RENAN'S ESTIMATE OF DAVID

[ca. 970 B.c.]

David died at the age of about sixty-six years, after a thirty-years' reign, and in his palace of Zion. He was buried close by, in a tomb hollowed in the rock, at the foot of the hill on which stood the city of David. All this happened about one thousand years before Christ.

A thousand years before Christ. This fact must not be forgotten in seeking to gain an idea of a character so complex as that of David, in endeavouring to form a picture of the singularly defective and violent world which has just unfolded itself before our eyes. It may be said that religion in the true sense was not yet born. The god, Jehovah, who is daily assuming in Israel an importance without parallel, is of a revolting partiality. He brings success to his servants; this is what is supposed to have been observed, and this makes him very strong. There is as yet no instance of a servant of Jehovah, whom Jehovah has abandoned. David's profession of faith may be summed up in one word: "Jehovah who preserved my life from all danger." Jehovah is a sure refuge, a rock whence one may defy one's enemy, a buckler, a saviour. The servant of Jehovah is in all things a privileged being. Oh, it is a wise thing to be a scrupulous servant of Jehovah!

It was above all in this sense that the reign of David was of extreme religious importance. David's was the first grand success made in the name and by the influence of Jehovah. The success of David, confirmed by the fact that his descendants succeeded him on the throne, was the palpable demonstration of Jehovah's power. The victories of Jehovah's servants are the victories of Jehovah himself; the strong god is he who wins. This idea differs little from that of Islam, whose vindication has scarcely any other support than that of success. Islam is true, for God has given it the victory. Jehovah is the true God by proof of experience; he gives the victory to the faithful. A brutal realism saw nothing beyond this triumph of material fact. But what is to happen on the day when the servant of Jehovah shall be poor, dishonoured, persecuted for his fidelity to Jehovah? The element of the grandiose and the extraordinary reserved for that day, may be perceived from the struggle of the Israelite conscience up to the present time.c

THE picture of the last period of King David's life is clouded by the struggle for the succession. The true circumstances of Solomon's accession will forever remain to some extent obscure, owing to the incompleteness of our information. We give the account as found in the records we possess. David had grown old and needed careful attendance. At the court the question as to who should succeed him could not remain in abeyance. According to order of birth, David's fourth son, Adonijah, stood next to the throne after Absalom's death. In fact, Adonijah regarded himself as the heir, and went so far as to exercise the rights of heir-apparent, even in public, as Absalom had done. A part of the court, and an influential portion of the people, seem also to have fully recognised Adonijah as the future king. David himself, who tenderly loved Adonijah, and had regarded him as taking the place of the Absalom whom he still mourned, did not venture to oppose him. Adonijah had the same mother (Haggith) as Absalom.

But Adonijah's hopes did not meet with universal acceptance at the court. It is true that he succeeded in winning over Joab and the priest Abiathar, to his cause. But on the other side stood Bathsheba, who was exerting

herself to obtain the succession for her son Solomon. Her cause was favoured by the priest Zadok, the prophet Nathan, and Benaiah, the captain of the royal bodyguard. Thus in the last days of David's life, two parties stood opposed to one another at the court.

One day Adonijah gave a banquet to his followers at the serpent-stone (En-rogel), a sacrificial stone in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. Nathan, who was, as it appears, the spiritual head of the opposition, feared lest the banquet should end, like that of Absalom in Hebron, with the hailing of Adonijah as king. This would mean the ruin of Solomon's cause. It was therefore an occasion for prompt measures. Bathsheba must at once inform the king of what was happening at the serpent-stone; she must remind David of a former promise that gave a prospect of Solomon's succession, and obtain its immediate confirmation.

Bathsheba did what she was told. According to agreement, Nathan, after a short interval, follows her to the king's presence, to lend her words emphasis. He even professes to have already heard the cry of the conspirators, "Long live King Adonijah." The two succeed in arousing the king's suspicions. He is convinced that again in his old age he is to be deprived of the throne and become the victim of a conspiracy of one of his sons. At once he solemnly adjudges the succession to Solomon. By David's command the latter is conducted on the king's own mule to Gihon, a sacred

[ca. 970-960 B.C.] spring near Jerusalem, anointed by Zadok and Nathan, hailed as king, and solemnly enthroned. The joyful acclamations of the people and the noise of the trumpets, reach the ears of the banqueters, who are not far off. They have scarcely time to ask the cause, when Jonathan, Abiathar's son, brings tidings of what has occurred. Solomon is king. Adonijah has no resource but the altar, at whose horns he implores bare life from his more fortunate brother. He does homage to the latter and is granted his life.

Solomon is thereupon proclaimed King, and now before David bows his head in death he lays on his successor a charge which he has closely at heart. He reminds him that Joab's deeds of blood against Abner and Amasa have not yet been expiated, and puts him in mind of the services rendered to him by Barzillai, and of Shimei's curses upon his house. Barzillai he is to reward loyally; the other two he shall not let go down to sheol (i.e. the Hebrew hades) in peace.

THE EARLY YEARS OF SOLOMON'S REIGN

David had scarcely closed his eyes when the desire for the throne was again roused in Adonijah, whom Solomon had pardoned. Through Bathsheba's intervention he requested Solomon to give him David's nurse, Abishag, to wife. What this wish meant, according to the conception of the period, we know from Absalom's behaviour towards David's harem. Solomon saw through Adonijah's daring plans, and the latter paid with his life. The fate of Adonijah's most distinguished partisans was also decided. Abiathar was relieved of his priestly office, but his life was spared in consideration of the services he had rendered to David in trouble and prosperity. He was banished to Anathoth, and his former colleague, Zadok, took his place. Joab, foreboding evil, fled to the altar of Jehovah, but there was no mercy for him. Appealing to his ancient blood-guiltiness, Solomon had him hewn down. Finally Shimei, who had not shared in Adonijah's attempts, was for the time being confined to Jerusalem, and, soon after, when in opposition to the king's command he left the city, he was executed.

This is the account contained in 1 Kings i.-ii. Many have recently taken the view that the first part distinctly contains the story of a palace intrigue, set on foot by Nathan and Bathsheba in favour of Solomon against Adonijah's succession; while the second part of the narrative has been recognised as an only partially veiled attempt to avert from Solomon the responsibility for the bloody deeds with which he thought to establish his newly acquired throne.

The fact that there hitherto had been no word of Solomon's succession seems to be decidedly in favour of this view. If Adonijah was the innocent victim of a court intrigue, it must be assumed that Bathsheba and Nathan persuaded the weak old king into acknowledging a promise he had never given, but which he now gladly adopted in his anxiety for the peace of his last days. This conception seems also to be favoured by the additional circumstance, that the narrator, obviously in an access of intentional irony, does not give an account of his own respecting Adonijah's criminal intentions at the sacrificial feast, but makes Nathan give his detailed version in the king's presence. Finally, as regards the second part of the narrative, in the passage concerning David's last dispositions, the traces of a later hand are distinctly visible, suggesting the idea that the whole passage is of late origin. This also lends support to the notion that, both according to

[ca. 960-950 B.C.]

the original account and also in reality, Solomon at least removed Joab from his path, not on account of his earlier but by reason of his later conduct, and not in compliance with David's wish, but for being a partisan of Adonijah.

But the literary basis of this last conception is not sufficiently secure. It is just those portions of David's last words which refer to Joab and Shimei, which are indisputably old, while the whole passage comes from our most authentic sources. Besides, as a matter of fact, such a wish on David's part does not in itself awaken such grave doubts as might appear. Only we must guard against trying to measure the distant past by our own moral feelings, and we must bear in mind what David, following the cruel faith of his time, did to the house of Saul, in order to blot out the stain of an ancient deed of blood which still lay on it. Thus it cannot really appear strange that he should have been tormented by an uneasy fear at the guilt and curse of a past, which, one day, when he was gone, might strike his house as that guilt of blood had chastised the house of Saul.

With Abiathar's removal from the priesthood, an act of the highest importance for the history of religion in Israel was accomplished. In place of the house of Eli, which had already been severely threatened in the time of Saul, but had finally recovered itself under David's favour, a new priesthood appeared on the scene. How significant the change was is shown by the circumstance that a prophetic reference to it is already made in the story of Eli. Eli derived his priesthood and that of his family from Egypt and probably from the father of the priesthood, Aaron. In what Zadok's claim consisted we do not know. He can hardly have been the first of an entirely new line, and thus not even a Levite. Solomon would have guarded against putting in Abiathar's stead a priest of quite unpriestly blood. Henceforth the "Bene- (sons of) Zadok " hold possession of the priesthood at Jerusalem. And after the erection of the temple they succeeded in bringing this priesthood, and with it their own house, to high prosperity and power.

Solomon's task as king was clear. As David's successor he was heir to great wealth; he had only to preserve what David had created and to confirm himself in its possession. Abroad he had to maintain the extraordinary prestige which Israel had acquired; at home to make the unity of the tribes, which David had completed, a permanent thing, and to chain Israel to the house of the great king.

In the last Solomon did not succeed. For himself, as far as we can see, he seems to have been possessed of sufficient force and skill. As long as he lived, David's kingdom remained in his hands, if not undisputed, still in the main undiminished. And if he did not contrive, or did not care, to make the tribes of Israel contented under his sway, yet, during his reign, matters did not come to an open breach. The single attempt at a rising of which we hear, that of Jeroboam, he put down by force. Eager as the northern tribes may have been to renounce the house of David, they did not dare to wrest from Solomon the sceptre he wielded with so much power. This, which mainly concerns internal relations, shows that Solomon was not the weak, inactive king whom many have represented him to be. But abroad also Solomon showed himself equal to his task, at least in all questions of importance.

Difficulties were not wanting. The death of the great David was an event which many of Israel's adversaries had doubtless long been looking for. When to this was added the disappearance from the scene of his bravest soldier, Joab, the opportunity for attacking Israel could not have

[ca. 960-950 B.C.] been more favourable. A scion of that ancient royal house of Edom which David had overthrown, Hadad by name, had fled to Egypt. He had succeeded, like Solomon himself, in obtaining in marriage a princess of the house of Pharaoh, the sister of Queen Tahpenes. Immediately after David's death he returned to his own country and seems to have wrenched at least a part of Edom from Solomon. But either his dominion was insignificant and not dangerous to Solomon, or the latter afterwards succeeded in regaining possession of Edom, for the approach to the Red Sea by Ezion-geber remained open to Solomon.

A second adversary is said to have risen against Solomon in the north. One of the captains of that Hadad-ezer of the Aramæan state of Zobah whom David had conquered, Rezon-ben-Eliadah, separated himself from his master. After a long life of adventure, he founded a dominion of his own, and made the ancient Damascus its capital. He drove out the governor whom David had placed there, and Solomon did not succeed in recovering the city. Here, then, if the tale be historical, Solomon suffered a real and, as it seems, a permanent loss. Still it would be hard to say whether, at the time, it was much felt; for probably neither David nor Solomon had ever been in possession of Damascus and Aram-Damascus. Here, too, as in Solomon's home government, the most serious question would seem to be the outlook for the future. For in course of time the kingdom of Damascus was to become one of Israel's most dangerous opponents.

If, therefore, in this way Solomon had received in the south, and perhaps also in the north, certain, though probably not very important checks, still he appears to have done a considerable amount for the preservation and strengthening of Israel's prestige. It is possible that he did not attach so much importance to those of David's conquests which lay on the outskirts of the kingdom as to the preservation of Israel itself. It is a fact that he protected it by founding strong fortresses against hostile invasions- an undertaking whose high utility cannot possibly be called in question. Thus in the north he fortified Hazor and Megiddo; in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem Beth-horon and the royal Canaanitish city, Gezer; to the south, for the protection of the border as the caravan route from Hebron to Eloth, he fortified the city of Tadmor. The Egyptian Pharaoh, whose daughter Solomon married, had conquered Gezer for him. A town named Baalath whose site is uncertain but perhaps lay near Gezer, is also mentioned among Solomon's fortified places. He also bestowed great attention on increasing the war material and cavalry which were distributed through a series of garrison towns and in keeping them ready for use. Though the figures concerning these are somewhat doubtful, the fact itself cannot be called in question. All this shows that we can scarcely speak of a decline in the power of Israel under Solomon, even if he abandoned certain outlying posts.

Yet, nevertheless, Solomon did not attain to his father's greatness. He had grown up as a king's son, without occasion and necessity to steel his will in the hard school of danger and privation, and he did not possess his father's energy and initiative. He thought more of the rights and pleasures of kingship than of his high duties and tasks. The father's despotic tendencies, in him only showing at intervals and immediately restrained and overcome, are in the son the groundwork of his character. His favourite amusements are costly buildings, strange women, rich display.

But he also insisted on the regular execution of justice, and his chief strength lay in the orderly administration of his country. Side by side with this went the final removal and absorption of the Canaanites. Both prob