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.