CHAPTER VII
THE JEWS AND THE ISRAELITES
If you will take a look on the map at all this country of Palestine and Syria you will see how it is cut up by mountains, the Lebanon range and others running down along it. One result of this must have been to make it difficult for the tribes that were settled there to unite and come together to resist the attacks of enemies from without.
In order to understand this great story properly you must bear in mind all through how much of it happened as it did because of the geographical position—that is to say, because the rivers ran just where they did run and because the deserts and the seas and the mountains lay just as they did lie round about the richer and more pleasant land. Between the mountains lay plains and valleys where the flocks might pasture. Canaan, you know, in the Bible is described as a land "flowing with milk and honey." Those are words meant to give you the idea of a rich, pleasant land, generally; but perhaps they mean a little more besides. "Flowing with milk" suggests a land where cows for milking would do well, and as for honey, we are told by people who have gone hunting there that the dogs often come out of the grass and the wild flowers quite yellow with pollen—the pollen that the bees carry home with them on their thighs. It is a great country for bees and honey.
But it was also, when the Hebrews first made their way into it, a great country for Philistines. They were not pleasant neighbours. The early chapters of the story of the Hebrews in Canaan are very much taken up with fights against the Philistines. The duel between David and Goliath is almost the best of the chapters; but the Samson story is very good reading too. At one moment the Philistines very nearly got the better of the Hebrews altogether; but then it seems as if the danger made Samuel, the greatest of the Judges, realise that if the people were to be successful against their Philistine enemies they must be united under one head. It was very largely by Samuel's act that Saul was appointed, and anointed with the sacred oil, as king—the first king of the now united tribes.
You know the rest of that story, very likely: how they gradually got the better of these strong enemies, how Saul slew his thousands and David his tens of thousands, and how, under David's son, Solomon, they came to the highest point of splendour and riches and power that they ever reached. The capital city was Jerusalem in Judæa, the more southern part of the kingdom. It is not to be supposed that in the fulness of its power this united kingdom had anything to fear from fortress cities of enemies in their midst. We may imagine all of them wiped out, because we know that Solomon's ships went freely to the coasts of Phœnicia, that cedar wood was brought from the splendid cedar forests on Mount Lebanon, that the wealth of Africa, in gold, ivory, apes and peacocks came to him by caravan through Egypt or by sea.
Nevertheless the union lasted only a very short while. Under Solomon's sons the kingdom was divided. Rehoboam sitting on his father's throne in Jerusalem and Jeroboam reigning over the kingdom of Israel in the north. We begin, about this time, to be tolerably sure about the dates, and the date of this division into the two kingdoms is given as 937 B.C.
The divided kingdom