House of David (2026) s2e02

This post is part of a series looking at Amazon Prime's show House of David (2025). There are some major spoilers in in what follows even though most are 2500 years old.

I'm going to work with a different format this series, and generally go into a little less detail than I did with series 1 – I'm trying to be more effective in my use of time. Let's see how that goes...

Plot

Opening flash forward of a confrontation between Saul and David, before the action goes back to the procession celebrating their victory over the Philistines (a year earlier). Eshbaal is welcomed home. Avner confronts Samuel in his cell. Jonathan is "self-medicating" his battle wound before heads to the hills to recover. Daganor and Achish (remaining Philistine kings) arguing about whether they lost because they used bronze not iron. David returns home but when his new army sub-orderlies arrive Eliab refuses to submit to David and fights him. Sara removes Jonathan's arrowhead. Queen Ahinoam appeals to Samuel asking him to endorse Saul again. Merab meets with Saul and expresses her disappointment she is no longer lined up to marry. Doeg sent to torture Samuel but the prophet reveals intimate details about Doeg's past. Ahinoam suggest Saul to make David earn his preferred bride. Avner shows Saul a cowering prophet and explains that Samuel is liberated. David leaves for Jerusalem. Merib suggests a plan to Saul. Avner smuggles Goliath's sword to safety in Nob. Eshbaal brings Jonathan home (leaving Sara behind). David's return is blighted by the new that he is to marry Mirab's not Mychaal.

In contrast to the opening episode of this season, which was essentially just one long battle scene, this episode contains much, much more plot. It's a typical format for a show entering its second season to layout all the initial threads that the series will draw out and knit together as we go. And of course, those who are familiar enough with the texts can see where most of these stories are going. 

Relationships

David's relationships with Saul (the aggressor), Jonathan (the best friend) and Mychaal (the lover) are all picked up again. It's particularly interesting to see that the series looks to be delving into David's turbulent relationship with Mychaal. She isn't very well developed in the texts, but the few verses that are there in the text about Mychaal give plenty for screenwriters to work around. And the roles of Merab and Saul's queen, Ahinoam are also being developed nicely, though we know even less about them from the texts.

The Celebration

Processions are, I suppose, one of the regular markers in epic films, particularly Roman-Christian epics where the plot tends to involve the birth of Christianity coming out in opposition to Rome. The height of the Roman-Christian film was in the 1950s (Quo Vadis, The Robe, Ben-Hur and several others beside). Indeed, many came less than a decade after the falls of fascist regimes in Germany and Italy, so these processions echoed to a certain extent some of the processions of those regimes. (And Hitler had copied Mussolini who himself had tried to evoke the glories of the Roman Empire).

Here though, we're talking about a Hebrew Bible story and things are a little different. The celebration (from 1 Sam 18:6) is initiated, by the women of Israel, rather than being a top-down affair. (It also comes after a series of battle victories, rather than just one, but that's a minor detail) and it sounds much more relaxed and spontaneous ("singing and dancing... with tambourines, with songs of joy, and with musical instruments. And the women sang to one another as they made merry" NRSVUE). This is in sharp contrast to the order, discipline and structure of gleaming uniforms in rigid straight lines standing to attention for hours. I know at which one I'd rather be. 

In terms of David films, though, the procession scene following his slaying of Goliath has been a feature since at least David et Goliath (1910), where (to quote myself) David processes "through the town on a horse. He wears a crown on his head whilst a minion follows at a respectable distance with Goliath's head on a stick." (My review. You can see this film on YouTube).

There's no head on a stick here, but there are is a big speech, which is something that wasn't ideally suited to the silent medium. These do two things. Firstly the speech is by Saul which does just give the impression that the/this celebration(s) is being wrestled away from the women who organised it. But it also nudges proceeding towards that more ordered, patriarchal approach. But then this is Saul the show's antagonist, not David, its humble hero.

That more top down feeling is also reinforced by the absence of the only line of dialogue we do know from the text, where the women (specifically) sing "Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands." (To some schools of thought, this poetic snippet of oral tradition is likely one of the oldest bits of text in the Bible). The use of the word "merry" in the NRSV also suggests alcohol-induced spontaneity in this chant.

Now, in fairness, I suspect that this ditty will appear later in the series – after all, in the text this isn't the account of a single incident but the stylised conglomeration of a series of events into a single story-like narrative – but nevertheless, its omission here does also move things away from spontaneity and towards something more stage-managed.

Lastly, on this. It's very noticeable that some members of the appreciative crowd also holding giant palm tree leaves. This, of course, is a nod towards Jesus' triumphal entry. As with David wearing his mother's Marian blue scarf/shawl/sash this is the show emphasising Jesus' connection with David. (Katie Turner has a little YouTube short on the textile in question). 

Metal Technology

The opening monologue to s2e01 had the narrator (who this time announces herself to be Mychaal) talking about how Goliath's sword "had a strength unmatched" developed by the "masters of the coming new age – the age of iron". This time we get the Philistines themselves discussing their technology. Daganor, a new character, comes to see Achish and tells him that the reason they lost was because he focussed on the power of his giant, rather than relying on the strength of his specially crafted sword.

"We are no longer in the age of bronze. Victory now hinges on the forging of iron." So this is the season's second mention of the transition from bronze to iron – a transition that (historically speaking) does seem to have given a military advantage to the more metallurgically advanced societies. So to put this dialogue in contemporary terms, Daganor thinks that to beat the Israelites they need to invest more in the added advantage of advanced technology. 

Interestingly he also adds that "When you created that sword for Goliath, you didn't fully understand what you had made". This, of course, is the kind of wording that lies at the heart of all dystopian sci-fi from "Frankenstein" onwards. Of course, it's worth pointing out (again) that these are what the show's bad guys are saying. And I suspect that the Philistine's reliance on iron will eventually become hubris and that Israel's dependence on God will eventually win the day. 

That said Jonathan, suffering from an infected piece of arrow lodged in his abdomen is taken into the hills to recover by Sara (another new character). She is also a tech-pioneer, and uses an arrow head removing tool that she has created. It seems oddly specific and is of a very advanced design given that using iron for anything is at the cutting edge of science (though the material it's made of is not mentioned).

Closing thoughts

There's plenty of good stuff here. Mychal's opening narrative deliciously lays out the arc for her character. She's looking back having loved David, but eventually come to see him as a man who usurped her father. But the show's going to take its time to get there. The use of the flash forward at the very beginning (in an episode that in several ways feels more like the first episode than the second) suggests that this will be where we return to by the end of the season (having not go close to it in this episode). It's still a long way from the point where Mychal might feel betrayed by David, this season is going to be about how she feels betrayed by her father.