T<\/span>wice in 1 Chronicles, David says he was prevented from building the temple because he shed \u201ccopious\u201d blood (22:6\u201311; 28:2\u20137). The passages frame his final arrangements for the temple and his succession exhortations to Solomon. After analyzing the texts, Donald Murray concludes that \u201cthe core of [Yahweh\u2019s] objection to David\u2019s building the temple is the fact that he has shed much blood.\u201d War is mentioned, but only to explain the specific occasions for bloodshed: The references to war are \u201ceach so closely juxtaposed with those to his shedding blood as to induce the pragmatic inference that the former define and delimit the occasions of the bloodshed.\u201d<\/p>\n Commentators should be more shocked at David\u2019s self-accusation than they are. Murray notes that the phrase \u201cshed blood\u201d (shaphak dam<\/em>) is used thirty-three times in the Hebrew Bible, fifteen times with reference to violent death. The phrase typically means murder or man-slaying: In the \u201coverwhelming majority of instances the expression designates lethal violence penetrated by ordinary citizens in civil-religious life against other ordinary members of the community not deserving of death.\u201d Shedding blood \u201cconstitutes a heinous offence that merits both human and divine condemnation, and incurs the penalty of death for the perpetrator.\u201d\u00a0Solomon accuses Joab of \u201cshedding blood,\u201d emphasizing that he sheds the blood of war in peace.\u00a0Executing Joab is not<\/em> \u201cshedding blood.\u201d<\/p>\n That David would confess to a crime is itself surprising. Equally surprising is the fact that his guilt for blood-shed is linked to war.\u00a0Only three instances of the phrase refer to violent killing in war, twice in Psalm 79 and once in Joel: \u201cThe warriors in Ps 79,3.10 are the nations, God\u2019s enemies, and the context is one of appeal to YHWH to avenge the undeserved slaughter of his not-so-guilty servants. In Joel 4,19 [3,19] Egypt and Edom are threatened with desolation for their bloody violence against the innocent of Judah.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n That is to say, \u201cnever, outside of Chronicles, used to denote killing by Israelite warriors in the context of war.\u201d Typically, killing in war is \u201cconceived of as belonging to a sphere of their own where they are not criminal offences, and thus neither incur bloodguilt nor are subject to the process of blood-vengeance.\u201d\u00a0Israelite warriors smite, kill, strike, gain victories.\u00a0Apart from David\u2019s usage in Chronicles, they never \u201cshed blood.\u201d<\/p>\n To explain David\u2019s usage, Murray turns to Numbers. Numbers 35:33\u201334 uses the expression \u201cshed blood,\u201d and indicates that blood pollutes the land and requires atoning cleansing. Executing the blood-shedder is the solution: Blood will have blood, blood cleanses blood. Since the land is Yahweh\u2019s, the land of His dwelling, blood pollution is a particular danger. If it is not cleansed, Yahweh threatens to abandon the land. As Murray puts it, blood shed is \u201ca religious pollution that banishes the presence of YHWH from his land and his people.\u201d This is one reason why David cannot built the temple: It\u2019s \u201cabsolutely imperative that such an offence should not be built as it were into the very foundations of the building that is supremely to manifest YHWH\u2019s presence among his people.\u201d<\/p>\n Why would David\u2019s wars lead to this danger? Murray points to Numbers 31:19\u201320, which prescribes a \u201cdecontamination\u201d rite for warriors who have killed in war.\u00a0The rite involves purification on the third and seventh days, a rite that resembles the purification from corpse defilement in Numbers 19.\u00a0Murray draws the natural inference that\u00a0\u201cThe law in Num 19, as the details in 19,14\u201318 indicate, applies to those contaminated by a corpse in civil life; the law in Num 31,19\u201324 to those so contaminated in a military situation.\u201d He brings in Numbers 5:2 as well, which excludes anyone \u201cunclean because of a dead person\u201d from the camp. Numbers 35 defines \u201cshed blood\u201d as \u201canyone who strikes someone dead,\u201d while Numbers 31 uses essentially the same expression to describe warriors defiled by corpses.<\/p>\n Murray\u2019s argument has the virtue of highlighting the oddity of David\u2019s words, and the severity of the charge. His appeals to Numbers are persuasive.\u00a0But he doesn\u2019t answer some obvious questions: Why can\u2019t David\u2019s bloodshed be purified? If a warrior can be cleansed from corpse defilement, why not David? How much of the blood David shed was shed\u00a0on the land<\/em>? He pushed back Philistines from their incursions into Israel (1 Chronicles 14:8\u201317), but the main wars (recorded in 1 Chronicles 18\u201320) took place elsewhere. Finally, David set up an ark-shrine in\u00a0Jerusalem, and seems to have had direct access to the Lord\u2019s presence (1 Chronicles 17:16), at least on one occasion. If he can do that, and lead Israel\u2019s processions and acts of worship, why can\u2019t he build a temple? Can he be too impure to build and yet pure enough for his other acts of cultic leadership?<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know how to answer all these questions, but let\u2019s try this on for size: David\u2019s inability to build the temple is part of a Moses-typology that runs through the Chronicler\u2019s depiction of David: As Moses was not permitted to enter the land, so David wasn\u2019t able to build the temple. The two situations are more deeply analogous than they might appear, given that Solomon\u2019s temple completes the conquest and given the analogies between Moses\/Joshua and David\/Solomon (Moses\/David says \u201cbe strong and courageous\u201d to Joshua\/Solomon). Moses dies with the rebels and doesn\u2019t enter the rest of the land; David doesn\u2019t enter into the rest of the temple.<\/p>\n