_AN EASTERN COURT AND HOME._
1 KINGS i.
"Pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness."--EZEK. xvi.
49.
A man does not choose his own destiny; it is ordained for higher
ends than his own personal happiness. If David could have made his
choice, he might, indeed, have been dazzled by the glittering lure of
royalty; yet he would have been in all probability happier and nobler
had he never risen above the simple life of his forefathers. Our
saintly king in Shakespeare's tragedy says:--
"My crown is in my heart, not on my head;
Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,
Nor to be seen. My crown is called Content;
And crown it is which seldom kings enjoy."
David assuredly did not enjoy that crown. After his establishment at
Jerusalem it is doubtful whether he could count more happy days than
Abderrahman the Magnificent, who recorded that amid a life honoured
in peace and victorious in war he could not number more than fourteen.
We admire the generous freebooter more than we admire the powerful
king. As time went on he showed a certain deterioration of character,
the inevitable result of the unnatural conditions to which he
had succumbed. Saul was a king of a very simple type. No pompous
ceremonials separated him from the simple intercourse of natural
kindliness. He did not tower over the friends of his youth like a
Colossus, and look down on his superiors from the artificial elevation
of his inch-high dignity. "In himself was all his state," and there
was something kinglier in his simple majesty when he stood under his
pomegranate at Migron, with his huge javelin in his hand, than in
"The tedious pomp which waits
On princes, when their rich retinue long
Of horses led, and grooms besmeared with gold
Dazzles the crowd, and sets them all agape."
We should not have assumed beforehand that there was anything
in David's character which rendered external pomp and ceremony
attractive to him. But the inherent flunkeyism of Eastern servility
made his courtiers feed him with adulation, and approach him with
genuflexions. Apparently he could not rise superior to the slowly
corrupting influences of autocracy which gradually assimilated the
court of the once simple warrior to that of his vulgar compeers
on the neighbouring thrones. There is something startling to see
what a chasm royalty has cleft between him and the comrades of his
adversity, and even the partner of his guilt who had become his
favourite queen. We see it throughout the story of the last scenes
in which he plays a part. He can only be addressed with periphrases
and in the third person. "Let there be sought for _my lord the king_
a young virgin; and let her stand before _the king_, and let her
lie in thy bosom, that _my lord the king_ may get heat." Bathsheba
can only speak to him in such terms as, "Didst not thou, my lord,
O king, swear unto thy handmaid?" and even she, when she enters
the sick-chamber of his decrepitude, prostrates herself and does
obeisance. Every other word of her speech is interlarded with "my
lord the king," and "my lord, O king"; and when she leaves "the
presence" she again bows herself with her face to the earth, and does
reverence to the king[63] with the words, "May my lord, King David,
live for ever." The anointed dignity of the prophet who had once so
boldly rebuked David's worst crime does not exempt him from the same
ceremonial, and he too goes into the inner chamber bowing his face
before the king to the earth.
Insensibly David must have come to require it all, and to like it.
Yet the unsophisticated instincts of his more natural youth would
surely have revolted from it. He would have deprecated it as sternly
as the Greek conqueror in the mighty tragedy who hates to walk to his
throne on purple tapestries, and says to his queen:--
"Ope not the mouth to me, nor cry amain
As at the footstool of a man of the East,
Prone on the ground: so stoop not thou to me;"
or, as another has more literally rendered it:--
"Nor like some barbarous man
Gape thou upon me an earth-grovelling howl."[64]
But the royal position of David brought with it a surer curse
than that which follows the extreme exaltation of a man above
his fellows. It brought with it the permitted luxury of imaginary
necessity for polygamy, and the man-enervating, woman-degrading
paraphernalia of an Eastern harem. Jesse and Boaz, in their paternal
fields at Bethlehem, had been content with one wife, and had known
the true joys of love and home. But monogamy was thought unsuitable
to the new grandeur of a despot, and under the curse of polygamy the
joy of love, the peace of home, are inevitably blighted. In that
condition man gives up the sweetest sources of earthly blessing for
the meanest gratifications of animal sensuousness. Love, when it is
pure and true, gilds the life of man with a joy of heaven, and fills
it with a breath of Paradise. It renders life more perfect and more
noble by the union of two souls, and fulfils the original purpose of
creation. A home, blessed by life's most natural sanctities, becomes
a saving ark in days of storm.
"Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights
His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings,
Reigns here and revels."
But in a polygamous household a home is exchanged for a troubled
establishment, and love is carnalised into a jaded appetite. The
Eastern king becomes the slave of every wandering fancy, and can
hardly fail to be a despiser of womanhood, which he sees only on its
ignoblest side. His home is liable to be torn by mutual jealousies
and subterranean intrigues, and many a foul and midnight murder has
marked, and still marks, the secret history of Eastern seraglios. The
women--idle, ignorant, uneducated, degraded, intriguing--with nothing
to think of but gossip, scandal, spite, and animal passion; hating
each other worst of all, and each engaged in the fierce attempt to
reign supreme in the affection which she cannot monopolise--spend
wasted lives of _ennui_ and slavish degradation. Eunuchs, the
vilest products of the most corrupted civilisation, soon make their
loathly appearance in such courts, and add the element of morbid and
rancorous effeminacy to the general ferment of corruption. Polygamy,
as it is a contravention of God's original design, enfeebles the
man, degrades the woman, corrupts the slave, and destroys the home.
David introduced it into the Southern Kingdom, and Ahab into the
Northern;--both with the most calamitous effects.
Polygamy produces results worse than all the others upon the children
born in such families. Murderous rivalry often reigns between them,
and fraternal affection is almost unknown. The children inherit the
blood of deteriorated mothers, and the sons of different wives burn
with the mutual animosities of the harem, under whose shadowing
influence they have been brought up. When Napoleon was asked the
greatest need of France, he answered in the one laconic word,
"_Mothers_"; and when he was asked the best training ground for
recruits, he said, "_The nurseries, of course._" Much of the manhood
of the East shows the taint and blight which it has inherited from
such mothers and such nurseries as seraglios alone can form.
The darkest elements of a polygamous household showed themselves
in the unhappy family of David. The children of the various wives
and concubines saw but little of their father during their childish
years. David could only give them a scanty and much-divided attention
when they were brought to him to display their beauty. They grew up
as children, the spoiled and petted playthings of women and debased
attendants, with nothing to curb their rebellious passions or
check their imperious wills. The little influence over them which
David exercised was unhappily not for good. He was a man of tender
affections. He repeated the errors of which he might have been warned
by the effects of foolish indulgence on Hophni and Phinehas, the sons
of Eli, and even on the sons of the guide of his youth, the prophet
Samuel. The wild careers of David's elder sons show that they had
inherited his strong passions and eager ambition, and that in their
case, as well as Adonijah's, he had not displeased them at any time
in saying, "Why hast thou done so?"
The consequences which followed had been frightful beyond precedent.
David must have learnt by experience the truth of the exhortation,
"Desire not a multitude of unprofitable children, neither delight in
ungodly sons. Though they multiply, rejoice not in them, except the
fear of the Lord be with them: for one that is just is better than
a thousand; and better it is to die without children, than to have
those that are ungodly."[65]
David's eldest son was Amnon, the son of Ahinoam of Jezreel; his second
Daniel or Chileab, son of Abigail, the wife of Nabal of Carmel; the
third Absalom, son of Maacah, daughter of Talmai, King of Geshur;
the fourth Adonijah, the son of Haggith. Shephatiah and Ithream were
the sons of two other wives, and these six sons were born to David
in Hebron. When he became king in Jerusalem he had four sons by
Bathsheba, born after the one that died in his infancy, and at least
nine other sons by various wives, besides his daughter Tamar, sister of
Absalom. He had other sons by his concubines. Most of these sons are
unknown to fame. Some of them probably died in childhood. He provided
for others by making them priests.[66] His line, down to the days of
Jeconiah, was continued in the descendants of Solomon, and afterwards
in those of the otherwise unknown Nathan. The elder sons, born to
him in the days of his more fervent youth, became the authors of the
tragedies which laid waste his house. They were youths of splendid
beauty, and, as they bore the proud title of "the king's sons," they
were from their earliest years encircled by luxury and adulation.[67]
Amnon regarded himself as the heir to the throne, and his fierce
passions brought the first infamy into the family of David. By the
aid of his cousin Jonadab, the wily son of Shimmeah, the king's
brother, he brutally dishonoured his half-sister Tamar, and then
as brutally drove the unhappy princess from his presence. It was
David's duty to inflict punishment on his shameless heir, but he
weakly condoned the crime. Absalom dissembled his vengeance for two
whole years, and spoke to his brother neither good nor evil. At the
end of that time he invited David and all the princes to a joyous
sheep-shearing festival at Baal Hazor. David, as he anticipated,
declined the invitation, on the plea that his presence would burden
his son with needless expense. Then Absalom asked that, as the king
could not honour his festival, at least his brother Amnon, as the
heir to the throne, might be present. David's heart misgave him, but
he could refuse nothing to the youth whose magnificent and faultless
beauty filled him with an almost doting pride, and Amnon and all the
princes went to the feast. No sooner was Amnon's heart inflamed with
wine, than, at a preconcerted signal, Absalom's servants fell on him
and murdered him. The feast broke up in tumultuous horror, and in the
wild cry and rumour which arose, the heart of David was torn with
the intelligence that Absalom had murdered all his brothers. He rent
his clothes, and lay weeping in the dust surrounded by his weeping
servants. But Jonadab assured him that only Amnon had been murdered
in revenge for his unpunished outrage, and a rush of people along
the road, among whom the princes were visible riding on their mules,
confirmed his words. But the deed was still black enough. Bathed
in tears, and raising the wild cries of Eastern grief, the band of
youthful princes stood round the father whose incestuous firstborn
had thus fallen by a brother's hand, and the king also and all his
servants "wept greatly with a great weeping."
Absalom fled to his grandfather the King of Geshur; but his purpose
had been doubly accomplished. He had avenged the shame of his sister,
and he was now himself the eldest son and heir to the throne.[68]
His claim was strengthened by the superb physique and beautiful
hair of which he was so proud, and which won the hearts both of king
and people. Capable, ambitious, secure of ultimate pardon, the son
and the grandson of a king, he lived for three years at the court
of his grandfather. Then Joab, perceiving that David was consoled
for the death of Amnon, and that his heart was yearning for his
favourite son,[69] obtained the intercession of the wise woman of
Tekoah, and got permission for Absalom to return. But his offence
had been terrible, and to his extreme mortification the king refused
to admit him. Joab, though he had manœuvred for his return, did not
come near him, and twice refused to visit him when summoned to do so.
With characteristic insolence the young man obtained an interview
by ordering his servants to set fire to Joab's field of barley. By
Joab's request the king once more saw Absalom, and, as the youth felt
sure would be the case, raised him from the ground, kissed, forgave,
and restored him to favour.
For the favour of his weakly-fond father he cared little; what he
wanted was the throne. His proud beauty, his royal descent on both
sides, fired his ambition. Eastern peoples are always ready to concede
pre-eminence to splendid men. This had helped to win the kingdom for
stately Saul and ruddy David; for the Jews, like the Greeks, thought
that "loveliness of person involves the blossoming promises of future
excellence, and is, as it were, a prelude of riper beauty."[70] It
seemed intolerable to this prince in the zenith of glorious life that
he should be kept out of his royal inheritance by one whom he described
as a useless dotard. By his personal fascination, and by base
intrigues against David, founded on the king's imperfect fulfilment of
his duties as judge, "he stole the hearts of the children of Israel."
After four years[71] everything was ripe for revolt. He found that
for some unexplained reason the tribe of Judah and the old capital
of Hebron were disaffected to David's rule. He got leave to visit
Hebron in pretended fulfilment of a vow, and so successfully raised
the standard of revolt that David, his family, and his followers had
to fly hurriedly from Jerusalem with bare feet and cheeks bathed in
tears along the road of the Perfumers. Of that long day of misery--to
the description of which more space is given in Scripture than to that
of any other day except that of the Crucifixion--we need not speak,
nor of the defeat of the rebellion. David was saved by the adhesion
of his warrior-corps (the _Gibborim_) and his mercenaries (the Krêthi
and Plêthi). Absalom's host was routed. He was in some strange way
entangled in the branches of a tree as he fled on his mule through the
forest of Rephaim.[72] As he hung helpless there, Joab, with needless
cruelty, drove three wooden staves through his body in revenge for his
past insolence, leaving his armour-bearer to despatch the miserable
fugitive. To this day every Jewish child flings a contumelious stone
at the pillar in the King's Dale, which bears the traditional name of
David's Son, the beautiful and bad.[73]
The days which followed were thickly strewn with calamities for the
rapidly ageing and heart-broken king. His helpless decline was yet to
be shaken by the attempted usurpation of another bad son.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] The same word is rendered "worship" in Psalm xlv. 11. Comp. 2
Sam. ix. 6; Esth. iii. 2-5. In 1 Chron. xxix. 20 we are told that the
people "_worshipped_" the Lord and the king.
[64]
"Μηδὲ βαρβάρου φωτὸς δίκην
Χαμαιπετὲς βόαμα προσχανῇς ἐμοί."
Æsch., _Agam._, 887.
[65] Ecclus. xvi. 1-3. He must have had at least twenty sons, and at
least one daughter (2 Sam. iii. 1-5, v. 14-16; 1 Chron. iii. 1-9,
xiv. 3-7). Josephus again (_Antt._, VII. iii. 3) has a different list.
[66] _Kohanim._
[67] From the fact that his son Eliada (2 Sam. v. 16) is called
Beeliada (_i.e._, "Baal knows") in 1 Chron. xiv. 7, it is surely a
precarious inference that "now and then he paid his homage to some
Baal, perhaps to please one of his foreign wives" (Van Oort, _Bible
for Young People_, iii. 84). The true explanation seems to be that at
one time Baal, "Lord," was not regarded as an unauthorised title for
Jehovah. The fact that David once had _teraphim_ in his house (1 Sam.
xix. 13, 16) shows that his advance in knowledge was gradual.
[68] Chileab was either dead, or was of no significance.
[69] 2 Sam. xiii. 39. "The soul of king David longed to go forth unto
Absalom."
[70] Max. Tyr., _Dissert._, 9 (Keil, _ad loc._).
[71] In 2 Sam. xv. 7 we should certainly alter "forty" into four.
[72] Rephaim seems a more probable reading than Ephraim in 2 Sam.
xviii. 6; see Josh. xvii. 15, 18. Yet the name "Ephraim" may have
been given to this transjordanic wood. The notion that he _hung by
his hair_ is only a conjecture, and not a probable one.
[73] His three sons had pre-deceased him; his beautiful daughter
Tamar (2 Sam. xiv. 27) became the wife of Rehoboam. She is called
Maachah in 1 Kings xv. 2, and the LXX. addition to 2 Sam. xiv. 27
says that she bore both names. The so-called tomb of Absalom in the
Valley of Hebron is of Asmonæan and Herodian origin.