CHAPTER V. DAVID’S REIGN
[ca. 1002-990 B.C.]
The eyes of Israel were now all turned to David. All the tribes of Israel, in the persons of their nobles, came to Hebron and said: “Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh. And moreover, in times past, even when Saul was king, thou wast he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel: and the Lord thy God said unto thee, Thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be ruler over my people Israel.” Thereupon the elders of Israel anointed David to be their king before Jehovah in Hebron. Nothing denotes more clearly than these words of our chronicler, the idea which animated all Israel in calling upon David to mount the throne of Saul. He still lived in their memory as the renowned leader in the struggle with the Philistines. And the memory of the days of Saul must have been all the more vivid, the more inglorious and mean the present appeared.
David could consequently be in no doubt as to his first task as newly elected king of Israel. Israel must be again free, and the Philistines thrown back on their coasts. Nothing else was intended when the tribes invited him to be their prince. And, like Saul in former days, by this means alone could David permanently retain the confidence with which the tribes approached him at his anointing.
In the country of the Philistines also, the significance of what had passed in Hebron was quickly perceived. There was probably no need of many words and messages to announce that the position of vassal to Philistia, in which David had hitherto stood, was at an end. If Saul’s kingdom had passed to David, between him and the Philistines the cause of Israel still retained the same rights as in the days of Saul. In spite of this, David seems to have been attacked sooner than he could have anticipated; immediately, on the news of his anointing at Hebron, the Philistines invaded Judah. David seems to have been taken unawares, and Israel’s attempt to make itself independent through him, to have been nipped in the bud. Beitlahm (Bible Bethlehem) David’s home, was quickly occupied, and Hebron was threatened. David was warned, but having no time to summon the militia, was compelled to withdraw hastily to the cave of Adullam, which stronghold had long ago been intrusted to him. Here he seems to have remained some time, until he had collected his forces, and later he succeeded in inflicting a sensible defeat on the Philistines, who had fixed their camp in the land of giants, the so-called plain of Rephaim north of Jebus, opposite Gibeon.
But it must be confessed that the Philistines were not annihilated, or even merely reduced to quiescence by this. The struggle was again renewed on the occasion of a second invasion of Judah by the enemy. In obedience to Jehovah’s oracle, David passed round the Philistines, who had again encamped in the land of giants, and attacked them from the north, i.e. from behind. He smote them from Gibeon to Gezer.
For the time the Philistines seemed to have remained quiet after these two defeats, which David had inflicted on them within so short a time. But their power was not yet broken, and David must have fought many and doubtless severe battles before Israel had rest from the Philistines. Many a reminiscence of David and his heroes, many a bold feat of his valiant host, lived on through subsequent generations and was referred to this very struggle. At one time it is David’s own life which is at stake, at another, Goliath of Gath is slain, the enemy who has also lent his name to the unknown Philistine giant whom David had formerly killed. Finally, by a decisive battle, David succeeds in winning the Philistine’s capital and with it their whole country. From this time forward the power of the Philistines is broken. Never afterwards do they appear as the enemies of Israel. From the time of David the relations between the two nations are essentially peaceful. Nor, in spite of his victories, did David subjugate Philistia or destroy her nationality. He was content to have won back Israel’s position, defeated the enemy, and kept peace with him. It even appears that moderately friendly relations were opened between the rivals. Indeed, so little were the Philistines now considered as the hereditary foes of Israel, that David chooses his bodyguard from amongst them.
But David was not content with the success he had so far attained. Israel was not merely to be free. Israel was to be united, and raised to a position commanding respect among the neighbouring states. Step by step, David brought this aim nearer fulfilment. He trained the tribes to give new and better expression to their cohesion than had formerly been possible; he fitted them to guide their destinies according to his own ideal; thanks to him, for a time, Israel was even able to have a decisive voice in the council of the peoples of Anterior Asia, who dwelt west of the Euphrates. No wonder, then, that Israel knows no greater king than David, and that his name is the expression, to the most remote posterity, of all the magnificence and all the splendour which could ever have been imagined in Israel. David was and remains the greatest man next to Moses in the history of Israel, and is at the same time the most popular.
It was not David’s work which awakened in the tribes of Israel the consciousness that they formed an unit, a single people, nor that for a transitory period they acted as one nation. Moses, and again later, Saul, even Deborah for some of the tribes, had given expression to this ideal unity, and temporarily realised it. The tribes must now long have known that they were the limbs of a single nation. But always, as had been lately manifested in Saul, the strength was lacking to maintain what had been momentarily acquired. What was especially wanted even when liberty had been won, was a national centre, round which the life of the nation, political as well as religious, might gather. Only when this was attained could the unification be really complete, and any sort of permanence be guaranteed for the liberty won by the sword. Saul, with inconceivable shortsightedness, did little or nothing towards this object. The national sanctuary, first lost and afterwards again recovered, he had left standing in an obscure corner of Israel, and had fixed his royal abode in his native Benjamite city of Gibeah where he had lived as a peasant, and which had neither past nor future—the best evidence that Saul lacked the kingly faculty. David saw deeper than Saul. If Saul was an able warrior, who, when he had sheathed his sword, returned to his cattle at Gibeah, David, on the contrary, was a born ruler. He recognised that religion and national life needed a centre, unity a base, national power a place of assembly—in short that if the country was to maintain its unity and independence, it must have a capital worthy of royalty and fitted to secure it.
[ca. 990 B.C.]
Immediately after the conclusion of the first Philistine wars, David proceeded to the accomplishment of this object. His choice bears witness to his genius. Hebron, lying at the southern end of the country, and being moreover the capital of his own tribe, could be suited, neither by its position nor its tribal character, to form the centre of the new kingdom, which must be superior to the ancient tribal distinctions. Saul’s residence of Gibeah was disqualified on similar grounds, and probably also strategically unimportant. On the other hand, the fortress of Jebus answered, as did no other place in Israel, to what David sought. Furnished by nature with the attributes of an almost impregnable stronghold from a strategical point of view, Jebus is one of the most important places in the country. At the middle point of the traffic between the Mediterranean and the East, as of that between Syria and Egypt, it is a natural centre for trade and commerce. As it was still in the possession of the Canaanites, it was well qualified to remain aloof from the contention for precedence among the tribes. And yet again as it lay not far from David’s birthplace, Jebus provided for the preservation of David’s kingship and of that connection with the tribe of Judah which was to a certain extent indispensable. In fact, David’s choice of Jebus—henceforth called Jerusalem in the Old Testament—as capital of his kingdom, was an act of incalculably wide-reaching importance. It is quite impossible to say what would have become of Judah and the throne of David in the centuries which followed Solomon’s death, but for the possession of Jerusalem. Of the part played by Jerusalem in the destinies of Israel, both before and after the exile, every one who knows the story is aware. If David’s successful fight for liberty against the Philistines was the first jewel which he added to his newly acquired crown, the second was the town of Jerusalem, which he now won and raised to be the royal city of Israel.
Jebus had hitherto been a relic of that large territory forming with Gibeon, Beeroth, Kirjath-jearim and Chephirah, a Canaanitish strip of land, which once, in the period of the conquest and for a considerable time after, had extended into the possession of Israel. In course of time, most of this land, so long beyond the borders of Israel, had been absorbed. Finally Saul had exerted himself in the matter by the application of force. Only Jebus, with its strong rock-citadel Zion, had obstinately resisted all attacks. Its possessors seem to have formed a singular little Canaanitish nation, called, from their town, the Jebusites.
DAVID SENDING URIAH TO JOAB
David’s attempt to win the Jebusites and their town for Israel by peaceful means, miscarried. Their rocky eyrie, Zion, appeared to the Jebusites so strong that the lame and blind would suffice to defend it. Undismayed by their scorn, David proceeded to use force, and stormed town and citadel. The citadel he took possession of himself and called it David’s citadel (the city of David) after having first restored the building for his own purposes. Hiram of Tyre, to whom the friendship of his powerful neighbour must have been a matter of some importance, is said to have assisted him with cedar wood and workmen. The former masters of the town seem, like the Philistines after them, not to have been treated according to the usage of war, but to have been spared. At least in later times we find the Jebusites living with Israel in Jerusalem.
DAVID’S GREATNESS IN TIME OF PEACE
But the conquest of Jerusalem by David, and the selection of this town as the capital of the country, had yet a further significance. A royal sanctuary was a necessary adjunct to the king’s residence and the capital of the country. But religion in Israel was a popular institution. No affair which touched the whole nation could dispense with it. The national capital, the centre of the life of the people, must, if it were to answer its purpose, also be the centre of the religious life. In order, therefore, to make Jerusalem, as a capital, what it might be and what by David’s means it actually was to become for Israel, it must be the centre of Jehovah’s worship.
Jewish King performing a Religious Rite
David’s greatness is raised to a still higher level by the fact that he thought of this also. History is made by the man who recognises the spirit of his time and of his country, and is in a position to step forward and act decisively in consonance with it. David perceived that the spirit of his nation and its destiny only worked in the close connection of the national with the religious life. He had an eye for the most secret inner existence of his nation, according to which it must be the people of religion, God’s people. Thus he became at once the historical, and what was inseparable from this, the religious hero of Israel. We need neither overlook the weakness and despotic whims of David, nor transform the man, by nature a hero, into a feeble saint, in order to appreciate his deep religious character and his importance for the religion of Israel. As David had glorified Israel’s past, so he had done for its future, and in days of tribulation his name revived Israel’s sinking hope and faith in God. Jehovah, the God of Israel, became through him the chief dweller at Jerusalem, the neighbour and almost the household companion, nay more, the host and father of its king. Jerusalem, the royal city, is at the same time the city of God, the holy city; David’s Dynasty is Jehovah’s royal house, and its members Jehovah’s sons, and even the hero of the last days, who shall save Israel and the world from all their woes, can henceforth be pictured in no other way than as a second David, the great son and antitype of the glorious founder of the holy city.
The ancient sanctuary of the time of Moses, the Ark of God, had been almost forgotten since the evil days when it fell into the enemy’s hand. The Philistines indeed, smitten with a solemn awe, had restored the ark. But neither Saul nor the priesthood of Nob, which had succeeded that of Shiloh, nor any one else in Israel, had interested himself in it. It might seem that its sojourn in the enemies’ country had desecrated it. Or probably the small measure of good fortune it had brought to the arms of Israel’s hosts at Aphek had shaken the belief in its virtue.
Not so David. The scruples of superstitious Saul and of his age, did not terrify him. He saw what the Ark of God was and that it was what he needed: the ancient sanctuary of Israel, which assured Jehovah’s presence in the desert, and with which great memories were connected. For him the fact that it had long, and perhaps in the first instance, had its location with the tribe of Joseph, could only be an additional reason for once more restoring it to honour. Everything must depend on his winning over to himself and Jerusalem that northern group of the tribes.
Thus the Ark of God was fetched in solemn procession and in the presence of the whole people from Baal Jehuda [Bible, Baalah (Kirjath-jearim) in Judah] where it stood in the house of a private individual. But an accident which befell the driver of the cart upon which it was carried, perplexed David. The fancy he had thought dispelled, that Jehovah’s hand of blessing was withdrawn from the ark, now appeared to be founded on the truth. He did not venture to conduct it to Zion. It was only when even a foreigner, Obed Edom of Gath, in whose house the Ark had been left for three months, derived blessing from it, that David carried out his intention. With rejoicing and the sound of trumpet, the people led Jehovah to Zion. David himself executed the motions of dancing before the Ark, clad in the linen garment of a priest, and fulfilled as chief the priestly office before Jehovah in Zion. Michal, Saul’s proud daughter, was ashamed of her husband for degrading himself before his serving men and maids. David was proud of having been honoured before Jehovah. There was in him a truly religious nature, which did not scruple to go even to the verge of what were, even for that age, religious eccentricities.
It must be in the highest degree astonishing that David built no temple for the Ark. If he fetched it to his capital and his palace, he must also have meant to erect there a fitting resting-place for Jehovah. Since he did not do so, he must have been guided by special reasons and considerations. If, as the history of Samuel hints, the Ark had already a temple of its own in Shiloh, it can be positively said that only a divine oracle could have withheld David from building a fitting temple. Without such a definite declaration of Jehovah’s will, it would have been culpable indifference and criminal contempt for the Majesty of Jehovah for David to have built no temple. There is consequently no real grounds to discredit as a late invention the tradition of David’s firm intention to build Jehovah a temple on Zion and its prevention by a prophetic saying. The rather late compilation of the writings concerning it cannot be taken into consideration, in face of such overwhelming inherent grounds for the truth of the fact. Nay, it is believeable that already on this occasion a prophetic saying furnished David with the prospect of the continuance of his dynasty.
FURTHER WARS BREAK OUT
[ca. 990-980 B.C.]
David was not left to the peaceful enjoyment of what he had already acquired. It could scarcely have been otherwise, and David would hardly have desired that it should. If Israel were to be master in Syria, if her borders were to be secured and the independence so often contested by surrounding peoples were to be rendered indisputable, explanations with her remaining neighbours must take place. David could not then possibly rest content with the acquisition of the kingship over all Israel, and the overthrow of the Philistines. The occasion, not undesired by David, came from without, from Ammon. The Ammonites soon joined themselves with the various Aramaic peoples, so that, when he had conquered them, David was master of all the border country to the north and east of Israel.
It is extremely doubtful whether the Ammonites were permanently subdued. At a later period their territory did not belong to Israel, but it probably did in David’s time. In any case the marauding eastern tribes which had so often threatened Israel, were for the present reduced to quiescence. The frontier of David’s kingdom was now secured in the east as far as to the desert. In the north his rule extended to Lebanon and Hebron. Even the rulers of the territories lying farther to the north and east sought his friendship. As for instance, King Toi of Hamath on the Orontes, who had lived at feud with Hadad-ezer and consequently could only be grateful to David for his overthrow. Also King Talmai of Geshur, a district of Hermon, southwest of Damascus. A daughter of his was one of David’s wives. She became the mother of Absalom.
The Phœnicians had even better reason than these northern neighbours to keep on good terms with David. Nothing but gain could result to their commercial operations from the existence in the interior of Palestine of a powerful and well-ordered state, such as David was striving after. Their king, Hiram of Tyre, concluded a friendly alliance with David, which continued under Solomon.
Thus David’s kingdom stretched from the Red Sea to Lebanon. It was the ruling power in Syria. It stood in uncontested power. It had no longer any adversary to fear. Next to David the greatest share in this result was due to Joab, his chief general—especially as David did not latterly often take the field himself. From beginning to end he remained faithfully devoted to David, unshaken through all the storms and vicissitudes of fortune—a warrior to whose keen sword success was never denied, but also a man of rude violence and unbridled selfishness, to whom no bond seemed sacred, no means to be rejected.
It is obvious that in such quarrels as he had to conduct on all sides, David had need of a carefully administered and well-disciplined army. The nucleus of his troops, a kind of guard on whom he could implicitly rely, consisted of those six hundred men, who, long ago, in the days of his flight from Saul, had gathered round him and had remained true to him during his persecution. When David became king, they, of course, stayed with him. Henceforth they represented his bodyguard, and bore the name of Gibborim, the “Heroes.” In war, special tasks were, as a matter of course, assigned to them. The gaps in the circles of these picked troops, which resulted from David’s numerous wars, were afterwards filled up after the victories over the Philistines—for reasons which are explained by the purpose of the force as the king’s bodyguard. The recruits were chiefly foreigners, especially Philistines and Cretan mercenaries of cognate race. Thus this whole force soon bore the name of Cretans and Philistines.
Important as this picked body was at all times to David, it could not possibly suffice for his great campaigns. David recognised that for wars such as he had to conduct, a permanent and reliable military organisation was necessary for Israel, even in time of peace, so that even then Israel’s troops might be under surveillance and no tribe be able to evade its duty in the moment of war. The census of the people undertaken by David’s chief captain, Joab, served this object. It was to secure the supervision of those capable of bearing arms in Israel, and to afford a groundwork for that organisation. Joab spent three-quarters of a year on the way; he extended his journey to Kadesh on the Orontes, the capital of the once mighty Hittite empire, which, consequently, if the statement is correct, had also been subdued by David. Soon after this numbering, a destructive pestilence fell upon Israel. In this David recognised Jehovah’s avenging hand. We have other reasons to assume that David’s remodelling of the army was not the cause of his success in the struggle with the neighbouring peoples. It appears only to have been taken in hand as a result of the information here collected, and as a measure which might be of value at a subsequent period.
The close of David’s history, so far as it is not dominated by the well-known occurrences in his own family, might be said to be comprised in two episodes, which concern his relations to the few surviving members of the family of his predecessor, Saul. They probably belong to the time before David’s foreign wars, but stand in our narrative in no historical sequence, so that it is difficult to define their date exactly. The second of them is to be judged from the first.
According to this, David, doubtless some time after the whole of Saul’s kingdom has fallen to him, and he had firmly established himself in Zion, felt constrained to exercise some grace towards the surviving posterity of Saul, in memory of the friendship which had united him to Saul’s son, Jonathan. On inquiry it appeared that a son of Jonathan’s, named Meribaal (or Mephibosheth) was still alive. He was lame from a child, and lived, as it seems, in profound seclusion—probably from fear of David’s vengeance—in Lodebar. David had Meribaal brought before him, and presented him with his grandfather’s possessions. It would seem, therefore, that for a time this had been assumed by David. He was, however, to take up his abode at Jerusalem, and Saul’s servant, Ziba, was to cultivate the estate in Gibeah. David here joins magnanimity and policy. He magnanimously pardons Meribaal, who might regard his life as forfeited, and also makes him royal gifts. But he also does not omit to separate the prince from his family and Saul’s royal seat, and to keep him under his own eyes in Jerusalem. He, as well as the nobles of Benjamin, were to be removed from everything which might remind them of the ancient claims of Saul.
If David here exercised magnanimity in a manner which no one could have expected of him, it is not probable that, in another instance of which we are apprised he was influenced by a desire to exterminate the house of Saul. The town of Gibeon, which an ancient compact had secured in its Canaanitish integrity, had suffered violence from Saul “in his zeal for Israel.” It is to be presumed that he made an attack on Gibeon, and executed a sanguinary punishment on a part of the Canaanite population. For this breach of faith, the guilt of blood lay on Saul and on Israel and must be expiated. Once in David’s time, some time after the above described event, the land had been scourged for three years with drought and famine. David questioned Jehovah concerning it, and its cause is named as the blood-guiltiness weighing on the house of Saul, and therefore—for the king represents the people—on Israel. The citizens of the injured Gibeon were to decide on the atonement. They demanded blood for blood; seven male descendants of Saul were delivered to the Gibeonites and by them “hanged up before Jehovah.” They were Saul’s two sons by his concubine Rizpah, who had once caused the breach between Abner and Eshbaal (Ishbosheth), besides Saul’s five grandsons from the marriage of Merab (the correct reading instead of Michal, lxx. Luc. Pesh.) with Adriel the son of Barzillai of Abel-meholah. Jonathan’s son, Meribaal, was spared for the sake of David’s bond of brotherhood with Jonathan. In her profound mother-love Rizpah kept watch by her slaughtered sons, scaring wild beasts and birds of prey from the corpses, till at last rain fell as a token that Jehovah’s anger was appeased. The bodies could now be buried. David collected their bones and had them deposited in the hereditary sepulchre of Kish at Gibeah. Saul’s house fell, but scarcely with David’s consent—a sacrifice to the religious belief of the time.
DAVID AND ABSALOM
[ca. 990-970 B.C.]
David had gloriously overcome the foes of Israel, but he had not attained to winning the mastery over his own unruly passions. The same man who could guide his people step by step with strength and dexterity, did not possess enough firmness of will to train his own sons. The bitter fruit could not fail to appear. Our records tell the story, with a plain objectivity, with an unsparing impartiality, and from a high moral standpoint that it would be hard to parallel.
Gate of Joppa, Jerusalem
Whilst Joab is with the army before Rabbath-Ammon, David transgresses with the wife of a captain who has gone to the war. In order to escape the responsibility for the consequences which do not fail to follow, David had Uriah, the husband, sent home with a message concerning the state of the war. But, ostensibly from a feeling of soldierly duty, although he probably knew what had happened, he refuses to visit his wife and hastens back to the army. Only one means now remains to hide the king’s fault. David gives Uriah a letter to Joab which disposes of the troublesome accuser. Joab must place him at a dangerous place in the battle and leave him to his fate. The plan succeeds; Uriah’s wife Bathsheba duly bewailed her spouse and then became the wife of her seducer.
When Bathsheba had given birth to a child, that which Uriah had already suspected or discovered could no longer be concealed, and the prophet Nathan becomes spokesman for the public conscience. First in a parable, and then in plain language, he announces to David the judgment of Jehovah. David, thereby showing his true greatness, instead of being angered by Nathan, owns his guilt. The child falls sick, and, in spite of David’s prayer, dies after seven days. In the child’s death David recognises Jehovah’s judgment on his own sin. But he cannot prevent his example from speedily ripening into evil fruit in his grown sons.
His first-born, Amnon, is consumed by a passion for his half-sister, Tamar. By a stratagem, suggested by an unscrupulous flatterer at the court, he manages to get her into his power. A feigned sickness offers an excuse for her visit to him. When the deed has been accomplished, he roughly thrusts the dishonoured maiden from him with pitiless violence, a sure sign that it was not love, but savage desire which had prompted him.
It is as though we were watching a Greek tragedy of fate, when we follow the chronicler’s relation of how the evil deed brought forth evil. Now in fatal succession, guilt is heaped on guilt. The father had begun with open adultery, and had then sought to veil his guilt by hypocrisy and to cover it with blood. He could not, therefore, be surprised if his children did not shrink from the violation of honour, or even from incest, and thence allowed themselves to pass to murder and rebellion.
After what he had done himself, David had not the courage to punish Amnon’s crime, save with words. So another of his sons, Tamar’s own brother Absalom, took it on himself to avenge the outrage on his sister. But he knew how to wait till opportunity offered. Two years after the crime had been committed, Absalom invited the king’s court to the festival of the sheep-shearing at his estate of Baal Hazar. Amnon and the other princes attended. During the meal, Amnon was struck down unawares by Absalom’s people. The others fled homewards, and Absalom to Geshur to his grandfather, Talmai. Three years he remained there in exile, till, by a stratagem of Joab, he succeeded in altering the king’s disposition towards him. Absalom was permitted to return to Jerusalem, but for two years more he was forbidden to appear before the king’s eyes. Finally he succeeded, again through Joab’s intervention, in obtaining a complete pardon.
No good came to David from his pardon of Absalom. To the son’s ambitious and imperious spirit, were now joined spite and the desire to revenge the wrong which he believed, or professed to believe, had been done him. Established in his rights as heir to the throne, he took advantage of his newly acquired position to steal the hearts of the people from the king, who was now growing old. And, not content with the prospect of eventually becoming his father’s lawful successor, he laid a malicious plan for the premature supersession of the king. For the space of four years he secretly prepared what he had in mind, winning over the people by royal splendour and popular mildness, and obtaining accomplices and comrades for his treacherous plans. Fully equipped, he passed to open rebellion against the unsuspecting king.
[ca. 970 B.C.]
He desired, with the king’s permission, to make sacrifice in the ancient, sacred Hebron, the discarded, and consequently discontented, capital of Judah. Messengers who left Jerusalem at the same time as he did, announced throughout Israel Absalom’s approaching succession. Here in Hebron, supported by Jewish tribal chiefs, Absalom unfurled the standard of rebellion. Soon a considerable number of the men of Israel rallied round him.
To David, the news of Absalom’s rising was a thunderbolt from a clear sky. It found him unsuspecting and completely unprepared. Not only in Judah but in the remaining portion of Israel, David’s government must have aroused discontent. Beyond his six hundred faithful followers, he seems for the moment to have been able to count on little support in the country west of Jordan. Only the east, which had formerly stood firmly by the house of Saul, appears also to have remained true to him. Even in his strong capital he did not feel himself safe for an instant from a sudden attack of Absalom, and decided to leave it.
Even now, reduced to the sorest straits ever experienced in his stirring life, the trust in God, the courage and wisdom which had so often sustained him, did not forsake David. Leaving his harem behind in the palace, he flees across the Kidron to Jordan. His bodyguard, his household, and what remains to him, accompanies his flight, including the priests Zadok and Abiathar with the Ark of God. David bids them return to Jerusalem; he cherishes the hope that Jehovah will not forsake his city. Moreover, the priests will be able secretly to inform him through their sons Jonathan and Ahimaaz of what is passing in the city. With the same object he sends back the faithful Hushai, commissioning him to appear as a partisan of Absalom and to frustrate the counsels of the crafty Ahitophel, who has gone over to Absalom.
David was now soon to learn that Absalom’s appeal to Israel had also found a willing ear in Saul’s house and tribe. He was still at the Mount of Olives when Meribaal’s steward, Ziba, met him with the message that his master had joined Absalom in the hope of recovering the throne of his grandfather. Soon afterwards in Bahurin a notable Benjamite, Shimei, comes upon him. He receives him with fierce reproaches, which betray plainly enough how fresh was the hold retained over many irreconcilables by the memory of Saul and his house’s bloody fall, though of this David was guiltless.
Absalom took possession of the empty capital. He showed the people that he had entered upon the succession to David, by appropriating to himself the latter’s harem. If Absalom meant to secure his throne, David must first be removed. Now, before he had collected an army, this would be an easy matter, since Absalom had already considerable force. This, in view of the present state of things, was the counsel of Ahitophel. But Absalom’s destiny willed it that he should not follow this advice. It flattered the vanity of the king’s son to let one of David’s former adherents also speak. Hushai’s stratagem succeeded in befooling the deluded man, and his fate was sealed. He worked on Absalom’s dread of David’s brave and daring host, and induced him to wait till he should have collected round him the forces of all Israel. At the same time he informed David, through the priests, of what he had counselled.
David was now master of the situation, and his decision was immediately taken. He crossed the Jordan, went to Eshbaal’s (Ishbosheth) former capital, Mahanaim, and employed the time allowed him in gathering an army.
Meanwhile Absalom had also crossed the Jordan. In the country east of that river a battle could not be avoided. David’s army marched in three bodies, led by Joab, Abishai, and the Gittite Ittai. Absalom’s commander was David’s nephew Amasa, who was the son of an Ishmaelite Ithra and David’s sister Abigail. David himself, on the earnest entreaty of his people, remained behind in Mahanaim. In the wood of Ephraim—which must have been the name of a wooded district east of Jordan—the decisive struggle took place. Absalom’s host, though far more numerous, for they stand to the narrator for “all Israel,” made no stand before David’s men. In the hurry of the flight Absalom is caught by his long waving hair in the branches of a terebinth. The mule gallops on. Swinging thus between heaven and earth, he is found by a common soldier who informs Joab of what he has seen. That savage warrior knows no mercy. Even David’s special injunction which had restrained the soldier meets with no regard from him. He rates the man’s weakness and himself thrusts three darts into Absalom’s body. Immediately afterwards he causes trumpet-calls to announce the end of the pursuit. Absalom’s body is thrown into a pit and covered with stones.
David, seated at the gate of Mahanaim, awaits the issue. The watchman perceives a man running up from the battle-field, then a second: in the first he recognises Zadok’s son, Ahimaaz, who had already done good messenger work in Jerusalem. Outrunning Joab’s messenger, he brings tidings of David’s victory. The father’s heart thinks only of Absalom. Asked concerning him, Ahimaaz evades the question. Meantime the other runner has come up and tells bluntly what has happened. The king trembles. Deeply moved, he mounts into the upper chamber of the gate-house, breaking out into loud lamentations over his son. He remained there a long time in his sorrow, not even heeding the victorious army which had meantime marched up. Joab’s anger at this treatment of his brave and faithful troops was not small. It was only his vigorous words which succeeded in inducing the king to rouse himself and master his sorrow.
As was to be expected, the people’s conscience revived after the sword had spoken. The revolted tribes, mindful of Israel’s debt of gratitude to David, and, perhaps, in obedience to the ancient grudge against Judah, once more turned penitently to David. Only Judah still stood defiantly apart. It is distinctly apparent that David’s own tribe had been the home of the conspiracy. The first thing, as David believed, was to win it over. He entered into negotiation with the elders of the tribe of Judah, and even offered Amasa Joab’s place in the army. Perhaps an ancient cause of Judah’s discontent was by this means removed.
The men of Judah now brought David across the Jordan with much ceremony, the Shimei before mentioned joining them at the head of one thousand Benjamites. David magnanimously pardoned him. Ziba, too, was active in David’s service. Soon the lame Meribaal also appeared to clear himself from Ziba’s accusation. David, not wholly trusting in his innocence, restored to him only half of his possessions. In Gilgal, the rest of the army encountered David’s train. The pre-eminence accorded by David to the stiff-necked men of Judah, breeds very comprehensible ill will. The feud between north and south threatens to break out anew.
Indeed, a portion of the tribe of David could not even now manage to restrain its enmity towards him. Sheba-ben-Bichri of Benjamin once more sounded the call to arms against the king. A considerable section of Israel seems to have again responded to the summons to revolt. But this time Judah remained steadfast and conducted David back to Jerusalem. In accordance with David’s promise, Amasa was to summon the militia of Judah to face the rebels. Joab was not the man to endure patiently a slight which he had not wholly deserved. As Amasa delayed, Joab once more contrived to render himself indispensable to the king. Him, also, David sent out to battle against Sheba with the bodyguard. At Gibeon they came upon Amasa. Like Abner before him, he fell by Joab’s hand.
The rebels had gone north. Joab pursued and drove them to the uttermost borders of the Israelite territory. In Abel-beth-maacha, near Dan and the sources of Jordan, Sheba succeeded in making a stand. Joab prepared to storm the town. Then, in response to his demand, the rebel’s head was thrown to him over the wall. Joab departed, and spared the faithful city.
With this, David’s control over the course of events comes to an end. What followed was scarcely of his doing. For a quiet and undisturbed period David may still have held the reins in Israel; then we find him as a worn-out old man, scarcely master of his own will, and in the hands of a court and harem not too nice in their aims and methods. As far as history is concerned, David had disappeared from the scene.
The Pillar of Absalom
The outline of David’s character stands more clearly in the light of history than that of Saul. Israel’s greatness and Jehovah’s honour are David’s first precepts, and this fact also secured for him the gratitude of Israel and the love and respect of posterity for all time. Nor could they be obscured by the truly gigantic shadow of the man of violence. David towers head and shoulders above the average human ruler. He also stands out prominently beyond both the kings of Israel who followed him and his predecessor Saul, in respect of grandeur, magnanimity, wisdom, tenacity, strength, and skill in victory as in rule. Even in the extravagance of his personal and despotic passions there are few who come up to him.
But even in his weaknesses David’s greatness of soul always reappears in its original beauty. David’s despotic whim seduced Bathsheba and basely murdered Uriah—but bowed, in righteous sense of guilt and unfeigned repentance, to the judgment of the people and the uncompromising sentence of Jehovah’s prophet. David’s paternal weakness was responsible for Amnon’s crime and Absalom’s rebellion—but the father’s heart did not cease to beat warmly for the son who had sinned so deeply. David’s weakness comes home to us in his noble sorrow over Absalom, and is, in our eyes, a striking instance of paternal fidelity. David’s magnanimity may seem to have degenerated into want of firmness in regard to Joab—though we have too little insight into the exact course of events to be able to form a conclusive judgment—but as concerns Saul and his house, as well as Shimei and Amasa, it is indisputable. Poetic endowment and religious zeal are so much the characteristics of his nature, that the possibility of David’s having taken an active share in the beginnings of the religious lyric in Israel will scarcely be called in question.[b]
RENAN’S ESTIMATE OF DAVID
David died at the age of about sixty-six years, after a thirty-years’ reign, and in his palace of Zion. He was buried close by, in a tomb hollowed in the rock, at the foot of the hill on which stood the city of David. All this happened about one thousand years before Christ.
A thousand years before Christ. This fact must not be forgotten in seeking to gain an idea of a character so complex as that of David, in endeavouring to form a picture of the singularly defective and violent world which has just unfolded itself before our eyes. It may be said that religion in the true sense was not yet born. The god, Jehovah, who is daily assuming in Israel an importance without parallel, is of a revolting partiality. He brings success to his servants; this is what is supposed to have been observed, and this makes him very strong. There is as yet no instance of a servant of Jehovah, whom Jehovah has abandoned. David’s profession of faith may be summed up in one word: “Jehovah who preserved my life from all danger.” Jehovah is a sure refuge, a rock whence one may defy one’s enemy, a buckler, a saviour. The servant of Jehovah is in all things a privileged being. Oh, it is a wise thing to be a scrupulous servant of Jehovah!
It was above all in this sense that the reign of David was of extreme religious importance. David’s was the first grand success made in the name and by the influence of Jehovah. The success of David, confirmed by the fact that his descendants succeeded him on the throne, was the palpable demonstration of Jehovah’s power. The victories of Jehovah’s servants are the victories of Jehovah himself; the strong god is he who wins. This idea differs little from that of Islam, whose vindication has scarcely any other support than that of success. Islam is true, for God has given it the victory. Jehovah is the true God by proof of experience; he gives the victory to the faithful. A brutal realism saw nothing beyond this triumph of material fact. But what is to happen on the day when the servant of Jehovah shall be poor, dishonoured, persecuted for his fidelity to Jehovah? The element of the grandiose and the extraordinary reserved for that day, may be perceived from the struggle of the Israelite conscience up to the present time.[c]
Tiberias, looking toward Lebanon
