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.5 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.6 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.7 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.8 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.9 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.10 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.
David’s palace was the first Israelite palace to be built. The Israelites had no experience with monumental construction; they had never had either a need to build anything on such a scale or the centralized administration to bring such a project to fruition. The nearest culture with such expertise was the Philistines—David may have come up with the idea of a palace from seeing the one in Gath when he had been a vassal of Achish—but it probably would have been bad form for David to ask them for help in this particular matter. Thus the next closest would have been the Phoenicians, living on the coast north of Israel. Tyre, an ancient and exceptionally wealthy seaport, was one of the great Phoenician cities and the closest to Israelite territory. If David wanted a palace, Tyre was the place to turn. Though the Bible suggests that Hiram sent supplies for the palace to David out of the goodness of his heart, or perhaps in recognition of David’s newly acquired status, it is certain that David paid for Hiram’s services. The Phoenicians were merchants, after all—they were not about to give their services away for nothing.
Every palace is a symbol, and David’s was no exception. Israel had entered a new era under him, and he was very aware of it. He was not a king like Saul, accepted by the people as a military leader. He was a conqueror, ruling by force, and his power required a physical manifestation unlike anything Israel had seen before. He would not live as everyone else lived; his dwelling would be that of a foreigner. By building himself a royal home, David announced, again, his distinction among all of Israel. Saul was merely an elevated Israelite. David was a monarch.
David and the Ark of the Covenant
JERUSALEM IS FAMOUS, HOWEVER, not for being the administrative cente
r of Israel, but for being its religious center. And perhaps David’s most significant achievement as king, at least in terms of the lasting effects of his actions, was to turn this former Jebusite city into the heart of Israel’s faith.
The Israelite landscape in David’s time was dotted with sanctuaries, local shrines serving the needs of one or more communities. There was little sense of a “national” religion. Though Israel’s sanctuaries were devoted to the same god, and probably shared many similar cultic practices, they were not outlets of a centralized cult, but rather independent “mom-and-pop” operations, with priestly lineages stretching back into the distant past.11 Many of these sanctuaries were very ancient and had their own legends attached to them. The shrine at Bethel, for example, claimed that its sanctity derived from having been the spot where God spoke to the ancestor Jacob, a claim that has found its way into the Bible in multiple places.12 Others told different stories, and some relied merely on their long standing in the community. And one shrine laid claim to a physical object that was understood to be God’s very throne: the ark of the covenant.
For all of its importance, we know remarkably little about the ark. Though it is described in some detail in the Bible, it is described in contradictory ways. In Exodus, it is depicted as a gold-plated box with a golden cover, mounted by golden cherubim (not pudgy babies, but fearsome winged lions). In Deuteronomy, by contrast, it is described as a plain wooden box without adornment. Its function is also differently conceived: in Exodus it is the physical seat of God, the center of God’s literal dwelling-place, the Tabernacle, and it is from atop the ark that God communicates with Moses. In Deuteronomy, it is merely the receptacle for the tablets of the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments), kept in the innermost sanctum of the temple. In yet a third passage, in Numbers, the ark is used as a palladium, a sort of military standard that went before the Israelites on their march through the wilderness.
In truth, the ark is most easily understood as the Israelite equivalent of an idol. That is, it is the physical representation of the deity—not the form of the deity, but its presence in the midst of the people. Like an idol in a non-Israelite temple, the ark stood in the innermost sanctum, the place where the deity was understood to dwell. Just as copies of ancient Near Eastern treaties were placed in the temples of the respective parties so that the gods could act as witnesses, the ark—at least in Deuteronomy—was the location of the most fundamental covenant between God and Israel. And just as non-Israelites took their idols out to battle with them to guarantee victory, so too the Israelites took the ark with them. Obviously, it was not really an idol—it was not worshipped as if it were God himself. But in its function it was the symbolic equivalent.
The ark belonged originally to the sanctuary at Shiloh, a major cultic site in the hills of Ephraim. It is likely that its presence there played a significant role in the importance of Shiloh’s sanctuary, investing it with special sanctity and probably making it a center for pilgrimages. In the book of Joshua, Shiloh is where the Israelites assembled to apportion the newly conquered promised land (18:1). It is to Shiloh that Elkanah and his wife Hannah went annually to offer sacrifices, where Hannah prayed for a son, and where Samuel spent his youth and received his call from God (1 Sam. 1:3). As the ark was a physical manifestation of God’s presence, it was natural for Shiloh to be a center for oracular inquiry, like an Israelite Delphi. Shiloh was not the only sanctuary in Israel, but it was a central cultic site and the only one to lay claim to the ark. For most purposes—for the usual offerings and priestly inquiries—a local sanctuary would suffice. Shiloh would have served as a sanctuary for exceptional occasions.13
Among these occasions would have been those rare times when the Israelite tribes came together to defend themselves against external threat—like an attack by the Philistines. At such moments the priests of Shiloh would bear the ark into battle, as a sign that the God of the Israelites was fighting on their behalf. In the battle of Eben-ezer, however, described in 1 Samuel 4, the ark was captured. Though it eventually found its way back into Israelite hands, it would never again reside at Shiloh. It was kept for about a generation in the Gibeonite town of Kiryath-jearim, just east of Jerusalem.14 And there it remained until David became king and found himself in possession of a capital with no religious significance.15
Jerusalem had a cult before David, but it was not an Israelite cult because Jerusalem was not an Israelite city. As the very name of the city shows, Jerusalem—“Foundation of Shalem”—was devoted to an old Semitic deity, Shalem, a god of dusk or of the evening star.16 To make his capital an Israelite cultic center, therefore, David had to start afresh. But this was not as easy as, say, building a church or synagogue is today. Cultic sites had long histories and associations stretching back into the past that justified their sanctity. David’s new capital had none of this. He could hardly get away with making up a story explaining how Jerusalem, a well-known foreign city, was actually of great Israelite religious significance; there could be no founding legend like that of the Bethel cult. What he needed was something tangible, something everyone would recognize as marking God’s presence. And the ark was just a few kilometers away.17
As with so many other parts of the David story, when we read it in retrospect we take it for granted that the ark should have been brought to Jerusalem. But, as with so much else, this hardly would have been obvious to an Israelite in David’s time. If the ark was not to remain in Kiryath-jearim, its rightful place would have been at Shiloh, its traditional home, or at the very least at another established Israelite sanctuary.18 The ark did not get to Jerusalem of its own accord. David took it—and it is likely that he took it by force. According even to the biblical account, before going to Kiryath-jearim David “assembled all the picked men of Israel, thirty thousand strong; then David and all the people that were with him set out” (2 Sam. 6:1–2). The biblical authors may want us to understand this as a show of honor, or as a sign of the ark’s role in military affairs. But in practical terms, the effect of David and his entire army descending on the town where the ark was held would have been one of implicit, if not explicit, threat.19 As we have seen, David always took what he wanted whenever he could. What he wanted now was the most important religious emblem in Israel, and he had more than enough men to ensure that he got it. Whatever benefits the inhabitants of Kiryath-jearim enjoyed during the ark’s stay in their small town were gone in an instant. Whatever ancient rights Shiloh may have had to the ark were ignored. As with so many other things, the changes that David made to the long-established fabric of Israel’s society were unilateral and abrupt.
The biblical story of the ark’s journey from Kiryath-jearim to Jerusalem describes quite reasonably how it was loaded onto a cart and conveyed by oxen, accompanied by music and dancing. Where it turns unlikely is in the moment when a man named Uzzah reached for the ark to steady it and was struck down by God on the spot. This episode is nothing more than an etiology for a place named Perez-uzzah, “the breach of Uzzah,” and has no historical significance. It does, however, speak to a well-established Israelite tradition that the ark was so holy that it was in fact dangerous. And this tradition explains why it was not immediately taken to Jerusalem but stayed for three months in the house of one Obed-edom. In the biblical narrative, David commanded that the ark be kept there after witnessing the death of Uzzah. In reality, it seems more likely that David wanted to ensure that the tradition of the ark’s inherent danger was not one that he needed to fear. Obed-edom was essentially a guinea pig, a royal taster, making sure that the king would not suffer any harm. One can imagine that the poor man was terrified of his responsibility, though it turned out he had nothing to fear. When it was clear that Obed-edom had experienced no adversity because of the presence of the ark in his home, it continued its delayed procession into the City of David.
The final leg of the ark’s journey was accompanied by grand ceremony. After every six steps taken in the procession, David sacrificed an ox and a r
am.20 The symbolism of this ritual would not have been lost on any observer. On the one hand, David was positioning himself as priest—he was taking on the cultic role of sacrificial officiant, making it clear that the ark was now a royal object. Though this confusion of roles may seem unusual from a modern standpoint, in the ancient world, including Israel, it was very common for kings to play a priestly role on special occasions.21 Doing so was a way to explicitly connect the monarch and the deity, to demonstrate not only that the deity had special care for the king, but that the cultic apparatus was under royal control. By leading the sacrifices before the ark himself, David turned an ethnic and national cultic symbol into a royal cultic symbol. On the other hand, the sheer volume of the sacrifices—an ox and a ram every six steps—would have sent a clear message regarding David’s personal wealth. For the average Israelite, an ox or a ram would have been enormously expensive, and sacrifices of such animals would have been rare and reserved for only the most important moments.
It is also noteworthy that these sacrifices were rather unlike any commonly known in Israel. There were essentially two types of sacrifice: burnt offerings, during which the entire animal was burned on the altar, and well-being offerings, during which part of the animal was burned and part consumed by the offerer. Each sacrifice had a specific function: burnt offerings to curry God’s favor or express thanks, and well-being offerings for communal celebration in a cultic context.22 David’s offerings, however, fit neither category. It is impossible that the animals should have been burned, for they were offered every six steps—and besides, there is no indication that an altar was available on which to burn them. But if the sacrifices weren’t burned, then no part of them reached God—for it is the smoke that conveys the sacrifice to the deity. In other words, David’s sacrifices were pure show. His ostentatious offerings again would have reminded the people that he was not one of them, that he was different not only in title, but in kind.
The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero Page 18
