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.