Saul very soon had an opportunity for showing whether Samuel had been a true seer or no. The city of Jabesh in Gilead was besieged by the Ammonites, and the inhabitants declared themselves ready to surrender should they fail in obtaining speedy succour from their countrymen. Their messengers had passed through all Israel without meeting with anything more helpful than pity, until at last tidings of their case reached Saul as he was returning with a yoke of oxen from the field. Hewing his cattle in pieces, he caused the portions to be sent in all directions, with the threat that so should it be done with the oxen of every one who should refuse to help in relieving Jabesh. The people obeyed the summons, fell suddenly one morning upon the Ammonites, and delivered the beleaguered city.
Having thus found Saul the man for their need, they refused to let him go. In Gilgal, Joshua's old camp, they anointed him king. The act was equivalent to imposing upon him the conduct of the struggle against the Philistines, and so he understood it. The first signal for the attack was given by his son Jonathan, when he slew the necib of the Philistines at Gibeah. These in consequence advanced in force towards the focus of the revolt, and took up a position opposite Gibeah on the north, being divided from it only by the gorge of Michmash. Only a few hundred Benjamites ventured to remain with Saul. The struggle opened with a piece of genuine old heroic daring. While the Philistines were dispersed over the country in foraging expeditions, Jonathan, accompanied by his armour-bearer only, and without the knowledge of Saul, made an attack upon the weak post which they had left behind at the pass of Michmash. After the first had been surprised and overmastered, the others took to flight, no doubt in the belief that the two assailants were supported. They carried their panic with them into the half-deserted camp, whence it spread among the various foraging bands. The commotion was observed from Gibeah opposite, and, without pausing to consult the priestly oracle, King Saul determined to attack the camp. The attempt was completely successful, but involved no more than the camp and its stores; the Philistines themselves effected an unmolested retreat by the difficult road of Bethhoron.
Saul was no mere raw stripling when he ascended the throne; he already had a grown-up son at his side. Nor was he of insignificant descent, the family to which he belonged being a widespread one, and his heritage considerable. His establishment at Gibeah was throughout his entire reign the nucleus of his kingdom. The men on whom he could always reckon were his Benjamite kinsmen. He recognised as belonging to him no other public function besides that of war; the internal affairs of the country he permitted to remain as they had been before his accession. War was at once the business and the resource of the new kingdom. It was carried on against the Philistines without interruption, though for the most part not in the grand style but rather in a series of border skirmishes. /1/
— Footnote 1 As regards the position of Samuel in the theocracy and the relation in which the stood to Saul, the several narratives in the Book of Samuel differ widely. The preceding account, so far as it relates to Samuel, is based upon 1Samuel ix., x. 1-15, xi., where he appears simply as a Roeh at Ramah, and has nothing to do either with the administration of the theocracy or with the Nebiim. Compare Prolegomena above, chap. VII. — Footnote
It is not without significance that the warlike revival of the nation proceeded from Benjamin. By the battle of Aphek Ephraim had lost at once the hegemony and its symbols (the camp-sanctuary at Shiloh, the ark of the covenant). The centre of Israel gravitated southward, and Benjamin became the connecting link between Ephraim and Judah. It would appear that there the tyranny of the Philistines was not so much felt. Their attacks never were made through Judah, but always came from the north; on the other hand, people fled from them southwards, as is instanced by the priests of Shiloh, who settled in Nob near Jerusalem. Through Saul Judah entered definitely into the history of Israel; it belonged to his kingdom, and it more than most others supplied him with energetic and faithful supporters. His famous expedition against the Amalekites had been undertaken purely in the interests of Judah, for it only could possibly suffer from their marauding hordes.
Among the men of Judah whom the war brought to Gibeah, David ben Jesse of Bethlehem took a conspicuous place; his skill on the harp brought him into close relations with the king. He became Saul's armour-bearer, afterwards the most intimate friend of his son, finally the husband of his daughter. While he was thus winning the affections of the court, he at the same time became the declared favourite of the people, the more so because unexampled good fortune attended him in all he undertook. This excited the jealousy of Saul, naturally enough in an age in which the king always required to be the best man. Its first outburst admitted of explanation as occasioned by an attack of illness; but soon it became obtrusively clear that the king's love for his son-in-law had changed into bitter hatred. Jonathan warned his friend and facilitated his flight, the priests of Nob at the same time providing him with arms and food. He went into the wilderness of Judah, and became the leader of a miscellaneous band of outlaws who had been attracted by his name to lead a roving life under his leadership. His kinsmen from Bethlehem were of their number, but also Philistines and Hittites. Out of this band David's bodyguard subsequently grew, the nucleus of his army. They reckoned also a priest among them, Abiathar ben Ahimelech ben Ahitub ben Phinehas ben Eli, the solitary survivor of the massacre of the sons of Eli at Nob which Saul had ordered on account of suspected conspiracy with David. Through him David was able to have recourse to the sacred lot before the ephod. In the end he found it impossible to hold his own in Judah against Saul's persecutions, especially as his countrymen for the most part withheld their assistance. He therefore took the desperate step of placing his services at the disposal of Achish the Philistine king of Gath, by whom he was received with open arms, the town of Ziklag being assigned him as a residence. Here with his band he continued to follow his old manner of life as an independent prince, subject only to an obligation to render military service to Achish.
Meanwhile the Philistines had once more mustered their forces and marched by the usual route against Israel. Saul did not allow them to advance upon Gibeah, but awaited their attack in the plain of Jezreel. A disastrous battle on Mount Gilboa ensued; after seeing his three eldest sons fall one after another at his side, Saul threw himself upon his sword, and was followed by his armour-bearer. The defeat seemed to have undone the work of his life. The immediate consequence at least was that the Philistines regained their lost ascendancy over the country to the west of Jordan. Beyond Jordan, however, Abner, the cousin and generalissimo of Saul, made his son Ishbaal, still a minor, king in Mahanaim, and he was successful in again establishing the dominion of the house over Jezreel, Ephraim, and Benjamin, of course in uninterrupted struggle with the Philistines.
But he did not regain hold of Judah. David seized the opportunity to set up for himself, with the sanction of the Philistines, and, it may safely be presumed, as their vassal, a separate principality which had its centre of gravity in the south, which was inhabited, not by the tribe of Judah properly so called, but by the Calebites and Jerachmeelites. This territory Abner disputed with him in vain. In the protracted feud between the houses of Saul and David, the fortunes of war declared themselves ever increasingly for the latter. Personal causes at last brought matters to a crisis. Abner, by taking to himself a concubine of Saul's called Rizpah, had roused Ishbaal's suspicions that he was aiming at the inheritance, and was challenged on the point. This proved too much for his patience, and forthwith he abandoned the cause of his ward (the hopelessness of which had already perhaps become apparent), and entered into negotiations with David at Hebron. When about to set out on his return he fell by the hand of Joab in the gate of Hebron, a victim of jealousy and blood-feud. His plans nevertheless were realised. His death left Israel leaderless and in great confusion; Ishbaal was personally insignificant, and the people's homage continued to be rendered to him only out of grateful fidelity to his father's memory. At this juncture he also fell by assassins' hands. As he was taking his midday rest, and even the portress had gone to sleep over her task of cleaning wheat, two Benjamite captains introduced themselves into his palace at Mahanaim and murdered him in the vain hope of earning David's thanks. The elders of Israel no longer hesitated about offering David the crown, which he accepted.
His residence was immediately transferred from Hebron to Jebus, which until then had remained in possession of the Canaanites, and first derives historical importance from him. It lay on the border between Israel and Judah,—still within the territory of Benjamin, but not far from Bethlehem; near also to Nob, the old priestly city. David made it not only the political but also the religious metropolis by transferring thither from Kirjathjearim the ark of the covenant, which he placed within his citadel on what afterwards became the temple hill.
Still the crown was far from being a merely honorary possession; it involved heavy responsibilities, and doubtless what contributed more than anything else to David's elevation to the throne was the general recognition of the fact that he was the man best fitted on the whole to overtake the labour it brought with it, viz., the prosecution of the war with the Philistines, a war which was as it were the forge in which the kingdom of Israel was welded into one. The struggle began with the transference of the seat of royalty to Jerusalem; unfortunately we possess only scanty details as to its progress, hardly anything more indeed than a few anecdotes about deeds of prowess by individual heroes. The result was in the end that David completed what Saul had begun, and broke for ever the Philistine yoke. This was undoubtedly the greatest achievement of his reign.