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David –
King of Israel – Britannica
The following is the Article “David – King of Israel” from
Encyclopedia Britannica:
David (flourished c. 1000 BCE) was the second ruler of the
united kingdom of ancient Israel and Judah. He founded the Judaean dynasty and
united all the tribes of Israel under a single monarch. His son Solomon
expanded the empire that David built. David is an important figure in Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam.
Background and sources
The primary evidence for David’s career consists of several
chapters in the books 1 and 2 Samuel in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). Many
of the psalms are also attributed to him, a tribute to his legendary skill as a
poet, harpist, and hymnist. Material evidence for his reign, while a matter of
intense debate among scholars, is scant. Some scholars claim to have discovered
artifacts that corroborate the biblical account of David’s kingdom. Others
assert that the archaeological record strongly suggests that David was not the
grand ruler of a rising kingdom but merely a gifted tribal leader of a
pastoral, rather than urban, society. A fragment from a stone stela mentioning
the “house of David” (a reference to his political dynasty) was inscribed more
than a century after the traditional date of his reign and is not accepted by
all scholars. The following article is largely drawn from the biblical account
of David’s reign.
Early life
David slays Goliath
According to 1 Samuel, David was the youngest son of Jesse,
a man of Bethlehem, and served as a shepherd for his father before beginning
his career as an aide at the court of Saul, Israel’s first king. When Israel
came into conflict with the Philistines, a people from a neighboring region,
David’s brothers went to fight for King Saul. Young David would travel back and
forth to the camp to bring his brothers food and supplies. According to 1
Samuel 17, Goliath, a heavily armed Philistine giant, challenged Saul for 40
days to send out a man to fight him. No one would face this warrior until
David, armed only with a sling and stones, volunteered. David hit the giant in
the forehead with a stone and killed him. He continued to distinguish himself
as a warrior in the ongoing battles against the Philistines, and his resultant popularity
aroused Saul’s jealousy. Fearing that the people would make David king, Saul
plotted to kill him. With the help of his loyal friend Jonathan, Saul’s eldest
son, David fled into southern Judah and Philistia, on the coastal plain of
Palestine, where, with great sagacity and foresight, he began to lay the
foundations of his career.
As an outlaw with a price on his head, David led the life
of a Robin Hood on the desert frontier of his tribal domain in Judah (in the
south of the Levant). He became the leader and organizer of a group of other
outlaws and refugees, who progressively ingratiated themselves with the local
population by protecting them from other bandits or, in case they had been
raided, by pursuing the raiders and restoring the possessions that had been
taken. Although the boy David was anointed by the prophet Samuel as the future
king of Israel (1 Samuel 16), his actions in exile helped ensure that he would
be “invited” to become king as the true successor of Saul after Saul and
Jonathan were slain in battle against the Philistines on Mount Gilboa.
Kingship
The exploits of David and the events of his monarchy are
related in 2 Samuel. After mourning the death of Saul and executing an
Amalekite who claimed to have killed the former king, David began to
consolidate his position as the successor to Saul. He was proclaimed king of Judah
in Hebron while Ishbosheth, Saul’s eldest surviving son, reigned in northern
Israel, and a long war of attrition developed between the two houses.
Ishbosheth’s position became exceedingly insecure following the death of his
general, Abner. He was eventually beheaded by his own courtiers, whom David, in
turn, executed for murdering the last ruler of the house of Saul. David made a
covenant with the elders of northern Israel and was then anointed as king over
all of Israel.
He next conquered the Jebusite (Canaanite) stronghold of
Jerusalem, which he made the capital of the new united kingdom. He selected
this city as his new capital because it was a neutral site and neither the
northerners nor the southerners would be adverse to the selection. From the very
beginning of his reign, David showed the political astuteness and acumen that
made for him a reputation that has continued for 3,000 years.
Expansion of the Davidic empire
The latter two-thirds of 2 Samuel contains the account of
the reign of David from Jerusalem. After establishing Jerusalem as his capital,
he defeated the Philistines so thoroughly that they were never again a serious
threat to the Israelites’ security, and he annexed the coastal region. He went
on to establish an empire by becoming the overlord of many small kingdoms
bordering Israel, including Edom, Moab, and Ammon. His minor empire stretched
from Egypt in the south to Lebanon in the north and from the Mediterranean Sea
in the west to the Arabian Desert in the east. He thus controlled the
crossroads of the great empires of the ancient Near East.
His second act of political astuteness was to bring the
sacred Ark of the Covenant, the supreme symbol of Israelite religion, to
Jerusalem. David was unable to build a temple, but, with the ark in Jerusalem,
the city became both the political and the religious cult center of his
kingdom.
David’s great success as a warrior and empire builder was
marred by interconnected family dissensions and political revolts. To tie
together the various groups that constituted his kingdom, David took wives from
them and created a harem. The resultant family was an extreme departure from
the family in the consanguineous context, the traditional clan structure.
David’s wives were mostly completely alien to one another, and his children
were without the directing support of established social patterns that provided
precedents for the resolution of conflict or for establishing the rights of
succession.
Though he showed generosity to Mephibosheth, the sole
surviving son of the house of Saul, David showed his weakness for the beauty of
Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of his generals. After ensuring Uriah’s death
by sending him onto the front lines in a battle with the Ammonites, David
married Bathsheba, who had become pregnant by the king. When the prophet Nathan
came to David and told him of a rich man’s unjust actions toward a poor man,
David’s response was one of anger and a demand for justice, whereupon Nathan
said, “You are the man,” and that God would exact retribution by not allowing
the child to live. David then repented. Bathsheba later conceived and bore
another child, Solomon, who was to be the future king of Israel.
J. Coert Rylaarsdam The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica