History of the Jews, Vol. 1 (of 6)

1035–1015 B. C. E

When David had completed two decades of his reign, he became involved in several wars, which withdrew him from the peaceful pursuits of regulating the internal affairs of the country, and of attending to the administration of justice. These wars with distant nations, forced on him against his will, gave him an immense accession of power, and raised the prestige of the people in a surprising degree. David first began a fierce warfare with the Moabites, who dwelt on the opposite side of the Dead Sea. With them he had been on friendly terms during his wanderings, and amongst them he had met with a hospitable reception. It is probable that the Moabites had ousted from their possession the neighbouring Reubenites, and that David hurried to their rescue. It must in any case have been a war of retribution, for, after his victory, David treated the prisoners with a severity which he did not display towards any of the other nations whom he conquered. The Moabite captives were fettered, and cast side by side on the ground, then measured with a rope, and two divisions were killed, whilst one division was spared. The whole land of Moab was subdued, and a yearly tribute was to be sent to Jerusalem.

Some time afterwards, when Nahash, king of the Ammonites, died, David, who had been on friendly terms with him, sent an embassy to his son Hanun, with messages of condolence. This courtesy only roused suspicion in Rabbath-Ammon, the capital of the Ammonites. The new king's counsellors impressed him with the idea that David had sent his ambassadors as spies to Rabbah, in order to discover their weakness, to conquer them, and to deliver them over to the same fate that had befallen the Moabites. Hanun was so carried away by his suspicions that he offered an insult to the king of Israel which could not be passed over unnoticed. He obliged the ambassadors, whose persons, according to the laws of nations, were inviolable, to have their beards shaved off on one side, and their garments cut short, and thus disgraced he drove them out of the country. The ambassadors were ashamed to appear at Jerusalem in this guise, but they informed David of the occurrence. He immediately prepared himself for battle, and the militia was called out; the old warriors girded their loins, and the Cherethite and Pelethite mercenaries sallied forth with their heroic leader Benaiah at their head. Hanun, who feared the valor of the Israelites, looked around for help, and engaged mercenary troops from among the Aramæans, who lived in the regions between the mountains of Hermon and the banks of the Euphrates. Hadadezer, king of Zobah on the Euphrates, contributed the greatest number – 20,000 men. David did not personally conduct this war, but left the supreme command with the careful and reliable Joab. Having led the Israelite army across the Jordan, Joab divided it into two bodies. With the one he attacked the Aramæans, the other he left under the command of his brother Abishai. He aroused the enthusiasm of his army by inspiring words: "Let us fight bravely for our people and the city of our God, and may the Lord God do what seemeth good unto Him." Joab then dashed at the Aramæans, and put them to flight. On this, the Ammonites were seized with such fear that they withdrew from the field, and took shelter behind the walls of their capital. It was a most successful achievement. Joab hurried to Jerusalem to report to the king, and to lay before him a plan by which the Aramæans might be totally annihilated, and any future interference on their part prevented. The victorious army, having been recalled from the Ammonitish territories, was reinforced, and with the king himself at its head pursued the Aramæan enemy on the other side of the Jordan. King Hadadezer, on his part, also sent fresh troops to the aid of his defeated forces, but in a battle at Helam, the Aramæan army was again defeated, and its general, Shobach, fell in the encounter. The vassals of the mighty Hadadezer then hastened to make peace with David.

Tôi (or Tou), the king of Hamath, who had been at war with Hadadezer, now sent his son Joram to David with presents, congratulating him on the victory over their common foe. David followed up his successes until he reached the capital of king Hadadezer, situated on the banks of the Euphrates. The Aramæans were then defeated a third time; their chariots and soldiers could not withstand the attack of the Israelite army. The extensive district of Zobah, to which various princes had been tributary, was divided into several parts.

The king of Damascus, an ally of the king of Zobah, was also defeated by David, and the ancient town of Damascus henceforth belonged to the king of Israel. David placed land-overseers in all the Aramæan territories from Hermon to the Euphrates, in order to enforce the payment of tribute. David and his army themselves must have been astonished at the wonderful result which they had achieved. It rendered the king and his army objects of fear far and wide. Meanwhile the king of the Ammonites had escaped punishment for his insults to the ambassadors of Israel. In consequence of the campaign against the Aramæans, which lasted nearly a year, the Israelitish army had been unable to resume the war against Hanun. It was only after the great events narrated above that David was again enabled to send his forces, under Joab, against Ammon. Yet another war arose out of the hostilities against this nation. The Idumæans, on the south of the Dead Sea, had also assisted the Ammonites by sending troops to their aid, and these had to be humiliated now. David deputed his second general, Abishai, Joab's brother, to direct the campaign against the Idumæans. Joab was in the meantime engaged in a long contest with the Ammonites, who had secured themselves behind the strong walls of their fortified capital, and were continually making raids on their foes. The Israelitish army had neither battering rams nor other instruments of siege. Their only alternative was to storm the heights of the city, and in their attempts to carry out this plan they were often repelled by the bowmen on the walls. At length Joab succeeded, after repeated attacks, in gaining possession of one part of the city – the Water-Town; he reported this victory to David at once, and urged him to repair to the camp in order to lead in person the attack on the other quarters, so that the honour of the conquest might be entirely his own. When David arrived at Rabbah with fresh troops, he succeeded in subduing the whole town, and in obtaining rich booty. David himself put on his head the golden diadem, richly adorned with precious stones, which had heretofore crowned the Ammonitish idol Malchom (Milchom). It appears that David did not destroy the city of Rabbah, as he had intended. He merely condemned the male inhabitants, or perhaps only the prisoners, to do hard work, such as polishing stones, threshing with iron rollers, hewing wood with axes, and making bricks. He treated the other prisoners from the various towns in a similar manner. Hanun, the original cause of the war, who had so deeply insulted David, was either killed or driven out of the kingdom. In his stead David appointed his brother Shobi as king. Meanwhile Abishai had been engaged in a war against the Idumæan king, and had utterly routed him in the Valley of Salt – probably in the neighbourhood of the rocksalt mountain, near the Dead Sea. Eighteen thousand Idumæans are said to have fallen there. The rest probably submitted; and for this reason David contented himself with placing excise officers and a garrison over them, as he had done in Damascus and the other Aramæan provinces. The Idumæans, however, seem later on to have revolted against the Israelitish garrison and the tax collectors, and to have massacred them. Joab therefore repaired to Idumæa, caused the murdered Israelites to be buried, and all Idumæan males to be put to death. He was occupied with this war of destruction during half a year, and so thoroughly was the task executed that only a few of the male sex could save themselves by flight. Amongst them was a son or a grandson of the Idumæan king.

By these decisive victories, in the west over the Philistines, in the south over the Idumæans, in the east (on the opposite side of the Jordan) over the Moabites and Ammonites, and in the north over the Aramæans, David had raised the power of Israel to an unexpected degree. While, at the commencement of his reign, when he was first acknowledged king of all Israel, the boundaries of the country had been comprised between Dan and Beersheba, he now ruled over the widespread territory from the river of Egypt (Rhinokolura, El-Arish) to the Euphrates, or from Gaza to Thapsacus (on the Euphrates). The nations thus subdued were obliged annually to do homage by means of gifts, to pay tribute, and perhaps also to send serfs to assist in building and other severe labour.

These wars and victories were better calculated than his early hardships to bring to light the great qualities of David's mind. Strong and determined as he was in every undertaking in which the honour and safety of his people were involved, he remained modest and humble, without a spark of presumption, after success had been attained. He erected no monument to commemorate his victories as had been done by Saul; like his general, Joab, he was imbued with the thought that to God alone was to be attributed the victory. The faith in God, to which David had given utterance when he prepared himself for the duel with the Rephaite Goliath (I Samuel xvii. 47), he preserved in all great contests. David elaborated this guiding thought in a psalm, which he probably chanted before the ark at the close of the war, and in which he gives a retrospect of his entire past life.

In consequence of their great victories, two firm convictions were impressed on the minds of the people, and these actuated and possessed them in all times to come. The one idea occurs in various forms: "A king cannot escape by the multitude of his army, nor a warrior by his power; vain is the horse for safety." God alone decides the fate of war, brings it to a close, gives victory or defeat, and "to Him it is equally easy to conquer with few or with many." The other idea, in closest connection with it, is that God leads the armies of Israel to victory, if they go forth to glorify His name or to save His people. The God of Israel was, in accordance with this idea, designated by a special name which fully expresses this thought; He was named the God of hosts (Adonai Zebaoth), the God who gives victory unto Israel in its conflicts. The King Zebaoth was invoked before every battle, and the Israelitish troops went forth with the firm conviction that they could never be defeated. This confidence, certainly, worked wonders in the course of time.

Severely as David treated the idols of the nations whom he had conquered, he behaved with comparative leniency to the conquered idolaters. The Moabites alone were cruelly punished, and the Ammonites were enslaved, but the other conquered races were merely obliged to pay tribute. The offences of the former must have been very great to have deserved so heavy a punishment. The foreign races residing in the country were not molested; thus we find Jebusites in Jerusalem, and Canaanites and Hittites in other parts of the country. Hence we find many strangers and natives not of Israelitish descent enrolled in his corps of warriors, or leading their own troops in his service. The Hittite Uriah, one of David's thirty heroes, who was destined to play a melancholy part in David's career, was deeply attached to the Israelitish nation.

The joy over these great achievements remained, however, but for a short time unmarred. The happiness of a state, like that of individuals, is but seldom of long duration, and days of sunshine must be followed by periods of darkness, to prevent the enervation of the national vigour. By one false step David lost not only his own inward contentment and peace, but shook the very foundations of that state which it had cost him such exertions to establish. When David returned home from the Aramæan war, and was resting from the fatigues of battle, which Joab and his army were still undergoing in the land of Ammon, he beheld from the roof of his palace a beautiful woman, who was bathing. She was the wife of one of his most faithful warriors (the Hittite, Uriah), and her name was Bathsheba. The houses of the warriors were built on Zion in the vicinity of the king's palace, and thus he happened to see Bathsheba. Carried away by his passion, he sent messengers to command her to repair to the palace, and Bathsheba obeyed. When David, some time after, found that this violation of the marriage tie had not been without consequences, his only thought was to save his honour, and thus he involved himself in deeper sin. He commanded Uriah to return to Jerusalem from the camp at Rabbah. He received him in a friendly manner, and gave him permission to rest, and enjoy the company of his wife. Uriah, however, made no use of this permission, but remained with the guard, who slept at the entrance of the king's palace, and protected his person. David was disappointed. He sought an escape from the dilemma, and this led him into a heinous crime. As he could not save his honour, he determined that Uriah should lose his life. David therefore sent him to the camp with a letter to Joab, saying that the bearer should be placed in a post of extreme danger – nay, of certain death – during one of the sorties of the Ammonites. This command was fulfilled, and Uriah fell, struck dead by an Ammonite arrow. Bathsheba fulfilled the customary time of mourning for her husband, and was then received into the palace by David as his wife.

In every other State the court circle would have discussed a king's fancy with bated breath; it would hardly have been blamed, and certainly it would soon have been forgotten. But in Israel there was an eye which could pierce this factitious darkness, and a conscience which declaimed in a loud voice against the crimes of even a royal wrong-doer. Prophetism possessed this clear sight which never failed, and this conscience which never slept. It was its foremost duty not to allow sin to grow into a habit by hushing it up and screening it, but to expose it in glaring colors, and brand it with the stamp of public condemnation.

David no doubt believed that Bathsheba alone was cognisant of his sin, and Joab the only accessory to the plot against Uriah's life. But this error was suddenly and rudely dispelled. The prophet Nathan one day came to David, and requested permission to bring a certain case to his notice. He then related the following parable: – In a great city there lived a rich man, who possessed great flocks and herds; and near him lived a poor man who possessed but one little lamb, which he had reared for himself. One day, when a guest came to the rich man, he was too stingy to kill one of his flock for the meal, but he took the lamb of the poor man to feast his friend. On hearing this complaint, David's sense of justice was aroused, and he said indignantly that the heartless rich man deserved to die, and should pay the poor man four times the value of the lamb. Then the prophet replied, "Thou art the man!"

Any other king would have punished the moralist who had dared speak the truth to a crowned head, to the representative of God on earth. David, however, the pupil of the prophet Samuel, when the picture of his misdeeds was thus placed before him, penitently answered, "Yes, I have sinned." He certainly did not fail to offer up heartfelt prayers, and to make atonement in order to obtain God's forgiveness. The child which was born died in early infancy, although David had worn himself away in fasting and prayers for its life. Bathsheba afterwards had a second son named Jedidiah, or Solomon (1033), who became the favourite of his father.

But though God pardoned the king for his heinous sins, humanity did not forgive them, and they proved fatal to domestic peace. Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, was the daughter of Eliam (one of David's warriors), and the granddaughter of his counsellor Ahithophel. The father and grandfather felt their honour disgraced through their daughter's seduction, which they could never forgive, although they kept silence, and did not betray their hatred. Ahithophel especially nursed his vengeance in secret, and only awaited an opportunity to wreak it on the king. David did all in his power to appease them. He elevated Bathsheba to the rank of first queen, promised her secretly that her son should be his successor, and solemnly swore to fulfil this promise. He wished at any cost to make peace with Ahithophel, whose counsel was precious to him. Ahithophel, however, remained immovable. A scandalous event in the house of David involved matters to a still greater extent, and robbed his remaining years of all tranquillity. His eldest son Amnon seduced his half-sister Tamar, and thereby aroused the fierce anger of her brother Absalom, who determined to avenge her. Each of the king's sons, six of whom had been born in Hebron, and eleven, in Jerusalem, had, when he attained manhood, his own house, household and lands. Absalom's lands and herds were situated at Baal-Hazor, not far from the capital. Thither he invited all the king's sons to the feast of sheep-shearing. Whilst they and their guests were enjoying the feast, and drinking freely, Absalom's servants, at their master's command, attacked Amnon, and dealt him his death-blow. Absalom served a double purpose by this murder. He avenged the insult offered to his sister, and hoped to secure his own succession to the throne by ridding himself of his elder brother. The son of Abigail, the second in succession, was already dead, and so it seemed inevitable that he, as the third son, must be the successor. David's son a fratricide! – What will be the consequences of this bloody deed? Only his faith in God saved him from becoming, like his predecessor, a victim to insanity, although the dire fate which had befallen him was but too real, and not merely the effect of a distrustful imagination.

David's first impulse was to seek out the murderer, who had taken refuge with his grandfather, King Talmai, of Geshur, on the south-west boundary of Judæa, in order to deal with him as he deserved, even at the risk of going to war on his account. But there were various influences at work against such a policy. In fact, since the affair with Bathsheba, intrigues had been rife at David's court. Joab was opposed to the succession of the last-born, Solomon, and was naturally on the side of Absalom, the eldest surviving son. Ahithophel, David's infallible counsellor, also favoured Absalom's claim to the throne, because he could use him as a tool against his father. On the other hand, Adonijah, David's fourth son, advocated the infliction of condign punishment on Absalom. Adonijah thought his prospects of displacing the infant Solomon fairer than his chance with the remorseless Absalom. If the latter were punished for fratricide, Adonijah would be the next in succession. He and his mother Haggith may perhaps, therefore, have incensed David against Absalom, but Joab and Ahithophel were wiser, and knew how to exert their influence in favour of abandoning all warlike attempts upon him or his grandfather, whose protection he was enjoying.

When David had at length decided on seizing or demanding the surrender of his guilty son (though he had been absent for three years), Joab employed a ruse to turn the king from his resolve. He sent for a woman living in the adjacent town of Tekoah, who had a reputation for adroit and clever speech. With her he devised a plan to make the king realise how horrible it was for a father to be willing to put to death a son for the not altogether unjustifiable murder of his brother. The wise woman of Tekoah consequently appeared before the king in mourning garments, and as though invoking his mercy she called out in an entreating voice and with deep prostrations, Help! O king, help! When she stated her fictitious case, the king readily recognised the hidden point of her story, and the allusion to his own case, and he demanded an open answer from her as to whether Joab had assisted her in her disguise and invention. When the woman of Tekoah had confessed the truth, the king sent for Joab, and assured him that he no longer entertained evil intentions against Absalom, and assigned to him the task of conducting his son to Jerusalem. The woman of Tekoah had, in her ingenious manner, made it clear to him that blood-revenge against his own son would be a contradiction in itself.

Joab himself brought Absalom from Geshur to Jerusalem. The son, however, was not permitted to appear before his father, but was obliged to remain in his own house. By this means Joab unconsciously sowed the seeds of dissension in the house of David. Night and day, Absalom, in his isolation and disgrace, brooded over the vile plan of deposing his father. But he dissembled in order to lull the latter's suspicion. To this end it was absolutely necessary that a reconciliation should be effected. Joab, who earnestly desired peace between father and son, became the mediator, and David decided that, after a two years' exile from his presence, his son might now be allowed to return. At this meeting, Absalom played to perfection the part of the penitent, obedient son; David then gave him a fatherly embrace, and the reconciliation was complete. Seven years had passed since the death of Amnon. But now Absalom's intrigues commenced. No doubt he had frequent meetings with Ahithophel, and was following his advice. He obtained chariots and horses from Egypt, procured a guard of fifty men, and displayed regal grandeur. He arose betimes in the morning, listened to disputes, and found every one's case just, but regretted that the king would not listen to all, and would not give justice to all. He hinted that were he the judge, no one would have to complain of difficulty in obtaining his dues. Absalom pursued this course for four years after the reconciliation with his father. He was the handsomest man of his times. He was then about thirty, and in the full pride of his strength. His beautiful thick hair fell in waves over his neck and shoulders, like the mane of a lion. His affability won him the hearts of all who approached him. David was so blinded that he did not see how his crafty son was alienating the affections of the people from their sovereign, whilst Absalom merely awaited a favourable opportunity to proceed against his father, to dethrone him, and perhaps to attempt his life. This opportunity soon offered itself.

It appears that David was occupied, in the last decade of his reign, with a comprehensive plan, apparently that of a great war which would require a numerous body of soldiers. He had already enlisted bands of mercenaries, six hundred Hittites, who, with their general Ittai, (whose admiration for David secured his unswerving attachment), had arrived from Gath. The king also wished to ascertain the number of able-bodied men over twenty years of age in all the Israelitish tribes, in order to determine whether he could undertake with their aid a campaign which would probably prove severe and tedious. The king delegated the office of numbering the men who could bear arms to his commander-in-chief, Joab, and the other generals. The work of enumeration lasted nine months and twenty days. From the numbers which were handed in, supposing them to be correct, it appears that, out of an entire population of 4,000,000, there were 1,300,000 men and youths capable of bearing arms.

This counting of the nation, however, proved to be a mistake for which David had to pay heavily. The people were highly incensed against him. In itself the act was displeasing to them, as they saw in it the preliminaries to enlistments for a war of long duration; added to this was the fear that the counting itself must be attended by evil results, for such was the view held in those days. A fearful pestilence broke out, which carried off great numbers, and confirmed all minds in the belief that it had arisen in consequence of the numbering of the people. The capital, being densely populated, naturally suffered the greatest loss from the pestilence. On seeing the heaps of corpses, or, to speak in the metaphorical language of those days, at sight of "the angel of Destruction" that had snatched away so many, David exclaimed: – "I have sinned and done wrong, but what has my poor flock done? Let thy hand strike me and the house of my fathers." The plague having spared Mount Moriah, where the Jebusites had settled, the prophet Gad bade the king erect an altar, and offer up sacrifices on that mountain, and he announced that the pestilence would then be averted from Jerusalem. Without hesitation, David and his entire court repaired thither. When the chief of the Jebusites, Ornah (Araunah), saw David approaching, he hurried to meet him, saluted him humbly, and asked what was his desire. David then informed him that he wished to buy the mountain in order to build an altar on it. Ornah graciously offered him the spot and all appertaining to it as a gift, but David refused to accept it. No sooner was an altar hastily erected there and a sacrifice offered, than the pestilence ceased in Jerusalem. From that time Mount Moriah was considered a sacred spot, which destruction could not approach; it was also the mountain on which Abraham was supposed to have offered his son Isaac as a sacrifice.