ISRAELITES
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ISRAELITES
tion were indeed unsuccessful: Gedeon refused tlie
crown which they ofTcred him, and Abimelech, his
son, who accepted it, proved an unworthy ruler. Yet
the longing of the Hebrew tribes for a monarchy could
not be suppressed; during Israel's fierce conflict with
the Philistines, Samuel, the last judge, wielded the
universal and absolute power of a monarch without
the title and the insignia of royalty; and when to the
hostility of Western enemies was joined that of East-
ern foes, like the Ammonites, the Israelites stren-
uously asked for a king and finally obtained one in the
person of the Benjamite Saul.
VII. Thp: Undivided Kingdom. — Israel's first mon- arch resembled in many respects the judges who had preceiled him, for the simple reason that, under his rule, the Hebrew tribes did not really coalesce into a nation. He was indeed the King of All Israel; his royal title and authority were to be hereditary, and at his summons all the tribes rallied around him. With their common help, he rescued the men of Jabes (lalaad from impending destruction at the hands of the Ammonites, fought for a time successfully against the Philistines, and overcame the Amalecites. All the while, however, his kingship was little more than a judgeship. His court and ways of life were simple in the extreme; he had no standing army, no governors over subordinate districts; the war against the Philis- tines, the great enemies of Israel in his day, he waged like the judges of old, by hasty and temporary levies, and when he died at Gelboe, the profound and invct^ erate disunion of the tribes, which had been momen- tarily checked, immediately reappeared; most of them declared themselves in favour of his son, Isboseth, but Juda gathered around David and made him king in Hebron. In the civil war which ensued, " David grew always stronger and stronger", with the final result that his sovereignty was formally and voluntarily acknowledged by the elders of all the tribes. The new king was the real founder of the Hebrew monarchy One of his first cares was to secure for Israel a polit- ical and religious capital in Jerusalem, a city of con- siderable size and of considerable natural strength His military genius enabled him gradually to over- come the various nations who had cruelly oppressed the chosen people in the days of the judges. On the south-west he fought against the Philistines, and took from them the town of Geth (Tell es-Safi), and a great part of their dominions. On the south-east, he confjuered and established garrisons in the territory of Edom. To the east of the Jordan he attacked and wellnigh exterminated the Moabites, while on the north-east he overthrew the Syrians of Soba as well as those of Damascus who had marched to the de- fence of their kindred. Finally, he waged a pro- tracted war against the Ammonites, who had entered into a defensive alliance with several of the Syrian princes, and wreaked upon them a frightful venge- ance. The possessions secured by these various wars formed a vast empire whose boundaries re- mained forever after the ideal extent of the Realm of Israel, and whose wise internal organization, on regular monarchical lines, greatly promoted the ag- ricultural and industrial interests of the Hebrew tribes.
Under such circumstances one might not unnatu- rally have supposed that the old tribal jealousies were at an end forever. And yet, on the occasion of the king's domestic broils, a rebellion broke out which for a while threatened to rend the nation asunder on the old, deep lines of cleavage. This dis- aster was, however, happily averted, and at his death David left to his son Solomon an undivided kingdom. David's reign had been pre-eminently a period of war and of territorial acquisition; Solo- mon's rule was, in the main, an era of peace and commercial achievement. Of special value to the new monarch were the friendly relations betweeu
Phoenicia and Israel, continued from David's time.
Through the hel[) of Tyre he erected the Temple and
other beautiful edifices in Jeru.salem; the help of
Tyre also enableil him to maintain for a time some-
thing of a foreign commerce l>y the Red Sea. His
relations with Egy|>t were likewise peaceful and
profitable. He received in marriage the daughter of
Psibkhenao II, the last Pharaoh of the twenty-first
dynasty, and kept up with Egypt a brisk overland
commerce. He carried on a friendly intercourse
and lively trade with the Ilittites of Cilicia and of
Cappadocia. Unfortunately, his love of splendour
and luxury, his unfaithfulness to Yahweh's law and
worship, gradually betrayed him into oppressive
measures which especially alienated the northern
tribes. In vain did he strive to overrule this dis-
satisfaction by doing away with the ancient terri-
Egii'Tikn Inscriptions, 1empL£. op Kaknak.
Describing invasion of Juda by Sesac
torial divisions of the tribes, and by appointing the Ephraimite Jeroboam as collector of taxes of the House of Joseph: his tampering with the old tribal principle did but increase the general discontent, and the great authority with which he invested the son of Nabat simply affortled the latter better op- portunity to realize the extent of the disaffection of the northern tribes and to avail himself of it to rebel against the king. About this same time, Etlom and Moab revolted against Solomon's suzerainty, so that, towards the end of his reign, everything threatened the continuity of the empire of Israel, which had always contained the hidden germs of disruption, and which, to a large extent, owed its very existence to the extreme temporary weakness of the great neighbouring nations of Egypt and Assyria.
VIII. The Kingdom of Ish.\el. — Roboam's in- sulting reply to the northern tril>es, when, gathered at Sicheni, after Solomon's demise, they asked for some relief from the heavy yoke put upon tlieiu by the late monarch, was the immediate occasion of their permanent rupture with the line of David and the southern tribes. Under Jeroboam's headship they formed (c. 937 b. c.) a separate kingdom which is known as the Kingdom of Israel, in contradistinc- tion to that of Juda, and which greatly surpassed the latter in extent and population. The area of the Northern Kingdom is estimated at about 9000
