The immediate result of the victory was a sudden influx of wealth into the Jewish capital. Not only were the golden shields carried by the bodyguard of Hadad-ezer brought to Jerusalem, to be borne on state occasions by the foreign guards of the conqueror, but immense stores of bronze were found in two of the cities of northern Syria, Tibhath and Berothai.[[492]] It was out of this bronze that the fittings of the temple were afterwards made by Solomon.[[493]]
Another result of the war was an embassy from Toi or Tou of Hamath. The powerful Hebrew prince who had so unexpectedly appeared on the horizon of northern Syria was a neighbour whose goodwill it was necessary to purchase at all costs. The embassy sent by Toi to David was accordingly headed by the Hamathite king’s own son. This was Hadoram, whose name was changed into the corresponding Hebrew Joram. The change of name was a delicate way of acknowledging the supremacy of the God of Israel and the sovereign who worshipped Him, and of declaring that henceforth Hadad of Syria was to become Yahveh of Israel. As the Assyrian kings professed to make war in order that they might spread the name and worship of Assur, so it might be presumed that the campaigns of David were carried on in order to glorify Yahveh, who had given him the victory.[[494]]
The ambassadors brought with them various costly gifts, which Israelitish vanity might, if it chose, interpret as tribute, and which would certainly have been so interpreted by an Egyptian or Assyrian scribe. Vessels of gold, silver, and bronze were laid at the feet of David, and a treaty of alliance formed between him and the ruler of Hamath. That Hadad-ezer had been the common enemy of both was a sufficient pretext both for the embassy and for the alliance. The memory of the alliance lasted down to a late date. Even when Azariah reigned over Judah in the time of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III., Hamath could still look to Jerusalem for help; and in the age of Sargon, Yahu-bihdi, whose name contains that of the national God of Israel, led the people of Hamath to revolt.
All this while the siege of ‘the City of Waters,’ the Rabbah or ‘Capital’ of Ammon, still dragged on. Joab was encamped before it, while David was leading a life of ease and luxury in his palace at Jerusalem. This neglect of his kingly duties finds little favour in the eyes of the Hebrew historian. At the season of the year when David sent Joab and ‘his servants’ to do his work, other ‘kings’ were accustomed to ‘go forth to battle,’ and special emphasis is laid upon the words of Uriah: ‘The ark and Israel and Judah abide in tents; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open fields; shall I then go into mine house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife?’ With a king who had thus delegated his proper work to others, and had already forgotten that the very reason for his existence was that he should lead the people of Yahveh against their enemies, a catastrophe could not be far distant. First came the act of adultery with Bath-sheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, next the treacherous murder of a faithful guardsman and brave officer. Uriah was made to carry to Joab the letter which contained his own death-warrant, as well as that of other servants of David, equally innocent and equally valorous. A special messenger brought the king the news of his death, and Bath-sheba was at once added to the royal harîm. One man only could be found with courage enough to protest against the deed; this was Nathan the prophet, a successor of the Samuel who had placed the crown on David’s head. The king professed his penitence, though he did not offer to put away Bath-sheba, and the death of the child he had had by her was accepted in expiation of his guilt. It was an example of that vicarious punishment, that substitution of ‘the fruit of the body for the sin of the soul,’ a belief in which was as strong among the Canaanites as it was in Babylonia. The second son borne by Bath-sheba received the double name of Jedidiah from Nathan, and Shelomoh or Solomon from his father. Shelomoh, ‘the peaceful,’ was, in fact, the Hebrew equivalent of Salamanu or Solomon, the name of a king of Moab in the days of Tiglath-pileser III.[[495]]
David’s submission gave him a claim upon Nathan which the prophet never forgot. The death of the first-born of Bath-sheba, moreover, seemed to indicate that Yahveh had accepted the sacrifice of the child that had been, as it were, offered for the sin of the father, and that the guilt of the Israelitish monarch had been atoned. Henceforward Nathan took a peculiar interest in the new queen and her offspring. One of the four sons of Bath-sheba was named after him (1 Chron. iii. 5), and it was to him that Solomon owed in part his succession to the throne. It may be that Solomon’s training was intrusted to the prophet; such at any rate may be the significance of the words in 2 Sam. xii. 25.
It was after the birth of Solomon that Rabbah was at length starved into a surrender. Joab, ever jealous of his master’s fame, sent to tell David of the fact, and to bid him come at once and occupy the city lest the glory of its capture should be credited to the general who had besieged it rather than to the king who had remained at home. David accordingly proceeded to the camp, and entered the Ammonite capital at the head of his troops. The crown of gold, inlaid with gems, which had adorned the image of Malcham, the Ammonite god, was placed over the head of his human conqueror; the city itself was sacked, and its population treated with merciless rigour. In the euphemistic language of the historian they were put ‘under saws and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made to pass through the brickkiln.’[[496]]
The war with Ammon was followed by one with Edom. The Amalekites or Bedâwin had already been taught that a strong power had arisen in Palestine, thoroughly able to protect its inhabitants from the raids of the desert robbers (2 Sam. viii. 12); the turn of the Edomites was to come next. David himself seems to have led the Israelitish army,[[497]] and in a decisive battle in a wadi south of the Dead Sea, utterly crushed the forces of Edom.[[498]] Eighteen thousand of the enemy were slain, and all further resistance on the part of disciplined troops was at an end. For six months longer the inhabitants of Mount Seir carried on a guerilla warfare with Joab; they were, however, mercilessly hunted out and massacred, hardly a male being left alive (1 Kings xi. 15). The child Hadad, the son, it may be, of the last Edomite king Hadar, was carried by ‘his father’s servants’ to Egypt, where they found shelter in the court of the Pharaohs, and David took possession of the depopulated country. Its possession opened up for Israel a new era of wealth and commercial prosperity. The high road along which the spices of southern Arabia were carried ran through it, and at its southern extremity were the two ports of Elath and Ezion-geber on the Sea of Suph, which connected Western Asia with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. David now commanded the caravan-trade from the north of Syria to the Gulf of Aqaba; on the one side he was in contact with Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, on the other with Egypt and Arabia. Apart from the trade which passed through Palestine, leaving riches on its way, the tolls levied on merchandise must have brought a goodly income to the royal exchequer. David, indeed, had too much in him of the peasant and the warrior to realise the full extent of his good fortune; it needed a Solomon to perceive all the advantages of his position, to fit out merchant vessels in the Gulf of Aqaba, and to secure a monopoly of the carrying trade. For the present, David was occupied in fortifying the conquests he had made. Aramæans from Ammon and Zobah were drafted into his bodyguard,[[499]] and Edom was so effectively garrisoned as to make revolt impossible for more than a century. A firm hold was kept upon the kinglets of the small Aramæan states to the north who had formerly owned Hadad-ezer as their suzerain; the king of Geshur was already connected by marriage with the royal house of Israel. A new and formidable power had grown up at the entrance to Egypt, effectually cutting off the monarchy of the Nile from Western Asia, and the commander-in-chief of the Israelitish army had proved himself the ablest and most irresistible general of his time.
David appeared to be securely fixed not only on the throne of Israel, but also on that of an Israelitish empire. But his power after all was wanting in stability. It depended in great measure upon Joab; Joab alone commanded the confidence of the veteran soldiery, and was dreaded by the foreign foe.[[500]] Moreover, there was as yet but little real adhesion between the Israelitish tribes. Ephraim could not forget its old position of pre-eminence, or cease to resent the domination of the new-born and half-foreign tribe of Judah. The blood-tax demanded by the wars of David added to the discontent. The wars were wars of aggression rather than of defence, and were to the advantage of a Jewish dynasty, not of the people as a whole. Military service became as unpopular in Israel as it has been of recent years in Egypt: when David proposed to number his subjects and thereby ascertain what fighting force he possessed, Joab vainly endeavoured to dissuade him from his intention, and the people subsequently saw in the plague that followed the punishment of a royal crime. The bodyguard of Philistines and Kretans, with its officers of various nationalities and creeds, protected the person of the king and prevented any open signs of disaffection; but discontent smouldered beneath the surface, ready to break into flame whenever a favourable opportunity occurred. The Israelites had too recently submitted themselves to the rule of a single sovereign to be as yet amenable to discipline, or to have lost the democratic instincts of the armed peasant and his guerilla methods of carrying on war.
There was yet another, and a still more potent cause for the instability of David’s throne. This was to be found in the royal family itself. Polygamy has been the fatal cancer which has eaten away the strength and prosperity of the most powerful dynasties of the Oriental world; and the history of the Israelitish empire proved no exception to the rule. David had none of the stern and ascetic fanaticism which distinguished Saul; he enjoyed life to the fullest, and when success came, policy alone set bounds to his enjoyment of it. Self-indulgent as most other Oriental despots, he multiplied to himself wives and children, not shrinking even from the murder of the trustiest of his followers in his determination to add yet another beauty to his well-stocked harîm. Polygamy brought with it its usual curse. In the dull and idle seclusion of the palace, the wives of the king quarrelled one with another for his favour and love, and the quarrel of the mother was adopted by her children. Maachah, the daughter of the king of Geshur, claimed precedence for herself and her son Absalom in virtue of their royal blood; Amnon, as the first-born of his father, regarded himself as rightful heir to the throne, and as therefore placed above the ordinary laws of men; while Bath-sheba, whose unscrupulous ambition had betrayed a husband to destruction, never ceased intriguing in the interests of Solomon whom she had destined from the outset for the crown.
The latter years of David’s life were clouded with the crimes and rebellions of his family. Amnon outraged his half-sister Tamar, and was murdered by her brother Absalom, and Absalom, his father’s favourite, fled to Talmai, king of Geshur. Thanks to Joab, the blood-feud was eventually appeased, and after an exile of three years Absalom was allowed to return to Jerusalem. Two years later, David consented to forget the past. Absalom was again received at court, and his beauty and grace of manner resumed their former sway over the hearts of both king and people.