Although our historical knowledge of David is rather limited, his reputation
certainly isn’t. It tells us of the boy in golden locks who defeats the giant
Goliath, who comes across King Saul, his suspicious predecessor king, but
does not kill him, who plays the lute and beguiles women, who is a great
leader in battle but is not allowed to build the Temple because there is blood
on his hands. In Jerusalem, today roads and buildings are named after him,
the citadel of the city, although at most dating from 150 BC, is called ‘David’s
palace’, David seems to be the embodiment of Israel, standing like ‘Zion’ for
the hope of a people of ever living in peace in their own country, David
stands for a nationalism which did not exist at the time of his life.
If one were to reconstruct the life of David following the biblical accounts, it
must have been around
1000 BC, that a young man from a leading family from the vicinity of
Bethlehem went into the services of the Philistines. Based in the town of
Ziglak, it was his task to defend the realm of the Philistines, which was a
rather unstable administration consisting of some towns which had formed a
confederation, against peoples south and southeast of the Negev. He had
been successful and had gained riches and power.
Success in another country did not lead him to forget his home country, and
so he returned and by means of his money and power succeeded in unifying
his tribe of Judea with the tribes of Israel in the North. Their capital had been
the town of Nablus. The newly formed realm now needed a new capital, and
he chose Jerusalem. Some translators of the Bible wrote that he conquered
the city through deceit, some tell of a water pipe which led him into the
centre of the city, but this is not confirmed. Maybe he didn’t have to conquer
the city, it had been lived in by the ‘Jebusites’, a tribe not belonging to the
tribes of Israel, yet he took over their ‘House of God’ and allowed their
Priests to continue working there. However, he needed ‘a foundation myth’
for his new state, and this was provided by the tribe of Benjamin, which was
in possession of the tabernacle since the flight from Egypt. In that way,
David created a religious, social and political home for the Israelites.
Jerusalem was not really suitable as a capital, it was situated next to the
desert and had no significant trade, it also had a rather limited water supply.
David’s palace must have been so small that despite intensive searches by
archaeologists nothing of it was found as yet. But the foundation myth was
so powerful that it is still working in our times.
If Salomon was David’s son cannot be verified, but the successors of David
found the unified kingdom too big to rule. The tribes in the North of
Jerusalem, living in the wide and green valleys were politically more
important than the Judeans, who lived next to the desert and were lacking in
land. Their piety and reference to David always were an irritation to the
Israelites. These northern tribes were successful producers of oil and were
StOM Page 6