On the same day Absalom marched into Jerusalem, and among those who greeted him he saw with astonishment Hushai, the ancient friend of his father. He believed Hushai's assurance that he wished to "serve him whom Jehovah and all the men of Israel had chosen." Ahithophel considered the success which had been obtained, the rebellion which spread through the whole country on this side of the Jordan, and the possession of the strong metropolis and the palace without a blow, insufficient and indecisive. He saw the situation clearly, and was convinced that all would be lost if the king had time to collect round him his old adherents, his companions in victory. Filled with the conviction that the only way to obtain the end in view was to make an immediate use of the great advantages won by the surprise, he insisted that Absalom should at once set out in pursuit of David. The people which Absalom had led from Hebron were numerous, of these he wished to leave behind the burdensome multitude and select 12,000 for this expedition. Hushai opposed this proposal with great skill. Thou knowest thy father, he said to Absalom, he is a mighty warrior, like a bear deprived of her whelps in the forest, and his men are mighty and of fierce courage. He will not be encamped on the field, but will have concealed himself in one of the hiding-places. If any of our men fall it will be said, Absalom's men have been defeated, and all thy adherents will lose courage. Rather rouse all Israel, and march out at their head, that we may encamp against David like the sand of the sea, and none of his men may escape. Absalom followed this advice to his ruin. Yet Hushai was not certain that Ahithophel would not win over Absalom to his opinion, or go of his own will against David; so he sent his maid before the gate to the fuller's well (to the south of the city, where the valleys of Hinnom and Kidron join), where Jonathan, the son of Abiathar, and Ahimaaz, the son of Zadok, lay concealed (Absalom's men had not allowed them to leave the gate), with instructions to them to hasten to the king and warn him not to encamp on this side of Jordan. Though watched by Absalom's guards and pursued, the two men came without disaster to David, who again set out in the night. When Ahithophel heard that the king was beyond Jordan he despaired of the undertaking; he saddled his ass, went to his own city, set his house in order and hung himself.
Absalom took formal possession of the sovereignty, and as a sign that he had broken for ever with his father and assumed the government, he took the royal harem into his possession. A tent was set up on the roof of the palace of Zion, under which Absalom lived with the ten concubines whom David had left behind in Jerusalem before the eyes of Israel. When this was done he raised the whole people to march against his father, and went with numerous troops to the Jordan. David was at Mahanaim, like Ishbosheth before him, eagerly busied with his army. It was due to the cunning arrangements made in the flight from Jerusalem that he had escaped without danger beyond Jordan, and was enabled to assemble his own adherents there while Absalom was calling out and collecting the whole army. From the Ammonites, whom he had treated so harshly, he seems nevertheless to have received support.[314]
While Absalom crossed the Jordan, David divided the forces he had at his disposal into three corps, the command of which he entrusted to Joab, his brother Abishai, and Ithai, a Philistine of Gath. He remained behind in Mahanaim, and bade the captains deal gently with Absalom in the event of victory. The armies met in the forest of Ephraim, not far from the Jordan. In spite of the superiority of the numbers opposed to them, the tried and veteran soldiers of David had the advantage over the ill-armed and ill-organised masses of peasants. Absalom started back on his mule, fell into a thicket, and became entangled by his long hair in the branches of a large terebinth. He remained hanging while his mule ran away from under him. Joab found him in this position, and thrust his spear thrice through his heart. Either the fall of the hostile leader, the author of the rebellion, appeared a sufficient success to David's men, or the advantage gained over Absalom's army was not very great, or they found themselves too weak to follow it up. Joab led the army back to Mahanaim.
Though the rebellion had lost its leader by the fall of Absalom, it was far from being crushed. Absalom's captain, Amasa, the nephew of David, collected the masses of the rebellious army; the elders of the tribes, as well as the people, were ready to continue the struggle against David, though some were again inclined to accept their old king. If the tribes could be divided, and Amasa separated from the elders of Judah, the victory was almost certain. On this David built his plan. By means of the priests Abiathar and Zadok he caused it to be made known to the elders of Judah that the rest of the tribes had made overtures to him, to recognise him again as king, which was not the case;—would they be the last to lead back their own flesh and blood, their tribesman David? At the same time the priests were bidden to offer to Amasa the post of captain-general as the reward of his return, and this offer David confirmed with an oath: So might God do to him if Amasa were not captain all his days in the place of Joab.[315] The elders of Judah allowed themselves to be entrapped no less than Amasa, who little knew with whom he had to do. They sent a message to the king that he might return over the Jordan, and went to meet him at Gilgal. David showed himself placable, and prepared to pardon the adherents of Absalom. Shimei, who had cursed him on his retirement from Jerusalem, went to meet him at the Jordan; and when the boat which carried David over reached the hither bank he fell at his feet. David promised not to slay him with the sword.[316] From Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, who had declared for Absalom, he only took the half of Saul's inheritance.[317]
The remaining tribes were enraged at the tribe of Judah, partly because they had abandoned the common cause, partly because Judah had entirely appropriated the merit of bringing back the king. Their feelings were wavering: half were for submission, the others for continuing the resistance.[318] Then rose up a man of Benjamin, Sheba, the son of Bichri. "What part have we in David, what portion in the son of Jesse?" he cried to the waverers, caused the trumpets to be blown, and gave a new centre to rebellion and resistance. David commissioned Amasa to call out the warriors of Judah within three days and lead them to Jerusalem. While Amasa was occupied with carrying out this command, David sent Joab with the Gibborim and the body-guard against Sheba. At Gibeon Joab met Amasa. Is all well with thee, my brother? he said, and took him by the beard with his right hand to greet him, while with the left he thrust his sword through his body.[319] Thus, after he had been gained by deceptive promises, the dangerous man was removed as Abner had been before him. Sheba could not withstand the impetuous advance of Joab; the tribes submitted. Sheba's first resistance was made far in the north at Dan, in the city of Abel-beth-maachah, and there he defended himself so stubbornly that a rampart was thrown up against the city and besieging engines brought up against the walls. When the walls were near upon falling, and the citizens saw destruction before them, they saved themselves by cutting off Sheba's head and sending it to Joab.[320] The reaction of the people against the new government, at the head of which Absalom, Amasa, and Sheba had successively placed themselves, was overcome.
Many years before, at the time when Joab was besieging Rabbath, the metropolis of the Ammonites, David had gone out on the roof of his house in Zion in the cool of the evening. This position overlooked the houses in the ravine which separated the citadel from the city. In one of these David saw a beautiful woman in her bath. This was Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, a Hittite, who served in the troop of the "mighty." The king sent for her to his palace, and she soon announced to David that she was with child. David gave orders to Joab to send Uriah from the camp to Jerusalem. He asked him of the state of the war and the army, and then bade him go home to his wife, but Uriah lay before the gate of the palace. When David asked him on the next morning why he had not gone home to his house, he answered: Israel is in the field, and my fellows lie in the camp before Rabbath, and shall I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? Remain here, replied David; to-morrow morning I will let thee go. David invited him into the palace and made him drunken, but, as before, Uriah passed the night before the gate of the palace. Then, on the following day, David sent Uriah to the camp with a letter to Joab: Place Uriah in the thickest of the battle, and turn away from him, that he may be smitten, and die. Soon after a messenger came from the camp and announced to the king: The men of Rabbath made a sally; we repulsed them, and drove them to the gate; then the bowmen shot at thy servants from the walls, and some of our men were slain, among them Uriah. David caused Bathsheba, when the time for mourning was over, to come into his harem, and after the death of her first child, she bore a second child, whom David called Solomon, i. e. the peaceful,[321] as the times of war were over with the capture of Rabbath and the subjugation of the Ammonites.
After Absalom's death the heir to the crown was Adonijah, the fourth son of David, whom Haggith had borne to him while at Hebron. Solomon was the seventh in the series of the surviving sons of David, and as yet quite young; yet Bathsheba attempted to place her son on the throne. One of the two high priests, Zadok, supported Bathsheba's views, as also Nathan the prophet, who acquired great influence with David in the last years of his reign. Both might expect a greater deference to priestly influence from the youthful Solomon than from the older and more independent Adonijah, and the more so if they assisted the young man to gain the throne against the legitimate successor. So Bathsheba prevailed upon David to swear an oath by Jehovah that Solomon should be his successor in the place of Adonijah.[322] But Adonijah did not doubt that the throne belonged to him, that all Israel was of the same conviction, and their eyes turned upon him.[323] If Zadok was in favour of Solomon's succession, Abiathar, the old and influential adherent of David, was for Adonijah, and what was more important, the captain of the army, Joab, who had won David's best victories, also declared for him. On the other hand, Bathsheba's party won Benaiah, the captain of the body-guard, so that the power and prospects of both party were about equal.
When David, 70 years old, lay on his death-bed, Adonijah felt that he must anticipate his opponents. He summoned his adherents to meet outside the walls at the fuller's well (p. 170). Joab appeared with the leaders of the army, Abiathar came to offer sacrifice, and all the sons of David except Solomon. The sacrifice was already being offered, the sheep, oxen and calves were killed, the proclamation of Adonijah was to follow immediately after the sacrifice, when the intelligence was carried to the opposite party. Bathsheba and Nathan hastened to the dying king to remind him of his oath in favour of Solomon. He gave orders that Solomon should be placed on the mule which he always rode himself and that Zadok should anoint the youth under the wall of Zion eastwards of the city at the fount of Gihon. Then Benaiah with the body-guard was to bring him back into the city at once with the sound of trumpets, and lead him into the palace, in order to set him upon the throne there. This was done. Zadok took the horn of oil from the sacred tabernacle, and when the new ruler returned in solemn procession to the palace all the people cried with joy: Long live king Solomon. When Adonijah and his adherents heard the shouting from the city, and understood what had taken place, they gave up their cause for lost, and dispersed in dread in every direction. David rejoiced over this last success;[324] he called Solomon to his bedside, and said to him: "Do good to the sons of Barzillai the Gileadite; he received me well when I fled over Jordan before thy brother Absalom. Shimei, who cursed me when I fled to Mahanaim, I have sworn not to slay; let him not go unpunished, and bring his grey hairs to the grave with blood. What Joab did to Abner and Amasa thou knowest; let not his grey hairs go down to the grave in peace."[325] David was buried in the grave which he had caused to be made on Zion, where the heights of the citadel meet the western height, on which the city lay.
Thus David had succeeded in healing the wounds which his ambition had inflicted in past days on Israel; he understood how to establish firmly the monarchy, and along with it the power and security of the state. He had given such an important impulse to the worship, to the religious poetry, and consequently to the religious life, of the Hebrews, that his reign has remained of decisive importance for the entire development of Israel. But beside these great successes and high merits lie very dark shadows. If we cannot but admire the activity and bravery, the wisdom and circumspection, which distinguish his reign, there stands beside these qualities not only the weakness of his later years, which caused him to make a capricious alteration in the succession, thereby endangering the work of his life; other actions, both of his earlier and later years, show plainly that in spite of religious feeling and sentiment he did not hesitate to set aside very fundamental rules of morality when it came to winning the object he had in view.
If even in his last moments he causes Joab to be put to death by the hand of his son, it may be that this old servant, when he had taken the side of the other son in the succession, appeared very dangerous for the rule of the younger son. But Joab had rendered the greatest services to David, he had won for him the most brilliant victories; and if our account makes David give the murder of Abner and Amasa as the reason for that command, David had made no attempt to punish one deed or the other; on the contrary, he had gladly availed himself of at least the results and fruits of them. We must not indeed measure those days of unrestrained force and violent passion in hatred and love, in devotion and ambition, by the standard of our own tamer impulses; the manner of the ancient East, above all of the Semites, was too much inclined to the most bloody revenge. Yet David's instructions to destroy a man of no importance, whom he had once in a difficult position sworn to spare, out of the grave, by the hand of his son, goes beyond the limit of all that we can elsewhere find in those times and feelings.