The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero

by Joel S. Baden

  From Adonijah, Solomon turned to the priest Abiathar. His life was spared, but he was confined to house arrest. His fellow Adonijah supporter Joab, however, was less fortunate. After seeing what had happened to Adonijah—or, equally likely, even before then—Joab tried to seek sanctuary at the altar, just as Adonijah had. Solomon had been lenient with Adonijah, at least at first. He would not be so with Joab; he sent Benaiah to seize him from the altar and kill him. Though this seems a violation of the principle of sanctuary, it was in fact in line with ancient Israelite custom: the altar provided no safety for those guilty of murder (Exod. 21:14). And, even if disingenuously, Solomon was perfectly capable of laying the deaths of Abner and Amasa at Joab’s feet. Solomon could declare that he had rid Israel of its most dangerous man—without mentioning that Joab was probably most dangerous to Solomon himself.

  Finally, Solomon dealt with Shimei. Shimei was confined to a house in Jerusalem—away from his home in Benjamin, where he might continue to stir up trouble—and given instructions that were nearly impossible to follow. He was not to leave his house—ever. Should he leave, he would die. Solomon only had to wait. And sure enough, eventually Shimei left, in pursuit of some runaway slaves. Like Adonijah and Joab, Shimei died by the sword of Benaiah.

  One group remains that had supported Adonijah but never appears in the story again: Adonijah’s younger brothers, the princes, the other sons of David who were invited to Adonijah’s feast. The precise makeup of this group is unclear. The Bible mentions two sons born after Adonijah in Hebron, Shephatiah and Ithream, and ten others born in Jerusalem. Because none is ever mentioned by name again, it is hard to judge whether these lists are historically accurate. It seems safe to say, however, that David had other sons after Adonijah—they appear not only here, but also in the story of Absalom’s murder of Amnon, where David is afraid that Absalom has killed not only his elder brother, but all the other princes as well. If David had other sons, what happened to them after Solomon became king? There is probably not an innocent explanation for their disappearance. After Adonijah’s death, the rightful heir to David’s throne would be the eldest of Adonijah’s younger brothers, and so on down the line. David knew enough to eliminate all his predecessor’s descendants to ensure the safety of his stolen crown. It is reasonable to assume that Solomon knew it just as well.

  With these deaths, all the remaining ties to David’s story were severed. Solomon could begin to rule without any entanglements inherited from his predecessor. Murder had been David’s main path to power, and with these final murders, that path finally came to an end. With the last words of the chapter, the Bible formally transitions from the story of David to the story of Solomon: “The kingdom was secured in Solomon’s hands” (1 Kings 2:46).

  The Bible presents Solomon’s kingship as David’s choice. David declared that Solomon would succeed him; David gave the command for Solomon’s coronation; David gave Solomon instructions for securing the kingdom. But Solomon’s kingship was not David’s choice. It happened without his consent, and even without his knowledge.

  Solomon’s kingship is presented as the divinely ordained continuation of David’s dynasty. It had been predicted long before Solomon’s birth; it was reaffirmed in David’s own deathbed words. But Solomon’s kingship was not a continuation of David’s dynasty. Solomon was not David’s son—he was the son of Uriah. Solomon had no right to the throne—he took it by force from Adonijah, the true heir, with the support of the army. Solomon was a usurper.

  The biblical authors did all they could to hide this fact, though it must have been recognized by David and Solomon’s contemporaries. But generations later, with king after king in Judah tracing his lineage back to David—the man who had created the kingdom of Judah in the first place—the biblical account won the day. And it has prevailed for the past three thousand years.

  The realization that Solomon was not David’s son has an effect beyond mere historical curiosity. The entire myth of the Davidic dynasty, built up over the centuries in ancient Israel, is based on a falsehood. There was no Davidic dynasty—the kingdom of Judah was ruled by a Solomonic dynasty. And the genealogies that trace the descent of Jesus back to David are equally problematic. Jesus’s line may go back to Solomon—but David is out of the picture. And so too are David’s sons, whom Solomon probably had killed as part of his Davidic housecleaning. David’s line died with him.

  The irony of Solomon’s coup is that, in the end, David’s legacy is the same as Saul’s. Both were the first kings—Saul over Israel, David over Judah and over the united kingdom. Both must have had high hopes that their sons would succeed them and that a long-lasting dynasty would result. But neither would see his hopes realized. Saul and David were both outmaneuvered by an outsider, someone with no right to be king, who would come to wear the crown.

  Solomon’s Reign

  THE ISRAELITES WHO LIVED through David’s and Solomon’s reigns witnessed a dramatic transformation of their land and culture. David had created two new kingdoms out of nothing: the kingdom of Judah, previously a region of independent communities, and the united kingdom of Judah and Israel. The inhabitants of Judah may not have felt that they needed a king—David imposed the kingship on them against their will—but once they had it, it was there to stay. David gave the Judahites a sense of nationhood and importance that they had never had previously. Long the minor area to the south of Israel’s heartland, Judah could now see itself as equal to its northern cousins, even if it would take many generations for them to achieve that status fully. In the north, on the other hand, the Israelites were never pleased with having been subsumed into a larger polity. They had had their own king once, and with him the hopes for a lasting national identity. David had put that all to a quick end.

  In some respects, the notion of the united kingdom, representing Israel’s golden age, is a myth.16 Israel and Judah were separate polities, with separate histories and traditions. In David, they had a common king, but not a common cause. The inhabitants of Israel and Judah did not consider themselves “Israelites” in the larger sense. They were members of their tribes, and clans, and families. The reluctance of the north to see itself as part of David’s kingdom is evident from Shimei’s curses, from Sheba’s rallying cry, and from the renewed separation of Israel and Judah that was yet to come. The combination of the two kingdoms was an accomplishment of David’s force and will—it was really the kingdom of David, not the kingdom of Israel.

  Memories of independence have long lives. In our time, we have witnessed what appears to be the disintegration of well-established nations—the USSR and Czechoslovakia, for example—not to mention the regular cries of those peoples unable to reassert their independence. This is not really disintegration, however; it is a return to older territorial and ethnic boundaries. David may have brought the north and south together, but this was a unification neither side ever asked for. And within two generations, when the force of David’s personality had faded, one would become two again.17

  Nevertheless, it was this united monarchy that David bequeathed to Solomon. David had struggled all his life to create and maintain his kingdom. He had little time or energy to do much more with it—as noted earlier, David’s kingship looked very much like Saul’s. Solomon, however, faced no challenges to his rule at any point, and fought no wars. He had the freedom to take what David had started and turn Israel into a real state, with centralized rule extending to all corners of the kingdom. David transformed Israel from a loose collection of tribes into a legitimate, if incipient, ancient Near Eastern nation. Solomon transformed the kingship from a glorified tribal chiefdom into a true Near Eastern monarchy.

  On multiple levels Solomon built on foundations laid by David. David made some forays into international relations, including some minor conquests and some tentative diplomatic ties. But he spent most of his energy securing Israel’s new borders. His efforts resulted in a state that, during Solomon’s reign, became more of a player on the international st
age. Solomon married an Egyptian princess—thereby becoming the first Israelite king to establish diplomatic connections with the superpower on the Nile. He developed commercial dealings across the Near East that brought new wealth into Israel, largely using the trade routes to the south that David had secured. And with that wealth Solomon followed the standard model of Near Eastern kings: he kept it for himself, using it to decorate his palace, build an elaborate ivory throne, and purchase horses for the royal stables. It is unclear whether the majority of Israel reaped any benefit from Solomon’s riches. It is telling that even the Bible does not suggest that anyone but Solomon grew wealthy during his reign.

  David had founded a new cult in Jerusalem, centered on the ancient icon of the ark of the covenant and the altar that accompanied it. Solomon, famously, built a new house for the ark, a magnificent temple. But Solomon’s temple was not like other Israelite sanctuaries. He didn’t want to have just another local cultic site. He wanted his temple to be grand on an internationally recognized scale. Archaeology has uncovered palaces from ancient Turkey to Syria that have architectural designs remarkably close to those of the temple described in the Bible.18 This makes sense, as the Bible tells us that Solomon had the temple built by foreigners: the Phoenicians from Tyre. We saw that David probably envisioned the Jerusalem cult as a confirmation of God’s approval of his kingship. Solomon would make the divine-royal link explicit by building not only the temple, but a new palace just beside it, in a single complex on the Temple Mount. Like David, Solomon offered sacrifices before his new cultic site, though Solomon’s were a bit more grandiose: 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep, according to the Bible. Like David, Solomon acted as priest, confirming that this great temple was a royal temple, the cult a royal cult. Solomon built the temple to be the religious center of the nation—but, as king, he was inextricably linked to it. Church and state were anything but separate.

  One of the most significant results of David’s reign was the end of Israel’s own old-fashioned ad hoc tribal armies, which had served Israel for generations. They may not have been the best fighting forces, but they kept the Israelites grounded in their long-established kinship groups and reinforced a communal model of mutual self-defense. The victory of David’s royal militia during Absalom’s revolt demonstrated the weakness of the old system and inaugurated a new era of the centralized royal military.19 Solomon, again adopting the practices of Israel’s more powerful neighbors, instituted a policy of military conscription, thereby taking advantage of the sheer manpower afforded by the populace and combining it with the rigor of a formal centralized army.20 The Israelites could not have been very pleased with this development. Even as it enhanced national security, it came at a severe cost to the traditional way of life. This popular displeasure is reflected in the prophet Samuel’s pessimistic prediction of what it would mean for Israel to have a king: “He will take your sons and appoint them as his charioteers and horsemen, and to run before his chariots” (1 Sam. 8:11).

  Saul, as we saw, had only the most insignificant of royal courts, consisting of a few relatives who helped him command the army. David largely maintained this pattern, though he introduced a few more figures: a scribe, a recorder, priests. Solomon, however, exploded the traditional forms of government. He too had generals, a scribe, a recorder, and priests. But whereas Saul’s and David’s governments were essentially local, tied to the person of the king, Solomon created a true national administration. He divided Israel into twelve districts, each governed by a prefect. Crucially, these districts did not correspond to the twelve tribes of Israel. Solomon redrew the map of Israel, breaking up long-standing affiliations and creating new administrative regions that crossed traditional boundaries. The purpose of this redistricting was to dissolve the tribal system entirely. Tribes had their own leaders, their own cultures, their own priorities. In theory, a tribe could try to secede, to return to its original independent status. Solomon would have none of this.21

  Moreover, these new administrative districts were created mainly for the purpose of taxation. Each district was responsible for providing Solomon’s court—and Solomon’s horses—with provisions for one month of the year, in rotation. Israel had no experience with national taxation; neither Saul nor David had taxed his subjects. This was a new imposition, and another predicted by Samuel: “He will take a tenth part of your grain and vintage and give it to his eunuchs and courtiers . . . he will take a tenth part of your flocks, and you shall become his servants” (1 Sam. 8:15, 17). Although military conscription was unwelcome, at least it served a clear national purpose. Solomon’s royal taxation, however, served nothing other than Solomon.

  Solomon’s most significant administrative action was instituting a policy of forced labor—not on conquered peoples, as David had done with Ammon, but on Israel itself, and specifically on the northern kingdom. Solomon undertook major building projects—not only the temple and palace, but new fortifications of major cities throughout Israel. At three sites in particular, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer, archaeological excavation has revealed what some believe to be the remains of Solomon’s construction.22 The massive walls and gates that were built under Solomon are on a scale far beyond anything Israel had known before. These sites, and others, were built as royal outposts—as the Bible puts it, “garrison towns, chariot towns, and cavalry towns”—intended not to empower their local regions, but to assert Solomon’s royal power throughout his territory.23

  In the end, it was these administrative impositions of taxation and forced labor that would undo all of David’s and Solomon’s achievements. After Solomon’s death, the leaders of the northern tribes came to his son, Rehoboam, and demanded that Solomon’s policies be reversed: “Your father made our yoke heavy. Now lighten the harsh labor of your father and the heavy yoke that he laid on us, and we will serve you” (1 Kings 12:4). Rehoboam refused, and Israel seceded, returning to the independence it had known before David. Solomon’s descendants would continue to rule Judah from David’s capital in Jerusalem. But the two kingdoms would never be unified again.

  DAVID CREATED SOMETHING NEW in Israel: a legitimate state, with secure borders and increasing international recognition. Solomon took David’s emerging nation and tried to bring it up to the standards of the great powers of the region. From where Solomon sat—on the throne—this meant enhancing the status of the kingship so that it no longer resembled a tribal chiefdom. This meant having a magnificent temple and palace. This meant military conscription. This meant taxation. This meant royally sponsored building projects, even if they had to be built on the backs of the people. Israel was not ready for such changes. It had survived and, in its provincial way, thrived under its traditional tribal system. The Israelites saw the new style of monarchy as an imposition, forcing them into unfamiliar cultural patterns, for ends that seemed to not benefit them. David and especially Solomon were ahead of their time. The cost of their innovations was the disintegration of the nation David had worked so hard to create.24

  CONCLUSION

  THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING DAVID’S legacy began even before his death, with the composition of the pro-David apology with which we have primarily been concerned here. As we saw in the previous chapter, the narrative of David’s decline and death in the first chapters of 1 Kings is intrinsically connected with the story of Solomon’s rise to power. It presents a David who is confused and easily taken advantage of, which hardly seems to serve an apologetic purpose with regard to David. Instead, this story is needed to establish Solomon’s credential to rule. Rather than defend David against any charges, it uses David to defend Solomon, to show that he gained the throne with David’s blessing and that Solomon’s retributive actions against his political opponents were undertaken on David’s instructions. The story of David’s last days belongs not to David’s apology, but to Solomon’s.1

  David’s apology thus properly ends before his death, shortly after he has resumed power in the wake of Absalom’s rebellion. And this is probably when
we should date the composition of the apology as well. It should be no surprise that the apology was written even while David was still on the throne. Although the narrative does glorify David, its main purpose is to exculpate him, to defend him against accusations leveled by his contemporaries: that he was a murderer and most important a usurper. The apology defends David’s right to sit on the throne; after his death, the arguments on both sides would be moot. It is also likely that it was Absalom’s revolt that occasioned the composition of the apology. When David first became king, although he was a usurper, his power was undeniable. His military strength and political savvy forced Judah and Israel to accept him as their ruler. In such a circumstance an apology would hardly be warranted—even if David was an illegitimate king, the people had no means to do anything about it. After Absalom’s rebellion, however, when David’s power was at its weakest, even the Bible acknowledges that many people in both Judah and Israel were reluctant to return to David. It was during Absalom’s revolt that the explicit accusation of murdering Saul and his family was hurled at David. This was the moment that required a full accounting of why David had the right to be king, that required a detailed denial of all the charges of illegitimacy and criminality that had been latent for years but had raced to the surface when David’s power was finally challenged.2