CHAPTER VI

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MONARCHY

Influence of Shiloh—Samuel and the Philistines—Duplicate Narratives in the Books of Samuel—Prophet and Seer—Dervish Monasteries—Capture of the Ark and Destruction of Shiloh—Saul made King—Quarrels with Samuel—Delivers Israel from the Philistines—Attacks the Amalekites—David—Two Accounts of his Rise to Power—Jealousy of Saul—David’s Flight—Massacre of the Priests at Nob—Wanderings of David—He sells his Services to the King of Gath—Duties of a Mercenary—Battle of Gilboa and David’s Position—He is made King of Judah—War with Esh-Baal—Intrigues with Abner—Murder of Esh-Baal—David revolts from the Philistines and becomes King of Israel—Capture of Jerusalem, which is made the Capital—Results of this—Conquest of the Philistines, of Moab, Ammon, Zobah, and Edom—The Israelitish Empire—Murder of Uriah and Birth of Solomon—Influence of Nathan—Polygamy and its Effects in the Family of David—Revolt of Absalom—Of Sheba—Folly and Ingratitude of David—Saul’s Descendants sacrificed because of a Drought—The Plague and the Purchase of the Site of the Temple—David’s Officers and last Instructions—His Character—Chronology—Solomon puts Joab and Others to Death—His Religious Policy—Queen of Sheba—Trade and Buildings—Hiram of Tyre—Palace and Temple Built—Tadmor—Zoological and Botanical Gardens—Discontent in Israel—Impoverishment of the Country—Jeroboam—Tastes and Character of Solomon.

When Samuel was born, the Hebrew settlement in Palestine had long been a matter of the past. Little by little Canaan had passed into the possession of the Israelitish tribes. The older population had at first been massacred, then laid under tribute and amalgamated with the newcomers. The tribes themselves had changed much. Some had disappeared, others had grown at their expense. Ephraim, which from the first days of the conquest had been the most powerful among them, was now in a state of decadence, and a new force was rising in the south in the shape of the mixed tribe of Judah. A few of the Canaanite cities in the interior still remained independent, like Gezer and Jerusalem, as well as all those on the Phœnician coast.

The tribes had suffered from want of cohesion. The attempt to found a monarchy in Manasseh had failed; it was too local and limited, and served only to arouse the jealousy of the tribes which lay outside it. It had done little more than bring to light the dissensions and differences that existed within Israel itself. The bond that connected the tribes had become continually looser, and the ‘House of Joseph’ was divided into hostile factions. Benjamin had been decimated by its brother Israelites under the leadership of Ephraim, and Ephraim had undergone the same treatment at the hands of its brethren from Gilead. The conquest of Canaan had brought with it the old Canaanitish spirit of disunion and discord; the spectacle which the Tel el-Amarna letters present to us of city arrayed against city is reproduced in the Israel of the period of the Judges. The common brotherhood, which was still felt in the age of Deborah, tended to be forgotten. The tribes no longer come to one another’s aid; they fight with one another instead. The authority of the Judges become more and more circumscribed, their jurisdiction more and more confined. The tribes on the east of the Jordan begin to lead a separate life, and hardly acknowledge that the tribes to the west are kinsmen at all. The incorporation of the Canaanite element had weakened the recollection of a common descent, and at the same time had introduced into Israel a spirit of selfish isolation. The causes which had brought about the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites were now working among its conquerors, and it seemed as if the fate of the Canaanites was to be the fate of the Israelites also.

The sanctuary at Shiloh still existed, but it had lost much of its influence. It had become little more than the local sanctuary of Ephraim,[368] and as the power of Ephraim waned the influence of Shiloh declined as well. Elsewhere rival sanctuaries and rival forms of worship had arisen. The high-places, whereon the Canaanites had adored Baalim and Ashtaroth, still continued sacred, and though officially the Baal of Israel was Yahveh, the mass of the people worshipped the local Baal of the place in which they lived. Yahveh was scarcely remembered, even in name: His place was taken by the Baalim and Ashtaroth of Canaan. Manasseh went ‘a whoring’ after the golden image erected by Jerubbaal in Ophrah, or after the Canaanitish Baal-berith in Shechem; a rival priesthood to that of Shiloh served before the idols of Micah at Dan; and Jephthah sacrificed his daughter in accordance with Canaanitish beliefs. The Law of Moses was forgotten; each man did that which was right in his own eyes.

Modern criticism has asked how it is possible that all this could have been the case if a written Law actually existed. But the question forgets to take account of the circumstances of the time. A knowledge of reading and writing was confined to a particular class, that of the scribes; Israel was divided; intercommunication was difficult, and a Law which presupposed a camp of nomads continually under the eye of their legislator, was not adapted to the changed conditions in which the Israelites found themselves. Moreover, it must be remembered that the Israelites were for the most part a peasantry living in scattered villages; the inhabitants of the towns were Canaanites either by race or marriage. The one were too ignorant, the others too alien, to be affected by the Mosaic Code.

Nevertheless, the Code was preserved at Shiloh. Here there was an Aaronic priesthood, and the few notices that we possess of the worship carried on there show that it was in accordance with the Mosaic Law. Outside Shiloh, among those who still remained true to the faith of their fathers, the Law was remembered and presumably observed. Of this the Song of Deborah is a witness. The God of Israel, in whose name Barak and Deborah went forth against the heathen, is the Yahveh of the Pentateuch, not the Baal of Canaan. The history of Israel in the age of the Judges is, religiously as well as politically, the history of degeneracy, not of development.

In fact, religion and politics cannot be separated one from the other in the history of the ancient East, least of all in the history of the Hebrews. The one presupposes the other, and the political decay of the nation is a sure sign of its religious retrogression. The same causes which broke up its political unity broke up its religious unity as well. The knowledge and worship of Yahveh lingered in Ephraim, because in Ephraim alone the old ideal and spirit of Israel continued to survive. Ephraim was, as it were, the heart and core of Israel; it had led the attack upon Palestine, and its blood was purer than that of the other tribes. It remained more genuinely Israelite, with less admixture of foreign blood.

After Joshua and Othniel the history of most of the Judges is connected with that of Ephraim. Ehud is a Benjamite—the Ephraimitic ‘Southerner’; Shamgar is referred to in the Song of Deborah;[369] Deborah herself dwelt near ‘Beth-el in Mount Ephraim’; between Ephraim and Jerubbaal, who reigned on the Ephraimitic frontier, there was smothered hostility, which burst into open war in the case of Jephthah; Tola was buried in ‘Shamir in Mount Ephraim’; Abdon was an Ephraimite; while Ibzan and Elon came from adjoining tribes. Jair the Manassite, and Samson from ‘the camp of Dan,’ are the sole exceptions to the rule. What else can this mean except that such annals as survived the stormy age of the Judges were preserved amid the fastnesses of Mount Ephraim? The scribes of early Israel were not confined to Zebulon, and as in Babylonia or Egypt, so also in Palestine, the temple was the seat of the library. In the sanctuary at Shiloh the written records of the country would have found a safe harbourage along with the tables of the Law and the other monuments of the Mosaic age.[370]

The lifetime of Samuel separated the age of the Judges from that of the Kings. It marked the transition from a period of anarchy and disunion to one of order and organised unity under a single head. But never had the fortunes of Israel seemed so desperate. Disunited, with its former leader, Ephraim, disabled and half-exterminated through civil war, it had become the prey of a foreign enemy. The Philistines were no longer content with raiding expeditions. They now occupied the districts they overran, and built forts to secure the passes that led into the very heart of the Israelitish territory.[371] Their supremacy extended from one end of Palestine to another, and so gave a name to the country which it never afterwards lost. The tribes were reduced to a condition of serfdom; they ceased to be free men who could go forth with arms in their hands to fight their foes; and were compelled, as in the subsequent days of Chaldæan domination, to confine themselves to tilling the soil. The wandering smiths, the Kenite gypsies, were driven from the land; the Israelite was deprived of all warlike weapons, and was forced to go to the nearest Philistine post if he wished merely to sharpen his implements of agriculture. The sons of Jacob had almost ceased to be a nation.

It was while Samuel was still young that the chief Philistine victories were gained, and as he grew older the Philistine yoke became heavier and more severe. In the general wreck, his was the one prominent figure in Israel. To him the people looked for counsel and help, and saw in him a prophet of Yahveh. But Samuel was a man of peace, not of war. He could not lead his people to battle, or check the rising tide of Philistine success. Other men were wanted for the work, and these were not forthcoming. Perhaps a time came when Samuel himself was unwilling they should be found, and that the authority he had possessed should pass to another. Such, at least, is the impression we derive from his opposition to the demand of the people that they should have a king.

Samuel possessed, moreover, something more than personal influence. He was the last representative of the ancient sanctuary at Shiloh. He had been dedicated to it even before he was born; he had grown up in it among the last descendants of the earlier high-priests; he had seen the ark taken from it to fall into the hands of the Philistines; he had also witnessed, probably, the destruction of the temple itself. All the older traditions of Mosaic worship gathered about him; he was the living link in the chain which bound the religious past of Israel with its present. In his person the doctrines and practices which had been preserved at Shiloh were handed on to the newer age of the kings.

The Hebrew historian who put together the books of Samuel was no longer embarrassed, like the compiler of the book of Judges, by a want of materials. His embarrassment arose from a contrary cause. The documents before him relating to the history of the seer, to the rise of the monarchy and the adventures of David, were numerous, and the same event was sometimes recorded in different forms. He was called upon to harmonise and combine them together, and he doubtless experienced the same difficulty in doing so that the Assyriologists at present experience in reconciling the various accounts they have of the history of Babylonia in the thirteenth century B.C. That the latter can be reconciled, if only we knew a little more, we cannot doubt; but for the present the chronological inconsistencies seem irreconcilable. All that can be done is to set them side by side.

The compiler of the books of Samuel treated his materials in the same way. The result is that the picture of the Hebrew prophet which is presented to us is not always uniform in its colours. Sometimes he is a priest, sometimes the judge of all Israel, sometimes a mere local seer whose very name appears to be unknown to Saul.[372] Throughout the greater part of the narrative the Philistines are represented as the irresistible masters of the country; once, however, we hear that the cities they had captured were restored to Israel.[373] But it does not follow that because the colours of the picture are not uniform, a fuller knowledge of the history would not show that they are in harmony with one another. European critics are apt to forget that in the East, and more especially in the ancient East, conditions of life and society which are incompatible in Europe may exist side by side. John, the hermit of Lykopolis in Upper Egypt, was nevertheless on more than one occasion the arbiter of the destinies of the Roman Empire. And in the border warfare of Canaan cities passed backwards and forwards from one side to the other with a rapidity which it is difficult for the modern historian to realise.

Whether Samuel was a Levite or an Ephraimite by descent has been disputed. His father came from the village of Ramathaim-zophim in Mount Ephraim, and was descended from a certain Zuph, who is called ‘an Ephrathite.’[374] ‘Ephrathite’ signifies ‘a man of Ephraim’ (as in 1 Kings xi. 26). But it also signifies a native of Ephratah or Bethlehem in Judah (Ruth i. 2, 1 Sam. xvii. 12), and could therefore signify any other place of the same name. That there were other places of the name, the very name of Ephraim, ‘the two Ephras,’ is a witness,[375] and we might therefore see in the ‘Ephrathite’ merely a native of one of them. The Chronicler (1 Chron. vi. 26, 27, 33-38) definitely makes Samuel a Levite, and traces his genealogy back to Kohath. It is true that in the age of Samuel the priests, in spite of the Mosaic law, were not always of the family of Levi—the fact that David’s sons were ‘priests’ is a sufficient proof of this,[376]—but it seems hard to believe that such an infringement of the Levitical tradition would have been permitted at Shiloh. Nor is it likely that the genealogy given by the Chronicler was an invention. Samuel had been in a special manner the gift of Yahveh. His mother Hannah had borne no children to her husband Elkanah, and was accordingly exposed to the taunts of a second and more fortunate wife. Once each year did the whole family ‘go up’ to Shiloh, ‘to worship and to sacrifice unto the Lord of Hosts.’ On one of these occasions Hannah besought Yahveh with tears that He would grant her a son, promising to dedicate him to the service of the sanctuary should he be born. A Babylonian tablet, dated in the fifth year of Kambyses, records a similar dedication by a Babylonian mother of her three sons to the service of the sun-god at Sippara.[377] In this case, however, the sons did not leave their mother’s house until they were grown up, when they entered the temple, where part of their duty was to attend the daily service.

Hannah’s prayer was granted, and a son was born. The name which he received has no relation to the circumstances of his birth, in spite of the etymology suggested for it in 1 Sam. i. 20, so long as we look only to its Hebrew spelling. But if this spelling has been derived from a cuneiform original all becomes clear. Samû-il in Assyrian would mean ‘God hears,’ and there would thus be a fitting connection between the name and the story of the prophet’s birth. The fact is noteworthy, as it suggests that the history of Samuel was first written in the cuneiform characters of Babylonia; and that the cuneiform syllabary was used in Israel up to the time of the fall of Shiloh.[378]

As soon as the child was weaned he was brought to the sanctuary along with other gifts. These consisted of meal and wine, and three bullocks, one of which was slain at the time of the dedication. ‘The priest’ who presided over the services of the temple was old and infirm, and the management of the sanctuary was really in the hands of his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas. His own name was Eli. But he comes before us without introduction; we know nothing of his parentage and descent, and even the Chronicler found no record of his genealogy. That he was a lineal descendant of Aaron, however, admits of no doubt. This, indeed, is plainly stated not only in the prediction of the destruction that should overtake Eli’s house (1 Sam. iii. 14), but also in the opening words of the prophecy of ‘the man of God’ (1 Sam. ii. 27, 28).[379] The very name of Phinehas, given to Eli’s son, connects him with the line of Aaron and the long bondage of the Israelites in Egypt. Phinehas is not Hebrew, but the Egyptian Pi-Nehasi ‘the Negro,’ and could have no sense or meaning in the Israel of the age of Samuel except as an old family name.

Samuel was clad in the linen ephod, the sacred vestment and symbol of the priest, and ‘ministered unto Yahveh before Eli.’ One night, before ‘the lamp of God’ had gone out which burned before the ark of the covenant,[380] ‘the word of the Lord’ came to the boy in his sleep. Three times did it call to him, and then came the revelation of the punishment which Yahveh was about to bring on the house of the high priest.[381] His sons had been unfaithful to their office; not only had they lain ‘with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation,’ they had made men abhor the offering of the Lord, and the weak old man had restrained them not. The law had ordained that the fat of the sacrifice belonged to Yahveh, and that before it was burned upon the altar neither priest nor offerer could receive anything of the victim. Unless the law was complied with, the sacrifice was useless; Yahveh had been robbed of His portion, and no blessing could follow upon the offering. But the sons of Eli persistently set at naught the strict injunctions of the law. Before the fat was burned, their servant came and struck his three-pronged fork into the flesh that had been placed in the caldron, demanding that it should be given to him raw. God’s priests thus mutilated the sacrifices that were made to Him, and compelled His worshippers to defraud Him of His due. The Israelites began to shrink from bringing their yearly offerings to Shiloh, and the downward course of the religion of Israel was hastened by the cynical greed of its priests.[382]

Eli had already been warned by ‘a man of God’ of the coming vengeance of Yahveh. The prophet destined to play so important a part in the history of Israel now appears almost for the first time upon the scene. Deborah, indeed, had been a prophetess, and a prophet had denounced the idolatry of his countrymen during the period of Midianitish oppression; but the spirit of Yahveh, which, in later days, revealed itself in the form of prophecy, had hitherto rather inspired those upon whom it had fallen to become leaders in war and ‘judges’ of their people. Now it assumed a new shape. Out of the misery and confusion produced by the Philistine raids sprang the first great outburst of Hebrew prophecy. Those who still believed Israel was the chosen people of Yahveh, and that He alone was God over all the earth, were profoundly stirred by the triumph of the uncircumcised. There was an outbreak of that religious enthusiasm, degenerating at times into fanaticism, which has occurred again and again in the East. The ‘seer’ took the place of the ‘judge.’ The waking visions which he beheld revealed the future, and declared to him and the people the will of Yahveh. The arms of flesh had failed; all that was left was the ‘open vision,’ where the events of the future were pictured beforehand, and men learned how to escape disaster.

Around the seer there gathered bands of disciples, closely resembling the dervishes of to-day. They, too, received a part of the prophetic spirit, and at times, under the influence of strong emotions, passed, as it were, out of the body into an ecstatic state. Like the modern dervishes, however, they were completely under the control of the seer. At a word from him their ecstasy would cease, and they would once more become ordinary citizens of the world. But the spirit that moved in them was easily communicated to religious or excitable natures. The messengers sent by Saul to arrest David at Ramah were themselves arrested by the spirit of prophecy which permeated the home of Samuel, and when Saul himself followed in his wrath, he, too, was suddenly overcome by the same divine influence. ‘The spirit of God was upon him also; and he went on and prophesied, until he came to Naioth (the convent) in Ramah. And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that night.’

But this ecstatic excitement was not of the essence of Hebrew prophecy, and the latter soon divested itself of it. The dervish element, indeed, remained almost to the last; Elijah is a proof of it, and even Hosea and Isaiah still recur at times to symbolic action. But it became subordinate and purely symbolical, while the seer himself became a prophet. The conception that gathered round him was no longer that of a seer of visions, a revealer of the future, but of an interpreter of the will of God to man. Prediction there might be in his prophecies; but it was accidental only, and dependent on conditions which were clearly expressed. If the people repented of their sins, God’s anger would be turned away from them; if, on the contrary, they persisted in their evil ways, disaster and destruction would fall upon them. The message of Yahveh was conditional; it did not contain the revelation of an inevitable future.

In this respect the Hebrew prophet was unique. His name _nâbî_ is found in Babylonian, where it takes the form of _nabium_ or _nabu_, ‘the speaker.’ It was the name of the prophet-god of Babylon, Nebo, the interpreter of the will of Bel-Merodach, the supreme deity of the city. Nebo declared to mankind the wishes and commands of Merodach; he was, too, the patron of literature, the inventor, it may be, of writing itself. The name of the mountain whereon Moses died is a testimony that the worship of Nebo had been carried to the West in the old days of Babylonian dominion in Canaan, and we need not wonder that the word _nâbî_, with all that it implied, had been carried to the West at the same time. But it was not until after the age of Samuel that it made its way successfully into the Hebrew language. Samuel was still the _roeh_ or ‘Seer,’[383] though the Babylonian word in the form of a verb (_hithnabbê_) was already applied to his ecstatic companions who prophesied around him.[384] But the word answered to a need. As the Hebrew prophet ceased more and more to be a seer, it became necessary to find some new title for him which should express more accurately his true nature, and the word _nâbî_ was already at hand. The ‘seer,’ accordingly, fell into the background; the ‘prophet’ occupied his place.

We can trace the beginning of this great religious movement in the age of Samuel. Samuel has often been called ‘the founder of the prophetic schools,’ and, to a certain extent, this is true. But they were not schools in the sense of establishments where his contemporaries could be educated in the older literature of their country, and be trained to take upon them the prophetic office. Schools of this kind were to come later in the history of Israel. They did not even resemble the early Christian monasteries of Egypt, where bodies of monks lived together under a head, sometimes in a single building, sometimes in a collection of separate cells. The earlier disciples of Samuel were wandering bands of enthusiasts, over whose religious ecstasies he exercised an exciting and a controlling influence. They were men, to use a Biblical expression, who were ‘drunk with the spirit’ of God.[385]

The loss of the ark and the destruction of Shiloh must have quickened the movement which the Philistine troubles had begun. And it should be remembered that the ‘prophets’ among whom Saul was numbered were not all of them of the Dervish type. Among them must have been men like Samuel himself, the true predecessors of the prophets of later Hebrew history. In the generation which followed, we find men like Gad and Nathan, who have ceased to be seers and have become the preachers of Israel, the conscience-keepers of the king himself, and the chroniclers of his reign.[386] The literary traditions of Shiloh passed to them through the hands of Samuel.

The prophetic movement did something more than keep alive a belief in Yahveh as the God of Israel. It preserved at the same time the feeling of national unity. The ‘prophets’ who surrounded Samuel were drawn from all classes and from all parts of the Israelitish territory. That Samuel was ‘established to be a prophet of Yahveh’ was, we are told, known to ‘all Israel,’ ‘from Dan to Beer-sheba.’ That the statement is not too general is shown by the history of Saul. All Israel demanded a king, and it was over all the Israelitish tribes that he ruled. As he owed his power to Samuel, it is clear that the influence of Samuel also must have extended from one extremity of the Israelitish tribes to another. Wherever the Philistine supremacy allowed it, the authority of the seer was recognised and reverenced.[387]

But it follows from this that the veneration in which the temple at Shiloh had been held was equally widespread. Theoretically, at least, the Israelite acknowledged a central sanctuary, where the sons of Aaron served before Yahveh, and the prescriptions of the Mosaic law were observed. In practice, it is true, the old Canaanitish high places, with their local Baalim and Ashtaroth, had usurped the place of Shiloh; private chapels had been set up in the houses of individuals, and priests ministered in the sacred ephod before a graven image. But all this was the natural fruit of an ‘age of ignorance,’ and later generations recognised that such was the case. The purer worship of Yahveh was no ‘development’ out of an earlier polytheism; it was simply a return to an ideal, the memory of which was kept alive at Shiloh.

And yet a time came when it seemed as if Yahveh had forgotten the sanctuary wherein He had set His ‘name at the first.’ The punishment denounced upon the house of Eli was not slow in coming. Judah was already in Philistine hands, and the enemy were now attacking the Israelitish stronghold in Mount Ephraim. The Philistine camp was pitched at Aphek, not far from Ramah, the birthplace of Samuel.[388] The last relics of the Hebrew army were encamped opposite them in a spot subsequently named Eben-ezer, ‘the Stone of Help.’ But it proved no help to them on this occasion. The Israelites were defeated with a loss of about four thousand men, and in their despair ‘the elders’ advised that the ark of the covenant should be brought to the camp. Yahveh, it was believed, enthroned Himself above it between the wings of the cherubim, like the Babylonian Bel-Merodach, who on the feast of the New Year similarly enthroned himself above the ‘mercy-seat’ in his temple at Babylon.[389] He would therefore be actually among them, visibly, as it were, leading their troops to victory and blessing them with His presence. In the old days of the conquest of Canaan, the ark had been carried before the camp of Israel; the visible presence of ‘Yahveh of hosts’ had gone with it, and the foe had been scattered before Him like chaff before the wind.

The ark was accordingly fetched from its resting-place at Shiloh, and for the first time since the days of Moses and Joshua the safeguard of Israel was seen by the common eye. Despite the fears and reluctance of Eli[390] his two sons bore it on their shoulders to the Israelitish camp. Its arrival was greeted by a shout of joy which resounded across the valley to the camp of the foe. Thereby the Philistines knew that the God of the Hebrews had come in person to help his people against their enemies as he had helped them in old days against the Egyptians. But the old days were not to come again. The ark had been carried out of its resting-place by the command of the elders, not of Yahveh. Its sanctity had been profaned, the mystery that surrounded it rudely stripped away. It was only when it stood in its appointed place in the Holy of Holies that the glory of the Lord rested upon it, and Yahveh enthroned Himself between the wings of its golden cherubim. The tabernacle and the ark were inseparable like the casket and the treasure within it; either without the other was forsaken of the Lord.

The presence of the ark in the Israelitish camp availed nothing. The Israelites fought with desperation, but without a leader they were no match for the well-armed and well-trained Philistine troops. Their army was cut to pieces; it was said that thirty thousand of them were left dead on the field. Worst of all, the two sons of Eli were among the slain; the ark of Yahveh was captured by the heathen, and the way lay open to Shiloh.

A Benjamite fled from the slaughter to carry the evil tidings to the high priest. Eli was ninety-eight[391] years old; his eyes were blind, and he was sitting on a bench at the entrance to the temple, full of anxiety for the fate of the ark. The shock of the news was more than he could bear; when he heard that it had been taken by the Philistines he fell backwards, and his neck was broken. A single day had deprived Israel of its ark and of its priests.

Hardly was Eli dead when his daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was prematurely delivered of a child. He was born on an evil day, a day when the light of Israel seemed extinguished for ever. Throughout his life he bore a name which prevented the terrible circumstances of his birth from being forgotten. His mother called him I-chabod, ‘the glory is departed,’ ‘for the ark of God was taken.’[392]

I-chabod had an elder brother, Ahitub, born in happier times.[393] Through him the line of Shilonite priests was continued, and the high priesthood still remained in Eli’s house. It was Ahitub’s grandson, Abiathar, who, after being the faithful servant of David in his troubles, was banished and deprived of the priesthood on Solomon’s accession.[394] But Ahitub must still have been young when the Philistines gained the victory which laid all Palestine at their feet.

The destruction of the temple at Shiloh must have been one of the first results of the victory. The Israelites had no longer an army, and the Philistine conquerors could march in safety through the passes of Mount Ephraim. A fort was built by them to command the pass at Michmash, and the old sanctuary of Israel was levelled to the ground. No record of its destruction, indeed, was known to the compiler of the books of Samuel; it would have been strange, if in that hour of distress and national disaster, when the storehouse of Hebrew literature was itself destroyed, a chronicler should have been found to describe the event. But the memory of it was never forgotten, and it is alluded to both by the prophet Jeremiah and by the Psalmist (Jer. vii. 12, xxvi. 6; Ps. lxxviii. 60).

Such of the priests of Shiloh as survived the catastrophe were scattered through Israel. In the time of Saul we find eighty-five of them at Nob, which is accordingly called ‘the city of the priests.’ Samuel himself fled to the home of his fathers at Ramah. There as a seer and prophet, as the representative of the fallen sanctuary of Israel, and as one of the few literary men of the age, he became the centre of all that was left of patriotism and national feeling in Israel. Gradually his influence grew. Ahitub, the grandson of Eli, was young like himself, and the destruction of Shiloh had deprived him of such authority as his service before the ark of the covenant would have conferred.

The ark itself was once more within the confines of Israel. It had been carried to Ashdod, and there placed in triumph in the temple of Dagon. But the triumph was short-lived. In the night, the image of Dagon twice fell from its pedestal and lay on its face before the ark of the mightier God. On the second occasion, it was broken in pieces by its fall; when the priests entered the sanctuary in the morning, they found the head and hands of their god rolled upon the threshold. ‘Therefore,’ we are told, ‘neither the priests of Dagon nor any that come into Dagon’s house tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this day.’[395]

Dagon has been supposed to have had the shape partly of a man, partly of a fish. But the supposition has arisen from a false etymology of the name, which connects it with the Hebrew _dâg_, ‘a fish.’ We now know from the cuneiform inscriptions that Dagon was really one of the primitive deities of Babylonia adored there in days when as yet the Semite had not become master of the land. Dagon was coupled with Anu, the god of the sky, and when the name and worship of Anu were carried to the West, the name and worship of Dagon were carried there too. Sargon ‘inscribed the laws’ of Harran ‘according to the wish of the gods Anu and Dagon,’ and a Phœnician seal in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford has upon it the name of Baal-Dagon as well as representations of an ear of corn, a winged solar disk, a gazelle, and several stars. The ear of corn symbolises the fact that among the Phœnicians Dagon, the brother of El and Beth-el, was the god of agriculture and the inventor of bread-corn and the plough.[396] But this was because in the language of Canaan _dagan_ signified ‘corn.’ In passing to the West the god thus assumed new attributes, and became an agricultural deity who watched over the growing crops.[397]

The power of the God of Israel was not shown only in the humiliation of the Philistine god. The plague broke out in Ashdod, accompanied by its usual symptom, hæmorrhoidal swellings. The inhabitants of the city were not slow in recognising in it the wrathful hand of Yahveh, and the ark was accordingly sent to their neighbours in Gath. But here, too, the plague followed it, and Ekron, to which it was sent next, fared no better. For seven months the sacred palladium of Israel remained in the hands of its captors. Then ‘the priests and the diviners’ advised that it should be sent back to the people of Yahveh along with offerings to mitigate the anger of the offended God. Five mice and five hæmorrhoids of gold were made and placed in a coffer by the side of the ark. They represented the five Philistine cities, and the mice were symbols of the wrathful Yahveh, the God of hosts and of battle, who had wreaked his vengeance on the worshippers of the peaceful god of agriculture. The mice which devoured the corn were the natural foes of Dagon.

The ark and the coffer were placed on a cart, and two milch-kine were yoked to draw it. A doubt still lingered in the minds of the Philistines whether the God who had allowed his people to be conquered and his dwelling-place to be captured could really, after all, have been the author of the plague, and they watched, therefore, to see whether the kine took the road towards Israelitish territory or back to their own young. But all doubt vanished when the kine marched straight eastward towards Beth-shemesh, lowing as they went. The villagers were in the fields reaping when they saw the cart coming towards them, laden with its precious freight. The kine stood still at last by the side of a great stone—the stone of Abel ‘in the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite.’ Then the Levites came and took the ark and the offerings from the cart and laid them on the stone, which thus became a sanctuary and an altar. The wood of the cart was broken into firewood, and the kine were repaid for the gift they had brought by being sacrificed to the Lord.

But the plague followed the ark even upon Israelitish soil. The men of Beth-shemesh believed that it was because they had looked into the sacred shrine of Yahveh, to see, possibly, whether its original contents were still within it, and in their terror they begged the inhabitants of Kirjath-jearim to come and carry it away. To Kirjath-jearim accordingly it was removed and placed in the house of Abinadab, whose son Eleazar was consecrated to look after it. That it was not carried to Shiloh is a sign that the destruction of Shiloh had already taken place.

With the removal of the ark to Kirjath-jearim darkness falls on the history of Israel. There was little for the patriotic historian to record. The people were in servitude to the Philistines, the national sanctuary had been destroyed, the ark itself was hidden away in a private house. When the curtain is again lifted, it is to chronicle a local success over the Philistine foe. Samuel is at Mizpeh, ‘the watch-tower,’ which must have adjoined Ramah, if indeed it was not the name of one of its two quarters.[398] Here was the last refuge of the few Israelites who still refused to acknowledge the Philistine rule, and the surrounding mountains afforded a home and shelter to the bands of outlaws who still carried on a guerilla warfare with the foreigner. One of the incidents of this warfare was long remembered. While Samuel was sacrificing a lamb as a burnt-offering to Yahveh, the Philistines fell upon the assembled people. But a sudden thunderstorm dismayed the assailants, who fled down the valley towards Beth-car pursued by the inhabitants of Mizpeh. It was in memory of the victory that Eben-ezer, ‘the stone of help,’ was set up by the seer between Mizpeh and Shen.[399]

It would seem that no further attack was made upon Mizpeh and its neighbourhood during the lifetime of Samuel. At least such appears to be the conclusion we must draw from the generalising and optimistic language of the Hebrew historian.[400] For a time, indeed, the whole district was freed from the presence of the foreigner. The villages eastward of Ekron and Gath ceased to pay tribute to the conqueror, though their independence could not have lasted long.[401] Samuel’s ‘circuit’ did not extend beyond Mizpeh, Gilgal and Beth-el, and his sons judged cases in Beer-sheba.

Ahitub, the high-priest, was doubtless at Nob with the rest of the Levites of Shiloh, almost within sight of Mizpeh. What had been saved out of the wreck of the temple at Shiloh must have been there with him. We know that at Nob the sword of Goliath was subsequently laid up before Yahveh, and at Nob too was probably preserved the brazen serpent that had been set up by Moses in the wilderness.[402] According to the Chronicler,[403] however, the tabernacle and the brazen altar which had been made by Bezaleel were at Gibeon; how this came to be the case he does not say.[404] At any rate, if the brazen serpent were preserved, there is no reason why other things should not have been preserved as well. And the books of the Law would have been among the first objects to be carried with them by the fugitive priests. We are told that when the ark was brought into the temple of Solomon it still contained the tables of stone which had been placed in it by Moses (1 Kings viii. 9); if these had been removed from it when it was taken to the Israelitish camp, they too must have formed part of the temple furniture which was saved by the priests.

Here, therefore, in a small district of the tribe of Benjamin, a portion of which was inhabited by the old Gibeonite natives of the land, all that remained of Israelitish independence, whether religious or political, found its last refuge. Here the national spirit of Israel still lingered among the priests and Levites who had fled from Shiloh, or who lived in the mountains of Ephraim. It is not without significance that here, too, was the home of the Gibeonite serfs of the sanctuary;[405] priests, Levites, and Nethinim were gathered together, as it were, in one spot. Though the temple had fallen, the Mosaic Law and ritual were enshrined in the hearts of those who had served in it.

The destruction of Shiloh had restored to Beth-el its old pre-Israelitish renown. Once more its high-place became thronged with worshippers, and those who had formerly carried their gifts and sacrifices to Yahveh at Shiloh, now brought them instead ‘to God at Beth-el.’[406] At Beth-el, accordingly, once each year Samuel offered sacrifice and adjudged the cases that were brought before him, or predicted the future to those who consulted him as a seer. It was at a similar gathering at Mizpeh that the Israelites had been attacked by the Philistines, and that the victory of Eben-ezer had been gained.

But the results of the victory were local and momentary, and the condition of the Israelites had become intolerable. Samuel, moreover, was growing old; his sons Joel and Abiah were corrupt,[407] and his own influence was that of the seer rather than that of the leader in war or the administrator in peace. The only hope for Israel lay in its finding a chieftain who could mould its shattered fragments into unity, could organise its forces, and break the Philistine yoke. A new Jerubbaal or Jephthah was required, but one who would lead to victory not a few only of the tribes, but the whole of Israel.

The people demanded a king. Their instinct was right; in no other way could the Israelitish nation be saved. Democracy had been tried, and had failed: the end of the era of the Judges was internal anarchy and decay, the destruction of the central sanctuary, and servitude to the foreigner. Naturally Samuel was reluctant to hand such powers as he still possessed to another. His sons, doubtless, were more reluctant still. Moreover, he had been brought up in the school of the past. His boyhood had been spent at Shiloh under the influence of ideas which saw in a theocracy the divinely-appointed government of Israel.[408] At first he resisted the demand of the people. But it was in vain that he protested against their rejection of Yahveh and himself, or pointed out to them that the establishment of a kingdom meant the loss of their personal independence. The logic of events was too strong for the seer, and he was compelled to yield. The time had come when the choice lay between a king or national extinction, and a king accordingly had to be found.

Samuel yielded apparently with a good grace. In such a matter the word of the chief seer and prophet of Israel was law, and he knew that the selection was in his own hands. And he made it wisely and patriotically. Saul, the son of Kish, the first king of united Israel, justified his election to the crown. He saved Israel from destruction, and for a time succeeded in rolling back the wave of Philistine domination. His military capacities were unquestionable, as well as his courage and devotion to his people.[409]

But there was another side to his character, which perhaps commended itself to Samuel quite as much as his military abilities. A vein of deep religious fervour ran through his whole nature, which at times degenerated into the gloomy despondency of the fanatic. Rightly handled, he was capable of high religious enthusiasm, and of following his religious guide with the simplicity of a child. But he could not brook opposition; and, like all men of strong emotions, his hate was as intense as his love. He was born to be the leader of his countrymen, whether as a king or as a dervish the future had to decide.

Naturally he was a Benjamite, from that little corner of Palestine which still remained true to the best traditions of Israel. At first it seemed as if he was going to be the obedient disciple of Samuel, a crowned addition to the group of dervish-like prophets who surrounded the seer. More than one account of his accession to the throne of Israel has been handed down, and it is not always easy to reconcile them. One thing, however, is clear: Saul did not seek election, and it came upon him as a surprise.

But the tallness of his stature had marked him out from among his companions; it was the outward token of superiority which Yahveh had set upon him. His first meeting with Samuel was accidental. He had been sent by his father[410] to seek some asses that had strayed or been stolen, and, while vainly engaged on his quest, was advised by his slave to consult a seer who lived in the neighbouring town. The town proved to be Ramah, and the seer to be Samuel, who was that day offering a solemn sacrifice on the high place.[411] Samuel invited him to the feast which followed the sacrifice, and assigned to him the chiefest position among his guests; then before his departure he secretly anointed his head with oil, and declared that he was chosen to be ‘captain over Yahveh’s inheritance.’ Next the seer told him where the asses were that he sought, and bid him make his way to the sacred circle of stones at Gilgal, and there remain seven days until the prophet himself should come.

Hardly had Saul quitted the presence of Samuel than he was met by ‘a company of prophets’ coming down with music and wild cries from the high-place of Gibeah.[412] Saul had not yet recovered from the excitement of the strange and unexpected scene in which he had just been an actor, and was in no mood to resist the infection of the religious ecstasy which now seized upon him. He, too, like the spectators at a modern _zíkr_ in the East, joined the band of enthusiasts, and added his voice to theirs. It was not until he reached the high-place that his outburst of religious frenzy had spent itself.

Such is one of the versions of the history of the foundation of the Israelitish monarchy. Saul is anointed secretly by Samuel, and at once enrols himself in one of the ‘prophesying’ bands of which Samuel was the spiritual director. According to another version, his election as king took place in public at a great assembly convened by Samuel at Mizpeh. Here the lot fell upon Saul, who had hidden himself ‘among the stuff,’ and Samuel thereupon presented him to the people, who shouted ‘Long live the king!’ Then the seer ‘wrote in a book’ such regulations regarding the election and duties of a. king as we find in the book of Deuteronomy (xvii. 14-20), ‘and laid it up before the Lord.’ As soon as the assembly was dismissed Saul returned ‘to his house at Gibeah.’[413]

His election, however, was not accepted unanimously, consecrated though it had been by Yahveh. There were some who failed to see in the tall enthusiast anything more than the son of a yeoman at Gibeah. But a sufficient number of his own tribesmen were ready to gather around him as soon as he should summon them to battle. And the occasion was not long in coming. Jabesh-Gilead, the old ally of Benjamin, was beleaguered by Nahash, the Ammonite king. The city was too weak to resist, and its inhabitants, offered to surrender. But with Semitic ferocity Nahash answered that he would spare their lives only on condition that the right eye of each should be torn out. Seven days were granted them in which to determine whether they should accept his terms or fight to the death, and during the period of respite the elders of the city sent to Benjamin to beg for help. Saul was ploughing when the messengers arrived, and, fired with indignation, he cut his oxen into pieces, which he sent throughout Israel with the words: ‘Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen.’[414] The summons still ran in the name of the old seer.

Men came in from all sides, and Saul found himself at the head of a small army. It is said that when he numbered his troops at Bezek, ‘the children of Israel were three hundred thousand, and the men of Judah thirty thousand.’ Such may have been the full fighting force of Israel before Saul’s reign was ended; it cannot have represented the number of those who were able to flock to his standard during the few days that still remained for the relief of Jabesh. As elsewhere in the Old Testament, the ciphers are largely exaggerated. Indeed when we consider the size of the Assyrian army, as recorded in the inscriptions, at a time when it was the most formidable engine of destruction in Western Asia, it becomes clear that the number of fighting men in the Hebrew army can never have been very great. The three hundred and thirty thousand men in Saul’s army are but an instance of that Oriental exaggeration of numbers and inability to realise what they actually mean, which is as common in the East to-day as it was in the age of Samuel.[415]

Jabesh was rescued, and the Ammonites were scattered in flight. The victory was a proof of Saul’s military capacity, and justified his choice as king. The news of it rang from one end of Israel to the other, and the victorious soldiers demanded the death of those who had questioned their leader’s right to reign. But Saul refused the demand; no bloodshed was to mar the glory of the day; from henceforth all true Israelites were to be united in recognising their king. Yahveh had chosen him at Mizpeh; it was now needful that he should go to the sacred enclosure of Gilgal, the first camping-ground of the Israelites in Canaan, and there be solemnly acclaimed by the assembled multitude. As Joshua the Ephraimite had started from Gilgal to conquer Canaan, so Saul the Benjamite, the new ‘captain of the Lord’s inheritance,’ set forth also from Gilgal to restore its fallen fortunes.

A year had to pass before Saul felt himself strong enough to attack the Philistine garrisons. By that time he had collected three thousand Israelites about him, all of them prepared to fight and willing to obey their leader. But they were armed only with implements of agriculture, or such other makeshifts for weapons as they could find. The Philistines had forbidden the wandering blacksmiths to enter Israelitish territory, and Saul and his son Jonathan, we are told, alone possessed sword and spear. Out of the three thousand, one thousand were with Jonathan at Gibeah; the rest were with Saul watching the road that led over the mountains from Michmash to Beth-el. There was a Philistine fort on the hill above Gibeah, in the very heart of Saul’s own country; another fort commanded the pass of Michmash and the approaches to Ephraim.

The Philistines seemed to have made a rising among the Israelites impossible. Their forts and garrisons commanded the roads, like the French garrisons in Algeria, and the conquered population was forbidden the use of arms. Saul, nominally the king of Israel, was in reality merely the chief of a band of outlaws, desperately holding their own in the fastnesses of the mountains, and protected by the sympathy of the priests and the peasantry. The victory over Nahash had confirmed Saul’s title to lead them among his own countrymen; it had done nothing towards releasing them from the domination of the Philistines.

Now, however, Jonathan ventured to assail the Philistine outpost at Gibeah. The attack was successful; the fortress was taken and its defenders put to the sword.[416] It was open revolt against the Philistine supremacy, and the news of it quickly spread. Saul sent messengers throughout Israel, claiming the success for himself and the monarchy, and formed a camp at Gilgal. Meanwhile the Philistine army was on the march to suppress the revolt. The Hebrew chronicler describes it as consisting of ‘thirty thousand chariots and six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the seashore for multitude,’[417] and it pitched its camp at Michmash, a little to the north of Gibeah. Here it cut Saul off from all communication with the north, and threatened his rear. He therefore left Gilgal and joined his son at Gibeah. Only six hundred men remained with him; the rest had fled at the approach of the enemy, who sent out three bands of raiders from their camp, one of which marched in a south-eastward direction towards the Dead Sea, while the other two turned, the one to the north-west, and the other to the north-east.

The mountainous district from which Saul drew his forces was panic-stricken. The peasantry fled from their devastated fields, and the whole country was given up to fire and sword. Pure-blooded Israelites and Hebrews of mixed descent were united in the common disaster. The one hid themselves in the caves and forests, even in cisterns and grain-pits, while the others took refuge in Gad and Gilead, on the eastern side of the Jordan.[418]

It was again Jonathan who brought deliverance to Israel. Between the Israelites at Gibeah, and the Philistines at Michmash, lay a deep gorge, usually identified with the Wadi Suweinît.[419] On either side rose a precipitous crag of rock which effectually cut off the hostile forces one from the other. Across this gorge Jonathan determined to make his way, accompanied only by his armour-bearer, and trusting in the help of Yahveh of Israel. In broad daylight the two heroes climbed the opposite cliff, in the face of the Philistines, who believed they were deserters from the Israelitish camp. But once arrived in the Philistine stronghold, they fell suddenly on its unprepared defenders and slew about twenty of them ‘within as it were half a furrow of an acre of land.’ The Hebrew camp followers of the Philistines thereupon turned upon their companions, and the camp of the Philistines became a scene of confusion and dismay. Jonathan had said nothing to his father of his intended exploit, but Saul soon observed that fighting was going on in the enemy’s camp.

Among the Israelitish fugitives with Saul was the high-priest Ahimelech,[420] the great-grandson of Eli, who had joined the king with the sacred ephod. The ark, too, had been carried for safety into the Israelitish camp, and was once more accompanying the army of Israel against its foes. When, therefore, Saul had numbered his men and found that Jonathan was absent, he called for the priest and bade him inquire of Yahveh whether they should go to his help or not. But before the question could be answered the tumult on the opposite side of the valley made hesitation impossible. It was clear that the moment had come for striking a blow at the supremacy of the foreigner. The gorge accordingly was quickly traversed, and the Israelitish king with his six hundred followers threw himself on the enemy’s rear. The Philistines resisted no longer. Attacked in front by the peasants who had followed them, and in the rear by the soldiers of the king, they fled precipitately up the pass to Beth-el.[421] The victory was complete, and the Philistine forces would have been annihilated had Saul’s religious convictions been less fervent. But when the instinct of the general overcame the zealot, and he had stayed the priest in the very act of consulting Yahveh, he salved his conscience by a vow. None should eat or drink until he had overthrown his enemies, and whoever broke the royal vow should be devoted to death.

The vow was rash and untimely, but it was registered in heaven. The Philistines were pursued as far as Aijalon. The Israelites were too weak from want of food to follow them further. Jonathan alone, who had not been in the Israelitish camp when the vow was made, ate a little honey which he saw dropping from a tree. His companions looked at it with longing eyes, but dared not follow his example. All the more fiercely, therefore, did they fall upon the spoil which they afterwards found in the Philistine camp. The sheep and oxen and calves were slaughtered as they stood upon the ground, ‘and the people did eat them with the blood.’ The news of this violation of one of the primary laws of Israelitish religion struck Saul with horror. He caused a great stone to be rolled towards him, and on this improvised altar the animals were slain. It was ‘the first altar,’ we are told, that Saul ‘built unto the Lord.’

But worse was yet to come. Saul proposed to pursue the Philistines in the night, and accordingly the oracle of Yahveh was again appealed to. No answer, however, was returned to the questioners. Neither priest nor ephod availed anything, and it became clear that sin had been committed in Israel. When the lots were cast, they fell upon Jonathan, who then confessed that he had, in ignorance of his father’s vow, eaten a little honey. The religious fanatic was stronger in Saul than the father, and he pronounced sentence that Jonathan must die. Jonathan, in fact, was the firstborn whose sacrifice was demanded by Yahveh as the price of the victory. Fortunately the religious convictions of the Hebrew soldiers were less intense than those of their king. It was Jonathan to whom the victory was due, and in the hour of his triumph they refused to allow him to die. Saul yielded, perhaps willingly; but the Philistines were permitted to disperse to their own homes.[422]

Was the sacrifice of Jonathan urged by Ahimelech and the priests? They at any rate did not interfere to prevent it, and the lots were cast under their supervision. What is certain is that from this time forward there was an increasing estrangement between Saul and the priesthood, which ended in the secret anointing of David as king of Israel, and in the massacre of the priests at Nob. We hear no more of Ahimelech and the ark in the camp of Saul.

Samuel, the aged and venerated representative of the Shilonite priesthood, had much to do with this growing estrangement. From the first he had looked upon Saul as a rival who had robbed him of his former power. Even after Saul had proved his fitness to rule by the rescue of Jabesh, and had been publicly acclaimed king by the people at Gilgal, he could not conceal his mortification and hostility. Were not he and his sons still with them? he asked the assembled Israelites; why then had they added this ‘wickedness’ unto ‘all their sins,’ to demand a king? In the thunder which rolled overhead he bade them recognise the anger of Yahveh at their thus rejecting His representative, and he ended with the threat that both they and their king should be ‘consumed.’[423]

Samuel was not long in embodying his hostility in deeds. According to one of the authorities used by the compiler of the books of Samuel, seven days only had elapsed after Saul’s election when the seer upbraided him in the presence of his army and told him that Yahveh had chosen another king in his place.[424] Here, however, two occurrences have been confused together—Saul’s confirmation as king by the people at Gilgal, and his subsequent encampment at the same place in the second year of his reign. By this time the breach had grown and widened between the old Judge and the new ‘Captain’ of Israel. Saul, in spite of his religious convictions and excitability, had not shown himself the obedient disciple and tool of Samuel that might have been expected; he proved to have a strong and violent will of his own, which he was fully ready to exercise when not under the influence of religious excitement. It was only temporarily that Saul was ‘among the prophets.’ Nor did he possess that tact and pliability which would have enabled David under the same circumstances to avoid an open quarrel with the aged seer. Saul was too earnest, too convinced that what he believed was the truth, to understand a compromise, much less a course of duplicity.

That the incident at Gilgal is historical, there can be no doubt. It is only the time of its occurrence that is misplaced. It belonged to those days of danger and difficulty when the Philistines seemed to have triumphed finally, and the hope of Israel lay in the six hundred desperate men who still followed Saul. Saul had waited vainly for the coming of Samuel, and at length, tired of waiting, had offered the burnt-offering for the safety and success of the army which Samuel had agreed to present. Hardly had it been offered when the seer appeared. Then it was that the king of Israel was told that he had been rejected by the Lord, and that another had been selected in his place. The occasion was indeed well chosen; the Israelites were already sufficiently discouraged and inclined to believe that their king had been even less successful against the Philistines than Samuel and his sons. Under the rule of Samuel, at all events, the territory of Benjamin had not been devastated, and its inhabitants compelled to hide themselves in the holes of the earth.

Samuel returned from Gilgal to ‘Gibeah of Benjamin.’ The victory at Michmash, which disappointed his predictions,[425] changed the aspect of affairs, and Saul’s throne seemed now to be firmly established. Once more, however, Samuel made an effort to shake it, and it was again at Gilgal that the event took place. Saul’s power rested on his soldiery, and the surest way, therefore, of striking at it was through the soldiery in the camp of Gilgal.

It was after an expedition against the Amalekites. The Israelites had marched towards El-Arîsh and smitten the Bedâwin of the desert ‘from Havilah’ in Northern Arabia to the great Wall of Egypt.[426] They had brought back with them a vast amount of spoil, as well as Agag, the Bedâwin chief, ‘everything that was vile and refuse,’ including the mass of the people, having been ‘destroyed utterly.’ But this was not enough. The Amalekites were to be treated as the Canaanites had been by Joshua; they and all that belonged to them had been laid under the ban and condemned to extermination.[427] Samuel, therefore, went in haste to the Israelitish camp, and there charged Saul with disobedience to the commands of Yahveh. Saul’s plea that the cattle and herds had been saved by ‘the people’ in order that they might be sacrificed to the Lord, was not accepted, and the fierce old seer himself ‘hewed Agag in pieces before Yahveh.’ At the same time, he told the Israelitish king that the kingdom had been rent from him and given to a neighbour that was better than he. It was the last time that the king and the seer met. Samuel went back to his home at Ramah and Saul returned to Gibeah. Between Saul and the priesthood there was open war.

The attack upon the Amalekites implies that the Philistines had for a time ceased to be formidable. The extract from the state chronicles given in 1 Sam. xiv. 47-52 makes it follow the other wars of Saul. Among these wars we hear of one against Moab, of another against Edom (or rather Geshur), and of a third against ‘the kings of Zobah.’[428] The Aramæans of Zobah, called Tsubitê in the Assyrian texts, and placed northward of the Haurân, were beginning to be powerful, and as we learn from the history of David, were about to establish a kingdom under Hadadezer which extended to the Euphrates and included Damascus. But at present they were still governed by more than one chief.[429]

The campaign against Zobah makes it clear that Saul’s authority was acknowledged in Gilead as well as on the western side of the Jordan. It is not surprising, therefore, that after his death his son should have resided there, well out of the reach of the Philistines, or that Eshbaal’s kingdom should have comprised all the northern tribes. Little by little, in spite of the opposition of Samuel, Saul worked his way to general acknowledgment and power. The Israelites, for the first time, were welded into a homogeneous state, and their enemies were kept at bay. The organisation of the kingdom went hand in hand with the military successes of its king. Israel at last was not only feared abroad, but at peace and unity within.

With all this, Saul preserved the old simplicity of his life and manners. He never yielded to the usual temptations of the Oriental despot; he had no harîm like David or Solomon, no palaces, no gardens, no trains of cooks and idle servants.[430] The people were not taxed to supply him with luxuries, nor dragged from their homes for his buildings and wars. In some of these royal pleasures doubtless he could not indulge: the conditions under which he reigned prevented it. But it was only by his own free choice that he remained faithful to one wife—Ahinoam, the daughter of Ahimaaz,—and that he held court at Gibeah under the shade of a tamarisk instead of a palace, with a spear in his hand in place of a sceptre.[431]

Saul was a born soldier, and he had a soldier’s eye for detecting those who could best serve him in war. He added to his bodyguard all who were distinguished by strength or courage, and the border warfare with the Philistines kept them in constant employment. Among the young recruits was David, the youngest of the eight sons of Jesse, a Jew of Beth-lehem. Two different accounts have been preserved of the way in which David was first introduced to the king. It is difficult to reconcile them; the compiler of the books of Samuel was content to set them side by side without attempting to do so, while the Septuagint translators have cut the Gordian knot by omitting large portions of one of them. The difficulty is increased by the fact that the second account makes David the conqueror of Goliath of Gath, who elsewhere (2 Sam. xxi. 19) is said to have been slain during David’s reign by El-hanan the Beth-lehemite.[432]

According to this second story, the Philistines had invaded Judah and pitched their camp on a mountain-slope between Socoh and Azekah. Saul was encamped on the hill opposite, and between the two armies was the valley of Elah at the bottom of which was the dry bed of a mountain stream. The three elder brothers of David were in the Hebrew army, David himself having been left at home to look after his father’s sheep. From time to time, however, he was sent with loaves of home-made bread to his brothers and a present of milk-cheeses to ‘the captain of their thousand.’ On one of these occasions a Philistine giant, Goliath by name, came forth from the camp of the enemy to challenge the Israelites to single combat. He had done so day by day, but none of Saul’s followers had ventured to accept the challenge. For Goliath of Gath was a descendant of the ancient Anakim, and of gigantic stature. His height, it was said, was six cubits and a span, or nearly ten feet,[433] and the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, while its head weighed six hundred shekels of iron. Like the Greeks, he wore not only a bronze helmet and coat of mail, but also greaves on his legs; a bronze shield was hung between his shoulders and a broad-sword at his side.

David offered to accept the challenge of the uncircumcised giant, and in spite of his brothers’ ridicule his words were repeated to Saul. As a shepherd he had already proved his strength and daring by slaying both a lion and a bear; he was now ready to face the Philistine and redeem the honour of Israel. At first the Israelitish king insisted that he should be armed, and he was accordingly equipped in the usual Hebrew fashion with helmet, cuirass, and sword. But the young shepherd felt restricted and awkward in these unaccustomed accoutrements; nor did he know how to manage the sword. He therefore stripped them from him, and boldly approached the Philistine champion with his shepherd’s sling and five ‘smooth stones.’ These he knew how to wield, and with such effect that one of the stones penetrated the forehead of the Philistine, who fell dead to the ground. Then his conqueror dissevered his head with his own sword, while the Israelites shouted and pursued the panic-stricken enemy to the gates of Ekron.[434] Saul had inquired in vain through Abner, the commander-in-chief of the army, whose son the young champion of Israel was; and it was not until David had presented himself before the king, with the head of the Philistine in his hand, that he learned from his own lips that he was the son of his ‘servant Jesse the Beth-lehemite.’

David’s fortune was made; Saul at once incorporated him in his bodyguard, and a warm friendship began between him and Jonathan, a friendship that ceased only with Jonathan’s death. David was fresh and handsome, with a charm of manner and a ready tact which won the hearts of those he was with. It was not long, therefore, before he became first the favourite, then the general, and eventually the son-in-law of the Israelitish king.

The other account of David’s introduction to Saul brings Samuel once more upon the stage. The ‘neighbour’ better than Saul proves to be David, whom Samuel is accordingly sent to Beth-lehem to anoint secretly. He goes there under the pretence of wishing to offer a sacrifice, to which he invites Jesse and his sons. The elders of the city receive him with fear and trembling, and ask if he has come in peace. He is known to be the enemy of the king, and his arrival in a city of Judah bodes nothing good. The sons of Jesse are passed in review before him; none of them, however, is approved, and the seer asks if there is still no other. Thereupon Jesse tells him that there is yet the youngest, who is in the fields tending the sheep. Samuel bids him be sent for, and in spite of his terror of Saul and the secrecy of his mission, anoints the youth ‘in the midst of his brethren.’ Then the spirit of Yahveh comes upon David, and an evil spirit from Yahveh takes possession of Saul. Saul still reigns, indeed, but the mystic power conferred by the consecration, which had given him the right to do so, has henceforth passed to another.

The ‘evil spirit’ shows itself in fits of moody depression, which at times become insanity. Saul’s mind, always excitable, loses its balance; he is oppressed by a settled melancholy, which is now and again broken by outbursts of ungovernable rage. His servants determine that the evil spirit can be charmed away only by music, and one of them recommends David, the Beth-lehemite shepherd, who is not only a valiant ‘man of war,’ but also a skilful player upon the harp. David is hereupon summoned to the court, where his harping cures the king, who makes him his armour-bearer.

Such are the two narratives of David’s introduction to Saul. It is plain that they exclude one another. The king’s handsome armour-bearer, who soothes his mind and banishes his melancholy by music, cannot be the shepherd-lad who brings the loaves of home-made bread to his brothers, and whose very name and parentage are unknown to Saul and Abner. And yet there are points in each narrative which seem to be historical. It is true that in a later passage the death of Goliath is ascribed to a certain El-hanan; but the passage is corrupt, and though the Chronicler must have had an equally corrupt text before him,[435] it is possible he may be right in making the Philistine slain by El-hanan the brother of Goliath. At all events, the fact that the sword of the giant of Gath was preserved at Nob and was there handed over to David on his flight from Saul, shows that the death of Goliath must have happened while Saul was reigning and that David had been the hero of the deed. The priest expressly says that it was ‘the sword of Goliath the Philistine whom thou slewest in the valley of Elah.’ On the other hand, David was famous as a musician, and was even said to have invented instruments of music (Am. vi. 5), while Saul’s fits of depression were also historical; and the description given of David’s appearance (1 Sam. xvi. 12) is that of one who had seen him. Perhaps the harp-playing before the king followed David’s enrolment in Saul’s bodyguard, and was one of the means whereby he gained the heart of his royal master.

Are we to accept the anointing by Samuel as a historical incident, or are the modern critics right in asserting that the story is an invention, the object of which was to claim for the founder of the Judæan monarchy the same consecration at the hands of the great Hebrew seer as that which had been bestowed upon Saul? That David was actually anointed by a messenger of Yahveh admits of little doubt. Apart from Psalm lxxxix. 20, the date of which is questionable, and which may refer to the coronation in Hebron, it is clear from incidental notices in the historical books of the Old Testament that such consecration by a prophet or seer was felt to be a necessary prelude to the usurpation of a throne. It was thus that both Jehu and Hazael were incited to seize the crowns of Samaria and Damascus.[436] The use of oil in religious ritual went back to the days when Babylonian culture was predominant in Western Asia, and the religious texts of Babylonia contain many references to it. That the prophet was anointed for his office, we know from the history of Elisha.

On the other hand, it is difficult to conceive that David’s brother would have treated him with the contempt to which he gave utterance in the valley of Elah (1 Sam. xvii. 28) had he really been a witness to his consecration as king, and David’s future friendship with Jonathan, the heir-apparent to the throne, would have been more than hypocritical. Possibly the period of the consecration has been transferred from a time when David had become the son-in-law of Saul and the friend and guest of Samuel (1 Sam. xix. 18-22) to an earlier time in David’s life to which it is inappropriate.[437]

Abner, the cousin of Saul, remained the commander-in-chief of the Israelitish army, the Turtannu or Tartan, as the Assyrians would have called him. David, however, was made a general—‘the captain of a thousand’ was the exact title. The desultory war with the Philistines still continued, and the new general soon justified his appointment. But his successes and his popularity with the army aroused the jealousy of the king. Saul began to plot against his life and to hope that he might fall in one of the skirmishes with the enemy. Merab, Saul’s elder daughter, had been promised to him in marriage, but she was given to another, and though her younger sister Michal was offered in her place, Saul stipulated that David should bring him instead of a dowry a hundred foreskins of the Philistines. It was the Egyptian mode of counting the slain, which is still practised in Abyssinia; when Meneptah II. defeated the Libyans and their northern allies, the number of the enemy who had fallen was determined partly by the hands, partly by the foreskins cut off from the slain. The hundred foreskins demanded by Saul were doubled by David, who thereupon received Michal as his wife.

Saul had already, in one of his fits of frenzy, made an attempt on David’s life. The day before he had heard the women welcoming David as he returned from ‘the slaughter of the Philistine’[438] with sounds of music and the refrain: ‘Saul hath slain his thousands and David his ten thousands.’ The king brooded over the words, until in his moments of insanity they overpowered all prudence and restraint. When he recovered they still sounded in his ears, and his feigned friendship towards his son-in-law concealed murder in his heart.

At last he openly avowed his desire to be rid of his supposed enemy; and though in his saner hours he still shrank from murdering him with his own hand, he suggested both to Jonathan and to his retainers that they should do so. David, in truth, was becoming a formidable rival. He was idolised by the army, was popular among the people, and was a member by marriage of the royal house. He was, moreover, a Jew; and the tribe of Judah was now beginning to rise into importance and to realise its own strength. Above all, Samuel and the priests were at bitter feud with Saul, and favourably disposed to David.

Jonathan betrayed his father’s secret to his unsuspecting friend, and bade him await the issue of an appeal to the better nature of Saul. The appeal was successful, and for a time Saul laid aside his suspicions and there was apparent, if not real, harmony once more between him and his son-in-law. But another success against the Philistines revived the evil passions of the king. Again the old depression and gloom came upon him, and David’s harp, instead of dissipating it, transformed it into madness. Suddenly he flung his spear at the player, who slipped aside and fled. The time for mediation and forgiveness was passed. David could no longer be safe in the presence of a madman who was bent on taking his life. Royal guards were even sent to watch David’s house, and he escaped only with the help of his wife. In the night she let him down through the window of his room, and laid on the bed in his place the image of the household god covered with a sheet. When the king’s guards arrived to take him she pretended that he was sick, and it was not until they had come a second time that they discovered they had been deceived. Saul reproached his daughter for abetting her husband’s escape; but it was too late, and David had made his way to the house of Samuel at Ramah. Here, however, he was not yet safe from pursuit, and he and the seer accordingly took refuge in the sacred enclosure of the Naioth or monastery. There, surrounded by the prophet-dervishes, they felt that even the king in the madness of disappointed fury would not venture to violate their sanctuary.

That Samuel also should have been compelled to shelter himself from Saul’s anger, and that David on escaping from Gibeah should at once have gone to him, makes it evident that the king at least believed in the complicity of the seer in the plot against his throne. It also raises the presumption that Saul’s belief was justified, and that Samuel had played the same part towards David that Ahijah subsequently played towards Jeroboam, and Elijah towards Jehu. That David and Samuel were acquainted with one another seems clear; indeed, Gibeah and Ramah were so close to each other that it would have been strange if the politic David had not visited the old seer. Had it been on the occasion of one of these visits that the rising rival of Saul was anointed with the consecrated oil?

David remained safe in sanctuary. The messengers sent by Saul to fetch him from it fell under the influence of the place, and joined the dervishes in their ecstatic exercises; and when Saul himself followed them, he too was infected by the religious excitement around him. One of the sources used by the compiler of the books of Samuel ascribes to this occasion the origin of the saying: ‘Is Saul also among the prophets?’[439]

But as in the case of the introduction of David to Saul, there is again a double account of his escape. The two narratives are equally worthy of credit from a historical point of view, yet it is difficult to reconcile them together. The compiler has endeavoured to do so by supposing that David ‘fled’ from the monastery of Ramah to Jonathan after Saul’s return to Gibeah. But this only makes the difficulty of harmonising the two accounts the greater. If we accept them both, the only way of reconciling them is to suppose that a considerable interval of time elapsed between the events recorded in them, that in the monastery of Ramah peace was once more established between David and his father-in-law, and that David consequently returned to his accustomed place at court. In this case, the statement of the compiler that the second narrative follows immediately upon the first would be a mistaken inference.[440]

According to the second account, David came to Jonathan and assured him that Saul was determined to take away his life. Jonathan protested that this was impossible, although he had himself previously warned his friend that such was the case,[441] on the ground that his father concealed nothing from him. It was then agreed that Jonathan should discover Saul’s intentions and reveal them three days later to David, who should meanwhile hide himself in the fields. Jonathan was to shoot three arrows, and send a boy to gather them up. If he told the boy they were on the hither side of David’s hiding-place, it meant that all was well; if, on the contrary, he said they were beyond it, David would know that his life was in danger. The day following was the feast of the New Moon, when David ought to have dined with the king. But his place was empty; only Abner sat by the side of Saul, whose seat was, as usual, ‘by the wall.’ Saul said nothing, thinking that David was absent for ceremonial reasons; but when on the next day the place was again empty, he asked Jonathan what had become of him. Jonathan replied, as had been agreed upon, that he had given David permission to go to Beth-lehem to take part in an annual sacrifice of the family. But the answer did not deceive his father. Saul broke forth into reproaches, accusing Jonathan of rebellion and folly in preferring friendship to self-interest, and in saving the life of one who would use it to deprive him of the crown. Jonathan replied; and the king, mad with rage, flung his spear at his own son, who left the table and made his way to the place where David was concealed. There he gave the signal by which David knew that he must flee for his life, and while the lad was picking up the arrows the two friends embraced and parted, perhaps for the last time.

David fled to Nob. The priests of Shiloh had settled in it, and he believed therefore that he would find a shelter there. But Ahimelech was afraid of Saul; he knew that the king bore no goodwill to his son-in-law, and it was strange that David should be alone. David, however, had a ready answer to the question why ‘no man’ was with him. Saul had sent him out in haste on a secret mission, and his servants accordingly had been ordered to wait for him ahead. The haste indeed was such that he had brought with him neither food nor weapons. The priest had only the shewbread to offer, and at first hesitated about giving it to those who were not Levites. But David overcame his scruples, assuring him that his companions had ‘kept themselves from women’ for the past three days, and that the vessels they carried with them were clean. At the same time he took Goliath’s sword which had been dedicated to Yahveh, and lay behind the ephod wrapped in a cloth. Then he continued his flight, and did not rest until he found himself at the court of the old enemy of Israel, Achish the son of Maoch, king of Gath.[442]

Recent criticism has maintained that this first visit to Achish of Gath is but a duplicate version of David’s second visit to the same prince, like the duplicate accounts of his introduction to Saul and flight from the Israelitish court. The two visits, however, clearly belong to different periods of time, and the different treatment experienced by the fugitive at the hands of the king of Gath was due to the wholly different circumstances under which he arrived there on the two occasions. The solitary and defenceless exile, flying for his life from his own countrymen, was a very different person from the leader of a numerous band of reckless and well-armed adventurers who came to offer their services as mercenaries in war. A more serious difficulty is the fact that Achish, the son of Maoch or Maachah, was still reigning over Gath in the third year of Solomon (1 Kings ii. 39). But the long reign of about fifty years, which this presupposes, is no impossibility; Ramses II. of Egypt, for example, was sixty-seven years on the throne.

David did not remain long in Gath. The Philistines could not forget that he had been one of their most formidable adversaries, and there must have been some among them who had blood-feuds to avenge upon him. The fugitive servant of Saul was no longer to be feared, but there were many voices crying for his life. For a while Achish was inclined to protect him in the hope of using him against his countrymen, but how long this protection would last was doubtful. David accordingly feigned himself mad, he scrabbled on the gates, and let the spittle fall on his unshorn beard. The Philistine king gave up all hope of making him his tool, and allowed him to quit the court. David thereupon made his way to the home of his boyhood, and took refuge in the limestone caves of Adullam, a few miles to the south-west of Beth-lehem.

Here at last he was safe. He was among his own tribesmen, in a district well known to him, and in a place of refuge where the outlaw could defy his pursuers. Moreover, the home of his family was not far distant, and it was not long, accordingly, before his brothers and other relatives joined him in his mountain stronghold. The band of outlaws increased rapidly, and soon amounted to four hundred men. David’s abilities as a military leader were known throughout Israel, and all the outlaws and adventurers of Judah flocked to his standard; among them was the prophet Gad.

David once more found himself at the head of a considerable force. The quarrel between him and the king was assuming the character of a civil war. It was Judah against Israel, the first revolt of the new power that was rising in the south against the domination of the north. But the power was still in its infancy. Against the trained veterans of the royal army, with the prestige of legal authority and resources behind them, the bandits of the Judæan mountains could hold their own only so long as they remained among the limestone fastnesses of their own land. It was like a struggle between Sicilian brigands and the regular troops; the sympathies of the peasantry were with the brigands, and as long as they acted on the defensive, their lives were safe.

But the mountains of Judah were barren, and it was needful for David and his men to descend at times into the valleys and plains below, and there levy contributions of food. These were the moments of danger. The townsmen and owners of land could not be trusted like the peasantry; they looked with no favourable eyes on the armed outlaws who seized what was not freely given to them, and were ready enough to betray them to Saul. In the towns and plains the king’s troops had the advantage; while, on the other side, it was always possible to fall in with a body of Philistines to whom every Israelite was a foe.

But while David was hidden in the cave of Adullam, Saul committed a deed which shattered his kingdom and transferred the allegiance of the priesthood to his Judæan rival. This was the massacre of the priests at Nob. In reading the story of it we seem to have before us the words of an eye-witness. Saul was seated under the tamarisk on the hill at Gibeah, with his spear in his right hand, and his officers standing around him. Suddenly he broke out into reproaches against them and against his son. ‘Hear now, ye Benjamites; will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards, and make you all captains of thousands and captains of hundreds; that all of you have conspired against me, and there is none that sheweth me that my son hath made a league with the son of Jesse, and there is none of you that is sorry for me, or sheweth unto me that my son hath stirred up my servant against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?’ Then the heathen foreigner, ‘Doeg the Edomite which was set over the servants of Saul,’ answered and said that he had seen David come to Ahimelech the priest at Nob, and that there the priest had consulted Yahveh for him, had given him food and Goliath’s sword. At once the infuriated king sent for Ahimelech and his brother priests, and demanded of him why he had conspired with the rebel. Ahimelech’s answer only increased his anger. David, said the priest, was the son-in-law of the king, and his most faithful servant; how then could he have refrained from helping him on his road? Thereupon, Saul ordered the priests to be put to death, but no Israelite could be found to perpetrate such an act of sacrilegious atrocity. The Edomite, however, had no scruples; he fell with a will upon the defenceless priests, and eighty-five of them were massacred. Saul then descended upon Nob, ‘the city of the priests,’ and treated it like a city of the Amalekites, smiting it with the edge of the sword, ‘both men and women, children and sucklings, and oxen and asses and sheep.’ Only Abiathar, the son of Ahimelech, escaped, and fled to David, carrying with him the ephod and the oracles of God. The prophecy of the destruction of Eli’s house was fulfilled, but in fulfilling it Saul destroyed his own. The breach between the king and the priests was complete; he had compelled them, and all who reverenced them, to take the side of his rival.

It was now that David determined to send his father and mother to the protection of the Moabite court. His great-grandmother had been a Moabitess, and it is possible that the war between Saul and Moab, referred to in 1 Sam. xiv. 47, was continuing at this very time. In this case, the Moabite king would have given a ready welcome to the parents of his enemy’s enemy. They would be hostages for David himself, and David was a person whom it was desirable to attach to the Moabite cause. Not only was he the son-in-law of Saul, and an able general, but he was now at the head of a devoted body of men who were waging war on the Israelitish king. If war was actually going on at the time between Israel and Moab, alliance with David would divert and weaken the Israelitish attack. Moreover, as long as David’s parents were in his power, the king of Moab could compel the Jewish chieftain to serve and, if need be, to fight for him.

David’s followers had increased to six hundred men, and he now felt himself strong enough to occupy one of the Judæan cities, and make it a centre for his war against Saul. A pretext for doing so was soon found. Keilah was threatened by Philistine raiders, and patriotism demanded its rescue. The city is mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna letters under the name of Keltê; it was already a place of military importance, and was surrounded by walls. David’s followers, however, were reluctant to leave their retreat in the mountains and venture into a town. But the representative of the high priests of Shiloh was now with them, and the oracles of Yahveh, which he consulted through the ephod, admitted of no contradiction. Keilah was accordingly occupied by David, and its Philistine invaders repulsed. The citizens, however, showed little gratitude towards their preservers. Perhaps they thought it was merely an exchange of masters, and that Philistine pillage would not have been worse than the exactions of the outlaws. Perhaps they feared the fate of Nob for harbouring the enemy of Saul. However it might be, they sent word to Saul that David and his men were in the town. The king marched to Keilah without delay; had not God delivered David into his hand by bringing him into a city that had ‘gates and bars’? But once more the ephod was consulted, and the answer was clear. The people of Keilah were traitors, and David’s band must seek a shelter elsewhere. This time they fled to the wooded slopes above the wilderness of Ziph, on the eastern side of the Dead Sea. Here David and Jonathan met once more[443] under the shadow of the forest. But the Ziphites betrayed the hiding-place of the outlaws, and offered to help the king to capture his foe. For a time the hunted fugitives evaded their pursuers; spies brought David intelligence of Saul’s movements, and the desolate wadis of Ziph and Maon, with their deep defiles and precipitous rocks, enabled him to slip out of the toils. But at last the game became desperate; the outlaws were encircled on all sides, and the difficulty of procuring food must have been great. At that moment the Philistines came to their help; a messenger arrived in haste at the royal camp, urging the king to march westward at once, for a Philistine army had invaded the land. David was saved, and he now settled himself in the caves and fastnesses of the mountains about En-gedi.

From the peaks where only the wild goats trod,[444] David could look across the Dead Sea to the purple hills of Moab. Here, therefore, he was in touch with the Moabites, while his inaccessible position rendered him safe from attack. Below him was the comparatively fertile valley of Carmel of Judah, where large flocks of sheep fed on the scanty grass. It was the northern portion of the wilderness of Paran, and the outlaws exacted from it their supplies of food. The supplies were usually yielded with a good grace, and in return the shepherds and their flocks were protected from the Bedâwin and the wild beasts. But on one occasion the request for food met with a refusal. Nabal, a wealthy farmer at Maon, was shearing his sheep, and refused to give any of them to the messengers of David. Perhaps Saul was still in the neighbourhood, and he was thus emboldened to play the part of the churl. But he was soon taught that David was strong enough to take without asking. Four hundred of the outlaws marched down upon Maon, bent upon making him and his family pay with their lives for the niggardly refusal. The tact of a woman, however, saved them, and averted the anger of David. Abigail, the wife of Nabal, met the angry chieftain on the road with presents and honeyed words, and her fair looks and speeches induced him to turn back. That night Nabal was holding a shearing feast in fancied security, but when, the next day, his wife told him of his narrow escape, and of the band of outlaws that was still in the neighbourhood, his heart failed him, and ‘he became as a stone.’ The shock was too great for his strength; a few days later he died. Then Abigail, like a prudent woman, became the wife of the outlaw, and the wealth of Nabal passed into his hands. It was a welcome addition to David’s resources, and made him better able to control his men. Abigail, too, proved a devoted wife, following her husband in his wanderings, and sharing his wild life. She was not his only wife, however, though Michal had been given by her father to a Benjamite named Phaltiel. David, it would seem, had already married a certain Ahinoam of Jezreel.

It was probably before the marriage of Abigail, and while Saul was still chasing the outlaws through the wilderness of Ziph,[445] that an incident occurred, two versions of which had reached the compiler of the books of Samuel. Saul had with him a force of three thousand men, more than sufficient gradually to close in upon David and cut off all his chances of escape. Abner, the commander-in-chief, was with him, and the king was obstinate in his determination to track his enemy to the death. According to the one version of the story, Saul was alone in a cave; according to the other, he was asleep at night in his camp among the rocky crevices of Mount Hachilah. While he slept, David, with his two companions, Ahimelech the Hittite and Abishai the brother of Joab, crept stealthily towards him, and soon reached the unconscious king. Abishai would have slain him with his spear, but David forbade his touching ‘the Lord’s anointed,’ and contented himself with carrying away the spear and cruse of water which stood at his head, or, according to the other version, with cutting off the skirt of the royal robe. Then, standing on the opposite side of the gorge, David reproached Abner for his careless watch over the king. Saul recognised David’s voice, and demanded if it were not he, whereupon David made an appeal to the king’s better nature, asked why he was thus driving him from his country and his God, and pointed to the trophies he had just carried off in proof of his innocence. If he were really aiming at the throne, would he have spared the king when Yahveh had delivered him into his hands? The impulsive Saul yielded for the moment to the voice and words of his former favourite, but they produced no further effect upon him. David could not venture to send back the spear by one of his own men; it had to be fetched by a servant of the king. David had given Saul a lesson in generosity, but the only result of it was that he had to return to his old hiding-place. Saul remained resolutely bent on taking his life.

Meanwhile Samuel had died, and there seemed no longer any power left in Israel to contend against the will of the king. David began to perceive that his cause was hopeless; he had become a mere chief of brigands, and against him were arrayed all the forces of order and authority in the country. It was useless to continue the struggle, and he determined, therefore, to sell the services of himself and his followers to the hereditary enemies of his people. Accordingly he passed over to Achish of Gath, and entered the service of the Philistine.

The use of mercenary soldiers was no new thing. Egypt had long since set the example, and in the age of the nineteenth dynasty the larger part of the Egyptian army already consisted of foreigners. Many of these were kinsfolk of the Philistines from the Greek seas. Such soldiers of fortune were acceptable to the kings who employed them for more reasons than one. Their lives were devoted to fighting, and therefore they were better trained and more amenable to discipline than the native recruits, who were levied only as occasion required. Moreover, they had everything to gain and nothing to lose from war, unlike the peasantry, whose fields might be ravaged while they themselves were away in the camp. Above all, the mercenaries were faithful to their employer so long as he supplied them with plunder or pay. They had no party feuds to avenge, no loss of liberty to chafe at, no spirit of independence to cherish. Their swords were at the disposal of the king, and of none else; the tyranny which crushed his subjects found in them a willing instrument. David never forgot the lesson which his service with Achish had taught him. When at last he became the king of Israel, he also surrounded himself with a bodyguard of foreign mercenaries, drawn from much the same countries as those of the Pharaoh.

It was not as a bodyguard, however, that Achish needed the Jews. It was rather as an auxiliary force in future contests with their countrymen. Consequently they were allowed to settle in the country, at some distance from Gath, and Ziklag was given them as a residence. The outlaws had ceased to be brigands, and had become part of the regular army of a foreign prince.

For a year and four months the Hebrew corps dwelt at Ziklag. But they were not idle all the time. Once David led them on a raiding expedition against the Bedâwin Amalekites of the south. Men, women, and children were alike put to the sword, so that none might live to tell the tale. When the Jews returned with their booty, David professed to Achish that the raid had been directed against the Hebrews of Judah and their allies the Kenites and Jerahmeelites. The deception was successful, and the Philistine king rejoiced in the thought that the captain of his mercenaries had thus for ever rendered himself hateful to his countrymen. David had succeeded in disarming the suspicions of his hosts, in providing his retainers with the spoil they coveted, and yet at the same time in not alienating from himself the affections of his own people.

But a further trial was in store for the wily exile. The quarrel between Saul and his son-in-law had allowed the Philistines to assert once more their old supremacy in Israel. In David the Israelites had lost one of their chiefest generals, and the troops which should have been employed against the common foe were occupied in hunting him through the wilds of the Judæan mountains. The watchful enemy took speedy advantage of the fact. Israel was again invaded; the Philistines swept the lowlands of Judah, and prepared to march northward. Saul returned from his pursuit of David among the trackless rocks on the shore of the Dead Sea only just in time to prevent their penetrating again into the heart of Mount Ephraim. The territory of Benjamin was saved for a time, and the foreigner did not succeed in reaching the royal residence at Gibeah.

But the respite was not for long. A year and a quarter later the united forces of the Philistine cities marched northward, along the highroad on the coast of the Mediterranean, which had been trodden so often by the former conquerors of Western Asia. They passed Dor, the modern Tantûra, then occupied by their kinsfolk the Zakkal, and, turning the point of Mount Carmel, proceeded eastward through the valley of the Kishon towards the plain of Megiddo. It was the old fighting ground of Palestine; its possession gave the conqueror the command of the whole country west of the Jordan, and cut off the Israelitish king in his rear. With the enemy established at Megiddo, Benjamin and Ephraim would be effectually severed from the northern tribes.

Saul lost no time in proceeding against his foe. The Philistine camp had been pitched, first at Shunem, then at Aphek, on the southern slope of Mount Gilboa;[446] the Israelites now took up their station at a fountain near Jezreel, a few miles to the north-west. But the sight of the huge Philistine army, recruited, doubtless, as it had been by the Zakkal, filled Saul with despair. His own forces were miserably insufficient to meet it; he had lost his old confidence in Yahveh and himself, and the priests and prophets had become his enemies. In vain he sought counsel of Yahveh; such priests as still remained near him refused their help, and ‘Yahveh answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.’ Abiathar and Gad were with David; the prophets who had gathered round Samuel were now the bitter foes of the Israelitish king.

In his despair he turned to the powers of witchcraft and necromancy. In younger and happier days, before the massacre at Nob, when he was still the favourite of the servants of Yahveh, still enthusiastic for the religion of Israel, Saul had driven from his dominions all those who professed to traffic with the powers of the unseen world. The wizards and fortune-tellers, the enchanters and the possessed had been expelled from the land. The fact is a proof of the influence of the Mosaic code and religion in the priestly and royal circle.[447] Elsewhere in Western Asia the necromancers’ trade was flourishing; Babylonia, which was the home of the culture of Western Asia, was the home also of the arts of magic. Here the magician was held in high honour, and the literature of magic and omens occupied a large place in the libraries of the country. We cannot suppose that beliefs which were held by the most cultivated classes of Babylonia were not also shared by the mass of the population in Canaan and Israel. And it must be remembered that outside the Levitical law there was no suspicion or idea that those who practised magic had dealings with spirits of evil. Heathendom drew no distinction between spirits of good and spirits of evil; the gods themselves were destructive as well as beneficent. The Mosaic condemnation of witchcraft was utterly opposed to the popular belief, and Saul’s expulsion of those who practised it proves not only the existence of the Law, but also its recognition as the law of the state by the representatives of the religion of Yahveh. It was a reform analogous to those of Hezekiah and of Isaiah in later days; an attempt to conform to the Law of Yahveh, contrary though it was to the prejudices and the practices of the time.

But the king was now forsaken by the Law and its ministers, and as a last resource he turned to the forbidden arts. In disguise he went by night to a witch at Endor, and begged her to raise the shade of Samuel from the dead. And Samuel came in visible presence to the witch, though his voice only was heard by the king. But it was a voice that pronounced judgment. God had indeed departed from Saul and given his kingdom to another, and the doom was about to be fulfilled. Before the morrow’s sun was set, where Samuel was there should Saul and his sons be also, and the host of Israel should be delivered into the hand of the Philistines. Saul fell to the earth in a swoon; he had fasted all the previous day, and brain and body were alike worn out.

It was an ill-omened beginning for the day of battle which followed. Like the army of Israel, that of the Philistines was divided into companies of a thousand men each, which were further subdivided into companies of a hundred. Along with the native Philistines and their allies, the band of Hebrew mercenaries marched past the five generals. But hardly had they passed when a discussion arose as to their trustworthiness. Achish, indeed, declared his full confidence in the fidelity of David and his followers, but the other Philistine ‘lords’ distrusted them. The risk of employing them against their own countrymen was too great. How could they be trusted not to desert at a critical moment of the battle, and so make their peace with Saul by the sacrifice of the uncircumcised foreigner? The wishes of Achish were overruled, and David was sent back to Ziklag.

What would David have done had the result of the council been otherwise? It has generally been assumed that the fears of the Philistine lords were justified, and that he would have betrayed his new masters by going over to his old one. But in that case it is probable that he would have found some excuse for not leaving Ziklag and accompanying Achish on his march. That he followed the Philistine army as far as the field of battle implies that in selling his services to the king of Gath, he accepted all the recognised consequences of the act. As he had told Saul, it was not only from his country that he was driven out, but from the God of his country as well. In leaving Judah for Gath he had transferred his duties from Israel to Philistia, from Saul to Achish, from Yahveh to Dagon. It was the first step that mattered: all else was contained in it. The duties of the mercenary were well understood: he ceased to have a country of his own, and became, as it were, the property of the prince to whom his services were given. In after days, David would have had no scruple in employing his Philistine bodyguard in subjugating their kinsmen, any more than the Egyptians had in employing their Sardinian or Libyan mercenaries in their wars against Libya and the peoples of the Greek seas.

David, indeed, would not have lifted up his hand personally to attack ‘the anointed of Yahveh.’ But there was a good deal of difference between a hand-to-hand fight between himself and Saul and assisting his new masters in overthrowing the power of the northern tribes of Israel. Between the Jews and these northern tribes there was always a certain amount of smothered hostility, which broke out into actual war in the early part of David’s reign, and eventually led to the revolt of the Ten Tribes. It was not the Israelitish king, but the Israelitish kingdom which David and his followers were helping to destroy.

We need not question his sincerity, therefore, when he offered his sword to the lords of the Philistines and protested against their mistrust of himself. Nor would the fact that he had been on the side of the Philistine enemy have been prejudicial to his future interests, if he already cherished the hope of being the successor of Saul. It was in Judah, among his own tribesmen, and not in Northern Israel, that the foundations of his kingdom were to be laid; it was only the Jews, consequently, whose good-will it was needful for him to secure. If he already aimed at extending his power over all Israel, a defeated and broken Israel would be more easily won over to him than an Israel proud of its independence and strength, and attached to the house of a sovereign who had led them to victory.[448] David’s loyalty to Achish, however, was never put to the test. He and his mercenaries were sent back to Ziklag, and their dismissal from the field of battle was in itself an insult which would serve as a pretext for a quarrel with the Philistines should the need or opportunity for one ever arise. But when they reached their homes, they found there only desolation and ruins. The Bedâwin Amalekites had made a raid upon the undefended town, had burned its buildings and carried away the women and the spoil. There was no longer any Saul to repress their attacks, or to exact vengeance for their incursions.

Mutiny broke out among the mercenaries. They accused David of having torn them from their families, thus leaving Ziklag to the mercy of the foe. He was the cause of the disaster, and they began to talk of stoning him to death. The priest Abiathar came, however, to his rescue, and announced through the ephod the word of Yahveh that the robbers should be overtaken and the spoil recovered. At once, therefore, the pursuit commenced. The Bedâwin tracks were followed in such haste that when the desert was reached, only four hundred out of the whole band of six hundred had strength enough to proceed. Then an Egyptian was found who had been a slave among the Amalekites, and having fallen ill on their retreat from Palestine had been left to die upon the road. The departure of the Philistine army had exposed the Negeb to the attack of the Bedâwin, and they had not been slow to take advantage of it.[449] Only three days had elapsed since they had passed the spot where the slave was found, and he offered himself a willing guide to the Hebrews in their quest of his former masters. The Amalekite tents were soon reached, and the nomads were found feasting on the abundant plunder they had gained and dancing in fancied security. Suddenly at twilight the Hebrews fell upon them, and an indiscriminate slaughter took place. The massacre went on for twenty-four hours, and none of the Amalekites escaped except about four hundred young men, who succeeded in mounting their camels and flying beyond pursuit. All the spoil they had carried off fell into the hands of their conquerors, including the two wives of David himself. The flocks and herds were given to David: the rest of the plunder was divided among his followers, the two hundred men who had been left on the road being allowed, after some dispute, to share it equally with their fellows.[450]

David, with characteristic foresight, sent portions of the spoil that had been allotted to him as a ‘present’ to ‘the elders of Judah’ in the chief towns of the tribe. The Jerahmeelites and Kenites were not forgotten, nor the Calebites of Hebron. Some of the plunder was sent as far south as Hormah and Zephath, as well as to Aroer and Ramoth of the south. Reuben and Simeon had now ceased to exist as separate tribes, Simeon having been absorbed into Judah while such cities of Reuben as still remained Israelite had been occupied by ‘the elders of Judah.’[451]

David’s object in sending the presents was cloaked under the pretext that they were made to those who had befriended him in the days of his wandering. But the pretext was more than transparent. His wanderings had never extended to Hormah or Aroer, or even to ‘the cities of the Jerahmeelites.’ A crown was already within measurable distance of the Jewish chieftain: his soldier’s eye had seen that the Israelitish army was no match for that of the Philistines, and the priests who were with him were assured that Yahveh had forsaken Saul, and would work no miracle in his favour. The Philistines were once more dominant in the south, and a victory at Gilboa would make that domination secure. David possessed the confidence of Achish, and as the vassal of the Philistines he could count on their support were he to make himself the king of Judah. All that was needed was the good-will of the Jewish elders, and this his victory over the Amalekites gave him the means of purchasing.

On the other hand, were the Philistines to be defeated, and the Hebrew army, contrary to all probability, to be victorious, David’s position would be in nowise affected. He would still be safe among the Philistines, out of reach of Saul, and at the head of a formidable band of mercenary troops. The pretext for sending the presents could be urged with some show of reason: they were merely a return to the friends who had aided him in the time of his necessity. Now, as ever, David could indignantly disclaim any intention of plotting against the ‘anointed of the Lord.’

While David was thus looking after his own interests, events were fighting for him in the north. The Israelites at Gilboa were utterly defeated, and all Israel lay helpless at the feet of the heathen. Saul was slain along with his three elder sons; only a minor, Esh-Baal, was left, who was carried for safety to the eastern side of the Jordan. Israel was without either a king or a leader; even its army was lost. For a time the mercenaries of David were the only armed force that still remained among the tribes of Israel.

Saul had fallen on his own sword. Wounded by an arrow, he had prayed his armour-bearer to slay him lest he should fall still living into the hands of his foes. But his armour-bearer refused to commit the act of sacrilege, and the king slew himself. His body, like those of his sons, was stripped and hung in derision from the walls of Beth-shan. But the inhabitants of Jabesh of Gilead could not forget that Saul had once saved them from the Ammonite, and they went by night and carried away the ghastly trophies of Philistine victory; the bodies were first burnt, then the ashes were buried under a tree at Jabesh, and a fast of seven days was held for the dead.

The Philistines do not seem to have crossed the Jordan. They contented themselves with occupying the country west of it, and garrisoning the cities from which the Israelites had fled. The monarchy had fallen, and the house of Israel appeared to have fallen with it. From Dan to Beersheba the Philistine was supreme.

Deliverance came from the south, from the latest born of the Israelitish tribes. The mixed Israelite, Edomite, and Kenite population, which had there been slowly forming into a united community, now found a common head and leader in the son of Jesse. David, too, was of mixed descent. His great-grandmother had been the Moabitess Ruth, and on his father’s side he was partly of Calebite origin.[452] Mixed races have always shown themselves the most vigorous and the most fitted to rule, and the history of the Israelitish monarchy is no exception to the general law. A purely Israelitish dynasty had failed, as it was destined to do again after the revolt of the Ten Tribes; it needed the genius and tact of the Jewish David to establish the monarchy on a lasting basis and defend it against all enemies.

The news of the death of the king of Israel was brought to David by an Amalekite. He had robbed the corpse of its crown and golden bracelets which he laid at the feet of the Jewish chief. In the hope of a reward he had come in hot haste and pretended that he had dealt the final blow which delivered David from his enemy, and opened to him the way to a throne.[453] But he met with an unexpected reception. The story of the disaster aroused in David his slumbering patriotism, his affection for Jonathan, and his old reverence for Saul. Now that he had nothing any longer to fear from the Hebrew king, and everything to gain by his death, he could allow his impulse and emotions to have free play. He turned in anger upon the messenger, demanding of him how he—a stranger and an Amalekite—had dared to lift up his hand against the anointed of Yahveh. Then he ordered his followers to cut down the luckless Bedâwi, whose blood, as he told him, was upon his own head. After their recent experience the nomad thief was likely to have but a short shrift at the hands of the mercenaries.

In this act of vengeance there was that mixture of policy and impulse which is the key to so many of David’s actions. On the one hand, David freed himself from all responsibility for the death of Saul. The blood of the king could not be required at his hand either in the form of a blood-feud with the family of Saul, or in that of the nemesis which waited on the shedder of blood. On the other hand, it could not be said that he had gained the crown through the murder of the legitimate king. Saul indeed had been slain, and David had reaped the advantage of his death, but he had in no way connived at it. In the eyes of God and man alike he was innocent of the deed.

David found an outlet for his feelings in a dirge which is one of the gems of early Hebrew poetry. Future generations knew it as the Song of the Bow; such was the name under which it was incorporated in the collection of early Hebrew poems called the book of Jasher, and under which David ordered that it should be learned in the schools.

‘Thy glory, O Israel, is slain upon thy high places! How are the mighty fallen! Tell it not in Gath, Publish it not in the streets of Askelon; Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph. Ye mountains of Gilboa, Let there be no dew nor rain upon you, neither fields of offerings; For there the shield of the mighty ones was cast away, The shield of Saul, as of one unanointed with oil. From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, The bow of Jonathan turned not back, And the sword of Saul returned not empty. Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, And in their death they were not divided; They were swifter than eagles, They were stronger than lions. Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, Who clothed you in scarlet delicately, Who put ornaments of gold upon your apparel. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle Jonathan is slain upon thy high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan; Very pleasant hast thou been unto me: Thy love to me was wonderful, Passing the love of women. How are the mighty fallen, And the weapons of war perished!’[454]

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.

The Israelite general now sent secret messengers to David to arrange the details of the betrayal. Abner undertook to ‘bring over’ all Israel to David, in return for which he was to supplant Joab as the commander of David’s army. The terms were agreed to by the Jewish king, David only stipulating in addition that Michal should be restored to him. We are not told what it was proposed to do with Esh-Baal; Abner’s treason, however, involved putting him out of the way. As long as he lived there would have been a claimant to the Israelite throne.

The plot prospered at first. Abner tampered successfully with the elders of Israel, reminding them that they had once wanted David as their king,[461] and that Yahveh had declared that through him alone the yoke of the Philistines should be broken. The Benjamites also allowed themselves to be persuaded by one of their own princes, who was at the same time the most prominent member of the house of Saul, and Abner accordingly went to Hebron with a troop of twenty men to announce to David that his part of the compact had been fulfilled. But the secret had already oozed out. Abner had timed his visit so that Joab should be absent on a raid when he had his audience with David. Joab, however, returned sooner than was expected, and, pretending to be ignorant of the real object of Abner’s coming, expostulated with the king for allowing an enemy to penetrate to the court and spy out the weak places of the land. Meanwhile he had sent a messenger who brought Abner back to Hebron, where he and his brother Abishai murdered the unsuspecting Israelite, and thus avenged the blood of Asahel.

The blow was felt keenly by David, who saw in it the destruction of his hopes. The acquisition of Israel seemed further off than ever, for the Israelites were not likely to forgive or forget the murder of their chief. Worst of all, perhaps, his chances of getting rid of Joab were at an end. It was clear that the Jewish general had discovered the treachery that had been meditated towards him, and though he was too politic to reproach the king, it gave him a firmer hold upon David than before. From the point of view of the monarchy, indeed, this was fortunate, as Joab had proved himself a better and more loyal general than Abner, and it is probable that had Abner been thrust into his place, the future conquests of David would never have been made.

All that David could do was to disavow the murder of Abner, to protest that though he had been anointed king he had not the power to punish the perpetrators of it, and ostentatiously to abstain from food at the public dinner of the court. Abner, moreover, received a sumptuous burial in Hebron, at which the king was chief mourner. Joab must have recognised the policy of the king’s action, since he seems to have accepted it without a word of protest. He had gained his point; his rival was removed from his path, and his position in the kingdom was more unquestioned than ever.

The death of Abner reduced the adherents of Esh-Baal to despair. The seeds of disaffection which he had sown also began to grow up. If Israel was to be delivered from the Philistines, it was evident that the throne of Esh-Baal must be occupied by another. Time was on the side of David, and it was not long before the end came.

Esh-Baal was murdered by two of his own tribesmen. Baanah and Rechab, the sons of Rimmon, penetrated into his bed-chamber one summer afternoon while he was taking his _siesta_, and there murdered the sleeping king. Then they beheaded the corpse, and, taking the head with them, hurried to David at Hebron without once resting on the road.[462] But David was too prudent to countenance the deed. While securing all the advantages of it, he ordered summary punishment to be inflicted on its perpetrators, and thus cleared himself and his house from the stain of blood. Like the Amalekite who claimed to have killed Saul, the murderers of Esh-Baal were put to death, and the divine law, which exacted blood for blood, was satisfied. The Jewish king could enjoy with an easy conscience the fruits of a murder of which he was innocent. No other rival stood in his path, for Merib-Baal, the son of Jonathan, was a hopeless cripple, with his spine injured by a fall in his childhood. When he was still but five years of age the fatal battle of Gilboa had taken place, and his nurse in the hurry of flight had dropped the child from her arms.[463]

The death of Esh-Baal made David king of what was left of Northern Israel. Those who had gathered round the son of Saul at Mahanaim now flocked to Hebron, and there anointed the king of Judah king also of Israel. They reminded him that they, too, were of his ‘bone and flesh,’ sprung from a common ancestor and acknowledging the same God, that he had once been their leader against the Philistines, and that it had been predicted of him that he should again be the captain of Israel.[464]

His coronation as king of Israel led to war with the Philistines. From the vassal prince who reigned at Hebron, and whose title was not acknowledged by the majority of his countrymen, there was nothing to fear; it was different when he had become the king of a united Israel, and could once more summon the forces around him with which he had gained the victories of his earlier years. In accepting the crown of Israel, moreover, without the permission of the Philistines, David had been guilty of revolt. The Philistines claimed dominion over the whole of Northern Israel west of the Jordan; if they had condoned his annexation of the territory of Benjamin, it was because he was still their tributary vassal, and the annexation meant war between him and the rival kingdom of Israel. The heathen lords of Palestine were well content that Judah and Israel should waste their strength in contending with one another. But the union of the two kingdoms turned that strength against themselves. The union had been effected without their consent; it was ‘the men of Israel’ who had anointed David without consulting the suzerain power.

At first the war went against the newly crowned king. He was taken by surprise, and the Philistine army had invaded his territories before he had time to gather his forces together. Beth-lehem, the seat of David’s forefathers, was seized by the enemy, and made the base of their attack. Thus cut off from help from the northern and eastern tribes, or even from Benjamin, David was forced to retire from Hebron, and once more to take refuge in the ‘hold’ of Adullam.[465] It was a country well known to him; it had already saved him from the pursuit of Saul, and the foreign foe did not dare to penetrate into its dark caves and narrow gorges. Here for a time he carried on a guerilla warfare with the Philistines until he felt himself strong enough to venture out into the open field. It was while he was thus keeping the enemy at bay that three of his followers performed a deed which placed them among the thirty _gibbôrîm_, or ‘mighty men,’ in immediate attendance on the king.[466] David had a sudden longing for the water of the well at the gate of Beth-lehem, of which he had doubtless often drunk in his boyish days. His wish was overheard by Joshebbasshebeth,[467] Eleazar, and Shammah, who broke through the host of the Philistines, and succeeded in bringing the water to their leader. David, however, refused to drink it. It was, as it were, the price of blood; the three heroes had risked their lives to bring it, and the king accordingly poured it out as a libation to the Lord.

How long this guerilla warfare lasted we do not know. Only a meagre abstract is given us of the wars and conquests of David, and it seems probable that a detailed history of them has been intentionally omitted by the compiler of the books of Samuel. A separate work dealing with the history was doubtless in existence at the time he wrote, and there was no room for another by the side of it. It was the lesser known portion of David’s history which he aimed at compiling out of the records of the past. The story, therefore, of the conquest of the Philistines and then of the creation of an Israelitish empire has been lost to us; we know the results, but little more.

When David at length ventured to descend from his mountain fortress, the Philistines were encamped in the plain of Rephaim, or the ‘Giants,’ which stretched to the south-east of Jerusalem.[468] He was thus cut off from the north, the road being further barred by the Jebusite stronghold of Jerusalem, which appears to have peacefully submitted to the Philistine domination. For a while the two hostile forces watched one another, neither daring to attack the other. Heroes and champions on either side performed individual deeds of valour like that which had first won recognition for David on the part of Saul, but no general engagement took place.[469] The Philistines were too numerous, the Israelites too securely posted to be assailed.

At last, however, David judged that his opportunity had come. The oracle of Yahveh was consulted; the answer was favourable; and the Israelites descended suddenly on their enemies at a place called Baal-perazim. The Philistines fled precipitately, leaving behind them the images of their gods, which fell into the hands of the conquering army. The defeat at Gilboa was in part avenged.

But the strength of the Philistines was by no means broken, and they still held possession of the country north of Judah. Once more they poured through the valley of Rephaim, and once more they were driven back towards the coast. David had fallen upon them in the rear, the sound of the approaching footsteps of the Israelites being drowned in the rustling made by the wind in a grove of mulberry-trees. This time the invaders were utterly shattered; they retreated from the territory of Benjamin, and fled to Gezer, which was still in Canaanite hands. The war was now carried into the country of the enemy. Gath, the most inland of the Philistine cities, was the primary object of attack; but a long and desultory war was needed before either it or its sister cities could be forced to yield. Again opportunities occurred for the display of individual deeds of prowess, and for winning the rewards of valour from the Israelitish king. The three brothers of Goliath were slain by three of the champions of Israel, Jonathan the nephew of David being the victor in one combat, Abishai the brother of Joab in another. Abishai’s victory was gained at Gob, where David narrowly escaped death at the hands of the giant Ishbi-benob.[470] The narrowness of the escape terrified his subjects, and they determined that he should not again expose his life in the field. The memory of Saul’s death and its disastrous results was too recent to be forgotten. Henceforward, except on rare occasions, David governed his people from the city or the palace; his armies were led by Joab, and the king became to them a name rather than an inspiring presence. The personal affection he had once excited was confined to his bodyguard, and when the evil days of rebellion came upon him, it was the bodyguard alone which remained faithful to their king.

Before the war with the Philistines was finished, an event occurred which had a momentous influence on the future history of Judah. This was the capture of Jerusalem. The Jebusite city had severed Judah from the northern tribes, and the struggle with the Philistines had shown what advantage that gave to an enemy. A united Israel was impossible so long as the Israelitish territory was thus cut in two by a belt of hostile country. While Jerusalem remained in the hands of the foreigner, Israel could never be secure from Philistine attacks, or its king be able to hurl against the enemy the full force of his dominions. If the Philistine war was to be brought to a decisive and satisfactory end, if the king of Judah was also to be king of Israel, it was needful that Jerusalem should be his. We have learned from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna how important Jerusalem already was in the days when the Israelites had not as yet quitted Egypt, and when Canaan formed part of the Egyptian empire. Its position made it one of the strongest of Canaanitish fortresses. It was the capital of a larger territory than usually belonged to the cities of Canaan, and it was already venerable for its antiquity. Its ruler was also a priest, ‘without father and without mother,’ and appointed to his office by ‘the Mighty King,’ ‘the Most High God’ of the book of Genesis. Its name testified to the worship of a god of peace: Urusalim, as it is written in the cuneiform characters, signified ‘the City of Salim,’ the god of peace.

The city stood on a hill to which in after days was given the name of Moriah. A low depression, first recognised in our own days by Dr. Guthe, separated it from another hill, which sloped southward till it ended in a point. On one side was the deep limestone valley through which the torrent of the Kidron had forced its way; on the other side, to the west, was another valley known in later times as that of the sons of Hinnom. On the southern hill was a fort which protected the approach to the upper town to the north.[471]

Its Jebusite defenders believed it to be impregnable. Even the lame and the blind, they said, could repel the assault of an enemy. But they were soon undeceived. The Israelites climbed up the cliff through a drain or aqueduct that had been cut in the rock, and the Jebusite fortress was taken. It may be that its capture was due to treachery, and that the way had been shown to the besiegers by one of the garrison; at all events the inhabitants of the city were spared, and henceforward shared it with settlers from Judah and Benjamin. The latter would seem to have been chiefly planted in the new city which David built on the southern hill of Zion where the Jebusite fortress had stood. In contradistinction to Jerusalem it came to be known as the City of David; a strong wall of fortification was built around it, a Millo or citadel was erected on the site of the Jebusite fort, and the king’s palace was founded in its midst. The palace seems to have stood on the western side of the hill, with a flight of steps cut in the rock leading down from it to the valley below, traces of which have apparently been discovered by Dr. Bliss in his recent excavations.[472]

It was built by Phœnician artificers from Tyre. War and foreign oppression had destroyed most of the culture the Israelites had once possessed, and they no longer had among them skilled artisans like Bezaleel, who could undertake the construction or adornment of buildings which might vie with the palaces of the Philistine or Canaanite cities. Carpenters and stone-masons had to be fetched from Tyre like the beams of cedar that were cut on the slopes of the Lebanon. Jaffa, the port of Jerusalem, must already have fallen by war or treaty into David’s hand.

We are told that the cedar and the workmen were sent by Hiram, the Tyrian king. But if the Israelitish palace had been built in the early part of David’s reign, this can hardly have been the case. Josephus, quoting from the Phœnician historian Menander, tells us that Hiram I., the son of Abibal, reigned thirty-four years (B.C. 969-936),[473] and since he was still alive in the twentieth year of Solomon’s reign (1 Kings ix. 10), it would have been Abibal rather than Hiram who first entered into commercial alliance with David.[474] Abibal seems, like David, to have been the founder of a dynasty, and his son and successor was the Solomon of Tyre. He constructed the two harbours of the city, restored the temples, and built for himself a sumptuous palace, while his ships traded to the Straits of Gibraltar in the west and to the Persian Gulf in the east.

Jerusalem became the capital of the Israelitish king, and the choice was a sign of his usual sagacity. It was an ideal centre for a kingdom such as his. It lay midway between Judah and the northern tribes, and thus, as it were, bound them together. At the same time it belonged to neither; its associations were Canaanite, not Hebrew, and its choice as a royal residence could excite no jealousies. Moreover, this absence of past associations with the history of Israel enabled David to do with it as he liked; it contained nothing the destruction or alteration of which would offend the prejudices of his countrymen. Situated as it was on the borders of both Judah and Benjamin, it served to unite the houses of Saul and Jesse, and the mixed population which soon filled it—partly Jebusite, partly Jewish, and partly Benjaminite—was a symbol and visible token of that unification of races and interests in Palestine which it was the work of David’s reign to effect. In addition to all this, Jerusalem was a natural fortress, difficult to capture, easy to defend; it had behind it the traditions of a venerable past, and had once been the seat of a priest-king.

The spoils of foreign conquest allowed David to fortify and embellish it. Israel as yet had no trade of its own. The struggle with the Philistines had effectually prevented it from engaging in the commerce which had made the name of ‘Canaanite’ synonymous with that of ‘merchant.’ The Philistines had held possession of the highroads that ran through Palestine as well as of the southern line of coast; the coasts and harbours to the north were occupied by the Phœnicians. The capture of Joppa from the Zakkal first opened to Israel and Judah a way to the sea.

The fortifications of Jerusalem were completed and the royal palace built. But the God of Israel to whom David owed his power and his victories had no habitation there. Jerusalem had become the capital of the Israelitish monarchy, yet it was still under the protection of a Canaanitish god. The time had come when Yahveh should take his place and assume the protection of David’s capital and David’s throne.

In Egypt, in Babylonia, in the cities of Canaan itself, the palace of the king and the temple of the deity stood side by side. It was on the temple rather than on the palace that the wealth of the nation was lavished: while the palace might be built of brick and stucco, the temple was constructed of hewn stone. David naturally desired that Yahveh also should have a fitting habitation in the city He had given to His worshippers. But the prophet Nathan, who had at first shared in the plans of David, was commissioned to arrest the design. David had been a man of war who had ‘shed much blood upon the earth’;[475] until the wars were finished ‘which were about him on every side’[476] Yahveh would not permit him to build Him a house. All he might do was to prepare the material for his happier and more peaceful son. Jerusalem was ‘the city of the god of peace,’ and it was as a god of peace and not of war that Yahveh would consent to dwell within it.

Nevertheless, though the building of a temple was forbidden, the new capital of the kingdom was not deprived of the presence of Yahveh. The ark of the covenant was brought from the Gibeah or ‘Hill’ of Kirjath-jearim,[477] where it had lain so long. Placed in ‘a new cart,’ it was led along by oxen, while David and the Israelites accompanied it with music and singing. On the road, the oxen stumbled and shook the sacred palladium of Israel; Uzzah, one of the two drivers, put forth his hand to steady it, and immediately afterwards fell back dead. His death was regarded as the punishment of one who, though not a Levite, had ventured to touch the shrine of Yahveh, and David in terror and dismay broke up the festal procession, and left the ark in the nearest house, which happened to belong to a Philistine of Gath named Obed-Edom.[478] Here it remained three months. Then, David finding that the household of the Philistine had been blessed and not cursed by its presence, caused it to be again removed and taken to Jerusalem. Sacrifices were offered as it passed along, music once more accompanied it, and David, as anointed king, clad in the priestly ephod, danced sacred dances before it. But his wife, Michal, who had seen him from a window thus acting like one of the inferior priests, ‘despised him in her heart,’ and on his return to the palace upbraided him with his unseemly conduct. David answered taunt with taunt; the king could not degrade himself by any service, however mean, that he might perform in honour of his God, but Michal herself should be degraded by living the rest of her life a childless wife. Meanwhile the assembled multitude was feasted with bread, meat, and wine, and the ark was reverently placed in ‘the tent’ set up for the purpose in the midst of Jerusalem. Was this the famous ‘tabernacle of the congregation’ which had accompanied the Israelites in their wanderings in the desert, and had afterwards formed part of the temple-buildings at Shiloh? The fact that it is called ‘the tent’ would seem to imply that such was the case. On the other hand, the Chronicler evidently thought otherwise,[479] and we are not told that ‘the tent’ had been brought from elsewhere.

It would seem that the war with the Philistines was over when the ark was brought to Jerusalem. During its continuance it is not probable that a native of Gath would be living peaceably in Israelitish territory, or giving hospitality to the sacred safeguard of Israel. The Philistines must have already been incorporated into David’s kingdom, like the Jebusites of Jerusalem or the Kenites of the south, and his bodyguard have been recruited from among them. Unfortunately we do not know how long the war had lasted. A time came, however, when they acknowledged themselves the servants of the Israelitish king, and became the vassals of Judah. They never again were formidable to their neighbours, nor did they ever seriously dispute the suzerainty of Judah. It is true that they might now and then take advantage of a foreign invasion, like that of the Assyrians, to shake off the yoke of their suzerain, but their independence never lasted long, and the five cities did not always take the same side. Even when the very existence of Jerusalem was threatened by Sennacherib, we find Ekron faithfully supporting Hezekiah against the Assyrian conqueror. David broke the spirit as well as the power of the Philistines, and took for ever the supremacy they had wielded out of their hands.[480]

The ‘lords’ or kings of the five Philistine cities were left undisturbed. But their position towards David was reversed. Instead of his being their vassal, they became vassals to him, paying him tribute, and providing him with military service when it was required. David was well acquainted with the excellence of the Philistines as soldiers in war. Accordingly he followed the example of the Egyptian Pharaohs who had transformed their Libyan and Sardinian enemies into mercenary troops, and of the king of Gath in his own case. He surrounded himself with a bodyguard of Philistines and Kretans, to whom were afterwards added Karian adventurers from the south-western coast of Asia Minor. Already in the age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets Lycians from the same part of the world had served as mercenaries in Syria, and in the time of Ramses II. the Hittite army contained troops from Lycia, from Ionia, and from the Troad. Not only could the foreigners be used against David’s own countrymen in case of disaffection or rebellion; their employment about the king’s person in an office of trust made them feel that they were as much his subjects as the Israelites themselves, and forget also that they had been conquered. It was a means of cementing together the monarchy which the Israelitish king had created.

The war with the Philistines was followed by one with Moab. Here, too, David was successful. The Moabites were vanquished, and the captives massacred in accordance with the cruel fashion of the day. Forced to lie along the ground, two-thirds of the row were measured off with a line and pitilessly put to death. The result was the almost complete destruction of the fighting force of the country; and a century had to pass before Moab recovered its strength, and once more regained its independence. It was during the war with Moab that Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, who was sprung from the mixed Jewish and Edomite population of Kabzeel, first came into notice, and was rewarded with a place among the thirty ‘heroes.’ He slew, we are told, two _ariels_ of Moab.[481] The word seems to have specially belonged to the language of the Moabites. Mesha, on the Moabite Stone, states that after the conquest of Ataroth and Nebo, he took from them the _arels_ (or _ariels_) of Dodah and Yahveh, and tore them in pieces before Chemosh,[482] and in the Egyptian _Travels of the Mohar_ the same word is found, having been borrowed from the Canaanites in the sense of a ‘hero.’[483] The _ariels_ slain by Benaiah must therefore have been Moabite champions like the Philistine Goliath of Gath.

Their overthrow was not the only achievement of Benaiah which qualified him for a place among the _gibbôrîm_. He had found a lion at the bottom of a cistern in the winter-time when the ground was covered with snow, and had boldly descended into the pit and killed it. He had, moreover, slain an Egyptian in single combat, though armed only with a staff, while his opponent wielded a spear. These and similar deeds raised him to the rank of captain of the foreign mercenaries, an office which he retained throughout the reign of David. Between him and Joab, the commander of the native army, feelings of rivalry and ill-will grew up, as perhaps was natural. The native troops naturally looked askance at the mercenaries, who formed, as it were, a check upon themselves, and were favoured by the king with a confidence which they did not themselves enjoy. The feelings of the troops they commanded were reflected back upon the two generals, whose jealousies and counter intrigues ended, finally, in the destruction of one of them. Benaiah survived, while Joab perished at the foot of the altar.

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]

David sank slowly into the grave, old in mind as well as in years. A young maiden, Abishag the Shunammite, was brought to lie beside the king, and so keep up the warmth of his body. But it was all in vain, and it became clear that he could not last long. The bed of the dying king was surrounded by intrigue. Adonijah, the eldest of his surviving sons, naturally looked upon himself as the rightful heir. He could count upon two powerful supporters. One was the priest Abiathar, who had first given David’s title to the crown a religious sanction; the other was Joab, who had created his empire. But Bath-sheba had long since determined that she should be queen-mother, and that her son Solomon should wear the crown. Behind her stood Nathan, the spiritual director both of herself and of her son. The adhesion of Abiathar and Joab to Adonijah, moreover, drove their rivals Zadok and Benaiah into the opposite camp, and Benaiah took with him the foreign bodyguard of which he was commander, and which, as in other countries, thus showed itself ready from the outset to make and unmake kings. Above all, Bath-sheba still exercised her old influence over the half-conscious monarch, and it did not need the incitements of Nathan to induce her to exert it once more on behalf of Solomon. Backed as she was by the prophet, the issue was not doubtful, and David did as he was bid. Bath-sheba reminded him of his old promise to herself, Nathan craftily represented that Adonijah was already seizing the crown before his father’s life was extinct.

Zadok and Benaiah were accordingly summoned, and ordered to escort the young prince on David’s own mule to the spring of Gihon, and there, just outside the eastern wall of Jerusalem, where the Spring of the Virgin now gushes from the ground, to anoint him with the oil of consecration, and proclaim his accession by the sound of trumpet. The presence of the priests and the bodyguard was a visible sign that the kingship and the power had been transferred from David to Solomon.

Meanwhile Adonijah was holding a feast at the stone of Zoheleth, near En-Rogel, the Fuller’s Spring, the modern Well of Job south of the Pool of Siloam. Abiathar and Joab were with him; so also were his brothers, who seem to have had but little affection for the favourite of Nathan, as well as those representatives of Judah who had been the mainstay of Absalom’s rebellion. Solomon appears to have been regarded as tainted by foreign blood; at all events, Judah followed Adonijah as it had followed Absalom.[516] But Nathan and Bath-sheba had taken their measures in time. In the midst of the feast news was brought to the conspirators by Johanan, the son of Abiathar, that Solomon had been proclaimed king, and that his person was already protected by the royal bodyguard. The guests fled in dismay, and Adonijah took refuge at the altar. There the sovereign-elect promised him that he would spare his life.

Solomon next received the last commands of the dying king. David’s last thought was for the maintenance of the kingdom and the dynasty. Solomon was to follow in the footsteps of his father, to obey the law of Yahveh and His priests. More especially he was to seek an early opportunity of ridding himself of possible rivals or antagonists whom the weakness or policy of David himself had hitherto spared. Joab was to be put to death; he was too powerful a subject to be allowed to live, aged though he now was, and his complicity with Adonijah made him dangerous to the new king. Shimei, too, was to be slain; as long as he lived the fallen dynasty had a leader around whom the disaffected might rally. On the other hand, the kindness of Barzillai, the Gileadite, was not to be forgotten; favour to him would win the hearts of the men of Gilead.[517]

David died, leaving behind him a name which his countrymen never forgot. He became the ideal of a patriot king. He had founded a dynasty and an empire; and though the empire soon fell to pieces, the dynasty survived and exercised a momentous influence upon the religious history of the world. He had established once for all the principle of monarchy in Israel; never again could the Israelites return to the anarchic days of the Judges, or forget the lessons of unity which they had been taught.

In character he was generous and kind-hearted, though in his later years his kindheartedness degenerated into weakness. He was, moreover, brave and skilful, with a personal charm of manner and readiness of speech which those about him found it impossible to withstand. Alone of his sons, Absalom seems to have inherited these gifts of his father, which may perhaps account for the blind love David had for him. But along with these gifts went a rich fund of Oriental selfishness, which made him never lose an opportunity of securing his own advantage or promotion. It was a selfishness so deep as to be wholly unconscious; whatever made for his interests was necessarily right. It was combined with clearness of head and definiteness of aim, which ensured success in whatever he undertook. A good judge of men, he first attached them to himself by his gifts of manner, and then knew how to trust and employ them.

With the strong and healthy mind of the peasant there was, however, combined a depth of passionate emotion which doubtless had much to do with the influence he possessed over others. David was a man of strong impulses, and we cannot understand his character unless we remember the fact. The impulses, it is true, were controlled and regulated by the cool judgment and politic self-restraint which distinguished more especially his earlier life; but they swayed him to the end, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil. Above all, he was a religious man, deeply attached to the faith into which he had been born, full of trust in priests and prophets and oracles, and convinced that Yahveh would protect and befriend him as long as he obeyed the divine law. But there was neither asceticism nor fanaticism in his religion; it was the firm faith and religious conviction of a healthy mind.

David was not cruel by nature; if he showed himself merciless at times, it was either for reasons of policy, or because the action was in accordance with the public opinion of the age. The Assyrian kings gloat over the barbarities they practised towards their conquered enemies, and the Hebrew Semite similarly prayed that Yahveh might dip His foot in the blood of His foes. David might indeed be a man of blood, but by the side of the rulers of Nineveh he was mercy itself; and the very fact that the blood he had shed prevented him from building a temple to his God shows how different the conception of Yahveh must have been from that which prevailed among the neighbouring nations of their own deities.

Such, then, was David’s character, with all its apparent anomalies. Brave and active, clear-headed and politic, generous and kind-hearted, he was at the same time selfish and impulsive, at times unforgiving and merciless. He had nevertheless a genuine and fervid trust in Yahveh, and a fixed belief that Yahveh demanded an upright life and ‘clean hands.’ Up to the last he remained at heart the Oriental peasant, who takes a healthy view of life, whose shrewdness is crossed and chequered by the impulses of the moment, and whose religion is deep and unquestioning. But, like the peasant, he failed to be proof against success and prosperity. The bold and hardy warrior degenerated into the self-indulgent and even sensual despot. It is true that he repented of the crimes to which his self-indulgence had led, and which to most other Oriental despots would have soon become a second nature; the self-indulgence, however, remained, and a weak will and infirmity of purpose marred the latter years of his life.

Future generations saw in him the ‘sweet psalmist of Israel.’ As far back as we can trace it, tradition averred that a large part of the psalter owed its origin to him. It has been left for the nineteenth century to be wiser than the past, and to deny to David the authorship of even a single psalm. But there are some of them which seem to bear their Davidic authorship on their face,[518] and if there are many which belong to a later date, while others are pieced together from earlier fragments,[519] this is only what we should expect when once the nucleus of a collection had been formed, and the psalms embodied in it employed liturgically. Assyrian discovery has shown that penitential psalms, similar in spirit and form to those of David, had been composed in Babylonia centuries before his time, and there collected together for liturgical purposes.[520] In Egypt, what we should call ‘Messianic psalms’ had been written before the age of the Exodus.[521] There is, therefore, no reason why a part of the Hebrew psalter should not belong to the Davidic period, and be the work of David himself. There is nothing in it inconsistent with the character of David or the ideas of his time. It is only the false theory of ‘the development of Hebrew religion’ which finds in it the religious conceptions of a later era. Those indeed who maintain that in the age of David the law of Moses was as yet unknown, and that faith in Yahveh was hardly to be distinguished from that in Baal or Chemosh, may be compelled to deny that any of the psalms, with their high spiritual level, can belong to the king who was ‘after God’s own heart’; but history cannot take note of theories which are built upon assumptions and not facts. Even in the northern kingdom of Israel, where the memory of the founder of the Davidic dynasty was naturally held in little esteem, tradition was obliged to confess that he had been the inventor of ‘instruments of music’ (Am. vi. 5).

The exact date of David’s death is doubtful. The chronology of the books of Kings, so long the despair of chronologists, has at length been corrected by the synchronisms that have been established between the history of Israel and Judah and that of Assyria. Thanks to the so-called Lists of Eponyms or Officers from whom the years of the state calendar took their name, we now possess an exact chronology of Assyria from B.C. 911. In B.C. 854 Ahab took part in the battle of Qarqar, which was fought by the princes of the west against their Assyrian invaders, and his death, therefore, could not have happened till after that date. In B.C. 842 Jehu offered homage to the Assyrian monarch, and Hazael of Damascus was defeated in a battle on Mount Shenir. Four years previously the Syrian opponent of the Assyrians was Hadad-idri or Ben-Hadad. Lastly, Menahem of Israel paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser III. in B.C. 738, Pekah and Rezin were overthrown in B.C. 734, and Damascus was taken and destroyed by the Assyrian king in B.C. 732. It is only after the capture of Samaria by Sargon in B.C. 722, when the kingdom of Judah stands alone, that the Biblical dates harmonise with the Assyrian evidence, or indeed with one another. It is evident, therefore, that the Biblical chronology is more than forty years in excess. Ahab, instead of dying in B.C. 898, as Archbishop Usher’s chronology makes him do, cannot have died till some forty-five years later. We have no means of checking the earlier chronology of the divided kingdom, but assuming its correctness, the revolt of the Ten Tribes would have taken place about B.C. 930.

Solomon, like Saul, is said to have reigned forty years. But this merely means that the precise length of his reign was unknown to the compiler. It could not have exceeded thirty years. Hadoram, who was ‘over the tribute’ in the latter part of David’s life (2 Sam. xx. 24), still occupied the same office in the first year of Rehoboam’s reign (1 Kings xii. 18), and Rezon, who had fled from Zobah when David conquered the country, was ‘an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon’ (1 Kings xi. 24, 25). No clue is given by the statement of Rehoboam’s age in 1 Kings xiv. 21, since when it is said that he was ‘forty and one years’ at the time of his accession this is merely equivalent to ‘_x_ + 1.’

The length of David’s reign is more accurately fixed. Seven years and a half did he reign in Hebron, and thirty-three years over Israel and Judah (2 Sam. iv. 5), or forty and a half years in all. Approximately, therefore, we may date his reign from B.C. 1000 to 960. Saul’s accession may have been ten or fifteen years earlier.

David’s palace at Jerusalem, it is stated in 2 Sam. v. 11, was built by the artisans of Hiram of Tyre, who also furnished him with cedar wood. The fragment of Tyrian annals quoted by Josephus from Menander[522] throws some light on the chronology of the time. Hiram, we are told, was the son of Abibal, and the names of his successors are recorded one after the other, together with the length of their reigns. But unfortunately the sum of the reigns does not agree with their total as twice given by Josephus, nor indeed are our authorities agreed among themselves in regard to the length of certain of them. The fact, however, that Josephus twice gives the same total raises a presumption in its favour, more especially when we find that it is possible by a little manipulation to make the sum of the several reigns harmonise with it.[523] This total is one hundred and forty-three years and eight months, which, it is said, elapsed from the building of Solomon’s temple in the twelfth year of Hiram down to the foundation of Carthage in the seventh year of Pygmalion. But the date of the foundation of Carthage is itself not a wholly certain quantity, though B.C. 826 is probably that which was assigned to it by the native historians.[524] A hundred and forty-three years and eight months reckoned back from 826 would bring us to B.C. 969 or 970. As the temple was begun in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign (1 Kings vi. 1), this would give B.C. 973 for the accession of Solomon, and B.C. 1013 for that of David. The palace constructed for David at Jerusalem by the workmen of Hiram must have been erected at the very end of David’s life, after the suppression of the revolt of Absalom, unless, indeed, the author of the books of Samuel has mistaken the name of the Tyrian king, and written Hiram instead of Abibal.

There is yet another synchronism between Hebrew and profane history which must not be overlooked. Jerusalem was captured in the fifth year of Rehoboam by Shishak I., the founder of the twenty-second Egyptian dynasty. But Egyptian chronology is more disputable even than that of Israel, and we do not know in what year of the Pharaoh’s reign the invasion of Palestine took place. Boeckh, on the authority of Manetho, places the commencement of his reign in B.C. 934; Unger, on the same authority, in B.C. 930; while Lepsius pushes it back to B.C. 961.

On the whole, then, we must be content with approximate dates for the founders of the Hebrew monarchy. The revolt of the Ten Tribes will have taken place somewhere between B.C. 940 and 930; the accession of David somewhere between B.C. 1010 and 1000. It coincided with the period when the older kingdoms of the Oriental world—Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt—were in their lowest stage of weakness and decay.

Solomon succeeded to a brilliant heritage. The nations which surrounded him had been conquered or forced into alliance with Israel; there was none among them adventurous or strong enough to attack the newly risen power. The caravan-roads which brought the merchandise of both north and south to the wealthy states of Western Asia passed through Israelitish territory; Edom, which communicated with the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, was in Jewish hands, as well as Zobah, which commanded the road to the Euphrates. The tolls levied on the trade which thus passed through the empire filled the treasury at Jerusalem with abundant riches, while the products and luxuries of the whole eastern world flowed into the Hebrew market. The alliance with the Tyrians gave Solomon a port in the Mediterranean; the possession of Edom gave him ports of his own in the Gulf of Aqaba. In return for the use of the Edomite harbours by the ships of Phœnicia, he was allowed to send forth merchantmen of his own from the havens of Hiram on the Phœnician coast. The ships themselves were manned with Phœnician sailors; like the Assyrian kings in later days he had to turn to the experienced mariners of Phœnicia to work his fleet.

At home the kingdom had been fully organised. There were an army of veterans, a foreign bodyguard, who had no interests beyond those of the master who paid them, a well-selected capital, and a fiscal administration. The revolts which had disturbed the later years of David had been suppressed with a heavy hand, and such murmurs as may have been raised against the enfeebled government and neglected justice of the late reign were hushed in presence of a young and well-educated prince, the _protégé_ of priests and prophets, whose very name promised his people the blessings of peace. The wars of David, with their tax of blood and treasure, were at an end. Those who had conspired against the elevation of Solomon to the throne had been put to death at the outset of his reign: the grey hairs of Joab were stained with his own blood as he clung to the unavailing altar; Adonijah was executed on the ground that he had asked to have Abishag for a wife, and it was not long before a pretext was found for removing Shimei out of the way. Benjamin and Judah had alike lost their leaders, and Solomon henceforth did his utmost to win them to himself.

Abiathar was banished to the priests’ city of Anathoth, and the glory of the high priesthood was left to Zadok and his descendants alone. They alone were allowed to serve before the ark of the covenant, and the doom pronounced upon the house of Eli was thus fulfilled. The act placed the religion of Israel for many generations to come under the domination of the king. Solomon declared by it his supremacy in the church as well as in the state. It meant that the king claimed the power and the right to appoint and dismiss the ministers of the Mosaic law. The central sanctuary became the royal chapel rather than the temple of the national God, and its priests were the paid officials of the sovereign rather than the administrators and interpreters to the people of the divine law. The democratic element passed out of Hebrew religion, and the king more than the high priest came to stand at the head of it. The erection of the temple completed the work which the deposition of Abiathar had begun; sanctuary, services, and priesthood were all alike under the royal control. The family of Eli had preserved the tradition of the days when the priests of Shiloh exercised independent authority, and interpreted the law which all were called upon to obey. With the banishment of Abiathar came a break with the past; no venerable memories were connected with the rival house of Zadok, no recollection of a time when the word of the priest of Shiloh had been a teacher in Israel. Under Zadok and his successors the old meaning of the high priesthood gradually faded out of sight; as in Assyria or Southern Arabia the priests of an earlier age were supplanted by kings, so too in Israel the place and influence of the high priest were absorbed by the Davidic dynasty. Even a Jeroboam could assert his right to establish sanctuaries and appoint the priests who should serve them.

Solomon had been brought up under the eye and instruction of Nathan, and to Nathan, therefore, we must probably trace his religious policy. There was much to be said in favour of it. It prevented friction between the priesthood and the monarchy; it guaranteed the stability of the dynasty of David by extending to it the sanction of religion; above all, it secured the maintenance of the religion itself. It gave it as it were a local habitation in a costly sanctuary built and endowed out of the royal revenues, and attached to the royal palace. The ark ceased to be national, and became instead the sacred treasure of the chapel of the king. While the monarchy lasted, the religion of the monarchy would last also, and Nathan and Zadok might be pardoned if they believed that the Davidic monarchy would last for ever.

The administration of the country next claimed the attention of the new king. It was organised on an Assyrian model, Palestine being divided into districts, each of which was placed under a governor who was responsible for the taxes as well as for the civil and judicial government of it. Hitherto, it would appear, the old system of tribal government had been preserved, the tribes owning allegiance to hereditary chieftains or ‘princes,’ who, like the chieftains of a Highland clan, represented the tribe, and led its members to war. David seems to have modified this system for military purposes, if we may judge from the list of ‘captains’ given in 1 Chron. xxvii., but no attempt was made to carry out a general system of taxation, or appoint governors with fiscal powers. The conquered provinces alone were required to furnish an annual tribute to the treasury, and for this a single officer, Hadoram, was found sufficient.

The territory of the Israelites themselves was now formed into fiscal districts. Twelve officers were appointed, who were required to provide in turn for the necessary expenses of the royal household during the twelve months of the year. A list of them, extracted from some official document, is given in 1 Kings iv. 8-19. In the earlier part of the list the names of the officers have been lost, those only of their fathers having been preserved. Two of them were married to daughters of Solomon, indicating that the list must have been drawn up towards the end of Solomon’s life. One of the king’s sons-in-law was the governor of Naphtali; the other presided over the Phœnician coast-land south of Tyre. Here, at Dor, in a country occupied by the Zakkal kinsmen of the Philistines, and in proximity to Tyre, it was needful that the prefect should be connected with the king by closer ties than those of officialism. The direction of the Mediterranean trade was mainly in his hands, and the resources which were thus at his disposal, as well as the neighbourhood of Hiram, might have tried the loyalty of any but a relative of the king. The plateau of Bashan was under the jurisdiction of one governor who had his residence at Ramoth-gilead; Gilead was under a second, while a third governor had Mahanaim. We may, therefore, gather that Ammon and Moab, as well as Geshur, had been absorbed into Israelitish territory. This may in part explain why at the revolt of the Ten Tribes Moab went with Israel rather than with Judah.

It is noticeable that there was no governor in Judah. Here, in fact, the king himself ruled in person. It would seem that Judah was exempt from the taxes levied on the rest of Palestine. This was in accordance with the policy which made Solomon court the goodwill of his father’s tribe, and identify with its interests those of himself and his house. So far as the continuance of the Davidic dynasty was concerned, the policy succeeded. Judah identified itself with the house of David, and rallied faithfully round its king. There was no longer any talk of rebellion, or of transporting the capital to Hebron; from henceforth Judah and its kings were one. But the fact only made the breach between Judah and the rest of Israel wider and more visible, and alienated the other tribes from the reigning house. They were treated like the conquered Gentiles; the place of their old hereditary princes and leaders was taken by governors appointed by the crown, and fixed taxes were rigorously exacted from them for the support of the royal treasury. They derived no benefit, however, from the royal expenditure; it was lavished upon Jerusalem and the Jewish towns which lay near to it. They were too far off to see even a reflection of that royal glory of which they may have heard, and for which they certainly had to pay. The same causes which strengthened the ties of allegiance of Judah to the reigning dynasty weakened those of Israel.

Throughout the reign of Solomon, Hadoram remained ‘over the tribute,’ and his duties were enlarged by the supervision of the home taxation and _corvée_ being added to that of the foreign tribute.[525] Jehoshaphat still continued ‘recorder,’ but the secretary Shisha had been succeeded by his two sons. The literary correspondence of the empire was increasing, and one chief secretary was no longer sufficient for it. The family of Nathan, as might have been expected, was well provided for. One son was made Vizier; the other became the royal chaplain as well as ‘the king’s friend.’ The latter title, which had been given to Hushai in the time of David (1 Chron. xxvii. 33), had been borrowed from Egypt; the title of the Vizier, or ‘head of the officers,’ corresponded with the Assyrian Rab-saki or Rabshakeh, ‘the chief of the princes.’ Another office which may have been borrowed from Assyria was that of royal steward, which was held by Ahishar; along with him the Septuagint associates a second steward Eliak, and a captain of the bodyguard called Eliab, the son of Saph or Shaphat.[526] Like the list of governors, the list of officials must have been drawn up at the end of Solomon’s reign, since Azariah has already taken the place of his grandfather Zadok as high priest (see 1 Chron. vi. 9, 10, where a confusion has been made between Ahimaaz the son of Zadok and Johanan or Jonathan the son of Abiathar). It is significant that the list begins with the ‘priest,’ not with the general of the army as in the warlike days of David.

The fame of Solomon’s wealth and magnificence was spread through the Oriental world. Foreign sovereigns sought his alliance or courted his favour. Even the Queen of Sheba came to visit him. Modern criticism has long since banished the Queen to the realm of fiction, but archæological discovery has again restored her to history. Sheba or Saba was already a flourishing kingdom in the time of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III.; its territories extended from the spice-bearing coasts of Southern Arabia to the borders of Babylonia and Palestine. If Glaser and Hommel are right in their interpretation of the south Arabian inscriptions, it had entered on the older heritage of the kingdom of Ma’ân. The Minæan kings of Ma’ân had ruled not only in the south but in the north as well; their records are found near Teima, and they had command of the great highroad of commerce which led from the Indian Ocean to Egypt and Gaza. Egypt and Gaza, indeed, are mentioned in Minæan inscriptions.[527] From an early period the kingdoms of Southern Arabia had been in commercial contact with Canaan.

The conquest of Edom by David and the Hebrew fleets which sailed from the Gulf of Aqaba must soon have acquainted the merchant princes of Ma’ân and Saba with the fact that a new power had risen in Western Asia, and a new market been opened for their goods. The road to Palestine was well-known and frequently travelled, and Minæan or Sabæan settlements existed upon it almost as far as the frontiers of Edom. What more natural, therefore, than that a Sabæan queen should visit her wealthy neighbour whose patronage had become important for Sabæan trade? That queens might rule in the Arabian peninsula we know from the annals of Tiglath-pileser III., which refer to Zabibê and her successor Samsê, each of whom is called a ‘queen of the land of the Arabs.’

Even the Pharaoh of Egypt condescended to mingle the blood of the solar race with that of the grandson of a Hebrew _fellah_. Solomon married the daughter of the Egyptian monarch. But it was a monarch of the twenty-first dynasty, who, though acknowledged as the sole legitimate representative of the line of the Sun-god Ra, had nevertheless been sadly shorn of his ancient rights and authority. His power was confined to the Delta, where he held his court in the old Hyksos capital of Tanis or Zoan, close to the Asiatic frontier, and as far removed as possible from the rival dynasty which ruled in Upper Egypt. He was doubtless glad to secure a son-in-law who could defend him from his enemies at home in case of need, and whose friendship was preferable to his hostility.

The Egyptian princess had brought with her as dowry the Canaanitish city of Gezer. That it should have been in the power of the Pharaoh to give it is at first sight surprising. It shows that Egypt had never relinquished in theory her old claims to be mistress of Canaan. Like the title of ‘king of France,’ which so long lingered in the royal style of England, they were never abandoned, but were ready to be revived whenever an opportunity occurred. Towards the close of the period of the Judges, but before the Philistines had become formidable, Assyria and Egypt had met on friendly terms on the coast of Palestine. The Assyrian conqueror, Tiglath-pileser I. (in B.C. 1100), had found his way to the Phœnician city of Arvad, and there received from the Egyptian Pharaoh various presents which included a crocodile and a hippopotamus. The campaign of the Assyrian king had brought him to the edge of the territory which the Egyptian rulers of the twenty-first dynasty still regarded as their own, and they hastened accordingly to propitiate the invader, and thus to stay his further advance. The embassy and gifts further show that the occupation of the coast by the Philistines did not prevent the Egyptians from maintaining their old relations with Phœnicia, though they may have done so by sea rather than by land. At all events an expedition sent to Gebal by Hir-Hor, the high priest of Thebes, at the beginning of the twenty-first dynasty, was despatched in ships.[528] Had the coast-road been free from danger, the Egyptians would doubtless have asserted their right to march along it. They seized the first occasion to do so, when the Philistines had been conquered by David, and the successor of David was the Pharaoh’s ally.

Solomon engaged in no wars of his own. He was no general himself, and it may be that he feared to intrust a subject with an army. Joab had taught him how easily the commander-in-chief might defy his master, Abner how readily he might betray him. In the list of officials given in the Hebrew text, Benaiah indeed is stated to have been ‘over the host’ (1 Kings iv. 4), but Benaiah was actually the commander of the bodyguard, so that his command of the army must have been merely nominal. Practically the army which had played so large a part in the history of David had ceased to exist. Hence it was that Rezon was able to establish an independent kingdom in Damascus, and that when the Ten Tribes revolted there was no army at hand with which to suppress the rebellion. Hence, too, the curious fact that just as Solomon sought the help of Hiram in fitting out his merchant fleet in the Gulf of Aqaba, so also he sought the help of the Egyptian king in subduing the one Canaanitish city of importance which still preserved its freedom. Gezer had maintained its Canaanitish continuity from the days when as yet the Israelites had not entered Canaan, and the mounds of Tel Jezer which mark its site must still conceal beneath them the records of its early history. Doubtless the Egyptian court was gratified at the arrangement with the Hebrew king. It admitted the Egyptian claim of suzerainty over Palestine, and admitted the right of its armies to march along its roads. But the substantial advantages remained with Solomon. He gained Gezer without either expense or trouble, and at the same time he allied himself by marriage with the oldest and most exclusive royal race in the Oriental world. Like the kings of Mitanni in the age of the eighteenth dynasty, the son-in-law of the Pharaoh was on a footing of equality with the proudest princes of Asia.

The alliance with Hiram was no less advantageous. Hiram had done for Tyre what Solomon was doing for Jerusalem. It has been conjectured that his father Abibal, or Abi-Baal, was the founder of a dynasty; at all events the accession of Hiram ushered in a new era for the Tyrian state. He succeeded to the throne at the age of nineteen years, and during his long reign of thirty-four years he raised Tyre to an unprecedented height of prosperity and power, and rebuilt the city itself. The ancient ‘rock’ from which it had derived its name was connected by an embankment with another rocky islet close to it, and a new and splendid city was erected upon the space thus won from the sea. Excellent harbours were constructed, massive walls built round the city, and the venerable temple of Melkarth restored from its foundations, and decorated with all the sumptuous splendour of Phœnician art.

Tyre had always been famous for its sailors and its ships, and its wealth is celebrated even in the letters of Tel el-Amarna. But under Hiram its maritime trade underwent an enormous development. The conquest of the Philistines by David, and the consequent disappearance of piracy from the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, were the immediate causes of this. Tyrian ships could now venture into the bays and havens of the Greek seas in quest of slaves, or the precious purple-fish, and their merchants could make voyages in safety as far as Tarshish. Riches poured into ‘the merchant-city,’ and Hiram had resources in abundance for his public works.

The Hebrew king was eager to follow the example of his Tyrian neighbour. It was true that his subjects were neither sailors nor traders; it was true, also, that the harbours on the Mediterranean coast which the conquest of the Philistines had added to his dominions were few and poor. But the conquest of Edom had given him the entrance to the spice-lands of Southern Arabia, and the gold-mines which recent discovery has found in Central Africa.[529] An agreement was therefore come to with Hiram which was to the profit of both. Hiram gave Solomon sailors and boat-builders, as well as the use of his Mediterranean ports; in return he received from Solomon the right of using the harbours of the Red Sea. While the products of Europe made their way to Solomon through Tyre, the products of the south passed to Hiram from the Edomite havens of Elath and Ezion-geber.

Hiram was useful to Solomon in yet another way. The age of empire-building was over; the time had come to create a capital which should be worthy of the empire. Like Ramses II. of Egypt, Solomon made himself an imperishable name as a builder. Jerusalem was strongly fortified; royal palaces were erected; above all, a temple was raised to Yahveh that vied in splendour with those of Phœnicia and the Nile. But the architects and artisans had to be brought from the dominions of the Tyrian king; the Israelites had been too much barbarised by the long struggle for existence they had had to wage for another Bezaleel to be born among them, as in the days when they had but just quitted the cultured land of the Delta. It is true that the master-artificer in bronze, who designed the bronze-work of the temple, was a Hebrew on his mother’s side, but he bore the Tyrian name of Hiram, and his father was ‘a man of Tyre.’ Even for his carpenters and masons Solomon was indebted to his Tyrian ally; it was only the gangs of labourers driven to their forced work among the forests and quarries of Lebanon that were levied by Hadoram out of ‘Israel.’ The Israelites had become hewers of wood and drawers of water for their king, and, as in the old days of Egyptian bondage, 3300 taskmasters were employed in keeping them to their work.[530] Like the architects, the skilled artificers were lent by Hiram; from Hiram came also the logs of cedar and fir that were needed for the buildings at Jerusalem.

In return Solomon provided his ally with wheat and oil. The island-city was dependent on others for its corn; on the rock of Tyre and on the barren crags of the opposite mainland no wheat could be grown. Twenty cities of Galilee, moreover, were ceded to Hiram. But for these Hiram had to pay one hundred and twenty talents of gold; and in the end, the wily Hebrew, like his forefather Jacob, had the best of the bargain. When the Tyrian king came to inspect his new territory, it ‘pleased him not.’ Solomon, in fact, had given him what it was not worth his own while to keep.

The royal palace was thirteen years in building. Attached to it was the armoury, or House of the Forest of Lebanon as it was called from the cedar used in its construction. Here the three hundred shields and two hundred targets of gold were stored, which were made for the bodyguard, and served also as a reserve fund in case of need. The architecture of the palace itself culminated, as in Persia, in the audience-chamber with its throne of ivory overlaid with gold, and approached by six steps which were guarded on either side by the images of lions. Another palace was erected for the Egyptian queen; like the palace of the king it was in the Upper City, close to the spot on which the temple was destined to stand.

The old palace of David, in the lower town or ‘City of David,’ was deserted; as soon as the new buildings were completed on Moriah, the king moved to them with his harîm and court. The palace which had satisfied the simple tastes of the father was no longer sufficient for the luxury and display of the more cultured son. The ‘City of David’ was left to the Jews and Benjamites; the court and the priesthood settled above them by the side of the old Jebusite population, which had been reduced to serfdom (1 Kings ix. 20). None but slaves and serfs might dwell where the monarch lived surrounded by his armed bodyguard; the free Israelite was confined to another quarter of the town.

The palace was protected by a huge fortress called the Millo, which was connected with the new walls of Jerusalem, and begun as soon as the palace of the Egyptian princess had been finished. Whether it stood on the eastern or western side of the city is doubtful; the topography of pre-exilic Jerusalem is unfortunately still involved in obscurity. The pool of Siloam, and the identification of the Upper Gihon or ‘Spring’ with the Virgin’s Fountain, the only natural spring of water in the immediate neighbourhood of the city, are almost the only two points which can be fixed with certainty. If the subterranean tunnel which conveys the water of the Virgin’s Fountain to the pool of Siloam is the conduit made by Hezekiah when he ‘stopped the upper water-course of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David’ (2 Chron. xxxii. 30), the west side will be that which overlooks the Tyropœon valley, where the tunnel ends. In this case the city of David, which is stated in 2 Sam. v. 7 to have been on Mount Zion, will be the so-called southern hill or ‘Ophel,’ which lies south of the Mosque of Omar, and the Tyropœon valley will be the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom so often referred to in the Old Testament. The Jerusalem of the kings will thus have been, like most of the cities of the ancient Oriental world, of no great size according to our modern conceptions; its population will have been as closely packed together as it is to-day in the native quarters of Cairo, and the fortifications which surrounded it would not have occupied too wide a circumference for a Jewish army to defend. The Tyropœon valley is choked with the rubbish of ancient Jerusalem to a depth of more than seventy feet; but under it must lie the tombs of the kings of Judah. The recent excavations of Dr. Bliss have thrown but little light on the question, since the walls he has found seem mostly of a late date; but if the rock-cut steps he has discovered north of the pool of Siloam are really ‘the stairs that go down from the city of David’ (Neh. iii. 16), a striking verification will have been given of the theory which sees in the southern hill the Zion of Scripture, and in the valley of ‘the Cheesemakers’ the gorge of the sons of Hinnom.[531]

The crown of all the building activity of Solomon was the temple, even though it did not take so long to construct as his own palace. Materials for it had already been accumulated by David, and the architects and workmen came from Tyre. It was built of large blocks of square stone, the edges of which were probably bevelled as in early Phœnician work, and the walls inside were covered with panels of cedar. Walls and doors alike were profusely decorated with the designs of Phœnician art. Cherubs and palms, lotus flowers and pomegranates were depicted on them in the forms that have been made familiar to us by the relics of ancient Phœnician workmanship. The temple itself was of rectangular shape, not unlike the chapel of King’s College at Cambridge, and in front of it were two large courts, one of which—the ‘inner’ or ‘upper’ court—stood on a higher level than the other. The whole design, in fact, was purely Phœnician; in form and ornamentation the building exactly resembled the temples of Phœnicia. Like them, it must have looked externally like a huge rectangular box, which was further disfigured by chambers, in sets of three, being built one over the other against the walls. The great temple of Melkarth, which Hiram had just completed at Tyre, probably served as the model for the temple of Jerusalem.

The entrance was approached by steps, and consisted of a porch, on either side of which were two lofty columns of bronze, called Jachin and Boaz.[532] Similar columns were planted before the entrance of a Phœnician temple where they symbolised the fertilising power of the Sun-god, and Herodotos (ii. 44) states that the two which stood in front of the temple at Tyre were made of gold and emerald glass. Two similar columns of stone, though of small size, have been found in the Temple of the Giants in the island of Gozo, one of which still remains in its original place. In the outer court was a bronze ‘sea’ or basin, thirty cubits in circumference, and supported on twelve oxen. The ‘sea’ had been imported into the West from Babylonia, where it similarly stood in the court of a temple, and represented the _apsu_ or ‘watery abyss,’ out of which Chaldæan philosophy taught that all things had been evolved. A Babylonian hymn which describes the casting of a copper ‘sea’ for the temple of Chaos tells us that, like the ‘sea’ at Jerusalem, it rested on the heads of twelve bulls.[533] Along with the ‘sea’ bronze lavers and basins were provided for the ablutions of the priests and the vessels of the sanctuary.

The temple was but a shell for enclosing the innermost shrine or Holy of Holies where, as in a casket, the ark of the covenant was placed under the protecting wings of two gilded cherubim. What they were like we may gather from the Assyrian sculptures, in which the two winged cherubs are depicted on either side of the sacred tree.[534] The over-shadowing wings formed a ‘mercy-seat,’ the _parakku_ of the Babylonian texts, whereon, according to Nebuchadrezzar, Bel seated himself on the festival of the new year, while the other gods humbly ranged themselves around him bowing to the ground.[535] At Babylon, moreover, the table of shewbread which stood before Bel was of solid gold, like the table which Solomon made for the service of Yahveh.[536] Indeed, the description of the lavish use of gold in the temple of Jerusalem finds its echo in the description given by Nebuchadrezzar of the temples he reared in Babylon. The altar of Yahveh, it is said, was of gold, so too were the candlesticks and lamps and vessels; even the hinges of the doors that opened into the Holy of Holies were of the same precious metal, while the cedar work was richly gilded, and the floor itself was overlaid with golden plates. In similar terms Nebuchadrezzar describes his decoration of Ê-Sagila, the temple of Bel, at Babylon. Here too, the beams and panels of cedar were overlaid with gold, the gates were gilded, and the vessels for the service of the sanctuary were of solid gold.[537] There was one point, however, in which the temples of Jerusalem and Babylon differed from one another; in the shrine of Ê-Sagila was the image of Bel: the Hebrew shrine contained no likeness of a god. The only graven figures within it were the cherubim whose wings overshadowed the ark.

The temple was finished in seven (or more exactly seven and a half) years. Perhaps an effort was made to restrict the years of building to the sacred number. At all events, it was in the seventh month of the Hebrew year, the Ethanim of the Phœnicians, that the feast of the dedication was kept.[538] It coincided with the ancient festival of the Ingathering of the Harvest, a fitting season for commemorating the completion of the work.

The dedication of Solomon’s temple is the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the Jewish state and of Hebrew religion. It became the visible centre round which the elements of the Israelitish faith gathered and cohered together until the terrible day came when the enemy stormed the walls of the capital and laid its temple in the dust. But it had already exercised a profound influence upon the history of Judah. It had helped to unify the kingdom; to bind the population of southern Palestine, mixed in blood though it were, into a single whole. Unlike the northern tribes with their two great sanctuaries at Dan and Bethel, Judah and Benjamin had a common centre in the one sanctuary of Jerusalem. Around it, moreover, were grouped all the traditions and memories of a venerable past. It alone was connected with the traditions of the Mosaic Law and the priesthood of Shiloh, with the rites and ceremonies that had come down from the primeval days of the Israelitish people, and with the foundation of the monarchy itself. It was the dwelling-place on earth of Yahveh of Israel; here was the sacred ark of the covenant which had once been carried before the invaders of Canaan, and was still the outward sign and symbol of God’s presence among His people. With the preservation of the temple the preservation of the Jewish religion itself seemed to be bound up, as well as of the Jewish state.

But the temple did something more than help to unify the southern monarchy and preserve the traditions of the Mosaic law. It served also to strengthen and perpetuate the Davidic dynasty, and to keep alive in the hearts of the people their allegiance to the line of Solomon. The temple, as we have seen, was not only a national sanctuary, it was also a royal chapel. It formed, as it were, part of the royal palace, in which the king overshadowed the high priest himself. The halo of veneration which surrounded the temple was thus communicated to the royal line. The temple and the descendants of David became parts of the same national conception; the one necessarily implied the other. When the throne of David fell, the temple also fell with it. While the temple lasted, Judah remained a homogeneous state, yielding willing obedience to its theocratic monarchy, and gradually gaining a clearer idea of the meaning and practice of the Mosaic Law. The temple of Solomon made Jewish religion conservative, but it was a conservatism which, as time went on, evolved the consequences of its own principles, and sought how best to carry them out in ritual and practice.

Jerusalem had become one of the great capitals of the world. Its public buildings were worthy of the empire which had been created by David, of the wealth that had poured into the coffers of Solomon from the trade of the whole Orient, of the culture and art which the young king had done his best to introduce. But the necessities of defence were not forgotten. The fortifications of the city were pushed on—though, it would seem, not with sufficient rapidity to allow them to be finished before the king’s death—and horses and chariots were imported from Egypt and the land of the Hittites in the north. With these Solomon equipped a standing force of 1400 chariots and 12,000 horsemen, who served as garrisons in Jerusalem and the other fortresses of the country.

Nor were the other cities of the empire neglected in favour of Jerusalem. Gezer was rebuilt and fortified; so too were ‘Beth-horon the nether and Baalath’ in Judah, and ‘Tadmor in the wilderness,’ the Palmyra of later days.[539] It is true that modern criticism would see in Tadmor the Tamar of the southern desert of Judah which is referred to by Ezekiel (xlvii. 19, xlviii. 28) as a future border of the Holy Land. But, though the Kethîbh or text of the Hebrew Scriptures has Tamar, the reading is corrupt, and has been corrected by the Massoretic scribes themselves.[540] The Chronicler (2 Chron. viii. 4) shows that Tadmor was the reading of the text in his time, and he shows further that it was known to be the desert-city which afterwards became the seat of empire of the merchant prince Odenathus and his queen, Zenobia. We learn from him that Solomon had put down a rising in that part of Zobah which adjoined Hamath, that he had founded ‘store-cities’ in Hamath, and had built Tadmor in the wilderness beyond. It is strange only that no allusion is made to building operations in Israel: perhaps Solomon was disinclined to establish fortresses among the northern tribes which might be used against his own authority, perhaps David had already put the cities of northern Israel in a thorough state of defence. At all events, little danger from abroad was to be apprehended in this part of the Israelitish dominions; Solomon was in alliance with Tyre, and presumably also with Hamath, and Zobah was included in his empire.

We gather from the Assyrian inscriptions that Zobah extended from the neighbourhood of Hamath and Damascus eastward across the desert towards the Euphrates. Midway stood Palmyra, approached by roads from both Damascus and Homs, which there united and then led to the ford across the Euphrates at Thapsacus or Tiphsakh. It was the shortest route from Palestine to Mesopotamia, and avoided the tolls and possible hostility of the Hittites in their strong fortress of Carchemish. The conquest of Zobah would necessarily have laid Palmyra and the roads that passed through it at the feet of David, and the importance of the place for commercial purposes could not have failed to strike the mind of Solomon ever ready to discover fresh channels of trade. Its fortification would naturally have been one of his first cares; even if there had been no mention of the fact in the Old Testament, the historian would have been almost compelled to assume it. It opened to him the merchandise of Mesopotamia, of Babylonia, and Assyria, and brought him into touch with the old monarchies of the Asiatic world. For the trade of the east, Palmyra was to Solomon what the ports of Edom were for the trade of the south.

To the north his dominions touched on those of the Hittites, who were still settled in Kadesh on the Orontes, even if Hamath had long since passed out of their possession. Lenormant was the first to point out that in 1 Kings x. 28 there is an allusion to the importation of horses into Judah, not only from Egypt, but also from the Hittite regions on the Gulf of Antioch. Here lived the Quê of the Assyrian monuments, who are named in the Hebrew text, though it needed the revelations of Oriental archæology to discover the fact. Solomon, it is there said, ‘had horses brought out of Egypt and out of Quê; the royal merchants received it from Quê at a price.’ In the later days of the Assyrian empire Nineveh obtained its supply of horses and stallions from the same part of the world, and there are numerous letters to the king which relate to their importation. The chariots came from Egypt, the value of each being as much as 600 shekels of silver, or £90; it was only the horses that were brought from ‘the kings of the Hittites’ and ‘the kings of Aram.’ The trade in both horses and chariots was a monopoly which Solomon kept jealously in his own hands; the merchants were those ‘of the king,’ and none of his subjects was allowed to import materials of war which might be employed against himself.

It was the trade with the south which introduced into Jerusalem the greatest novelties and the most costly articles of luxury. In imitation of the kings of Egypt and Assyria, Solomon established zoological and botanical gardens where the strange animals and plants that had been brought from abroad were kept. Such collections had been made by Thothmes III. at Thebes, and on the foundations of a ruined chamber in his temple at Karnak we may still see pictures of the trees and plants and birds which he sent home from his campaigns in Syria and the Soudan. In Assyria a botanical garden had been similarly planted by Tiglath-pileser I. (B.C. 1100), and stocked with foreign plants.[541] Solomon’s collections were therefore no new thing in the Oriental world, though they were a novelty in Palestine; and his subjects went to gaze and wonder, like the Cairenes of to-day, at the apes which had come from the far south, or the peacocks whose name (_thukîyîm_) betrayed their Indian origin. It is even said that he composed books on the animal and vegetable collections he had made.[542]

Gold and silver and ivory were also brought, with the apes and peacocks, by the merchant vessels whose voyages of three years’ duration carried them along the Somali coast, and even, it may be, to the mouths of the Indus. The gold probably came, for the most part, from the mines of the Zambesi region, where foreign mining settlements are now known to have been established at an early date, and where objects have been found, such as birds carved out of stone, which remind us of the civilisation of southern Arabia. But the greater part of the silver, which we are told became as plentiful as ‘stones,’ must have been derived from Asia Minor. Here were the mines from which the Hittites extracted the metal for which they seem to have had a special fancy, and it was through them that it probably made its way to Jerusalem. Copper would have come from Cyprus, and been brought in the ships which trafficked in the Mediterranean. It was the Mediterranean trade, moreover, which supplied the tin needed for the vast quantities of bronze that was used in the Solomonic age. We know of no source of it equal to such a demand except the peninsula of Cornwall; but if it really was Cornish tin that found its way to the eastern basin of the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age it must have travelled like amber across Europe until it reached the Adriatic or the Gulf of Lyons. The amber found by Dr. Schliemann in the prehistoric tombs of Mykenæ is of Baltic origin, and amber beads have been discovered by Dr. Bliss at Lachish, belonging to the century before the Exodus; if amber could travel thus far from northern Europe, the tin might have done the same.

Future generations looked back upon the reign of Solomon as the golden age of Israel. But there was a reverse side to the picture. The combination of culture and arbitrary power produced in him the selfish luxury of an Oriental despot, which is bent on satisfying its own sensuous desires at the expense of all around it. Solomon’s extravagance was like that of the Khedive Ismail in our own day, and it led to the same amount of misery and impoverishment in the nation. He found on his accession a treasury well filled by the thrifty government of his father; and his trading monopolies and alliances brought him an apparently inexhaustible supply of wealth. But a time came when even this supply began to fail, and to cease to suffice for his reckless expenditure. Heavier taxes were laid on the subject populations; the free men of Israel were compelled to work as unpaid serfs under the lash of the taskmaster, and the older population of the land, who were still numerous, were turned into veritable bond-slaves. To the Gibeonites, who had long been the serfs of the Levitical sanctuary, were now added the Nethinim, a part of whom went under the name of ‘Solomon’s slaves’ (Ezra ii. 55, 58). The building of the temple had cost the people dear: the Israelites had been robbed of their freedom to provide for it stone and wood; the Canaanites had been given to it as actual slaves.

Doubtless the policy of Solomon was partly determined by the same considerations as those which had moved the Pharaoh of the Oppression. He mistrusted the Canaanites, he was afraid of the northern tribes. In either case he endeavoured to break their spirit, and render them powerless to revolt. But in the case of the Hebrew tribesmen he did not succeed. Discontent was smothered for awhile, but it was none the less dangerous on that account. And towards the end of Solomon’s life an incident occurred which led eventually to the division of the kingdom. Jeroboam the son of Nebat—in whom Dr. Neubauer has seen the name of a ‘Nabathean’—and whose mother belonged to the tribe of Ephraim, had distinguished himself by his activity and abilities. Solomon had finished the Millo or Fort, and was now at work on the other fortifications of Jerusalem. His notice was drawn to Jeroboam, and he made the young man the ‘taskmaster’ or overseer of the _corvée_ of Ephraimites employed upon the walls. Like Moses in old days, Jeroboam’s sympathy was aroused by the sufferings of his fellow-tribesmen, which found a mouthpiece in Ahijah the prophet of Shiloh. Ahijah was himself one of the dispossessed. The glory of Shiloh had passed away from it; Jerusalem had taken its place. The tabernacle of Shiloh had been rejected in favour of the temple of the Jewish king. The centre of Hebrew religion and power had departed from the house of Joseph, and been transferred to the mixed parvenus of Judah.

In Jeroboam the prophet recognised the leader who should restore the lost fortunes of Ephraim and revenge its injuries. Jeroboam listened to the counsels of revolt, but the time for making use of them had not yet come. His plans and plotting became known to Solomon, and, once more like Moses, he had to fly for his life. He made his way to the Egyptian court, where a ready welcome awaited him.

A new dynasty had arisen there. The Libyan mercenaries had dethroned their feeble masters, and seated Shishak or Sheshanq, their general, upon the throne of the Pharaohs. The Tanitic dynasty which ruled the Delta was swept away; so also was the rival dynasty of high-priests who reigned at Thebes and held possession of Upper Egypt. With the rise of the twenty-second dynasty at Bubastis, a new and unaccustomed vigour was infused into the government of Egypt. Shishak proved himself an able and energetic king. His earlier years were occupied in putting down opposition at home, and restoring order and unity throughout the country. When once the task was accomplished, he began to turn his attention elsewhere. Egypt had never relinquished its theoretical claims to sovereignty in Canaan; and the new power that had arisen there menaced the safety of the Asiatic frontier. Solomon, it is true, had allied himself by marriage with the Pharaohs; but it was with a Pharaoh of the fallen dynasty, and this in itself made him all the more dangerous a neighbour. At present Israel was too powerful to be attacked; but a time might come when the Egyptian monarch might venture to march again along the roads that had once conducted the armies of Egypt to the conquest of Syria. Meanwhile Shishak could stir up disaffection and rebellion in the Israelitish empire, and could harbour pretenders to the throne who might hereafter undermine the very existence of the new power.

As long as Solomon lived Jeroboam did not dare to stir. But he was not the only ‘adversary’ of the Jewish king. Hadad, the representative of the old kings of Edom, had also found a refuge in the Egyptian court, and had there married the sister-in-law of the Pharaoh. In spite of the Pharaoh’s remonstrances he had returned to the mountains of Edom when David and Joab were dead, and had there carried on a guerilla warfare with the Israelitish garrisons. Throughout the lifetime of Solomon he had maintained himself in the fastnesses of Seir, and had been, as it were, a thorn in the side of the conquerors of his country. But he never succeeded in seriously injuring the caravan trade that passed through Edom, or in shaking off the Israelitish yoke. The male population of Edom had been too mercilessly exterminated for this to be possible, and all that he could do was to molest the trade with the Red Sea. But even in this he does not seem to have been successful.

A more formidable opponent of Israel was Rezon of Zobah. He, it would seem, had established himself at Damascus even before the death of David, and all the efforts to dislodge him were of no avail. It is possible that the insurrection in Zobah, which led to the construction of fortified posts on the borders of Hamath (2 Chron. viii. 3), was connected with his revolt. At any rate, Rezon founded a kingdom and a dynasty in the old Syrian capital, which in years to come was to shake the monarchy of northern Israel to its base. ‘He abhorred Israel,’ we are told, ‘and reigned over Aram.’

The Jewish historian traces the misfortunes of Solomon to the religious indifferentism of his later years. His wives were many, his concubines innumerable. They had been added to his harîm from all parts of the known world; and they brought with them the worship of their native deities. Solomon had none of that intense belief in the national God which had distinguished Saul and David, or which made the Assyrian kings conquer and slay the unbelievers who would not acknowledge the supremacy of Assur.[543] He was a cultured and selfish epicure, catholic in his tastes and sympathies, and doubtless inclined to stigmatise as narrow-minded fanaticism the objections of those who would have forbidden him to indulge his wives in their religious beliefs. On the hill opposite Jerusalem they were allowed to worship in the chapels of their own divinities, and the king himself did not refuse to bow himself with them in the house of Rimmon. Shrines were erected and altars blazed to Ashtoreth of the Sidonians, to Milcom of Ammon, and to Chemosh of Moab.

Modern criticism has averred that all this was only in accordance with the general ideas and practice of the time, and that not Solomon alone but the rest of his people saw little or no difference between Yahveh and Baal. The Song of Deborah, which reflects the feelings of so much earlier an epoch, is a sufficient answer to such an assertion. The whole history of Saul and David points unmistakably to the contrary, and the temple bears witness that there was a time when Solomon also shared the belief that Yahveh alone was God in Israel, and that He would brook the presence of no other god beside Himself. The character of Solomon, his habits and alliances,—above all, the seductions of the harîm, are quite enough to account for a gradual change in his views. It is probable, moreover, that the death of his old guide and instructor Nathan may have had much to do with what an undogmatic theology might call emancipation from the narrow and exclusive circle of Hebrew religious ideas; we know that such was the case with Jehoash after the death of Jehoiada the priest. The king who began by sending to Phœnicia for the architects and builders of the temple, ended not unnaturally with the erection of sanctuaries to a Phœnician goddess.

In fact, the artistic tastes of Solomon ran counter to the puritanical tendencies and restrictions of the Mosaic Law. It had been made for the wanderers in the desert, for hardy warriors intent on the conquest of a foreign land, for the simple peasantry of Palestine. It was directed against the cultured vices and artistic idolatries of Egypt and Canaan: on its forefront was the command: ‘Thou shalt not make the likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the water that is under the earth.’ The temple at Jerusalem, with its costly decoration and graven images, was in itself a violation of the letter of the Law. Solomon was called indeed to be king over Israel, but his heart and his sympathies were with Phœnicia.

He had been carefully educated, and, like our own Henry VIII., was a learned as well as a cultivated prince. His wisdom was celebrated above that of the wisest men of his day (1 Kings iv. 30, 31), and he left behind him a large collection of proverbs. Some of these were re-edited by the scribes of Hezekiah’s library (Prov. xxv. 1), the foundation of which may possibly go back to him. Indeed, he showed himself so anxious to imitate the civilised monarchs of his day that it is hard to believe he established no library at Jerusalem. The library had been for untold centuries as essential to the royal dignity in Western Asia or Egypt as the temple or palace, and the annals of Menander imply that one existed at Tyre in the age of Hiram. Archæology has vindicated the authenticity of the letters that passed between Solomon and the Tyrian king (2 Chron. ii. 3, 11); similar letters were written in Babylonia in the age of Abraham, and the tablets of Tel el-Amarna have demonstrated how frequent they were in the ancient East. As in Babylonia and Assyria, so, too, in Palestine, they would have been preserved among the archives of the royal library.

Hiram was nineteen years old when he ascended the throne, and he died at the age of fifty-three. Solomon was probably of about the same age as his friend both at his accession and at his death. He died, worn out by excessive self-indulgence, leaving behind him an impoverished treasury, a discontented people, and a tottering empire. But he had achieved one great result. Jerusalem had become the capital of a united Judah and Benjamin, Hebrew religion had obtained a local habitation round which henceforward it could live and grow, and the dynasty of David was planted firmly on the Jewish throne. When the disruption of the kingdom came after Solomon’s death, it did no more than give outward form to the estrangement that had so long been maturing between Judah and the northern tribes; the temple, the line of David, and the fortress-capital of Jerusalem remained unshaken. The work of David and Solomon was accomplished, though in a way of which they had not dreamed; and a nation was called into existence whom neither defeat nor exile, persecution nor contempt, has ever been able to destroy.

Footnote 368:

We hear only of citizens of Mount Ephraim going up yearly to sacrifice at Shiloh (1 Sam. i. 1-3).

Footnote 369:

It must be remembered that at this time, before the rise of Judah, Ephraim was the nearest neighbour of the Philistines as well as of the Amalekites.

Footnote 370:

It cannot be supposed, of course, that an Ephraimite would have recorded the defeat and slaughter of his tribe at the hands of Jephthah. But such a momentous disaster could not fail to become known throughout Canaan, and some notice of it must have been taken by the chroniclers of Ephraim themselves. Where and by whom, however, the present account was composed it is vain to inquire, and the question may be left for discussion to the philological critics. That Samuel, who was brought up at Shiloh, could write we are assured in 1 Sam. x. 25.

Footnote 371:

1 Sam. ix. 5; xiv. 1.

Footnote 372:

1 Sam. ix. 18, 19. The disintegrating critics have assumed this narrative to be primitive and contemporary because it presents us with a picture of Samuel which seems to degrade him into an obscure local soothsayer, and on the strength of it have disputed the antiquity of such narratives as assign to him national influence. They might just as well maintain that the only primitive and contemporary account of King Alfred that we possess is the story of the burnt cakes at Athelney.

Footnote 373:

1 Sam. vii. 14.

Footnote 374:

Zuph gave his name to ‘the district of Zuph’ (1 Sam. ix. 5), which has the plural form in Ramathaim-zophim.

Footnote 375:

Ephraim, however, may be, like Jerusalem, the older form of which has been recovered from the cuneiform inscriptions, a later Massoretic mispronunciation of an original plural Ephrim. The Massoretes have erroneously introduced a dual form into the pronunciation of the name Chushan-rishathaim, and probably also into that of Naharaim when compared with the Egyptian Naharin and the Nahrima of the Tel el-Amarna tablets. Perhaps the dual form Ephraim originated in the existence of the two Ophrahs (with _’ayin_), which are already mentioned in the geographical lists of Thothmes III.

Footnote 376:

2 Sam. viii. 18; see also 2 Sam. xx. 26. The Authorised Version mistranslates the word in both passages.

Footnote 377:

Translated by me in the _Records of the Past_, new ser., IV., pp. 109-113.

Footnote 378:

See above, p. 244. The Hebrew Samuel could also represent a Babylonian Sumu-il, ‘Sumu is God’ or ‘the name of God,’ which we actually find in early Babylonian contracts.

Footnote 379:

So, too, the Chronicler states that he was descended from Ithamar the younger son of Aaron (1 Chron. xxiv. 3).

Footnote 380:

It would seem from 1 Sam. iii. 3, as compared with Exod. xxvii. 21, and Lev. xxiv. 3, that there was no veil at the time in ‘the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.’

Footnote 381:

‘The priest’ of the narrative is equivalent to ‘high priest’: see above, p. 219. Eli’s two sons were naturally not on a level of equality with himself. It has been gravely maintained that there were only three priests at Shiloh at the time, because nothing is said about any others; had the narrative not required the mention of Hophni and Phinehas we should have been told there was only one. Such trifling with historical documents is unfortunately only too characteristic of the so-called ‘literary criticism.’

Footnote 382:

It has been assumed that ‘the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation’ (Exod. xxxviii. 8, 1 Sam. ii. 22) were religious prostitutes like the _qedashoth_ in the Phœnician temples (see Deut. xxiii. 17, 18). But the fact that the intercourse of the sons of Eli with them was a sin in the eyes of both Yahveh and the people proves the contrary. Here, as in other cases, an old institution of Semitic religion was retained among the adherents of the Mosaic law, but it was deprived of its pagan and immoral characteristics.

Footnote 383:

1 Sam. ix. 9.

Footnote 384:

1 Sam. xix. 23. _Nâbî_ is not of Arabic derivation as is often supposed, as, for example, by Professor Cornill, _The Prophets of Israel_, pp. 8-10, where it is erroneously stated that the Babylonian _nabû_ does not mean ‘to pronounce’ or ‘proclaim.’ The name of Nebo shows to what antiquity the Babylonian _nabium_ in its special sense of ‘prophet’ reaches back. The modern Arabic _nebi_ is borrowed from the Hebrew _nâbî_. _Nâbî_ corresponds with the Greek προφήτης ‘forth-speaker,’ as distinguished from μάντις or ‘diviner,’ the Babylonian _asipu_. In Babylonia the _asipu_ performed the offices which the Hebrew _roeh_ had once fulfilled; he determined whether an army should move or not, whether victory would be on its side, whether an undertaking would be prosperous or the reverse. While, therefore, the _asipu_ and the _nabiu_ continued to exist side by side, performing the functions which had been combined in the Hebrew _roeh_, and at the outset in the Hebrew _nâbî_, among the Israelites the _roeh_ disappeared, and the _nâbî_ alone remained with purely prophetical attributes.

Footnote 385:

Towards the end of Samuel’s life, however, a Naioth or ‘monastery’ grew up around him at Ramah, which must have closely resembled the Dervish colleges of the modern Mohammedan world; see 1 Sam. xix. 23. This monastery will have taken the place of Shiloh, and become a veritable ‘school’ of prophetical training and instruction.

Footnote 386:

Gad, however, still retained the title of ‘seer’ (1 Chron. xxix. 29), and one of the histories of the reign of Solomon was contained ‘in the visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam’ (2 Chron. ix. 29). Even Isaiah’s history of Hezekiah was called ‘the vision of Isaiah the prophet’ (2 Chron. xxxii. 32). But the title was merely a survival.

Footnote 387:

We must, however, distinguish between Samuel’s authority as a seer, which did not excite the jealousy of his Philistine masters, and his authority as a dispenser of justice. That was confined to a small area in the heart of Mount Ephraim. Each year, we are told (1 Sam. vii. 16) he went on circuit like a Babylonian judge, ‘to Beth-el and Gilgal and Mizpeh.’ This is the Mizpeh of Benjamin.

Footnote 388:

Ramah, ‘the height,’ is identified in 1 Sam. ii. 11 with Ramathaim, ‘the two heights.’ The village evidently stood on two hills. For the possible site of Aphek, see G. A. Smith, _The Historical Geography of the Holy Land_, p. 224. Eben-ezer is identified with the great stone at Beth-shemesh (1 Sam. vi. 14, 18) by M. Clermont-Ganneau (_Quarterly Statement_ of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1874, p. 279; 1877, pp. 154 _sqq._), but this is questionable.

Footnote 389:

See my _Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments_, p. 154; and above, p. 196.

Footnote 390:

1 Sam. iv. 13.

Footnote 391:

The Septuagint text omits the ‘eight.’

Footnote 392:

The Septuagint reads Ouai-bar-khabôth, ‘Woe to the son of glory,’ with the insertion of the Aramaic _bar_, ‘son.’

Footnote 393:

1 Sam. xiv. 3.

Footnote 394:

As Abiathar was the contemporary of David, and his father Ahimelech or Ahiah of Saul, Ahitub will have been the contemporary of Samuel. If Solomon came to the throne about B.C. 965, and Saul was about forty years of age at the time of his death, we should have about B.C. 1045 for the date of Saul’s birth. Samuel was an old man when he died; if he lived ten years after Saul’s accession, and was ten years old when the ark was taken, we may place his birth about B.C. 1090. This would give about B.C. 1180 for the birth of Eli, or very shortly after the Israelitish invasion of Canaan. The life of Eli would thus cover almost the whole period of the Judges, and form a single link between the Mosaic age and that of Samuel. In such a case it is not astonishing that the records and traditions of the Mosaic age were preserved at Shiloh. The ark was only seven months among the Philistines (1 Sam. vi. 1), and it was removed from ‘the house of Abinadab’ at Kirjath-jearim some time after the seventh year of David (see, however, 1 Sam. xiv. 18). ‘The sons of Abinadab,’ in 2 Sam. vi. 4, must mean, as is so frequently the case, the descendants of Abinadab.

Footnote 395:

In Zeph. i. 9 there is an allusion to the practice of the Philistine priests of ‘leaping’ over the threshold. For the origin and reason of this sacredness of the threshold see Trumbull, _The Threshold Covenant_, pp. 10-13, 116-126, 143. ‘In Finland it is regarded as unlucky if a clergyman steps on the threshold when he comes to preach at a church.... In the Lapp tales the same idea appears.’ (Jones and Kropf, _Folk-Tales of the Magyars_, p. 410.)

Footnote 396:

Philo Byblius according to Euseb., _Præp. Evangel._ i. 6.

Footnote 397:

That Dagon was worshipped in Canaan before he was adopted by the Philistine emigrants we know, not only from the evidence of geographical names, but also from the fact that one of the Tel el-Amarna correspondents in Palestine was called Dagan-takala.

Footnote 398:

It is noticeable that Zophim in Ramathaim-zophim means ‘Watchmen.’ Poels (_Le Sanctuaire de Kirjath-jearim_, Louvain, 1894) has, moreover, made it probable that Kirjath-jearim, Mizpeh, Gibeah, Geba, and Gibeon all represent the same place.

Footnote 399:

According to 1 Sam. vii. 2, the victory at Eben-ezer took place ‘twenty years’ after the ark had been removed to Kirjath-jearim. But this is merely the half of an unknown period, and means that the interval of time was not long.

Footnote 400:

1 Sam. vii. 13, 14. The area of independence, however, must have been very confined, since there was a garrison of the Philistines in ‘the hill of God’ at Gibeah (1 Sam. ix. 5), as well as one at Michmash (1 Sam. xiv. 1).

Footnote 401:

There is no reason for doubting the very explicit statement made in 1 Sam. vii. 14, which explains and limits the preceding verse. Its antiquity is vouched for by the concluding words: ‘And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites.’ The term ‘Amorite’ instead of ‘Canaanite’ points to an early date, and the sentence reads like an extract from a contemporary chronicle. The peace was an enforced one, as both Israelites and Canaanites alike were under the yoke of the Philistines.

Footnote 402:

See 2 Kings xviii. 4.

Footnote 403:

1 Chron. xvi. 39, xxi. 293; 2 Chron. i. 3, 5.

Footnote 404:

Is it an inference from 1 Kings iii. 4? That the Chronicler sometimes drew erroneous inferences from his materials, I have shown in _The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments_, p. 463. It is difficult to understand how ‘fixtures’ like the tabernacle and the altar escaped destruction when the temple at Shiloh was ruined.

Footnote 405:

Kirjath-jearim was a Gibeonite town (Josh. ix. 17).

Footnote 406:

1 Sam. ix. 3.

Footnote 407:

1 Sam. viii. 2. Joel is called Vashni in 1 Chron. vi. 28, where the Septuagint reads Sani.

Footnote 408:

As has been noticed above (p. 315, note 1), the title of the supreme god of Tyre is evidence that there, too, the state had been originally regarded as a theocracy.

Footnote 409:

The name of Saul corresponds with the Babylonian Savul, a title of the Sun-god, though it might also be explained as a Hebrew word meaning ‘asked for.’ But one of the Edomite kings was also named Saul, and he is stated to have come from ‘Rehoboth (Assyrian Rêbit) by the river’ Euphrates (Gen. xxxvi. 37). This points to a Babylonian origin of the name. Kish, Saul’s father, has also the same name as the Edomite god Qos (in Assyrian Qaus), of which the Canaanitish Kishon is a derivative. As Saul’s successors in Edom were Baal-hanan and Hadad, while Hadad was a contemporary of Solomon, and El-hanan is said in 2 Sam. xxi. 19 to have been the slayer of Goliath, I have proposed (_The Modern Review_, v. 17, 1884) to see in the Saul and Baal-hanan of Edom the Saul and David of Israel. Saul is said to have fought against Edom (1 Sam. xiv. 47), and Doeg the Edomite was his henchman. But the proposal is excluded by two facts. The kings of Edom recorded in Gen. xxxvi. 31-39 reigned ‘before there was any king over the children of Israel,’ and Saul the son of Kish did not come from the Euphrates.

Footnote 410:

1 Sam. ix. 3. In 1 Sam. x. 14-16, Saul’s uncle takes the place of his father.

Footnote 411:

Much has been made of the supposed fact that Saul had never heard of Samuel, and did not know that he was a seer. But the narrative only says that Saul’s slave informed him that a seer was in the town, without mentioning his name; and if Saul had never previously seen Samuel, he would naturally not recognise him in the crowd.

Footnote 412:

That the prophets were at Gibeah is shown by the fact that ‘the hill of God,’ where they met Saul, was also where ‘the garrison of the Philistines’ was (1 Sam. x. 5, xiii. 2, 3).

Footnote 413:

It has been usually supposed from this verse that ‘Gibeah of Saul’ was the original home of Saul’s family. But as the family burial-place was at Zelah (2 Sam. xxi. 14), this can hardly have been the case. Gibeah was the scene of Jonathan’s first success against the Philistines, and it was here that Saul fixed his residence during the latter years of his life.

Footnote 414:

Cp. Judg. xix. 29, where the Levite similarly cuts up his concubine and sends the pieces to the several tribes of Israel.

Footnote 415:

See my _Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments_, pp. 463-4. When Ahab came to the help of the Syrians against the Assyrian king Shalmaneser, his whole force consisted of only ten thousand men and two thousand chariots, and ‘Assur-natsir-pal thinks it a subject of boasting that he had slain fifty or one hundred and seventy-two of the enemy in battle.’ The whole of the country population of Judah carried into captivity by Sennacherib was only two hundred thousand one hundred and fifty, which would give at most an army of fifty thousand men. The Egyptian armies, with which the victories of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties were gained, were of small size. One of them, in the time of the nineteenth dynasty, contained only three thousand one hundred foreign mercenaries and one thousand nine hundred native troops (Erman, _Life in Ancient Egypt_, Eng. tr., p. 542). At the same time, we must not forget that if there were fifty thousand available fighting men in Judah in the time of Hezekiah, there would have been about three hundred and fifty thousand among the other seven tribes a few generations earlier. Consequently the calculation given in the text of 1 Sam. xi. 8 is approximately correct as a mere calculation. Between available and actual fighting men there was, of course, a great difference. In the second year of Saul’s reign, when his authority was established, he was not able to muster more than three thousand fighting men (1 Sam. xiii. 2). A larger body, indeed, had flocked to him, but they were an undisciplined, unarmed multitude, who had to be dismissed to their homes.

Footnote 416:

As the Hebrew _netsîb_ signifies a ‘governor’ as well as a ‘fortified post’ or ‘garrison,’ many writers have maintained that the _netsîb_ in ‘the Hill of God’ at Gibeah was the Philistine official. But Jonathan would not have required a thousand men in order to destroy a single official and the few soldiers who might have been with him.

Footnote 417:

The Hebrews had, of course, no means of ascertaining the exact numbers of the enemy. The number of chariots is quite impossible, and they would have been useless in the mountainous country. In the great battle in which Meneptah saved Egypt from the combined armies of the Libyans and their northern allies, nine thousand three hundred and seventy-six prisoners in all were taken, while the slain amounted to six thousand three hundred and sixty-five Libyans and two thousand three hundred and seventy of their Mediterranean confederates. To these must be added nine thousand one hundred and eleven Maxyes. And yet it does not seem that any of the invaders escaped from the battle.

Footnote 418:

1 Sam. xiii. 6, 7. For the distinction that is here drawn between ‘the men of Israel’ and ‘the Hebrews,’ see above, p. 6.

Footnote 419:

The identification is uncertain, as it depends on the position to be assigned to Gibeah.

Footnote 420:

Ahimelech (1 Sam. xxii. 9, 11, 20) is here called Ahiah, perhaps out of reluctance to apply the term Melech, ‘King,’ with its heathen associations, to Yahveh.

Footnote 421:

Here called by its old name of Beth-On, which the Massoretic punctuation has transformed into Beth-Aven.

Footnote 422:

Some of the literary critics have started the gratuitous supposition that a prisoner was substituted for Jonathan, though the fact was suppressed by the later Hebrew historian. It is perhaps natural that those who re-write history should have a poor opinion of the trustworthiness of their predecessors.

Footnote 423:

1 Sam. xii.

Footnote 424:

1 Sam. x. 8, compared with xiii. 8-15.

Footnote 425:

1 Sam. xiii. 14. Though Saul’s kingdom did ‘not continue,’ it nevertheless lasted some time, and was not overthrown at Michmash, as those who heard Samuel’s words must have expected. As David was not anointed until some years later, he cannot be ‘the man’ after Yahveh’s ‘heart,’ whom the seer had in his mind at the time.

Footnote 426:

The _nakhal_ (A.V. ‘valley’) is probably the Wadi el-Arîsh, which lay on the way to the Shur or line of fortifications that protected the eastern side of the Delta. Havilah, the ‘sandy’ desert, corresponds with the Melukhkha or ‘Salt’ desert of the Babylonian inscriptions. The ‘city of Amalek’ may have been El-Arîsh, if this were not in Egyptian hands at the time.

Footnote 427:

The Israelites had been stirred to vengeance by the murderous raids of the Bedâwin at a time when the Philistine invasion had made them too weak to defend themselves (1 Sam. xv. 33).

Footnote 428:

For ‘Edom’ we should probably read ‘Aram,’ as is demanded by the geographical order of the list of countries which runs from south to north. In 2 Sam. viii. 13, ‘Aram’ has been substituted for ‘Edom,’ which was still read by the Chronicler (1 Chron. xviii. 12), and the marriage of David with the daughter of the king of Aram-Geshur (2 Sam. iii. 3) implies hostility between Saul and the Geshurites.

Footnote 429:

The ‘critics’ have decided that the list of Saul’s wars has been ‘borrowed’ from the history of David. In this case, however, we should have heard of ‘the king’ of Zobah, not of ‘the kings.’ We happen to know that Saul fought against Ammon. Had the fact not been mentioned, the ‘critics’ would have maintained, as in the case of Moab and Zobah, that such a war never took place. The argument from silence may simplify the process of reconstructing history, but from a historical point of view it is worthless.

Footnote 430:

Saul showed himself in other cases such a scrupulous observer of the Law that we can well understand his obeying the precept of Deuteronomy that the king should not ‘multiply’ horses or wives (Deut. xviii. 16, 17).

Footnote 431:

1 Sam. xxii. 6.

Footnote 432:

It is clear, however, from 1 Sam. xxi. 9, that there must be some mistake here, since the sword of Goliath was laid up at Nob while Saul was king.

Footnote 433:

This must be an exaggeration, since David, who was not above the ordinary size, afterwards used his sword (1 Sam. xxi. 9).

Footnote 434:

The narrative goes on to say that ‘David took the head of the Philistine and brought it to Jerusalem; but he put his armour in his tent.’ This verse is given in the Septuagint, though the next nine verses are omitted. But the statement cannot be right. Jerusalem was not captured by David until many years after the battle in the valley of Elah, and the shepherd lad had no tent of his own at the time.

Footnote 435:

1 Chron. xx. 5. ‘Beth-lehemite’ is turned into ‘Lahmi,’ the name of the ‘brother’ of Goliath, and the unintelligible _Yaare-oregim_ becomes _Yair_. _Oregim_, ‘weavers,’ however, has crept in from the end of the verse, and the original reading of 1 Sam. xxi. 19 must have been, ‘El-hanan, the son of Yaari (the forester) the Beth-lehemite, slew Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.’

Footnote 436:

1 Kings xix. 15, 16; 2 Kings ix. 2, 3. Ahijah, however, did not anoint Jeroboam when he suggested to him that he should head a revolt of the ten tribes against the house of David. When David was made king at Hebron he was anointed by ‘the men of Judah,’ not by a prophet (2 Sam. ii. 4), and no mention is made of a prophet or priest when he was anointed ‘king over Israel’ (2 Sam. v. 3).

Footnote 437:

We must remember that in any case the act of anointing would have been a secret, and that consequently an erroneous account of it might easily have been set on foot.

Footnote 438:

1 Sam. xviii. 6. The singular ‘Philistine’ has to be noted, as if there was a reference in it to the overthrow of Goliath. Cf. xix. 5.

Footnote 439:

See above, p. 342.

Footnote 440:

It is also possible that chapter xx. ought to precede chapter xix.

Footnote 441:

1 Sam. xix. 2.

Footnote 442:

Hitzig identified the name of Achish with that of the Homeric Ankhisês. Whether this is so or not, Dr. W. Max Müller is probably right in seeing the same name in that of a native of Keft, or the northern coast of Syria, mentioned in an Egyptian papyrus where it is written Akashau (Spiegelberg in the _Zeitschrift für Assyriologie_, viii. p. 384).

Footnote 443:

Unless, indeed, 1 Sam. xxiii. 16-18 is an interpolation.

Footnote 444:

1 Sam. xxiv. 2. Compare the expression used by Sennacherib when describing his campaign against the Cilicians: ‘Like a wild goat I climbed to the high peaks against them’ (W. A. I., i. 39, 77).

Footnote 445:

The name is preserved in the modern Tell Zif.

Footnote 446:

Shunem was a fortified city, already mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, Aphek a mere village. Shunem had evidently been captured, and the Philistine camp subsequently formed outside its walls a little to the west.

Footnote 447:

See Exod. xxii. 18; Lev. xx. 27; Deut. xviii. 10, 11.

Footnote 448:

We are told in 1 Chron. xii. 19 that even while he was in the Philistine camp at Aphek, and again when he was on the march back to Ziklag, ‘some of Manasseh’ deserted to him.

Footnote 449:

The Negeb or ‘South’ was divided at the time into the Negeb of the Cherethites or Philistines, of the Jews, and of the Calebites (1 Sam. xxx. 14, 16.) Up to the end of Saul’s reign, therefore, Caleb and Judah had not been as yet amalgamated into a single tribe.

Footnote 450:

See above, p. 234.

Footnote 451:

Aroer had belonged to Reuben (Josh. xiii. 16), Hormah, Ziklag, Chor-ashan, and Ramoth of the south to Simeon (Josh. xix. 4-8.) It is curious that no mention should be made of Beth-lehem, and it is therefore possible that ‘Beth-lehem’ should be read in place of ‘Beth-el’ in 1 Sam. xxx. 27. The Septuagint has Baith-Sour.

Footnote 452:

Boaz, the grandfather of Jesse, is said to have been the son of Salmon or Salma, who, according to 1 Chron. ii. 50, 51, was the founder of Bethlehem, and the son of Caleb.

Footnote 453:

Criticism has seen in the story told by the Amalekite a second version of the death of Saul inconsistent with that which precedes it. The inconsistency certainly exists, but that is because the Amalekite’s story was a fabrication, the object of which was to gain a reward from David. There was this much truth in it, that Saul had been wounded and had desired death; the Amalekite could easily have learned this from those who had witnessed the last scene of Saul’s life. But the fact that he had robbed Saul’s corpse shows that he must have come to the ground after the flight of the Israelitish soldiers; he was, in fact, one of those Bedâwin thieves who, in Oriental warfare, still hang on the skirts of the battle in the hope of murdering the wounded and plundering the dead when it is over and the victors are pursuing the vanquished.

Footnote 454:

The translation is that of the Revised Version, with a slight change in the 21st verse. The contrast between the preservation of the text in this Song and in that of the Song of Deborah is great, no passage in it being corrupt, and points to the more archaic character of the latter, as well as to a confirmation of the fact that the Song of the Bow was learnt in the schools from the time of its composition.

Footnote 455:

Ish-Baal or Esh-Baal, ‘the man of Baal,’ is called Ishui in 1 Sam. xiv. 49 (where the name of Abinadab is omitted; see 1 Chron. viii. 33). Later writers changed Baal into Bosheth, ‘Shame,’ in accordance with the custom which grew up when the title of Baal came to signify the god of Phœnicia, rather than Yahveh of Israel.

Footnote 456:

That the reign of David ‘in Hebron’ continued for five years after the death of Esh-Baal seems the most probable way of explaining the statement in 2 Sam. ii. 10, that the reign of Saul’s son lasted only two years. It is certainly preferable to the usual supposition that ‘two’ is a mistake for ‘seven.’

Footnote 457:

The author of the books of Samuel did not know his age (2 Sam. ii. 10). In 1 Sam. xiv. 49 Ishui is named before Melchi-shua, but in 1 Chron. viii. 33 Esh-Baal is the youngest of Saul’s children. That Esh-Baal did not take part in the battle of Gilboa would suit equally well with either hypothesis. Abner, the son of Ner, the son of Abiel, was the great-uncle of Esh-Baal (1 Sam. xiv. 50, 51). As he was still in the prime of life when he was murdered, it is reasonable to suppose that his great-nephew was very young.

Footnote 458:

1 Chron. ii. 16.

Footnote 459:

If, as is probable, we should read ‘Geshurites’ for ‘Ashurites’ in 2 Sam. ii. 9, Esh-Baal would have claimed rule over Geshur, and consequently would have been as much involved in war with the king of that country as he was with David. We subsequently find the Aramæans in alliance with the Ammonites (2 Sam. x. 6, etc.), and the king of Ammon was the ally of David against Esh-Baal (2 Sam. xi. 2). It is probable that in 1 Sam. xiv. 47, ‘Aram’ must be read for ‘Edom,’ the geographical position of which was not between Ammon and Zobah (see above, p. 368); if so, Esh-Baal, in asserting his authority over Geshur, would only have succeeded to his father’s conquests.

Footnote 460:

Absalom, as the son of a princess, would claim precedence of his two elder brothers, who, although born after David’s coronation, were nevertheless not of royal descent on their mother’s side. The name of the eldest, the son of Ahinoam, was Amnon, that of the second, the son of Abigail, is given as Chileab in the Hebrew text of Samuel, Daniel in that of 1 Chron. iii. 1, the Septuagint reading Daluia (Dalbia) and Damniêl in the two passages. He seems to have died young. The fourth son of David was Adonijah, the son of Haggith, who, by the death of his three elder brothers, became the eldest son before his father’s death, while the fifth and sixth sons were Shephatiah, the son of Abital, and Ithream, the son of Eglah. All were born in Hebron.

Footnote 461:

2 Sam. iii. 17. This goes to show that Saul’s suspicions of David were founded on fact.

Footnote 462:

The name of the Babylonian god Rimmon or Ramman implies that the family of the murderers were idolaters. They are said to have been originally from Beeroth, the inhabitants of which had fled to Gittaim (2 Sam. iv. 3). If the flight had been due to Saul, the hostility of the sons of Rimmon to the son of Saul would be explained. Beeroth was one of the cities of the Gibeonites (Josh. ix. 17), and Saul, we learn from 2 Sam. xxi. 1, had slain the Gibeonites.

Footnote 463:

The name Merib-Baal, given by the Chronicler (1 Chron. viii. 34, ix. 40), is doubtless correct. In the books of Samuel Baal has, as usual, been changed into Bosheth, and Merib corrupted into the senseless Mephi.

Footnote 464:

See 1 Chron. xi. 2, and xii. 38-40, where it is added that the coronation-feast lasted for three days.

Footnote 465:

See 2 Sam. xiii. 13-17.

Footnote 466:

It is difficult to say whether the number of the _gibbôrîm_ or ‘heroes’ was actually restricted to thirty, or whether thirty was an ideal number which was elastic in practice. In 2 Sam. xxiii. thirty-seven ‘heroes’ are named, but some of these may have been appointed to supply the place of others who had died or fallen in war. To be included among the thirty was equivalent to receiving a Victoria Cross.

Footnote 467:

2 Sam. xxiii. 8, but the text is corrupt, and reads literally: ‘He that sitteth on the seat, a Takmonite, chief of the third (?); he is Adino the Eznite, over eight hundred slain at one time.’ The Septuagint has: ‘Yebosthe the Canaanite is chief of the third; Adino the Asônæan is he who drew his sword against eight hundred warriors at once’; while the Chronicler (1 Chron. xi. 11) omitted the name of Adino, and read: ‘Jashobeam, a Khakmonite, chief of the captains; he lifted up his spear against three hundred slain at one time.’ For Jashobeam the Septuagint gives Yesebada. Adino seems to be the Adnah of 1 Chron. xii. 20, a Manassite who deserted to David when he was at Ziklag. Jashobeam is the most probable form of the name, and there must be some confusion between Jashobeam, who brandished his spear over three hundred enemies, and an unknown Adino, who did the same over eight hundred enemies.

Footnote 468:

G. A. Smith, _The Historical Geography of the Holy Land_, p. 218.

Footnote 469:

See 2 Sam. xxi. 15-22, xxiii. 8-17.

Footnote 470:

If the name of Ishbi-benob, ‘my seat is in Nob,’ is correct, ‘Gob’ must be corrected into ‘Nob.’ But perhaps it is the name of the giant which needs correction.

Footnote 471:

See the map given by Stade, _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_, p. 268, and my ‘Topography of Præ-exilic Jerusalem’ in the _Quarterly Statement_ of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Oct. 1883, pp. 215 _sqq._

Footnote 472:

Bliss, ‘Excavations at Jerusalem’ in the _Quarterly Statement_ of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Oct. 1896 and Jan. 1897.

Footnote 473:

_Antiq._ viii. 5, 3; _C. Ap._ i. 18.

Footnote 474:

It is, of course, possible that Abibal had been preceded by an earlier Hiram of whom we otherwise know nothing, and who is meant in 2 Sam. v. 11. It is also possible that the use of Hiram’s name in this passage is proleptic, derived from the fact that it was he who subsequently sent materials to David for the construction of the temple.

Footnote 475:

1 Chron. xxii. 8.

Footnote 476:

1 Kings v. 3.

Footnote 477:

2 Sam. vi. 3. In Josh. xviii. 18 ‘Gibeah of Kirjath’ is given as one of the cities of Benjamin. Like most of the Egyptian and Babylonian cities it had a second and sacred name, Baalê-Judah, the city of ‘Baal of Judah’ (2 Sam. vi. 2).

Footnote 478:

The name of Obed-Edom, ‘the servant of Edom,’ shows that Edom was the name of a deity as well as of a country, like Ammi, the patron-god of Ammon, and it is met with in the monuments of Egypt. A papyrus (_Pap. Leydens._ i. 343. 7) states that Atum or Edom was the wife of the Canaanitish fire-god Reshpu, and one of the places in Palestine captured by Thothmes III. was Shemesh-Edom (No. 51), ‘the Sun-god is Edom’ (_Records of the Past_, new ser., v. p. 47).

Footnote 479:

2 Chron. i. 3. See above, p. 353.

Footnote 480:

This must be the general signification of the Hebrew expression _Metheg-ammah_ in 2 Sam. viii. i., which the Septuagint translates τὴν ἀφωρισμένην, ‘the tribute.’ The Chronicler read Gath for Metheg (1 Chron. xviii. 1), and consequently understood _ammah_ in the sense of ‘mother-city.’ My own belief is that we have in the phrase a Hebrew transcription of a Babylonian expression which has been derived from a cuneiform document. The Babylonian _mêtêg ammati_ (for _mêtêq ammati_) would signify ‘the highroad of the mainland’ of Palestine, and would refer to the command of the highroad of trade which passed through Canaan from Asia to Egypt and Arabia. _Ammati_ is the Semitic equivalent of the Sumerian Sarsar (W. A. I. v. 18, 32 _c._), which was an early Babylonian name of the land of the Amorites or Syria (W. A. I. ii. 51, 19; see _Records of the Past_, new ser., v. p. 107); and _mêtêq_ is given as a rendering of _kharran_, ‘a highroad’ (W. A. I. ii. 38, 26).

Footnote 481:

2 Sam. xxiii. 20.

Footnote 482:

See my _Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments_, p. 367.

Footnote 483:

_Ibid._ pp. 349, 350.

Footnote 484:

The Septuagint has misread ‘Amalek’ for ‘Maacah.’

Footnote 485:

El-Hîba probably stands on the site of the Egyptian town of Hâ-Bennu, the Greek Hipponon, the capital of the eighteenth nome of Upper Egypt, and its fortifications were built by the high priest Men-kheper-Ra and his wife Isis-em-Kheb. The Tanite Pharaohs formed the twenty-first dynasty.

Footnote 486:

See Delitzsch, _Wo lag das Paradies_, pp. 279-280. Assur-bani-pal states that he sent his troops against the cities of Azar-el, the Khiratâqazians, Edom, Yabrudu, Bit-Ammani or Ammon, ‘the district of the city of the Haurân’ (_Khaurina_), Moab, Sakharri, Khargê, and ‘the district of the city of Tsubitê, or Zobah.’ Delitzsch identifies Yabrudu with the Yabruda of Ptolemy, the modern Yabrûd, north-east of Damascus. In the tribute-lists of the Second Assyrian Empire, Tsubitê or Tsubutu comes between Dûru (_Tantûra_) and Hamath, Samalla (_Sinjerli_) and Khatarikka or Hadrach (Zech. ix. 1.), and Zemar (_Sumra_), and the Quê on the coast of the Gulf of Antioch.

Footnote 487:

The fact that the Assyrian king Shalmaneser II. calls Baasha, the contemporary king of Ammon, ‘the son of Rukhubi’ or Rehob, just as he calls Jehu ‘the son of Omri,’ shows that Rehob was a personal name. The Biblical Beth-Rehob is parallel to Bit-Omri, a designation of Samaria in the Assyrian texts. Beth-Rehob is placed near Dan in Judg. xviii. 28. In 1 Chron. xix. 6, Aram-Naharaim is apparently substituted for Aram-Beth-Rehob, though, as the dominions of Hadad-ezer extended to the Euphrates, soldiers may have come to the help of the Ammonites from Mesopotamia, as well as from Beth-Rehob. The name of Hadad-ezer is incorrectly given as Hadar-ezer in 2 Sam. x. 16. It appears as Hadad-idri in the Assyrian inscriptions (with the Aramaic change of _z_ to _d_), where it is the name of the king of Damascus, called Ben-Hadad II. in the Old Testament.

Footnote 488:

So, according to the Septuagint and 1 Chron. xviii. 4. The Hebrew text of 2 Sam. viii. 4 has ‘700 horsemen.’ But it is possible that we ought to read ‘1700 horsemen.’

Footnote 489:

Nicolaus Damascenus, as quoted by Josephus, makes Hadad the king of Damascus, who thus vainly endeavoured to check the torrent of Israelitish success. Hadad, however, must be merely Hadad-ezer in an abbreviated form, Perhaps we may gather from 1 Kings xi. 23, that the ruling prince in Damascus at the time of David’s conquests was Rezon, the son of Eliadah.

Footnote 490:

1 Chron. xix. 18. In 2 Sam. x. 18, the numbers are 700 charioteers and 40,000 horsemen, which are clearly wrong.

Footnote 491:

The account of the war with Zobah given above is the most probable that can be gleaned from the scanty and fragmentary notices that have been preserved to us. But it must be remembered that it is probable only. It is not even certain that ‘the Syrians that were beyond the river’ (2 Sam. x. 16) were not the Aramæans of Damascus rather than those of Mesopotamia, since, as Professor Hommel has shown (_Ancient Hebrew Tradition as illustrated by the Monuments_, pp. 195 _sqq._) the term _Ebir Nâri_, ‘Beyond the river,’ is already used in an Assyrian poem (K. 3500, l. 9) of the age of David, in the Assyro-Babylonian sense of the country westward of the Euphrates. Indeed, Professor Hommel suggests that it already denoted the country westward of the Jordan. This, however, is inconsistent with 2 Sam. x. 17; and west of the Jordan, moreover, there were no Aramæan kingdoms.

Footnote 492:

The Chronicler (1 Chron. xviii. 8) has preserved the true form of the name of Tibhath, which has been corrupted into Betah in 2 Sam. viii. 8. It is the Tubikhi of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, the Dbkhu of the geographical list of Thothmes III. (No. 6). Instead of Berothai the Chronicler has Chun.

Footnote 493:

1 Chron. xviii. 8.

Footnote 494:

Hadoram, the older form of the name, is found only in 1 Chron. xviii. 10. The text of the books of Samuel has the Hebraised Joram.

Footnote 495:

Salamanu appears as Shalman in Hos. x. 14, as Sulmanu in Assyro-Babylonian. Sulmanu was the god of Peace, like Selamanês in a Greek inscription from Shêkh Barakât in northern Syria, whose name is also found in a Phœnician inscription from Sidon (Clermont-Ganneau, _Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études_ CXIII., vol. ii. pp. 40, 48).

Footnote 496:

This is usually supposed to mean that they were tortured in various ways, but more probably it means only that they were made public slaves and compelled to cut and saw wood, harrow the ground, and make bricks. At all events, if tortures are referred to, no parallel to them can be found elsewhere. As the crown is said to have weighed ‘a talent’ it can hardly have been worn by an earthly king.

Footnote 497:

2 Sam. viii. 13. In 1 Chron. xviii. 12, however, the victory is ascribed to Abishai, the brother of Joab.

Footnote 498:

2 Sam. viii. 13, where the mention of ‘the valley of salt’ shows that we must read ‘Edom’ instead of ‘Aram,’ as indeed is done by the Chronicler as well as in the superscription of Ps. lx. and in the Septuagint. The ‘valley of salt’ was part of the Melukhkha or ‘Saltland’ of the cuneiform inscriptions.

Footnote 499:

2 Sam. xxiii. 37, 36, 34.

Footnote 500:

1 Kings xi. 21.

Footnote 501:

This was Ithra who ‘went in’ to Abigail, the daughter of Nahash, the sister of Zeruiah, Joab’s mother (2 Sam. xvii. 25). The form of expression may imply that Abigail was seduced. If so, the hostility of Joab would be easily accounted for.

Footnote 502:

It is probable that ‘Shobi the son of Nahash of Rabbah of the children of Ammon’ (2 Sam. xvii. 27) was a brother of the last king of Ammon, and it is even possible that he may have been the cause of the Ammonite war. If he had been a rival of his brother Khanun, and had received shelter and protection from David, we should have an explanation of the otherwise gratuitous insult offered by Khanun to the ambassadors of the Israelitish king.

Footnote 503:

That the forest was on the eastern bank of the Jordan is plain from Josh. xvii. 15-18 and 2 Sam. xix. 31.

Footnote 504:

It is called Abel-Maim, ‘Abel of the Waters,’ in 2 Chron. xvi. 4, compared with 1 Kings xv. 20. In 2 Sam. xx. 14, we should perhaps read, ‘And all the young warriors’ (_bakhûrîm_ for _bêrîm_) ‘were gathered together,’ as the Septuagint has ‘all in Kharri,’ and the Vulgate ‘viri electi.’

Footnote 505:

2 Sam. xxiv. 6, according to Lucian’s recension of the Greek translation (‘Khettieim Kadês’). See Field, _Origenis Hexaplorum quæ supersunt_, i. p. 587.

Footnote 506:

2 Sam. xix. 29. Ziba, the steward of Mephibosheth, who was lame, had accused his master of aiming at the kingdom, and David had accordingly given him all Mephibosheth’s property. David not only had believed the accusation, but in spite of Mephibosheth’s protests and excuses, must have continued to do so, since Ziba, so far from being punished, was allowed to retain half his master’s possessions. The Jewish historian evidently takes a different view from that of David, and regards the accusation as false. Mephibosheth is more correctly written Merib-Baal in 1 Chron. viii. 34; ix. 40.

Footnote 507:

‘Adriel, the son of Barzillai the Meholathite’ (2 Sam. xxi. 8), cannot be the same as Phaltiel or ‘Phalti the son of Laish of Gallim’ (1 Sam. xxv. 44), to whom Saul had given Michal after David’s flight, and from whom David afterwards took her (2 Sam. iii. 16). As Michal never seems to have subsequently left the harîm of David (2 Sam. vi. 23), it would appear that the name of Michal in 2 Sam. xxi. 8 must be a mistake for that of some other daughter of Saul.

Footnote 508:

See 2 Sam. xxiv. 23, where the Septuagint has ‘Orna(n) the king.’ The various spellings of the name Araunah, Araniah (2 Sam. xxiv. 18), and Ornan (1 Chron. xxi. 15) show that it was a foreign word, the pronunciation of which was not clear to the Israelites. Araniah is an assimilation to a Hebrew name.

Footnote 509:

2 Sam. xxiv. 6.

Footnote 510:

In 1 Kings v. 3, 4, the reason why David could not build the temple is given a little differently. It is there stated to have been because of the constant wars in which he was engaged which prevented him from securing the needful leisure for the work. This reason, however, does not apply to the latter part of David’s reign.

Footnote 511:

The Chronicler (1 Chron. xviii. 16) reads Shavsha, apparently through a confusion with the later Sheva (2 Sam. xx. 25). However, the Septuagint has Sasa in 2 Sam. viii. 17, and the two scribes of Solomon at the beginning of his reign were the sons of Shisha (1 Kings iv. 3).

Footnote 512:

The genealogy of the high priests is involved in a confusion which with our present materials it is hopeless to unravel. In 1 Sam. xiv. 3, Ahimelech is called Ahiah, and in 2 Sam. viii. 17, as well as in the document used in 1 Chron. xxiv. (verses 3, 6, and 31), he is made the son of Abiathar instead of his father. In 1 Chron. xviii. 16, the name is transformed into Abimelech, and in 1 Chron. xxiv. Ahimelech and Abiathar are stated to have been descended from Ithamar the son of Aaron, and not from his brother Eleazar. That the genealogy in 1 Chron. vi. 4 _sqq._ is corrupt is evident not only from the repetition of the triplet Amariah, Ahitub, and Zadok in verses 7, 8, and 11, 12, but also from the statement that Azariah four generations after Zadok ‘executed the priest’s office’ in Solomon’s temple. In 1 Chron. ix. 11; Neh. xi. 11, again, the order is ‘Zadok the son of Meraioth the son of Ahitub,’ whereas in 1 Chron. vi. 7, 8, and 52, 53, it is Zadok the son of Ahitub the son of Amariah the son of Meraioth.

Footnote 513:

Hadoram (2 Chron. x. 18) is written Adoram in 2 Sam. xx. 24, and Adoniram in 1 Kings iv. 6. Adoni-ram is a Hebraised form of the original name Addu-ramu, ‘Hadad is exalted.’ His father’s name, Abda, has an Aramaic termination. An early Babylonian seal-cylinder in the collection of M. de Clercq has upon it the name of Abdu-ramu.

Footnote 514:

See above, p. 92.

Footnote 515:

1 Chron. xxvii. 25-32.

Footnote 516:

The Jewish historian includes among those who refused to go with Adonijah the otherwise unknown Shimei and Rei (1 Kings i. 8). They are referred to as well-known personages, implying that the writer must have had before him a large collection of documents relating to the history of the time, most of which have now perished.

Footnote 517:

As Barzillai was already eighty years of age at the time of David’s flight (2 Sam. xix. 35), the death of David could not have happened very long after that event. That Joab and Abiathar were still vigorous implies the same thing. As for the authenticity of David’s dying instructions, there is no reason to question it. A later writer is not likely to have gratuitously credited them to David; and inconsistent though they may seem to us with David’s piety, they were in full keeping with his character as well as with that of other Israelites of his age. If they had been falsely ascribed to David by Solomon’s admirers after the murder of Joab and Shimei, Adonijah also would have been included among the victims.

Footnote 518:

_E.g._ Ps. lx.

Footnote 519:

_E.g._ Ps. cviii.

Footnote 520:

See my Hibbert Lectures on the _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, pp. 348-356. Thus we read:—

‘O lord, my sins are many, my transgressions are great! O my goddess, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!

The sin that I sinned I knew not. The transgression I committed I knew not. The cursed thing that I ate I knew not. The cursed thing that I trampled on I knew not. The lord in the wrath of his heart has regarded me; God in the fierceness of his heart has revealed himself to me.

I sought for help and none took my hand; I wept and none stood at my side; I cried aloud and there was none that heard me. I am in trouble and hiding; I dare not look up. To my god, the merciful one, I turn myself, I utter my prayer;

O my god, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my sins! O my goddess, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my sins!’

Footnote 521:

See above, p. 175.

Footnote 522:

_Cont. Ap._ i. 17, 18.

Footnote 523:

The single reigns are:—(1) Hiram for thirty-four years; (2) Baleazor for seven years according to the Armenian version of Eusebius and the Synkellos, seventeen years according to Niese’s text of Josephus; (3) Abdastartos nine years; (4) Methuastartos twelve years; (5) Astarymos nine years; (6) Phelles eight months; (7) Eithobalos or Eth-Baal thirty-two years (forty-eight years according to Theophilus _ad Autolyc._ III.); (8) Balezor six years (seven years according to Theoph., eight years according to Euseb. and the Synk.); (9) Matgenos twenty-nine years (twenty-five years according to the Arm. Vers. of Euseb.); (10) Pygmalion forty-seven years.

Footnote 524:

_I.e._ seventy-two years after the foundation of Rome; Trogus Pompeius _ap._ Justin. xviii. 7; Oros. iv. 6. Velleius Paterculus (i. 6) makes it seven years later.

Footnote 525:

See 1 Kings xii. 18. For the forced labour or _corvée_ see 1 Kings v. 13, 14.

Footnote 526:

The Vatican manuscript of the Septuagint has a wholly different list from that of the Hebrew text, Baasha the son of Ahithalam taking the place of Azariah as Vizier, Abi the son of Joab being commander-in-chief, and Ahira the son of Edrei tax-master, while Benaiah remains commander of the bodyguard as in David’s reign. The list is perhaps derived from a document that belonged to the early part of Solomon’s reign. The Syriac reads Zakkur for Zabud, the royal chaplain; but Zabud is supported by the Vatican Septuagint, which makes him the chief councillor. For the reading ‘army’ or ‘bodyguard’ instead of the senseless πατριᾶς in iv. 6, see Field, _Origenis Hexaplorum quæ supersunt_, i. p. 598.

Footnote 527:

See Hommel, _The Ancient Hebrew Tradition_, pp. 252 _sqq._

Footnote 528:

The papyrus in which the history of the expedition is recorded is preserved in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, and has not yet been published. Mr. Golénischeff, its discoverer, however, has given me a verbal account of it.

Footnote 529:

There is no gold in Southern Arabia, and consequently Ophir must have been an emporium to which the gold was brought for transhipment from elsewhere. The mines were probably at Zimbabwe and the neighbourhood, where Mr. Theodore Bent made important excavations. For the site of Ophir, which may have been near Gerrha in the Persian Gulf, see Sayce in the _Proceedings_ of the Society of Biblical Archæology, June 1896, p. 174.

Footnote 530:

1 Kings v. 16. These taskmasters must be distinguished from the 550 (or 250 according to 2 Chron. viii. 10) who superintended the work in Jerusalem itself (ix. 23), on which no Israelites were employed, but only native Canaanites (ix. 21, 22). The Chronicler makes the overseers of the preparatory work 3600 in number (2 Chron. ii. 18), the _corvée_ itself consisting of 150,000 men.

Footnote 531:

See my article in the _Quarterly Statement_ of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1883, pp. 215-223, where I have staked the justification of my views on the discovery of the ‘stairs’ near the spot where the rock-cut steps have been found by Dr. Bliss (_Ibid._ 1896-97). Dr. Guthe first noticed that a shallow valley once existed between the Temple-hill and the so-called ‘Ophel.’

Footnote 532:

The columns were 18 cubits high (1 Kings vii. 15), though the Chronicler (2 Chron. iii. 15) makes them 35 cubits or 52-1/2 feet. The _khammânîm_ or ‘Sun-pillars,’ dedicated to the Sun and associated with the worship of Asherah and Baal, are often referred to in the Old Testament (2 Chron. xxxiv. 4; Is. xvii. 8, etc.), and are mentioned in a Palmyrene inscription.

Footnote 533:

A translation of the hymn is given in my Hibbert Lectures on the _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, pp. 495, 496; see also p. 63.

Footnote 534:

Layard, _Monuments of Nineveh_, i. plate 7A.

Footnote 535:

See above, p. 196.

Footnote 536:

Herod. i. 181.

Footnote 537:

See Ball, _The India House Inscription of Nebuchadrezzar_ in the _Records of the Past_, new ser., iii. pp. 104-123.

Footnote 538:

1 Kings viii. 2. In vi. 38, however, it is said that the work was not completed until the eighth month of the year, the Phœnician Bul.

Footnote 539:

To these the Chronicler adds ‘Beth-horon the Upper’ (2 Chron. viii. 5). Possibly the two Beth-horons were fortified in connection with the reservoirs which Solomon is supposed to have constructed in order to supply Jerusalem with water. Baalath was, strictly speaking, in Dan (Josh. xix. 44). The Latin form Palmyra comes from Tadmor by assimilation to _palma_, ‘a palm.’ The change of _d_ to _l_ in Latin words is familiar to etymologists, and the initial _p_ for _t_ is paralleled by _pavo_, ‘a peacock,’ from the Greek ταὧς (Persian _tâwûs_). One of the Septuagint MSS. has Thermath for Tadmor, but in the ordinary text the whole passage is omitted.

Footnote 540:

Thus ‘Beth-horon the Upper’ is omitted in the verse, and the words ‘in the land’ (of Judah) have been transposed to the end of it, instead of coming as they should after ‘Baalath.’

Footnote 541:

_Records of the Past_, new ser., i. p. 115.

Footnote 542:

1 Kings iv. 33. That books are meant, and not lectures such as were given to his subjects by the Egyptian king Khu-n-Aten, seems evident from verse 32, compared with Prov. xxv. 1.

Footnote 543:

‘The enemies of Assur,’ says Assur-natsir-pal, he ‘has combated to their furthest bounds above and below’ (_Records of the Past_, new ser., ii. p. 136); ‘Countries, mountains, fortresses, and kinglets, the enemies of Assur, I have conquered,’ says Tiglath-pileser I. (_Records of the Past_, new ser., i. p. 94).

INDEX.

A

Aaron, 34, 134, 162, 165, 201, 215, 218, 221, 223, 245.

Abarim, 7, 226, 244.

Abdiel, 13, 38.

Abdon, 322.

Abel (city), 436.

Abel-mizraim, 98.

Abesukh (Abishua), 13.

Abi, 459.

Abiah, 355.

Abiathar, 348, 381, 388, 391, 431, 443, 444, 445, 447, 455.

Abibal, 410, 411, 437, 452, 453, 462.

Abiel, 399.

Abi-ezrites, 305, 307, 309, 311.

Abigail, 384, 401, 431.

Abimelech, 242, 306, 310, 316 _sq._

Abimelech of Gerar, 63.

Abinadab, 348, 352, 398.

Abinoam, 299, 303.

Abishag, 445, 455.

Abishai, 384, 408, 417, 426, 432, 436.

Abishar, 459.

Abital, 401.

Abner, 371, 374 _sq._, 436.

Abraham, etymology of, 33, 34. age of, 143.

Abram (Abi-ramu), 13, 38, 128.

_abrêk_, 87.

Absalom, 146, 401, 429 _sq._, 448.

Abulfarag, 95.

Achan, 251.

Achish, 378, 385, 389.

Achshaph, 259.

Adam (city), 248.

Adino, 406.

Adoni-bezek, 267.

Adonijah, 401, 445, 446, 447, 455.

Adoni-zedek, 254.

Adoram. _See_ Hadoram.

Adriel, 439.

Adullam, 379, 405.

Agag, 367.

Ahiah. _See_ Ahimelech.

Ahijah, 373, 376, 476.

Ahimaaz, 369, 431, 433, 459.

Ahimelech or Ahiah, 348, 363, 365, 378, 381, 443. the Hittite, 384.

Ahinoam, 369. wife of David, 384, 401.

Ahira, 459.

Ahitophel, 430, 432.

Ahitub, 348, 349, 353, 443.

Ahmes, 148. ‘Captain,’ 89, 92, 95.

Aholiab, 198.

Ai, 14, 247, 251, 254, 258, 269.

Aijalon, 257, 363. in Zebulon, 322.

Akiamos, 292, 293.

Aleppo, 421.

Alexander the Great, 185.

Allon-bachuth, 298.

_alûphîm_, 67, 224.

Amalek, city of, 367.

Amalekites, 43, 46, 186, 189, 215, 230, 234, 247, 289, 303, 307, 322, 367, 386, 391, 392, 395, 426.

Amasa, 431 _sq._

amber, 475.

Ameni, 175, 231.

Amenôphis, 173, 174.

Amenôphis, IV. or Khu-n-Aten, 155, 287.

Ammi, 13, 39, 413.

Ammi-satana (dhitana), 12.

Ammiya, 229.

Ammi-zadoq, 7, 13, 14, 39, 40.

Ammo, 40, 228.

Ammon, 13, 39, 44, 227, 289, 358, 401, 417 _sq._, 427, 457.

Ammonites, 322, 323, 398, 432.

Amnon, 401, 429.

Amon, 156, 158, 237.

Amorites, 2, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 20, 21, 24, 38, 42 _sq._, 56, 57, 231, 252, 264, 285, 292, 353, 415.

Amram, 162.

Amraphel (_see_ Khammu-rabi), 12, 24, 117, 126, 128, 147, 149, 295.

Amu, 6.

Amurru (Amorites), 15, 30, 42.

Anab, 266.

Anakim, 41, 53, 294, 370.

Anath, 295.

Anathoth, 237, 455.

angels, Babylonian, 194.

Ansarîyeh, 37.

Anu, 295, 350.

Anuti, 3.

Aperu, 3.

Aphek, 261, 262, 346, 387, 391.

Apophis, 23, 85, 95, 99, 148.

Apuriu, 2, 173.

Ar, 44, 227.

Arad, 182, 217, 257, 263, 329.

Aram, 368, 401, 417, 473, 478.

Aramaic, 34 _sq._

Araunah, 441.

Arba, 53.

Argob, 227, 322.

_ariel_, 416.

Arioch (_see_ Eri-Aku), 11, 24, 26, 58, 128.

ark, 196 _sq._, 346 _sq._, 354, 413, 456, 468.

Arnon, 43, 222, 223, 226.

Aroer, 392, 393.

Arphaxad, 143.

Arrian, 185.

Arumah, 318.

Arvad, 231, 285, 461.

Asahel, 400.

Asenath, 84.

Ashdod, 292, 293, 349, 351.

Asher, 78, 248, 304, 311, 314.

Asherah (Asratu), 15, 241, 274, 307, 468.

Ashkelon, 56, 159, 292, 396.

Ashtaroth-Karnaim, 24, 41, 223, 227.

Ashurites, 401.

Asshurim, 7, 223, 231.

Assur-bil-kala, 231.

Assur-irbi, 231, 437.

Assur-natsir-pal, 359, 478.

Assyrians, 21, etc., 418, 451.

Astruc, 105.

_asyla_, 235, 236.

Aten-Ra, 156.

Atonement, day of, 134.

Aup, 229.

Avaris, 23, 173.

Avim, 294.

Azariah, 459.

Azekah, 369.

Azmaveth, 445.

B

Baal, 308.

Baalath of Judah, 471.

Baal-berith, 283, 310.

Baale-Judah, 413.

Baal-hanan, 356, 445.

Baal-Peor, 233, 244.

Baal-perazim, 407.

Baal-zephon, 181.

Baanah, 404.

Baasha, 459.

Baba, 93.

Babylon, 11, 12.

Babylonia, 2, etc. kings of, 12, 147.

Babylonian law, 57 _sq._ ritual, 204.

Bad-makh-dingirene, 26.

Baethgen, 306.

Balaam, 40, 132, 224, 228 _sq._, 234.

Balak, 228.

Balawât, 197, 202.

Barak, 296 _sq._, 311.

Baring-Gould, 195.

Barzillai, 439, 447.

Bashan, 24, 223, 227, 235, 322, 457.

Bastian, 31.

Bath-sheba, 263, 424, 429, 445, 446.

Baxter, 135.

Beer, 318.

Beeroth, 252, 404.

Beer-Sheba, 64, 353.

Bela, son of Beor (_see_ Balaam), 224.

Belbeis, 96, 154, 171.

Benaiah, 416, 443, 446, 462.

Ben-Hadad, 420, 451.

Beni-Yaakan, 221.

Benjamin, 76, 79, 253, 268, 275 _sq._, 303.

Ben-Oni, 79.

Bent, 463.

Berger, 34.

Berothai, 423.

Beth-Anoth, 285.

Beth-barah, 312, 317, 318, 319.

Beth-car, 352.

Beth-el, 69, 70, 81, 247, 253, 277, 298, 345, 353, 354, 363.

Beth-horon, 255, 471, 472.

Beth-lehem, 81, 264, 268, 275, 279, 338, 369, 371, 377.

Beth-lehem in Zebulon, 322.

Beth-On, 70, 79, 86, 253, 363.

Beth-Rehob, 420.

Beth-Shean, Beth-Shan, 247, 252, 296, 394

Beth-Shemesh, 351, 352.

Bethuel, 65.

Beybars I., Sultan, 249.

Bezek, 247, 267, 359.

Bint-Anat, 161.

Birch, 185.

Bissell, 110.

Bliss, 255, 256, 410, 466, 467, 475.

Boaz, 394.

Boaz, (a column), 467.

Boeckh, 453.

Briggs, 105.

Brinton, 42.

Browne, Sir Th., 201.

Brugsch, 3, 93, 149, 150, 179, 180.

Brünnow, 4.

Bubastis, 154.

Budde, 226, 290, 297.

Bul (month), 469.

Burna-buryas, 21.

C

Caleb, 246, 256, 263 _sq._, 269, 287, 392, 394, 397.

calendar changed, 178.

camels, 169.

Canaan, 2, 8, 11, 21, 34, 131, 159, 160, 217.

Canaanitish. _See_ Hebrew.

Caphtor, 291.

Carchemish, 19, 40, 55, 228, 285, 419, 472.

Carmel of Judah, 285, 383.

Carthage, 288, 453.

Casdim, 8.

census, 210, 440.

Chabas, 3.

Chærêmôn, 174.

Chedor-laomer, 11, 24, 26, 128.

Chemosh, 40, 44, 416, 478.

Chephirah, 252.

Cherethithes, 392.

Cheyne, 304, 305.

Chileab, 401.

Chinnereth, 259.

Chronicles, books of, 140.

chronology, 142 _sq._, 211, 451.

Chun, 423.

Chushan-rishathaim, 286, 287.

circumcision, 31, 165, 250.

Clercq, de, 202.

Clermont-Ganneau, 29, 52, 249, 252, 346.

copper, 474.

Cornill, 343.

Cornwall, 474.

Covenant, book of, 101, 136, 196.

cuneiform characters, use of in Israel, 244, 339.

Cushite wife of Moses, 215.

Cyprus, 230, 285, 474.

D

Dagon, 294, 349, 350.

Damascus, 25, 28, 368, 373, 421, 423, 438, 462, 477.

Dan, 76, 80, 248, 254, 263, 280, 294, 304, 320, 330. Camp of, 279, 280.

Dangin, Thureau-, 10.

Daressy, 14, 223.

David, 146, 369 _sq._ City of, 465, 466.

Day of Atonement, 208.

Debir (king), 254.

Debir (city), 265.

Deborah, 81, 295 _sq._ Song of, 273 _sq._

Dedan, 45.

Delitzsch, Friedrich, 148, 419.

Deluge—story, 122 _sq._

Derketô, 292.

Deuteronomy, 101, 219, 238 _sq._

Dhi-Zahab, 222.

Dibon, 79.

Diktynna, 294.

Dinhabah (Dunip), 37, 224.

Diodoros, 96, 97, 184.

Dodah, 416.

Doeg, 356, 381.

Dor (_Tantûra_), 247, 252, 259, 261, 294, 313, 387, 457.

Driver, 143.

Dungi, 60.

Dusratta, 287.

Dussaud, 37.

E

Ebal, 242, 243.

Ebed-Tob, 3, 28, 29, 128, 254, 266, 441.

Ebed-Asherah, 229.

Eben-ezer, 346, 352, 354.

Eber, 7, 231, 285.

Ebers, 86.

Ebir-nâri, 7, 8, 231, 423.

Ebronah, 7, 221.

Ecclesiasticus, book of, 137.

Edar, tower of, 82.

Edom, 39, 66 _sq._, 120, 132, 155, 182, 189, 190, 222, 224, 230, 288, 356, 368, 401, 426, 427, 442, 454, 463, 477.

Edom (god), 413.

Edrei, 227.

Egibi, 69.

Eglah, 401.

Eglon (king of Moab), 289 _sq._

Eglon (city), 254, 256.

Egypt, 2, etc., 418.

Egyptians in Israel, 288.

Ehud, 290.

Eisenlohr, 151.

Ekron, 351, 371.

El, 46.

Elah, 226, 369, 371, 374.

Elath, 66, 182, 187, 427, 464.

Elam, 5, 11, 12, 24, 26.

Eleazar, 221, 406, 443.

El-hanan, 356, 369, 372.

El-Hîba (in Egypt), 418.

Eli, 219, 340 _sq._, 381, 443, 455.

Eliab, 459.

Eliadah, 421.

Eliak, 459.

Elijah, 189.

Elim, 182, 187.

Elimelech, 4.

Elishah (Cyprus), 285.

El-Kab, 89, 92, 93.

Elkanah, 339.

Ellasar (Larsa), 25, 138.

Elon, 321.

El-Paran, 187, 226.

embalming, 96, 97.

Emim, 24, 41, 43.

Endor, witch of, 389.

En-gedi, 383.

En-hakkorê, 327, 328.

En-Mishpat (Kadesh-barnea), 191, 215, 220.

Enna (Egyptian writer), 83.

En-rogel (the Fuller’s Well), 446.

ephod, 72, 283, 316.

Ephraim, 76, 79, 253, 303, 313 _sq._, 322 _sq._, 325 _sq._, 334, 335, 338.

Ephrathite, 338.

eponyms, 451.

Erman, 89, 90, 91, 198, 212, 223.

Erech, 11, 12.

Eri-Aku (Arioch), 11, 12, 25, 27, 59.

Esar-haddon, 208, 225.

Esau, 66 _sq._, 74.

Esh-Baal, 368, 393, 398 _sq._, 417, 430, 444.

Eshcol, 216.

Eshtaol, 279, 326.

Eshtemoa, 264.

Etana, 328.

Etham, 180, 187.

Ethanim (month), 469.

eunuchs, 86.

Eurafrican race, 43.

Ewald, 305.

Ezion-geber, 182, 221, 427, 464.

Ezra, 132, 134.

Ezri, 445.

F

Feast of Trumpets, 208.

Fenkhu, 2, 6.

festivals, 194.

firstborn claimed by Baal, 206.

G

Gaal, 318.

Gad (tribe), 76, 80, 227, 232, 235.

Gad (prophet), 345, 380, 388, 440, 442.

Galilee, 467.

gardens, zoological and botanical, 473.

Gath, 266, 351, 378, 386, 408, 413, 414, 432.

Gaza, 180, 258, 292, 293, 294, 328.

Geba, 352.

Gebal, 94, 461.

Gedor, 265.

George Syncellus, 95.

Gerar, 63.

Gerizim, 243, 317.

Geshur, 227, 368, 401, 427, 457.

Gezer, 120, 159, 247, 252, 253, 256, 257, 408, 460, 462.

Gibeah, 275 _sq._, 352, 353, 357, 358, 361, 366, 369, 377, 380, 387, 412, 439.

Gibeon, 252, 254, 352, 353, 436.

Gibeonites, 253, 259, 404, 438, 475.

Gideon (Jerub-baal), 232, 305 _sq._

Gihon, 446, 466.

Gilboa, 387, 393, 396, 399, 404.

Gilead, 227, 235, 304, 312, 322 _sq._, 368, 432, 447, 457.

Gilgal, 250, 261, 290, 353, 357, 360, 361, 366, 367.

Gilgames, Epic of, 123.

Gimil-Sin, 10.

Girshin, 37.

Glaser, 7, 119, 459.

Gob, 408.

Goldziher, 226.

Golénischeff, 175, 291, 294, 313, 461.

Goliath, 353, 356, 369 _sq._, 375, 378, 408.

Gomer (Kimmerians), 131.

Goodwin, 181.

Goshen, 95, 150, 153, 158.

granaries, 92.

Gray, Buchanan, 198.

Greene, Baker, 187.

Gudea, 164, 207.

Gudgodah, 221.

Guthe, 409, 467.

H

Hachilah, 384.

Hadad (god), 15, 241.

Hadad (king), 146, 356, 427, 477.

Hadad, son of Bedad, 232.

Hadad-ezer, 368, 417, 418, 420, 421, 424.

Hadar, 427.

Hadashah, 286.

Hadoram (Adoram), 444, 452, 457, 458, 464. or Joram, 254, 423.

Hadrach, 419.

Haggith, 401.

Ham (Ammon), 25, 41.

Hamath, 254, 421, 423, 472, 478.

Hamor, 75.

Hannah, 339.

Har-el, 50.

Harosheth, 296, 299, 300.

Harran (Kharran), 8, 9, 15, 65, 71, 350.

Hashmonah, 221.

Hathor, 88.

Haurân, 368, 419.

Havilah, 190, 367.

Havoth-Jair, 227.

Hayman, 243.

Hazeroth, 214.

Hazor, 248, 258, 259 _sq._, 296 _sq._

Heber, 299, 304.

Hebrew language, 35 _sq._

Hebrews, 1, etc., 362.

Hebron, 4, 23, 53, 81, 149, 236, 254, 264, 265, 285, 289, 373, 397, 398, 401, 402, 403, 405, 429.

Helam (Aleppo), 422.

Heliopolis (On), 85, 99, 154, 171.

Hepher, 261, 262.

Herodotos, 14, 31, 96, 468.

Heshbon, 43.

Hesy (_see_ Lachish), 255.

Hexateuch, 100.

Hezekiah, 225.

high-priests, 219, 315.

Hilprecht, 10.

Hinnom, valley of sons of, 409, 466.

Hiram, 410, 452, 453, 462, 463, 464, 465, 480.

Hir-Hor, 461.

Hittites, 14, 21, 22, 29, 40, 54 _sq._, 94, 159, 160, 262, 274, 284, 285, 300, 418, 420, 437, 471, 472, 473, 474.

Hitzig, 300, 378.

Hivites, 262, 274.

Hobab, 213.

Hoffmann, 37.

Hoham, 254.

Hommel, 5, 7, 26, 29, 34, 45, 80, 119, 148, 151, 164, 198, 231, 291, 321, 423, 459.

Hophni, 340.

Hor, 182, 221.

Horam, 256.

Horeb, 164, 189.

Hormah (or Zephath), 215, 217, 258, 392.

hornet, the, 286, 293.

Horites, 2, 24, 66, 74, 159.

horse, the, 90.

Huldah, 297.

Hûleh (Lake Merom), 259, 261.

Hushai, 430, 432, 458.

Hyksos, 6, 22, 69, 83, 84, 85, 90, 95, 99, 148, 154, 174, 212.

I

Ibleam, 252.

Ibzan, 322.

I-chabod, 348.

Iddo, 345.

Inê-Sin, 10, 11.

Ira, 444.

Ir-Shemesh, 285.

Isaac, 46, 62 _sq._ age of, 143.

Ishbi-benob, 408.

Ishmael, 34, 38, 66, 76.

Ishmaelites, 46.

Ishui, 398, 399.

Israel, etymology of, 73.

‘Israelites’ in Egyptian, 159, 172.

Issachar, 80, 252, 296, 297, 303, 313, 314, 321.

Istar (Ashtoreth), 161, 188.

Ithamar, 340, 443.

Ithream, 401.

Ittai, 432.

Iye-ha-Abarim, 225.

J

Jaazer, 227.

Jabesh-gilead, 277, 278, 358, 394.

Jabez, 263.

Jabin, 259 _sq._, 296, 300.

Jachin (column), 467.

Jacob, 67 _sq._

Jacob-el, 13, 38, 68 _sq._, 128.

Jacob’s Well, 75.

Jael, 301, 302, 304.

Jaffa. _See_ Joppa.

Jair, 227, 322.

Jarmuth, 254, 255.

Jasher (Jashar), book of, 136, 257, 396.

Jashobeam, 406.

Jaziz, 445.

Jebus, 268.

Jebusites, 247, 264, 267, 409, 414, 441, 465.

Jedidiah (Solomon), 306, 425.

Jehdeiah, 445.

Jehoshaphat, 443, 458.

Jephthah, 322 _sq._, 335.

Jephthah-el, 326.

Jerahmeel, 263, 320, 386, 392, 393.

Jericho, 177, 248, 250, 258, 263, 289.

Jeroboam, 456, 476.

Jerub-baal (Gideon), 305 _sq._

Jerusalem, 3, 25, 28, 174, 246, 254, 257, 264, 268, 269, 275, 284, 286, 407, 408 _sq._, 441, 464, 470, 471, 480.

Jeshurun, 73, 191, 242, 244.

Jesse, 369, 371.

Jethro, 163, 186, 190.

Jezreel, 262, 384.

Joab, 399 _sq._

Joash, 305 _sq._, 445.

Jobaal, 318.

Jobab, 259.

Joel, 355.

Johanan, 261, 431, 447, 459.

Jonathan, son of Saul, 358, 360 _sq._

Jonathan, son of Moses, 281.

Jonathan, brother of Joab, 408.

Jonathan, son of Uzziah, 445.

Joppa (Jaffa), 294, 311, 410, 412.

Joram, 254.

Jordan, dried up, 249.

Joseph, 79, 82 _sq._

Joseph-el, 13, 38, 68, 128.

Josephus, 410, 421, 422, 452.

Joshebbashebeth, 406.

Joshua, 246 _sq._, 265, 270, 271, 287.

Jotham, 317.

Judah, 37, 76, 80, 258, 263, 264, 267 _sq._, 320 _sq._, 328.

judge (_shophêt_), 190, 288.

Justin, 30.

K

Kabzeel, 416.

Kadesh on the Orontes, 55, 80, 300, 419, 437, 442, 473.

Kadesh in Galilee, 236, 259, 261, 296, 298, 299.

Kadesh-barnea, 187, 189, 191, 215, 220, 221, 258, 267.

Kadmonites (_see_ Kedem), 162, 307.

Kainan, 143.

_kalbu_, 265.

Kallisthenes, 184.

Karians, 415.

Kastor, 293.

Kedem or Qedem (Kadmonites), 163, 306.

Keft, 378.

Keilah, 264, 382.

Kelt, 43.

Kenaz, 80, 263.

Kenites, or ‘Smiths,’ 214, 230, 263, 267, 288, 299, 320, 336, 386, 392.

Kenizzites, 264, 267, 286, 287, 289, 320.

Kennicott, 281.

Keturah, 45.

Kibroth-hattaavah, 214.

Kidron, 409.

king, law about the, 241.

Kirjath-jearim, 252, 279, 348, 352, 354, 412.

Kirjath-Sannah, 265.

Kirjath-Sepher, 265, 287, 330.

Kish, 356.

Kishon, 261, 297, 300, 303, 304, 310, 356.

Kittel, 306.

Kohath, 338.

Korkha, 286.

Kretans, 415, 428, 443.

Krete, 293, 294, 320.

Kudur-Laghghamar. _See_ Chedor-laomer.

Kudur-Nankhundi, 12.

Kush, 161.

Khabirâ, 5.

Khabiri, 3, 4, 254, 266, 284, 286.

Khalaman, 422.

Khammu-rabi (Amraphel), 11, 12, 13, 25, 27, 45, 59, 68, 71.

Khanun, 417, 432.

Khar (Horites), 2, 159, 160, 192.

Kharran. _See_ Harran.

Khetem (Etham), 180, 181, 187.

Khubur, 5.

Khu-n-Aten (Amenôphis IV.), 156, 157.

L

Laban, 36, 71 _sq._

Laban (god), 18.

Lachish, 20, 120, 248, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 267, 475.

Laish, 248, 259, 280 _sq._

Lakhmu, 81.

Lapidoth, 297.

Larsa (Ellasar), 11, 12, 25, 27, 28, 117, 138.

lawgiver, the, 121.

Leah, 71.

Lebanon, 11.

Lehmann, 60.

Lemuel, 13.

Lenormant, Fr., 473.

Lepsius, 454.

Levi, 76, 80, 134, 201.

Levite, story of the, 275 _sq._

Levite of Ephraim, 279 _sq._

Levites, 218 _sq._, 234, 239, 243, 378, 413. cities of, 235 _sq._, 282.

Libnah, 255.

Libyans, 20, 42, 159, 171, 172, 175, 212.

Lihyanian, 35.

Lindl, 25.

Lot, 39, 44.

Lotan, 2.

Luz, 81.

Lycians, 415.

Lydians, 292, 293.

M

Maachah, 227, 417, 436.

Maachah wife of David, 429.

Maachah or Maoch of Gath, 378, 379.

Machir, 76, 121, 144, 227, 303, 313.

Machpelah, 53, 97.

Madai, 131.

Madon, 259.

Mafkat (Sinaitic Peninsula), 163, 182, 186.

Mahanaim, 73, 398, 400, 432, 457.

Mahler, 151.

Makkedah, 255, 257, 304.

Malcham or Milcom, 426.

Malik (Moloch), 11.

Mamre, 23, 216.

Mâ’n. _See_ Minæans.

Manasseh, 76, 77, 281, 311, 391, 406. kingdom of, 306.

maneh or mina, 60, 252.

Manetho, 149, 151, 173, 212, 330.

Maoch. _See_ Maachah.

Maon, 383.

Maonites (Minæans), 321.

Maqrîzî, 93, 129.

Marah, 187.

Mariette, 148.

_marna_, 294.

marriage by capture, 277.

Martu (Moreh), 20, 21, 42, 44.

Maspero, 23, 85, 93, 95, 129, 151, 160, 163.

Massah, 214.

Max Müller, W., 22, 266, 378.

Maxyes, 362.

Megiddo, 247, 252, 259, 296, 304, 310, 387.

Meholah, 439.

Meissner, 8, 60.

Melchi-shua, 399.

Melchizedek, 25, 28, 128.

Melkarth, 315, 463, 467.

Melukhkha, 163, 190, 367, 427.

Memphis, 14.

Menander, 185, 410, 452, 480.

Meneptah, son of Ramses II., 22, 64, 94, 96, 149, 150, 154, 155, 159, 160, 170 _sq._, 175, 178, 185, 212, 291, 361, 374.

Men-kheper-Ra, 418.

Mephibosheth (Merib-Baal), 404, 438.

Merab, 374.

Mer’ash, 10.

Meribah, 214, 220.

Merib-Baal (Mephibosheth), 307, 404, 438.

Merom, 259, 262.

Meroz, 274, 304.

Mesopotamia, 284.

Messianic psalms, 450.

_messu_, 161.

Messui or Messu, 161, 215.

_metheg-ammah_, 414.

mice, 351.

Micah, 278.

Michal, 374, 384, 413, 439.

Michmash, 349, 353, 361, 362, 366.

Midian, 32, 45, 163, 190, 213, 232 _sq._, 263, 306 _sq._

Migdol, 180, 181, 184.

Millo, 319, 466, 476.

Minæans (Mâ’n), 7, 34, 45, 119, 198, 459, 460.

Minos, 293.

Miriam, 162, 214, 223.

Mitanni, 17, 18, 284 _sq._, 300, 419, 462.

Mizpah, 36, 245, 262, 324, 345, 352, 353, 358.

Moab, 223, 226, 232, 289, 368, 381, 415, 457.

Moabite Stone, 146, 416.

Mopsos, 292.

Moreh, 21, 44.

Moriah, 49, 51, 465.

Moseley, H. N., 31.

Moseroth or Mosera, 220.

Moses, 161 _sq._, 281. songs of, 243. death of, 244.

Mount of the Lord, 50.

Müller, D. H., 35, 231.

Muzri, 183.

N

Nabal, 383.

Nabatheans, 40, 419.

Nabonassar, 12.

Nabonidos, 16.

Nadab and Abihu, 207.

Naharaim (Mesopotamia), 17, 40, 284 _sq._

Nahash (of Ammon), 358, 417, 432.

Nahash (aunt of Joab), 431.

Nahor, 18, 19.

Nahshon, 145.

Naioth (‘the monastery’), 342, 344, 376.

name changed, 32.

Naphtali, 80, 311, 457.

Naram-Sin, 24, 188.

Nathan, 345, 412, 425, 442, 445, 446, 456, 458.

‘Nations’ (Goyyim), 26.

Naville, 95, 129, 149, 153, 154, 183.

Nebat, 476.

Nebo, 245, 343, 416.

Nebuchadrezzar, 196, 197, 288, 418, 468, 469.

Negeb, the, 246, 254, 257, 269, 329, 392.

Ner, 398, 399.

Nethinim, the, 354, 475.

Neubauer, 37, 162, 224, 302, 476.

Nile, 88, 93, 94.

Nin-ip, 29, 441.

Nin-Marki, 15.

Nin-Martu, 59.

Noah, 123, 124, 126.

Noam, 299.

Nob, 237, 349, 353, 369, 372, 378, 380, 408, 438, 444.

Nobah, 227.

O

Obed-Edom, 413.

Obil, 445.

Oboth, 225.

Og, 43, 224, 227.

On (Heliopolis), 85, 86, 154, 174.

Ophel, 466, 467.

Ophir, 463.

Ophrah, 283, 305, 307 _sq._, 338.

Oppert, 148.

Oreb, 312.

Oros, 173.

Osarsiph, 174.

Osiris, 223.

Othniel, 256, 263, 266, 287 _sq._

P

Padan (-Aram), 16, 17, 69.

Pa-ebpasa, 179.

palace of David, 452.

palace of Solomon, 465.

Palestine, name of, 398.

Palmyra (Tadmor), 471, 472, 473.

Paran, 186, 213, 383. mount of, 189.

Passover, the, 176 _sq._

peacocks, 474.

Peiser, 8, 59, 60, 71, 148.

Pella, 259.

Peniel, or Penuel, 73, 312.

Perizzites, or ‘fellahin,’ 228.

Pethor, 40, 228.

Petra, 188, 214, 233.

Petrie, Flinders, 20, 21, 56, 60, 151, 159, 170, 255.

Phaltiel, 384, 439.

Pharaoh, etymology of, 97.

Phichol, 64.

Philistines, 64, 180, 257, 291 _sq._, 320, 326 _sq._, 335, 437.

Philo Byblius, 46.

Phinehas, 145, 215, 233, 275, 443.

Phineas son of Eli, 340, 348.

Phœnician alphabet, 119.

Phœnicians, 2, 30, 35, 94, 454, 467.

Phœnician sacrificial tariffs, 204, 205, 206.

Pi-hahiroth, 181.

Pinches, 12, 13, 26, 60, 68, 70, 295.

Pinon. _See_ Punon.

Piram, 255, 256.

Pirathon, 322.

Pithom (Pi-Tum), 149, 150, 153, 154, 155, 166.

plagues, the ten, 167 _sq._

Pliny, 97.

Plutarch, 184.

polygamy, 316, 428.

Porphyry, 306.

Potiphar’s wife, 83.

Potipherah (Potiphar), 84, 86.

Priestly Code, the, 101, 103, 106.

prophet, the, 341 _sq._

Ptah-hotep, 98, 118.

Puah, 321.

Punon or Pinon, 225, 226.

Pur-Sin, 20.

Q

Qarantel, mount, 250.

Qedem. _See_ Kedem.

Qos, 356.

Qosem (Goshen), 95, 153, 154.

Quê, 419, 473.

R

Raamses (Rameses or Ramses), 150.

Rabbah, 44, 227, 228.

Rabbath-Ammon (Rabbah), 417, 424, 426, 432.

Rab-saris, the, 86.

Rab-shakeh, the, 459.

Rachel, 71, 81, 82.

ram in sacrifice, 52.

Ramah, 298, 344, 346, 349, 352, 357, 367, 376.

Ramathaim-zophim, 338, 352.

Ramath-lehi, 327, 328.

Rameses or Raamses, city of, 179.

Ramoth of the South, 392.

Ramoth-Gilead, 457.

Ramsay, W. M., 237.

Ramses or Rameses I., 150, 153, 158.

Ramses II., 4, 55, 64, 78, 148, 149, 150, 154, 180, 223, 266, 379, 415, 464.

Ramses III., 3, 4, 67, 150, 171, 222, 224, 285, 291, 292.

Ramses IV., 3, 212.

Ramses VI., 186.

Rassam, Hormuzd, 197.

Rechab, 404.

‘Red Sea,’ the, 182.

refuge, cities of, 235.

Rehob, 420.

Rehoboam, 452.

Rei, 446.

Reisner, 15.

Rekem, 233.

Rephaim, 24, 41, 227. plain of, 407.

Rephidim, 189.

Reshpu, 413.

resurrection, 210.

Reuben, 77, 80, 227, 232, 235, 289, 303, 392.

Reuel, 63.

Rezon, 147, 421, 437, 452, 462, 477.

Rib-Hadad, 94, 284, 306.

Rimmon (god), 15, 30, 299.

Rimmon (Benjamite), 404. rock of, 277.

Rizpah, 402, 439.

Rowlands, J., 215.

Ruth, 263, 394.

S

Saba or Sheba, 119, 163, 219.

Sabæans, in Babylonia, 13.

Sabbath, Babylonian etymology of, 193, 208.

Sachau, 19.

sacrifices, 197 _sq._ Babylonian, 197. human, 46 _sq._, 324.

Saft-el-Henna (Goshen), 96, 153, 154.

Sakea, Babylonian feast of, 209.

Salem or Jerusalem, 28, 268.

Salimmu, god of peace, 28.

Salma or Salmon, 394.

Samâla or Samalla, 36, 231.

Samaritans, 100, 103.

Samson, 327 _sq._

Samsu-iluna, 45.

Samuel, 242, 245, 335 _sq._, 365 _sq._, 389.

sanctuary, central, 240.

Saph, 459.

Sardinians, 293.

Sargon of Akkad, 10, 20, 161.

Sarid, 303.

Saul, 146, 190, 356 _sq._

Saxon conquest of Britain, 252, 269, 271.

scapegoat, the, 48.

Scheil, 12, 27.

Schliemann, 475.

Schumacher, 223.

scribes, 121.

‘sea’ in the temple, 468.

Sebaita (Zephath), 215.

seer. _See_ prophet.

Seir, 24, 66, 67, 74, 162, 171, 188, 222.

Seirath, 290.

Selamanês, 425.

Sennacherib, 137, 152, 257, 260, 359, 383.

Septuagint, 136, 154.

Seraiah, 443, 444.

seraph, 225.

serpents, bronze, in Babylonia, 225, 353.

Set, 165.

Sethos (Ramses), 174.

Seti I., 2, 158, 216.

Seti II., 83, 98, 151, 178, 180, 185.

Set-Nubti, 148.

Shalman, 425.

Shamgar, 295, 301, 320.

Shamir, 321.

Shammah, 406.

Shapher, 221.

Shasu, 67, 171, 217, 222.

Sharon, 261.

Shavsha, 443.

Sheba (Benjamite), 435, 436, 440.

Sheba or Saba, 45, 119, 163, 321, 459, 460.

Shechem, 22, 75, 76, 262, 269, 270, 283, 309, 316 _sq._

shekel, 60.

Shelomith, 207.

Shem (Babylonian Sumu), 13.

Shemesh-Edom, 413.

Shephatiah, 401.

shepherd, 90.

Sheth, 230.

Sheva, 443, 444.

shewbread, 197, 468.

_shibboleth_, 325.

Shiloh, 269, 270, 275, 277, 281, 283, 320, 333, 334, 337, 339, 344 _sq._, 352, 353, 378, 444, 476.

Shimei (Benjamite), 430, 438, 439, 447, 455.

Shimei (official of David), 445, 446.

Shimron, 259.

Shimron-meron, 260.

Shinar, 11, 25.

Shisha, 443, 444, 458.

Shishak, 84, 252, 263, 453, 476, 477.

Shobach or Shophach, 418, 421.

Shobi, 432.

Shunem, 387, 445.

Shur, 181, 183, 187, 190.

Siddim, 24, 30.

Sidon, 259, 262, 274, 280, 321.

Sihon, 43, 224, 226.

Siloam, pool of, 466.

Simeon, 76, 80, 263, 320, 329, 392.

Sin (moon-god), 9, 16, 188. desert of, 188, 189.

Sinai, 164, 188, 302. mount, 188, 191 _sq._

Sinaitic Peninsula, 163, 182, 186, 187.

Sin-idinnam, 12, 27.

Sinjerli, 19, 36, 138.

Sinuhit, 162.

Sippara (Sepharvaim), 14, 57.

Sisera, 261, 296 _sq._

slave, penalty for murder of, 194.

Smith, G. A., 36.

Socho or Socoh, 265, 369.

Sodom, 25, 30.

Solomon, 146, 306, 425, 445, 447, 452 _sq._ proverbs of, 138.

sphinx, 88.

Spinoza, 105.

Stade, 103, 278, 409.

Stone of Job, 223.

Strabo, 185.

Strassmaier, 59, 197.

strikes, 166.

Subarti, 5, 16.

Succoth, 150, 155, 179, 180, 181, 312.

Suez Canal, 212.

Sumu-abi, 13.

Suphah, 222.

Suru (Syria), 16.

Sutekh, 22, 23, 85, 148.

Sutu or Sutê, 230, 289.

Suweinît, Wâdi, 362.

T

Taanach, 247, 252, 261, 296, 304.

Taberah, 214.

tabernacle, the, 196 _sq._, 353, 414.

tables of the law, 202.

Tabor, 299, 309, 310.

Tadmor, 471, 472.

Tahtim-hodshi, 300.

Takmonite, 406.

tale of the two brothers, 83.

Talmai, 401, 429.

Tamar (wife of Judah), 82.

Tamar (daughter of David), 429.

Tamar (city of), 471.

Tappuah, 261, 262.

Tarkhu, 19.

tartan, the, 374, 443.

Tatian, 105.

Tatnai, 8.

tattooing, 200, 241.

Teie, 155, 158.

Tel el-Amarna, 2, etc. tablets of, 113 _sq._

Tel el-Maskhûta, 149, 154, 166.

Tema, 45, 459.

Teman, 189.

temple, when built, 145, 412. of Solomon, 464, 467 _sq._

Terah, 18, 19.

teraphim, 72, 80, 279.

Thapsacus (Tiphsakh), 472.

Thebes in Egypt, 461.

Thebez, 319.

Themistokles, 237.

Thothmes III., 20, 41, 50, 55, 68, 80, 84, 98, 175, 217, 237, 259 _sq._, 280, 300, 311, 323, 413, 423, 473.

Thothmes IV., 88.

Thukut (Succoth), 149, 155, 179, 180, 181.

Tiamat, 125.

Tibhath, 423.

Tid’al, 12, 24, 26, 128.

Tiglath-pileser I., 231, 419, 461, 474, 478.

Tiglath-pileser III., 138, 230, 281, 424, 425, 451, 459, 460.

Tiglath-Ninip, 418.

Timnath-heres, 271.

tin, 474.

Tirzah, 261.

tithe, 29.

Tob, 323, 417.

Toi or Tou, 423.

Tola, 321.

Tomkins, H. G., 20, 80, 81, 84, 259, 300.

Travels of the Mohar, 266, 416.

tribes, the twelve, 77.

Trumbull, Clay, 176, 215, 350.

Tubikhi (Tibhath), 423.

Tudghula. _See_ Tid’al.

Tumilât, Wâdi (Goshen), 95, 153, 154, 155.

Tunip (_see_ Dinhabah), 65.

Tyre, 274, 288, 315, 410, 457, 462, 463, 465, 467, 480.

Tyropœon valley, 466.

U

Ubi (Aup), 229.

Umman-Manda, 26.

Unger, 454.

Ur of the Chaldees, 8, 9, 11, 16, 60, 127, 209.

Uriah, 424, 425.

Urim and Thummim, 72, 198, 388.

Usous, 66.

Uzzah, 413.

V

Virey, 92, 99.

von Luschan, 36.

W

Warburton, Bishop, 210.

Ward, J., 23.

wedges of gold, 252.

Wellhausen, 103, 145, 297, 300.

Welsh laws, 288.

Wessely, 175.

Wiedemann, 194, 239.

Wilbour, 93.

Wilcken, 175.

Winckler, 148, 183, 266.

Wolf, 104, 121.

Wright, Bateson, 104.

X

Xanthos, 293.

Y

Yabniel, 256.

Ya’di, 37, 80, 231.

Yahveh, 34, 47, 164.

Yahveh-Shalom, 308, 310.

Yahveh-yireh, 49.

Yaphia, 255.

Yâm Sûph (_see_ Suphah), 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 188, 427.

Yaudâ or Yaudû, 37, 80.

Year of Jubilee, 208.

Yeud, 46.

Z

Zabdi, 445.

Zabsali (Zamzummim), 11, 41.

Zadok, 145, 431, 443, 444, 446, 455, 459.

Zahi, 2.

Zakkal. _See_ Zaqqal.

Zalmon, 319.

Zalmonah, 225.

Zalmunna, 312.

Zambesi, 474.

Zamzummim, 11, 25, 41, 43, 138.

Zanoah, 264.

Zaphnath-paaneah, 89, 174.

Zaqqal or Zakkal, 5, 291, 293, 294, 313, 387, 388, 412, 457.

Zared, 226.

Zaretan, 248.

Zaru, 179, 181.

Zebah, 312, 368, 401.

Zebud, 459.

Zebul, 318, 319.

Zebulon, 121, 303, 311, 321.

Zeeb, 312.

Zelah, 358, 439.

Zelophehad, 144, 207.

Zephath (Hormah), 217, 246, 257, 258, 329, 392.

Zeruiah, 400, 431.

Ziba, 438.

Ziklag, 386, 389, 391, 392.

Zimrida, 256.

Zin, 220.

Zion, 410, 466.

Ziph, 382, 384.

Zippor, 228.

Zipporah, 163, 165, 215.

Zoan (Tanis), 23, 53, 90, 148, 149, 150, 460.

Zobah, 417, 419, 422, 427, 442, 454, 472, 477.

Zoheleth, 446.

Zorah, 279, 320, 326.

Zuph or Ziph, 338.

Zuzim, 11, 24, 25, 41, 138.

● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). ○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the sections in which they are referenced.