the “constructed” David that the tradition has given us.2 What is important is that David is the engine for Israel’s imagination and for Israel’s public history. This David is no doubt a literary, imaginative construction, made by many hands. So we must settle for that. We cannot get behind the literary construction, even as we cannot get behind the construction of any significant person in antiquity, and even as we cannot get behind the construction of ourselves. Because we are, all of us, imaginative