There's another really interesting observation we could make about the David and Jonathan story. For background, it's important to understand that while the stories probably originated in oral tradition and possibly in some lost written tradition, the version in the Bible was written during the Babylonian exile.

With that said, remember how David first met King Saul? The beautiful youth was brought to the king to play music for him in his bed chamber to soothe him.

In Babylon and the greater surrounding culture, this sort of practice would have been presumed sexual. The tradition of kings having young male and female bed companions was well established and well known.

In light of that, the story of David in King Saul's bedchamber takes on quite interesting subtextual meaning.

At first glance, Saul's extreme jealousy or David and Jonathan's tight friendship doesn't make a lot of sense. Saul appears to be enraged over almost nothing. But is he crazy, or does he have good reason to be so jealous?

If we read the story subtextually as the king being angry that his son stole away the affections of his favored bed mate, then it all starts to make more sense.

That reading would seem to be a pretty natural one given the broader culture at the time and given the fact that the people writing the story down were very familiar with the culture.

And that makes the intimate nature of Jonathan and David's relationship in the story seem even more apparent.