Chapter VI: The Establishment of the Monarchy (1)

Influence of Shiloh—Samuel and the Philistines—Duplicate Narratives
in the Books of Samuel—Prophet and Seer—Dervish Monasteries—Capture
of the Ark and Destruction of Shiloh—Saul made King—Quarrels with
Samuel—Delivers Israel from the Philistines—Attacks the
Amalekites—David—Two Accounts of his Rise to Power—Jealousy of
Saul—David’s Flight—Massacre of the Priests at Nob—Wanderings of
David—He sells his Services to the King of Gath—Duties of a
Mercenary—Battle of Gilboa and David’s Position—He is made King of
Judah—War with Esh-Baal—Intrigues with Abner—Murder of
Esh-Baal—David revolts from the Philistines and becomes King of
Israel—Capture of Jerusalem, which is made the Capital—Results of
this—Conquest of the Philistines, of Moab, Ammon, Zobah, and
Edom—The Israelitish Empire—Murder of Uriah and Birth of
Solomon—Influence of Nathan—Polygamy and its Effects in the Family
of David—Revolt of Absalom—Of Sheba—Folly and Ingratitude of
David—Saul’s Descendants sacrificed because of a Drought—The Plague
and the Purchase of the Site of the Temple—David’s Officers and last
Instructions—His Character—Chronology—Solomon puts Joab and Others
to Death—His Religious Policy—Queen of Sheba—Trade and
Buildings—Hiram of Tyre—Palace and Temple Built—Tadmor—Zoological
and Botanical Gardens—Discontent in Israel—Impoverishment of the
Country—Jeroboam—Tastes and Character of Solomon.

When Samuel was born, the Hebrew settlement in Palestine had long been a matter of the past. Little by little Canaan had passed into the possession of the Israelitish tribes. The older population had at first been massacred, then laid under tribute and amalgamated with the newcomers. The tribes themselves had changed much. Some had disappeared, others had grown at their expense. Ephraim, which from the first days of the conquest had been the most powerful among them, was now in a state of decadence, and a new force was rising in the south in the shape of the mixed tribe of Judah. A few of the Canaanite cities in the interior still remained independent, like Gezer and Jerusalem, as well as all those on the Phœnician coast.

The tribes had suffered from want of cohesion. The attempt to found a monarchy in Manasseh had failed; it was too local and limited, and served only to arouse the jealousy of the tribes which lay outside it. It had done little more than bring to light the dissensions and differences that existed within Israel itself. The bond that connected the tribes had become continually looser, and the ‘House of Joseph’ was divided into hostile factions. Benjamin had been decimated by its brother Israelites under the leadership of Ephraim, and Ephraim had undergone the same treatment at the hands of its brethren from Gilead. The conquest of Canaan had brought with it the old Canaanitish spirit of disunion and discord; the spectacle which the Tel el-Amarna letters present to us of city arrayed against city is reproduced in the Israel of the period of the Judges. The common brotherhood, which was still felt in the age of Deborah, tended to be forgotten. The tribes no longer come to one another’s aid; they fight with one another instead. The authority of the Judges become more and more circumscribed, their jurisdiction more and more confined. The tribes on the east of the Jordan begin to lead a separate life, and hardly acknowledge that the tribes to the west are kinsmen at all. The incorporation of the Canaanite element had weakened the recollection of a common descent, and at the same time had introduced into Israel a spirit of selfish isolation. The causes which had brought about the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites were now working among its conquerors, and it seemed as if the fate of the Canaanites was to be the fate of the Israelites also.

The sanctuary at Shiloh still existed, but it had lost much of its influence. It had become little more than the local sanctuary of Ephraim,[368] and as the power of Ephraim waned the influence of Shiloh declined as well. Elsewhere rival sanctuaries and rival forms of worship had arisen. The high-places, whereon the Canaanites had adored Baalim and Ashtaroth, still continued sacred, and though officially the Baal of Israel was Yahveh, the mass of the people worshipped the local Baal of the place in which they lived. Yahveh was scarcely remembered, even in name: His place was taken by the Baalim and Ashtaroth of Canaan. Manasseh went ‘a whoring’ after the golden image erected by Jerubbaal in Ophrah, or after the Canaanitish Baal-berith in Shechem; a rival priesthood to that of Shiloh served before the idols of Micah at Dan; and Jephthah sacrificed his daughter in accordance with Canaanitish beliefs. The Law of Moses was forgotten; each man did that which was right in his own eyes.

Modern criticism has asked how it is possible that all this could have been the case if a written Law actually existed. But the question forgets to take account of the circumstances of the time. A knowledge of reading and writing was confined to a particular class, that of the scribes; Israel was divided; intercommunication was difficult, and a Law which presupposed a camp of nomads continually under the eye of their legislator, was not adapted to the changed conditions in which the Israelites found themselves. Moreover, it must be remembered that the Israelites were for the most part a peasantry living in scattered villages; the inhabitants of the towns were Canaanites either by race or marriage. The one were too ignorant, the others too alien, to be affected by the Mosaic Code.

Nevertheless, the Code was preserved at Shiloh. Here there was an Aaronic priesthood, and the few notices that we possess of the worship carried on there show that it was in accordance with the Mosaic Law. Outside Shiloh, among those who still remained true to the faith of their fathers, the Law was remembered and presumably observed. Of this the Song of Deborah is a witness. The God of Israel, in whose name Barak and Deborah went forth against the heathen, is the Yahveh of the Pentateuch, not the Baal of Canaan. The history of Israel in the age of the Judges is, religiously as well as politically, the history of degeneracy, not of development.

In fact, religion and politics cannot be separated one from the other in the history of the ancient East, least of all in the history of the Hebrews. The one presupposes the other, and the political decay of the nation is a sure sign of its religious retrogression. The same causes which broke up its political unity broke up its religious unity as well. The knowledge and worship of Yahveh lingered in Ephraim, because in Ephraim alone the old ideal and spirit of Israel continued to survive. Ephraim was, as it were, the heart and core of Israel; it had led the attack upon Palestine, and its blood was purer than that of the other tribes. It remained more genuinely Israelite, with less admixture of foreign blood.

After Joshua and Othniel the history of most of the Judges is connected with that of Ephraim. Ehud is a Benjamite—the Ephraimitic ‘Southerner’; Shamgar is referred to in the Song of Deborah;[369] Deborah herself dwelt near ‘Beth-el in Mount Ephraim’; between Ephraim and Jerubbaal, who reigned on the Ephraimitic frontier, there was smothered hostility, which burst into open war in the case of Jephthah; Tola was buried in ‘Shamir in Mount Ephraim’; Abdon was an Ephraimite; while Ibzan and Elon came from adjoining tribes. Jair the Manassite, and Samson from ‘the camp of Dan,’ are the sole exceptions to the rule. What else can this mean except that such annals as survived the stormy age of the Judges were preserved amid the fastnesses of Mount Ephraim? The scribes of early Israel were not confined to Zebulon, and as in Babylonia or Egypt, so also in Palestine, the temple was the seat of the library. In the sanctuary at Shiloh the written records of the country would have found a safe harbourage along with the tables of the Law and the other monuments of the Mosaic age.[370]

The lifetime of Samuel separated the age of the Judges from that of the Kings. It marked the transition from a period of anarchy and disunion to one of order and organised unity under a single head. But never had the fortunes of Israel seemed so desperate. Disunited, with its former leader, Ephraim, disabled and half-exterminated through civil war, it had become the prey of a foreign enemy. The Philistines were no longer content with raiding expeditions. They now occupied the districts they overran, and built forts to secure the passes that led into the very heart of the Israelitish territory.[371] Their supremacy extended from one end of Palestine to another, and so gave a name to the country which it never afterwards lost. The tribes were reduced to a condition of serfdom; they ceased to be free men who could go forth with arms in their hands to fight their foes; and were compelled, as in the subsequent days of Chaldæan domination, to confine themselves to tilling the soil. The wandering smiths, the Kenite gypsies, were driven from the land; the Israelite was deprived of all warlike weapons, and was forced to go to the nearest Philistine post if he wished merely to sharpen his implements of agriculture. The sons of Jacob had almost ceased to be a nation.

It was while Samuel was still young that the chief Philistine victories were gained, and as he grew older the Philistine yoke became heavier and more severe. In the general wreck, his was the one prominent figure in Israel. To him the people looked for counsel and help, and saw in him a prophet of Yahveh. But Samuel was a man of peace, not of war. He could not lead his people to battle, or check the rising tide of Philistine success. Other men were wanted for the work, and these were not forthcoming. Perhaps a time came when Samuel himself was unwilling they should be found, and that the authority he had possessed should pass to another. Such, at least, is the impression we derive from his opposition to the demand of the people that they should have a king.

Samuel possessed, moreover, something more than personal influence. He was the last representative of the ancient sanctuary at Shiloh. He had been dedicated to it even before he was born; he had grown up in it among the last descendants of the earlier high-priests; he had seen the ark taken from it to fall into the hands of the Philistines; he had also witnessed, probably, the destruction of the temple itself. All the older traditions of Mosaic worship gathered about him; he was the living link in the chain which bound the religious past of Israel with its present. In his person the doctrines and practices which had been preserved at Shiloh were handed on to the newer age of the kings.

The Hebrew historian who put together the books of Samuel was no longer embarrassed, like the compiler of the book of Judges, by a want of materials. His embarrassment arose from a contrary cause. The documents before him relating to the history of the seer, to the rise of the monarchy and the adventures of David, were numerous, and the same event was sometimes recorded in different forms. He was called upon to harmonise and combine them together, and he doubtless experienced the same difficulty in doing so that the Assyriologists at present experience in reconciling the various accounts they have of the history of Babylonia in the thirteenth century B.C. That the latter can be reconciled, if only we knew a little more, we cannot doubt; but for the present the chronological inconsistencies seem irreconcilable. All that can be done is to set them side by side.

The compiler of the books of Samuel treated his materials in the same way. The result is that the picture of the Hebrew prophet which is presented to us is not always uniform in its colours. Sometimes he is a priest, sometimes the judge of all Israel, sometimes a mere local seer whose very name appears to be unknown to Saul.[372] Throughout the greater part of the narrative the Philistines are represented as the irresistible masters of the country; once, however, we hear that the cities they had captured were restored to Israel.[373] But it does not follow that because the colours of the picture are not uniform, a fuller knowledge of the history would not show that they are in harmony with one another. European critics are apt to forget that in the East, and more especially in the ancient East, conditions of life and society which are incompatible in Europe may exist side by side. John, the hermit of Lykopolis in Upper Egypt, was nevertheless on more than one occasion the arbiter of the destinies of the Roman Empire. And in the border warfare of Canaan cities passed backwards and forwards from one side to the other with a rapidity which it is difficult for the modern historian to realise.

Whether Samuel was a Levite or an Ephraimite by descent has been disputed. His father came from the village of Ramathaim-zophim in Mount Ephraim, and was descended from a certain Zuph, who is called ‘an Ephrathite.’[374] ‘Ephrathite’ signifies ‘a man of Ephraim’ (as in 1 Kings xi. 26). But it also signifies a native of Ephratah or Bethlehem in Judah (Ruth i. 2, 1 Sam. xvii. 12), and could therefore signify any other place of the same name. That there were other places of the name, the very name of Ephraim, ‘the two Ephras,’ is a witness,[375] and we might therefore see in the ‘Ephrathite’ merely a native of one of them. The Chronicler (1 Chron. vi. 26, 27, 33-38) definitely makes Samuel a Levite, and traces his genealogy back to Kohath. It is true that in the age of Samuel the priests, in spite of the Mosaic law, were not always of the family of Levi—the fact that David’s sons were ‘priests’ is a sufficient proof of this,[376]—but it seems hard to believe that such an infringement of the Levitical tradition would have been permitted at Shiloh. Nor is it likely that the genealogy given by the Chronicler was an invention. Samuel had been in a special manner the gift of Yahveh. His mother Hannah had borne no children to her husband Elkanah, and was accordingly exposed to the taunts of a second and more fortunate wife. Once each year did the whole family ‘go up’ to Shiloh, ‘to worship and to sacrifice unto the Lord of Hosts.’ On one of these occasions Hannah besought Yahveh with tears that He would grant her a son, promising to dedicate him to the service of the sanctuary should he be born. A Babylonian tablet, dated in the fifth year of Kambyses, records a similar dedication by a Babylonian mother of her three sons to the service of the sun-god at Sippara.[377] In this case, however, the sons did not leave their mother’s house until they were grown up, when they entered the temple, where part of their duty was to attend the daily service.

Hannah’s prayer was granted, and a son was born. The name which he received has no relation to the circumstances of his birth, in spite of the etymology suggested for it in 1 Sam. i. 20, so long as we look only to its Hebrew spelling. But if this spelling has been derived from a cuneiform original all becomes clear. Samû-il in Assyrian would mean ‘God hears,’ and there would thus be a fitting connection between the name and the story of the prophet’s birth. The fact is noteworthy, as it suggests that the history of Samuel was first written in the cuneiform characters of Babylonia; and that the cuneiform syllabary was used in Israel up to the time of the fall of Shiloh.[378]

As soon as the child was weaned he was brought to the sanctuary along with other gifts. These consisted of meal and wine, and three bullocks, one of which was slain at the time of the dedication. ‘The priest’ who presided over the services of the temple was old and infirm, and the management of the sanctuary was really in the hands of his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas. His own name was Eli. But he comes before us without introduction; we know nothing of his parentage and descent, and even the Chronicler found no record of his genealogy. That he was a lineal descendant of Aaron, however, admits of no doubt. This, indeed, is plainly stated not only in the prediction of the destruction that should overtake Eli’s house (1 Sam. iii. 14), but also in the opening words of the prophecy of ‘the man of God’ (1 Sam. ii. 27, 28).[379] The very name of Phinehas, given to Eli’s son, connects him with the line of Aaron and the long bondage of the Israelites in Egypt. Phinehas is not Hebrew, but the Egyptian Pi-Nehasi ‘the Negro,’ and could have no sense or meaning in the Israel of the age of Samuel except as an old family name.

Samuel was clad in the linen ephod, the sacred vestment and symbol of the priest, and ‘ministered unto Yahveh before Eli.’ One night, before ‘the lamp of God’ had gone out which burned before the ark of the covenant,[380] ‘the word of the Lord’ came to the boy in his sleep. Three times did it call to him, and then came the revelation of the punishment which Yahveh was about to bring on the house of the high priest.[381] His sons had been unfaithful to their office; not only had they lain ‘with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation,’ they had made men abhor the offering of the Lord, and the weak old man had restrained them not. The law had ordained that the fat of the sacrifice belonged to Yahveh, and that before it was burned upon the altar neither priest nor offerer could receive anything of the victim. Unless the law was complied with, the sacrifice was useless; Yahveh had been robbed of His portion, and no blessing could follow upon the offering. But the sons of Eli persistently set at naught the strict injunctions of the law. Before the fat was burned, their servant came and struck his three-pronged fork into the flesh that had been placed in the caldron, demanding that it should be given to him raw. God’s priests thus mutilated the sacrifices that were made to Him, and compelled His worshippers to defraud Him of His due. The Israelites began to shrink from bringing their yearly offerings to Shiloh, and the downward course of the religion of Israel was hastened by the cynical greed of its priests.[382]

Eli had already been warned by ‘a man of God’ of the coming vengeance of Yahveh. The prophet destined to play so important a part in the history of Israel now appears almost for the first time upon the scene. Deborah, indeed, had been a prophetess, and a prophet had denounced the idolatry of his countrymen during the period of Midianitish oppression; but the spirit of Yahveh, which, in later days, revealed itself in the form of prophecy, had hitherto rather inspired those upon whom it had fallen to become leaders in war and ‘judges’ of their people. Now it assumed a new shape. Out of the misery and confusion produced by the Philistine raids sprang the first great outburst of Hebrew prophecy. Those who still believed Israel was the chosen people of Yahveh, and that He alone was God over all the earth, were profoundly stirred by the triumph of the uncircumcised. There was an outbreak of that religious enthusiasm, degenerating at times into fanaticism, which has occurred again and again in the East. The ‘seer’ took the place of the ‘judge.’ The waking visions which he beheld revealed the future, and declared to him and the people the will of Yahveh. The arms of flesh had failed; all that was left was the ‘open vision,’ where the events of the future were pictured beforehand, and men learned how to escape disaster.

Around the seer there gathered bands of disciples, closely resembling the dervishes of to-day. They, too, received a part of the prophetic spirit, and at times, under the influence of strong emotions, passed, as it were, out of the body into an ecstatic state. Like the modern dervishes, however, they were completely under the control of the seer. At a word from him their ecstasy would cease, and they would once more become ordinary citizens of the world. But the spirit that moved in them was easily communicated to religious or excitable natures. The messengers sent by Saul to arrest David at Ramah were themselves arrested by the spirit of prophecy which permeated the home of Samuel, and when Saul himself followed in his wrath, he, too, was suddenly overcome by the same divine influence. ‘The spirit of God was upon him also; and he went on and prophesied, until he came to Naioth (the convent) in Ramah. And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that night.’

But this ecstatic excitement was not of the essence of Hebrew prophecy, and the latter soon divested itself of it. The dervish element, indeed, remained almost to the last; Elijah is a proof of it, and even Hosea and Isaiah still recur at times to symbolic action. But it became subordinate and purely symbolical, while the seer himself became a prophet. The conception that gathered round him was no longer that of a seer of visions, a revealer of the future, but of an interpreter of the will of God to man. Prediction there might be in his prophecies; but it was accidental only, and dependent on conditions which were clearly expressed. If the people repented of their sins, God’s anger would be turned away from them; if, on the contrary, they persisted in their evil ways, disaster and destruction would fall upon them. The message of Yahveh was conditional; it did not contain the revelation of an inevitable future.

In this respect the Hebrew prophet was unique. His name _nâbî_ is found in Babylonian, where it takes the form of _nabium_ or _nabu_, ‘the speaker.’ It was the name of the prophet-god of Babylon, Nebo, the interpreter of the will of Bel-Merodach, the supreme deity of the city. Nebo declared to mankind the wishes and commands of Merodach; he was, too, the patron of literature, the inventor, it may be, of writing itself. The name of the mountain whereon Moses died is a testimony that the worship of Nebo had been carried to the West in the old days of Babylonian dominion in Canaan, and we need not wonder that the word _nâbî_, with all that it implied, had been carried to the West at the same time. But it was not until after the age of Samuel that it made its way successfully into the Hebrew language. Samuel was still the _roeh_ or ‘Seer,’[383] though the Babylonian word in the form of a verb (_hithnabbê_) was already applied to his ecstatic companions who prophesied around him.[384] But the word answered to a need. As the Hebrew prophet ceased more and more to be a seer, it became necessary to find some new title for him which should express more accurately his true nature, and the word _nâbî_ was already at hand. The ‘seer,’ accordingly, fell into the background; the ‘prophet’ occupied his place.

We can trace the beginning of this great religious movement in the age of Samuel. Samuel has often been called ‘the founder of the prophetic schools,’ and, to a certain extent, this is true. But they were not schools in the sense of establishments where his contemporaries could be educated in the older literature of their country, and be trained to take upon them the prophetic office. Schools of this kind were to come later in the history of Israel. They did not even resemble the early Christian monasteries of Egypt, where bodies of monks lived together under a head, sometimes in a single building, sometimes in a collection of separate cells. The earlier disciples of Samuel were wandering bands of enthusiasts, over whose religious ecstasies he exercised an exciting and a controlling influence. They were men, to use a Biblical expression, who were ‘drunk with the spirit’ of God.[385]

The loss of the ark and the destruction of Shiloh must have quickened the movement which the Philistine troubles had begun. And it should be remembered that the ‘prophets’ among whom Saul was numbered were not all of them of the Dervish type. Among them must have been men like Samuel himself, the true predecessors of the prophets of later Hebrew history. In the generation which followed, we find men like Gad and Nathan, who have ceased to be seers and have become the preachers of Israel, the conscience-keepers of the king himself, and the chroniclers of his reign.[386] The literary traditions of Shiloh passed to them through the hands of Samuel.

The prophetic movement did something more than keep alive a belief in Yahveh as the God of Israel. It preserved at the same time the feeling of national unity. The ‘prophets’ who surrounded Samuel were drawn from all classes and from all parts of the Israelitish territory. That Samuel was ‘established to be a prophet of Yahveh’ was, we are told, known to ‘all Israel,’ ‘from Dan to Beer-sheba.’ That the statement is not too general is shown by the history of Saul. All Israel demanded a king, and it was over all the Israelitish tribes that he ruled. As he owed his power to Samuel, it is clear that the influence of Samuel also must have extended from one extremity of the Israelitish tribes to another. Wherever the Philistine supremacy allowed it, the authority of the seer was recognised and reverenced.[387]

But it follows from this that the veneration in which the temple at Shiloh had been held was equally widespread. Theoretically, at least, the Israelite acknowledged a central sanctuary, where the sons of Aaron served before Yahveh, and the prescriptions of the Mosaic law were observed. In practice, it is true, the old Canaanitish high places, with their local Baalim and Ashtaroth, had usurped the place of Shiloh; private chapels had been set up in the houses of individuals, and priests ministered in the sacred ephod before a graven image. But all this was the natural fruit of an ‘age of ignorance,’ and later generations recognised that such was the case. The purer worship of Yahveh was no ‘development’ out of an earlier polytheism; it was simply a return to an ideal, the memory of which was kept alive at Shiloh.

And yet a time came when it seemed as if Yahveh had forgotten the sanctuary wherein He had set His ‘name at the first.’ The punishment denounced upon the house of Eli was not slow in coming. Judah was already in Philistine hands, and the enemy were now attacking the Israelitish stronghold in Mount Ephraim. The Philistine camp was pitched at Aphek, not far from Ramah, the birthplace of Samuel.[388] The last relics of the Hebrew army were encamped opposite them in a spot subsequently named Eben-ezer, ‘the Stone of Help.’ But it proved no help to them on this occasion. The Israelites were defeated with a loss of about four thousand men, and in their despair ‘the elders’ advised that the ark of the covenant should be brought to the camp. Yahveh, it was believed, enthroned Himself above it between the wings of the cherubim, like the Babylonian Bel-Merodach, who on the feast of the New Year similarly enthroned himself above the ‘mercy-seat’ in his temple at Babylon.[389] He would therefore be actually among them, visibly, as it were, leading their troops to victory and blessing them with His presence. In the old days of the conquest of Canaan, the ark had been carried before the camp of Israel; the visible presence of ‘Yahveh of hosts’ had gone with it, and the foe had been scattered before Him like chaff before the wind.

The ark was accordingly fetched from its resting-place at Shiloh, and for the first time since the days of Moses and Joshua the safeguard of Israel was seen by the common eye. Despite the fears and reluctance of Eli[390] his two sons bore it on their shoulders to the Israelitish camp. Its arrival was greeted by a shout of joy which resounded across the valley to the camp of the foe. Thereby the Philistines knew that the God of the Hebrews had come in person to help his people against their enemies as he had helped them in old days against the Egyptians. But the old days were not to come again. The ark had been carried out of its resting-place by the command of the elders, not of Yahveh. Its sanctity had been profaned, the mystery that surrounded it rudely stripped away. It was only when it stood in its appointed place in the Holy of Holies that the glory of the Lord rested upon it, and Yahveh enthroned Himself between the wings of its golden cherubim. The tabernacle and the ark were inseparable like the casket and the treasure within it; either without the other was forsaken of the Lord.

The presence of the ark in the Israelitish camp availed nothing. The Israelites fought with desperation, but without a leader they were no match for the well-armed and well-trained Philistine troops. Their army was cut to pieces; it was said that thirty thousand of them were left dead on the field. Worst of all, the two sons of Eli were among the slain; the ark of Yahveh was captured by the heathen, and the way lay open to Shiloh.

A Benjamite fled from the slaughter to carry the evil tidings to the high priest. Eli was ninety-eight[391] years old; his eyes were blind, and he was sitting on a bench at the entrance to the temple, full of anxiety for the fate of the ark. The shock of the news was more than he could bear; when he heard that it had been taken by the Philistines he fell backwards, and his neck was broken. A single day had deprived Israel of its ark and of its priests.

Hardly was Eli dead when his daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was prematurely delivered of a child. He was born on an evil day, a day when the light of Israel seemed extinguished for ever. Throughout his life he bore a name which prevented the terrible circumstances of his birth from being forgotten. His mother called him I-chabod, ‘the glory is departed,’ ‘for the ark of God was taken.’[392]

I-chabod had an elder brother, Ahitub, born in happier times.[393] Through him the line of Shilonite priests was continued, and the high priesthood still remained in Eli’s house. It was Ahitub’s grandson, Abiathar, who, after being the faithful servant of David in his troubles, was banished and deprived of the priesthood on Solomon’s accession.[394] But Ahitub must still have been young when the Philistines gained the victory which laid all Palestine at their feet.

The destruction of the temple at Shiloh must have been one of the first results of the victory. The Israelites had no longer an army, and the Philistine conquerors could march in safety through the passes of Mount Ephraim. A fort was built by them to command the pass at Michmash, and the old sanctuary of Israel was levelled to the ground. No record of its destruction, indeed, was known to the compiler of the books of Samuel; it would have been strange, if in that hour of distress and national disaster, when the storehouse of Hebrew literature was itself destroyed, a chronicler should have been found to describe the event. But the memory of it was never forgotten, and it is alluded to both by the prophet Jeremiah and by the Psalmist (Jer. vii. 12, xxvi. 6; Ps. lxxviii. 60).

Such of the priests of Shiloh as survived the catastrophe were scattered through Israel. In the time of Saul we find eighty-five of them at Nob, which is accordingly called ‘the city of the priests.’ Samuel himself fled to the home of his fathers at Ramah. There as a seer and prophet, as the representative of the fallen sanctuary of Israel, and as one of the few literary men of the age, he became the centre of all that was left of patriotism and national feeling in Israel. Gradually his influence grew. Ahitub, the grandson of Eli, was young like himself, and the destruction of Shiloh had deprived him of such authority as his service before the ark of the covenant would have conferred.

The ark itself was once more within the confines of Israel. It had been carried to Ashdod, and there placed in triumph in the temple of Dagon. But the triumph was short-lived. In the night, the image of Dagon twice fell from its pedestal and lay on its face before the ark of the mightier God. On the second occasion, it was broken in pieces by its fall; when the priests entered the sanctuary in the morning, they found the head and hands of their god rolled upon the threshold. ‘Therefore,’ we are told, ‘neither the priests of Dagon nor any that come into Dagon’s house tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this day.’[395]

Dagon has been supposed to have had the shape partly of a man, partly of a fish. But the supposition has arisen from a false etymology of the name, which connects it with the Hebrew _dâg_, ‘a fish.’ We now know from the cuneiform inscriptions that Dagon was really one of the primitive deities of Babylonia adored there in days when as yet the Semite had not become master of the land. Dagon was coupled with Anu, the god of the sky, and when the name and worship of Anu were carried to the West, the name and worship of Dagon were carried there too. Sargon ‘inscribed the laws’ of Harran ‘according to the wish of the gods Anu and Dagon,’ and a Phœnician seal in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford has upon it the name of Baal-Dagon as well as representations of an ear of corn, a winged solar disk, a gazelle, and several stars. The ear of corn symbolises the fact that among the Phœnicians Dagon, the brother of El and Beth-el, was the god of agriculture and the inventor of bread-corn and the plough.[396] But this was because in the language of Canaan _dagan_ signified ‘corn.’ In passing to the West the god thus assumed new attributes, and became an agricultural deity who watched over the growing crops.[397]

The power of the God of Israel was not shown only in the humiliation of the Philistine god. The plague broke out in Ashdod, accompanied by its usual symptom, hæmorrhoidal swellings. The inhabitants of the city were not slow in recognising in it the wrathful hand of Yahveh, and the ark was accordingly sent to their neighbours in Gath. But here, too, the plague followed it, and Ekron, to which it was sent next, fared no better. For seven months the sacred palladium of Israel remained in the hands of its captors. Then ‘the priests and the diviners’ advised that it should be sent back to the people of Yahveh along with offerings to mitigate the anger of the offended God. Five mice and five hæmorrhoids of gold were made and placed in a coffer by the side of the ark. They represented the five Philistine cities, and the mice were symbols of the wrathful Yahveh, the God of hosts and of battle, who had wreaked his vengeance on the worshippers of the peaceful god of agriculture. The mice which devoured the corn were the natural foes of Dagon.

The ark and the coffer were placed on a cart, and two milch-kine were yoked to draw it. A doubt still lingered in the minds of the Philistines whether the God who had allowed his people to be conquered and his dwelling-place to be captured could really, after all, have been the author of the plague, and they watched, therefore, to see whether the kine took the road towards Israelitish territory or back to their own young. But all doubt vanished when the kine marched straight eastward towards Beth-shemesh, lowing as they went. The villagers were in the fields reaping when they saw the cart coming towards them, laden with its precious freight. The kine stood still at last by the side of a great stone—the stone of Abel ‘in the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite.’ Then the Levites came and took the ark and the offerings from the cart and laid them on the stone, which thus became a sanctuary and an altar. The wood of the cart was broken into firewood, and the kine were repaid for the gift they had brought by being sacrificed to the Lord.

But the plague followed the ark even upon Israelitish soil. The men of Beth-shemesh believed that it was because they had looked into the sacred shrine of Yahveh, to see, possibly, whether its original contents were still within it, and in their terror they begged the inhabitants of Kirjath-jearim to come and carry it away. To Kirjath-jearim accordingly it was removed and placed in the house of Abinadab, whose son Eleazar was consecrated to look after it. That it was not carried to Shiloh is a sign that the destruction of Shiloh had already taken place.

With the removal of the ark to Kirjath-jearim darkness falls on the history of Israel. There was little for the patriotic historian to record. The people were in servitude to the Philistines, the national sanctuary had been destroyed, the ark itself was hidden away in a private house. When the curtain is again lifted, it is to chronicle a local success over the Philistine foe. Samuel is at Mizpeh, ‘the watch-tower,’ which must have adjoined Ramah, if indeed it was not the name of one of its two quarters.[398] Here was the last refuge of the few Israelites who still refused to acknowledge the Philistine rule, and the surrounding mountains afforded a home and shelter to the bands of outlaws who still carried on a guerilla warfare with the foreigner. One of the incidents of this warfare was long remembered. While Samuel was sacrificing a lamb as a burnt-offering to Yahveh, the Philistines fell upon the assembled people. But a sudden thunderstorm dismayed the assailants, who fled down the valley towards Beth-car pursued by the inhabitants of Mizpeh. It was in memory of the victory that Eben-ezer, ‘the stone of help,’ was set up by the seer between Mizpeh and Shen.[399]

It would seem that no further attack was made upon Mizpeh and its neighbourhood during the lifetime of Samuel. At least such appears to be the conclusion we must draw from the generalising and optimistic language of the Hebrew historian.[400] For a time, indeed, the whole district was freed from the presence of the foreigner. The villages eastward of Ekron and Gath ceased to pay tribute to the conqueror, though their independence could not have lasted long.[401] Samuel’s ‘circuit’ did not extend beyond Mizpeh, Gilgal and Beth-el, and his sons judged cases in Beer-sheba.

Ahitub, the high-priest, was doubtless at Nob with the rest of the Levites of Shiloh, almost within sight of Mizpeh. What had been saved out of the wreck of the temple at Shiloh must have been there with him. We know that at Nob the sword of Goliath was subsequently laid up before Yahveh, and at Nob too was probably preserved the brazen serpent that had been set up by Moses in the wilderness.[402] According to the Chronicler,[403] however, the tabernacle and the brazen altar which had been made by Bezaleel were at Gibeon; how this came to be the case he does not say.[404] At any rate, if the brazen serpent were preserved, there is no reason why other things should not have been preserved as well. And the books of the Law would have been among the first objects to be carried with them by the fugitive priests. We are told that when the ark was brought into the temple of Solomon it still contained the tables of stone which had been placed in it by Moses (1 Kings viii. 9); if these had been removed from it when it was taken to the Israelitish camp, they too must have formed part of the temple furniture which was saved by the priests.

Here, therefore, in a small district of the tribe of Benjamin, a portion of which was inhabited by the old Gibeonite natives of the land, all that remained of Israelitish independence, whether religious or political, found its last refuge. Here the national spirit of Israel still lingered among the priests and Levites who had fled from Shiloh, or who lived in the mountains of Ephraim. It is not without significance that here, too, was the home of the Gibeonite serfs of the sanctuary;[405] priests, Levites, and Nethinim were gathered together, as it were, in one spot. Though the temple had fallen, the Mosaic Law and ritual were enshrined in the hearts of those who had served in it.

The destruction of Shiloh had restored to Beth-el its old pre-Israelitish renown. Once more its high-place became thronged with worshippers, and those who had formerly carried their gifts and sacrifices to Yahveh at Shiloh, now brought them instead ‘to God at Beth-el.’[406] At Beth-el, accordingly, once each year Samuel offered sacrifice and adjudged the cases that were brought before him, or predicted the future to those who consulted him as a seer. It was at a similar gathering at Mizpeh that the Israelites had been attacked by the Philistines, and that the victory of Eben-ezer had been gained.

But the results of the victory were local and momentary, and the condition of the Israelites had become intolerable. Samuel, moreover, was growing old; his sons Joel and Abiah were corrupt,[407] and his own influence was that of the seer rather than that of the leader in war or the administrator in peace. The only hope for Israel lay in its finding a chieftain who could mould its shattered fragments into unity, could organise its forces, and break the Philistine yoke. A new Jerubbaal or Jephthah was required, but one who would lead to victory not a few only of the tribes, but the whole of Israel.

The people demanded a king. Their instinct was right; in no other way could the Israelitish nation be saved. Democracy had been tried, and had failed: the end of the era of the Judges was internal anarchy and decay, the destruction of the central sanctuary, and servitude to the foreigner. Naturally Samuel was reluctant to hand such powers as he still possessed to another. His sons, doubtless, were more reluctant still. Moreover, he had been brought up in the school of the past. His boyhood had been spent at Shiloh under the influence of ideas which saw in a theocracy the divinely-appointed government of Israel.[408] At first he resisted the demand of the people. But it was in vain that he protested against their rejection of Yahveh and himself, or pointed out to them that the establishment of a kingdom meant the loss of their personal independence. The logic of events was too strong for the seer, and he was compelled to yield. The time had come when the choice lay between a king or national extinction, and a king accordingly had to be found.

Samuel yielded apparently with a good grace. In such a matter the word of the chief seer and prophet of Israel was law, and he knew that the selection was in his own hands. And he made it wisely and patriotically. Saul, the son of Kish, the first king of united Israel, justified his election to the crown. He saved Israel from destruction, and for a time succeeded in rolling back the wave of Philistine domination. His military capacities were unquestionable, as well as his courage and devotion to his people.[409]

But there was another side to his character, which perhaps commended itself to Samuel quite as much as his military abilities. A vein of deep religious fervour ran through his whole nature, which at times degenerated into the gloomy despondency of the fanatic. Rightly handled, he was capable of high religious enthusiasm, and of following his religious guide with the simplicity of a child. But he could not brook opposition; and, like all men of strong emotions, his hate was as intense as his love. He was born to be the leader of his countrymen, whether as a king or as a dervish the future had to decide.

Naturally he was a Benjamite, from that little corner of Palestine which still remained true to the best traditions of Israel. At first it seemed as if he was going to be the obedient disciple of Samuel, a crowned addition to the group of dervish-like prophets who surrounded the seer. More than one account of his accession to the throne of Israel has been handed down, and it is not always easy to reconcile them. One thing, however, is clear: Saul did not seek election, and it came upon him as a surprise.

But the tallness of his stature had marked him out from among his companions; it was the outward token of superiority which Yahveh had set upon him. His first meeting with Samuel was accidental. He had been sent by his father[410] to seek some asses that had strayed or been stolen, and, while vainly engaged on his quest, was advised by his slave to consult a seer who lived in the neighbouring town. The town proved to be Ramah, and the seer to be Samuel, who was that day offering a solemn sacrifice on the high place.[411] Samuel invited him to the feast which followed the sacrifice, and assigned to him the chiefest position among his guests; then before his departure he secretly anointed his head with oil, and declared that he was chosen to be ‘captain over Yahveh’s inheritance.’ Next the seer told him where the asses were that he sought, and bid him make his way to the sacred circle of stones at Gilgal, and there remain seven days until the prophet himself should come.

Hardly had Saul quitted the presence of Samuel than he was met by ‘a company of prophets’ coming down with music and wild cries from the high-place of Gibeah.[412] Saul had not yet recovered from the excitement of the strange and unexpected scene in which he had just been an actor, and was in no mood to resist the infection of the religious ecstasy which now seized upon him. He, too, like the spectators at a modern _zíkr_ in the East, joined the band of enthusiasts, and added his voice to theirs. It was not until he reached the high-place that his outburst of religious frenzy had spent itself.

Such is one of the versions of the history of the foundation of the Israelitish monarchy. Saul is anointed secretly by Samuel, and at once enrols himself in one of the ‘prophesying’ bands of which Samuel was the spiritual director. According to another version, his election as king took place in public at a great assembly convened by Samuel at Mizpeh. Here the lot fell upon Saul, who had hidden himself ‘among the stuff,’ and Samuel thereupon presented him to the people, who shouted ‘Long live the king!’ Then the seer ‘wrote in a book’ such regulations regarding the election and duties of a. king as we find in the book of Deuteronomy (xvii. 14-20), ‘and laid it up before the Lord.’ As soon as the assembly was dismissed Saul returned ‘to his house at Gibeah.’[413]

His election, however, was not accepted unanimously, consecrated though it had been by Yahveh. There were some who failed to see in the tall enthusiast anything more than the son of a yeoman at Gibeah. But a sufficient number of his own tribesmen were ready to gather around him as soon as he should summon them to battle. And the occasion was not long in coming. Jabesh-Gilead, the old ally of Benjamin, was beleaguered by Nahash, the Ammonite king. The city was too weak to resist, and its inhabitants, offered to surrender. But with Semitic ferocity Nahash answered that he would spare their lives only on condition that the right eye of each should be torn out. Seven days were granted them in which to determine whether they should accept his terms or fight to the death, and during the period of respite the elders of the city sent to Benjamin to beg for help. Saul was ploughing when the messengers arrived, and, fired with indignation, he cut his oxen into pieces, which he sent throughout Israel with the words: ‘Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen.’[414] The summons still ran in the name of the old seer.

Men came in from all sides, and Saul found himself at the head of a small army. It is said that when he numbered his troops at Bezek, ‘the children of Israel were three hundred thousand, and the men of Judah thirty thousand.’ Such may have been the full fighting force of Israel before Saul’s reign was ended; it cannot have represented the number of those who were able to flock to his standard during the few days that still remained for the relief of Jabesh. As elsewhere in the Old Testament, the ciphers are largely exaggerated. Indeed when we consider the size of the Assyrian army, as recorded in the inscriptions, at a time when it was the most formidable engine of destruction in Western Asia, it becomes clear that the number of fighting men in the Hebrew army can never have been very great. The three hundred and thirty thousand men in Saul’s army are but an instance of that Oriental exaggeration of numbers and inability to realise what they actually mean, which is as common in the East to-day as it was in the age of Samuel.[415]

Jabesh was rescued, and the Ammonites were scattered in flight. The victory was a proof of Saul’s military capacity, and justified his choice as king. The news of it rang from one end of Israel to the other, and the victorious soldiers demanded the death of those who had questioned their leader’s right to reign. But Saul refused the demand; no bloodshed was to mar the glory of the day; from henceforth all true Israelites were to be united in recognising their king. Yahveh had chosen him at Mizpeh; it was now needful that he should go to the sacred enclosure of Gilgal, the first camping-ground of the Israelites in Canaan, and there be solemnly acclaimed by the assembled multitude. As Joshua the Ephraimite had started from Gilgal to conquer Canaan, so Saul the Benjamite, the new ‘captain of the Lord’s inheritance,’ set forth also from Gilgal to restore its fallen fortunes.

A year had to pass before Saul felt himself strong enough to attack the Philistine garrisons. By that time he had collected three thousand Israelites about him, all of them prepared to fight and willing to obey their leader. But they were armed only with implements of agriculture, or such other makeshifts for weapons as they could find. The Philistines had forbidden the wandering blacksmiths to enter Israelitish territory, and Saul and his son Jonathan, we are told, alone possessed sword and spear. Out of the three thousand, one thousand were with Jonathan at Gibeah; the rest were with Saul watching the road that led over the mountains from Michmash to Beth-el. There was a Philistine fort on the hill above Gibeah, in the very heart of Saul’s own country; another fort commanded the pass of Michmash and the approaches to Ephraim.

The Philistines seemed to have made a rising among the Israelites impossible. Their forts and garrisons commanded the roads, like the French garrisons in Algeria, and the conquered population was forbidden the use of arms. Saul, nominally the king of Israel, was in reality merely the chief of a band of outlaws, desperately holding their own in the fastnesses of the mountains, and protected by the sympathy of the priests and the peasantry. The victory over Nahash had confirmed Saul’s title to lead them among his own countrymen; it had done nothing towards releasing them from the domination of the Philistines.