David, however, was too practical to spend his time in useless laments. He had relieved his feelings in a burst of lyric poetry; it was now time to seize the opportunity which the overthrow and death of Saul had given him. The oracle of Yahveh was consulted, and the answer was favourable; let David march to Hebron and there offer himself as king of Judah. The way had already been prepared: he had secured the good-will of the Jewish elders; he was the son-in-law of the late king, and a hero of whom his tribesmen were proud. Above all, he had behind him a body of armed veterans and devoted adherents, the only armed force now left in the country.
Hebron was the natural capital of Judah. It is true it had been a Calebite settlement, but Calebites and Jews were now one. Its ancient sanctuary had been a gathering-place for the population of the south from time immemorial, and there was no other city which could rival its claims to pre-eminence. Here, therefore, the representatives of Judah assembled, and here they anointed David to be their king. The goal of so many years of struggle and hardship, of patient waiting and politic tact, was at length reached. David was king of Judah; it could not be long before he became king of Israel also.
The Philistines offered no difficulties. David was their vassal; he had shown himself loyal to them, and they were well content that he should rule over his countrymen, and collect the tribute due from them year by year. The territory of Judah, moreover, was small; it adjoined the cities of the Philistines, and in case of revolt could easily be overrun and reduced to subjection. That a rival prince should reign in the north, thus separating the northern tribes from Judah and putting an end to all joint action, was a further guarantee for Philistine supremacy. The old Egyptian province of Canaan had become Palestine, the land of the Philistines.
For seven and a half years David reigned in Hebron. Meanwhile, the relics of the Israelitish army had found a refuge on the eastern side of the Jordan. Here, under their old commander-in-chief Abner, the son of Ner, they once more formed themselves into a disciplined body, and made Esh-Baal, the surviving son of Saul, their king.[[455]] Esh-Baal, we are told, reigned two years. His position was a difficult one. His rule was titular only; all the real power of the State was in the hands of his uncle Abner. Judah refused to acknowledge his authority, and had raised itself into a separate kingdom under a rebel chief; the northern tribes on the west side of the Jordan were in subjection to the heathen conqueror who held possession of the highroad from Asia into Egypt, and therewith of the trade and wealth that passed along it. Cut off from Mount Ephraim, the subjects of Esh-Baal saw David, the Jewish vassal of the Philistines, extending his sway over Benjamin, the ancestral territory of the house of Saul, while they themselves maintained a precarious struggle against their foes behind the fortified walls of Mahanaim. Here they would have been under the protection of the Ammonites, who were threatened by the same enemy as themselves.[[456]]
The Philistines found the task of forcing the fords of the Jordan too dangerous or too unprofitable. Terms were made with the Israelites; Esh-Baal became their vassal, and his nominal rule was allowed to extend over Western Israel as far south as the frontiers of Judah. Here the two vassal kingdoms came into collision with one another, and Israel and Judah were engaged in perpetual war. It was a repetition of what had been the state of Canaan in the closing days of the Egyptian empire when the Tel el-Amarna letters passed to and fro.
Esh-Baal was merely the shadow of a king. Whether he was a minor or an imbecile it is impossible to say with certainty; most probably he was but a child.[[457]] Abner, the master of the army, was also the real master of the kingdom. David’s rise to power must have been as distasteful to him as it would have been to Saul, and he seized the first opportunity of endeavouring to overthrow it. The brigand-chief had become a king, and the outlaws who had gathered round him in the cave of Adullam had been rewarded with posts of honour. Joab, the nephew of David,[[458]] was made the commander-in-chief of the Jewish army, and the choice was justified by the results. David owed most of his future successes in war to the military skill and generalship of his commander-in-chief. He himself ceased more and more to take part in active warfare; Joab more than supplied his place, and the safety of the king was too important to the army and its general to allow of his risking his person in battle. David ruled at home while Joab gained victories for him in the field.
Joab proved a faithful and a loyal servant. No suspicion was ever breathed against him that he sought to steal the hearts of his soldiers away from their master, and to supplant David as David had supplanted Saul. In the evil days of rebellion and disaster that were to overtake David, Joab never deserted him, and his restoration to the throne was the work of his faithful general. The services, however, rendered by Joab had their drawback. He became indispensable to the king; nay more, he became the master of the king. As David grew old, he began to fret under the irksome yoke; gratitude and self-interest alike forbade him to remove his too powerful servant by those Oriental means which had given him a wife, and up to the day of his death Joab’s power was checked only by the influence or the intrigues of Bath-sheba.
Even in the early days when David still reigned at Hebron, there was ill-feeling between the uncle and the nephew. The masterful nature of Joab had asserted itself, and David was made to feel that his throne depended on ‘the sons of Zeruiah.’ War had broken out between Esh-Baal and David. The Jews, it would seem, had advanced northward into the territory of Benjamin, where they were met at Gibeon by the Israelite forces under Abner from Mahanaim. A fierce battle ensued which ended in the defeat of the Israelite troops. Abner fled across the Jordan, the north of Israel being in the hands of the Philistines, and the authority of David was acknowledged as far as Mount Ephraim. The Benjamites were forced to transfer their allegiance from the house of Saul to that of Jesse. Nineteen Jews only had fallen in the fight, while 360 of the enemy were left dead on the field of battle. But among the Jews was Asahel, the younger brother of Joab, who had been slain by Abner during his flight. It was the beginning of a blood-feud which could be extinguished only by Abner’s death.
Abner’s military genius was no match for that of Joab, and the long war which followed between David and Esh-Baal saw the power of the Jewish king steadily increase. David began to assume the manners and privileges of an Oriental despot, to multiply his wives, and to marry into the families of the neighbouring kinglets. Four more wives were added to his harîm, one of whom was the daughter of Talmai, the Aramaitish king of Geshur. The alliance with Talmai had a political object; Geshur lay on the northern frontier of Esh-Baal’s kingdom, and in Esh-Baal, therefore, David and Talmai had a common enemy.[[459]] Absalom was the offspring of the marriage with the Aramaitish princess.[[460]]
Enclosed between Geshur and Judah, with Benjamin lost and the north of Israel garrisoned by the Philistines, the dynasty of Saul grew continually weaker. The Ammonites made common cause with David (2 Sam. xi. 2), and in the neighbouring Aramæans found further allies. Abner was not slow in perceiving that his fortunes were linked with those of a lost cause, and he determined to betray his nephew and his master. A pretext was quickly found; he entered the royal harîm and spent a night with Rizpah, the concubine of Saul. The act was equivalent to claiming the throne, and Esh-Baal naturally ventured to protest. The protest gave Abner the opportunity he wanted. He fell with angry words on the helpless king, told him that his throne depended on his general’s loyalty, and that that loyalty was at an end. Henceforth Abner’s sword was at the service of David to transfer to him the kingdom from the house of Saul, and to establish the rule of the Jewish prince from Dan to Beer-sheba.