The early history of the Hebrews

by A. H. Sayce

It was not as a bodyguard, however, that Achish needed the Jews. It was rather as an auxiliary force in future contests with their countrymen. Consequently they were allowed to settle in the country, at some distance from Gath, and Ziklag was given them as a residence. The outlaws had ceased to be brigands, and had become part of the regular army of a foreign prince.

For a year and four months the Hebrew corps dwelt at Ziklag. But they were not idle all the time. Once David led them on a raiding expedition against the Bedâwin Amalekites of the south. Men, women, and children were alike put to the sword, so that none might live to tell the tale. When the Jews returned with their booty, David professed to Achish that the raid had been directed against the Hebrews of Judah and their allies the Kenites and Jerahmeelites. The deception was successful, and the Philistine king rejoiced in the thought that the captain of his mercenaries had thus for ever rendered himself hateful to his countrymen. David had succeeded in disarming the suspicions of his hosts, in providing his retainers with the spoil they coveted, and yet at the same time in not alienating from himself the affections of his own people.

But a further trial was in store for the wily exile. The quarrel between Saul and his son-in-law had allowed the Philistines to assert once more their old supremacy in Israel. In David the Israelites had lost one of their chiefest generals, and the troops which should have been employed against the common foe were occupied in hunting him through the wilds of the Judæan mountains. The watchful enemy took speedy advantage of the fact. Israel was again invaded; the Philistines swept the lowlands of Judah, and prepared to march northward. Saul returned from his pursuit of David among the trackless rocks on the shore of the Dead Sea only just in time to prevent their penetrating again into the heart of Mount Ephraim. The territory of Benjamin was saved for a time, and the foreigner did not succeed in reaching the royal residence at Gibeah.

But the respite was not for long. A year and a quarter later the united forces of the Philistine cities marched northward, along the highroad on the coast of the Mediterranean, which had been trodden so often by the former conquerors of Western Asia. They passed Dor, the modern Tantûra, then occupied by their kinsfolk the Zakkal, and, turning the point of Mount Carmel, proceeded eastward through the valley of the Kishon towards the plain of Megiddo. It was the old fighting ground of Palestine; its possession gave the conqueror the command of the whole country west of the Jordan, and cut off the Israelitish king in his rear. With the enemy established at Megiddo, Benjamin and Ephraim would be effectually severed from the northern tribes.

Saul lost no time in proceeding against his foe. The Philistine camp had been pitched, first at Shunem, then at Aphek, on the southern slope of Mount Gilboa;[^[446]] the Israelites now took up their station at a fountain near Jezreel, a few miles to the north-west. But the sight of the huge Philistine army, recruited, doubtless, as it had been by the Zakkal, filled Saul with despair. His own forces were miserably insufficient to meet it; he had lost his old confidence in Yahveh and himself, and the priests and prophets had become his enemies. In vain he sought counsel of Yahveh; such priests as still remained near him refused their help, and ‘Yahveh answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.’ Abiathar and Gad were with David; the prophets who had gathered round Samuel were now the bitter foes of the Israelitish king.

In his despair he turned to the powers of witchcraft and necromancy. In younger and happier days, before the massacre at Nob, when he was still the favourite of the servants of Yahveh, still enthusiastic for the religion of Israel, Saul had driven from his dominions all those who professed to traffic with the powers of the unseen world. The wizards and fortune-tellers, the enchanters and the possessed had been expelled from the land. The fact is a proof of the influence of the Mosaic code and religion in the priestly and royal circle.[^[447]] Elsewhere in Western Asia the necromancers’ trade was flourishing; Babylonia, which was the home of the culture of Western Asia, was the home also of the arts of magic. Here the magician was held in high honour, and the literature of magic and omens occupied a large place in the libraries of the country. We cannot suppose that beliefs which were held by the most cultivated classes of Babylonia were not also shared by the mass of the population in Canaan and Israel. And it must be remembered that outside the Levitical law there was no suspicion or idea that those who practised magic had dealings with spirits of evil. Heathendom drew no distinction between spirits of good and spirits of evil; the gods themselves were destructive as well as beneficent. The Mosaic condemnation of witchcraft was utterly opposed to the popular belief, and Saul’s expulsion of those who practised it proves not only the existence of the Law, but also its recognition as the law of the state by the representatives of the religion of Yahveh. It was a reform analogous to those of Hezekiah and of Isaiah in later days; an attempt to conform to the Law of Yahveh, contrary though it was to the prejudices and the practices of the time.

But the king was now forsaken by the Law and its ministers, and as a last resource he turned to the forbidden arts. In disguise he went by night to a witch at Endor, and begged her to raise the shade of Samuel from the dead. And Samuel came in visible presence to the witch, though his voice only was heard by the king. But it was a voice that pronounced judgment. God had indeed departed from Saul and given his kingdom to another, and the doom was about to be fulfilled. Before the morrow’s sun was set, where Samuel was there should Saul and his sons be also, and the host of Israel should be delivered into the hand of the Philistines. Saul fell to the earth in a swoon; he had fasted all the previous day, and brain and body were alike worn out.

It was an ill-omened beginning for the day of battle which followed. Like the army of Israel, that of the Philistines was divided into companies of a thousand men each, which were further subdivided into companies of a hundred. Along with the native Philistines and their allies, the band of Hebrew mercenaries marched past the five generals. But hardly had they passed when a discussion arose as to their trustworthiness. Achish, indeed, declared his full confidence in the fidelity of David and his followers, but the other Philistine ‘lords’ distrusted them. The risk of employing them against their own countrymen was too great. How could they be trusted not to desert at a critical moment of the battle, and so make their peace with Saul by the sacrifice of the uncircumcised foreigner? The wishes of Achish were overruled, and David was sent back to Ziklag.

What would David have done had the result of the council been otherwise? It has generally been assumed that the fears of the Philistine lords were justified, and that he would have betrayed his new masters by going over to his old one. But in that case it is probable that he would have found some excuse for not leaving Ziklag and accompanying Achish on his march. That he followed the Philistine army as far as the field of battle implies that in selling his services to the king of Gath, he accepted all the recognised consequences of the act. As he had told Saul, it was not only from his country that he was driven out, but from the God of his country as well. In leaving Judah for Gath he had transferred his duties from Israel to Philistia, from Saul to Achish, from Yahveh to Dagon. It was the first step that mattered: all else was contained in it. The duties of the mercenary were well understood: he ceased to have a country of his own, and became, as it were, the property of the prince to whom his services were given. In after days, David would have had no scruple in employing his Philistine bodyguard in subjugating their kinsmen, any more than the Egyptians had in employing their Sardinian or Libyan mercenaries in their wars against Libya and the peoples of the Greek seas.

David, indeed, would not have lifted up his hand personally to attack ‘the anointed of Yahveh.’ But there was a good deal of difference between a hand-to-hand fight between himself and Saul and assisting his new masters in overthrowing the power of the northern tribes of Israel. Between the Jews and these northern tribes there was always a certain amount of smothered hostility, which broke out into actual war in the early part of David’s reign, and eventually led to the revolt of the Ten Tribes. It was not the Israelitish king, but the Israelitish kingdom which David and his followers were helping to destroy.