“... The author of 4 Maccabees, however, departs dramatically from the interpretive guidelines provided for the episode in the Jewish Scriptures, and indeed thoroughly rewrites the story to illustrate and support his very different rhetorical goals. Here it truly becomes the “story of David’s thirst” (4 Macc 3:6). Stripped of the interpretive frame of the “deeds of valor” of David’s warriors—and of the historical context of the Philistine occupation of the Valley of Rephaim and Bethlehem—the story now focuses on David’s experience of thirst (which is absent from the Scriptural story), the irrational desire that drives him to crave the water that the non-Jews have in their territory, when plentiful springs are to be found close by (another detail absent from the original story), and the means by which he finds the strength to do what is just rather than wrongfully self-indulgent. The story is so crafted as to become a narrative demonstration that, though one cannot eradicate certain “passions,” one can master them so as to discern and choose the virtuous course of action. ...”

“... Third, the author suppresses in 3:11 the fact that the water for which David longs is the water of his own home town in Bethlehem, a city currently under enemy control (2 Sam 23:14b–15; 1 Chron 11:16b–17). David’s longing for the waters of Bethlehem in the biblical accounts expresses his desire to retake what is properly his, to be deprived of the proper state of affairs (with access to Bethlehem open to Judeans) by the intrusion of the Philistines no longer. However, by referring merely to the enemy camp rather than Bethlehem, the author of 4 Maccabees subtly turns David’s desire into an expression of “I want what they have,” a desire that is excessive and irrational, as the author says, when what David has close at hand is truly sufficient for him. ...”