Chapter VI: The Establishment of the Monarchy (4)

Moab was conquered; it was now the turn of Ammon. The Ammonites had looked on while their neighbours on the eastern side of the Jordan were being annexed to the kingdom of Israel. Nahash, however, the Ammonite king, had long been the ally of David. A common hostility to Esh-Baal had brought them together, and the league against the son of Saul had included Ammon, Judah, and the Aramæans. It was this alliance which had largely contributed to the success of David in his war against the northern tribes; left to himself it is doubtful whether the Jewish prince would have succeeded in overcoming his rival.

While Nahash lived, the old friendship continued between him and the king of Israel. But with his death came a change. The ambassadors sent by David to congratulate his son Khanun on his accession were grossly insulted, and driven back across the Jordan with their beards half-shorn and their robes cut off in the middle. Khanun, it was clear, was bent upon provoking war. He had the Aramæans at his back to support him; the fate of Moab had alarmed him, and he determined, while he still possessed allies, to anticipate the war which he foresaw.

The challenge was promptly taken up. Joab and his brother Abishai marched across the Jordan at the head of a large army of veterans. A battle took place before ‘the City of Waters,’ Rabbath-Ammon, ‘the capital of Ammon.’ The Aramæan forces had already come to the help of their confederates. Hadad-ezer of Zobah had furnished 20,000 men; 12,000 had come from the land of Tob, and 1000 from Maacah.[484] Joab found himself enclosed between the Aramæans on one side and the Ammonites on the other. But the Israelitish general was equal to the danger. Leaving Abishai to resist the Ammonite attack, he put himself at the head of a picked body of troops and fell upon the Syrians, whom he succeeded in utterly routing. The Ammonites, seeing the flight of their allies, retreated behind the walls of their city, and Joab remained master of the field.

But the battle had been sharply contested, and the Hebrew army had suffered too severely to be able to pursue its advantage. Joab retired to Jerusalem, there to recruit his army and prepare for another campaign. Meantime, the enemy also had not been idle. Hadad-ezer summoned the vassal princes of Syria from either side of the Euphrates, and placed the army under the command of a general named Shobach. The struggle had passed from a mere war with Ammon to a contest for the supremacy in Western Asia. The time had come for David himself once more to take the field; the issue at stake was too important to be decided by an inferior commander, however able and experienced.

The two great powers on the Euphrates and the Nile, which had controlled the destinies of the Oriental world in earlier days, were now in a state of decadence. Egypt was the shadow of its former self. Its empire in Asia had long since fallen, and it was now divided into two hostile and equally impotent kingdoms. The Tanite Pharaohs reigned in the north, and though their supremacy was theoretically acknowledged as far as the First Cataract, Upper Egypt was really governed by the high priests of Ammon at Thebes, who had blocked the navigation of the Nile by a strong fortress at El-Hîba, near Feshn, which successfully prevented the rulers of the Delta from advancing to the south.[485] Babylonia was similarly powerless. A younger rival had grown up in Assyria, and about B.C. 1290 the Assyrian king Tiglath-Ninip had even captured Babylon and held possession of it for seven years. Like Egypt, Babylonia had renounced its claim to rule in Western Asia, not to renew it till the age of Nebuchadrezzar.

The kingdom of Mitanni or Aram-Naharaim, moreover, had passed away; when Tiglath-pileser I. of Assyria swept over Western Asia, in B.C. 1100, it had already become a thing of the past. Perhaps its overthrow was due to the irruption of the Hittites from the mountains of Cappadocia, but if so it was soon avenged, for the Hittites too had ceased to be formidable. Their empire had dissolved into a number of small states: one of these was Carchemish, which commanded the chief ford across the Euphrates; another was Kadesh, on the Orontes, which had once more sunk into obscurity.

In place of Mitanni and the Hittites the Semitic Aramæans of Syria had risen into prominence. They had been the older inhabitants of the country, and the decay of the intrusive powers of Mitanni and the Hittites had enabled them to shake off the foreign yoke, and establish kingdoms of their own. Among these, Zobah, called Zubitê in the Assyrian inscriptions, acquired the leading place.

In the closing days of the Assyrian empire, the capital of Zobah lay to the north-east of Moab—perhaps, as Professor Friedrich Delitzsch thinks, in the neighbourhood of the modern Homs.[486] It was essentially an Arab state, but had been founded by those Ishmaelite Arabs of Northern Arabia, who, like the Nabatheans, had by intercourse with a Canaanite population developed a dialect which we term Aramaic. Saul, as we have seen, had been already brought into hostile collision with them. At that time the tribes of Zobah were still disunited, and it was with the ‘kings’ or chieftains of Zobah that the war of the Israelitish ruler had been carried on. As in Israel, however, so in Zobah, the necessity of defending themselves against the enemy had led to union, and when David reigned at Jerusalem they were under the sway of a single sovereign, Hadad-ezer, ‘the son of Rehob.’ Rehob had given his name to a district a little to the north of Palestine, of which Hadad-ezer must have been the hereditary prince.[487]

Hadad-ezer had attempted to establish his empire on the ruins of that of the Hittites. He had not only unified Zobah, but had reduced the neighbouring Aramæan princes to subjection. All northern Syria was tributary to him except the kingdom of Hamath, and Hamath also was threatened by the rising power. He had erected a stela commemorating his victories on the banks of the Euphrates, in imitation of the ancient Pharaohs of Egypt, and his alliance was courted by the Aramæans on the eastern side of the river.

His career of conquest was suddenly arrested. The Ammonites, threatened by David, sought his assistance, and in return for his help offered to acknowledge his suzerainty. The offer was accepted, and the Syrian king found himself face to face with the upstart power of Israel. The war which followed must have been a long one, but it ended in the complete victory of David. In the brief annalistic summary of David’s reign given in 2 Sam. viii., we hear only of one or two of the later incidents in the campaign. David, it is said, smote Hadad-ezer ‘as he was marching to restore his stela on the banks of the river’ Euphrates (_v._ 3). This implies that the memorial of former conquests had been destroyed either by the Israelitish king or by the revolted subjects of Hadad-ezer himself.

The account of the war against Ammon (2 Sam. x.) shows that the Israelitish victory must have been subsequent to the overthrow of the Ammonites. The defeat of Hadad-ezer was complete. The Israelites captured 1000 chariots, 7000 horsemen,[488] and 20,000 foot-soldiers, besides a large number of horses. The Syrian power, however, was not yet broken. Damascus rose in defence of its suzerain, and David found himself once more confronted by a formidable enemy. But fortune again smiled on the veterans of Israel, and 22,000 Syrians from Damascus were left dead on the field. Israelitish garrisons were placed in Damascus and the neighbouring cities, and the rule of David was acknowledged as far as the frontiers of Hamath.[489] Nevertheless, Hadad-ezer was still unsubdued. His communications with Mesopotamia were still open across the desert, and it would seem that the last scene in the war was enacted as far north as Aleppo.

A final effort to save Hadad-ezer was made by the Aramæan states on the eastern side of the Euphrates, who were either his vassals or his allies. Troops poured across the river, under the command of Shobach, called Shophach by the Chronicler. Once more David made a levy of the Israelitish forces and led them in person against the foe. He crossed the Jordan to the south of Mount Hermon, traversed the territories of Damascus and Homs, and after leaving Hamath on the left found himself at Helam, where the Aramæan host had pitched their camp. Josephus in his account of the campaign transforms Helam, which he reads Khalaman, into the name of the Aramæan king beyond the Euphrates; we may accept his reading without following him in changing a place into a man. Khalaman would correspond exactly with Khalman, the Assyrian name of Aleppo, which lay on the high road from the fords of the Euphrates to the west. It seems probable, therefore, that in Helam or Khalaman, we must see Aleppo.

According to Josephus, who appears to have derived his account from some Midrash or Commentary on the books of Samuel, the army of Shobach consisted of 80,000 infantry and 1000 horse. At all events, in the battle which followed, and which resulted in the complete victory of the Israelites, 7000 of the Syrian cavalry and 40,000 of their foot-soldiers are said to have been slain.[490] The power of Zobah was utterly destroyed. All Syria on the western side of the Euphrates hastened to make peace with the conqueror, and to offer him homage or alliance. The states on the eastern bank were separated from their Aramæan kinsfolk to the west, and as long as David lived took good care not again to cross the river. The old dream of the Israelitish patriot was fulfilled, and the dominion of Israel extended northwards to the borders of Hamath. Even the desert tribes to the east of Hamath, who had owned obedience to Hadad-ezer, passed under the sway of David, and for a time at all events the Jewish king could boast that his rule was acknowledged as far as the Euphrates.[491]

The immediate result of the victory was a sudden influx of wealth into the Jewish capital. Not only were the golden shields carried by the bodyguard of Hadad-ezer brought to Jerusalem, to be borne on state occasions by the foreign guards of the conqueror, but immense stores of bronze were found in two of the cities of northern Syria, Tibhath and Berothai.[492] It was out of this bronze that the fittings of the temple were afterwards made by Solomon.[493]

Another result of the war was an embassy from Toi or Tou of Hamath. The powerful Hebrew prince who had so unexpectedly appeared on the horizon of northern Syria was a neighbour whose goodwill it was necessary to purchase at all costs. The embassy sent by Toi to David was accordingly headed by the Hamathite king’s own son. This was Hadoram, whose name was changed into the corresponding Hebrew Joram. The change of name was a delicate way of acknowledging the supremacy of the God of Israel and the sovereign who worshipped Him, and of declaring that henceforth Hadad of Syria was to become Yahveh of Israel. As the Assyrian kings professed to make war in order that they might spread the name and worship of Assur, so it might be presumed that the campaigns of David were carried on in order to glorify Yahveh, who had given him the victory.[494]

The ambassadors brought with them various costly gifts, which Israelitish vanity might, if it chose, interpret as tribute, and which would certainly have been so interpreted by an Egyptian or Assyrian scribe. Vessels of gold, silver, and bronze were laid at the feet of David, and a treaty of alliance formed between him and the ruler of Hamath. That Hadad-ezer had been the common enemy of both was a sufficient pretext both for the embassy and for the alliance. The memory of the alliance lasted down to a late date. Even when Azariah reigned over Judah in the time of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III., Hamath could still look to Jerusalem for help; and in the age of Sargon, Yahu-bihdi, whose name contains that of the national God of Israel, led the people of Hamath to revolt.

All this while the siege of ‘the City of Waters,’ the Rabbah or ‘Capital’ of Ammon, still dragged on. Joab was encamped before it, while David was leading a life of ease and luxury in his palace at Jerusalem. This neglect of his kingly duties finds little favour in the eyes of the Hebrew historian. At the season of the year when David sent Joab and ‘his servants’ to do his work, other ‘kings’ were accustomed to ‘go forth to battle,’ and special emphasis is laid upon the words of Uriah: ‘The ark and Israel and Judah abide in tents; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open fields; shall I then go into mine house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife?’ With a king who had thus delegated his proper work to others, and had already forgotten that the very reason for his existence was that he should lead the people of Yahveh against their enemies, a catastrophe could not be far distant. First came the act of adultery with Bath-sheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, next the treacherous murder of a faithful guardsman and brave officer. Uriah was made to carry to Joab the letter which contained his own death-warrant, as well as that of other servants of David, equally innocent and equally valorous. A special messenger brought the king the news of his death, and Bath-sheba was at once added to the royal harîm. One man only could be found with courage enough to protest against the deed; this was Nathan the prophet, a successor of the Samuel who had placed the crown on David’s head. The king professed his penitence, though he did not offer to put away Bath-sheba, and the death of the child he had had by her was accepted in expiation of his guilt. It was an example of that vicarious punishment, that substitution of ‘the fruit of the body for the sin of the soul,’ a belief in which was as strong among the Canaanites as it was in Babylonia. The second son borne by Bath-sheba received the double name of Jedidiah from Nathan, and Shelomoh or Solomon from his father. Shelomoh, ‘the peaceful,’ was, in fact, the Hebrew equivalent of Salamanu or Solomon, the name of a king of Moab in the days of Tiglath-pileser III.[495]

David’s submission gave him a claim upon Nathan which the prophet never forgot. The death of the first-born of Bath-sheba, moreover, seemed to indicate that Yahveh had accepted the sacrifice of the child that had been, as it were, offered for the sin of the father, and that the guilt of the Israelitish monarch had been atoned. Henceforward Nathan took a peculiar interest in the new queen and her offspring. One of the four sons of Bath-sheba was named after him (1 Chron. iii. 5), and it was to him that Solomon owed in part his succession to the throne. It may be that Solomon’s training was intrusted to the prophet; such at any rate may be the significance of the words in 2 Sam. xii. 25.

It was after the birth of Solomon that Rabbah was at length starved into a surrender. Joab, ever jealous of his master’s fame, sent to tell David of the fact, and to bid him come at once and occupy the city lest the glory of its capture should be credited to the general who had besieged it rather than to the king who had remained at home. David accordingly proceeded to the camp, and entered the Ammonite capital at the head of his troops. The crown of gold, inlaid with gems, which had adorned the image of Malcham, the Ammonite god, was placed over the head of his human conqueror; the city itself was sacked, and its population treated with merciless rigour. In the euphemistic language of the historian they were put ‘under saws and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made to pass through the brickkiln.’[496]

The war with Ammon was followed by one with Edom. The Amalekites or Bedâwin had already been taught that a strong power had arisen in Palestine, thoroughly able to protect its inhabitants from the raids of the desert robbers (2 Sam. viii. 12); the turn of the Edomites was to come next. David himself seems to have led the Israelitish army,[497] and in a decisive battle in a wadi south of the Dead Sea, utterly crushed the forces of Edom.[498] Eighteen thousand of the enemy were slain, and all further resistance on the part of disciplined troops was at an end. For six months longer the inhabitants of Mount Seir carried on a guerilla warfare with Joab; they were, however, mercilessly hunted out and massacred, hardly a male being left alive (1 Kings xi. 15). The child Hadad, the son, it may be, of the last Edomite king Hadar, was carried by ‘his father’s servants’ to Egypt, where they found shelter in the court of the Pharaohs, and David took possession of the depopulated country. Its possession opened up for Israel a new era of wealth and commercial prosperity. The high road along which the spices of southern Arabia were carried ran through it, and at its southern extremity were the two ports of Elath and Ezion-geber on the Sea of Suph, which connected Western Asia with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. David now commanded the caravan-trade from the north of Syria to the Gulf of Aqaba; on the one side he was in contact with Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, on the other with Egypt and Arabia. Apart from the trade which passed through Palestine, leaving riches on its way, the tolls levied on merchandise must have brought a goodly income to the royal exchequer. David, indeed, had too much in him of the peasant and the warrior to realise the full extent of his good fortune; it needed a Solomon to perceive all the advantages of his position, to fit out merchant vessels in the Gulf of Aqaba, and to secure a monopoly of the carrying trade. For the present, David was occupied in fortifying the conquests he had made. Aramæans from Ammon and Zobah were drafted into his bodyguard,[499] and Edom was so effectively garrisoned as to make revolt impossible for more than a century. A firm hold was kept upon the kinglets of the small Aramæan states to the north who had formerly owned Hadad-ezer as their suzerain; the king of Geshur was already connected by marriage with the royal house of Israel. A new and formidable power had grown up at the entrance to Egypt, effectually cutting off the monarchy of the Nile from Western Asia, and the commander-in-chief of the Israelitish army had proved himself the ablest and most irresistible general of his time.

David appeared to be securely fixed not only on the throne of Israel, but also on that of an Israelitish empire. But his power after all was wanting in stability. It depended in great measure upon Joab; Joab alone commanded the confidence of the veteran soldiery, and was dreaded by the foreign foe.[500] Moreover, there was as yet but little real adhesion between the Israelitish tribes. Ephraim could not forget its old position of pre-eminence, or cease to resent the domination of the new-born and half-foreign tribe of Judah. The blood-tax demanded by the wars of David added to the discontent. The wars were wars of aggression rather than of defence, and were to the advantage of a Jewish dynasty, not of the people as a whole. Military service became as unpopular in Israel as it has been of recent years in Egypt: when David proposed to number his subjects and thereby ascertain what fighting force he possessed, Joab vainly endeavoured to dissuade him from his intention, and the people subsequently saw in the plague that followed the punishment of a royal crime. The bodyguard of Philistines and Kretans, with its officers of various nationalities and creeds, protected the person of the king and prevented any open signs of disaffection; but discontent smouldered beneath the surface, ready to break into flame whenever a favourable opportunity occurred. The Israelites had too recently submitted themselves to the rule of a single sovereign to be as yet amenable to discipline, or to have lost the democratic instincts of the armed peasant and his guerilla methods of carrying on war.

There was yet another, and a still more potent cause for the instability of David’s throne. This was to be found in the royal family itself. Polygamy has been the fatal cancer which has eaten away the strength and prosperity of the most powerful dynasties of the Oriental world; and the history of the Israelitish empire proved no exception to the rule. David had none of the stern and ascetic fanaticism which distinguished Saul; he enjoyed life to the fullest, and when success came, policy alone set bounds to his enjoyment of it. Self-indulgent as most other Oriental despots, he multiplied to himself wives and children, not shrinking even from the murder of the trustiest of his followers in his determination to add yet another beauty to his well-stocked harîm. Polygamy brought with it its usual curse. In the dull and idle seclusion of the palace, the wives of the king quarrelled one with another for his favour and love, and the quarrel of the mother was adopted by her children. Maachah, the daughter of the king of Geshur, claimed precedence for herself and her son Absalom in virtue of their royal blood; Amnon, as the first-born of his father, regarded himself as rightful heir to the throne, and as therefore placed above the ordinary laws of men; while Bath-sheba, whose unscrupulous ambition had betrayed a husband to destruction, never ceased intriguing in the interests of Solomon whom she had destined from the outset for the crown.

The latter years of David’s life were clouded with the crimes and rebellions of his family. Amnon outraged his half-sister Tamar, and was murdered by her brother Absalom, and Absalom, his father’s favourite, fled to Talmai, king of Geshur. Thanks to Joab, the blood-feud was eventually appeased, and after an exile of three years Absalom was allowed to return to Jerusalem. Two years later, David consented to forget the past. Absalom was again received at court, and his beauty and grace of manner resumed their former sway over the hearts of both king and people.

But David was growing old; discontent was gathering even among his own tribesmen, and Absalom was impatient to seize the crown which he conceived to be his by right. He obtained leave to go to Hebron, there to offer sacrifice in the ancient sanctuary and capital of Judah. The place was well chosen: the religious traditions of a venerable past were associated with the city, and its inhabitants could have looked with little favour on the rise of Jerusalem. They gave ready ear to the prince who promised to restore Hebron to its ancient importance, and make it once more a capital. The cry of Hebron and Judah as against Jerusalem and a dynastic empire was eagerly responded to.

David was taken by surprise. Even Joab does not seem to have been aware of the conspiracy which was being formed. There were no troops in Jerusalem sufficient to defend it against attack, even if its defenders could be trusted, and of this David was no longer sure. He seemed deserted by all the world, and his only safety lay in flight. Even his counsellor Ahitophel had gone over to the rebel son.

The royal household and harîm fled eastwards across the Jordan to those outlying districts of Israelitish territory in which Esh-Baal had so long maintained himself. David was accompanied by his bodyguard: the priests who wished to accompany him with the ark were sent back. So, too, was Hushai, the fellow-councillor of Ahitophel, in the hope that he might counteract the schemes of Absalom’s adviser.

The revolt showed David that he had been living in merely fancied security. His tribesmen had fallen away from him at the first summons of his more popular son; his old comrades, indeed, still stood by him, and he could count on the swords and fidelity of his foreign bodyguard. But what were they against a revolted nation? Even in the days of outlawry, when he was hunted from cave to cave by Saul, he could reckon on popular sympathy and help; now the popular sympathy was transferred to another, and the flood-gates of disaffection and hatred were opened upon him. In spite of his guards, Shimei of the house of Saul ventured to stone him as he passed along, and to call him the man of blood who had unrighteously seized the crown. It was a sign that the fall of Saul’s dynasty had not been forgotten, and that there were still those in Benjamin who submitted with reluctance to the rule of his supplanter.

David was saved by the loyalty of Joab. Had that invincible general gone over to the enemy a new king would have sat on the throne of Israel. The commander-in-chief would have taken his veterans with him and led them, as ever, to victory. Fortunately for David, his old friend refused to forsake the fortunes of the fallen king. Perhaps family jealousies may have had some influence on his resolution. Absalom conferred the office of commander-in-chief on Amasa, the son of Joab’s cousin, who had married a man of Israel.[501] The appointment may indeed have been made because Joab had already thrown in his lot with that of the king; more probably it had been promised to Amasa before the beginning of the revolt.

But the priests and prophets remained faithful to the king of their choice. Zadok and Abiathar, the chief priests, had returned to Jerusalem with the sacred symbol of Yahveh’s presence in Israel, but their sons Ahimaaz and Johanan undertook to keep David informed of the plans of his enemies in the capital. Fortunately for him, the advice of Ahitophel was only partially acted upon. Absalom possessed himself of his father’s concubines, and thereby, in accordance with Hebrew ideas, published to the world his usurpation of the throne, but the further advice of the wily counsellor was disregarded. Instead of despatching a body of twelve thousand men, who should fall upon the fugitives before they could reach the fords of the Jordan, Absalom and his youthful friends preferred the counsel of Hushai, and determined first to raise a levy of all Israel. The idea of marching in person at the head of a great army appealed to the vanity of the young usurper; and to the inexperience of youth the possibility of David and his guards hiding in ambush, and thence descending upon their unwary pursuers, seemed a very real danger. Ahitophel, the single representative of age and experience among the conspirators, knew only too well what the rejection of his advice must mean. The rebellion was self-condemned; it was doomed to failure, and the return of David would be the destruction of himself. Even at the council-board of Absalom his rival Hushai had been preferred to himself; all that was left him was to crawl back to his home in bitter disappointment, and there hang himself. The conspiracy had lost the brain which alone could have conducted it to success.

The news of Ahitophel’s advice was brought to David by the young priests. They had escaped with difficulty from their hiding-place at the Fuller’s Spring below the southern extremity of the wall of Jerusalem, and subsequently owed their preservation to a woman’s wit. The priests were known to be hostile to the new movement; they had therefore been watched and closely pursued. They reached David while he was still on the western side of the Jordan, and no time was lost in putting the river between himself and his enemies. The fugitives, however, did not consider themselves safe until they found themselves at Mahanaim, where they were in the midst of a friendly population. Ammonites as well as Gileadites hastened to do honour to David, and to furnish him with everything that he and his companions required.[502]

He was soon joined by Joab and his brother Abishai, with the veteran troops under their command. A third division of the army was placed under Ittai of Gath, a captain in the royal bodyguard, and the approach of the rebel army was awaited without anxiety. Amasa made the fatal mistake of attacking the royal troops in their own territory, on ground they had chosen for themselves. Not only was it on the further side of the Jordan, it was also among the trees and dense undergrowth of the forest of Ephraim.[503] The issue could not be doubtful. David, indeed, had not been allowed by his followers to enter the field himself. He was now too old for active service, and his death would involve all the horrors of a disputed succession and civil war. That Absalom, however, would be defeated seems to have been taken for granted, and David accordingly impressed upon his generals that they should spare his son’s life.

But Joab judged more wisely than the king. He knew that as long as Absalom lived there would be constant trouble and insecurity, and that for those who had fought against him on his father’s side there would be but short shrift. As Absalom, therefore, hung suspended by his hair from the branches of a tree which had caught him in his flight, he pierced him with three darts, while his ten armour-bearers despoiled the corpse. Twenty thousand of the enemy were said to have been slain, partly by the sword, partly from the nature of the place in which the battle was fought, and the slaughter would have been greater had not Joab recalled his men from their pursuit of the foe as soon as Absalom was dead. With the fall of the usurper all further danger was at an end.

Ahimaaz, the Levite, famous for his fleetness of foot, ran with news of the victory to the king. But Joab knew how fondly David had doted on his handsome and selfish son; he knew also that he was weakened in both mind and body, and that the day was past when his emotions could be kept under control. Joab, therefore, refused to let Ahimaaz carry the tidings of his son’s death to the king, and an ‘Ethiopian’ slave was sent with the news instead. In the end, however, Ahimaaz outran the Ethiopian, and announced at Mahanaim the victory that had been won. Then came the foreigner with the message that Absalom was dead.

The conduct of David which followed on the message was indefensible. He forgot that he was a king, that he had duties towards his people and those who had risked their lives on his behalf, that the prince who had fallen in open fight had been the murderer of his brother, a rebel against his father, and a would-be parricide. All was forgotten and absorbed in a father’s grief for his dead son. David allowed the passion of his emotion to sweep him away, and he wept as a woman and not as a man. It was an outburst of Oriental exaggeration of feeling, unrestrained and untempered by the reason or the will.

His followers regarded the spectacle with amazement and dismay. Had it been worth their while to fight for such a king? One by one they slunk away, and it seemed as if he would soon be left alone to the company of himself and his harîm. But once more Joab came to the rescue of his old master and companion in arms. It was indeed with the rough speech of the soldier, but plain speech was needed even though it was rough and rude. ‘Thou hast shamed this day,’ he said, ‘the faces of all thy servants, which this day have saved thy life, and the lives of thy sons and of thy daughters, and the lives of thy wives, and the lives of thy concubines; in that thou lovest thine enemies, and hatest thy friends. For thou regardest neither princes nor servants: for this day I perceive, that if Absalom had lived, and all we had died this day, then it had pleased thee well. Now therefore arise, go forth, and speak comfortably unto thy servants: for I swear by the Lord, if thou go not forth, there will not tarry one with thee this night: and that will be worse unto thee than all the evil that befell thee from thy youth until now.’

David was roused from his selfish and unworthy grief; weak and self-indulgent as he had become, the words of Joab nevertheless forced him to recognise the dangers he had provoked. But he never forgave his monitor. He soon found an opportunity of punishing Joab for his loyalty, and his dying orders to his successor were to put his grey-haired servant to death.

Secret word was sent to the priests at Jerusalem that they should shame the elders of Judah into demanding the return of the king, seeing that he was their own tribesman, and that the rest of Israel had already acknowledged his sovereignty. At the same time Amasa was appointed commander-in-chief in place of Joab. David thus revenged himself upon his too outspoken general, and also made a bid for popularity among the Jewish forces who had followed Amasa.

The act was as foolish as it was unjust, and it soon brought its penalty with it. The elders of Judah indeed begged the king to return, and he was led across the Jordan in a sort of triumphal procession by the delegates of that tribe. But the other tribes resented this appropriation of the royal person. It was the Jews rather than the rest of Israel who had revolted and made Absalom their king, while the veterans of Joab who had remained loyal represented the whole nation. For the first time since the death of Esh-Baal, the men of Israel and of Judah stood over against one another with antagonistic interests and angry rivalry; Israel claimed to have ten parts in the king, whereas Judah had but one, and yet David’s action had implied that Judah alone was his rightful heritage. Hardly was he again in Jerusalem before a new and more dangerous revolt broke out against his rule. Sheba, a Benjamite, raised the standard of rebellion, and his cry, ‘We have no part in David,’ found an echo in the hearts of the northern tribes. ‘Every man of Israel,’ we are told, deserted ‘the son of Jesse’; Judah alone adhered to him. But the strong arm and able brain that had so long fought for David were no longer there to help him; Joab had been superseded by Amasa; and the raw levies of Judah who had escaped from the forest of Ephraim were but a poor substitute for the disciplined forces which had created an empire. David at last awoke to the fact that in a moment of weak passion he had done his best to throw away a crown; Abishai was summoned in haste and sent with the bodyguard and ‘Joab’s men’ against the new foe.

It would seem that Sheba’s camp had been at Gibeon, not far to the north of Jerusalem. On the advance of the Jewish army he retreated northward. Joab had accompanied his brother, and at ‘the great stone’ of Gibeon the Jewish forces were overtaken by their new commander-in-chief. Amasa placed himself at the head of them, clad in the robe of office which Joab had worn for so many years. The provocation was great, and the murder of Abner with which Joab had begun his career was repeated in the murder of Amasa at the close of it. Abner, however, had been a general of considerable ability and influence; and Joab had not yet accumulated so many claims upon the gratitude of the king. The army took Joab’s side in the matter: Amasa’s body was thrown into a field with a common cloth above it, and the Jewish soldiers hurried on along the high-road in pursuit of the foe. They would have no other commander but Joab, and his degradation by the king was tacitly set aside.

With Joab once more at their head, the insurrection soon came to an end. Sheba fled to the northern extremity of Israelitish territory and flung himself into the city of Abel of Beth-Maachah.[504] Here he was closely besieged until ‘a wise woman’ persuaded her fellow-citizens to cut off his head and throw it to Joab. The rebellion was over, and Joab returned in triumph to Jerusalem.

The last ten years of David’s life were passed in tranquillity. His bodily and mental powers grew enfeebled, and he sank slowly into the grave. The hardships of his youth and the self-indulgence and polygamy of his later years had weakened his constitution prematurely. While his early companions Joab and Abiathar still retained their vigour, the king became old and worn-out. The intrigues of the harîm, it is true, still continued, but there was no Absalom to steal away the hearts of the people by his beauty and winsomeness of manner; no Amnon to assert in deeds the rights of a crown-prince.

Israel was at peace with her neighbours. Edom and Zobah had been utterly crushed; Moab and Ammon feared to move while Joab was alive. The petty kings of Northern Syria paid intermittently their tribute; Tyre and Sidon courted their powerful neighbour, whose friendship was preferable to his hostility. Egypt was divided against herself; more than one dynasty ruled in the country, and the Tanite sovereigns of the Delta had neither wealth nor men. Like Egypt, Babylonia had fallen into decay, and the defeat of the Assyrian king Assur-irbi by the Aramæans had cut off Assyria from the nations of the West. The Philistines had been compelled to become the servants of David; and the pirate-hordes who had flocked to their aid from Krete and the Ægean now passed into the service of the Israelitish king, or else transferred their attention to other parts of the Mediterranean Sea. According to Greek legend, Thrace, Rhodes, and Phrygia occupied the waters of which they had once been the masters. Phœnician trading-ships could at last sail peaceably across them, and Tyre accordingly, under Abibal and Hiram, became a centre of maritime trade.

In the north, the Hittite empire had long since passed away. Kadesh, on the Orontes, had become the capital of a small district, formidable to no one, and on good terms with its Israelitish neighbours.[505] Hamath, also, was in alliance with the Israelitish king. Among the wadis of the Lebanon, near Damascus, Rezon, indeed, led the life of a bandit-chief, and robbed the caravans which passed his way; but it was not until after David’s death that he succeeded in establishing himself at Damascus, and there founding a dynasty of kings.

At home, however, though outwardly all seemed calm, the seeds of disunion and discontent were lying thick below the surface. The rebellion of Absalom in Judah, of Sheba in Northern Israel, had shown how fragile were the bonds of union that bound the tribes to one another and to their king. The affections of Judah were not yet entwined around the house of David; the feeling that they were a single nation had not yet penetrated very deeply into the hearts of the other tribes. The Davidic dynasty itself was not yet secure. It depended for its support rather on the sword than on the loyalty of the people. The fallen dynasty still had its followers and secret supporters, and now and then an event occurred which showed how dangerous they might become. Shimei the Benjamite doubtless represented the feeling of his tribe when he cursed David in the hour of his humiliation; and David’s conduct after his restoration to the throne shows that he could not trust even Merib-Baal or Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, whom he had treated as his own son.[506] An incident which had happened in an earlier part of his reign is another proof of his readiness to root out as far as possible the family of Saul. Three years in succession Palestine had suffered from want of rain and consequent famine, and the oracle of Yahveh declared that the cause of the visitation was Saul’s slaughter of the Gibeonites. The massacre of the priests at Nob had indeed been avenged by the death of the Israelitish king and his sons, and by the fall of his throne, but other temple-servants besides the priests had suffered from Saul’s outburst of mad anger, and their blood was still crying out for revenge. Blood demanded blood, and the sacrifice of Saul’s descendants could alone atone for the guilt of their forefather.

Mephibosheth was spared, partly because of his father Jonathan’s friendship towards David, whose life he had once saved, partly because little was to be feared from a lame man. But the five sons of Michal (?) by Adriel of Meholah were handed over to the executioner.[507] They stood too near the throne; apart from Mephibosheth they were, in fact, the only direct descendants of the late king, and David was doubtless glad of the opportunity of removing them from his path. His dying injunctions to Solomon proved how merciless he could be when the safety of his dynasty was at stake.

Two other descendants of Saul still remained, who might possibly be a source of trouble. These were the sons of his concubine Rizpah, and they also were condemned to die. The sacred number of seven victims was thus made up, and David satisfied at once the religious scruples of the Gibeonites and the political exigencies of his own position. Shimei had some reason for calling him a ‘man of blood’ who had shed ‘the blood of the house of Saul.’

The human victims were hanged on the sacred hill of Gibeah ‘before the Lord,’ and none was allowed to take the bodies down until at last the rain fell. Then they were buried solemnly in the ancestral tomb of Saul’s family at Zelah, along with the ashes of Saul and Jonathan, which David had brought from Jabesh-gilead. The great atonement had been made and accepted by Yahveh, and at the same time David had cleared himself from all charges of impiety towards the dead. The fallen dynasty had ceased to be formidable.

Hence it was that when the northern tribes under Sheba broke away from the house of David, they could find no representative of the family of Saul to lead them. Sheba, it is true, was a Benjamite, but he came from Mount Ephraim, and was not related to Saul. He was rather one of those military generals who in after days played so large a part in the history of the northern kingdom in dethroning and founding dynasties.

Nevertheless, the yoke of the royal supremacy was borne with impatience. In spite of the support of the priesthood and the swords of Joab and the foreign bodyguard, David’s reign was troubled by rebellion. As long, indeed, as it was signalised by victories over a foreign foe, by the conquest of neighbouring states, by the influx of captive slaves and the acquisition of spoil, his subjects were well content with their successful leader in war. His influence over those who were brought into personal contact with him had always been great, and there were few who could resist his charm of manner. But when the era of conquests was past, when David had delegated his military duties to others, and had retired more and more into the privacy of an Oriental palace, the seeds of discontent began to grow and spread. Even in Judah there were complaints that justice was neglected (2 Sam. xiv. 2-6); further off the complaints must have been loud and deep. The unpopularity of the conscription by which the ranks of the army were filled was patent even to Joab (2 Sam. xxiv. 3), and the census on which it depended was regarded as hateful to God as well as to man.

Even David himself half repented of his determination to number the people (2 Sam. xxiv. 10), and the general feeling was expressed by the seer Gad when he declared that the punishment of heaven would be visited for the deed, not indeed upon the guilty king, but upon his innocent subjects (2 Sam. xxiv. 13, 17). In the plague that devastated Palestine they saw the anger of Yahveh, and the conscience-stricken king at once assented to the common view.

The cessation of the plague was connected with the foundation of the temple. At the very spot where David had seen the angel of death standing with his sword unsheathed, the altar was built and the sacrifice offered which appeased the wrath of the Lord. It was the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, on the level summit of Mount Moriah, where the old Jebusite population of Jerusalem still dwelt. It may even be that Araunah was the last Jebusite king whose life and freedom were spared when Jerusalem was surrendered to David.[508]

The threshing-floor was bought by David, and became the great ‘high-place’ of the new capital of the kingdom. Everything marked it out as the site of that temple which in the Eastern world was a necessary supplement of the royal palace. It was the highest part of the city; it was, moreover, a smooth and sunny rock, and the place which it occupied was open and unconfined. It had been the scene of a special revelation of Yahveh to the king, and the altar erected on it had been the means of preserving the people of Israel from death. It is possible, too, that the spot was already sacred. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets, Ebed-Tob, king of Jerusalem, speaks of the Temple of Nin-ip as standing on ‘the mountain of Uru-salim,’ and of all the mountains of Jerusalem the future temple-mount was the most prominent and commanding.

We do not know when the pestilence occurred which thus had such momentous consequences for the later religion of Judah. The empire of David already extended as far as ‘Kadesh of the Hittites,’[509] but Edom does not as yet seem to have become a province of Israel. The census was taken in order to ascertain the number of fighting men in Israel, not with a view to the levying of taxes. In the latter case the conquered provinces would have been included in the registration. We may gather, therefore, that the event happened about the middle of David’s reign, probably at the time when the struggle with Zobah was still going on.

It was at a later period, when ‘the Lord had given him rest round about from all his enemies’ (2 Sam. vii. 1), that he announced to Nathan his purpose of building a temple. Nathan had taken Gad’s place as the seer and confidant of the king, and the palace of David had already been erected. But Yahveh would not allow him to carry out his plan. His hands were stained too deeply with blood; the work was destined for the son whose name signified ‘the peaceful one,’ and in whose birth and training the seer had taken so profound an interest.[510] All that David could do was to prepare the way for his successor, to collect the materials for the work, and to determine the place whereon the temple of God should stand.

Two lists have come down to us of David’s chief officers, extracted from the State annals. The first list is given at the end of the annalistic summary of the events of his reign (2 Sam. viii. 16-18), and belongs to the earlier portion of it; the second must have been drawn up not long before his death. From the outset, it is clear, the kingdom was as thoroughly organised as that of the surrounding states. There was the ‘recorder’ or ‘chronicler’ whose duty it was to hand down the memory of all that happened to future generations; the scribe or chief secretary who wrote and answered official letters, and superintended the copying and re-editing of older documents in the record office; the commander-in-chief of the army, who corresponded to the _turtannu_ or tartan of the Assyrians, and the commander of the foreign troops. The administration, in fact, seems to have closely resembled that of Assyria, excepting only that there was no Vizier or Prime Minister who acted as the representative of the king. It presupposes a long-established use of writing and all the machinery of a civilised Oriental state. The scribe and the chronicler make their appearance in Israel simultaneously with the establishment of an organised government. A knowledge of the art of writing could have been no new thing.

Jehoshaphat, the son of Ahilud, we are told, was the recorder, Seraiah was the secretary,[511] Benaiah the commander of the Kretan and Philistine bodyguard. By the side of the civil functionaries were the two high priests Zadok and Abiathar, while the office of royal chaplains was filled by the sons of David himself. Their duties were probably to offer such sacrifices as were not public in the absence or in place of their father. That there should have been two high priests is difficult to explain. Zadok was the son of Ahitub, whom the Chronicler makes the son of Amariah, and a descendant of Phinehas the son of Eleazar (1 Chron. vi. 7), while Abiathar was the son of Ahimelech or Ahiah, the grandson of Ahitub, and great-grandson of Phinehas the son of Eli.[512] Abiathar appears to have represented the family of Ithamar the younger brother of Eleazar the son of Aaron; at any rate, it was to his family that the safe keeping of the ark had been intrusted as well as the high priesthood at the sanctuary of Shiloh. The destruction of Shiloh dealt a blow at its influence and _prestige_, the massacre of the priests at Nob almost annihilated it. Room was thus given for another line of priests who claimed descent from the elder branch of Aaron’s family, and who had probably preserved the Mosaic tradition in another part of Israel. Is it possible that Zadok had followed the fortunes of Esh-Baal, while Abiathar attached himself to David? At all events, the unification of the kingdom brought with it the unification of the high-priestly families; throughout the greater part of David’s reign the ark at Jerusalem was served by both Zadok and Abiathar, with numerous Levites under them (2 Sam. xv. 24-29). That Zadok is always named first, though Abiathar had been the early friend and priest of David, implies that his claim to represent the elder branch of the high priest’s family was recognised.

When the second list of David’s officials was compiled certain important changes had taken place. Seraiah, the secretary, had been succeeded by Sheva or Shisha (2 Sam. xx. 25; 1 Kings iv. 3); ‘Ira, the Jairite,’ had become the chaplain of David, and the growth of the empire had necessitated the creation of a new office. This was the imperial treasurership which was held by a certain Hadoram, who seems to have been of Syrian origin, and whose duty it was to collect the tribute of the conquered provinces.[513] Possibly he had already gained experience of the office under one of the Syrian kings.

Other officers of David are enumerated by the Chronicler (1 Chron. xxvii. 25-34). They had their analogues in Assyria and Egypt, and show how thoroughly the court of Israel was modelled after those of the neighbouring states. Among them we read of Azmaveth, the son of Adiel, who presided over the exchequer; of Jonathan, the son of Uzziah, who superintended the public granaries, which must therefore have been established in imitation of those of Egypt and Babylonia;[514] of Ezri, the superintendent of the peasants who worked on the crown lands; of Shimei and Zabdi, who had charge of the royal vineyards and wine-cellars; of Baal-hanan and Joash, to whom were intrusted the olive plantations and storehouses of oil; of Obil, the Ishmaelite, the chief of the camel-drivers; of Jehdeiah, the head of the ass-drivers; and of Jaziz, the Hagarene, who superintended the shepherds of the king.[515]