The History of Antiquity Volume Ii Part 11

While Absalom crossed the Jordan, David divided the forces he had at his disposal into three corps, the command of which he entrusted to Joab, his brother Abishai, and Ithai, a Philistine of Gath. He remained behind in Mahanaim, and bade the captains deal gently with Absalom in the event of victory. The armies met in the forest of Ephraim, not far from the Jordan. In spite of the superiority of the numbers opposed to them, the tried and veteran soldiers of David had the advantage over the ill-armed and ill-organised ma.s.ses of peasants. Absalom started back on his mule, fell into a thicket, and became entangled by his long hair in the branches of a large terebinth. He remained hanging while his mule ran away from under him. Joab found him in this position, and thrust his spear thrice through his heart. Either the fall of the hostile leader, the author of the rebellion, appeared a sufficient success to David's men, or the advantage gained over Absalom's army was not very great, or they found themselves too weak to follow it up. Joab led the army back to Mahanaim.

Though the rebellion had lost its leader by the fall of Absalom, it was far from being crushed. Absalom's captain, Amasa, the nephew of David, collected the ma.s.ses of the rebellious army; the elders of the tribes, as well as the people, were ready to continue the struggle against David, though some were again inclined to accept their old king. If the tribes could be divided, and Amasa separated from the elders of Judah, the victory was almost certain. On this David built his plan. By means of the priests Abiathar and Zadok he caused it to be made known to the elders of Judah that the rest of the tribes had made overtures to him, to recognise him again as king, which was not the case;--would they be the last to lead back their own flesh and blood, their tribesman David?

At the same time the priests were bidden to offer to Amasa the post of captain-general as the reward of his return, and this offer David confirmed with an oath: So might G.o.d do to him if Amasa were not captain all his days in the place of Joab.[315] The elders of Judah allowed themselves to be entrapped no less than Amasa, who little knew with whom he had to do. They sent a message to the king that he might return over the Jordan, and went to meet him at Gilgal. David showed himself placable, and prepared to pardon the adherents of Absalom. s.h.i.+mei, who had cursed him on his retirement from Jerusalem, went to meet him at the Jordan; and when the boat which carried David over reached the hither bank he fell at his feet. David promised not to slay him with the sword.[316] From Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, who had declared for Absalom, he only took the half of Saul's inheritance.[317]

The remaining tribes were enraged at the tribe of Judah, partly because they had abandoned the common cause, partly because Judah had entirely appropriated the merit of bringing back the king. Their feelings were wavering: half were for submission, the others for continuing the resistance.[318] Then rose up a man of Benjamin, Sheba, the son of b.i.+.c.hri. "What part have we in David, what portion in the son of Jesse?"

he cried to the waverers, caused the trumpets to be blown, and gave a new centre to rebellion and resistance. David commissioned Amasa to call out the warriors of Judah within three days and lead them to Jerusalem.

While Amasa was occupied with carrying out this command, David sent Joab with the Gibborim and the body-guard against Sheba. At Gibeon Joab met Amasa. Is all well with thee, my brother? he said, and took him by the beard with his right hand to greet him, while with the left he thrust his sword through his body.[319] Thus, after he had been gained by deceptive promises, the dangerous man was removed as Abner had been before him. Sheba could not withstand the impetuous advance of Joab; the tribes submitted. Sheba's first resistance was made far in the north at Dan, in the city of Abel-beth-maachah, and there he defended himself so stubbornly that a rampart was thrown up against the city and besieging engines brought up against the walls. When the walls were near upon falling, and the citizens saw destruction before them, they saved themselves by cutting off Sheba's head and sending it to Joab.[320] The reaction of the people against the new government, at the head of which Absalom, Amasa, and Sheba had successively placed themselves, was overcome.

Many years before, at the time when Joab was besieging Rabbath, the metropolis of the Ammonites, David had gone out on the roof of his house in Zion in the cool of the evening. This position overlooked the houses in the ravine which separated the citadel from the city. In one of these David saw a beautiful woman in her bath. This was Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, a Hitt.i.te, who served in the troop of the "mighty." The king sent for her to his palace, and she soon announced to David that she was with child. David gave orders to Joab to send Uriah from the camp to Jerusalem. He asked him of the state of the war and the army, and then bade him go home to his wife, but Uriah lay before the gate of the palace. When David asked him on the next morning why he had not gone home to his house, he answered: Israel is in the field, and my fellows lie in the camp before Rabbath, and shall I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? Remain here, replied David; to-morrow morning I will let thee go. David invited him into the palace and made him drunken, but, as before, Uriah pa.s.sed the night before the gate of the palace. Then, on the following day, David sent Uriah to the camp with a letter to Joab: Place Uriah in the thickest of the battle, and turn away from him, that he may be smitten, and die. Soon after a messenger came from the camp and announced to the king: The men of Rabbath made a sally; we repulsed them, and drove them to the gate; then the bowmen shot at thy servants from the walls, and some of our men were slain, among them Uriah. David caused Bathsheba, when the time for mourning was over, to come into his harem, and after the death of her first child, she bore a second child, whom David called Solomon, _i.e._ the peaceful,[321] as the times of war were over with the capture of Rabbath and the subjugation of the Ammonites.

After Absalom's death the heir to the crown was Adonijah, the fourth son of David, whom Haggith had borne to him while at Hebron. Solomon was the seventh in the series of the surviving sons of David, and as yet quite young; yet Bathsheba attempted to place her son on the throne. One of the two high priests, Zadok, supported Bathsheba's views, as also Nathan the prophet, who acquired great influence with David in the last years of his reign. Both might expect a greater deference to priestly influence from the youthful Solomon than from the older and more independent Adonijah, and the more so if they a.s.sisted the young man to gain the throne against the legitimate successor. So Bathsheba prevailed upon David to swear an oath by Jehovah that Solomon should be his successor in the place of Adonijah.[322] But Adonijah did not doubt that the throne belonged to him, that all Israel was of the same conviction, and their eyes turned upon him.[323] If Zadok was in favour of Solomon's succession, Abiathar, the old and influential adherent of David, was for Adonijah, and what was more important, the captain of the army, Joab, who had won David's best victories, also declared for him. On the other hand, Bathsheba's party won Benaiah, the captain of the body-guard, so that the power and prospects of both party were about equal.

When David, 70 years old, lay on his death-bed, Adonijah felt that he must antic.i.p.ate his opponents. He summoned his adherents to meet outside the walls at the fuller's well (p. 170). Joab appeared with the leaders of the army, Abiathar came to offer sacrifice, and all the sons of David except Solomon. The sacrifice was already being offered, the sheep, oxen and calves were killed, the proclamation of Adonijah was to follow immediately after the sacrifice, when the intelligence was carried to the opposite party. Bathsheba and Nathan hastened to the dying king to remind him of his oath in favour of Solomon. He gave orders that Solomon should be placed on the mule which he always rode himself and that Zadok should anoint the youth under the wall of Zion eastwards of the city at the fount of Gihon. Then Benaiah with the body-guard was to bring him back into the city at once with the sound of trumpets, and lead him into the palace, in order to set him upon the throne there. This was done.

Zadok took the horn of oil from the sacred tabernacle, and when the new ruler returned in solemn procession to the palace all the people cried with joy: Long live king Solomon. When Adonijah and his adherents heard the shouting from the city, and understood what had taken place, they gave up their cause for lost, and dispersed in dread in every direction.

David rejoiced over this last success;[324] he called Solomon to his bedside, and said to him: "Do good to the sons of Barzillai the Gileadite; he received me well when I fled over Jordan before thy brother Absalom. s.h.i.+mei, who cursed me when I fled to Mahanaim, I have sworn not to slay; let him not go unpunished, and bring his grey hairs to the grave with blood. What Joab did to Abner and Amasa thou knowest; let not his grey hairs go down to the grave in peace."[325] David was buried in the grave which he had caused to be made on Zion, where the heights of the citadel meet the western height, on which the city lay.

Thus David had succeeded in healing the wounds which his ambition had inflicted in past days on Israel; he understood how to establish firmly the monarchy, and along with it the power and security of the state. He had given such an important impulse to the wors.h.i.+p, to the religious poetry, and consequently to the religious life, of the Hebrews, that his reign has remained of decisive importance for the entire development of Israel. But beside these great successes and high merits lie very dark shadows. If we cannot but admire the activity and bravery, the wisdom and circ.u.mspection, which distinguish his reign, there stands beside these qualities not only the weakness of his later years, which caused him to make a capricious alteration in the succession, thereby endangering the work of his life; other actions, both of his earlier and later years, show plainly that in spite of religious feeling and sentiment he did not hesitate to set aside very fundamental rules of morality when it came to winning the object he had in view.

If even in his last moments he causes Joab to be put to death by the hand of his son, it may be that this old servant, when he had taken the side of the other son in the succession, appeared very dangerous for the rule of the younger son. But Joab had rendered the greatest services to David, he had won for him the most brilliant victories; and if our account makes David give the murder of Abner and Amasa as the reason for that command, David had made no attempt to punish one deed or the other; on the contrary, he had gladly availed himself of at least the results and fruits of them. We must not indeed measure those days of unrestrained force and violent pa.s.sion in hatred and love, in devotion and ambition, by the standard of our own tamer impulses; the manner of the ancient East, above all of the Semites, was too much inclined to the most b.l.o.o.d.y revenge. Yet David's instructions to destroy a man of no importance, whom he had once in a difficult position sworn to spare, out of the grave, by the hand of his son, goes beyond the limit of all that we can elsewhere find in those times and feelings.

FOOTNOTES:

[283] Joshua xv. 63; Judges i. 21.

[284] 2 Sam. v. 5-8; xxiv. 18; 1 Kings ix. 20.

[285] 2 Sam. v. 17.

[286] 2 Sam. v. 22-25.

[287] Above, p. 131, note 4; 2 Sam. xxi. 15-22; 1 Chron. xxi. 4-8; xix.

1.

[288] 2 Sam. viii. 1. Jesus, son of Sirach, xlvii. 8.

[289] Noldeke, "Amalekiter," s. 17-25.

[290] 2 Sam. viii. 2.

[291] 2 Sam. x. 6-14.

[292] 2 Sam. viii. 3, 4; x. 15-19.

[293] Psalms lx. 2; 2 Sam. viii. 13.

[294] The date rests on the fact that Solomon was born soon after, and was more than 20 years old when he came to the throne; see below. The war against Hadad-Ezer cannot be placed before 1020, since Rezon, who escaped, remained Solomon's opponent as long as Solomon lived. 1 Kings xi. 25.

[295] 2 Sam. viii. 6, 7, 14; x. 19.

[296] 1 Kings xi. 27.

[297] 1 Chron. xxvii. 25-31.

[298] 2 Sam. xx. 23; 1 Chron. xviii. 17.

[299] 2 Sam. xv. 18.

[300] 2 Sam. xxiii. 18; 1 Chron. xi. 15, 26-45.

[301] 2 Sam. xxiii. 8.

[302] 2 Sam. xxiv. 9. The number of the levy here, as in almost all accounts of the a.s.sembling of the people, must be grossly exaggerated: 800,000 are given in Israel, 500,000 in Judah only. Chronicles raises the first number to 1,100,000, and reduces the second to 30,000, 1 xxii.

5. The statement given in Chronicles about the division of the levy into 12 troops, and the strength of these troops (1 xxviii. 1-15), contradicts these numbers. As this arrangement of the army is mentioned in Chronicles only, which books show a great tendency to systematise, the division into 12 remains uncertain. That there was a numbering of the people is not to be doubted. It is counted as one of David's errors, and Jehovah strikes the people with pestilence. This narrative is connected with the command to redeem the firstborn, the boys (vol. i.

499), the ordinance given in Exod. x.x.x. 12, which is connected with the same conception: "When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul to Jehovah that there be no plague among them."

[303] 2 Sam. viii. 15.

[304] 2 Sam. xx. 23-26; 1 Chron. xxvii. 16-22.

[305] Psalm xviii.; cf. De Wette-Schrader, "Einleitung," S. 345.

[306] 2 Sam. vi. 1-8, 12-15; Psalm xxiv. On the date see above, p, 125, n. 2. M. Niebuhr ("a.s.sur und Babel," s. 350) explains the number of 466-1/2 years given by Josephus ("Ant." 20, 10) by a.s.suming that it contains the interval of 430-1/2 years which the Hebrews give for the interval between the building of the temple and its destruction. To this amount is added eight years for the captive high priest Jozadak, down to the time when his son Joshua became high priest, and 28 years for Zadok's priesthood before the commencement of the building of the temple. If we reckon the 28 years of Zadok backwards for the time that we have a.s.sumed for the beginning of the temple, 990 B.C., we arrive at the year 1018 B.C. for the erection of the new tabernacle.

[307] 1 Chron. xvi. 39.

[308] 2 Sam. xv. 24, 27; 1 Chron. vii. 4-15, 50-53; xxiii.-xxvi.

[309] If Josephus is right, that the fourth year of Solomon was the twelfth year of Hiram of Tyre.

[310] 2 Sam. xix. 35.

[311] Absalom's rebellion cannot have taken place till the latter years of David. Absalom was born in Hebron, and therefore, at the least, after David's thirtieth year, 2 Sam. v. 4. He must at the least have been towards 20 years old when he caused Amnon to be murdered. Five years pa.s.sed before David would allow him to enter his presence, 2 Sam. xiii.

38, and xiv. 28. Lastly, his efforts to gain popularity, and the preparations for rebellion, must have occupied two years. If it is stated in 2 Sam. xv. 7 that after Absalom's return from Geshur 40 years elapsed till his rebellion, Absalom must have been 63 years old at the time of his rebellion, and David at the least 93 years old. Hence in the pa.s.sage quoted four years must be read instead of 40.

[312] 2 Sam. xv. 1-6; xvii. 25; 1 Chron. ii. 17.

[313] 2 Sam. xv. 5-14.

[314] 2 Sam. xvii. 27.

[315] 2 Sam. xix. 11-13.

[316] 2 Sam. xix. 18-33; 1 Kings ii. 8.

[317] 2 Sam. xvi. 3-5; xix. 24-30.

[318] 2 Sam. xix. 40.

[319] 2 Sam. xx. 8-13; 1 Kings ii. 5.