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| David
King of Israel (–c. 962 BC) Biographical David (Hebrew, ‘beloved’) was the second king of Israel. He was the youngest son of Jesse, a Bethlehemite, and first distinguished himself by slaying Goliath. Saul appointed him to a military command and gave him his daughter Michal as his wife, but David soon had to flee from the king’s jealousy. In the cave of Adullam, near Gath, he gathered a band of 400 freebooters with whom he ranged through the region between Philistia and the Dead Sea. Saul’s repeated expeditions against him placed David in great difficulty, and for over a year he became a vassal of the Philistine king of Gath. After the deaths of Saul and Jonathan at Gilboa, David reigned for seven and a half years over the tribe of Judah, while Ishbosheth, son of Saul, ruled the rest of Israel. Upon Ishbosheth’s death, all Israel chose David as king. He conquered the independent city of Jebus (Jerusalem) and made it the political and religious centre of his kingdom, building a palace for himself on its highest hill, Zion (the ‘City of David’), and placing the Ark of the Covenant there under a tent. Within a few years, his conquest of the Philistines, Moabites, Aramaeans, Edomites, and Ammonites extended his realm from Egypt to the Euphrates. The last years of his long reign of thirty-two years in Jerusalem were troubled by attempted revolutions led by his sons Absalom and Adonijah. ‘The sweet singer of Israel’ was doubtless the originator of the sublime religious lyric poetry of the Hebrews, although not many of the Psalms as we have them are likely to be his own work. Place of birth: Bethlehem, Judah Place of death: Jerusalem Son of Jesse and Nitzevet bat Adel, he was married to Michal (daughter of King Saul of Israel; no issue), Abigail, Ahinoam, Bathsheba, Haggith, Maachah, Abital, and Eglah, having had issue by all except Michal. |
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