At home, however, though outwardly all seemed calm, the seeds of disunion and discontent were lying thick below the surface. The rebellion of Absalom in Judah, of Sheba in Northern Israel, had shown how fragile were the bonds of union that bound the tribes to one another and to their king. The affections of Judah were not yet entwined around the house of David; the feeling that they were a single nation had not yet penetrated very deeply into the hearts of the other tribes. The Davidic dynasty itself was not yet secure. It depended for its support rather on the sword than on the loyalty of the people. The fallen dynasty still had its followers and secret supporters, and now and then an event occurred which showed how dangerous they might become. Shimei the Benjamite doubtless represented the feeling of his tribe when he cursed David in the hour of his humiliation; and David’s conduct after his restoration to the throne shows that he could not trust even Merib-Baal or Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, whom he had treated as his own son.[[506]] An incident which had happened in an earlier part of his reign is another proof of his readiness to root out as far as possible the family of Saul. Three years in succession Palestine had suffered from want of rain and consequent famine, and the oracle of Yahveh declared that the cause of the visitation was Saul’s slaughter of the Gibeonites. The massacre of the priests at Nob had indeed been avenged by the death of the Israelitish king and his sons, and by the fall of his throne, but other temple-servants besides the priests had suffered from Saul’s outburst of mad anger, and their blood was still crying out for revenge. Blood demanded blood, and the sacrifice of Saul’s descendants could alone atone for the guilt of their forefather.
Mephibosheth was spared, partly because of his father Jonathan’s friendship towards David, whose life he had once saved, partly because little was to be feared from a lame man. But the five sons of Michal (?) by Adriel of Meholah were handed over to the executioner.[[507]] They stood too near the throne; apart from Mephibosheth they were, in fact, the only direct descendants of the late king, and David was doubtless glad of the opportunity of removing them from his path. His dying injunctions to Solomon proved how merciless he could be when the safety of his dynasty was at stake.
Two other descendants of Saul still remained, who might possibly be a source of trouble. These were the sons of his concubine Rizpah, and they also were condemned to die. The sacred number of seven victims was thus made up, and David satisfied at once the religious scruples of the Gibeonites and the political exigencies of his own position. Shimei had some reason for calling him a ‘man of blood’ who had shed ‘the blood of the house of Saul.’
The human victims were hanged on the sacred hill of Gibeah ‘before the Lord,’ and none was allowed to take the bodies down until at last the rain fell. Then they were buried solemnly in the ancestral tomb of Saul’s family at Zelah, along with the ashes of Saul and Jonathan, which David had brought from Jabesh-gilead. The great atonement had been made and accepted by Yahveh, and at the same time David had cleared himself from all charges of impiety towards the dead. The fallen dynasty had ceased to be formidable.
Hence it was that when the northern tribes under Sheba broke away from the house of David, they could find no representative of the family of Saul to lead them. Sheba, it is true, was a Benjamite, but he came from Mount Ephraim, and was not related to Saul. He was rather one of those military generals who in after days played so large a part in the history of the northern kingdom in dethroning and founding dynasties.
Nevertheless, the yoke of the royal supremacy was borne with impatience. In spite of the support of the priesthood and the swords of Joab and the foreign bodyguard, David’s reign was troubled by rebellion. As long, indeed, as it was signalised by victories over a foreign foe, by the conquest of neighbouring states, by the influx of captive slaves and the acquisition of spoil, his subjects were well content with their successful leader in war. His influence over those who were brought into personal contact with him had always been great, and there were few who could resist his charm of manner. But when the era of conquests was past, when David had delegated his military duties to others, and had retired more and more into the privacy of an Oriental palace, the seeds of discontent began to grow and spread. Even in Judah there were complaints that justice was neglected (2 Sam. xiv. 2-6); further off the complaints must have been loud and deep. The unpopularity of the conscription by which the ranks of the army were filled was patent even to Joab (2 Sam. xxiv. 3), and the census on which it depended was regarded as hateful to God as well as to man.
Even David himself half repented of his determination to number the people (2 Sam. xxiv. 10), and the general feeling was expressed by the seer Gad when he declared that the punishment of heaven would be visited for the deed, not indeed upon the guilty king, but upon his innocent subjects (2 Sam. xxiv. 13, 17). In the plague that devastated Palestine they saw the anger of Yahveh, and the conscience-stricken king at once assented to the common view.
The cessation of the plague was connected with the foundation of the temple. At the very spot where David had seen the angel of death standing with his sword unsheathed, the altar was built and the sacrifice offered which appeased the wrath of the Lord. It was the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, on the level summit of Mount Moriah, where the old Jebusite population of Jerusalem still dwelt. It may even be that Araunah was the last Jebusite king whose life and freedom were spared when Jerusalem was surrendered to David.[[508]]
The threshing-floor was bought by David, and became the great ‘high-place’ of the new capital of the kingdom. Everything marked it out as the site of that temple which in the Eastern world was a necessary supplement of the royal palace. It was the highest part of the city; it was, moreover, a smooth and sunny rock, and the place which it occupied was open and unconfined. It had been the scene of a special revelation of Yahveh to the king, and the altar erected on it had been the means of preserving the people of Israel from death. It is possible, too, that the spot was already sacred. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets, Ebed-Tob, king of Jerusalem, speaks of the Temple of Nin-ip as standing on ‘the mountain of Uru-salim,’ and of all the mountains of Jerusalem the future temple-mount was the most prominent and commanding.
We do not know when the pestilence occurred which thus had such momentous consequences for the later religion of Judah. The empire of David already extended as far as ‘Kadesh of the Hittites,’[[509]] but Edom does not as yet seem to have become a province of Israel. The census was taken in order to ascertain the number of fighting men in Israel, not with a view to the levying of taxes. In the latter case the conquered provinces would have been included in the registration. We may gather, therefore, that the event happened about the middle of David’s reign, probably at the time when the struggle with Zobah was still going on.