David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition

by Finkelstein, Israel

  AN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

  The composition of the David and Solomon story as a written narrative—and indeed the composition of biblical texts as we now have them—would not have been possible were it not for this dramatic change in Judah’s character as a society. The changes can be seen first and foremost in Jerusalem itself. The city underwent a period of explosive expansion.* The ancient core of settlement, perched for millennia on its narrow ridge near the Gihon spring, was heavily fortified. New suburbs sprang up outside the walls of the original City of David, on the broad, formerly unoccupied hill to the west. The built-up area eventually spread to cover much of the western hill. This new suburb was surrounded with a fortification wall even more formidable than the newly built defenses of the City of David, with a thickness of more than twenty feet.

  The process of expansion seems to have been fairly rapid. From the pottery types recovered on the western hill it is clear that it took place during the few decades that preceded and immediately followed the Assyrian conquest of the kingdom of Israel. In the span of just a few years, Jerusalem grew from a modest hill country town of about ten to fifteen acres to a large, fortified city of almost 150 acres. The population spiked accordingly. A rough estimate of the demographic growth that took place in this period, based on a ratio of people to the size of the built-up area, would suggest that Jerusalem’s population skyrocketed from around one thousand inhabitants to approximately twelve thousand. That made it a significant urban population by the standards of the ancient Near East—and far and away the largest city that ever existed in the southern highlands. At the same time, many farmsteads were built in the vicinity of the city, presumably to provide Jerusalem’s swollen population with agricultural produce. Many more farms and villages appeared all over the southern highlands of Judah as well.

  The expansion of Jerusalem in the late eighth century BCE

  The construction of massive fortifications in the City of David and around Jerusalem’s western hill would have required massive, conscripted labor—as would the impressive seventeen-hundred-foot-long subterranean tunnel used to bring water into the City of David, known as the Siloam tunnel. Outside Jerusalem, there is also evidence of extensive public construction. At the regional center of Lachish in the Shephelah, the city gate system, the podium of the palace, and a complex of stables were enlarged and expanded. At Tell Beit Mirsim and Beth-shemesh in the Shephelah, excavations have uncovered unusual complexes of stone olive oil presses. Far to the south in the Beer-sheba Valley, where overland trade routes led from Transjordan to the port cities on the Mediterranean, fortresses and well-planned storehouses were built at the strategic way stations of Arad, Tel Ira, and Beer-sheba itself.

  What was the impetus for this extensive building program? From where did the resources come? The decision of the Judahite king Ahaz (c. 743–727 BCE) to become an Assyrian vassal represented something more than political submission; it marked Judah’s formal entrance into a wider economy as an active participant in long-distance commerce. The archaeological finds of the late eighth century BCE show clear evidence of this economic activity. The construction of fortresses and storehouses in the Beer-sheba Valley is undoubtedly connected with the Arabian spice trade, now conducted under Assyrian auspices. The appearance of olive oil processing complexes at Tell Beit Mirsim and Beth-shemesh also seem connected with regional commerce, for neither site is located in the traditional highland areas where olives were grown. Either groves were intentionally planted around the new olive oil production centers or, more likely, harvested olives were transported from throughout the Judahite highlands to be transformed into a valuable and potentially tradable commodity—lacking in Assyria—and then shipped to the Assyrian-controlled commercial centers on the coast.

  The archaeological dating of these developments is not precise enough to pinpoint exactly when in the late eighth century BCE they started, but it is likely that they began in the time of Ahaz, picked up speed during the much longer reign of his son and successor Hezekiah (c. 727–698 BCE), and were substantially intensified after the fall of the kingdom of Israel. As the last autonomous kingdom west of the Jordan, Judah took advantage of the great economic opportunities presented by its status as a vassal kingdom. And in the midst of this apparent economic activity there appeared the first signs of extensive state-level activity and an important new form of public communication: the written word.

  The sudden appearance at many sites of inscribed signet seals bearing personal names shows a new concern with ownership and economic status. Standardized, inscribed weight stones are clear evidence of the regulation of commercial exchange. A well-known class of storage jars from this period, produced in large quantities, bears distinctive seal impressions on the handles. They contain an emblem in the shape of a winged sun disc or scarab beetle (which may have been a royal Judahite insignia), a short Hebrew inscription reading lmlk (“belonging to the king”), and the name of one of four cities: Hebron, Socoh, Ziph, and a still unidentified place designated by the letters mmst. Scholars have suggested several alternative explanations: that they contained the products of royal estates; that they were used as official containers for tax collection and distribution of commodities; or that the seal impressions were merely the identifying marks of pottery workshops where official royal storage jars were manufactured. In any case they represent a kingdom-wide network of regulation and communication. And as is also seen in the appearance of a growing number of inscribed potsherds in the fortresses of Arad and Beer-sheba, it was a network of connections and exchanges made possible only by the spread of literacy out into the countryside, presumably from royal secretaries and scribes in Jerusalem.

  In Jerusalem, seals, weight stones, and standardized store jars have been found in significant numbers. There are additional indications of the expanding functions of literacy in the kingdom’s capital: the elaborate family tombs hewn into the steep cliffs to the east and south of the city and in large rock-cut burial chambers a few hundred yards to the north of the city. Some are freestanding monolithic monuments, while others are carefully carved subterranean chambers with finely finished walls and gabled ceilings. There is little doubt that these tombs were used for burial of nobility, for one of them bears an inscription with the name of the deceased and his royal office: “…yahu, who is in charge of the house…” Biblical scholars have identified him with Shebna (the full biblical Hebrew form would be Shebnayahu) the royal steward, whom the prophet Isaiah (22:15–16) condemned for arrogance in hewing an elaborate tomb in the rock.

  Perhaps most significant is the first use of writing in Iron Age Jerusalem for a public pronouncement. The hewing of the Siloam water tunnel was commemorated by a unique ancient Hebrew inscription chiseled into its bedrock wall, celebrating in a dramatic literary narrative the skill of the engineers and the courage of the two teams of diggers, who worked from opposite ends of the tunnel’s course:

  …when the tunnel was driven through. And this was the way in which it was cut through: While […] were still […] axe(s), each man toward his fellow, and while there were still three cubits to be cut through, [there was heard] the voice of a man calling to his fellow, for there was an overlap in the rock on the right [and on the left]. And when the tunnel was driven through, the quarrymen hewed [the rock], each man toward his fellow, axe against axe; and the water flowed from the spring toward the reservoir for 1,200 cubits, and the height of the rock above the head[s] of the quarrymen was 100 cubits.

  This inscription caused a great sensation at the time of its accidental discovery in 1880. It was immediately seen as archaeological verification of the biblical reference to how King Hezekiah “made the pool and the conduit and brought water into the city” (2 Kings 20:20). Yet it is important for far more than biblical confirmation: it is the earliest archaeological evidence for extensive literary activity in Jerusalem.* The archaeological picture of Judah in the closing decades of the eighth century is of a populous, prosperous, an
d literate kingdom. Jerusalem had become a heavily fortified city with a large population and a special class of royal officials, scribes, and administrators, who could conscript workmen for public projects and private memorials. In fact, this picture uncannily resembles the biblical descriptions of Jerusalem under David and Solomon in its general context and in many specific details.

  Writing for the first time in the Iron Age thus became an important tool in creating and establishing the state’s coherence. That was the essential precondition for the compilation of the biblical David and Solomon story as a written text. Only then were court secretaries and scribes in a position to compile an ambitious literary epic about the dynasty’s founding fathers. This is a crucial fact for any discussion of the evolution of the biblical tradition: the first signs of widespread literacy in Judah mark the earliest possible time when ancient oral traditions could be collected, reworked, and edited together in the form of written texts.

  A FLOOD OF REFUGEES

  As a skillful example of royal self-promotion and historical legitimation, the biblical account of David’s rise and Solomon’s succession could not have been written earlier than the late eighth century BCE. But why did it take the particular form that it did? It is significant that many of the accusations against David concern the killings of figures from the northern highlands, in particular, related to the house of Saul. The accusations undoubtedly came from northern traditions, but why were they kept in the text? Why were they of special significance in this period?

  Our main clue is demographic, for the explosive growth of the city of Jerusalem and indeed all of Judah at the end of the eighth century cannot be explained on the basis of sheer prosperity or natural growth alone. The more than tenfold increase in Jerusalem’s population seems to have been closely tied to the contemporary chain of events, specifically the conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel. The Israeli archaeologist Magen Broshi long ago suggested that the sudden population explosion in Jerusalem at the end of the eighth century BCE—far greater than could be explained by natural population increase—was the result of a wave of refugees from the former kingdom of Israel fleeing southward to avoid conscription in the new Assyrian order. There is clear evidence that the population of the Judahite countryside also grew dramatically. Archaeological surveys have noted that the number of settlements in the hill country to the south of Jerusalem swelled from around thirty in the ninth and early eighth centuries BCE to more than 120 in the late eighth century. In the Shephelah, the number increased from twenty-one to 276. Beyond the increase in the number of sites, the existing sites seem to have grown bigger and become more densely inhabited. All in all, it would not be an exaggeration to estimate that Judah’s population more than doubled in the late eighth century BCE.

  Where precisely did these refugees come from? We can now suggest a particular region on the basis of archaeological surveys in the northern highlands. A word of caution is in order: pottery collected in surveys is limited in quantity and variety. Hence in most cases it can be dated to a general period rather than to a very specific, short span of time. In examining the demographic patterns of the northern highlands—in particular the territory of the northern kingdom—it is relatively easy to distinguish between pottery types from Late Iron II (the eighth to seventh centuries BCE) and the much later Persian period (the fifth to fourth centuries BCE), but very difficult—if not impossible—to distinguish chronological phases in Late Iron II survey collections. The data are nevertheless of great significance: clear patterns of population growth and decline emerge.

  In the area of northern Samaria, between Shechem and the Jezreel Valley (the northern sector of the kingdom of Israel in its last stage of existence), the number of sites did not change dramatically between the Late Iron II and the Persian period. There were 238 settlements in the eighth century and 247 in the Persian period.* Yet the situation is utterly different in southern Samaria—the area between Shechem and Bethel, just to the north of Jerusalem. The number of sites there decreased from 238 in the eighth century to 127 in the Persian period and the total built-up area shrank even more spectacularly, from approximately 420 to 111 acres (170 to 45 hectares). Translating these figures into estimated population suggests a striking, 75 percent drop, from a population of about thirty-four thousand to nine thousand. Even if there were several oscillations between the two eras of comparison, it is clear that southern Samaria suffered a major demographic decline after the conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel by Assyria.

  Another source of evidence points to the same conclusion. In the eighth century BCE southern Samaria was an important olive oil producing region that required a substantial population to maintain this industry. It is significant that this was a place where the Assyrians settled Mesopotamian deportees after their conquest of the kingdom of Israel. As we have mentioned, the Assyrians left most of the Israelite rural population in place, exiling only a small proportion, presumably the elite. Yet in this region there seems to have been a calculated effort to replace a vanished population. Cuneiform tablets from Gezer and nearby Tel Hadid attest to the presence of Babylonian deportees in the area in the early seventh century BCE. The name Avvim, which appears in a biblical list of Judahite towns ( Joshua 18:23), seems connected with the name Avva—one of the places of origin of the Mesopotamian deportees (2 Kings 17:24); Avvim is located in the highlands of Benjamin, around Bethel. A papyrus written in Aramaic mentions deportees who were probably settled in Bethel itself. This planned settlement may have had two motivations: to restore the economic output of a depopulated area and to establish a docile population (entirely dependent on the Assyrians) near the border of the vassal kingdom of Judah, as a measure of caution against future unrest.

  In any case, the evidence seems to converge on the southern part of the northern kingdom and the vicinity of Bethel as the source of many of the refugees who swelled the population of Judah and Jerusalem at the end of the eighth century BCE. This is precisely the area where there is evidence for a tenth century BCE highland polity related to the biblical traditions of Saul. Those traditions, like the tales about David, would have been orally transmitted for centuries, and as local memories and expressions of regional identity, would hardly have vanished from the consciousness of the people of the region, even if they were to leave their ancestral lands and become refugees in Judah.

  Thus two traditions—of Saul and Israel, of David and Judah—would have been thrust together in the midst of the far-reaching social and economic changes that transformed the kingdom of Judah after the fall of Israel. Not only did Judah develop from an isolated highland society into a fully developed state integrated into the Assyrian economy; its population dramatically changed from purely Judahite into a mix of Judahite and ex-Israelite. Perhaps as much as half of the Judahite population in the late eighth to early seventh century BCE was of north Israelite origin. And as we will see, the composition of an official dynastic history, in which the concept of a united monarchy was central, was only one of the ways that the rulers of Judah attempted to bind together the new society that had been created within the span of just a few decades.

  ONE PEOPLE, ONE TEMPLE

  The biblical story of David and Solomon places great emphasis on their role in centralizing the Israelite cult in their capital city and on the special sanctity of that place. David orders the holy Ark of the Covenant to be brought to Jerusalem in a joyful procession (2 Samuel 6) and Solomon is credited with constructing the great Temple as the center point of united Israel’s worship. The insistence on the centrality of Jerusalem was a theological process that would continue to develop for several centuries, but there is some suggestive archaeological evidence for the beginnings of cultic centralization at the end of the eighth century BCE. It is noteworthy in that respect that King Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, is remembered in the Bible as one of the most righteous kings of Judah, who “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done” (2 Kings
18:3). From the Bible’s perspective, his achievement was primarily religious:

  He removed the high places, and broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had burned incense to it; it was called Nehushtan. He trusted in the LORD the God of Israel; so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. (2 Kings 18:4–5)

  Scholars have debated the historicity of this description, some accepting it as reliable, others raising doubts or rejecting it altogether on purely textual grounds. We have no archaeological information about the possible changes made to the Jerusalem Temple in this period, as it lies inaccessible to excavation beneath the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount. Yet there is suggestive evidence in some of the outlying fortresses and administrative centers of the kingdom that dramatic changes in the nature of public worship in Judah were under way at the end of the eighth century BCE.

  At the eastern end of the Beer-sheba Valley, the fortress of Arad was maintained, as we have suggested, in an effort by the rulers of Judah to extend their control over the passing caravan trade. It contained an elaborate sanctuary, with an altar for sacrifices in the outer courtyard and internal chambers for rituals. In the course of subsequent research, a member of the Arad excavation team, Zeev Herzog, suggested that the sanctuary had functioned during the eighth century BCE. Its end came not in violent destruction, but in intentional replanning: the shrine and its altar were dismantled and the area they formerly occupied was covered with a layer of soil, over which new structures were built. The ritual significance of the objects from the dismantled shrine was nevertheless respected; small altars used for burning incense within the sanctuary were laid on their sides and carefully buried in the place where the sanctuary once stood. These alterations were undertaken just before the end of the eighth century BCE.*