weld Israel together more tightly,27 in no sense did he create a state. He had no administrative machinery, levied no taxes, and his court was so modest it hardly deserves the name (I Sam. 22:6). It is true that he began to gather about him a bodyguard of tough soldiers (14:52), but, although this was an innovation that had in it the seeds of a standing army, it could hardly be regarded as more than plain military necessity. And when Saul died a suicide on the field of Gilboa (I Sam.31), all that he had worked for was lost. His army was dispersed, his three sons were slain and their bodies, together with his own, shamefully exposed, while the one surviving son—Ish-baal (Ish-bosheth)—fled as a refugee east of the Jordan (II Sam. 2:8-10). The Philistines regained control, and their garrisons were once more to be seen in the land (II Sam. 23:14). Night had returned to Israel.
IV
David was the one who saved his people, dramatically reversed their fortune, and brought them to undreamed of heights of glory. The familiar story of his career cannot be traced here. The fair-haired darling of Saul’s court, military hero and giant killer, his exploits aroused popular adulation and provoked Saul’s jealousy until he had to flee, first to the wilds of Judah and then into the arms of the Philistines. When Saul was dead, David became king over Judah in Hebron with Philistine consent (II Sam. 2:4).28 When Ish-baal was subsequently removed, he became king over all Israel (II Sam. 5:1-5). It is with David that a new and different Israel emerges.
1. Now David, too, was in the old tradition: he was a man of charisma. His brilliant exploits were evidence to all Israel that the spirit of Yahweh was with him. Indeed the people began to say in effect that he, not Saul, was the true charismatic:
Saul has slain his thousands,
And David his ten thousands.
(I Sam. 18:7)
Saul realized perfectly that this was tantamount to saying that David ought to be the leader, for he said: “What more can he have but the kingdom?” No doubt this feeling that the “spirit” was slipping away from him served to accelerate his disintegration, while that very disintegration, plus David’s continued success, but served to convince the people that the “spirit” had indeed passed to David.
It must be emphasized that early Israel recognized and followed only the charisma. The very language in which the people acclaim David king illustrates this (II Sam. 5:1-2). David could never have become king had he not been regarded as the man of charisma. Heredity counted for nothing, as the sad fate of Ish-baal (II Sam. 2–4) shows. Although Saul’s son, and although acclaimed king by his uncle Abner, Ish-baal was apparently a weakling. The people never followed him, king’s son or not, and when Abner quarreled with him and left him, nothing remained for the futile puppet but assassination.
Yet at the same time David was a long step from the older order. If he could not have arisen without the charismatic qualities, he did not owe his rise to these alone. For one thing, he had a rugged private army, and their victories contributed to his prestige. First an outlaw band of four hundred (I Sam. 22:2), it later grew to six hundred (I Sam. 27:2), and subsequently was to grow into a considerable foreign legion (II Sam. 8:18; 15:18).29 He thus created a standing army responsible only to himself. Nor must we discount the sagacity with which David consciously set out to inherit the claims of Saul. He had long tried to win the affections of Judah (e.g., I Sam. 30:26-31). He had married Saul’s daughter, and when he became king in Hebron, he demanded her return (II Sam. 3:12-15), although it is apparent that they did not greatly care for each other (II Sam. 6:20-23). And although he scrupulously refused to harm Saul (I Sam. 24:6; 26:10-11) and publicly honored his memory (II Sam. 21:12-14), he nevertheless ordered the execution of Saul’s surviving male issue (II Sam. 21:1-10) save for Jonathan’s son, the lame Mephibosheth, whom he made a pensioner of his court (II Sam. 9). Whatever David’s motives actually were, the house of Saul could only regard this as ruthless political cynicism (II Sam. 16:5-8). Suffice it to say David represented a shift from the old order. He was a charismatic who, aided by his personal soldiery and his political acumen, was acclaimed king in a considered election (II Sam. 5:1-5).
2. No sooner was David king than he embarked upon that course of action that was utterly to transform Israel. The steps by which he welded the Israelite people into a united nation we can do no more than sketch. First, of course, the Philistine menace had to be dealt with, and David dealt with it for good. The Philistines could not tolerate a united Israel. Indeed their policy had been to play David off against the house of Saul under the principle “divide and rule.” So when, with the death of Ish-baal, David was acclaimed king over all Israel, it was their signal to strike (II Sam. 5:17). But the victory was David’s. With two crushing blows, both delivered near Jerusalem (II Sam. 5:17-25), he sent them reeling headlong from the Judean mountains. How David followed up his victory we do not know, but in the end the Philistines are subdued and tributary to Israel (II Sam. 8:1). Never again would they be a serious menace.
David went on from victory to victory. Seeing the need of unifying the country, he seized for himself a new capital—Jerusalem (II Sam. 5:6-10), a city hitherto non-Israelite—centrally located between north and south and the property of no one of the tribes (a step to be compared with that of our founding fathers who selected the site of Washington, D.C.). We should note that he took it with his private army (5:6). It was his personal property, and he called it “the city of David” (5:9). Subsequently he reduced one by one, as archaeology proves, the other Canaanite towns that had so far withstood Israel, and incorporated them into his state. The climax of his military glory came when in a series of incredibly brilliant campaigns (II Sam. 8; 10–12) he conquered the Moabite, Ammonite, and Edomite kingdoms of Transjordan and made them tributary, and then went on to extend his victories over the Aramean states of Syria. When the wars were over, David ruled an empire which stretched from the Gulf of Aqabah in the south to central Syria in the far north. Kings still farther to the north hastened to make peace with him (II Sam. 8:9-10).
A more dramatic reversal of fortune could hardly be imagined. In a few short years Israel had been changed from a disorganized league of tribesmen struggling for existence into the ranking nation of Palestine and Syria.
3. David’s conquests had laid the basis for an unexampled economic prosperity, and Solomon had the genius to take advantage of it. Israel now controlled the trade routes from Egypt to the north, from the Phoenician littoral to the hinterland, and from Damascus down through Transjordan to the Hedjaz. Solomon enlarged the state no further, but he was able, in spite of disturbances in Edom and Aram (I Kings 11:9-25), to hold the structure together. This he did by fortifying key defense points (I Kings 9:15, 17-19), by developing a formidable chariot arm (I Kings 4:26; 10:26)30—a thing never before done in Israel (cf. II Sam. 8:4)—and by a program of judicious alliances. These last, usually sealed by a marriage of convenience, serve to explain the astounding number of wives Solomon is said to have had (I Kings 11:1-3). Foremost among these was none other than the daughter of the pharaoh (I Kings 3:1), who brought with her as a dowry the Canaanite city of Gezer (I Kings 9:16),31 which pharaoh’s army took and handed over to Solomon.
Of all his alliances none was more profitable than that with Hiram, king of Tyre, an alliance already sealed by David (II Sam. 5:11). The Canaanites (whom the Greeks knew as the Phoenicians) were at this period entering the heyday of the overseas commercial expansion which was to make them the great trading people of the ancient world. Solomon linked hands with this expansion. Phoenician materials and Phoenician architects served his building projects (I Kings 5:1-12, 18); Phoenician sailors furnished the “know-how” in the new trading venture out of Ezion-geber down the Red Sea which brought back to the royal court the exotic products of the south (I Kings 9:26-28; 10:11-12, 22). Perhaps stimulated by this activity, the Queen of Sheba came from Arabia to visit Solomon (I Kings 10:1-13), no doubt in the interest of the overland camel caravan trade then newly developing.
Israel was filled with wealth as never before
