Disability as a Symbol of Terror: Rereading the David Narrative in Light of Armed Conflicts in Africa

Injuries: Disabilities and Scars

Armed conflicts put able and healthy people at risk of being maimed, injured, and psychologically traumatized. Those in danger of injury are not only the combatants—army personnel, militia groups, and rebel groups. Civilians in armed conflicts are wounded in various ways: caught in the crossfire, targeted attack on civilians, bombings by improvised explosives, and suicide bombings.

The disability ensuing from armed conflicts is not only about the effects on the human body, but wars also take away people’s ability to work towards self-sufficiency and national development, as people become displaced and refugees who have to rely on relief programs and handouts (Wild et al., 2020). In Africa, many risk crossing borders to seek shelter in other African countries, and others risk crossing the Mediterranean Ocean into Europe. It is reported that over 1500 people died in the Mediterranean Ocean in 2022, adding to the over 25 000 deaths since 2014 (Sunderland, 2022). The armed conflicts in the continent contribute to the continent’s underdevelopment as able human beings flee the continent to find refugees elsewhere.

Rape (Genital-Anal Injury and Sexual Trauma)

In armed conflict contexts, rape is used as a weapon of war (Mukwege, 2022) and thus inflicts genital-anal injury and leaves sexual trauma (Sommers, 2007). Sexual violence acts are perpetrated by various actors in the conflict, like state actors (army and peacekeeping forces) and non-state actors (rebels, militia groups, criminal organizations, and opportunists). However, acts of sexual violence, as Arieff (2010) notes, are perpetrated mainly by the combatants in the conflict as a tool to intimidate and humiliate the opposing group or the civilians caught in the crossfire. During the Rwandan genocide, it is estimated that between 250 000 and 500 000 women were raped (Amnesty International, n.d.; Banyanga et al., 2017; Des Forges, 1999; Haffajee, 2006). In the Democratic Republic of Congo, rape is used against both males and females. Armed combatants often perpetrate such rapes (Bartels et al., 2013). In the ongoing conflict in the DRC, it was at some point reported that 48 women were raped every hour, and countless surgeries had to be done to address complications stemming from rape (Bradley, 2013).

Psychological Trauma and Stress (Invisible Injuries)

Armed conflicts not only leave open and visible wounds—destruction to property, land, and human bodies. People in war zones also suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms affecting the young and the old (Crawford, 2013). Factors contributing to psychological trauma and stress include, among other things, violence, imprisonment, torture, rape, displacement, loss of family members, and loss of property. Furthermore, the ripple effects of ongoing wars continue to be felt even years after (Njenga et al., 2003, 2006). For example, the Rwandan genocide of 1994 resulted in the loss of life of about 800 0000 people within 100 days and 4 million people displaced. Many Rwandans had to live with the trauma inflicted by the genocide (Banyanga et al., 2017; Pham et al., 2004).

The injuries and disabilities from armed conflicts symbolize the terror of armed conflicts. As Murray et al. (2002) highlight:

Armed conflicts are not just sites of production of disabilities; they are also sites at which persons with disabilities are at even greater risk and often become targets for killing and, in other instances, used as human shields (Priddy, 2019). Disabled people in conflict zones often have to rely on others in case they have to flee from conflict. Many places of refuge to which people run on the flight from conflict zones are ill-equipped and therefore fail to provide the necessary and essential services to disabled people (Priddy, 2019). Furthermore, conflict zones are also sites where disabilities are exacerbated due to the increased risk. Disabled people in conflict zones are at risk of sustaining injuries and worsening their plight. Those unable to flee on their own are at risk of abandonment in the conflict zones. When caught in the crossfire, the disabled risk, among others, death, enslavement, and abuse. Priddy (2019) also highlights that “persons with disabilities remain the forgotten victims of armed conflict.”

In the next section, I turn my attention to the David narrative. Within this analysis, my central focus will be on disability, which I interpret as a symbol of terror within the story.

Injuries in Armed Conflict: A Wounded King, the Case of Saul

In the ancient Near East, a king was a warrior who was supposed to maintain order by defeating enemies. The king was supposed to lead the army in inter-monarch battles. Thus, as a warrior, the king risked his life in fighting with the enemies. However, unlike any ordinary army personnel, kings also had royal guards, who served as their shield. Yet, the danger of getting wounded, defeated, captured, and killed remained.

In 1 Samuel 31, the narrative relates Saul’s final armed conflict with the Philistines. Saul got wounded in the battle and realized there was no way to escape from his enemies. In 1 Sam 31:4, Saul describes the treatment that he will receive from his enemies as follows: “lest these uncircumcised will come and stab me, and make a mockery of me.” Thus, for Saul, the treatment he would receive from his enemies would be further injuries on his already wounded body. He would be shamed at the hands of his enemies. Saul took his own life by falling on his sword to escape that shame. Therefore, King Saul met his fateful end in the battle with the Philistines—a neighboring nation. In this case, David is presented as being far away from these events, as though he had no hand in the fall of Saul. However, reading against the grain, David played a role in the events. First, he was part of the Philistine army that was going to fight Saul. The Philistine’s army would have relied on David for intelligence on how to best defeat the army in which he used to be a high-ranking official (see 1 Sam 18:5, 14, 30). Second, an Amalekite delivers Saul’s crown to David instead of taking it to the rightful heirs of the kingdom. Such a move can hardly be a coincidence. While the narrative is at pains to portray David as a man who had no intention of killing Saul even if he had the opportunity (1 Sam 24:7; 26:9-11), it is hard to rule out his involvement in the act (see Baden, 2014, pp. 104–115; Halpern, 2001, pp. 78–80). Third, the death of Saul was just the beginning of the many deaths to follow in Saul’s house. Saul’s progeny, apart from those who died together with him, were also killed—Ish-Bosheth was killed in a move that made David king over Israel (2 Sam 3-5), and the rest of Saul’s progeny were killed to eliminate rivalry and establish a Davidic dynasty (2 Sam 21:1-14). The text raises the possibility that David was involved in the murder of Saul and his descendants, but the pro-David narrative always places the blame for the murders on someone else (see also Brenner, 2005, pp. 124–128; Brueggemann, 1988).

The fateful end of Saul evokes his first inter-monarchs armed conflict as king of Israel. In Sam 11:1-11, Saul springs to action to save the besieged town of Jabesh-Gilead, which was invaded by Nahash the Ammonite. In that story, Nahash threatened to make a covenant with the Jabesh-Gileadites through mutilation: “On this condition, I will make a treaty with you, namely that I gouge out everyone’s right eye, and thus put disgrace upon all Israel” (1Sa 11:2 NRS). As Lemon (2006, p. 229) notes, “[t]his text explicitly states that it is a desire to shame the Israelites that moves Nahash to mutilate them.” Thus, in the ancient Near Eastern context of armed conflict, the mutilation was intended to bring shame to the conquered and to serve as a symbol of terror for the rebellious. For example, the Balawat gate of Shalmaneser III (858-824 BC) depicts prisoners of war being tortured and mutilated.

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Balawat Gate of Shalmaneser III (ca. 858-824), British Museum

The inhumane treatment of those captured by the Assyrians led others to consider ending their lives rather than facing torture and shame. Just as King Saul before the Philistines, King Urartu, when faced defeated by Sargon II, committed suicide: “The splendor of Assur, my lord, overwhelmed him [the king of Urartu], and with his own iron dagger, he stabbed himself through the heart, like a pig, and ended his life” (see Bleibtreu, 1991). The battle with the Elamite monarch and his army, which shows a cruel and degrading treatment of the defeated, is described in Sennacherib’s inscription:

These descriptions of the treatment by imperial powers of those conquered provide a foundation for not viewing Saul’s death as a cowardly death; instead, as an attempt to save Israel from humiliation and shame from their enemies. Moreover, it is also likely that the composers of Israel’s (mythical) origins were drawing their experiences with the Assyrian empire and the later Babylonian empire. King Saul thus becomes a prefigure of the experiences of later kings who suffered at the hands of imperial forces. From the Northern Kingdom of Israel, Ahab died from the wounds in battle (1 Kgs 22); Joram was wounded in battle but recovered (2 Kgs 8:28-29), and from the South, the Kingdom of Judah (Ahaziah died from the wound when Israel and Judah were at war with each other), Josiah died from injuries sustained in battle with the Egyptians (2 Kgs 23:28-30, cf. 2 Chron 35:20-24), Zedekiah is captured, and his eyes were gouged out (2 Kgs 25:7).

The violence of imperial power then and now is in the production of mass disability. The ancient imperial forces sought to disempower and instill fear in the conquered populations to gain control over the conquered. The modern imperial violence, as Erevelles (Erevelles, 2011, p. 22) argues, “is instrumental not only in the creation of disability but also in the absence of public recognition of the impact of disability in the third world.” Thus, disability should also be viewed as a by-product of structural violence in the global scheme. As Meekosha (2011, p. 677) argues, “Maybe it is too confronting to deal with the disabling of people in the global South because in trying to claim the positives of a disability identity, it becomes difficult to acknowledge the overwhelming suffering that results from colonization, war, famine, and poverty.” The armed conflicts in the post-colonial states continue the colonial culture of violence (Fanon, 1968; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2012).

Disability of Mephibosheth: A Product of Armed Conflict

The death of Saul and his son Jonathan in the armed conflict with the Philistines would have brought chaos to the royal house at various levels. First, chaos would have erupted within the royal house regarding who would take over the reign. The king and his other potential successors, Jonathan and the other two unnamed sons, were dead, leaving the other sons to contend for the throne. The installation of Ish-Bosheth by the army commander, who went on to rule all of Israel, was likely to end the power struggle. This considering that other brothers may have annexed some areas and crowned themselves kings (2 Sam 2:8-9). Second, the houses of Saul and David kept engaging in violent confrontations. The story also switches its focus from Saul’s royal house to David following the demise of King Saul. When Saul passed away, it was also a good opportunity for David to establish himself as king.

After advancing the David character, the narrative returns to Saul’s royal house to inform the reader of the succession. The narrative also highlights that there was a continuing armed conflict between the royal house of Saul and the royal house of David (2 Samuel 2:8–3:1). In 2 Sam 3:1, the reader is informed that “the war between the house of Saul and the house of David lasted a long time. David grew stronger and stronger, while the house of Saul grew weaker and weaker” (NIV).

The narrative then introduces the Mephibosheth character as a digression to the main plot, when Ish-Bosheth was murdered and his head delivered to king David, who was ruling from Hebron. The murder of King Ish-Bosheth finally opened room for David to take over the kingship of all the tribes of Israel (2 Sam 5:1). At this point, the reader is informed of Mephibosheth’s disability which happened when he was five—the time when Saul and Jonathan died in the war with the Philistines. The disability of Mephibosheth was not a temporary injury but a permanent injury, which implied that from that point, he was lame his entire life (Schipper, 2009). Mephibosheth’s disability does not have to be seen as merely the result of an accident; his nurse dropped him, resulting in a crippling injury. The context within which Mephibosheth, an able child at the time, became disabled matters. It was in the context of armed conflict that Mephibosheth became paralyzed. While the introduction of the Mephibosheth in the plot of David’s story serves other purposes, this reader cries for attention to be paid to the children as victims of war. Therefore, the Mephibosheth incident, which occurred among the privileged in society, may just as well be viewed as a tip of an iceberg suffered by the many children during armed conflicts. In the ancient context of war, children lost their parents and their abilities, and those who escaped with their lives in case of defeat were not just displaced but were turned into enslaved people, with the girl children having to suffer from sexual violations and rape and forced marriages (cf. Num 31:17-18; Jdg 21:11-12).

In our contemporary context, while there is some attention to the issue of the rights of people with disabilities in the war context, not much is done to highlight the terror of armed conflicts in producing disabled children. The six significant violations of children in the context of war, as underlined by UNICEF (2022), are: death, maiming, recruitment and use of children as soldiers, attacks on children, rape or sexual violence, abduction, and denial of access to humanitarian assistance. UNICEF (2022) notes the following:

A recent study on the Libyan conflict found that between 2012 and 2017, there was a total of 16 126 death and 43 633 injuries resulting from the conflict, with most disabilities attributed to blasts (Daw et al., 2019). Another study on the epidemiology of injuries sustained in armed conflicts highlights that civilians suffer immensely, with children accounting for 34.7% of the injured, with blasts the primary cause of extreme injuries (Wild et al., 2020).

Children living in armed conflict situations, like Mephibosheth, get injured, and some eventually die. Therefore, the disabilities of children emanating from war stand out as a symbol of terror. The underreporting and non-reporting of the impact of wars on children prevent us from realizing the costs of war. Just as Mephibosheth was kept in hiding, many of the child victims of our modern wars are kept out of our sight.

The later actions of David towards Mephibosheth, while they are presented as an act of kindness on the part of David and as a way of fulfilling his oath to Jonathan (see 2 Sam 9; 16:1-4; 21:7), also have troubling aspects. When Mephibosheth is invited into the royal house, the psychological damage is already done. Mephibosheth considered himself “a dead dog” (2 Sam 9:8)—a non-threat to David. With his disabilities, it would be impossible to marshal an army to rival David. Furthermore, Mephibosheth being brought so close to the king was for him to live on a knife’s edge.

David’s kindness towards Mephibosheth exhibits an imperial tactic of war: disabling (more than just physical) so that the disabled person would be reliant on and consume the imperial goods. As Sidel (1995, p. 1677) notes, “[s]ome military leaders may find it more advantageous to wound rather than to kill enemy personnel, military or civilian since the opponents then consume valuable resources to take care of their wounded.” David’s actions were intended to keep Mephibosheth under constant check, reliant, and, where possible, set him up for failure to render him killable (compare 2 Sam 16:1-4 and 19:24-30). Indeed, Mephibosheth vanishes from the story setup after the betrayal from his servant Ziba, who notified David that Mephibosheth was hoping for the kingdom to be restored to Saul’s house (2 Sam 16:3). Thus, the accusation was that Mephibosheth wanted to seize the opportunity of the dysfunctionality within David’s royal house, and be declared king over Israel. With the accusation, the parcels of land restored to Mephibosheth are transferred to Ziba (2 Sam 16:4), and in so doing, the kindness is reversed. As Rouse (2008, p. 191) notes, David’s later actions toward Mephibosheth render his earlier benevolent actions questionable, as the disabled Mephibosheth becomes a victim yet again.

Following Puar’s biopolitics of debilitation, the disability of Mephibosheth should not be merely viewed as an individual’s trait but as a collective experience. The biopolitics of debilitation resists the idea of individualizing disability as simply identifying people with disabilities in society to be cared for while ignoring “the material conditions of deliberate populations debilitation” (Puar, 2017, p. 72). The concept of debilitation, as Puar argues, requires the rethinking of disability by framing it within the tactical practice of creating and precarities populations and maintaining them as such (Puar, 2017, p. 73). If Mephibosheth, Saul’s grandson, who probably had one of the best care in the kingdom, was injured. In that case, the question becomes: How many more injuries happened on the day and lost the estates, and subsequently, when Ishbosheth was assassinated, how many were injured and lost their estate as the victors moved in to grab land and properties the habiru style?

The empire had the right to maim, take property, and kill as a tactic to manage the population. For David, the Benjamite population, with its claim to kingship, required special attention to managing it through maiming, giving and taking property and life (Shimei is another example, 2 Sam 16 and 1 Kgs 2). As a result, David uses imperialist tactics to kill and maim, but he also presents himself as kind while looking for solutions for Mephibosheth, who is crippled. While his hand was also involved in the action that rendered Mephibosheth disabled. The benevolence towards Mephibosheth was intended to keep David in power while debilitating Saul’s household.

For some scholars, the disability of Mephibosheth is linked with the interpretation of 2 Sam 5:8b, “The ‘blind and lame’ will not enter the house” (Ceresko, 2001; Schipper, 2005, 2009). It is argued on the one hand that “the lame”, that is, Mephibosheth, represent the failure of the northern kingdom of Israel, and on the other hand “, the blind” represents the failure of the southern kingdom of Israel (Judah), that is Zedekiah, an heir of David. The blindness of Zedekiah is thus interpreted as representing the failure of the Davidic dynasty. In this view, the Samuel-Kings narrative is built on the imagery of disability to highlight the fall of both Israel and Judah. It is often overlooked that David’s treatment of Mephibosheth, to some extent, reflects a tactic used by the Babylonian empire of injury and benevolence as a tool for subordination and domination. The empire inflicts injury while at the same time showing kindness to keep the conquered under submission. The empire has the power over life and death; therefore, it can injure and let live (Mephibosheth, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah). The David-Mephibosheth story is based on the imperial ideology of injury and benevolence. Therefore, the Davidic figure is constructed in the image of the Babylonian empire. This requires readers to tread with care in appropriating David’s actions as exemplary or a paradigm for treating people with disabilities.

In the African context, some of the armed conflicts which have riddled the continent and produced so many disabilities similarly resulted from such imperial tactics of disabling to further the debilitation to keep African states backwards and rely on the previous colonizers. Armed conflicts in Africa are also funded and supported by external players. Most African countries are not producers of arms but consumers of arms, so the guns do not remain silent. Therefore, the biopolitics of debilitation should also consider the issue of international arms trade. The major suppliers of weapons which produce disability and render the continent backwards are the so-called developed nations—the USA, the United Kingdom, China, and Russia, among others (Sabbe, 2022). Therefore, Africans must keep their eyes open to the imperialistic tendencies of some Euro-West and rising superpowers whose intentions may be to disable rather than empower them. This biblical story serves as a reminder of such tactics. As Rouse (2008, p. 197) also argues, “[r]edeeming Mephibosheth’s identity requires that the voice of the marginalized be rescued from the manipulation by external forces.” In decolonial terms, the disabilities of children resulting from armed conflicts are, to a great extent, the doings of the imperial powers of our time. This, however, does not imply a denial of the self-inflicted realities due to power mongering, dictatorship, power grabs through coup d’états, corruption, securing illegal trade by some elites, gangs, and cartels.