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

by Finkelstein, Israel

  Farther to the west at Tel Beer-sheba, a similar alteration in ritual practice seems to have taken place. Although no sanctuary was identified in the excavations, the building blocks of a large horned altar were found, suggesting that a sanctuary or a freestanding place for sacrifices had once stood in this royal citadel. Some dismantled pieces of this altar were found discarded in the earthen ramparts of the city’s fortifications and some were reused as building material in storehouses. Significantly, both the ramparts and the storehouses were constructed at the end of the eighth century BCE—suggesting that the shrine had been dismantled by that time.

  Finally, at Lachish, the most important regional center of the Shephelah, a parallel development took place. A pit containing cult objects was uncovered in the excavations immediately beneath the level of the palace courtyard, which was expanded and paved in the late eighth century BCE. The cult objects are difficult to date and it is impossible to know precisely when in the late eighth century the courtyard was resurfaced, but it fits the general context of activities we have been describing. The finds at Arad, Beer-sheba, and Lachish seem to point to a similar picture: all three present evidence for the existence of sanctuaries in the eighth century BCE, but in all three, the sanctuaries fell into disuse before the end of the eighth century. It is noteworthy that none of the many seventh-and early-sixth-century BCE sites excavated in Judah produced evidence for the existence of a sanctuary.

  Archaeology cannot provide an exact date within this general time frame for the removal of the countryside shrines, but a look at the broader events—and the tradition preserved in 1 Kings 18:4–5—points to the days of Hezekiah as a likely context. It seems plausible that during this time, Judah experienced a sweeping reform of cultic practices, in the course of which countryside sanctuaries were abolished, destroyed, and buried, probably as part of an effort to centralize the state cult in Jerusalem. Yet this process should be seen from socioeconomic and political—rather than strictly religious—perspectives. It probably aimed at strengthening the unifying elements of the state—the central authority of the king and the elite in the capital—and at weakening the old, regional, clan-based leadership in the countryside.

  Simultaneous with the sudden appearance of standardized weights and measures, royal seals and uniform storage jars, the institutions of state-directed administration grew more complex and more centralized. All this served the new need to unify Judah’s diverse population. The kingdom contained not only distinctive regional cultures (from desert, highlands, and foothills) but also large numbers of immigrants from the territory of the former kingdom of Israel. These people must have brought to Judah their northern cult traditions and attachments to ancient northern shrines, the most important of which was the Bethel temple, situated in the midst of their ancestral villages. Located just a few miles north of Jerusalem, it was now in Assyrian territory, but still probably reachable for ceremonies and festivals.

  This must have posed a serious religious challenge to Judahite authority. It seems that the solution was a ban on all sanctuaries—countryside shrines in Judah and the Bethel temple alike—except for the royal Temple in Jerusalem. In short, the cult “reform” in the days of Hezekiah, rather then representing puritan religious fervor, was actually a domestic political endeavor. It was an important step in the remaking of Judah in a time of a demographic upheaval and economic reorganization. In the new conditions of the late eighth century BCE, Judah gained a growing sense of authority and responsibility over all the people of the central highlands—as the last kingdom left with even nominal autonomy. Jerusalem was its capital city and the Davidic dynasty was its ruling family. Jerusalem may have always been a small town in comparison to the great cities of the northern kingdom, but its newfound destiny was to become the center of all the people of Israel.

  This sudden realization of Jerusalem’s historical centrality now seemed to demonstrate God’s favor. It was an essential precondition to compiling an authoritative history of the Davidic dynasty—in which divine will, rather than happenstance or realpolitik—played the central role in the elevation of Jerusalem and its Davidic kings to leadership over all Israel.

  THE FIRST AUTHORIZED VERSION

  Uniformity of ritual at a central Temple was one way to encourage the integration of the population, and it is possible that an early version of the construction of the Temple by Solomon may have been written as early as the days of Hezekiah. Yet the writing of a national history was another important tool. Assyrian kings had popularized and dignified the compiling of official chronicles—developing from terse building inscriptions into elaborate texts of thanksgiving for military victories or civil achievements, to bombastic and totally self-serving dynastic histories. It is likely that the spread of Assyrian military and political power encouraged the adoption of Assyrian cultural characteristics throughout the region, including chronicle writing as the high-status accessory of every respectable Assyrian vassal king. But Judah’s dynastic history was to be something different—and it would survive and be remembered long after even the greatest kings of Assyria had faded into obscurity.

  The biblical story of David and Solomon is not just a standard work of self-serving royal propaganda. It was—and is—a passionate and sophisticated defense of Davidic legitimacy, powerful enough to be argued in the public squares or meeting places to still the voices of criticism with the skill of its argument and its considerable narrative art.

  What was the reason to put the oral traditions about David into writing? Why was it necessary for the southerners to deal with accusations from the north regarding the founder of their ruling dynasty? Why was it necessary to state that David was not a traitor and a collaborator with the Philistines; that he was not a simple thug; that he bore no responsibility for the death of the first northern king in the battle of Gilboa; that he did not participate in the killing of Ish-bosheth the son of Saul; that he was not responsible for the death of Abner; that he did not unjustly order the liquidation of all of Saul’s immediate descendants? Why the need to explain that Solomon, who was not first in line to the throne of his father, came to be his successor? More important, when was it necessary to insist that David and his descendants were the only legitimate rulers over all the people of Israel?

  At the time of Hezekiah, when half if not more of the Judahite population was in fact Israelite, Judah could not ignore, or eradicate, the historical traditions of the north. In order to unify the kingdom, it had to take all of them into consideration, to incorporate them in a single official story that would defuse the impact of the traditions that were hostile to the expansion of royal Judahite rule.

  That was done first and foremost with popular culture: with the legends and memories that were cherished in the villages of Judah, in the traditions of the northerners, and in the Jerusalem court. As the single, national account of the beginnings of monarchy in Israel, a new narrative wrapped a northern-centered anointment of Saul around the tales of the bandit and showed how David innocently acted only in the best interests of his people. It explained how David was a great patriot and father of his country who time and again saved Israelites from the hands of the Philistines; that he was forced to run for his life because of Saul’s faults, faults that the northern king himself admitted (1 Samuel 26:21); that he was always loyal to Saul. It showed that he was in no way responsible for the death of Saul, for he was not even present at the battle of Gilboa; that it was God’s power and will that unseated Saul and anointed David; that it was Joab, not David, who carried out the bloody purge of the Saulides and their loyalists; and that regarding territory and military exploits, David was greater than any of the northern kings, including the mighty Omrides, in the extent of his legendary conquests. Most important of all was the idea of a divine promise—that the Davidic dynasty was under the protection of the God of Israel.

  This unbreakable connection between the God of Israel and the house of David is expressed most succinctly in God’s words to David
:

  When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son. When he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men; but I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever. (2 Samuel 7:12–16)

  This promise and the dynastic chronicle that leads up to it are not history, but the expression of a new economic, social, and demographic reality in Judah that gave birth to the idea of the united monarchy, now projected back into Israel’s distant past.

  We know very little about the process of scribal activity in this period or about the kinds of groups who might have been responsible for collecting the traditions and composing a unified text. What we have in the Bible is the result of continued elaboration and editing; what we suggest for the time of Hezekiah is an initial version of the text that continued to be elaborated in subsequent decades. Was it kept only in a temple or palace library? Was it made in many copies distributed throughout the kingdom, or was the story retold to the public on the basis of just a few original texts? Whatever the answers, the earliest version of the biblical story of Saul, David, and the accession of Solomon—and possibly also his construction of the Temple—was created not solely or even primarily for religious purposes, but for a now-forgotten political necessity—of establishing Temple and Dynasty as the twin foundation stones for the new idea of a united Israel.

  HEZEKIAH’S REVOLT

  The death of Sargon II on the field of battle in 705 BCE may have raised hopes that the plan for a united Israel could be realized. Judah adopted a new strategy toward Assyria that replaced its more deliberate policy of vassal status with a daring, if dangerous, course. Times of royal succession in Assyria were always filled with tension and uncertainty throughout the empire since the authority of the new king was not yet established. This was clearly the case with the succession of Sennacherib, Sargon’s son. Almost immediately upon his taking the throne, a serious revolt broke out against Assyrian rule in Babylonia, the spiritual heartland of Mesopotamia and a vital component of the Assyrian state. Taking advantage of the uprising in Babylon, the rising Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt sought to extend its influence along the Philistine coast. King Luli of the Phoenician city-state of Sidon also considered challenging Assyria. The combination of apparent Assyrian weakness and the possibility of an uprising emboldened the Judahite king Hezekiah to participate in planning for a regionwide rebellion. It proved to be a risky and ultimately disastrous course for Judah to take.

  Facing the Assyrian armies in direct confrontation required courage and intensive, large-scale preparation. In Jerusalem, the impressive fortification walls protecting the eastern slope of the City of David and the “broad wall” on the newly settled western hill were almost certainly constructed during the years that followed Sargon’s death. Any such massive defensive preparations would have been seen as an obvious threat to Sargon, who campaigned in Samaria in 720 and in Philistia between 720 and 711. Likewise these massive preparation works would have been unthinkable after the Assyrians arrived on the scene to confront Hezekiah in 701 BCE. The fact that this huge construction project was a matter of urgency is evident in the signs of the hurried building: the broad wall on the western hill passed right through an existing suburb in which standing houses had to be razed. That was not the only or even the most impressive preparation for war. The Siloam tunnel, the 1,750-foot-long, winding subterranean channel that brought freshwater into the fortified city, was of vital strategic significance. Its inscription recording the frantic work of the diggers in completing the tunnel both celebrates their successful achievement and reveals the urgency of the work.

  In light of Assyria’s complete military dominance of the region, Hezekiah and his allies were taking an enormous risk. And once the rebellion in Babylon had been suppressed, they faced the consequences of their decision. In the spring of 701 BCE, Sennacherib finally turned his full attention westward and marched in their direction with Assyria’s devastating military might.

  SENNACHERIB’S REVENGE

  As Sennacherib’s army proceeded down the Mediterranean coast to restore Assyrian control of the vital trading ports in Phoenicia and Philistia, all of Hezekiah’s allies were crushed, one by one. After conquering Sidon and recapturing the coastal cities, Sennacherib moved inland to the Philistine city of Ekron, conquering it and deposing its king. In panic, the rebel allies called for assistance from Egypt, but an arriving Egyptian relief force was quickly smashed. Now it was time for Assyria’s final attack on Judah, aimed first at the strong and prosperous cities in the Shephelah that had grown dramatically in the previous decades. As related on the Prism of Sennacherib:

  As to Hezekiah, the Judahite, he did not submit to my yoke: forty-six of his strong, walled cities, as well as the small towns in their area, which were without number, by leveling with battering rams and by bringing up siege engines, and by attacking and storming on foot, by mines, tunnels, and breeches, I besieged and took them; 200,150 people, great and small, male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels, cattle, and sheep without number, I brought away from them and counted as spoil.

  The archaeological evidence of destruction in the late eighth century BCE is eloquent testimony to the thoroughness of the devastation that the Assyrians wrought. Intense destruction layers have been noted at most of the major sites in the Shephelah, whose economic importance to Hezekiah’s kingdom was great. In 2 Kings 18:14, 17 there are references to the presence of Sennacherib with “a great army” at Lachish. The battle there was later commemorated in an elaborate wall relief in Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh, now displayed in the British Museum. It includes such vivid details as the desperate defenders shooting arrows and hurling torches from the city’s battlements down upon the attacking soldiers; the Assyrian siege ramp and armored battering ram breaching Lachish’s defenses; the rebels captured and impaled on tall pikes placed around the city; and the pitiful exodus of Judahite women and children taken from their conquered city off into exile. Excavations at Lachish by David Usisshkin uncovered evidence of the city’s complete destruction, as well as the Assyrian siege ramp and other remains of the siege.

  Sennacherib took glee in the humiliation he imposed on the rebel Judahite king in his own capital, unable to come to the aid of his besieged cities and towns: “[Hezekiah] himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. I surrounded him with earthwork in order to molest those who were leaving his city’s gate.”

  The second book of Kings offers a different version of the story, in which the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem was miraculously lifted when an angel sent by God killed 185,000 of the besieging soldiers in their sleep, an account that biblical scholars have explained as describing a plague. One fact seems clear in both versions: instead of devastating Jerusalem, the Assyrian army besieged it, but withdrew without destroying it or even deposing Hezekiah from the throne.

  The cost of his survival was enormous. According to the Bible, a crippling payment of tribute was paid to the Assyrian king.

  And the king of Assyria required of Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasuries of the king’s house. At that time Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of the LORD, and from the doorposts which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid and gave it to the king of Assyria. (2 Kings 18:14–16).

  According to the Prism of Sennacherib, the price paid by Hezekiah was not only treasure but the loss of some of the most fertile lands in his kingdom, the territory in the Shephelah on which the
kingdom’s newfound prosperity was based:

  His cities, which I had despoiled, I cut off from his land, and to Mitinti, king of Ashdod, Padi, king of Ekron, and Silli-bêl, king of Gaza, I gave [them]. And thus I diminished his land. I added to the former tribute, and I laid upon him the surrender of their land and imposts—gifts for my majesty. As for Hezekiah, the terrifying splendor of my majesty overcame him, and the Arabs and his mercenary troops which he had brought in to strengthen Jerusalem, his royal city, deserted him. In addition to the thirty talents of gold and eight hundred talents of silver, gems, antimony, jewels, large carnelians, ivory-inlaid couches, ivory-inlaid chairs, elephant hides, elephant tusks, ebony, boxwood, all kinds of valuable treasures, as well as his daughters, his harem, his male and female musicians, which he had brought after me to Nineveh….

  Thus Sennacherib’s campaign and its aftermath effectively destroyed the economic system that Ahaz and Hezekiah constructed over the previous years. Judah was now territorially shrunken, demographically swollen, completely subjected to Assyria, and burdened by a crippling debt. Yet the Davidic kingship survived and Jerusalem remained standing. The twin pillars of Judahite society—Temple and Dynasty—endured.

  The faith that despite temporary reverses, their dynastic founder, David, was chosen by God and that the city of Jerusalem was divinely protected—even after being besieged by the greatest of empires—was unique testimony to the resilience of Judah’s new sense of identity and destiny. But with the devastation of the Shephelah and the enormous burden of tribute that had to be paid, the rulers of Judah now had to develop different strategies for survival. And as these new strategies were formulated and put into action in the following decades, several more layers of the David and Solomon story would be added—to produce an even more elaborate narrative of the united monarchy of Israel, substantially in the form that we have in the Bible today.