Chapter VI: The Establishment of the Monarchy (2)

Now, however, Jonathan ventured to assail the Philistine outpost at Gibeah. The attack was successful; the fortress was taken and its defenders put to the sword.[416] It was open revolt against the Philistine supremacy, and the news of it quickly spread. Saul sent messengers throughout Israel, claiming the success for himself and the monarchy, and formed a camp at Gilgal. Meanwhile the Philistine army was on the march to suppress the revolt. The Hebrew chronicler describes it as consisting of ‘thirty thousand chariots and six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the seashore for multitude,’[417] and it pitched its camp at Michmash, a little to the north of Gibeah. Here it cut Saul off from all communication with the north, and threatened his rear. He therefore left Gilgal and joined his son at Gibeah. Only six hundred men remained with him; the rest had fled at the approach of the enemy, who sent out three bands of raiders from their camp, one of which marched in a south-eastward direction towards the Dead Sea, while the other two turned, the one to the north-west, and the other to the north-east.

The mountainous district from which Saul drew his forces was panic-stricken. The peasantry fled from their devastated fields, and the whole country was given up to fire and sword. Pure-blooded Israelites and Hebrews of mixed descent were united in the common disaster. The one hid themselves in the caves and forests, even in cisterns and grain-pits, while the others took refuge in Gad and Gilead, on the eastern side of the Jordan.[418]

It was again Jonathan who brought deliverance to Israel. Between the Israelites at Gibeah, and the Philistines at Michmash, lay a deep gorge, usually identified with the Wadi Suweinît.[419] On either side rose a precipitous crag of rock which effectually cut off the hostile forces one from the other. Across this gorge Jonathan determined to make his way, accompanied only by his armour-bearer, and trusting in the help of Yahveh of Israel. In broad daylight the two heroes climbed the opposite cliff, in the face of the Philistines, who believed they were deserters from the Israelitish camp. But once arrived in the Philistine stronghold, they fell suddenly on its unprepared defenders and slew about twenty of them ‘within as it were half a furrow of an acre of land.’ The Hebrew camp followers of the Philistines thereupon turned upon their companions, and the camp of the Philistines became a scene of confusion and dismay. Jonathan had said nothing to his father of his intended exploit, but Saul soon observed that fighting was going on in the enemy’s camp.

Among the Israelitish fugitives with Saul was the high-priest Ahimelech,[420] the great-grandson of Eli, who had joined the king with the sacred ephod. The ark, too, had been carried for safety into the Israelitish camp, and was once more accompanying the army of Israel against its foes. When, therefore, Saul had numbered his men and found that Jonathan was absent, he called for the priest and bade him inquire of Yahveh whether they should go to his help or not. But before the question could be answered the tumult on the opposite side of the valley made hesitation impossible. It was clear that the moment had come for striking a blow at the supremacy of the foreigner. The gorge accordingly was quickly traversed, and the Israelitish king with his six hundred followers threw himself on the enemy’s rear. The Philistines resisted no longer. Attacked in front by the peasants who had followed them, and in the rear by the soldiers of the king, they fled precipitately up the pass to Beth-el.[421] The victory was complete, and the Philistine forces would have been annihilated had Saul’s religious convictions been less fervent. But when the instinct of the general overcame the zealot, and he had stayed the priest in the very act of consulting Yahveh, he salved his conscience by a vow. None should eat or drink until he had overthrown his enemies, and whoever broke the royal vow should be devoted to death.

The vow was rash and untimely, but it was registered in heaven. The Philistines were pursued as far as Aijalon. The Israelites were too weak from want of food to follow them further. Jonathan alone, who had not been in the Israelitish camp when the vow was made, ate a little honey which he saw dropping from a tree. His companions looked at it with longing eyes, but dared not follow his example. All the more fiercely, therefore, did they fall upon the spoil which they afterwards found in the Philistine camp. The sheep and oxen and calves were slaughtered as they stood upon the ground, ‘and the people did eat them with the blood.’ The news of this violation of one of the primary laws of Israelitish religion struck Saul with horror. He caused a great stone to be rolled towards him, and on this improvised altar the animals were slain. It was ‘the first altar,’ we are told, that Saul ‘built unto the Lord.’

But worse was yet to come. Saul proposed to pursue the Philistines in the night, and accordingly the oracle of Yahveh was again appealed to. No answer, however, was returned to the questioners. Neither priest nor ephod availed anything, and it became clear that sin had been committed in Israel. When the lots were cast, they fell upon Jonathan, who then confessed that he had, in ignorance of his father’s vow, eaten a little honey. The religious fanatic was stronger in Saul than the father, and he pronounced sentence that Jonathan must die. Jonathan, in fact, was the firstborn whose sacrifice was demanded by Yahveh as the price of the victory. Fortunately the religious convictions of the Hebrew soldiers were less intense than those of their king. It was Jonathan to whom the victory was due, and in the hour of his triumph they refused to allow him to die. Saul yielded, perhaps willingly; but the Philistines were permitted to disperse to their own homes.[422]

Was the sacrifice of Jonathan urged by Ahimelech and the priests? They at any rate did not interfere to prevent it, and the lots were cast under their supervision. What is certain is that from this time forward there was an increasing estrangement between Saul and the priesthood, which ended in the secret anointing of David as king of Israel, and in the massacre of the priests at Nob. We hear no more of Ahimelech and the ark in the camp of Saul.

Samuel, the aged and venerated representative of the Shilonite priesthood, had much to do with this growing estrangement. From the first he had looked upon Saul as a rival who had robbed him of his former power. Even after Saul had proved his fitness to rule by the rescue of Jabesh, and had been publicly acclaimed king by the people at Gilgal, he could not conceal his mortification and hostility. Were not he and his sons still with them? he asked the assembled Israelites; why then had they added this ‘wickedness’ unto ‘all their sins,’ to demand a king? In the thunder which rolled overhead he bade them recognise the anger of Yahveh at their thus rejecting His representative, and he ended with the threat that both they and their king should be ‘consumed.’[423]

Samuel was not long in embodying his hostility in deeds. According to one of the authorities used by the compiler of the books of Samuel, seven days only had elapsed after Saul’s election when the seer upbraided him in the presence of his army and told him that Yahveh had chosen another king in his place.[424] Here, however, two occurrences have been confused together—Saul’s confirmation as king by the people at Gilgal, and his subsequent encampment at the same place in the second year of his reign. By this time the breach had grown and widened between the old Judge and the new ‘Captain’ of Israel. Saul, in spite of his religious convictions and excitability, had not shown himself the obedient disciple and tool of Samuel that might have been expected; he proved to have a strong and violent will of his own, which he was fully ready to exercise when not under the influence of religious excitement. It was only temporarily that Saul was ‘among the prophets.’ Nor did he possess that tact and pliability which would have enabled David under the same circumstances to avoid an open quarrel with the aged seer. Saul was too earnest, too convinced that what he believed was the truth, to understand a compromise, much less a course of duplicity.

That the incident at Gilgal is historical, there can be no doubt. It is only the time of its occurrence that is misplaced. It belonged to those days of danger and difficulty when the Philistines seemed to have triumphed finally, and the hope of Israel lay in the six hundred desperate men who still followed Saul. Saul had waited vainly for the coming of Samuel, and at length, tired of waiting, had offered the burnt-offering for the safety and success of the army which Samuel had agreed to present. Hardly had it been offered when the seer appeared. Then it was that the king of Israel was told that he had been rejected by the Lord, and that another had been selected in his place. The occasion was indeed well chosen; the Israelites were already sufficiently discouraged and inclined to believe that their king had been even less successful against the Philistines than Samuel and his sons. Under the rule of Samuel, at all events, the territory of Benjamin had not been devastated, and its inhabitants compelled to hide themselves in the holes of the earth.

Samuel returned from Gilgal to ‘Gibeah of Benjamin.’ The victory at Michmash, which disappointed his predictions,[425] changed the aspect of affairs, and Saul’s throne seemed now to be firmly established. Once more, however, Samuel made an effort to shake it, and it was again at Gilgal that the event took place. Saul’s power rested on his soldiery, and the surest way, therefore, of striking at it was through the soldiery in the camp of Gilgal.

It was after an expedition against the Amalekites. The Israelites had marched towards El-Arîsh and smitten the Bedâwin of the desert ‘from Havilah’ in Northern Arabia to the great Wall of Egypt.[426] They had brought back with them a vast amount of spoil, as well as Agag, the Bedâwin chief, ‘everything that was vile and refuse,’ including the mass of the people, having been ‘destroyed utterly.’ But this was not enough. The Amalekites were to be treated as the Canaanites had been by Joshua; they and all that belonged to them had been laid under the ban and condemned to extermination.[427] Samuel, therefore, went in haste to the Israelitish camp, and there charged Saul with disobedience to the commands of Yahveh. Saul’s plea that the cattle and herds had been saved by ‘the people’ in order that they might be sacrificed to the Lord, was not accepted, and the fierce old seer himself ‘hewed Agag in pieces before Yahveh.’ At the same time, he told the Israelitish king that the kingdom had been rent from him and given to a neighbour that was better than he. It was the last time that the king and the seer met. Samuel went back to his home at Ramah and Saul returned to Gibeah. Between Saul and the priesthood there was open war.

The attack upon the Amalekites implies that the Philistines had for a time ceased to be formidable. The extract from the state chronicles given in 1 Sam. xiv. 47-52 makes it follow the other wars of Saul. Among these wars we hear of one against Moab, of another against Edom (or rather Geshur), and of a third against ‘the kings of Zobah.’[428] The Aramæans of Zobah, called Tsubitê in the Assyrian texts, and placed northward of the Haurân, were beginning to be powerful, and as we learn from the history of David, were about to establish a kingdom under Hadadezer which extended to the Euphrates and included Damascus. But at present they were still governed by more than one chief.[429]

The campaign against Zobah makes it clear that Saul’s authority was acknowledged in Gilead as well as on the western side of the Jordan. It is not surprising, therefore, that after his death his son should have resided there, well out of the reach of the Philistines, or that Eshbaal’s kingdom should have comprised all the northern tribes. Little by little, in spite of the opposition of Samuel, Saul worked his way to general acknowledgment and power. The Israelites, for the first time, were welded into a homogeneous state, and their enemies were kept at bay. The organisation of the kingdom went hand in hand with the military successes of its king. Israel at last was not only feared abroad, but at peace and unity within.

With all this, Saul preserved the old simplicity of his life and manners. He never yielded to the usual temptations of the Oriental despot; he had no harîm like David or Solomon, no palaces, no gardens, no trains of cooks and idle servants.[430] The people were not taxed to supply him with luxuries, nor dragged from their homes for his buildings and wars. In some of these royal pleasures doubtless he could not indulge: the conditions under which he reigned prevented it. But it was only by his own free choice that he remained faithful to one wife—Ahinoam, the daughter of Ahimaaz,—and that he held court at Gibeah under the shade of a tamarisk instead of a palace, with a spear in his hand in place of a sceptre.[431]

Saul was a born soldier, and he had a soldier’s eye for detecting those who could best serve him in war. He added to his bodyguard all who were distinguished by strength or courage, and the border warfare with the Philistines kept them in constant employment. Among the young recruits was David, the youngest of the eight sons of Jesse, a Jew of Beth-lehem. Two different accounts have been preserved of the way in which David was first introduced to the king. It is difficult to reconcile them; the compiler of the books of Samuel was content to set them side by side without attempting to do so, while the Septuagint translators have cut the Gordian knot by omitting large portions of one of them. The difficulty is increased by the fact that the second account makes David the conqueror of Goliath of Gath, who elsewhere (2 Sam. xxi. 19) is said to have been slain during David’s reign by El-hanan the Beth-lehemite.[432]

According to this second story, the Philistines had invaded Judah and pitched their camp on a mountain-slope between Socoh and Azekah. Saul was encamped on the hill opposite, and between the two armies was the valley of Elah at the bottom of which was the dry bed of a mountain stream. The three elder brothers of David were in the Hebrew army, David himself having been left at home to look after his father’s sheep. From time to time, however, he was sent with loaves of home-made bread to his brothers and a present of milk-cheeses to ‘the captain of their thousand.’ On one of these occasions a Philistine giant, Goliath by name, came forth from the camp of the enemy to challenge the Israelites to single combat. He had done so day by day, but none of Saul’s followers had ventured to accept the challenge. For Goliath of Gath was a descendant of the ancient Anakim, and of gigantic stature. His height, it was said, was six cubits and a span, or nearly ten feet,[433] and the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, while its head weighed six hundred shekels of iron. Like the Greeks, he wore not only a bronze helmet and coat of mail, but also greaves on his legs; a bronze shield was hung between his shoulders and a broad-sword at his side.

David offered to accept the challenge of the uncircumcised giant, and in spite of his brothers’ ridicule his words were repeated to Saul. As a shepherd he had already proved his strength and daring by slaying both a lion and a bear; he was now ready to face the Philistine and redeem the honour of Israel. At first the Israelitish king insisted that he should be armed, and he was accordingly equipped in the usual Hebrew fashion with helmet, cuirass, and sword. But the young shepherd felt restricted and awkward in these unaccustomed accoutrements; nor did he know how to manage the sword. He therefore stripped them from him, and boldly approached the Philistine champion with his shepherd’s sling and five ‘smooth stones.’ These he knew how to wield, and with such effect that one of the stones penetrated the forehead of the Philistine, who fell dead to the ground. Then his conqueror dissevered his head with his own sword, while the Israelites shouted and pursued the panic-stricken enemy to the gates of Ekron.[434] Saul had inquired in vain through Abner, the commander-in-chief of the army, whose son the young champion of Israel was; and it was not until David had presented himself before the king, with the head of the Philistine in his hand, that he learned from his own lips that he was the son of his ‘servant Jesse the Beth-lehemite.’

David’s fortune was made; Saul at once incorporated him in his bodyguard, and a warm friendship began between him and Jonathan, a friendship that ceased only with Jonathan’s death. David was fresh and handsome, with a charm of manner and a ready tact which won the hearts of those he was with. It was not long, therefore, before he became first the favourite, then the general, and eventually the son-in-law of the Israelitish king.

The other account of David’s introduction to Saul brings Samuel once more upon the stage. The ‘neighbour’ better than Saul proves to be David, whom Samuel is accordingly sent to Beth-lehem to anoint secretly. He goes there under the pretence of wishing to offer a sacrifice, to which he invites Jesse and his sons. The elders of the city receive him with fear and trembling, and ask if he has come in peace. He is known to be the enemy of the king, and his arrival in a city of Judah bodes nothing good. The sons of Jesse are passed in review before him; none of them, however, is approved, and the seer asks if there is still no other. Thereupon Jesse tells him that there is yet the youngest, who is in the fields tending the sheep. Samuel bids him be sent for, and in spite of his terror of Saul and the secrecy of his mission, anoints the youth ‘in the midst of his brethren.’ Then the spirit of Yahveh comes upon David, and an evil spirit from Yahveh takes possession of Saul. Saul still reigns, indeed, but the mystic power conferred by the consecration, which had given him the right to do so, has henceforth passed to another.

The ‘evil spirit’ shows itself in fits of moody depression, which at times become insanity. Saul’s mind, always excitable, loses its balance; he is oppressed by a settled melancholy, which is now and again broken by outbursts of ungovernable rage. His servants determine that the evil spirit can be charmed away only by music, and one of them recommends David, the Beth-lehemite shepherd, who is not only a valiant ‘man of war,’ but also a skilful player upon the harp. David is hereupon summoned to the court, where his harping cures the king, who makes him his armour-bearer.

Such are the two narratives of David’s introduction to Saul. It is plain that they exclude one another. The king’s handsome armour-bearer, who soothes his mind and banishes his melancholy by music, cannot be the shepherd-lad who brings the loaves of home-made bread to his brothers, and whose very name and parentage are unknown to Saul and Abner. And yet there are points in each narrative which seem to be historical. It is true that in a later passage the death of Goliath is ascribed to a certain El-hanan; but the passage is corrupt, and though the Chronicler must have had an equally corrupt text before him,[435] it is possible he may be right in making the Philistine slain by El-hanan the brother of Goliath. At all events, the fact that the sword of the giant of Gath was preserved at Nob and was there handed over to David on his flight from Saul, shows that the death of Goliath must have happened while Saul was reigning and that David had been the hero of the deed. The priest expressly says that it was ‘the sword of Goliath the Philistine whom thou slewest in the valley of Elah.’ On the other hand, David was famous as a musician, and was even said to have invented instruments of music (Am. vi. 5), while Saul’s fits of depression were also historical; and the description given of David’s appearance (1 Sam. xvi. 12) is that of one who had seen him. Perhaps the harp-playing before the king followed David’s enrolment in Saul’s bodyguard, and was one of the means whereby he gained the heart of his royal master.

Are we to accept the anointing by Samuel as a historical incident, or are the modern critics right in asserting that the story is an invention, the object of which was to claim for the founder of the Judæan monarchy the same consecration at the hands of the great Hebrew seer as that which had been bestowed upon Saul? That David was actually anointed by a messenger of Yahveh admits of little doubt. Apart from Psalm lxxxix. 20, the date of which is questionable, and which may refer to the coronation in Hebron, it is clear from incidental notices in the historical books of the Old Testament that such consecration by a prophet or seer was felt to be a necessary prelude to the usurpation of a throne. It was thus that both Jehu and Hazael were incited to seize the crowns of Samaria and Damascus.[436] The use of oil in religious ritual went back to the days when Babylonian culture was predominant in Western Asia, and the religious texts of Babylonia contain many references to it. That the prophet was anointed for his office, we know from the history of Elisha.

On the other hand, it is difficult to conceive that David’s brother would have treated him with the contempt to which he gave utterance in the valley of Elah (1 Sam. xvii. 28) had he really been a witness to his consecration as king, and David’s future friendship with Jonathan, the heir-apparent to the throne, would have been more than hypocritical. Possibly the period of the consecration has been transferred from a time when David had become the son-in-law of Saul and the friend and guest of Samuel (1 Sam. xix. 18-22) to an earlier time in David’s life to which it is inappropriate.[437]

Abner, the cousin of Saul, remained the commander-in-chief of the Israelitish army, the Turtannu or Tartan, as the Assyrians would have called him. David, however, was made a general—‘the captain of a thousand’ was the exact title. The desultory war with the Philistines still continued, and the new general soon justified his appointment. But his successes and his popularity with the army aroused the jealousy of the king. Saul began to plot against his life and to hope that he might fall in one of the skirmishes with the enemy. Merab, Saul’s elder daughter, had been promised to him in marriage, but she was given to another, and though her younger sister Michal was offered in her place, Saul stipulated that David should bring him instead of a dowry a hundred foreskins of the Philistines. It was the Egyptian mode of counting the slain, which is still practised in Abyssinia; when Meneptah II. defeated the Libyans and their northern allies, the number of the enemy who had fallen was determined partly by the hands, partly by the foreskins cut off from the slain. The hundred foreskins demanded by Saul were doubled by David, who thereupon received Michal as his wife.

Saul had already, in one of his fits of frenzy, made an attempt on David’s life. The day before he had heard the women welcoming David as he returned from ‘the slaughter of the Philistine’[438] with sounds of music and the refrain: ‘Saul hath slain his thousands and David his ten thousands.’ The king brooded over the words, until in his moments of insanity they overpowered all prudence and restraint. When he recovered they still sounded in his ears, and his feigned friendship towards his son-in-law concealed murder in his heart.

At last he openly avowed his desire to be rid of his supposed enemy; and though in his saner hours he still shrank from murdering him with his own hand, he suggested both to Jonathan and to his retainers that they should do so. David, in truth, was becoming a formidable rival. He was idolised by the army, was popular among the people, and was a member by marriage of the royal house. He was, moreover, a Jew; and the tribe of Judah was now beginning to rise into importance and to realise its own strength. Above all, Samuel and the priests were at bitter feud with Saul, and favourably disposed to David.

Jonathan betrayed his father’s secret to his unsuspecting friend, and bade him await the issue of an appeal to the better nature of Saul. The appeal was successful, and for a time Saul laid aside his suspicions and there was apparent, if not real, harmony once more between him and his son-in-law. But another success against the Philistines revived the evil passions of the king. Again the old depression and gloom came upon him, and David’s harp, instead of dissipating it, transformed it into madness. Suddenly he flung his spear at the player, who slipped aside and fled. The time for mediation and forgiveness was passed. David could no longer be safe in the presence of a madman who was bent on taking his life. Royal guards were even sent to watch David’s house, and he escaped only with the help of his wife. In the night she let him down through the window of his room, and laid on the bed in his place the image of the household god covered with a sheet. When the king’s guards arrived to take him she pretended that he was sick, and it was not until they had come a second time that they discovered they had been deceived. Saul reproached his daughter for abetting her husband’s escape; but it was too late, and David had made his way to the house of Samuel at Ramah. Here, however, he was not yet safe from pursuit, and he and the seer accordingly took refuge in the sacred enclosure of the Naioth or monastery. There, surrounded by the prophet-dervishes, they felt that even the king in the madness of disappointed fury would not venture to violate their sanctuary.

That Samuel also should have been compelled to shelter himself from Saul’s anger, and that David on escaping from Gibeah should at once have gone to him, makes it evident that the king at least believed in the complicity of the seer in the plot against his throne. It also raises the presumption that Saul’s belief was justified, and that Samuel had played the same part towards David that Ahijah subsequently played towards Jeroboam, and Elijah towards Jehu. That David and Samuel were acquainted with one another seems clear; indeed, Gibeah and Ramah were so close to each other that it would have been strange if the politic David had not visited the old seer. Had it been on the occasion of one of these visits that the rising rival of Saul was anointed with the consecrated oil?

David remained safe in sanctuary. The messengers sent by Saul to fetch him from it fell under the influence of the place, and joined the dervishes in their ecstatic exercises; and when Saul himself followed them, he too was infected by the religious excitement around him. One of the sources used by the compiler of the books of Samuel ascribes to this occasion the origin of the saying: ‘Is Saul also among the prophets?’[439]

But as in the case of the introduction of David to Saul, there is again a double account of his escape. The two narratives are equally worthy of credit from a historical point of view, yet it is difficult to reconcile them together. The compiler has endeavoured to do so by supposing that David ‘fled’ from the monastery of Ramah to Jonathan after Saul’s return to Gibeah. But this only makes the difficulty of harmonising the two accounts the greater. If we accept them both, the only way of reconciling them is to suppose that a considerable interval of time elapsed between the events recorded in them, that in the monastery of Ramah peace was once more established between David and his father-in-law, and that David consequently returned to his accustomed place at court. In this case, the statement of the compiler that the second narrative follows immediately upon the first would be a mistaken inference.[440]

According to the second account, David came to Jonathan and assured him that Saul was determined to take away his life. Jonathan protested that this was impossible, although he had himself previously warned his friend that such was the case,[441] on the ground that his father concealed nothing from him. It was then agreed that Jonathan should discover Saul’s intentions and reveal them three days later to David, who should meanwhile hide himself in the fields. Jonathan was to shoot three arrows, and send a boy to gather them up. If he told the boy they were on the hither side of David’s hiding-place, it meant that all was well; if, on the contrary, he said they were beyond it, David would know that his life was in danger. The day following was the feast of the New Moon, when David ought to have dined with the king. But his place was empty; only Abner sat by the side of Saul, whose seat was, as usual, ‘by the wall.’ Saul said nothing, thinking that David was absent for ceremonial reasons; but when on the next day the place was again empty, he asked Jonathan what had become of him. Jonathan replied, as had been agreed upon, that he had given David permission to go to Beth-lehem to take part in an annual sacrifice of the family. But the answer did not deceive his father. Saul broke forth into reproaches, accusing Jonathan of rebellion and folly in preferring friendship to self-interest, and in saving the life of one who would use it to deprive him of the crown. Jonathan replied; and the king, mad with rage, flung his spear at his own son, who left the table and made his way to the place where David was concealed. There he gave the signal by which David knew that he must flee for his life, and while the lad was picking up the arrows the two friends embraced and parted, perhaps for the last time.

David fled to Nob. The priests of Shiloh had settled in it, and he believed therefore that he would find a shelter there. But Ahimelech was afraid of Saul; he knew that the king bore no goodwill to his son-in-law, and it was strange that David should be alone. David, however, had a ready answer to the question why ‘no man’ was with him. Saul had sent him out in haste on a secret mission, and his servants accordingly had been ordered to wait for him ahead. The haste indeed was such that he had brought with him neither food nor weapons. The priest had only the shewbread to offer, and at first hesitated about giving it to those who were not Levites. But David overcame his scruples, assuring him that his companions had ‘kept themselves from women’ for the past three days, and that the vessels they carried with them were clean. At the same time he took Goliath’s sword which had been dedicated to Yahveh, and lay behind the ephod wrapped in a cloth. Then he continued his flight, and did not rest until he found himself at the court of the old enemy of Israel, Achish the son of Maoch, king of Gath.[442]

Recent criticism has maintained that this first visit to Achish of Gath is but a duplicate version of David’s second visit to the same prince, like the duplicate accounts of his introduction to Saul and flight from the Israelitish court. The two visits, however, clearly belong to different periods of time, and the different treatment experienced by the fugitive at the hands of the king of Gath was due to the wholly different circumstances under which he arrived there on the two occasions. The solitary and defenceless exile, flying for his life from his own countrymen, was a very different person from the leader of a numerous band of reckless and well-armed adventurers who came to offer their services as mercenaries in war. A more serious difficulty is the fact that Achish, the son of Maoch or Maachah, was still reigning over Gath in the third year of Solomon (1 Kings ii. 39). But the long reign of about fifty years, which this presupposes, is no impossibility; Ramses II. of Egypt, for example, was sixty-seven years on the throne.

David did not remain long in Gath. The Philistines could not forget that he had been one of their most formidable adversaries, and there must have been some among them who had blood-feuds to avenge upon him. The fugitive servant of Saul was no longer to be feared, but there were many voices crying for his life. For a while Achish was inclined to protect him in the hope of using him against his countrymen, but how long this protection would last was doubtful. David accordingly feigned himself mad, he scrabbled on the gates, and let the spittle fall on his unshorn beard. The Philistine king gave up all hope of making him his tool, and allowed him to quit the court. David thereupon made his way to the home of his boyhood, and took refuge in the limestone caves of Adullam, a few miles to the south-west of Beth-lehem.

Here at last he was safe. He was among his own tribesmen, in a district well known to him, and in a place of refuge where the outlaw could defy his pursuers. Moreover, the home of his family was not far distant, and it was not long, accordingly, before his brothers and other relatives joined him in his mountain stronghold. The band of outlaws increased rapidly, and soon amounted to four hundred men. David’s abilities as a military leader were known throughout Israel, and all the outlaws and adventurers of Judah flocked to his standard; among them was the prophet Gad.

David once more found himself at the head of a considerable force. The quarrel between him and the king was assuming the character of a civil war. It was Judah against Israel, the first revolt of the new power that was rising in the south against the domination of the north. But the power was still in its infancy. Against the trained veterans of the royal army, with the prestige of legal authority and resources behind them, the bandits of the Judæan mountains could hold their own only so long as they remained among the limestone fastnesses of their own land. It was like a struggle between Sicilian brigands and the regular troops; the sympathies of the peasantry were with the brigands, and as long as they acted on the defensive, their lives were safe.

But the mountains of Judah were barren, and it was needful for David and his men to descend at times into the valleys and plains below, and there levy contributions of food. These were the moments of danger. The townsmen and owners of land could not be trusted like the peasantry; they looked with no favourable eyes on the armed outlaws who seized what was not freely given to them, and were ready enough to betray them to Saul. In the towns and plains the king’s troops had the advantage; while, on the other side, it was always possible to fall in with a body of Philistines to whom every Israelite was a foe.

But while David was hidden in the cave of Adullam, Saul committed a deed which shattered his kingdom and transferred the allegiance of the priesthood to his Judæan rival. This was the massacre of the priests at Nob. In reading the story of it we seem to have before us the words of an eye-witness. Saul was seated under the tamarisk on the hill at Gibeah, with his spear in his right hand, and his officers standing around him. Suddenly he broke out into reproaches against them and against his son. ‘Hear now, ye Benjamites; will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards, and make you all captains of thousands and captains of hundreds; that all of you have conspired against me, and there is none that sheweth me that my son hath made a league with the son of Jesse, and there is none of you that is sorry for me, or sheweth unto me that my son hath stirred up my servant against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?’ Then the heathen foreigner, ‘Doeg the Edomite which was set over the servants of Saul,’ answered and said that he had seen David come to Ahimelech the priest at Nob, and that there the priest had consulted Yahveh for him, had given him food and Goliath’s sword. At once the infuriated king sent for Ahimelech and his brother priests, and demanded of him why he had conspired with the rebel. Ahimelech’s answer only increased his anger. David, said the priest, was the son-in-law of the king, and his most faithful servant; how then could he have refrained from helping him on his road? Thereupon, Saul ordered the priests to be put to death, but no Israelite could be found to perpetrate such an act of sacrilegious atrocity. The Edomite, however, had no scruples; he fell with a will upon the defenceless priests, and eighty-five of them were massacred. Saul then descended upon Nob, ‘the city of the priests,’ and treated it like a city of the Amalekites, smiting it with the edge of the sword, ‘both men and women, children and sucklings, and oxen and asses and sheep.’ Only Abiathar, the son of Ahimelech, escaped, and fled to David, carrying with him the ephod and the oracles of God. The prophecy of the destruction of Eli’s house was fulfilled, but in fulfilling it Saul destroyed his own. The breach between the king and the priests was complete; he had compelled them, and all who reverenced them, to take the side of his rival.

It was now that David determined to send his father and mother to the protection of the Moabite court. His great-grandmother had been a Moabitess, and it is possible that the war between Saul and Moab, referred to in 1 Sam. xiv. 47, was continuing at this very time. In this case, the Moabite king would have given a ready welcome to the parents of his enemy’s enemy. They would be hostages for David himself, and David was a person whom it was desirable to attach to the Moabite cause. Not only was he the son-in-law of Saul, and an able general, but he was now at the head of a devoted body of men who were waging war on the Israelitish king. If war was actually going on at the time between Israel and Moab, alliance with David would divert and weaken the Israelitish attack. Moreover, as long as David’s parents were in his power, the king of Moab could compel the Jewish chieftain to serve and, if need be, to fight for him.

David’s followers had increased to six hundred men, and he now felt himself strong enough to occupy one of the Judæan cities, and make it a centre for his war against Saul. A pretext for doing so was soon found. Keilah was threatened by Philistine raiders, and patriotism demanded its rescue. The city is mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna letters under the name of Keltê; it was already a place of military importance, and was surrounded by walls. David’s followers, however, were reluctant to leave their retreat in the mountains and venture into a town. But the representative of the high priests of Shiloh was now with them, and the oracles of Yahveh, which he consulted through the ephod, admitted of no contradiction. Keilah was accordingly occupied by David, and its Philistine invaders repulsed. The citizens, however, showed little gratitude towards their preservers. Perhaps they thought it was merely an exchange of masters, and that Philistine pillage would not have been worse than the exactions of the outlaws. Perhaps they feared the fate of Nob for harbouring the enemy of Saul. However it might be, they sent word to Saul that David and his men were in the town. The king marched to Keilah without delay; had not God delivered David into his hand by bringing him into a city that had ‘gates and bars’? But once more the ephod was consulted, and the answer was clear. The people of Keilah were traitors, and David’s band must seek a shelter elsewhere. This time they fled to the wooded slopes above the wilderness of Ziph, on the eastern side of the Dead Sea. Here David and Jonathan met once more[443] under the shadow of the forest. But the Ziphites betrayed the hiding-place of the outlaws, and offered to help the king to capture his foe. For a time the hunted fugitives evaded their pursuers; spies brought David intelligence of Saul’s movements, and the desolate wadis of Ziph and Maon, with their deep defiles and precipitous rocks, enabled him to slip out of the toils. But at last the game became desperate; the outlaws were encircled on all sides, and the difficulty of procuring food must have been great. At that moment the Philistines came to their help; a messenger arrived in haste at the royal camp, urging the king to march westward at once, for a Philistine army had invaded the land. David was saved, and he now settled himself in the caves and fastnesses of the mountains about En-gedi.

From the peaks where only the wild goats trod,[444] David could look across the Dead Sea to the purple hills of Moab. Here, therefore, he was in touch with the Moabites, while his inaccessible position rendered him safe from attack. Below him was the comparatively fertile valley of Carmel of Judah, where large flocks of sheep fed on the scanty grass. It was the northern portion of the wilderness of Paran, and the outlaws exacted from it their supplies of food. The supplies were usually yielded with a good grace, and in return the shepherds and their flocks were protected from the Bedâwin and the wild beasts. But on one occasion the request for food met with a refusal. Nabal, a wealthy farmer at Maon, was shearing his sheep, and refused to give any of them to the messengers of David. Perhaps Saul was still in the neighbourhood, and he was thus emboldened to play the part of the churl. But he was soon taught that David was strong enough to take without asking. Four hundred of the outlaws marched down upon Maon, bent upon making him and his family pay with their lives for the niggardly refusal. The tact of a woman, however, saved them, and averted the anger of David. Abigail, the wife of Nabal, met the angry chieftain on the road with presents and honeyed words, and her fair looks and speeches induced him to turn back. That night Nabal was holding a shearing feast in fancied security, but when, the next day, his wife told him of his narrow escape, and of the band of outlaws that was still in the neighbourhood, his heart failed him, and ‘he became as a stone.’ The shock was too great for his strength; a few days later he died. Then Abigail, like a prudent woman, became the wife of the outlaw, and the wealth of Nabal passed into his hands. It was a welcome addition to David’s resources, and made him better able to control his men. Abigail, too, proved a devoted wife, following her husband in his wanderings, and sharing his wild life. She was not his only wife, however, though Michal had been given by her father to a Benjamite named Phaltiel. David, it would seem, had already married a certain Ahinoam of Jezreel.

It was probably before the marriage of Abigail, and while Saul was still chasing the outlaws through the wilderness of Ziph,[445] that an incident occurred, two versions of which had reached the compiler of the books of Samuel. Saul had with him a force of three thousand men, more than sufficient gradually to close in upon David and cut off all his chances of escape. Abner, the commander-in-chief, was with him, and the king was obstinate in his determination to track his enemy to the death. According to the one version of the story, Saul was alone in a cave; according to the other, he was asleep at night in his camp among the rocky crevices of Mount Hachilah. While he slept, David, with his two companions, Ahimelech the Hittite and Abishai the brother of Joab, crept stealthily towards him, and soon reached the unconscious king. Abishai would have slain him with his spear, but David forbade his touching ‘the Lord’s anointed,’ and contented himself with carrying away the spear and cruse of water which stood at his head, or, according to the other version, with cutting off the skirt of the royal robe. Then, standing on the opposite side of the gorge, David reproached Abner for his careless watch over the king. Saul recognised David’s voice, and demanded if it were not he, whereupon David made an appeal to the king’s better nature, asked why he was thus driving him from his country and his God, and pointed to the trophies he had just carried off in proof of his innocence. If he were really aiming at the throne, would he have spared the king when Yahveh had delivered him into his hands? The impulsive Saul yielded for the moment to the voice and words of his former favourite, but they produced no further effect upon him. David could not venture to send back the spear by one of his own men; it had to be fetched by a servant of the king. David had given Saul a lesson in generosity, but the only result of it was that he had to return to his old hiding-place. Saul remained resolutely bent on taking his life.

Meanwhile Samuel had died, and there seemed no longer any power left in Israel to contend against the will of the king. David began to perceive that his cause was hopeless; he had become a mere chief of brigands, and against him were arrayed all the forces of order and authority in the country. It was useless to continue the struggle, and he determined, therefore, to sell the services of himself and his followers to the hereditary enemies of his people. Accordingly he passed over to Achish of Gath, and entered the service of the Philistine.

The use of mercenary soldiers was no new thing. Egypt had long since set the example, and in the age of the nineteenth dynasty the larger part of the Egyptian army already consisted of foreigners. Many of these were kinsfolk of the Philistines from the Greek seas. Such soldiers of fortune were acceptable to the kings who employed them for more reasons than one. Their lives were devoted to fighting, and therefore they were better trained and more amenable to discipline than the native recruits, who were levied only as occasion required. Moreover, they had everything to gain and nothing to lose from war, unlike the peasantry, whose fields might be ravaged while they themselves were away in the camp. Above all, the mercenaries were faithful to their employer so long as he supplied them with plunder or pay. They had no party feuds to avenge, no loss of liberty to chafe at, no spirit of independence to cherish. Their swords were at the disposal of the king, and of none else; the tyranny which crushed his subjects found in them a willing instrument. David never forgot the lesson which his service with Achish had taught him. When at last he became the king of Israel, he also surrounded himself with a bodyguard of foreign mercenaries, drawn from much the same countries as those of the Pharaoh.

It was not as a bodyguard, however, that Achish needed the Jews. It was rather as an auxiliary force in future contests with their countrymen. Consequently they were allowed to settle in the country, at some distance from Gath, and Ziklag was given them as a residence. The outlaws had ceased to be brigands, and had become part of the regular army of a foreign prince.

For a year and four months the Hebrew corps dwelt at Ziklag. But they were not idle all the time. Once David led them on a raiding expedition against the Bedâwin Amalekites of the south. Men, women, and children were alike put to the sword, so that none might live to tell the tale. When the Jews returned with their booty, David professed to Achish that the raid had been directed against the Hebrews of Judah and their allies the Kenites and Jerahmeelites. The deception was successful, and the Philistine king rejoiced in the thought that the captain of his mercenaries had thus for ever rendered himself hateful to his countrymen. David had succeeded in disarming the suspicions of his hosts, in providing his retainers with the spoil they coveted, and yet at the same time in not alienating from himself the affections of his own people.

But a further trial was in store for the wily exile. The quarrel between Saul and his son-in-law had allowed the Philistines to assert once more their old supremacy in Israel. In David the Israelites had lost one of their chiefest generals, and the troops which should have been employed against the common foe were occupied in hunting him through the wilds of the Judæan mountains. The watchful enemy took speedy advantage of the fact. Israel was again invaded; the Philistines swept the lowlands of Judah, and prepared to march northward. Saul returned from his pursuit of David among the trackless rocks on the shore of the Dead Sea only just in time to prevent their penetrating again into the heart of Mount Ephraim. The territory of Benjamin was saved for a time, and the foreigner did not succeed in reaching the royal residence at Gibeah.

But the respite was not for long. A year and a quarter later the united forces of the Philistine cities marched northward, along the highroad on the coast of the Mediterranean, which had been trodden so often by the former conquerors of Western Asia. They passed Dor, the modern Tantûra, then occupied by their kinsfolk the Zakkal, and, turning the point of Mount Carmel, proceeded eastward through the valley of the Kishon towards the plain of Megiddo. It was the old fighting ground of Palestine; its possession gave the conqueror the command of the whole country west of the Jordan, and cut off the Israelitish king in his rear. With the enemy established at Megiddo, Benjamin and Ephraim would be effectually severed from the northern tribes.

Saul lost no time in proceeding against his foe. The Philistine camp had been pitched, first at Shunem, then at Aphek, on the southern slope of Mount Gilboa;[446] the Israelites now took up their station at a fountain near Jezreel, a few miles to the north-west. But the sight of the huge Philistine army, recruited, doubtless, as it had been by the Zakkal, filled Saul with despair. His own forces were miserably insufficient to meet it; he had lost his old confidence in Yahveh and himself, and the priests and prophets had become his enemies. In vain he sought counsel of Yahveh; such priests as still remained near him refused their help, and ‘Yahveh answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.’ Abiathar and Gad were with David; the prophets who had gathered round Samuel were now the bitter foes of the Israelitish king.