The Prince

The Prince by Francine Rivers is a good historical novel about Jonathan, the son of Israel's first king. Generally, I do not enjoy fiction about Bible characters because authors take too many liberties with the story, often adding details that are inconsistent with Scripture, but Francine Rivers is quite faithful to the Bible story while filling in details in the lives of Saul, David, and Jonathan.

Rivers is remarkably accurate about minor details such as locations of minor cities and the times soldiers from Gad, Manasseh, and Reuben joined David's men when he was an outcast. She also narrates events in the same order as the Scripture with one curious exception: she puts David's short stay with Achish the king of Gath before David's visit to the priests at Nob.

Any work of historical fiction based on Scripture is going to add details which are not recorded in Scripture. Most of the time, Rivers does this in a way that is consistent with other Scripture. For example, she has Samuel telling Saul when he is anointed to write a copy of the Law for himself with his own hand. The Scripture does not say Samuel told Saul to write a copy of the law for himself (1 Samuel 10:25). However, in Deuteronomy 17:18, Moses did command that the king was to write for himself a copy of the law. In another case, she suggests that David fled to Gath not so much for safety as to find out the secret of forging iron. We don't know that he went to Philistia for that reason, but it is true according to Scripture that the Israelites did not have that technology at the time.

On the other hand, in the case of Israelite marriage law, Rivers is not consistent with other Scripture. In Rivers' story, Jonathan criticizes Saul for giving his daughter Merab in marriage to a man outside the tribe of Benjamin. He tells Saul that Moses required Israelites to marry within their own tribe. Accordingly, when Jonathan marries, he refuses to consider the daughters of wealthy men from any other tribe and marries a poor farm girl from the tribe of Benjamin. Actually, what the Law did not permit was for Israelites to marry the daughters of the nations they were to drive out (Deuteronomy 7:1-4). Furthermore, it did not permit the high priest to marry anyone except the virgin daughter of an Israelite (Leviticus 21:14), and it did not permit daughters who inherited land from their fathers to marry outside their own tribe so their tribal land might not become the possession of another tribe (Numbers 36:8). This could happen when a man had no sons. Otherwise, Israelites could marry other Israelites without regard to their tribe.

I enjoyed this book of fiction and would highly recommend it. I give it a rating of four out of a possible five.