In character he was generous and kind-hearted, though in his later years his kindheartedness degenerated into weakness. He was, moreover, brave and skilful, with a personal charm of manner and readiness of speech which those about him found it impossible to withstand. Alone of his sons, Absalom seems to have inherited these gifts of his father, which may perhaps account for the blind love David had for him. But along with these gifts went a rich fund of Oriental selfishness, which made him never lose an opportunity of securing his own advantage or promotion. It was a selfishness so deep as to be wholly unconscious; whatever made for his interests was necessarily right. It was combined with clearness of head and definiteness of aim, which ensured success in whatever he undertook. A good judge of men, he first attached them to himself by his gifts of manner, and then knew how to trust and employ them.
With the strong and healthy mind of the peasant there was, however, combined a depth of passionate emotion which doubtless had much to do with the influence he possessed over others. David was a man of strong impulses, and we cannot understand his character unless we remember the fact. The impulses, it is true, were controlled and regulated by the cool judgment and politic self-restraint which distinguished more especially his earlier life; but they swayed him to the end, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil. Above all, he was a religious man, deeply attached to the faith into which he had been born, full of trust in priests and prophets and oracles, and convinced that Yahveh would protect and befriend him as long as he obeyed the divine law. But there was neither asceticism nor fanaticism in his religion; it was the firm faith and religious conviction of a healthy mind.
David was not cruel by nature; if he showed himself merciless at times, it was either for reasons of policy, or because the action was in accordance with the public opinion of the age. The Assyrian kings gloat over the barbarities they practised towards their conquered enemies, and the Hebrew Semite similarly prayed that Yahveh might dip His foot in the blood of His foes. David might indeed be a man of blood, but by the side of the rulers of Nineveh he was mercy itself; and the very fact that the blood he had shed prevented him from building a temple to his God shows how different the conception of Yahveh must have been from that which prevailed among the neighbouring nations of their own deities.
Such, then, was David’s character, with all its apparent anomalies. Brave and active, clear-headed and politic, generous and kind-hearted, he was at the same time selfish and impulsive, at times unforgiving and merciless. He had nevertheless a genuine and fervid trust in Yahveh, and a fixed belief that Yahveh demanded an upright life and ‘clean hands.’ Up to the last he remained at heart the Oriental peasant, who takes a healthy view of life, whose shrewdness is crossed and chequered by the impulses of the moment, and whose religion is deep and unquestioning. But, like the peasant, he failed to be proof against success and prosperity. The bold and hardy warrior degenerated into the self-indulgent and even sensual despot. It is true that he repented of the crimes to which his self-indulgence had led, and which to most other Oriental despots would have soon become a second nature; the self-indulgence, however, remained, and a weak will and infirmity of purpose marred the latter years of his life.
Future generations saw in him the ‘sweet psalmist of Israel.’ As far back as we can trace it, tradition averred that a large part of the psalter owed its origin to him. It has been left for the nineteenth century to be wiser than the past, and to deny to David the authorship of even a single psalm. But there are some of them which seem to bear their Davidic authorship on their face,[[518]] and if there are many which belong to a later date, while others are pieced together from earlier fragments,[[519]] this is only what we should expect when once the nucleus of a collection had been formed, and the psalms embodied in it employed liturgically. Assyrian discovery has shown that penitential psalms, similar in spirit and form to those of David, had been composed in Babylonia centuries before his time, and there collected together for liturgical purposes.[[520]] In Egypt, what we should call ‘Messianic psalms’ had been written before the age of the Exodus.[[521]] There is, therefore, no reason why a part of the Hebrew psalter should not belong to the Davidic period, and be the work of David himself. There is nothing in it inconsistent with the character of David or the ideas of his time. It is only the false theory of ‘the development of Hebrew religion’ which finds in it the religious conceptions of a later era. Those indeed who maintain that in the age of David the law of Moses was as yet unknown, and that faith in Yahveh was hardly to be distinguished from that in Baal or Chemosh, may be compelled to deny that any of the psalms, with their high spiritual level, can belong to the king who was ‘after God’s own heart’; but history cannot take note of theories which are built upon assumptions and not facts. Even in the northern kingdom of Israel, where the memory of the founder of the Davidic dynasty was naturally held in little esteem, tradition was obliged to confess that he had been the inventor of ‘instruments of music’ (Am. vi. 5).
The exact date of David’s death is doubtful. The chronology of the books of Kings, so long the despair of chronologists, has at length been corrected by the synchronisms that have been established between the history of Israel and Judah and that of Assyria. Thanks to the so-called Lists of Eponyms or Officers from whom the years of the state calendar took their name, we now possess an exact chronology of Assyria from B.C. 911. In B.C. 854 Ahab took part in the battle of Qarqar, which was fought by the princes of the west against their Assyrian invaders, and his death, therefore, could not have happened till after that date. In B.C. 842 Jehu offered homage to the Assyrian monarch, and Hazael of Damascus was defeated in a battle on Mount Shenir. Four years previously the Syrian opponent of the Assyrians was Hadad-idri or Ben-Hadad. Lastly, Menahem of Israel paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser III. in B.C. 738, Pekah and Rezin were overthrown in B.C. 734, and Damascus was taken and destroyed by the Assyrian king in B.C. 732. It is only after the capture of Samaria by Sargon in B.C. 722, when the kingdom of Judah stands alone, that the Biblical dates harmonise with the Assyrian evidence, or indeed with one another. It is evident, therefore, that the Biblical chronology is more than forty years in excess. Ahab, instead of dying in B.C. 898, as Archbishop Usher’s chronology makes him do, cannot have died till some forty-five years later. We have no means of checking the earlier chronology of the divided kingdom, but assuming its correctness, the revolt of the Ten Tribes would have taken place about B.C. 930.
Solomon, like Saul, is said to have reigned forty years. But this merely means that the precise length of his reign was unknown to the compiler. It could not have exceeded thirty years. Hadoram, who was ‘over the tribute’ in the latter part of David’s life (2 Sam. xx. 24), still occupied the same office in the first year of Rehoboam’s reign (1 Kings xii. 18), and Rezon, who had fled from Zobah when David conquered the country, was ‘an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon’ (1 Kings xi. 24, 25). No clue is given by the statement of Rehoboam’s age in 1 Kings xiv. 21, since when it is said that he was ‘forty and one years’ at the time of his accession this is merely equivalent to ‘x + 1.’
The length of David’s reign is more accurately fixed. Seven years and a half did he reign in Hebron, and thirty-three years over Israel and Judah (2 Sam. iv. 5), or forty and a half years in all. Approximately, therefore, we may date his reign from B.C. 1000 to 960. Saul’s accession may have been ten or fifteen years earlier.
David’s palace at Jerusalem, it is stated in 2 Sam. v. 11, was built by the artisans of Hiram of Tyre, who also furnished him with cedar wood. The fragment of Tyrian annals quoted by Josephus from Menander[[522]] throws some light on the chronology of the time. Hiram, we are told, was the son of Abibal, and the names of his successors are recorded one after the other, together with the length of their reigns. But unfortunately the sum of the reigns does not agree with their total as twice given by Josephus, nor indeed are our authorities agreed among themselves in regard to the length of certain of them. The fact, however, that Josephus twice gives the same total raises a presumption in its favour, more especially when we find that it is possible by a little manipulation to make the sum of the several reigns harmonise with it.[[523]] This total is one hundred and forty-three years and eight months, which, it is said, elapsed from the building of Solomon’s temple in the twelfth year of Hiram down to the foundation of Carthage in the seventh year of Pygmalion. But the date of the foundation of Carthage is itself not a wholly certain quantity, though B.C. 826 is probably that which was assigned to it by the native historians.[[524]] A hundred and forty-three years and eight months reckoned back from 826 would bring us to B.C. 969 or 970. As the temple was begun in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign (1 Kings vi. 1), this would give B.C. 973 for the accession of Solomon, and B.C. 1013 for that of David. The palace constructed for David at Jerusalem by the workmen of Hiram must have been erected at the very end of David’s life, after the suppression of the revolt of Absalom, unless, indeed, the author of the books of Samuel has mistaken the name of the Tyrian king, and written Hiram instead of Abibal.
There is yet another synchronism between Hebrew and profane history which must not be overlooked. Jerusalem was captured in the fifth year of Rehoboam by Shishak I., the founder of the twenty-second Egyptian dynasty. But Egyptian chronology is more disputable even than that of Israel, and we do not know in what year of the Pharaoh’s reign the invasion of Palestine took place. Boeckh, on the authority of Manetho, places the commencement of his reign in B.C. 934; Unger, on the same authority, in B.C. 930; while Lepsius pushes it back to B.C. 961.