yhwh’s, all those who read in the textual context about de-sire, lust and murder and about the king’s devotion to the royal throne, can ex-perience the sparks of thrill and fear in this text.

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