The essays represent the proceedings of two international meetings in 2006: the Nijmegen conference on "Story and History in the Books of Samuel" and the SBL International Seminar in Edinburgh "For and against David". Half of the contributions deal with the wider issues of story and history as well as specific aspects of King David within the books of Samuel (by J. Fokkelman, S. Bar-Efrat, E. Eynikel, K.-P. Adam, C. Carmichael, T. Rezetko, S. McKenzie and D. Lamb). And half address blocks of chapters throughout the text by way of proposal and response (by C. Schafer-Lichtenberger, J. Klein, B. Halpern, G. Hentschel, I. Willy-Plein, W. Dietrich, T.-A. Rudnig, S. Kreuzer, J. Vermeylen, A. Campbell and G. Auld).