Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

[ca. 1002 B.C.]

When the news of Abner's death came to Mahanaim, Ishbosheth's "hands were feeble, and all the Israelites were troubled." The pillar of the kingdom had fallen. The two captains thought to earn David's gratitude. While Ishbosheth was taking his midday rest on his bed in the sleeping chamber, they crept unnoticed into the house, hewed off the head of their king, and brought it with all speed to David at Hebron. This murder also must have been welcome to David; it brought him quickly to his goal; but he would not reward the agents- he had them both hanged.

DAVID SECURES THE CROWN

The throne of Saul was vacant, and David, the husband of his daughter, was at the head of no inconsiderable power; whom else could the tribes of Israel, which had obeyed Ishbosheth, now raise to the throne, if the melancholy division was to be brought to an end and the people again united under one rule? The elders of the tribes were wise enough to judge the situation aright. So the whole people came together at Hebron; in full assembly David was raised to the throne of all Israel, and anointed by the elders. All was joy, harmony, and hope, that, after the close of the long, fraternal quarrel, better times might now be in store.

Eight years had gone by since Saul had fallen at Gilboa, and David had at last attained the object which he had persistently aimed at through so many changes of fortune. But he did not feel secure so long as male descendants of Saul were still surviving. Still he would not lay hands on them himself. Now the Hivites of Gibeon nourished a deadly hatred against Saul's family, because, "in his zeal for the children of Israel," Saul's hand had lain heavy upon them. David offered "to make atonement for the wrong which Saul had done them," and thereupon they demanded: because their land had borne no fruit for three years, that seven men of Saul's family should be delivered to them "to be hanged before Jehovah at Gibeah," the home of Saul. Just seven male descendants of Saul survived, two sons of his concubine, Rizpah, and five grandsons, whom Saul's eldest daughter had borne to Adriel. These David took and "delivered into the hands of the Gibeonites and they hanged them in the hill before Jehovah."

Only Mephibosheth, Jonathan's son, David spared, remembering his oath of friendship to Jonathan. Moreover, Mephibosheth was young and lame in both feet; in the night of terror after the battle of Gilboa, his nurse had let him fall. David left him his inheritance intact, in so far that he was allowed to take possession of Saul's portion in Gibeah, and the king ordered that the bones of Saul and Jonathan should be brought from Jabesh to Zelah near Gibeah, where Saul's father rested. In the tribe of Benjamin, which had been Saul's and, among the friends of his house, David's deeds were not forgotten; these men hated "David, the man of blood." c

[graphic][merged small][subsumed][merged small]

THE eyes of Israel were now all turned to David. All the tribes of Israel, in the persons of their nobles, came to Hebron and said: "Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh. And moreover, in times past, even when Saul was king, thou wast he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel: and the Lord thy God said unto thee, Thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be ruler over my people Israel." Thereupon the elders of Israel anointed David to be their king before Jehovah in Hebron. Nothing denotes more clearly than these words of our chronicler, the idea which animated all Israel in calling upon David to mount the throne of Saul. He still lived in their memory as the renowned leader in the struggle with the Philistines. And the memory of the days of Saul must have been all the more vivid, the more inglorious and mean the present appeared.

David could consequently be in no doubt as to his first task as newly elected king of Israel. Israel must be again free, and the Philistines thrown back on their coasts. Nothing else was intended when the tribes invited him to be their prince. And, like Saul in former days, by this means alone could David permanently retain the confidence with which the tribes approached him at his anointing.

In the country of the Philistines also, the significance of what had passed in Hebron was quickly perceived. There was probably no need of many words and messages to announce that the position of vassal to Philistia, in which David had hitherto stood, was at an end. If Saul's kingdom had passed to David, between him and the Philistines the cause of Israel still retained the same rights as in the days of Saul. In spite of this, David seems to have been attacked sooner than he could have anticipated; immediately, on the news of his anointing at Hebron, the Philistines invaded Judah. David seems to have been taken unawares, and Israel's attempt to make itself independent through him, to have been nipped in the bud. Beitlahm (Bible Bethlehem) David's home, was quickly occupied, and Hebron was threatened. David was warned, but having no time to summon the militia, was compelled to withdraw hastily to the cave of Adullam, which stronghold had long ago been intrusted to him. Here he seems to have remained some time, until he had collected his forces, and later he succeeded in inflicting a sensible defeat on the Philistines, who had fixed their camp in the land of giants, the so-called plain of Rephaim north of Jebus, opposite Gibeon.

[ca. 1002-990 B.C.]

But it must be confessed that the Philistines were not annihilated, or even merely reduced to quiescence by this. The struggle was again_renewed on the occasion of a second invasion of Judah by the enemy. In obedience to Jehovah's oracle, David passed round the Philistines, who had again encamped in the land of giants, and attacked them from the north, i.e. from behind. He smote them from Gibeon to Gezer.

For the time the Philistines seemed to have remained quiet after these two defeats, which David had inflicted on them within so short a time. But their power was not yet broken, and David must have fought many and doubtless severe battles before Israel had rest from the Philistines. Many a reminiscence of David and his heroes, many a bold feat of his valiant host, lived on through subsequent generations and was referred to this very struggle. At one time it is David's own life which is at stake, at another, Goliath of Gath is slain, the enemy who has also lent his name to the unknown Philistine giant whom David had formerly killed. Finally, by a decisive battle, David succeeds in winning the Philistine's capital and with it their whole country. From this time forward the power of the Philistines is broken. Never afterwards do they appear as the enemies of Israel. From the time of David the relations between the two nations are essentially peaceful. Nor, in spite of his victories, did David subjugate Philistia or destroy her nationality. He was content to have won back Israel's position, defeated the enemy, and kept peace with him. It even appears that moderately friendly relations were opened between the rivals. Indeed, so little were the Philistines now considered as the hereditary foes of Israel, that David chooses his bodyguard from amongst them.

But David was not content with the success he had so far attained. Israel was not merely to be free. Israel was to be united, and raised to a position commanding respect among the neighbouring states. Step by step, David brought this aim nearer fulfilment. He trained the tribes to give new and better expression to their cohesion than had formerly been possible; he fitted them to guide their destinies according to his own ideal; thanks to him, for a time, Israel was even able to have a decisive voice in the council of the peoples of Anterior Asia, who dwelt west of the Euphrates. No wonder, then, that Israel knows no greater king than David, and that his name is the expression, to the most remote posterity, of all the magnificence and all the splendour which could ever have been imagined in Israel. David was and remains the greatest man next to Moses in the history of Israel, and is at the same time the most popular.

It was not David's work which awakened in the tribes of Israel the consciousness that they formed an unit, a single people, nor that for a transitory period they acted as one nation. Moses, and again later, Saul, even Deborah for some of the tribes, had given expression to this ideal unity, and temporarily realised it. The tribes must now long have known that they were the limbs of a single nation. But always, as had been lately manifested in Saul, the strength was lacking to maintain what had been momentarily acquired. What was especially wanted even when liberty had been won, was a national centre, round which the life of the nation, political as well as religious, might gather. Only when this was attained could the unification be really complete, and any sort of permanence be guaranteed for the liberty won by the sword. Saul, with inconceivable shortsightedness, did little or nothing towards this object. The national sanctuary, first lost and afterwards again recovered, he had left standing in an obscure corner of Israel, and had fixed his royal abode in his native Benjamite city of Gibeah where

[ca. 990 B.C.] he had lived as a peasant, and which had neither past nor future-the best evidence that Saul lacked the kingly faculty. David saw deeper than Saul. If Saul was an able warrior, who, when he had sheathed his sword, returned to his cattle at Gibeah, David, on the contrary, was a born ruler. He recognised that religion and national life needed a centre, unity a base, national power a place of assembly-in short that if the country was to maintain its unity and independence, it must have a capital worthy of royalty and fitted to secure it.

Immediately after the conclusion of the first Philistine wars, David proceeded to the accomplishment of this object. His choice bears witness to his genius. Hebron, lying at the southern end of the country, and being moreover the capital of his own tribe, could be suited, neither by its position nor its tribal character, to form the centre of the new kingdom, which must be superior to the ancient tribal distinctions. Saul's residence of Gibeah was disqualified on similar grounds, and probably also strategically unimportant. On the other hand, the fortress of Jebus answered, as did no other place in Israel, to what David sought. Furnished by nature with the attributes of an almost impregnable stronghold from a strategical point of view, Jebus is one of the most important places in the country. At the middle point of the traffic between the Mediterranean and the East, as of that between Syria and Egypt, it is a natural centre for trade and commerce. As it was still in the possession of the Canaanites, it was well qualified to remain aloof from the contention for precedence among the tribes. And yet again as it lay not far from David's birthplace, Jebus provided for the preservation of David's kingship and of that connection with the tribe of Judah which was to a certain extent indispensable. In fact, David's choice of Jebus-henceforth called Jerusalem in the Old Testamentas capital of his kingdom, was an act of incalculably wide-reaching importance. It is quite impossible to say what would have become of Judah and the throne of David in the centuries which followed Solomon's death, but for the possession of Jerusalem. Of the part played by Jerusalem in the destinies of Israel, both before and after the exile, every one who knows the story is aware. If David's successful fight for liberty against the Philistines was the first jewel which he added to his newly acquired crown, the second was the town of Jerusalem, which he now won and raised to be the royal city of Israel.

Jebus had hitherto been a relic of that large territory forming with Gibeon, Beeroth, Kirjath-jearim and Chephirah, a Canaanitish strip of land, which once, in the period of the conquest and for a considerable time after, had extended into the possession of Israel. In course of time, most of this land, so long beyond the borders of Israel, had been absorbed. Finally Saul had exerted himself in the matter by the application of force. Only Jebus, with its strong rock-citadel Zion, had obstinately resisted all attacks. Its possessors seem to have formed a singular little Canaanitish nation, called, from their town, the Jebusites.

David's attempt to win the Jebusites and their town for Israel by peaceful means, miscarried. Their rocky eyrie, Zion, appeared to the Jebusites so strong that the lame and blind would suffice to defend it. Undismayed by their scorn, David proceeded to use force, and stormed town and citadel. The citadel he took possession of himself and called it David's citadel (the city of David) after having first restored the building for his own purposes. Hiram of Tyre, to whom the friendship of his powerful neighbour must have been a matter of some importance, is said to have assisted him with

[graphic][merged small][subsumed]
« AnteriorContinuar »