In this article, I survey exegetical approaches to the “blind and lame,” using disability studies and close readings to expose ableist bias. I also present my reading, in which I propose that the blind and lame are disabled persons whom David hates not just because of who they are, but also because of the fears they provoke. He is afraid. Disabled bodies can be unpredictable, untamable, and uncertain. David has no idea what his enemies are capable of, because “blind” and “lame” are vague and amorphous labels. Parading blind people and lame people on the ramparts does not display the weakest people in a strong city but displays people of unknown strengths.
Fokkelman, J.P. (1981). Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel. Volume 1. Van Gorcum.
15.
Garland-Thomson, R. (1997a). Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American
16.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2009). Staring: How we Look. Oxford University Press.
17.
Garland-Thomson, R. (ed.) (1996). Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. New York University Press.
18.
Goering, Greg Schmidt. (2019). Moving and Thinking: Kinesthesis and Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs. In AnnetteSchellenberg and ThomasKrüger. Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East (pp. 69–86). SBL Press.
19.
Gordon, Robert P. (1999). I & II Samuel: A Commentary. Zondervan.
20.
Green, B. (2017). David’s Capacity for Compassion. LHBOTS641. Bloomsbury T&T Clark.
21.
Hevey, D. (1992). The Creatures Time Forgot: Photography and Disability Imagery. Routledge.
22.
Jones, Kirsty. (2019). Home but Not Healed: How the Sensory Profiles of Prophetic Utopian Visions Influence Presentations of Disability. In AnnetteSchellenberg and ThomasKrüger. Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East (pp. 161–180). SBL Press.
23.
Kim, Eunjung. (2017). Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disability, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.
24.
Kitay, Eva Feder. (2015). Dependency. In Benjamin Reiss, David Serlin and Rachel Adams. Keywords for Disability Studies. New York University Press. 54–59.
25.
Krüger, Thomas. (2019). On the Sense of Balance in the Hebrew Bible. In AnnetteSchellenberg and ThomasKrüger. Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East (pp. 87–98). SBL Press.
26.
Mauchline, J. (1971). 1 and 2 Samuel. NCB. Oliphants.
27.
McCarter, P. K. (2010). II Samuel. Yale University Press.
28.
Miller, V. (2019). A King and a Fool? The Succession Narrative as a Satire. Brill.
29.
Olyan, Saul M. (2001). The Exegetical Dimensions of Restrictions on the Blind and the Lame in Texts from Qumran. Dead Sea Discoveries8, 38–50.
30.
Olyan, Saul M. (2008). Disability in the Hebrew Bible: Interpreting Mental and Physical Differences. Cambridge University Press.
31.
Price, Margaret. (2014). “The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain.”Hypatia30:1, 268–284.
32.
Raphael, Rebecca. (2009). Biblical Corpora: Representations of Disability in Hebrew Biblical Literature. LHBOTS445. New York: T&T Clark.
33.
Schipper, Jeremy. (2006) Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible: Figuring Mephibosheth in the David Story. LHBOTS441. Bloomsbury T&T Clark.
34.
Shildrick, M. (2009). Dangerous Discourses of Disability, Subjectivity and Sexuality. Palgrave Macmillan.
35.
Thomas, Carol. 2017. Sociologies of Disability and Illness. Bloomsbury Publishing.
36.
Vargon, Shmuel. (1996). The Blind and the Lame. VT46:4: 498–514.
