LITMIR.BIZ

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and put them to flight. On this, the Ammonites were seized with such fear that they withdrew from the field, and took shelter behind the walls of their capital. It was a most successful achievement. Joab hurried to Jerusalem to report to the king, and to lay before him a plan by which the Aramæans might be totally annihilated, and any future interference on their part prevented. The victorious army, having been recalled from the Ammonitish territories, was reinforced, and with the king himself at its head pursued the Aramæan enemy on the other side of the Jordan. King Hadadezer, on his part, also sent fresh troops to the aid of his defeated forces, but in a battle at Helam, the Aramæan army was again defeated, and its general, Shobach, fell in the encounter. The vassals of the mighty Hadadezer then hastened to make peace with David.

      Tôi (or Tou), the king of Hamath, who had been at war with Hadadezer, now sent his son Joram to David with presents, congratulating him on the victory over their common foe. David followed up his successes until he reached the capital of king Hadadezer, situated on the banks of the Euphrates. The Aramæans were then defeated a third time; their chariots and soldiers could not withstand the attack of the Israelite army. The extensive district of Zobah, to which various princes had been tributary, was divided into several parts.

      The king of Damascus, an ally of the king of Zobah, was also defeated by David, and the ancient town of Damascus henceforth belonged to the king of Israel. David placed land-overseers in all the Aramæan territories from Hermon to the Euphrates, in order to enforce the payment of tribute. David and his army themselves must have been astonished at the wonderful result which they had achieved. It rendered the king and his army objects of fear far and wide. Meanwhile the king of the Ammonites had escaped punishment for his insults to the ambassadors of Israel. In consequence of the campaign against the Aramæans, which lasted nearly a year, the Israelitish army had been unable to resume the war against Hanun. It was only after the great events narrated above that David was again enabled to send his forces, under Joab, against Ammon. Yet another war arose out of the hostilities against this nation. The Idumæans, on the south of the Dead Sea, had also assisted the Ammonites by sending troops to their aid, and these had to be humiliated now. David deputed his second general, Abishai, Joab's brother, to direct the campaign against the Idumæans. Joab was in the meantime engaged in a long contest with the Ammonites, who had secured themselves behind the strong walls of their fortified capital, and were continually making raids on their foes. The Israelitish army had neither battering rams nor other instruments of siege. Their only alternative was to storm the heights of the city, and in their attempts to carry out this plan they were often repelled by the bowmen on the walls. At length Joab succeeded, after repeated attacks, in gaining possession of one part of the city—the Water-Town; he reported this victory to David at once, and urged him to repair to the camp in order to lead in person the attack on the other quarters, so that the honour of the conquest might be entirely his own. When David arrived at Rabbah with fresh troops, he succeeded in subduing the whole town, and in obtaining rich booty. David himself put on his head the golden diadem, richly adorned with precious stones, which had heretofore crowned the Ammonitish idol Malchom (Milchom). It appears that David did not destroy the city of Rabbah, as he had intended. He merely condemned the male inhabitants, or perhaps only the prisoners, to do hard work, such as polishing stones, threshing with iron rollers, hewing wood with axes, and making bricks. He treated the other prisoners from the various towns in a similar manner. Hanun, the original cause of the war, who had so deeply insulted David, was either killed or driven out of the kingdom. In his stead David appointed his brother Shobi as king. Meanwhile Abishai had been engaged in a war against the Idumæan king, and had utterly routed him in the Valley of Salt—probably in the neighbourhood of the rocksalt mountain, near the Dead Sea. Eighteen thousand Idumæans are said to have fallen there. The rest probably submitted; and for this reason David contented himself with placing excise officers and a garrison over them, as he had done in Damascus and the other Aramæan provinces. The Idumæans, however, seem later on to have revolted against the Israelitish garrison and the tax collectors, and to have massacred them. Joab therefore repaired to Idumæa, caused the murdered Israelites to be buried, and all Idumæan males to be put to death. He was occupied with this war of destruction during half a year, and so thoroughly was the task executed that only a few of the male sex could save themselves by flight. Amongst them was a son or a grandson of the Idumæan king.

      By these decisive victories, in the west over the Philistines, in the south over the Idumæans, in the east (on the opposite side of the Jordan) over the Moabites and Ammonites, and in the north over the Aramæans, David had raised the power of Israel to an unexpected degree. While, at the commencement of his reign, when he was first acknowledged king of all Israel, the boundaries of the country had been comprised between Dan and Beersheba, he now ruled over the widespread territory from the river of Egypt (Rhinokolura, El-Arish) to the Euphrates, or from Gaza to Thapsacus (on the Euphrates). The nations thus subdued were obliged annually to do homage by means of gifts, to pay tribute, and perhaps also to send serfs to assist in building and other severe labour.

      These wars and victories were better calculated than his early hardships to bring to light the great qualities of David's mind. Strong and determined as he was in every undertaking in which the honour and safety of his people were involved, he remained modest and humble, without a spark of presumption, after success had been attained. He erected no monument to commemorate his victories as had been done by Saul; like his general, Joab, he was imbued with the thought that to God alone was to be attributed the victory. The faith in God, to which David had given utterance when he prepared himself for the duel with the Rephaite Goliath (I Samuel xvii. 47), he preserved in all great contests. David elaborated this guiding thought in a psalm, which he probably chanted before the ark at the close of the war, and in which he gives a retrospect of his entire past life.

      In consequence of their great victories, two firm convictions were impressed on the minds of the people, and these actuated and possessed them in all times to come. The one idea occurs in various forms: "A king cannot escape by the multitude of his army, nor a warrior by his power; vain is the horse for safety." God alone decides the fate of war, brings it to a close, gives victory or defeat, and "to Him it is equally easy to conquer with few or with many." The other idea, in closest connection with it, is that God leads the armies of Israel to victory, if they go forth to glorify His name or to save His people. The God of Israel was, in accordance with this idea, designated by a special name which fully expresses this thought; He was named the God of hosts (Adonai Zebaoth), the God who gives victory unto Israel in its conflicts. The King Zebaoth was invoked before every battle, and the Israelitish troops went forth with the firm conviction that they could never be defeated. This confidence, certainly, worked wonders in the course of time.

      Severely as David treated the idols of the nations whom he had conquered, he behaved with comparative leniency to the conquered idolaters. The Moabites alone were cruelly punished, and the Ammonites were enslaved, but the other conquered races were merely obliged to pay tribute. The offences of the former must have been very great to have deserved so heavy a punishment. The foreign races residing in the country were not molested; thus we find Jebusites in Jerusalem, and Canaanites and Hittites in other parts of the country. Hence we find many strangers and natives not of Israelitish descent enrolled in his corps of warriors, or leading their own troops in his service. The Hittite Uriah, one of David's thirty heroes, who was destined to play a melancholy part in David's career, was deeply attached to the Israelitish nation.

      The joy over these great achievements remained, however, but for a short time unmarred. The happiness of a state, like that of individuals, is but seldom of long duration, and days of sunshine must be followed by periods of darkness, to prevent the enervation of the national vigour. By one false step David lost not only his own inward contentment and peace, but shook the very foundations of that state which it had cost him such exertions to establish. When David returned home from the Aramæan war, and was resting from the fatigues of battle, which Joab and his army were still undergoing in the land of Ammon, he beheld from the roof of his palace a beautiful woman, who was bathing. She was the wife of one of his most faithful warriors (the Hittite, Uriah), and her name was Bathsheba. The houses of the warriors were built on Zion in the vicinity of the king's palace, and thus he happened to see Bathsheba. Carried away by his passion, he sent messengers to command her to repair to the palace, and Bathsheba obeyed. When David, some time after, found that this violation

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