King David of Israel

Jerusalem, the city of peace; the city of the great king! Rarely a city of peace during its long and turbulent history, but certainly so in the days of David. He was the man who made Jerusalem the capital of Israel, and laid the foundation of the claim that has endured three thousand years to the present day.

Israel did not possess Jerusalem before the days of David. From at least as far back as the time of Abraham, and probably long before that, Jerusalem was the central fortress of the Jebusites, a powerful Canaanite tribe which most likely occupied the countryside for a considerable distance around. They called the city Jebus, but that was not its original name. In the days of Abraham it was Salim, the name of the Babylonian god of peace. This is why it is known as the city of peace; a name that must go back to when Babylonian or Sumerian influence was prominent in Canaan. The later name 'Jerusalem' is in Hebrew 'Uru-salim', 'ur' being a Semitic term for 'city', hence 'city of peace'. David reverted to the original Semitic name, by which it has since been known.

Fully aware of its strategic importance, David's first action upon becoming king of the united nation was to dispossess the Jebusites. The city was a small place but strongly fortified. The Jebusites taunted David with his inability to capture it (2 Sam. 5.6‑10; 1 Chron. 11.4‑9). . But someone in David's forces knew of a possible means of entrance. David made an announcement coupled with a promise. "Whoso getteth up to the gutter, and smiteth the Jebusites, he shall be chief and captain" (2 Sam. 5.8). Joab, David's nephew, a daring and skilful warrior, did so, and won the coveted honour.

The A.V. translators did not understand what was meant by this "getting up to the gutter" (Heb. sinnor, meaning a channel or shaft) and the precise means by which David captured Jebus was therefore not known. Then in 1867 an Englishman, Captain Warren, engaged in surveying work in Palestine, was standing at the Virgins Fountain, the spring that rises in a cave well below the city walls which feeds the Pool at Siloam, when he noticed a hitherto unknown hole in the roof. His curiosity aroused, he investigated and found what appeared to be a vertical shaft leading upwards. By means of ropes and other appliances he managed to climb this shaft and found that it led into an underground passage cut in the rock. Following the passage he emerged into a kind of vaulted cave into which a chink of daylight penetrated. Wriggling through a gap in the masonry he found himself standing in a street in Jerusalem inside the city walls. He realised at once that he had solved the mystery of the "gutter". This shaft had been made by the Jebusites to enable them to obtain water from the fountain far below in times of siege, and Captain Warren had repeated the feat accomplished by Joab and his men three millenniums earlier. Taken unawares by warriors emerging from this

unexpected gap in their defences, the Jebusites were overpowered and the fortress surrendered to David.

The Jebusites remained, side by side with the Israelites. Araunah, who later on sold David the land on which the Temple was to be built, was a Jebusite. Solomon made them bondmen, a kind of second-class citizens, condemned to the menial tasks of the community, and after that they disappeared from history. But David now was king of Israel in Jerusalem.

Nothing succeeds like success. The growing power and influence of this new king of a now united and virile nation soon attracted the notice of the rulers round about. The first to take overt action was Hiram, king of Tyre (2 Sam. 5.11) who sent 'messengers', evidently an embassy of congratulation on his success, and to establish friendly relations, with presents consisting of cedars of Lebanon and craftsmen to assist David in his building programme.

Hiram was a king of David's stamp, far seeing, courageous and a born organiser. His people, the Phoenicians, were the merchants and the traders of the ancient world and Hiram evidently saw in this rising kingdom of Israel a new and profitable market for his wares. He himself was the founder of a dynasty of Phoenician kings which endured for something like two centuries and under whose administration the Phoenicians attained the peak of their power and influence. Under Hiram and his successors Phoenician ships sailed to India, West Africa, Britain and South America, two thousand years before Columbus! Jezebel, the idolatrous wife of King Ahab of Israel in the time of Elijah, was a granddaughter of Hiram. Phoenician territory and its seaports extended from Tripolis and Byblos in the north, through Sidon and Tyre to Haifa and Joppa in the south, a coastline two hundred miles long. Behind that coastline lay the new and rapidly expanding nation of Israel, ripe for introduction to the varied products of the wider world which Hiram's merchants would be only too pleased to sell them. No wonder Hiram hastened to make friends with David. But this thing became a snare to David. Up to now Israel had been a pastoral and agricultural people, living on the produce from their farms and pasture lands, simple folk relatively untouched by the glittering prizes this world has to offer. All this was to change. They became aware of the many aids to easier living, to the luxuries and means of indulgence and amusement, which the technology of that age could give them. They were shown articles of utility and works of art that came from far distant lands of which they had never before heard. Rare timbers and costly building stone for their houses, elaborate furnishings and utensils, fine raiment and intricate jewellery, all these could be theirs, at a price. By the time of Solomon the masses of the people were working harder than ever before to produce the foodstuffs and farm products which were to pay for all this. A new class began to emerge in Israel, an 'upper class' of aristocrats who enriched themselves with all this trade at the expense of the working classes below them. It is not always realised that the magnificence of the kingdom of David and Solomon, and the kings who came after them, was built upon the toil and sweat of the people.

Friendship with the Phoenicians brought idolatry, for they were idolaters, worshippers of Baal and Ashtoreth and Dagon. The uncompromising loyalty of David kept it at bay during the forty years of his reign, but it gained a foothold in the days of Solomon and after that Israel was rarely free from its influence. David may have received the ambassadors of Hiram with all sincerity and believed he was acting for the good of his people, but it was a dark day for Israel when he entered into alliance with Hiram the idolater and man of the world. In his enthusiasm he quite forgot the Divine injunction given to his forebears in the early days of their nationhood, "separate yourselves from the people of the land'.

The Apostle Paul must have had something of the same thing in mind when he advised the Corinthians "Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?… Therefore come out from them, and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you" (2 Cor. 6.14‑17 NIV). It is so fatally easy for Christians to become entangled with worldly interests and pursuits hostile to their highest spiritual interests only to find, too late, that it has brought leanness into their souls. The principle enunciated by Jesus "seek first his kingdom" stands for all time as the ideal of the Christian life. Like Abraham of old, we must confess that we are "strangers and pilgrims on the earth", seeking another country, a heavenly, in which, when it is attained all our hopes and aspirations will be realised.

The attitude of Hiram king of Tyre was one thing; that of David's old antagonists the Philistines was quite another. Whilst David was king over Judah in Hebron they had left him alone, content with their domination of northern Israel achieved at the death of Saul. Now that David was the acknowledged king over all Israel, north and south, and rapidly organizing his entire realm into a powerful federation, they could not afford to ignore the threat. 1 Chron. 14.8 tells that as soon as the Philistines heard that David had become king over all Israel, they sallied forth and invaded Judah, spreading themselves in the valley of Rephaim to the south-west of Jerusalem in an endeavour to surround and capture the city. This time David was a little more discreet than he had been with Hiram; he went to the Lord with his problem. It is evident that in the face of this threat he was going to trust in the Lord's leading rather than in his own military judgment and skill. "Go up" said the Lord "for I will deliver them into your hand". The victory must have been a momentous one. The name which David gave to the battlefield, Baal-perazim, the 'breaking of Baal', was immortalized three centuries later by Isaiah (28.21) when searching for a simile to describe the rising up of God to bring the powers of evil to an end at the close of this present age. He declared that "the Lord will rise up as in Mount Perazim, he will be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon" (RSV) to effect His great work. David followed up the victory by burning the idols of the Philistines which they had left behind in the haste of their retreat. It was a kind of poetic justice for their capture of the Ark of the Covenant some eighty years or so earlier. He then met a second invasion by pursuing them all the way from the valley of Gibeon to their own capital city of Gaza. That intervention of the Lord virtually ended the Philistine menace for Israel. Although David and others had to ward off occasional attacks in later years they never again posed a serious threat to Israel's security. As it had been in the days of Samuel, it was God, and only God, who gave Israel true victory over the Philistines. When they attempted to fight the invaders in their own strength the result was always disaster. Here is a lesson for the Christian in every aspect of his war against sin and evil. As Paul exhorts, "Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day" (Eph. 6.10‑17).

So "the fame of David went out into all lands, and the Lord brought the fear of him upon all nations" (1 Chron. 14.17 RSV). But these material successes brought their own snares. Secure upon his throne, having the allegiance of all his people, he had nothing to fear from his enemies. Now the products and luxuries, the good things of this world were at his beck and call and there was every incentive for David to use his supreme power as king to sit back and take all that life had to offer. He was not the first, and by no means the last, to have been weaned away in measure from his first sincerity and idealism by the lure of sudden riches. Nowhere is this better shown than in his matrimonial affairs. His original marriage to Saul's daughter Michal, the bride of his youth, was now some twenty years old. She was still with him, but during that twenty years, he had taken six more wives and an unspecified number of concubines. Now that he was settled in Jerusalem he went on taking more wives. Not surprisingly, he finished up with nineteen sons and probably as many daughters by his wives and unnamed concubines. He reaped the consequences in later life by the jealousies and intrigues, leading to rebellions and murders, which were common to every Eastern potentate who possessed a similar establishment. It was not said of David, as it was of Solomon his son, that "his wives turned away his heart". He did at least maintain his faith in God and his abhorrence of pagan idolatry to the end of his days. This is certainly a measure of the steadfastness of his character and loyalty in circumstances that would have wrecked the faith of a lesser man. But the more the history of David is studied the more evident it becomes that nearly all the troubles and disasters of his life were the direct consequence of his many marriages. Had he kept to the Divine ideal first instituted in the Garden of Eden and remained true to his first love, who stood by him so loyally during the dark days of his flight from Saul, he would perhaps have lived, and died, a happier man.