Pastor Moline Movie Review: The House of David (streaming on Amazon)

Some of the events depicted in this series may not accurately represent all historical and Biblical facts or figures. While we have made efforts to portray certain aspects of history authentically, creative liberties have been taken for storytelling purposes.” The words italicized above appear before every episode of a new streaming series appearing on Amazon Prime: The House of David. I have been asked about this series several times in the last few weeks, so I thought I would do a movie review on the series.

The House of David follows the basic Biblical outline of the life of David, recounting the early aspects of his life leading up to the fight with Goliath, as recounted in 1 Samuel 17. It does have some of the basic events depicted. From the Lord rejecting Saul and Samuel hacking apart Agag, the king of the Amalekites, the basics are there. But the “creative liberties for storytelling purposes” go a bit too far for my taste and, truth be told, sometimes contradict the words of Scripture. The creative liberties end up making The House of David into a mix of The Exorcist, Jesus of Nazareth, Gladiator, Days of our Lives, and Longmire.

For example, David’s mother is killed, sacrificing herself to save him from a hungry lion when he wanders off as a child. David later kills this same lion, fighting it in the dark in a cave with nothing more than a knife. He draws the bravery to kill this lion from the words of Psalm 139 that his mother used to sing to him.

There are a number of Scriptural concerns from this but, surprisingly, not necessarily the one that you might think – killing a lion. In 1 Samuel 17:34-37, David—still a teenager—tells King Saul that he can kill Goliath because he has often killed lions and bears to protect the sheep. So, David did kill a lion (or at least claimed to have killed one). But David’s mother was not killed by a lion. We know this because in 1 Samuel 22, David is on the run from King Saul, who seeks to kill him, and he asks the King of Moab to protect his father and mother while he is running from Saul. This means his mother is still living at that time. Furthermore, the words of the Psalm David learned from his mother are actually words of a Psalm that he himself wrote much later in his own life.

There are other additional Scriptural issues. David wants to become a warrior like his older brothers. So, his brother takes him to a town destroyed by the Philistines to show him how terrible war is. While there, they are ambushed by dozens of Philistine warriors, and David’s brother Eliab is able to fight off all of them until finally being shot by an arrow as they are running off. This is the Gladiator portion of the show, one man fighting off an entire army like he’s Legolas fighting at Minas Tirith. This event doesn’t occur in Scripture.

Furthermore, David seems to bear some sort of family secret that makes him an outcast. Whether that is that he is illegitimate or the son of a slave isn’t revealed in the first two episodes. Whatever the reason for his exclusion from the normal family, this isn’t Biblical either. The show does depict demon worship and possession, and to be clear, these are real things that existed (and still do today). But they are depicted in a very Hollywood sort of way, not in a Biblical way. It is perhaps good that they are depicted as really existing in the world, but the creative liberties hide the subtleties of these forces in reality.

And now for the biggie – giants. The show does depict Goliath as a giant. It also seems to be influenced by recently deceased Michael Heiser’s teachings on giants in the Bible. Goliath is pictured as at least 15 feet tall (if not more). The Hebrew Masoretic text tells us Goliath was 9 feet tall (still a giant), while the Septuagint indicates he was extremely tall for his day: 6’6”. The show depicts a whole family of giants called the Anakim, which Michael Heiser taught were descendants of the angels conceiving offspring with women in Genesis 6. The Bible does talk about people called Anakim and does mention people of large stature, but it is a stretch to make giants the descendants of fallen angels because of one big issue: Noah’s flood. Scripture teaches that the flood killed everything that wasn’t on the ark, which doesn’t leave room for giants to survive also. 1 Peter 3 speaks about this directly. So to summarize on giants, they did exist; they might not seem so large to us today, but we want to be careful not to make them survivors of the flood of Noah.

So as to the show? It isn’t a bad watch. It was entertaining, it had compelling storylines, and it was interesting. But it isn’t an accurate Biblical account of The House of David. If you would like to read the truth about David, the place to look is to the Bible. David’s life is recounted from 1 Samuel 16 through the end of 2 Samuel. Additionally, 1 Chronicles rehashes some of this material in a theological way. The book of Ruth explains the origin of David’s family. And don’t forget to read the Psalms, many of which are David’s words, written by his own hand. So feel free to watch the show for entertainment value, but stick to the Bible when you are looking for historical accuracy and not “creative liberties.”

In Christ, Pastor Moline