The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero (20 page)

The situation could hardly be more perfect for David. He did not need to eliminate Meribbaal, for Meribbaal posed no real threat. Quite the contrary: it was entirely in David’s interest to keep him alive. After Meribbaal, the next in line could well be someone with the physical ability and ambition to challenge David. As long as Meribbaal remained safe, however, the royal succession would be in a holding pattern: Israel might desire that one of Saul’s descendants reclaim the throne, but the sole remaining heir was incapable of doing so.

Keeping Meribbaal alive also would provide David with another opportunity to score political points with his new kingdom. With the deaths of Saul and his descendants, David must have seemed not only cruel, but also deeply insensitive to the attachment that Israel felt for its only royal family. Meribbaal provided an opportunity for David to demonstrate the opposite: that David had never been anti-Saul, but that the previous deaths were merely the result of circumstance. Given the chance to display royal generosity, David could point readily to Meribbaal. Thus the Bible presents David as asking, “Is there anyone still left of the House of Saul with whom I can keep faith for the sake of Jonathan?” (2 Sam. 9:1). No one could accuse David of seeking to obliterate Saul’s name from history. His care for Meribbaal would prove his affection for the traditions of the north.

David summoned Meribbaal to him, an invitation that undoubtedly would have been terrifying for the young man. After all, the last northerner to be personally invited to see David was Abner, and the previous heir to the throne was Ishbaal—both now dead. Meribbaal could have no idea what David’s intentions were. Thus he made his fealty to David as clear as possible. Upon arriving, he “fell on his face and prostrated himself” (2 Sam. 9:6), in the standard Near Eastern gesture of subjugation.
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When David spoke his name, Meribbaal’s response was equally abject: “At your service” (9:6). But Meribbaal need not have worried. David had no intention of harming him and told him, “Don’t be afraid, for I will keep faith with you for the sake of your father Jonathan” (9:7). Then, in an act of ostensible generosity, David laid out the terms of this faithfulness: “I will give you back all the land of your grandfather Saul, and you shall always eat at my table” (9:7).

Most readers understand this as true kindness: David is promising to care for Meribbaal, even perhaps to treat him as part of the royal court. David’s actions are, however, less altruistic than they appear. By decreeing that Meribbaal would eat with David “always,” David was in essence confining him to house arrest in the palace. Though Meribbaal would not die, he would be a glorified prisoner, kept constantly under David’s watchful eye. This practice of royal house arrest is known from elsewhere in the ancient Near East. In fact, ironically, it is precisely what happens at the end of the Davidic dynasty. In the very last verse of the books of Kings, after the kingdom of Judah has been destroyed by the Babylonians and its leaders killed or exiled, we hear of the fate of the last surviving Davidic monarch, Jehoiachin. Jehoiachin, who had long been imprisoned in Babylon, was released from his cell and brought to the court of the Babylonian king Evil-merodach. There, “he ate before [the king] always, all the days of his life” (2 Kings 25:29). The parallels between that story and the story of Meribbaal are apparent. The Babylonians had conquered Judah, just as David had vanquished the north. There was no surviving administrative structure to support the return of the Davidic monarchy, just as there was no structure to support the return of Saul’s family to power. And just as the Davidic monarchy would never resume after the house arrest of Jehoiachin, so Saul’s line would never regain the throne after the confinement of Meribbaal. In both cases the historical status of the royal line is acknowledged, but at the same time a firm statement is made that that royal line’s time has passed. David’s actions toward Meribbaal are only an outward show of generosity. In fact, they are a death sentence for the House of Saul.

What should we make, then, of David’s promise to grant to Meribbaal all of Saul’s land? This appears to be a kindness, as Saul’s royal lands would have been quite considerable, at least by the standards of ancient Israel. Yet this too is deceptive. After all, Meribbaal, confined to David’s court, could hardly take advantage of the property. In fact, David did something quite clever here. He struck a deal with a man named Ziba, Saul’s former steward: “You and your sons and your servants shall work the land for Meribbaal and shall bring in its yield to provide food for your master’s grandson to eat” (2 Sam. 9:10). That is, Saul’s landholdings may belong nominally to Meribbaal, but they will be worked by Ziba and his family, who are thereby indebted to David. What’s more, this arrangement means that even though Meribbaal is eating at the king’s table, he is not eating of the king’s food. He is, in effect, paying for his own imprisonment.
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Again, David has turned an ostensibly kind gesture to his own benefit.

The fact that David had the authority to grant Saul’s former lands to Meribbaal is also revealing. Traditionally, Israelite property was inviolable, held in perpetuity by the family, clan, and tribe. Even if it was necessary to sell the land, it was to be returned to its original owners after a time (Lev. 26:10–34). Israel’s territories were considered to have been granted to them by God himself at the moment of Joshua’s conquest. This was a cultural understanding that Saul never violated—nowhere is it intimated that he claimed any authority over the landholdings of his subjects. David, on the other hand, arrogated this authority to himself, in line with the regular practices of other ancient Near Eastern monarchies.
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This must have been a shock to the Israelite population, who would have felt that their ancestral lands were suddenly in jeopardy of being seized by the crown.
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But David’s power was such that he could overturn this long-standing tradition without fear of retribution.
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Given David’s well-established tendency to dispatch by the sword those who stood in his way, it is revealing that he took another path with Meribbaal. The value of Meribbaal’s life must have been higher for David than his death. And indeed, David’s treatment of Meribbaal is a stroke of brilliant diplomacy. With one deft move he elevated to prominence an heir who could never become king, kept under close watch his most obvious opponent (even if Meribbaal was only a symbolic threat), financed Meribbaal’s imprisonment with Meribbaal’s own land, created a dependent in charge of Saul’s property in Ziba, and in all of this displayed to Israel his implicit loyalty to the memory of Saul’s kingship.

But one final step needed to be taken with regard to Saul’s family, now that they were no longer a threat. David collected the bones of Saul and Jonathan from Jabesh-Gilead, where they had been resting since the battle at Mount Gilboa, and the bodies of Saul’s other descendants killed at Gibeon and buried them in the family tomb of Saul’s father, in the territory of Benjamin. This postmortem repatriation was highly symbolic. Family tombs were of great significance in ancient Israel. They formed a major part of a family’s title to the land: if one’s descendants were buried there, then no one else could claim possession. The family tomb was effectively a deed of ownership. The tomb was also a locus for religious observance. In early Israel, there was a well-established cult of the dead. Living descendants offered sacrifices and poured libations at the gravesites of their ancestors, in the hopes that the deceased would protect them from the great beyond.
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It was thus of utmost importance that those who died be returned to their family tombs. At the same time, it meant that David had every reason to want to prevent Saul and Jonathan (and Ishbaal, who was buried in Hebron) from being buried in Benjamin. Without the body of the king there, the claim of Saul’s descendants to their land was weakened. And, more important, there could be no cult of the dead on Saul’s behalf. As long as the king remained elsewhere, there would be no place for anyone to rally to Saul’s memory. The one physical location where Saul could be venerated would be empty.

For David to be willing to return the bones of Saul and his descendants to the family tomb, then, signals his growing sense of security. The threat of a Saulide uprising had passed, permanently. Returning the bones would have no adverse consequences and might just score David some points on the political front. It was a prudent and gracious move.

F
ROM THE MOMENT OF
Saul’s death to the moment his bones were returned to Benjamin, David had come a remarkably long way. He began as a vassal of the Philistines, a servant of foreigners, and ended as the king of a newly united Judah and Israel. At every step, David took advantage of his changing situation. He used the powerful support of the Philistines to consolidate his rule over Judah. He used his new power over Judah to confront and wear down Abner and Ishbaal. He used the increasing weakness of the north against itself, driving Abner to defect and Ishbaal’s killers to turn traitor. He used Ishbaal’s death to become king in Israel. He used the combined forces of Judah and Israel to declare his independence from and to fend off the Philistines. He used both murder and diplomacy to control the remainder of Saul’s line.

David was a brilliant and ruthless tactician. Nothing he did was unexpected or particularly innovative within the larger standards of the ancient world in which he lived—he was simply good at what he did. Of course, attaining the throne and removing the threat of Saul’s descendants was just the beginning. We now turn to the question of what David actually achieved while he was on the throne. How did he create his new kingdom in his image?

Chapter 5
David’s Kingdom
T
HE
M
YTH OF
N
ATIONAL AND
R
ELIGIOUS
O
RIGINS

T
O BE REMEMBERED AS A
glorious king, one must have reigned over a glorious kingdom. In Israel’s cultural memory, no kingdom was more glorious than the united Israel and Judah under David. This was an easy period to glorify—not only was it the only time when the northern and southern kingdoms were ruled by a single monarch, but it lasted for only two generations, under David and then Solomon, before disintegrating. The best times are always those of the irrecoverable past, largely because that past can be reshaped in our memory, made finer than it ever really was or could have been.

David is credited with the creation of the nation of Israel. He established the eternal capital, Jerusalem, where he inaugurated the worship of Yahweh. And he expanded Israel’s borders through the conquest of many neighboring nations. Some of this is true; some is false. Much of it is either exaggerated or misunderstood. It is our task to understand what David actually accomplished, and why.

The New Capital

O
NE OF
D
AVID’S FIRST
acts upon becoming king of Israel was to conquer Jerusalem and establish it as his new capital. It was a smart choice. Jerusalem was an ancient city, and in fact an ancient capital city.
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Archaeological discoveries have revealed that the city was probably inhabited as early as the fourth millennium
BCE
.
2
Its location, atop one of the higher hills in the area and fed by a reliable water source, made it a natural place to settle. There are references to Jerusalem in Egyptian texts from the twentieth century
BCE,
and in the fourteenth century
BCE
Jerusalem was the capital of a significant territory in the hills of Judah, complete with a king (albeit a vassal of Egypt). As with his choice of Hebron in Judah, David’s choice of a capital had historical and cultural resonance.

Before David arrived, however, Jerusalem and its surrounding area had fallen under the control of a people known as the Jebusites. Like the Gibeonites, the Jebusites were a non-Israelite population. They were well enough ensconced in Jerusalem that the expansion of the Israelites throughout the surrounding region was not sufficient to displace them. This is reflected in the biblical account of the conquest, in which, among the lists of the many regions Joshua conquered, we find the notice that “the people of Judah could not dispossess the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem” (Josh. 15:63). Thus Jerusalem goes unmentioned in the stories of Saul’s reign, because, like Gibeon, it was not part of Saul’s kingdom. For David, this presented an opportunity: rather than make his capital in part of Saul’s former territory, or in the backwater of Judah, he could establish his own place, one with historical power but without any baggage from the Saulide legacy. Moreover, David could capture Jerusalem with his personal militia, rather than with any Judahite or Israelite help, and thereby turn the city into something of a private royal fiefdom—rightly called the “City of David.”
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Jerusalem was also well located for David’s purposes. As David was the first king to rule both Judah and Israel, it was important that he choose a capital that would not appear to show favoritism toward either. Jerusalem is situated almost directly on the border between the two. The obvious modern analogy is the choice of Washington, D.C., as the new capital of the United States, positioned as it is on the line between the northern and southern states. We see David’s choice of Jerusalem as almost divinely inspired, since we know that the city became the spiritual capital of the Judeo-Christian faith. The Bible, written after Jerusalem was well established as the holy city of Israel, takes the same perspective. But for David, the choice was purely tactical, a considered political move.
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The actual conquest of the city is narrated quite briefly in the Bible. As David and his forces were strong enough to withstand the attacks of the Philistines, it is reasonable to assume that the capture of Jerusalem was a relatively straightforward affair. What is perhaps lost in the brevity of the narrative is the way that David undid centuries of Jerusalem’s independence. We are accustomed to thinking of the Jebusites as the enemy—after all, they are frequently listed as one of the indigenous nations that the Israelites were to dispossess during the conquest and are therefore aligned with the Canaanites. Yet in reality, the Jebusites had lived peacefully among the early Israelites for generations, and Jerusalem had been a proud and independent city for millennia. It is not surprising that David should have wanted it as his capital, nor that he would have taken what he wanted. But if we put ourselves in the place of the Jebusites, we may recognize just how sudden and violent an upheaval the conquest of the city was. It is hard to mourn a people who no longer exist. But the Jebusites, like every other ancient populace, had their own culture, their own history, their own narratives that had been cultivated for centuries. The mutual understanding between the Jebusites and the Israelites was undone in the flash of an eye. The creation of David’s kingdom meant the destruction of the Jebusites. In fact, the Jebusites would become a metaphor for an obliterated people. In the book of the prophet Zechariah, the destruction of the Philistine cities is predicted, and of Ekron it is said, “Ekron shall be like the Jebusites” (9:7). David created a new nation, but in doing so he wiped another clean off the map. The Bible, and the traditions that emerged from it, consider this justified by the results, by the transformation of the city into Israel’s glorious capital. But if it happened today, we would call it genocide.

Jerusalem

The modern tourist walking the streets of Jerusalem’s old city can still feel the power of the ancient site. As one passes through one of the seven gates embedded in the mighty walls, a few short turns lead to the Temple Mount, where the Wailing Wall supports the enormous platform on which the temple once stood, now dominated by the Dome of the Rock. From the top of the Temple Mount one can see the full panorama of hills and valleys all around, and one can sense how this place would have been the center of the kingdom. It all appears utterly befitting the capital city of the great David.

What most people do not realize, however, is that the Jerusalem they visit and worship in today has virtually nothing to do with the Jerusalem of David. The Wailing Wall is from the first century
BCE
, built by Herod the Great. The walls and gates are from the sixteenth century
CE
and were constructed by the Muslim conqueror Suleiman the Magnificent. The tourist site known as David’s Tomb is a medieval building in very much the wrong location for David’s actual burial site. The old city is not David’s city.

David’s city does remain, however, though few visitors find their way there. David’s capital comprised what is now known as the City of David, a small spur to the southeast of the Temple Mount, outside of Suleiman’s walls. It doesn’t have the appearance of a great capital. For one thing, it is covered with private Israeli and Arab homes, with archaeological excavations only gradually revealing the ancient structures beneath. What’s more, from top to bottom it is little more than half a kilometer in length, and from side to side, no more than a quarter of a kilometer. It is a tiny area. This was the Jerusalem that was settled and fortified in the millennia before David, and it was from here that a large swath of the hill country was governed in the second millennium
BCE
. Compared with the great imperial capitals of Egypt and Mesopotamia, or even with the relatively enormous cities of the Philistines, the Jerusalem of David’s time was incredibly small. Its size reminds us that the sort of magnificence we associate with kings and capitals today was not necessarily a feature of early Israel.
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After all, Saul ruled from underneath a tree in his hometown.

One of the major reasons that capitals both ancient and modern tend to be larger than the average city—or tiny village—is that they need space to house and support all of the officials required for the task of governing. The more extensive the administrative structures, the more expansive the physical structures. Thus the tininess of David’s capital tells us something important about the nature of his administration. Despite ruling over a far larger territory than any Israelite before him, David did not fundamentally change the nature of Israelite leadership in a single generation. He imposed no national programs of taxation or construction—the types of programs that require robust centralized oversight. Such programs were foreign to Israel, literally: Israel’s only experience with enforced taxation and labor would have been during its very early history, even before it was truly Israel, when Canaan was a vassal state of the powerful Egyptian empire.
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Since it had come into its own, however, Israel had survived without that sort of centralized authority, and even after the monarchy was instituted this did not change. At most, Saul would on occasion require the towns under his authority to provide troops for military actions. David was very much in the same mold.

Indeed, like Saul, David maintained a limited administrative structure, surrounding himself with only a handful of people whom he felt he could trust (2 Sam. 8:16–18; 1 Chron. 18:15–17). Just as Saul’s army commander was a relative, his cousin Abner, so too David chose a kinsman, in this case a nephew, as his commander: Joab, the son of Zeruiah, who according to Chronicles was David’s sister.
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Choosing a family member as chief military officer was prudent: as we have seen, the most likely source of a coup was from the ranks of the army, and so having a relative in that position assured some degree of loyalty. At the same time, by selecting a kinsman who was not in the direct line of succession, David could also be secure in the knowledge that Joab would never have a rightful claim to the throne. Aside from Joab, David’s cabinet consisted of Jehoshaphat, a “recorder,” probably something of a foreign minister; Shausha (also known as Seraiah), a scribe; and Benaiah, the head of David’s personal bodyguards. There was also Adoram, who was in charge of forced labor—though this probably refers to the labor performed by foreigners David defeated, rather than by Israelites. Rounding out the list were David’s two main priests, Abiathar and Zadok, both of whom had joined David back when he was living in the wilderness.

As in the case of his kinsman Joab and his old supporters Abiathar and Zadok, when it came to his most important military forces, David stuck to people he knew and trusted and who had been with him for some time. His bodyguards, known as the Cherethites and Pelethites, were probably of Philistine origin, as their titles, derived from Greek, suggest.
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They were joined by six hundred soldiers from Gath under the leadership of a man named Ittai, who had been with David since his days in Ziklag. David’s core soldiers, in other words, were his old Philistine compatriots, trustworthy perhaps precisely because they were foreigners. David’s administration was minimal, which accords with the lack of any major national projects attributed to him.

The structures of government would change, in fact, only with Solomon, who seems to have recognized the opportunity that David’s newly created united kingdom offered for the imposition of centralized authority. It is Solomon who created a taxation system for the nation and who imposed forced labor on the populace for the construction of new monumental buildings—with, as we will see, disastrous consequences. If it was a conscious decision at all, David was undoubtedly right to maintain the relatively simple mode of authority with which Israel had long been familiar. His power was an imposition upon the people no less than Solomon’s, but David’s kingship, like Saul’s, probably did not affect the everyday life of most Israelites.

Still, David had achieved something beyond Saul, and he was not content to rule from beneath a tree as Saul had. Thus, according to the Bible, his first decision after conquering and refortifying Jerusalem was to have a palace built for himself.
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This is described in a single verse: “King Hiram of Tyre sent envoys to David with cedar trees, carpenters, and stonemasons; and they built a palace for David” (2 Sam. 5:11). We know nothing of the dimensions of this palace, though given the relatively restricted space in the City of David, it could not have been very large. We are also unsure of its exact location within David’s Jerusalem, though recent archaeological excavations have uncovered what may be part of it.
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What separated a palace from a normal residence was its size and, perhaps more important, its mode of construction. Whereas the usual Israelite home was basically four rooms with walls made of mud-brick, a royal building was made of cedar and stone and required advanced knowledge of carpentry and masonry. This explains the perhaps unexpected appearance of the king of Tyre in the middle of the David story.