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Joshua set up his headquarters north of Jerusalem, at Shechem, where he built a shrine to Yahweh. Jerusalem was the home of the Jebusites, ruled by King Adonizedek, a name that suggests a priest-king. Adonizedek resisted Joshua but was defeated. Yet ‘the sons of Judah could not drive out the Jebusites’, who ‘lived in Jerusalem side by side with the sons of Judah as they do today’. Around 1200 BC , Merneptah, the son of Ramses the Great and perhaps the pharaoh who was forced to release Moses’ Israelites, faced attacks from the Sea Peoples – throwing the old empires of the Near East into flux. The pharaoh raided Canaan to restore order. When he returned home, he inscribed his triumph on the walls of his Theban temple, declaring that he had defeated the Sea Peoples, recaptured Ashkelon – and massacred a people who now appear in history for the first time: ‘Israel is laid waste and his seed is not.’
Israel was not yet a kingdom; rather, the Book of Judges recounts, it was a confederation of tribes ruled by elders who were now challenged by a new enemy: the Philistines, part of the Sea Peoples, who originated in the Aegean. They conquered the coast of Canaan, building five rich cities where they wove clothes, crafted red and black pottery, and worshipped their many gods. The Israelites, hill shepherds from little villages, were no match for these sophisticated Philistines whose infantry wore Greek-style breastplates, greaves (leg armour) and helmets, and deployed close-combat weapons that challenged the cumbersome chariotry of the Egyptians. The Israelites elected charismatic warlords – the Judges – to fight Philistines and Canaanites. At one point, a much neglected verse of the Book of Judges claims the Israelites took and burned Jerusalem; if so, they did not manage to keep the stronghold.
At the Battle of Ebenezer in about 1050 BC , the Philistines crushed the Israelites, destroyed their shrine at Shiloh, captured the Ark of the Covenant, the sacred symbol of Yahweh, and advanced into the hill country around Jerusalem. Faced with annihilation and wishing to be ‘like other nations’, the Israelites decided to elect a king, chosen by God. They turned to their ageing prophet, Samuel. Prophets were not predictors of the future but analysts of the present – propheteia in Greek means the interpreting of the will of the gods. The Israelites needed a military commander: Samuel chose a young warrior, Saul, whom he anointed with holy oil. Ruling from a hilltop citadel at Gibeon (Tell al-Ful), just three miles north of Jerusalem, this ‘captain over my people Israel’ justified his selection by defeating the Moabites, Edomites and Philistines. But Saul was not suited to the throne: ‘an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him.’
Samuel, faced with a mentally unstable king, secretly looked elsewhere. He sensed the blessing of genius among the eight sons of Jesse of Bethlehem: David, the youngest, ‘was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to. And the Lord said, Arise, anoint him: for this is he.’ David was also ‘cunning in playing, a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters’. He grew up to be the most remarkable yet rounded character in the Old Testament. The creator of sacred Jerusalem was a poet, conqueror, murderer, adulterer, the essence of the holy king and the flawed adventurer.
Samuel brought young David to court where King Saul appointed him as one of his armour-bearers. When the king was haunted by madness, David showed his first god-given gift: he played the harp ‘so Saul was refreshed’. David’s musical talents are an important part of his charisma: some of the Psalms ascribed to him may even be his.
The Philistines advanced to the valley of Elah. Saul and his army faced them. The Philistines produced a brobdingnagian champion, Goliath from Gath, *1 whose full armour contrasted with the flimsy gear of the Israelites. Saul feared a pitched battle so he must have been relieved, if sceptical, when David demanded a shot at beating Goliath. David chose ‘five smooth stones out of the brook’ and, wielding his sling, he ‘slang it and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead’. *2 He beheaded the fallen champion and the Israelites pursued the Philistines all the way to their city of Ekron. Whatever its truth, the story signifies that as a boy David made his name as a warrior. *3
Saul promoted David but the women in the streets sang ‘Saul hath slain his thousands; David, his ten thousands.’ Saul’s son Jonathan befriended David and his daughter Michal loved him. Saul allowed them to marry but was tormented by jealousy: he twice tried to kill his son-in-law with a javelin. Princess Michal saved David’s life by letting him down from a palace window, and he was later granted asylum by the priests of Nob. The king pursued him, killing all the priests except one, but David escaped again, living on the run as the leader of 600 brigands. Twice he crept up on the sleeping king but spared his life, leading Saul to weep: ‘Thou art more righteous than I.’
Finally David defected to the Philistine King of Gath who granted him his own city domain, Ziklag. The Philistines again invaded Judah and defeated Saul on Mount Gilboa. His son Jonathan was killed and the king himself fell on his sword.
*1 Just as the word ‘Philistine’ has, thanks to the Bible, entered the language to describe a lack of culture (despite their cultural sophistication), so the people of Gath, known at ‘Gits’, also entered the vernacular. But the Philistines gave their name to the land which became the Roman Palestina, hence Palestine.
*2 The sling was not then a child’s toy but a powerful weapon: slingers are shown in inscriptions in Beni Hasan in Egypt standing beside the archers in battle. Royal inscriptions in Egypt and Assyria show contingents of slingers were regular units of the imperial armies of the ancient world. It is believed skilled slingers could project specially smoothed stones the size of tennis balls at 100–150mph.
*3 Was ‘David’ a nom de guerre or regal name? The Bible tells the Goliath story twice, and in the second version it names the Israelite boy-hero as Elhanan: was this David’s real name?