This giving of favors also has a distinctly royal tone. As we have already seen, early rule in Israel, as in many other cultures, was based on both military strength and royal patronage. A ruler gained and kept the loyalty of his servants and officers by proving himself capable of doling out favors to those close to him. David seems to be doing the same, but writ large: he doesn’t need to court individuals, but communities.3 In distributing spoils to the towns of Judah, David presents himself as a monarch. All of this leads to the strong possibility that the timing of David’s distribution of spoils followed on the heels of Saul’s death. While Saul was still alive, such efforts might well have been wasted; whatever gifts David might have been able to offer, they hardly could match the military protection Saul offered. Once Saul had fallen, however, David was ready to fill the void. The spoils served his purpose perfectly: they demonstrated his military power—since he was the one who had taken them in the first place—and his royal patronage. In short, David was telling the Judahites, “I’m the best you’ve got, and I can offer you both protection and favor.” Call it what you will—diplomacy, bribery, extortion—in the end, it seems to have worked. David wanted to present himself as a king, and a king is what he became.
This is how David became king in Hebron—essentially, by coercion. Less clear is the formal mechanism by which this is imagined to have happened. The biblical account says simply that “the men of Judah came and there they anointed David king” (2 Sam. 2:4). But who were these “men of Judah”? Why did they come to Hebron? And how did they “anoint David king”? To start, we should remember that there was no unified tribe of Judah, but rather a number of individual communities occupying a geographical territory independent from the northern kingdom of Israel. Thus “the men of Judah” cannot be imagined to be a collective leadership group, let alone literally all of the men of Judah. What we may imagine is that “the men of Judah” refers to a leader or leaders from each community. This conforms to the notice of David’s sending spoils not to Judah as a whole, but to the elders of each town—each community had to be dealt with independently.
How, then, did these independent communities each send one or more representatives to Hebron to anoint David king at what would appear to be the same time? The biblical authors naturally want to present David’s kingship as a collective, spontaneous act—the people of Judah confirming what God himself had decreed in David’s youth. But concerted efforts like this require centralized leadership, which Judah did not have—or, at least, did not have until the arrival of David. If the towns and regions of Judah sent their leaders to Hebron to see David, it is most logical to assume that they did so not of their own accord, but because they were summoned. Such a summons would, in fact, reflect standard ancient Near Eastern protocol. Upon the assumption of the throne, kings would regularly require those lands subject to them to send representatives bearing tribute. By appearing before the new king, these lands demonstrated their loyalty to the new regime and explicitly marked themselves as subservient to the royal overlord.4 This is precisely what we would expect to have happened with David at Hebron, especially because he had to ensure the loyalty not of one unified territory, but of each individual community—or at least enough of them to be certain that his control was secure.
It is even possible, though by no means certain, that the summons to the communities of Judah to show themselves before David in Hebron was sent along with the redistribution of the spoils discussed above. The function of the spoils was, as we have seen, to articulate David’s power and to send an implicit either/or choice. By sending representatives to Hebron, communities publicly demonstrated their choice, and their acceptance of David’s power.
Such acceptance is, in the end, what the “anointing” of David entailed. Literally, anointing refers to the pouring of oil on the head. It was typically performed by an established authority figure in the name of the deity: thus Moses anoints Aaron and his sons as priests; Samuel anoints Saul and David as king; the priest Zadok and the prophet Nathan both anoint Solomon; Elijah anoints Jehu as king and Elisha as his prophetic successor. Anointing thus marked individuals as divinely ordained in their roles. It seems likely that in the story of David’s anointing at Hebron, the literal meaning is not intended—we cannot suppose that the representatives of Judah either individually or collectively poured oil over David. Rather, the symbolic import of anointing is alluded to here. By acknowledging David’s power, and their subservience to him, the people of Judah elevated David to a position of authority and granted him—at least in the eyes of the biblical authors—the divine right of kingship. We may imagine that if any literal anointing occurred, it would have been by David’s own hand—as a sort of ancient Napoleon.
With the acceptance of David’s kingship, a new era dawned—not just for David, but for Judah. What was once a region of independent communities was now, for the first time, unified under a single leader. What Saul had accomplished in the north, David had now accomplished in the south. The creation of the monarchy in Judah was at the same time the creation of Judah itself. It is in this moment that we hear for the first time of “the House of Judah.” David’s achievement in this is undeniable, considering the central role that Judah would play in history, literature, and religion. Without David, there would be no Judah. Yet it should be remembered that, at least at first, Judah was still only a very minor kingdom. The acknowledgment of David as king did not suddenly make Judah into a powerful political or cultural force. It was still no more than a collection of backwater villages scattered in the wilderness among the hills. And though Judah would come to valorize David as its glorious founder, it came into being not by choice, but by coercion. It existed by force of David’s will—a will that he exerted with a heavy hand and a strong arm. Judah’s glory years were still to come. And, in fact, there is one further piece of the puzzle that makes the moment of Judah’s creation even less triumphant.
When we think of David becoming king in Judah, we see in this the beginning of the great nation of Israel. We read the story through the lens of what followed, the history of Israel from David to the present. What is forgotten is the political situation after the death of Saul, and more important David’s own position. Saul’s death may have been David’s doing, one way or another, but Israel was defeated by the Philistines. It was the Philistines who had the power in the region. And David was, for all intents and purposes, a vassal of the Philistines. As we have seen, he established his power from that position. The death of Saul did not change that fact, and neither did David’s move to become king of Judah.
We may imagine a scenario in which David, seizing his opportunity, left the embrace of the Philistines to establish himself as the king of a new independent state of Judah. In such a case, we may also imagine the Philistines’ response. They had overwhelming military advantage, especially with the collapse of the northern kingdom after Saul’s death. David had been their loyal subject—they could hardly have allowed him to go off on his own and found a rival kingdom right in their backyard. In short, there would have been a significant Philistine response, and one that inevitably would have wiped Judah off the map before it even had a chance to defend itself. And yet none of this happened. David ruled over Judah in Hebron for seven years, and during that time, there is not a word of any Philistine aggression. How can this be explained?
The answer is as obvious as it is unpalatable: Judah, David’s new kingdom, was effectively a Philistine territory. For his entire tenure in Hebron, David remained a loyal vassal of the Philistines.5 This may be hard to hear, but it makes perfect sense. Without the northern kingdom to protect it, Judah was entirely at the mercy of the Philistines. David—born in Judah, though long since having abandoned any attachment to it—had been acting as a Philistine mercenary in the region for more than a year and had proved himself capable. We may even imagine that rule over Judah was David’s reward for having helped the Philistines finally defeat Saul. There is no notice in the text that David
turned against his Philistine masters when he became king of Judah. The Philistines seem to have accepted his kingship without complaint. In fact, the period of David’s rule in Hebron seems to have been one of newfound peace—which is entirely sensible, since the Philistines had defeated the northern kingdom and were now in control of the southern region through David. Judah would one day be independent, but it was created as a Philistine territory and led by a Philistine vassal.6
Support for this reconstruction may be found in the Bible itself. The entire narrative of David’s anointing in Hebron and reign over Judah is absent from Chronicles. If this was a high point of his royal career, as it would seem to the modern reader, why would Chronicles, which goes to such lengths to glorify David even above and beyond what we find in Samuel, not mention a word of it? Why is this period of David’s career treated as an embarrassment—ignored out of existence, just like the unseemly events of his time in the wilderness? Something about this story must have seemed unacceptable to the authors of Chronicles. Whether it was the historical recollection of what David’s Judahite kingdom really was or a keen reading of the story in Samuel, Chronicles seems to have understood that this ostensibly glorious moment was anything but.
The Bible presents David’s kingship over Judah as almost a foregone conclusion, a spontaneous moment of popular acclamation of God’s chosen monarch. The reality is far less appealing. David became king in Judah through intimidation and coercion. The towns of Judah coalesced into a nation not by choice, but by force. David’s reign was based not on love, but on fear. And he ruled not as a Judahite, but as a servant of the Philistines.
The State of the North
IT IS UNCLEAR JUST how long David waited after becoming king in Judah to begin confronting Saul’s former kingdom. Presumably, however, he wouldn’t have waited long, for Israel would never be as weak as it was immediately after the death of Saul. It is not surprising, then, that virtually the first thing we hear after the anointing of David in Hebron is that he turned to the north.
The situation in Israel after the battle at Mount Gilboa was understandably unsettled. Not only Saul but three of his sons, the heirs to his throne, had died on the battlefield. Such a situation could hardly be planned for, especially for a first-generation monarchy like that of Israel. Jonathan, Saul’s eldest son, had been primed to succeed his father by leading part of Saul’s military. But of Saul’s sons after Jonathan we have heard nothing to this point, almost certainly because they had no significant position in the military or administration of the northern kingdom. Even if Saul had other sons—and, it turns out, he did—their claim to the throne would be based solely on the principle of lineal royal succession, a rather tentative basis for power so early in a monarchy. The people of Israel must have been very uncertain about their future.
David tried to take advantage of the situation in the north almost immediately—not militarily, at first, but diplomatically. He sent a message to the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead, the town that had taken Saul’s body down from the wall and given it a proper burial. The Bible records this message, though it is undoubtedly not the very words that David actually sent. According to 2 Samuel 2:5–7, David blessed Jabesh-Gilead for its act of faithfulness to Saul, hoped for God’s blessing on the town, and offered David’s own reward, along with a not-so-subtle suggestion: “Now take courage and be valiant men, for your lord Saul is dead and the House of Judah has anointed me king over them” (2:7). Whatever David may have really said, this last line probably sums it up fairly accurately. He suggests that with Saul no longer able to protect Jabesh-Gilead, the town would be smart—or, as the Bible puts it almost with a wink, “valiant”—to follow the example of Judah and make David their king as well. As he did with the towns of Judah, David presents Jabesh-Gilead with a choice. But unlike Judah, which was essentially defenseless and had been subject to David’s displays of power for some time, the far northern town of Jabesh-Gilead was under no direct threat from him. This was true diplomacy. David had nothing to back up his words—and they seem to have fallen on deaf ears.7
In part, this may have been because, in the vacuum created by Saul’s death, a new power figure in the north had begun to emerge. This was not one of Saul’s sons but rather his general, Abner. That Saul’s general should have taken up the reins of leadership—though, as we will see, not the reign itself—is unsurprising. We need not look far afield in our modern world to recognize that the fall of an established government is often succeeded by military rule. And as we have seen, royal power was predicated first and foremost on a person’s ability to command the military, which is why kings like Saul and princes like Jonathan made leading the troops a priority. Without a credible military leader from the immediate line of royal descent, the most important military leader from outside that line would have been in a position of significant power. And Abner would wield his power, in sometimes unexpected ways, for the relatively brief remainder of his life.
Abner probably could have proclaimed himself king in Israel; as Saul’s cousin, he was at least from the right family. And yet he did not. Instead, he put Saul’s son Ishbaal on the throne. The standard royal succession notwithstanding, it is clear that this was truly Abner’s doing. Even the Bible says that Abner “took Ishbaal son of Saul . . . and made him king over Gilead, the Ashurites, Jezreel, Ephraim, and Benjamin—over all Israel” (2 Sam. 2:8–9). It seems to have been by Abner’s will, communicated to Saul’s former territories, that Ishbaal assumed his father’s place. Abner acted as kingmaker rather than as king. This was the smarter decision. The northern kingdom of Israel was hardly a choice place to rule, given its military and political situation vis-à-vis the Philistines and David to the south. There was no guarantee that the kingdom would survive for much longer—king of Israel might be a relatively dangerous position to hold. By establishing himself as the real power behind the throne, Abner could control the kingdom to a degree while keeping himself safe. And should Ishbaal falter, Abner would be able to deflect any criticism from himself, especially as he had done the “right” thing by maintaining the expected royal succession.8
Who, then, was Ishbaal, the new king of Israel? We know remarkably little about him. He doesn’t appear in the Bible before Abner makes him king; evidently he was of little consequence before his father and three elder brothers were killed. Almost all we know is his name—and the Bible has obscured even that, for in Samuel he is called not Ishbaal, but Ishbosheth. Like many Israelite names, his is a combination of two words. The first, ish, means “man.” The second, at least as it appears in Samuel, bosheth, means “shame” or “disgrace.” This is not a comment on his character but is a well-known biblical adaptation of his real name, baal, which is both a proper noun meaning “lord” and, more famously, the name of the main Canaanite deity, Baal—the same Baal that Elijah famously proves powerless on Mount Carmel. Thus, Ishbaal’s name meant “man of Baal.” Here and elsewhere, biblical scribes, perhaps embarrassed that an Israelite should have a name glorifying a foreign god, replaced the divine name with a pejorative term. To be fair to Ishbaal—or to Saul, who named him—in the early years of Israel, “Baal” seems to have been used to denote the Israelite god, Yahweh. We should not think that Saul worshipped a Canaanite deity. Later, however, any association with Baal would have been unthinkable, and hence the alteration in the text.9
Military confrontation between David and Israel was inevitable, and it took place at Gibeon, a town near the southern border of Israel. Given the location, it is likely that Abner led the Israelite troops to Gibeon as a defensive measure and that David’s men, led by his general Joab, saw this as an opportunity to engage in combat without going too far north. The Bible presents the battle as a rout, with Joab and his men pursuing Abner until the last light of day. With the sun setting, Joab gave up the chase, allowing Abner to retreat, and returned to Hebron. This much seems likely enough.
Not quite so believable are the stories embedded in the biblical account of th
is battle. The first is a bizarre moment right at the beginning of the fighting, when Abner and Joab are supposed to have selected twelve men from each side to engage in single combat, almost for the entertainment of the rest of the troops. Each pair is said to have simultaneously stabbed each other, such that “they fell together.” From both the “set-piece” feel of the story and the fact that it has no effect on the rest of the narrative, it is clear that this story is nothing but an elaborate etiology for a place in Gibeon called “the Field of Blades.”10 The second story is again of single combat, but of a different kind. David’s leading warriors, the sons of Zeruiah—Joab, Abishai, and Asahel—are said to have been present at the battle. Asahel, according to the text, set off on a run after Abner, such that the two of them were essentially alone, streaking through the field. Abner begged Asahel to stop chasing him, warning that if he did not relent, Abner would have to kill him. Asahel refused, and so Abner, left with no choice, “struck him in the belly with a backward thrust of his spear” (2 Sam. 2:23), killing Asahel on the spot. Not only is this sort of single combat story more literary than likely—it is decidedly reminiscent of Homer—but the episode exists entirely as a means for establishing, for future use, a rationale for why Abner should die: as blood vengeance for the death of Asahel. Interestingly enough, though the other parts of this trio, Joab and Abishai, are regular figures in the David story, Asahel is never mentioned before this episode. It is not that he was invented, necessarily—in fact, he is listed as one of David’s elite warriors in 2 Samuel 23:24 (well after he is supposed to have died at Gibeon). But his relationship to Joab and Abishai does seem a new creation of the biblical authors, again to justify the impending death of Abner.
The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero Page 14