The Warrior and the Bride

While this work of Biblical fiction has been written with an audience in mind of those who are interested in Biblical history, the author hopes that others will also find this tale of an extended romance set in a period of unrest and tumult to be an interesting read.  

The story is largely set in the 2nd Book of Samuel and the 1st Book of Kings, and the author has tried to include the Biblical background in a way which doesn’t interfere too seriously with the flow of the story. In the interest of keeping the book consistent with the Bible, the author has needed to include a large number of characters. Many of these are fairly minor but a separate list of characters has been included as an appendix which may prove helpful to the reader in keeping track of characters which recur in the story. The reader may well find it useful to read this story alongside the two Biblical books which provided the historic context of this story.  

The main characters are Benaiah and Abishag, two individuals who had important roles to play in serving King David and his successor. Although a work of fiction, hopefully, the story is consistent with the Biblical narrative and references are provided wherever the story is related to a Biblical event. The author realises that minor inconsistencies do occur in the text but then, minor inconsistencies can be found in the Bible itself. There is no indication in the Bible that the two main characters were in any way related but nothing in the Bible specifically states that they were not.

Attitudes and beliefs have been ascribed to the two main characters which are well ahead of the Old Testament culture in which they were living. Their attitudes are indeed, ahead of current Jewish thought, especially in their understanding of God’s declaration to Abraham, that through his offspring, all nations of earth will be blessed  because he had obeyed God. (Genesis ch 22 v 18). This is a repeat of a promise God had made to Abraham earlier in the book of Genesis (ch 12 v 3).