What Language Did King David Speak? (Explained!)

It is difficult to say with much certainty, but King David would likely have spoken a form of Proto-Hebrew. Hebrew was not fully emerged at his time as a language, but taking the accounts we have of his life at face value, he would most likely have spoken an early form of Hebrew or another Semitic language.

While scholars generally agree that some historical basis does exist for the Biblical figure of King David, at the same time they can agree concretely on very few details of his life.

We cannot know with any certainty what language he would have spoken; we can only make suppositions based on what we do know about him, which is not very much.

Let’s look further into this.

Did King David really exist?

Before we look more specifically at the language of King David, it’s important to look at the debate about the historicity of King David.

Whether or not he actually existed in the first place is, naturally, very important in a question about what language he spoke.

The general consensus among scholars today is that King David did exist at some point in history, and we know this from stela inscriptions from the 9^th Century BC.

This inscription simply records the existence of the royal House of David, in what is today northern Israel.

David, then, did exist as a King of Israel and scholars generally agree he would have lived around 1000 BC.

We can also guess the rough area in which he would have lived and ruled.

Beyond this, though, there is really nothing we can say with any certainty about the life and existence of King David.

Jewish texts record David’s ascent to the throne in 885 BCE.

King David is an enormously important Biblical figure, as the Bible goes to great lengths to show that Jesus is his direct descendant and thus, by both birth right and divine right, the king of the Jews.

David of course is described as gaining fame after slaying Goliath, and is later anointed king of the Judah tribe and ultimately all the tribes of Israel.

Naturally, though, the historicity of the Bible is never a settled question.

Virtually all that we know of the details of David’s life comes from the Bible; meaning, in other words, we can really know all but nothing about his actual existence.

What was King David’s native language?

What, then, can we say about the language of King David?

Again, virtually nothing with any certainty.

He almost certainly would have spoken a Semitic language, but which one is very hard to say.

The inscriptions on the stone stelae which bear the name of his house are written in Old Aramaic, in the Phoenician alphabet.

These, though, were probably inscribed at least a couple of centuries after his death.

The best guess we can make about the language David spoke is that it was an early form of Hebrew, or Proto-Hebrew.

This would certainly have been in use at the time he lived and in the area he is supposed to have ruled.

Hebrew in the form we know it had most likely not come into full form, yet, as even Biblical tradition holds it developed later.

On the other hand, though, Semitic languages were very much intermingled at this time, and so there are many possible languages he could have spoken.

Old Aramaic is generally held to have been in use between around 900-700 BC, so he could well have spoken Old Aramaic.

Some hold that he spoke Syriac, though this is not really supported by evidence or historical context.

So, again, the truth is that we simply don’t know; an early form of Hebrew is our best guess.

What nationality was King David in the Bible?

“Nationality” in the modern sense that we understand it did not exist in the time of King David.

The Bible, specifically the Old Testament, records the struggles of the Israelite tribes, of which there were 12 mentioned in the Bible.

These tribes were the closest thing anyone had to a national identity. Biblical tradition holds that King David was part of the Israelite tribe of Judah.

The Judah were among the southernmost tribes of Israel, inhabiting places like Kadesh in the south up to Bethlehem in the north.

King David, then, was “Israeli” in a very anachronistic sense.

How did King David speak to God?

The question of how Biblical figures spoke to God is always an interesting one.

There are many differing views on this, but one is that God spoke a form of proto language known as the Adamic language that predated all other human language before the breaking of the Tower of Babel.

When King David spoke to God, then, he would have been imbued with knowledge of this language.

Others hold more simply that Hebrew is the language of God, and that this is the language David would have used when speaking to God.

The Bible, unfortunately, does not make it explicit.

So, again, it’s important to keep in mind that while King David did probably exist historically in some sense, the image we have of him from the Bible is virtually entirely mythic.

We have too little physical or contemporary written evidence of his life to know much about him with any certainty.

If we take the Biblical version of him to be an accurate portrayal, then our best guess would be that his native language was some progenitor to Hebrew.