The first Israelite victory recorded in 2 Samuel 8 is over the Philistines. It is natural enough for the biblical authors to emphasize David’s battles against the Philistines by placing them at the head of the chapter, for victory over Israel’s longtime nemesis was one of the basic rationales for both Saul’s and David’s kingships in the first place. The extent of this victory is ambiguous, however. It is usually assumed that David actually defeated the Philistine heartland along the coast, thereby establishing Israel’s right to that fertile territory—including what we now call the Gaza Strip. The text, however, says only that David attacked “Philistines,” not “the Philistines.” It seems that this battle was not a full-fledged assault on the Philistine homeland. Gezer, the Philistine-controlled town closest to Israelite territory, was still in Philistine hands into the reign of Solomon. David never conquered the Philistines in any substantial way. They remained firmly in control of their coastal cities for the duration of his life.
The second verse of 2 Samuel 8 records David’s victory over Moab, the nation across the Jordan to the east of Judah (present-day Jordan). Unlike the long-established Philistine enemy, in David’s time Moab had barely coalesced into a meaningful political entity.41 It is therefore somewhat unclear what it even would have meant for David to conquer the entire nation of Moab. Then again, the text never quite makes that claim explicitly, though it tries to imply it. On the contrary, just as in the case of the Philistines in the previous verse, the Bible provides no detail whatsoever about the scope of David’s victory. Not a single town or region is mentioned—which strongly suggests that not a single town or region was taken, for the biblical authors would be sure to say so.42 This may have been a border skirmish, perhaps the result of some small band of Moabites testing the strength of the new kingdom to their west. Regime change was often the occasion for such adventures in the ancient Near East. It was never obvious how powerful a new ruler would be, and thus the rise of a new king often coincided with external attacks or internal revolts.43 Such may have been the case here, too. Most important, there is no record of Moab having been subjugated by David. In the monumental inscription of the Moabite king Mesha from the end of the ninth century BCE, the subjugation of Moab is attributed to the Israelite king Omri, who ruled a century after David.44 Thus we have here another example of the biblical authors suggesting that David controlled territory that he did not.
From the Philistines in the west and the Moabites in the east, 2 Samuel 8 turns north, to describe David’s defeat of the Arameans led by Hadadezer, the king of Zobah—territory that now belongs to Syria. Here again, however, the text implies more than it proves. The battle described in 2 Samuel 8:3–13 did not take place on Aramean soil, but rather in Ammon, the Transjordanian nation north of Moab. Ammon had been Israel’s enemy during Saul’s reign—in fact, some if not all of Saul’s authority derived from his ability to successfully defend the town of Jabesh-Gilead from the advances of the Ammonite king Nahash (1 Sam. 11). Saul’s enemy, however, was David’s friend: David refers to the fact that Nahash “kept faith” with him, using a technical term for treaty partnership. After the death of Nahash and the rise of his son Hanun to the Ammonite throne, however, David recognized an opportunity to test the limits of his power—again, regime change and international renegotiations went hand in hand. The war against Ammon also served a political purpose for David within Israel. His rejection of his former treaty obligations to Ammon would have been popular with the Israelites, especially those in Gilead, the region most directly threatened by Ammon.
Upon David’s aggression, Ammon turned for help to its allies in Aram, and soldiers came from Zobah, Maacah, and Tob, city-states just to the north of Israelite territory. It is the sequence of battles against these armies, detailed in 2 Samuel 10, that is referred to in 2 Samuel 8 as the defeat of the Arameans. David did not extend Israel’s borders to the north, into Aram—he extended them east, across the Jordan into Ammon. The Arameans he defeated were not even in Aramean territory.45 There is thus no record of David campaigning in Aram, to the north of Israel. He never occupied Aramean territory—nor does the text ever say that he did. The text implies it, perhaps, but had David really taken this territory, the biblical authors would have proclaimed and celebrated it.
Ammon, on the other hand—the actual object of the battles in which David fought the Arameans—was authentically subjugated. It is striking to note the difference between the reports that imply conquest where there was none and those that describe real conquests. Whereas details of territory taken and cities captured are lacking in those texts that can be classified as exaggerations, the notice of the conquest of Ammon is detailed. “Joab attacked Rabbah of Ammon”—the capital—“and captured the royal city” (2 Sam. 12:26). We cannot find this sort of explicit statement in any other account of David’s conquests, from his early days in Saul’s service to his time on the throne of Israel. This is a factual statement of victory over a foreign capital. It is the only one—and it is therefore the only one that can be trusted. We are further told that David gained possession of the royal crown of Ammon and carried off booty from the city. Moreover, he subjected the inhabitants of Rabbah to forced labor, “with saws, iron threshing boards, and iron axes, or assigned them to brickmaking” (12:31)—and here is where Adoram, who is in charge of forced labor for David, probably made his living, as there is no evidence that David ever subjected Israelites to labor.46 This description is again in contrast to what we find elsewhere, where references to booty and forced labor are generic at best. When the biblical authors have details to give, they give them—and when they don’t, they don’t.
The last victory mentioned in 2 Samuel 8 is over the Edomites, the nation to the southeast of Israel. Early in its existence, Edom’s territory was confined mostly to the southern Negev, as we know from the biblical story in Numbers 21 of the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness: they are prevented from moving straight up into Canaan by the Edomites, whose territory they are forced to circumvent.47 The value of this territory was mostly for its trade routes, which brought rare goods—spices and precious metals—into Israel from Arabia.48 Although the notice of David’s subjugation of Edom is brief (“He stationed garrisons in Edom—in all of Edom he stationed garrisons—and all the Edomites became vassals of David” [8:14]) it may be trustworthy. Solomon controlled Edomite territory, as he kept his fleet in the Edomite city of Ezion-geber (1 Kings 9:26). But the fact that in Solomon’s time this area was still referred to as Edomite suggests that it was not annexed to Israel, but rather controlled by Israel. It seems most likely, then, that David’s conquest of Edom consisted mostly of his seizure of the southern Negev and the establishment of garrisons to protect the trade route. Remarkably, archaeological evidence supports this process: an unusually high number of settlements in the Negev appeared out of nowhere in the tenth century BCE.49
In 2 Samuel 8, then, we have the biblical argument for the creation of a Davidic empire. The text is arranged geographically, with the conquest of the Philistines to the west, the Moabites to the east, the Arameans to the north, and the Edomites to the south. The artfulness of this construction is telling, especially when we recognize that those in the north, the Arameans, were really defeated in Ammon, to the east. The chapter is not a straightforward historical account, but a piece of propaganda, intended to magnify David’s conquests and give the impression of a mighty empire stretching in all directions. Notably, it appears to be yet another piece of pro-David one-upmanship regarding Saul, for we may note the verse that describes Saul’s military triumphs: “He waged war on every side against all his enemies: against the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, the kings of Zobah, and the Philistines, and wherever he turned he worsted them” (1 Sam. 14:47). This is precisely the list of nations we find in 2 Samuel 8, even down to the kings of Zobah. David hardly could be made to seem less powerful than his unworthy predecessor when it came to military success, and 2 Samuel 8 is the biblical authors’ attempt to en
sure David’s legacy. Scholars have further argued that this chapter is of a piece with royal propaganda from elsewhere in the Near East, especially monumental inscriptions relating the victories of kings over their many enemies.50 The text, like its parallels from elsewhere, implies great achievements without quite stating them explicitly. As a piece of propaganda, it has been remarkably successful. Even the later biblical authors of the two books of Chronicles accepted the story as presented here: Chronicles says explicitly that David captured Gath from the Philistines (1 Chron. 18:2), a claim made nowhere in Samuel.
David’s Kingdom
In the end, then, what can we say about the extent of David’s kingdom? To the west, it was no larger than it had been in Saul’s time. The Philistines still controlled all of their traditional territory. David’s kingdom never reached the coast of the Mediterranean. To the north, Israel also maintained its previous boundaries, with the northernmost point still being the city of Dan. This is reflected in the Bible in the typical description of Israel’s territory: “from Dan to Beersheba,” a phrase used to describe Israel in the time of Samuel (1 Sam. 3:20), at the time of David’s census (2 Sam. 24:2), and in the time of Solomon (1 Kings 5:5). The Arameans remained a formidable power to the north, becoming Israel’s main rival and even overlord in the ninth century BCE. To the south, David made inroads into the Negev territory of the Edomites, though this was less a conquest than a transfer of influence. This area was virtually uninhabited before David installed garrisons there to protect the trade routes. The traditional phrase “from Dan to Beersheba” reflects the fact that Beersheba remained the southernmost major settlement in Israelite territory, even after David.
It was only to the east, in his conquest of Ammon, that David expanded with any real force. Yet this was really not such a great distance—Rabbah is only about twenty miles from the Jordan valley, and there was little of Ammon to the east of that, as the mountains give way to uninterrupted desert. What’s more, the territories just to the east of the Jordan were probably already Israelite, or at least pro-Israelite, rather than Ammonite, for these are the regions in which the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and part of Manasseh are said to have settled (Num. 32). Consider, for example, Jabesh-Gilead, the town oppressed by the Ammonites, the town that rescued Saul’s body from the wall: it is on the Ammonite side of the Jordan. This diminishes even further the Ammonite territory to be conquered by David. The conquest of Ammon was a real conquest, and a real subjugation—perhaps the only one of its kind in all of David’s reign. But it was hardly a major expansion, nor was Ammon a major power like the Philistines or the Arameans.
The largest view we can realistically maintain of David’s kingdom, then, is not very different from what it was at the beginning of David’s reign. It could hardly be called an empire—it was no stronger than the Philistine and Aramean peoples to its west and north. And compared with Egypt and Mesopotamia, it remained a virtual nonentity—note that David is never said to have had any diplomatic contact with either of those two great superpowers at any time during his reign, nor is there any record from those civilizations of David’s reign. Israel under David remained what it had always been: a minor state, largely confined to the central hill country of Judah and Israel.
The current area of the modern state of Israel, small though it may be, is in fact perhaps larger than that of David’s Israel. Certainly the coastal plain, almost all the way up to Jaffa, would not have been under David’s control. On the other hand, the West Bank would have been David’s heartland, even extending a little into what is now Jordan. But the Davidic empire of tradition, stretching from the border of Egypt up to the Euphrates, is a gross exaggeration. The biblical account is propagandistic, and that propaganda has been accepted as fact for thousands of years.
To give David credit where it is due, however, simply maintaining the newly expanded borders of his kingdom was achievement enough. He left a territory secure enough that it could endure, at least for the most part, for many generations. For a small kingdom with few natural resources at its disposal, a widely scattered populace, and no tradition of statehood, this is impressive. But it is not the Davidic empire of tradition. Such an empire never existed.
Chapter 6
David Under Attack
DESPERATE TIMES CALL FOR DESPERATE MEASURES
THE POPULAR DEPICTION OF DAVID’S reign as gloriously successful is based largely on the memories of David preserved by later biblical authors. Those who wrote the books of Kings established David as the ruler against whom all others were judged. Those who wrote the books of Chronicles whitewashed David’s story to remove all traces of embarrassment or potential wrongdoing. But in the earliest material in the books of Samuel, even as the authors try to glorify David at every turn, they are forced, by virtue of their proximity to the historical events, to reckon with reality. The events that truly could be described as glorious—the capture of Jerusalem, the entrance of the ark into the city, and David’s victories against the neighboring nations—are narrated in only two chapters of Samuel. Almost the entire rest of the history of David’s kingship describes not a glorious reign, but rather a constantly troubled one.
In some respects, it is not surprising that David’s reign would not be an easy one. It was hard enough for rightfully chosen kings to maintain their grip on power. How much more difficult for a man who had taken the crown against the popular will and who had in addition spent years fighting on the side of the enemy, been responsible for the death of the previous and well-liked monarch, and appropriated a national cultic treasure for himself. If anyone knew the dangers of being king, it was David. But even David was unprepared when threats to his kingship came from an unexpected source: his own family.
David’s Family
TO UNDERSTAND THE CHALLENGES David would face, we need to be familiar with those closest to him. According to 2 Samuel 3:2–5, David had six sons by six different wives while he reigned in Hebron. His first wife, Ahinoam—the former wife of Saul—bore Amnon, David’s firstborn and a significant part of the story to come. His second wife, Abigail—the former wife of the Calebite chief—bore a son named Chileab according to Samuel, but Daniel according to Chronicles.1 The discrepancy in the son’s name is curious, but ultimately irrelevant, for neither Abigail nor her son is ever mentioned again. This may seem odd: after all, an entire chapter was devoted to the story of how Abigail became David’s wife. Yet her absence from the rest of the narrative is telling. As suggested above, this marriage had nothing to do with love and everything to do with replacing Nabal as chief of the Calebites. Once David had become king of Judah, Abigail and her offspring were of no use to him. Her job was done.2
It is possible, even probable, that David’s first two sons were born not in Hebron as the Bible says, but before David had become king in Judah. David had been married to both Ahinoam and Abigail for more than a year and a half before going to Hebron, and it seems unlikely that he would have waited to have children with them. In the case of Ahinoam, it is even possible that her son, Amnon, was conceived with David when she was still Saul’s wife. The biblical authors, however, would not have been pleased with the idea that David’s sons were born in Philistia, as this would make them practically foreigners. The authors have probably condensed the chronology of the births, at least for the first two sons.
David’s third son was Absalom, the central figure in the coming narrative. His mother, we are told, was Maacah, the daughter of King Talmai of Geshur. Geshur was an independent territory to the northeast of Israel, just to the east of the Sea of Galilee.3 According to the conquest narrative in the book of Joshua, Geshur was one of the regions that the Israelites were unable to dispossess, thus explaining the Geshurites’ continuing presence on the borders of Israel (Josh. 13:13). We are never told when or how David came to marry the princess of Geshur, but given the standards of the time, we can make an educated guess. As noted above, marriages between royal houses were common in the ancient Near East as a way of ce
menting diplomatic relations between nations. It therefore seems improbable that David should have married the daughter of the king of Geshur before he took the throne in Hebron, as the Geshurites would have had little to gain from an alliance with a mere Philistine mercenary. We can thus date David’s marriage to Maacah at least to the Hebron period, though we may not be able to be more precise than that.4 The marriage itself demonstrates that David was seen from the outside as a legitimate ruler, and one secure enough on the throne to warrant diplomatic ties. As Geshur was supposedly part of Ishbaal’s kingdom, David’s connection to it also was probably intended to weaken Ishbaal politically in advance of David’s seizing the northern throne.5
Of David’s remaining sons listed in 2 Samuel 3, only the fourth, Adonijah son of Haggith, plays any further role in the story—though not until the very end. Shephatiah son of Abital, and Ithream son of Eglah, the fifth and sixth sons, never appear by name again. In this regard they are like the eleven sons said to be born to David once he became king in Jerusalem, listed in 2 Samuel 5, only one of whom is known to us: Solomon. What about Solomon? We will treat David’s successor fully in the next chapter. After he is born in 2 Samuel 12, he disappears from the narrative until the beginning of the first book of Kings. It is there, at the end of David’s life, that Solomon’s story, including his birth, is properly told.
The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero Page 20
