DA VID, JTIXG OF ISRAEL. 



13 



the ambition of the more gifted members for 

 the benefit of the greater number; 3. The free 

 use of uncultivated land and of the spontaneous 

 products of the earth, which is permitted to all. 

 The first of these causes is not the exclusive priv- 

 ilege of any one age or country ; the second is 

 capable of being advantageously modified under 

 the influence of economic and moral progress; the 

 third alone is fated to disappear, as land is more 

 and more completely occupied for culture. Now 

 that the study of the working-people in the East 

 has shown the social importance of this element 

 of well-being, it is for other family monographies 

 to exhibit the means whereby the ruling classes 

 have at all times endeavored to fill its place and to 

 maintain harmony by insuring to the lower classes 



equivalent resources. It is not enough to show 

 that societies have everywhere found, in the con- 

 tinuous nature of the engagements between em- 

 ployer and workman, strong guarantees against 

 antagonism and suffering. It has still to be 

 shown, with the clearness characteristic of the 

 method of observation, how model workshops 

 may, by harmonizing apparently conflicting inter- 

 est, and without impairing any of the rights either 

 of employer or employed, produce that stability of 

 relations which formerly in the West, as still in the 

 East, was based on a system of constraint. Knowl- 

 edge of these processes is of the highest impor- 

 tance for the solution of the problems which now 

 vex all manufacturing nations. On this point we 

 demand of the author full and definite information. 



DAVID, KIIG OF ISRAEL. 1 



By Professor W. ROBEKTSON SMITH, of the University of Aberdeen. 



"T~^v AVID, beloved son of Jesse, second King of 

 -*— ' Israel, and founder of the dynasty which 

 continued to reign at Jerusalem until the Baby- 

 lonian captivity. According to the usual chro- 

 nology, he reigned 1055-1015 b. c, but the com- 

 putations which produce this date by counting 

 back from the destruction of Jerusalem, 588 b. c, 

 or the fall of Samaria, *722 b. c, contain nu- 

 merous precarious elements. Ewald puts the 

 date ten years earlier, but recent investigations, 

 on the contrary, make it not improbable that Da- 

 vid flourished as much as from thirty years to 

 half a century later than is usually assumed. 



David is the greatest of the kings of Israel, 

 and his reign changed the whole face of Hebrew 

 history. During the period of the Judges, the 

 Hebrews were weakened by an exaggerated love 

 of personal independence, divided by tribal jeal- 

 ousies, and oppressed by a succession of foreign 

 enemies, of whom the latest and most dangerous 

 were the Philistines, an immigrant people whose 

 main settlements in the fruitful coast-land of South- 

 ern Canaan appear to have taken place after the 

 Hebrews were established in the land. Forcing 

 their way inland, the Philistines struck a decisive 

 blow in the battle of Ebenezer (1 Samuel iv.), 

 when the collapse of the ancient hegemony of 

 Ephraim, and the destruction of the sanctuary 

 of the ark at Shilo, left the Hebrews without na- 



1 From the new edition of the " Encyclopaedia Bri- 

 tannica," vol. vi. 



tional leaders and without a centre of national 

 action. Then arose Samuel, whose prophetic ac- 

 tivity rallied the Israelites around Jehovah God 

 of hosts, and brought about a great national and 

 religious revival. The struggle with the Philis- 

 tines was renewed with better success, though 

 without decisive issue, and at length the election 

 of Saul as king embodied in a permanent institu- 

 tion the stronger sense of national unity which 

 had grown up under Samuel. But Saul was not 

 equal to the task set before him. He broke with 

 the prophetic party, which was the mainstay of 

 the national revival which the king was called to 

 lead. He felt himself forsaken by Jehovah, and 

 his last years were clouded by accesses of a furi- 

 ous melancholy which destroyed his vigor and 

 alienated his subjects. When at length he was 

 defeated and slain at Gilboa, the Philistines ap- 

 peared to be absolute masters of the position. 

 They even moved forward and occupied the cities 

 in the plain of Jezreel and on the Jordan, which 

 the Israelites forsook in terror — a movement 

 which cut the country as it were in two, and ap- 

 parently made it impossible for the Hebrews again 

 to unite under a single head. From this humilia- 

 tion David in a few years raised his country to 

 the highest state of prosperity and glory, sub- 

 duing his enemies on every side, and extending 

 his suzerainty, as he expresses himself in Psalm 

 xviii., even over nations that he had not known. 

 To do this work, other qualities than mere mili- 



