desponding period; the sagacious statesman who gave unity to its various
tribes, and formed them into a powerful monarchy; the matchless poet who
bequeathed to all ages a lofty and beautiful psalmody; the saint, who
with all his backslidings and inconsistencies was a man after God's own
heart,--is well worthy of our study. David was the most illustrious of
all the kings of whom the Jewish nation was proud, and was a striking
type of a good man occasionally enslaved by sin, yet breaking its bonds
and rising above subsequent temptations to a higher plane of goodness. A
man so elevated, with almost every virtue which makes a man beloved, and
yet with defects which will forever stain his memory, cannot easily be
portrayed. What character in history presents such wide contradictions?
What career was ever more varied? What recorded experiences are more
interesting and instructive?--a life of heroism, of adventures, of
triumphs, of humiliations, of outward and inward conflicts. Who ever
loved and hated with more intensity than David?--tender yet fierce,
brave yet weak, magnanimous yet unrelenting, exultant yet sad,
committing crimes yet triumphantly rising after disgraceful falls by the
force of a piety so ardent that even his backslidings now appear but as
spots upon a sun. His varied experiences call out our sympathy and
admiration more than the life of any secular hero whom poetry and
history have immortalized. He was an Achilles and a Ulysses, a Marcus
Aurelius and a Theodosius, an Alfred and a Saint Louis combined; equally
great in war and in peace, in action and in meditation; creating an
empire, yet transmitting to posterity a collection of poems identified
forever with the spiritual life of individuals and nations. Interesting
to us as are the events of David's memorable career, and the sentiments
and sorrows which extort our sympathy, yet it is the relation of a
sinful soul with its Maker, by which he infuses his inner life into all
other souls, and furnishes materials of thought for all generations.
David was the youngest and seventh son of Jesse, a prominent man of the
tribe of Judah, whose great-grandmother was Ruth, the interesting wife
of Boaz the Jew. He was born in Bethlehem, near Jerusalem,--a town
rendered afterward so illustrious as the birthplace of our Lord, who was
himself of the house and lineage of David. He first appears in history
at the sacrificial feast which his townspeople periodically held,
presided over by his father, when the prophet Samuel unexpectedly
appeared at the festival to select from the sons of Jesse a successor to
Saul. He was not tall and commanding like the Benjamite hero, but was
ruddy of countenance, with auburn hair, beautiful eyes, and graceful
figure, equally remarkable for strength and agility. He had the charge
of his father's sheep,--not the most honorable employment in the eyes of
his brothers, who, according to Ewald, treated him with little
consideration; but even as a shepherd boy he had already proved his
strength and courage by an encounter with a bear and a lion.
Until David was thirty years of age his life was identified with the
fading glories of the reign of Saul, who laid the foundation of the
military power of his successors,--a man who lacked only the one quality
imperative on the vicegerent of a supreme but invisible Power, that of
unquestioning obedience to the divine directions as interpreted by the
voice of prophets. Had Saul been loyal in his heart, as David was, to
the God of Israel, the sceptre might not have departed from his
house,--for he showed some of the highest qualities of a general and a
ruler, until his jealousy was excited by the brilliant exploits of the
son of Jesse. On these exploits and subsequent adventures, which invest
David's early career with the fascinations of a knight of chivalry, I
need not dwell. All are familiar with his encounter with Goliath, and
with his slaughter of the Philistines after he had slain the giant,
which called out the admiration of the haughty daughter of the king, the
love of the heir-apparent to the throne, and the applause of the whole
nation. I need not speak of his musical melodies, which drove the fatal
demon of melancholy from the royal palace; of his jealous expulsion by
the King, his hairbreadth escapes, his trials and difficulties as a
wanderer and exile, as a fugitive retreating to solitudes and caves of
the earth, parched with heat and thirst, exhausted with hunger and
fatigue, surrounded with increasing dangers,--yet all the while
forgiving and magnanimous, sparing the life of his deadly enemy,
unstained by a single vice or weakness, and soothing his stricken soul
with bursts of pious song unequalled for pathos and loftiness in the
whole realm of lyric poetry. He is never so interesting as amid caverns
and blasted desolations and serrated rocks and dried-up rivulets, when
his life is in constant danger. But he knows that he is the anointed of
the Lord, and has faith that in due time he will be called to
the throne.
It was not until the bloody battle with the Philistines, which
terminated the lives of both Saul and Jonathan, that David's reign began
in about his thirtieth year,[3]--first at Hebron, where he reigned seven
and one half years over his own tribe of Judah,--but not without the
deepest lamentations for the disaster which had caused his own
elevation. To the grief of David for the death of Saul and Jonathan we
owe one of the finest odes in Hebrew poetry. At this crisis in national
affairs, David had sought shelter with Achish, King of Gath, in whose
territory he, with the famous band of six hundred warriors whom he had
collected in his wanderings, dwelt in safety and peace. This apparent
alliance with the deadly enemy of the Israelites had displeased the
people. Notwithstanding all his victories and exploits, his anointment
at the hand of Samuel, his noble lyrics, his marriage with the daughter
of Saul, and the death of both Saul and Jonathan, there had been at
first no popular movement in David's behalf. The taking of decisive
action, however, was one of his striking peculiarities from youth to old
age, and he promptly decided, after consulting the Urim and Thummim, to
go at once to Hebron, the ancient sacred city of the tribe of Judah, and
there await the course of events. His faithful band of six hundred
devoted men formed the nucleus of an army; and a reaction in his favor
having set in, he was chosen king. But he was king only of the tribe to
which he belonged. Northern and central Palestine were in the hands of
the Philistines,--ten of the tribes still adhering to the house of Saul,
under the leadership of Abner, the cousin of Saul, who proclaimed
Ishbosheth king. This prince, the youngest of Saul's four sons, chose
for his capital Mahanaim, on the east of the Jordan.
[Footnote 3: Authorities differ as to the precise date of David's
accession.]
Ishbosheth was, however, a weak prince, and little more than a puppet in
the hands of Abner, the most famous general of the day, who, organizing
what forces remained after the fatal battle of Gilboa, was quite a match
for David. For five years civil war raged between the rivals for the
ascendency, but success gradually secured for David the promised throne
of united Israel. Abner, seeing how hopeless was the contest, and
wishing to prevent further slaughter, made overtures to David and the
elders of Judah and Benjamin. The generous monarch received him
graciously, and promised his friendship; but, out of jealousy,--or
perhaps in revenge for the death of his brother Asahel, whom Abner had
slain in battle,--Joab, the captain of the King's chosen band,
treacherously murdered him. David's grief at the foul deed was profound
and sincere, but he could not afford to punish the general on whom he
chiefly relied. "Know ye," said David to his intimate friends, "that a
great prince in Israel has fallen to-day; but I am too weak to avenge
him, for I am not yet anointed king over the tribes." He secretly
disliked Joab from this time, and waited for God himself to repay the
evil-doer according to his wickedness. The fate of the unhappy and
abandoned Ishbosheth could not now long be delayed. He also was murdered
by two of his body-guard, who hoped to be rewarded by David for their
treachery; but instead of gaining a reward, they were summarily ordered
to execution. The sole surviving member of Saul's family was now
Mephibosheth, the only son of Jonathan,--a boy of twelve, impotent, and
lame. This prince, to the honor of David, was protected and kindly cared
for. David's magnanimity appears in that he made special search, asking
"Is there any that is left of the house of Saul, that I may show him the
kindness of God for Jonathan's sake?" The memory of the triumphant
conqueror was still tender and loyal to the covenant of friendship he
had made in youth, with the son of the man who for long years had
pursued him with the hate of a lifetime.
David was at this time thirty-eight years of age, in the prime of his
manhood, and his dearest wish was now accomplished; for on the burial of
Ishbosheth "came all the tribes of Israel to David unto Hebron,"
formally reminded him of his early anointing to succeed Saul, and
tendered their allegiance. He was solemnly consecrated king, more than
eight thousand priests joining in the ceremony; and, thus far without a
stain on his character, he began his reign over united Israel. The
kingdom over which he was called to reign was the most powerful in
Palestine. Assyria, Egypt, China, and India were already empires; but
Greece was in its infancy, and Homer and Buddha were unborn.
The first great act of David after his second anointment was to transfer
his capital from Hebron to Jerusalem, then a strong fortress in the
hands of the Jebusites. It was nearer the centre of his new kingdom than
Hebron, and yet still within the limits of the tribe of Judah, He took
it by assault, in which Joab so greatly distinguished himself that he
was made captain-general of the King's forces. From that time "David
went on growing great, and the Lord God of Hosts was with him." After
fortifying his strong position, he built a palace worthy of his capital,
with the aid of Phoenician workmen whom Hiram, King of Tyre, wisely
furnished him. The Philistines looked with jealousy on this impregnable
stronghold, and declared war; but after two invasions they were so badly
beaten that Gath, the old capital of Achish, passed into the hands of
the King of Israel, and the power of these formidable enemies was
broken forever.
The next important event in the reign of David was the transfer of the
sacred ark from Kirjath-jearim, where it had remained from the time of
Samuel, to Jerusalem. It was a proud day when the royal hero, enthroned
in his new palace on that rocky summit from which he could survey both
Judah and Samaria, received the symbol of divine holiness amid all the
demonstrations which popular enthusiasm could express. "And as the long
and imposing procession, headed by nobles, priests, and generals, passed
through the gates of the city, with shouts of praise and songs and
sacred dances and sacrificial rites and symbolic ceremonies and bands of
exciting music, the exultant soul of David burst out in the most
rapturous of his songs: 'Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift
up ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in!'"--thus
reiterating the fundamental truth which Moses taught, that the King of
Glory is the Lord Jehovah, to be forever worshipped both as a personal
God and the real Captain of the hosts of Israel.
"One heart alone," says Stanley, "amid the festivities which attended
this joyful and magnificent occasion, seemed to be unmoved. Whether she
failed to enter into its spirit, or was disgusted with the mystic dances
in which her husband shared, the stately daughter of Saul assailed David
on his return to his palace--not clad in his royal robes, but in the
linen ephod of the priests--with these bitter and disdainful words: 'How
glorious was the King of Israel to-day, as he uncovered himself in the
eyes of his handmaidens!'--an insult which forever afterward rankled in
his soul, and undermined his love." Thus was the most glorious day which
David ever saw, clouded by a domestic quarrel; and the proud princess
retired, until her death, to the neglected apartments of a dishonored
home. How one word of bitter scorn or harsh reproach will sometimes
sunder the closest ties between man and woman, and cause an alienation
which never can be healed, and which may perchance end in a
domestic ruin!
David had now passed from the obscurity of a chief of a wandering and
exiled band of followers to the dignity of an Oriental monarch, and
turned his attention to the organization of his kingdom and the
development of its resources. His army was raised to two hundred and
eighty thousand regular soldiers. His intimate friends and best-tried
supporters were made generals, governors, and ministers. Joab was
commander-in-chief; and Benaiah, son of the high-priest, was captain of
his body-guard,--composed chiefly of foreigners, after the custom of
princes in most ages. His most trusted counsellors were the prophets Gad
and Nathan. Zadok and Abiathar were the high-priests, who also
superintended the music, to which David gave special attention. Singing
men and women celebrated his victories. The royal household was
regulated by different grades of officers. But David departed from the
stern simplicity of Saul, and surrounded himself with pomps and guards.
None were admitted to his presence without announcement or without
obeisance, while he himself was seated on a throne, with a golden
sceptre in his hands and a jewelled crown upon his brow, clothed in
robes of purple and gold. He made alliances with powerful chieftains and
kings, and imitated their fashion of instituting a harem for his wives
and concubines,--becoming in every sense an Oriental monarch, except
that his power was limited by the constitution which had been given by
Moses. He reigned, it would seem, in justice and equity, and in
obedience to the commands of Jehovah, whose servant he felt himself to
be. Nor did he violate any known laws of morality, unless it were the
practice of polygamy, in accordance with the custom of all Eastern
potentates, permitted to them if not to their ordinary subjects. We
infer from all incidental notices of the habits of the Israelites at
this period that they were a remarkably virtuous people, with primitive
tastes and love of domestic life, among whom female chastity was
esteemed the highest virtue; and it is a matter of surprise that the
loose habits of the King in regard to women provoked so little comment
among his subjects, and called out so few rebukes from his advisers.
But he did not surrender himself to the inglorious luxury in which
Oriental monarchs lived. He retained his warlike habits, and in great
national crises he headed his own troops in battle. It would seem that
he was not much molested by external enemies for twenty years after
making Jerusalem his capital, but reigned in peace, devoting himself to
the welfare of his subjects, and collecting materials for the future
building of the Temple,--its actual erection being denied to him as a
man of blood. Everything favored the national prosperity of the
Israelites. There was no great power in western Asia to prevent them
founding a permanent monarchy; Assyria had been humbled; and Egypt,
under the last kings of the twentieth dynasty, had lost its ancient
prestige; the Philistines were driven to a narrow portion of their old
dominion, and the king of Tyre sought friendly alliance with David.
In the course of time, however, war broke out with Moab, followed by
other wars, which required all the resources of the Jewish kingdom, and
taxed to the utmost the energies of its bravest generals. Moab, lying
east of the Dead Sea, had at one time given refuge to David when pursued
by Saul, and he was even allied by blood to some of its people,--being
descended from Ruth, a Moabitish woman. The sacred writings shed but
little light on this war, or on its causes; but it was carried on with
unusual severity, only a third part of the people being spared alive,
and they reduced to slavery. A more important contest took place with
the kingdom of Ammon on the north, on the confines of Syria, caused by
the insults heaped on the ambassadors of David, whom he sent on a
friendly message to Hanun the King. The campaign was conducted by Joab,
who gained brilliant victories, without however crushing the Ammonites,
who again rallied with a vast array of mercenaries gathered in their
support. David himself took the field with the whole force of his
kingdom, and achieved a series of splendid successes by which he
extended his empire to the Euphrates, including Damascus, besides
securing invaluable spoils from the cities of Syria,--among them
chariots and horses, for which Syria was celebrated. Among these spoils
also were a thousand shields overlaid with gold, and great quantities of
brass afterward used by Solomon in the construction of the Temple. Yet
even these conquests, which now made David the most powerful monarch of
western Asia, did not secure peace. The Edomites, south of the Dead Sea,
alarmed in view of the increasing greatness of Israel, rose against
David, but were routed by Abishai, who penetrated to Petra and became
master of the country, the inhabitants of which were put to the sword
with unrelenting vengeance. This war of the Edomites took place
simultaneously with that of the Ammonites, who, deprived of their
allies, retreated with desperation to their strong capital,--Rabbah
Ammon, twenty-eight hundred feet above the sea, and twenty miles east of
the Jordan,--where they made a memorable but unsuccessful resistance.
It was during the siege of this stronghold, which lasted a year, that
David, no longer young, oppressed with cares, and unable personally to
bear the fatigues of war, forgot his duties as a king and as a man. For
fifty years he had borne an unsullied name; for more than thirty years
he had been a model of reproachless chivalry. If polygamy and ferocity
in war are not drawbacks to our admiration, certain it is that no
recorded crime or folly that called out divine censure can be laid to
his charge. But in an hour of temptation, or from strange infatuation,
he added murder to adultery,--covering up a great crime by one of still
greater enormity, evincing meanness and treachery as well as ungoverned
passion, and creating a scandal which was considered disgraceful even in
an Oriental palace. "We read," says South in one of his most brilliant
paragraphs, "of nothing like adultery in a persecuted David in the
wilderness, when he fled hither and thither like a chased doe upon the
mountains; but when the delicacies of his palace softened and ungirt his
spirit, then it was that this great hero fell by a glance, and buried
his glories in nocturnal shame, giving to his name a lasting stain, and
to his conscience a fearful wound." Nor did he come to himself until a
child was born, and the prophet Nathan had ingeniously pointed out to
him his flagrant sin. He manifested no wrath against his accuser, as
some despots would have done, but sank to the ground in the greatest
anguish and grief.
Then it was that David's repentance was more marvellous than his
transgression, offering the most memorable instance of contrition
recorded in history,--surpassing in moral sublimity, a thousand times
over, the grief of Theodosius under the rebuke of Ambrose, or the sorrow
of the haughty Plantagenet for the murder of Becket. His repentance was
so profound, so sincere, so remarkable, that it is embalmed forever in
the heart of a sinful world. Its wondrous depth and intensity almost
make us forget the crime itself, which nevertheless pursued him into the
immensity of eternal night, and was visited upon the third and fourth
generation in treason, rebellion, and wars. "Be sure your sin will find
you out," is a natural law as well as a divine decree. It was not only
because David added Bathsheba to the catalogue of his wives; it was not
only because he coveted, like Ahab, that which was not his own,--but
because he violated the most sacred of all laws, and treacherously
stained his hands in the blood of an innocent, confiding, and loyal
subject, that his soul was filled with shame and anguish. It was this
blood-guiltiness which was the burden of his confession and his agonized
grief, as an offence not merely against society and all moral laws, but
also against his Maker, in whose pure eyes he had committed his crimes
of lust, deceit, and murder. "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned,
and have done this evil in Thy sight!" What a volume of theological
truth blazes from this single expression, so difficult for reason to
fathom, that it was against God that the royal penitent felt that he had
sinned, even more than against Uriah himself, whose life and property,
in a certain sense, belonged to an Oriental king.
"Nor do we charge ourselves," says Edward Irving, "with the defence of
those backslidings which David more keenly scrutinized and more bitterly
lamented than any of his censors, because they were necessary, in a
measure, that he might be the full-orbed man to utter every form of
spiritual feeling. And if the penitential psalms discover the deepest
hell of agony, and if they bow the head which utters them, then let us
keep those records of the psalmist's grief and despondency as the most
precious of his utterances, and sure to be needed by every man who
essayeth to lead a spiritual life; for it is not until a man, however
pure, honest, and honorable he may have thought himself, and have been
thought by others, discovereth himself to be utterly fallen, defiled,
and sinful before God,--not until he can, for expression of utter
worthlessness, seek those psalms in which David describes his
self-abasement, that he will realize the first beginning of spiritual
life in his own soul."
Should we seek for the cause of David's fall, for that easy descent in
the path of rectitude,--may we not find it in that fatal custom of
Eastern kings to have more wives than was divinely instituted in the
Garden of Eden,--an indulgence which weakened the moral sense and
unchained the passions? Polygamy, under any circumstances, is the folly
and weakness of kings, as well as the misfortune and curse of nations.
It divided and distracted the household of David, and gave rise to
incessant intrigues and conspiracies in his palace, which embittered his
latter days and even undermined his throne.
We read of no further backslidings which seemed to call forth the divine
displeasure, unless it were the census, or numbering of the people, even
against the expostulations of Joab. Why this census, in which we can see
no harm, should have been followed by so dire a calamity as a pestilence
in which seventy thousand persons perished in four days, we cannot see
by the light of reason, unless it indicated the purpose of establishing
an absolute monarchy for personal aggrandizement, or the extension of
unnecessary conquests, and hence an infringement of the theocratic
character of the Hebrew commonwealth. The conquests of David had thus
far been so brilliant, and his kingdom was so prosperous, that had he
been a pagan monarch he might have meditated the establishment of a
military monarchy, or have laid the foundation of an empire, like Cyrus
in after-times. From a less beginning than the Jewish commonwealth at
the time of David, the Greeks and Romans advanced to sovereignty over
both neighboring and distant States. The numbering of the Israelitish
nation seemed to indicate a desire for extended empire against the plain
indications of the divine will. But whatever was the nature of that sin,
it seems to have been one of no ordinary magnitude; and in view of its
consequences, David's heart was profoundly touched. "O God!" he cried,
in a generous burst of penitence, "I have sinned. But these sheep, what
have they done? Let thine hand be upon me, I pray thee, and upon my
father's house!"