The early history of the Hebrews

by A. H. Sayce

The conduct of David which followed on the message was indefensible. He forgot that he was a king, that he had duties towards his people and those who had risked their lives on his behalf, that the prince who had fallen in open fight had been the murderer of his brother, a rebel against his father, and a would-be parricide. All was forgotten and absorbed in a father’s grief for his dead son. David allowed the passion of his emotion to sweep him away, and he wept as a woman and not as a man. It was an outburst of Oriental exaggeration of feeling, unrestrained and untempered by the reason or the will.

His followers regarded the spectacle with amazement and dismay. Had it been worth their while to fight for such a king? One by one they slunk away, and it seemed as if he would soon be left alone to the company of himself and his harîm. But once more Joab came to the rescue of his old master and companion in arms. It was indeed with the rough speech of the soldier, but plain speech was needed even though it was rough and rude. ‘Thou hast shamed this day,’ he said, ‘the faces of all thy servants, which this day have saved thy life, and the lives of thy sons and of thy daughters, and the lives of thy wives, and the lives of thy concubines; in that thou lovest thine enemies, and hatest thy friends. For thou regardest neither princes nor servants: for this day I perceive, that if Absalom had lived, and all we had died this day, then it had pleased thee well. Now therefore arise, go forth, and speak comfortably unto thy servants: for I swear by the Lord, if thou go not forth, there will not tarry one with thee this night: and that will be worse unto thee than all the evil that befell thee from thy youth until now.’

David was roused from his selfish and unworthy grief; weak and self-indulgent as he had become, the words of Joab nevertheless forced him to recognise the dangers he had provoked. But he never forgave his monitor. He soon found an opportunity of punishing Joab for his loyalty, and his dying orders to his successor were to put his grey-haired servant to death.

Secret word was sent to the priests at Jerusalem that they should shame the elders of Judah into demanding the return of the king, seeing that he was their own tribesman, and that the rest of Israel had already acknowledged his sovereignty. At the same time Amasa was appointed commander-in-chief in place of Joab. David thus revenged himself upon his too outspoken general, and also made a bid for popularity among the Jewish forces who had followed Amasa.

The act was as foolish as it was unjust, and it soon brought its penalty with it. The elders of Judah indeed begged the king to return, and he was led across the Jordan in a sort of triumphal procession by the delegates of that tribe. But the other tribes resented this appropriation of the royal person. It was the Jews rather than the rest of Israel who had revolted and made Absalom their king, while the veterans of Joab who had remained loyal represented the whole nation. For the first time since the death of Esh-Baal, the men of Israel and of Judah stood over against one another with antagonistic interests and angry rivalry; Israel claimed to have ten parts in the king, whereas Judah had but one, and yet David’s action had implied that Judah alone was his rightful heritage. Hardly was he again in Jerusalem before a new and more dangerous revolt broke out against his rule. Sheba, a Benjamite, raised the standard of rebellion, and his cry, ‘We have no part in David,’ found an echo in the hearts of the northern tribes. ‘Every man of Israel,’ we are told, deserted ‘the son of Jesse’; Judah alone adhered to him. But the strong arm and able brain that had so long fought for David were no longer there to help him; Joab had been superseded by Amasa; and the raw levies of Judah who had escaped from the forest of Ephraim were but a poor substitute for the disciplined forces which had created an empire. David at last awoke to the fact that in a moment of weak passion he had done his best to throw away a crown; Abishai was summoned in haste and sent with the bodyguard and ‘Joab’s men’ against the new foe.

It would seem that Sheba’s camp had been at Gibeon, not far to the north of Jerusalem. On the advance of the Jewish army he retreated northward. Joab had accompanied his brother, and at ‘the great stone’ of Gibeon the Jewish forces were overtaken by their new commander-in-chief. Amasa placed himself at the head of them, clad in the robe of office which Joab had worn for so many years. The provocation was great, and the murder of Abner with which Joab had begun his career was repeated in the murder of Amasa at the close of it. Abner, however, had been a general of considerable ability and influence; and Joab had not yet accumulated so many claims upon the gratitude of the king. The army took Joab’s side in the matter: Amasa’s body was thrown into a field with a common cloth above it, and the Jewish soldiers hurried on along the high-road in pursuit of the foe. They would have no other commander but Joab, and his degradation by the king was tacitly set aside.

With Joab once more at their head, the insurrection soon came to an end. Sheba fled to the northern extremity of Israelitish territory and flung himself into the city of Abel of Beth-Maachah.[^[504]] Here he was closely besieged until ‘a wise woman’ persuaded her fellow-citizens to cut off his head and throw it to Joab. The rebellion was over, and Joab returned in triumph to Jerusalem.

The last ten years of David’s life were passed in tranquillity. His bodily and mental powers grew enfeebled, and he sank slowly into the grave. The hardships of his youth and the self-indulgence and polygamy of his later years had weakened his constitution prematurely. While his early companions Joab and Abiathar still retained their vigour, the king became old and worn-out. The intrigues of the harîm, it is true, still continued, but there was no Absalom to steal away the hearts of the people by his beauty and winsomeness of manner; no Amnon to assert in deeds the rights of a crown-prince.

Israel was at peace with her neighbours. Edom and Zobah had been utterly crushed; Moab and Ammon feared to move while Joab was alive. The petty kings of Northern Syria paid intermittently their tribute; Tyre and Sidon courted their powerful neighbour, whose friendship was preferable to his hostility. Egypt was divided against herself; more than one dynasty ruled in the country, and the Tanite sovereigns of the Delta had neither wealth nor men. Like Egypt, Babylonia had fallen into decay, and the defeat of the Assyrian king Assur-irbi by the Aramæans had cut off Assyria from the nations of the West. The Philistines had been compelled to become the servants of David; and the pirate-hordes who had flocked to their aid from Krete and the Ægean now passed into the service of the Israelitish king, or else transferred their attention to other parts of the Mediterranean Sea. According to Greek legend, Thrace, Rhodes, and Phrygia occupied the waters of which they had once been the masters. Phœnician trading-ships could at last sail peaceably across them, and Tyre accordingly, under Abibal and Hiram, became a centre of maritime trade.

In the north, the Hittite empire had long since passed away. Kadesh, on the Orontes, had become the capital of a small district, formidable to no one, and on good terms with its Israelitish neighbours.[^[505]] Hamath, also, was in alliance with the Israelitish king. Among the wadis of the Lebanon, near Damascus, Rezon, indeed, led the life of a bandit-chief, and robbed the caravans which passed his way; but it was not until after David’s death that he succeeded in establishing himself at Damascus, and there founding a dynasty of kings.