We last left Israel on the eastern side of the Jordan River, poised to invade Canaan after 40 years in the wilderness. Moses, because of his frustration in striking the rock, was not permitted to enter the land, but God allowed him to see it (Deuteronomy 32:48-52).
We pick up the story in Joshua 1, after the Israelites mourned Moses 30 days. Aaron had already died, leaving Joshua to lead Israel and Eleazar as high priest. At this point, Israel had already conquered a large amount of territory on the eastern side of the Jordan from the Amorites, which would later become part of the territory of Israel proper.
This territory was claimed by Reuben, Gad, and half of the tribe of Manasseh, who asked to be allowed to leave their families and herds there, and the warriors would go on into the land with their brethren to fight as needed (Joshua 1:12-18).
So Joshua sent some men to spy out the land, Rahab the harlot protected the spies – she believed God was with the Israelites and her people were doomed anyway, so she played it smart and saved her house (Joshua 2:8-16).
Incidentally, she found her way into the lineage of Jesus (Matthew 1:5), marrying into the tribe of Judah and becoming great-grandmother to David. Proving that God is not racist – since she was descended from Ham, through Canaan, and yet Jesus was not ashamed to carry her blood.
It also proves that God is not averse to being descended from prostitutes either. Interestingly, the next generation of the lineage was also a non-Israelite, Ruth who was from Moab – descended from Lot (see the Book of Ruth for that story, which is fun but not part of our history here).
This means that – genetically – Jesse, father of David, was only 25% Israelite, being 25% Canaanite and 50% Moabite. Presumably David’s mother was Israelite, which would bring his genetic makeup back up to 62.5% Israelite.
David’s son Solomon would go on to have his heir Rehoboam by an Ammonite woman, further diluting the Judean blood. Since these people were direct ancestors of Jesus, it proves that God was less concerned with a “pure” bloodline of Israelites, and more concerned with the kind of people they were; specifically, the faith Rahab and Ruth demonstrated in His abilities.
THE PARTING OF THE JORDAN
The actual entry to the Promised Land took place on the 10th day of the first month, around April, and it was accompanied by a miracle not much less impressive than the Red Sea parting, but far less well known. God told Joshua to send the Ark ahead of them, and the priests carried it down into the Jordan River…
Joshua 3:14-17 …when those who bore the ark had come to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests who bore the ark had dipped in the edge of the water (for the Jordan overflows all its banks all the time of harvest),that the waters which came down from above stood, and rose up in one heap, a great way off… and those that went down toward the sea… were wholly cut off. Then the people passed over right against Jericho. The priests who bore the ark of the covenant of Yahweh stood firm on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan; and all Israel passed over on dry ground, until all the nation had passed completely over the Jordan.
The exact mechanism for this is not clear; but parting a raging river during the flood season is no small feat. In the Red Sea, God used a strong wind to blow a tide back, exposing a sandbar; but that wouldn’t have worked here.
Perhaps a bank burst upstream, causing the water to flow into a side channel or depression for a time; regardless, this is how Israel crossed into the Promised Land of Canaan. Which is an interesting symmetry, for they left Egypt and entered Canaan almost exactly 40 years apart (less four days), both of which events were accompanied by miraculous parting of water.
At that time, while the waters were stopped, God told Joshua to have one man of each tribe in Israel, twelve in total, each pick up a large stone from the bottom of the river and carry it out of the river, and to use them to make a monument to this crossing for all time (Joshua 4:5-9).
This is interesting because these stones were referred to much later, by John the Baptist, although almost no one realizes it. This was the place where the Hebrews crossed the river Jordan, and was thereafter known as Bethabara, the “house of the [river] crossing.”
In a speech to the hypocritical Pharisees, John the Baptist gave a scathing speech telling them not to bother getting baptized without changing their actions and attitude first; and attacking their smug security as God’s chosen people, saying…
Luke 3:8 Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
Everyone has always assumed “these stones” is an arbitrary reference to random stones. But John 1:28, speaking of the same events, said “These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing.”
Which means John was standing within sight of the stone monument that Joshua had set up, 1500 years earlier. So, it was from those particular 12 stones that John claimed God was able to raise up children to Abraham.
There’s a lot of symbolism at play here, which is far beyond the scope of this book; suffice it to say that in the Bible, the Jordan represents the grave (which is why people were baptized in it), and that these twelve stones represented the righteous dead of the twelve tribes whom God was able to raise up from the dead to replace the self-righteous Pharisees.
Regardless, once the stones had been collected and carried out of the river bed and the people had finished passing through, the priests with the Ark – who had been standing still in the river all this time – continued to walk out of the river and then “the waters of the Jordan returned to their place, and went over all its banks, as before” (Joshua 4:18).
THE FALL OF JERICHO
Immediately after that, all of the male Israelites were circumcised, for they had not circumcised their children since leaving Egypt (Joshua 5:2-7). This happened on the 10th day of the first Hebrew month – usually sometime in April in our calendar.
On the 14th day they kept the Passover, to commemorate the escape from the death angel in Egypt, and the following day, the 15th, they kept the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. This day marked precisely 40 full years since their departure from Egypt, and thus was -1467.
Shortly thereafter God commanded them to attack Jericho, which was expecting a siege and was prepared for them. Remember, this was in April, just after the harvest season and so food stores in the city would be ample. Curiously, God forbade them from looting the city of anything except metals (Joshua 6:24).
Then, to break the siege, He told them to walk around it 6 days, very quietly, once a day. Then on the 7th day, to go around seven times and then to have the priests blow the trumpets, and all the people shout as loud as they could.
Joshua 6:20 So the people shouted, and the priests blew the trumpets. It happened, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, that the people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.
When this happened, the walls of Jericho fell flat, and the people who surrounded the city when they attacked it “went every man straight before him.” This implies that there was an access point at every direction of the compass, which is an interesting fact the archeological record confirms.
Excavations of the city of Jericho have shown that the walls were originally in two parts; the lower, older part was stone, but had been damaged at some earlier point in history and had been rebuilt but with mud bricks on top. Also, the interface between these two phases of the walls tended to slope out – a bad design.
According to archaeological excavations at Jericho, including the Kenyon and Italian–Palestinian excavations, the mudbrick wall on top of the stone retaining wall had collapsed and fallen in front of the retaining wall around most of the city and had essentially formed a pile of sloping bricks resembling a ramp… The outward falling of the city walls, which was followed by a massive fire that engulfed Jericho and included the collapse of buildings in the city, was proposed by excavators as possibly being the result of an earthquake rather than a battering ram or other siege equipment.
…Excavations in the destruction layer at Jericho uncovered numerous ceramic storage jars containing significant amounts of grain, specifically barley, that had been burned along with the buildings rather than looted… These finds indicate an attack on Jericho soon after barley harvest time in March/April and by an army that was not concerned with looting the food supplies of the city, matching the timing and methodology of the invading Israelite army in the Joshua narrative…(The Bronze Age Destruction of Jericho, Archaeology, and the Book of Joshua, Titus Kennedy)
This was horrible military practice, as food was a valuable commodity in ancient times, and was almost always looted before the city was burned. In addition, sieges were generally timed before harvest, so the defenders would have little food to support a long siege, the point of which was starvation-to-surrender.
All of these things fit the Joshua narrative very well. Historians disagree for two reasons; first, their strong bias against the Bible’s history causes them to reject its narrative outright. Second, there are disagreements with – you guessed it – Egyptian dating.
Egyptian linked discoveries at Jericho “prove” that it’s impossible for Joshua to have invaded in -1467 because the Egyptian seals in the destruction layers date to the 13th dynasty (which they date to 1650 or so, but we date to -1580-1507) and the 18th dynasty (which they date to -1400 or so, but we date to
-1000 or so).
After the destruction of Joshua, Jericho was uninhabited for some time; but by the time of David (after -1071) it had been inhabited again (2 Samuel 10:5). The walls of the city were properly rebuilt in the time of Ahab (after -933) (1 Kings 16:34).
Thus, the 13th dynasty seals agree nicely with the destruction in the time of Joshua, and the 18th dynasty seals agree nicely with the time of David. We have a large advantage over other researchers, because we know better than to rely on traditional Egyptian dating.
Regardless, that the walls of Jericho collapsed is beyond argument even with traditional historians. Walls attacked by battering rams collapse in only one place, but these walls have fallen in a full circle around the city.
Some researchers have proposed an earthquake, but that would be as likely to make the walls fall in as out, which is not what the archeological record shows. Given the Bible’s claim that it was a direct result of the shouting and the stomping and the trumpets, it is likely to be the result of harmonic resonance.
When 600,000 men march in step around a city, you’re going to feel that. Now a well-built wall wouldn’t be affected, but a badly-built wall – one built in haste, in fear of the imminent Israelite invasion – might well be.
And Jericho is a very earthquake-prone site; while the walls weren’t knocked down by an earthquake, they may well have been shaken and softened by one, leaving it so that all it would take is one good push to collapse and make a perfect ramp for invasion.
As always, it was a miracle; but the miracle was in the timing, the miracle was in the fact God knew about harmonic resonance which Joshua certainly did not. The miracle was that the walls had been built badly, prepared in haste, weakened by an earthquake perhaps, and only God knew that.
THE INVASION
After this Joshua conquered Ai with a clever ruse involving a fake retreat and an ambush (Joshua 8). Then the Gibeonites, hearing what had happened, developed a clever ruse of their own to trick Joshua into making a forbidden treaty with them; they pretended to be from a far country, and secured an oath from Joshua that he wouldn’t attack them.
Foolishly he did so, only to find out that they were basically the next city on the list to conquer. But a deal’s a deal (Joshua 9). After that, Adonizedek king of Jerusalem – which at this point, was still a Canaanite city – was afraid, so gathered a coalition of five kings to attack Gibeon.
They of course appealed to Joshua, who was given permission to engage by God, who attacked the coalition with hailstones (Joshua 10:10-11).Following this came the miracle of Joshua’s long day:
Joshua 10:12-14 Then Joshua spoke to Yahweh in the day when Yahweh delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel; and he said in the sight of Israel, “Sun, stand still on Gibeon! You, moon, stop in the valley of Aijalon!” The sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation had avenged themselves of their enemies…. The sun stayed in the midst of the sky, and didn’t hurry to go down about a whole day. There was no day like that before it or after it….
Some interpret this as an eclipse. And because the sun and moon are both mentioned in the same context, meaning they were clearly both visible, this is a reasonable idea. However, they are mentioned as stopping in two different places which argues against an eclipse.
Also, the Bible says “there was no day like that before or after,” which argues that this was a unique event, and not a solar eclipse which is relatively common. Explaining this particular miracle with observed human experience is challenging, so you can choose to believe it happened or not.
Regardless, after decisively conquering these five kings and taking their cities, the northern Canaanite tribes banded together to bring an army “even as the sand that is on the seashore in multitude, with very many horses and chariots” (Joshua 11:4-9).
Joshua of course won again, and again warred with other cities; “Joshua made war a long time with all those kings. There was not a city that made peace with the children of Israel, except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon. They took all in battle” (Joshua 11:18-19).
Following this, God told Joshua he was getting old, and there was still more land to conquer; but to go ahead and divide the land they were going to conquer among the tribes on that day (Joshua 13:1-6), so he did so.
This was seven years into the Promised Land, and we can prove this by Caleb’s statement just after that in Joshua 14:6-12.Doing the math there, the spying of Kadesh-Barnea happened in the second year, and that was 45 years earlier. Since they were in the wilderness 40 years, that makes this the seventh year after the entry to the Promised Land, or -1460.
At about this time, the Tabernacle was reared up in Shiloh, where it would remain until the time of David (-1071), about 300 years. This became the spiritual hub of Israel for the judges period, and later – due to Israel’s many failures in this period – became a byword for what happened when God abandons a place (Jeremiah 7:12).
During this time, there was no centralized leadership, no constant chain of judges or rulers. The only continuous presence was the high priest, who spoke for God and not for themselves; thus, as Samuel would much later tell them…
1 Samuel 12:12 …you said to me, ‘No, but a king shall reign over us;’ when Yahweh your God was your king.
The last few chapters of Judges (17-21) seem to be out of place chronologically, and tell some stories of that early period after the death of Joshua, when “every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6).
These stories in the end of Judges properly belong here, chronologically; things about the founding of Dan, an alternate Levite priesthood based there, and the near-extinction of the tribe of Benjamin because of a particularly gruesome act they did, and how the tribe was saved. Fun stuff, but not part of our main narrative, so we’ll skip it.
Section
THE DEATH OF JOSHUA
No age is given for Joshua at this point, but since he was a fellow spy, it stands to reason he was of similar age as Caleb; he was definitely over 20, since he would have died in the wilderness if God had not specifically said to spare him for his faith (Numbers 14:30).
Hence his lowest possible age at this point would be 67, and likely much higher since God had literally just called him old in Joshua 13:1. He was, however, called a “young man” early in the Exodus, which likely means he was under 30, or at most 40 at the Exodus (Numbers 11:28).
This puts his probable upper age at something like Caleb’s own 85 years. Now we know he went on to live 110 years (Joshua 24:29). Which means he lived for a minimum 25 years, maximum 43 years after this.
This is somewhat important for the internal chronology of the judges period, though fortunately we don’t need it for the overall chronology of the patriarchs because 1 Kings 6:1 tells us that 480 years passed between the Exodus and the 4th year of Solomon’s reign.
This allows us to bridge past the judges period, reaching from Solomon to Moses, and from Moses back to Abraham thanks to Galatians 3:17, which tells us that from Abraham’s covenant at 85 years old (-1937) to the Exodus (-1507) was 430 years to the day (Exodus 12:41), and from there to Solomon’s 4th year was 480 years (-1027). More on this in the Appendix on Biblical chronology.
But even though the judges period doesn’t affect the big picture, it tells us a lot about the geopolitical situation at the time. Remember, traditional historians believe that this coincided with the peak of the power of the 18th-19th dynasties, which they believe controlled the territory as far as Turkey.
And they did indeed do that – in the 10th and 9th centuries, not the 14th and 13th. During the entire judges period, as has been noted, Egypt is absent from the Biblical record because they were oppressed by the Amalekites – who, on the other hand, make regular appearances in the judges period.
Joshua 24:31 Israel served Yahweh all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, and had known all the work of Yahweh, that he had worked for Israel.
Now Joshua died between 25 and 43 years after entering the Promised Land; I personally favor a lower number, meaning he was effectively the same age as Caleb. So, we are going to assign 49 years from the entry to the Promised Land to the first time God punished them; reasons for this will follow at the proper time.
JUDGES PERIOD
As has been noted, Joshua didn’t finish the process of driving out the Canaanites, particularly in the south. This may have been because the southern tribes found it easier to get support from the Amalekites in Egypt, who were involved in every major war for the next 300 years.
One of God’s primary rules was to completely conquer the Canaanites, and not to make treaties with them – the reason for this being that He was afraid, with good reason, that they would start following their religion and draw down His jealousy on them.
And of course, they did anyway (Judges 1:28-36, 2:1-4). So, God made them lose battles, and they didn’t change. So finally, He decided to leave some tribes that He didn’t drive out, as tests to see if they would obey Him or not. (Spoiler alert: they didn’t.)
This began a cycle of sin, foreign oppression, repentance, and deliverance that lasted through much of the judges period, with at least six cycles recorded. The records are usually in the format “the land had rest X years,” and then the people sinned “and God sold them into the [foreign tribe] Y years,” then “God raised up a judge to deliver them, and he judged them Z years.”
If you add up all of the XYZ years, you get a number far too large to fit here. Since we have a solid bridge between Solomon and Moses, we know the entire period from the entry to the Promised Land to Saul’s first year cannot be more than 355 years.
Thus, we have to understand this as ordinal (5th) years, not cardinal (5) years. Hebrew makes no distinction, unfortunately. Let’s take the first example; Joshua died, and the people waited until his generation had died out to sin and for God to make them vassals of a foreign people – in this case, the Mesopotamians.
They served the Mesopotamians eight years. Then Israel repented, begged God for help, so God called Othniel, younger brother of Caleb, to deliver Israel. He did so, and “the land had rest 40 years.” This would be the 40th year from the beginning of the bondage.
Then again Israel sinned, God was angry, and they became vassals of Moab for 18 years. Again, they repented, again God picked a judge who delivered them, “and the last had rest 80 years,” or better “the land had rest until the 80th year from the beginning of the bondage,” which is when the next bondage began.
Using this method, it fits neatly inside the 355-year window given us by 1 Kings 6:1 – although there are some places where there is room for discussion and disagreement by a decade or two. But since this isn’t critical for any other period, we won’t spend a lot of time on this, and focus on telling the story.
THE CAPTORS
The Bible mentions six different nations enslaving Israel for their sins at this time; it’s worth looking at them one by one. The first, Mesopotamia, isn’t the one we have spent so much time on (Babel, Ur, Kish, etc.), but rather the land of Haran.
This word is a translation of the Hebrew Aram-Naharaim which is literally “Aram of the two rivers.” Since you’ll remember from the earliest chapters, the land of Aram was the upper Euphrates valley in modern NE Syria and SE Turkey.
This was the adopted homeland of Abraham’s cousins, and so these invaders were most likely distant relatives of Israel, Laban’s descendants looking for a piece of the inheritance of Abraham. Their king, Cushan-Rishathaim is unknown to history; since it means “twice-wicked Cushan”, most people think that the name is an insult, not an actual name.
We do have a strong connection between Cushan and the Mitanni; two, actually. First is that the Egyptian name for the Mitanni – much later, around 950 B.C. – was Naharin, which seems to be the same root as naharim, between the rivers. The second is in Habakkuk:
Habakkuk 3:7-8 I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction: and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble. Was the LORD displeased against the rivers? …
This, the only other mention of the name in the Bible – albeit about 1,000 years later – mentions Cushan in the context of the Mitanni, in the context of “the rivers,” which must be the Euphrates and its tributaries.
Little is known of the Mitanni this early in history, since their capital city has never been found or excavated, so it’s not at all surprising we don’t know the name of their contemporary king Cushan.
Regardless, God delivered them through the judge Othniel, younger brother of Caleb; we know for a fact he was under 20 after the Exodus (since otherwise, he’d be dead), and that he was born before the end of the 40 years in the wilderness (since otherwise, his parents would have been dead).
This means that by the end of the captivity to Mesopotamia, Othniel would have been no less than 58 years old, and no more than 116. More likely somewhere in the middle. Regardless, his age puts an upper limit on how high we can stretch the period after Joshua’s death, since the longer it was, the older Othniel would be.
MOABITES
So, then Othniel judged Israel until he died, let’s say 20 years after the captivity; then Israel started falling away, worshipping idols, and so on; so, the new captivity, this time to the Moabites, began the 40th year from the last captivity.
Remember, this was not a period of kings, or continuous rulers; this was, according to the book of Judges, a time when “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” It was effectively a libertarian society, subject to judgments by a theocratically appointed line of priests.
So, it’s important to emphasize that Othniel had not been judging 40 years, because there had to be some time for him to die, Israel to drift without his leadership, start sinning, annoy God, and then to lose a war, before the 40th year was up.
Now the Moabites took the Ammonites – their cousins – and the Amalekites, who by this time were well established in Egypt, to help attack Israel (Judges 3:12-13). This would have been in -1378, lasting 17 years until -1361.
What’s strange is that despite the Amalekite and Ammonite involvement, the captivity was clearly to the Moabites (Judges 3:14, 28-30), and not to the Amalekites. Then Ehud died, Israel sinned, and God sold them into captivity to the Canaanites of the city of Hazor in -1298 (Judges 4:1-2).
Hazor was to the northern part of Canaan, so it’s odd that he, too, apparently had Amalekite help, since Deborah mentions Amalek in her victory song (Judges 5:12-14). Deborah was a prophetess around
-1278. The Bible is often accused of open misogyny, but God had no problem using a woman when she was the best man for the job.
Judges 4:4-5 Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, she judged Israel at that time. She lived under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim: and the children of Israel came up to her for judgment.
So, she told Barak, apparently a leader among Israel, that God had sent him to deliver them from the Canaanites. His response demonstrated… shall we say, less than perfect faith in the prophecy:
Judges 4:8-9 Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” She said, “I will surely go with you: nevertheless, the journey that you take shall not be for your honour; for Yahweh will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” Deborah arose, and went with Barak to Kedesh.
So, because Barak was afraid to go without Deborah holding his hand, any glory he might have gotten for leading the army would belong to her, instead. He apparently was cool with that. So they went, she commanded him when to attack, they did, they won, the rest is history (Judges 4-5).
Likewise in -1258, the Midianite captivity specifically mentions having the Amalekites as their allies (Judges 6:3). Yet in none of these captivities does the Bible ever record they went into captivity to Amalek.
Why not? If Amalek contributed warriors to each battle, why did they never get a share of the spoils? Easy: they already did because the Amalekites were the Hyksos, and the rest of the Canaanite tribes were vassals of theirs.
It was in everyone’s best interest to keep the Hebrews contained, so the Amalekites continued to harass Israel every chance they got through their proxies in the Palestine region. And interestingly, Manetho confirms exactly this at exactly this time in history:
Finally, they appointed as king one of their number whose name was Salitis.… above all he fortified the district to the east, foreseeing that the Assyrians, as they grew stronger, would one day covet and attack his kingdom. (Josephus)
Manetho believed this was the Hyksos defending against the Assyrians, but he was wrong for they had no presence in this part of the world at this time; in fact, this was the Amalekites defending themselves against Israel, having heard the news of their powerful conquest of the Promised Land under Joshua and fearing they might return to Egypt.
…This place [Avaris] he rebuilt and fortified with massive walls, planting there a garrison of as many as 240,000 heavy-armed men to guard his frontier. Here he would come in summer-time, partly to serve out rations and pay his troops, partly to train them carefully in maneuvers and so strike terror into foreign tribes. (Ibid.)
So much for the Egyptian side of the story, this dated – using the rising of Sothis, a calendar which Manetho credits Salitis with starting, and thus a very firm date in history established at -1321. And it is Manetho’s testimony that from here, the Amalekites “struck terror into foreign tribes.”
Now the Hyksos already controlled the area up to southern Palestine; from there, they were in easy striking distance of Moab, Ammon, Edom and of course Israel. But the Hyksos had a focus in Egypt already, and couldn’t fully divide their forces with occupying the land of Canaan.
So instead, they contented themselves with extracting loyalty from the Canaanite tribes that were left, and using them to fight proxy wars against the Israelites. Which is why they were involved in nearly every captivity, yet never once were the captors.
Judges 6:3-6 So it was, when Israel had sown, that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites, and the children of the east; they came up against them; and they encamped against them, and destroyed the increase of the earth, until you come to Gaza, and left no sustenance in Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor donkey. For they came up with their livestock and their tents; they came in as locusts for multitude; both they and their camels were without number: and they came into the land to destroy it. Israel was brought very low because of Midian; and the children of Israel cried to Yahweh.
This is how “striking terror into foreign tribes” looked from the Israelites’ side. Notice the “as locusts for multitude” agrees well with a 240,000 man strike force of Amalekites alone, the ones stationed at Avaris.
Notice also the “children of the east” came with the Midianites. This is an odd phrase, and some interpret it as Ammon and Moab who lived to the east; but the Bible would likely have mentioned them by name. However, there were other “children” of the east.
Don’t forget Abraham’s other sons by Keturah, who went to the land of the east so as not to infringe on Isaac’s inheritance. These became the Mitanni/Midianites as well as the Asshurim/Assyrians.
It would be plausible that these people would want to recapture the land they felt Isaac’s descendants took from them, and also would be consistent with known fact that the Assyrians and Mitanni were allied at this point in history – something we’ll get to in the next chapter or two.[might be able to refer back to this, if my writing plan goes as I see it now]
If true, this marks the first time the Assyrians appear on the Bible’s radar.
THE RISE OF MONARCHY
To get out of this captivity, after the usual whining to God about what happened, God appeared to Gideon and told him to break down an altar of Baal that belonged to his father and sacrifice certain things in a certain way.
Upon throwing down his altar, he earned the nickname Jerubbaal, “let Baal contend,” which was effectively daring Baal to do something about it. “Bite me, Baal” would be one of the nicer ways we might express this sentiment today (Judges 6:32-33).
Gideon had several crises of faith, insisting that God make a fleece wet when nothing else was, then dry when everything else was wet, which God humored; then God kept culling the army until it only had 300 men in it, so that they would know it was His doing, not their own strength (Judges 7:1-7).
Long story short, they conquered the Midianites, as well as some Israelite collaborators. Upon returning from the successful campaign, Israel wanted to make him king, to which he responded “I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: the LORD shall rule over you”(Judges 8:23).
He had seventy legitimate sons, plus at least one by a concubine (Judges 8:30-31).The laws of inheritance didn’t consider the sons of a concubine equal with those of a wife, which made the son of the concubine, Abimelech, jealous.
Abimelech then went to his mother’s town and stirred up a bit of a civil war against the sons of Gideon, and managed to wipe out all but the youngest of the 70 (Judges 9:1-5), whose name was Jotham.
Abimelech thus became the first proper king of Israel, ruling for three years (-1218), a century before Saul. Again, a long story short, Jotham stirred up things against him, and Abimelech died; thereupon, God changed tactics in how He led Israel.
Up until this point, the idea had been that each person was independent; there was no king, God was their king. They had elders to judge them, more or less like Moses had appointed in the wilderness; on occasion, a hero would rise up like Gideon or Deborah to do the job Moses and Joshua had done, and once their job was done they would sooner or later die and let Israel as a whole figure it out for themselves once more.
So, for most of the first 300 years, “every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6) – which is to say, decided for himself what right and wrong was. There was no hierarchy outside of basic family dynamics.
But after Abimelech, God began to shift towards a more centralized leadership. And the first step in that was a continuous system of judges from this point on. They were not kings, more advisor than dictator, but it was the first continuous executive presence in Israel (Judges 10:1).
Israel was clearly wanting a king, as witnessed by their offer to Gideon and their acceptance of Abimelech – whose name literally means “my father is king.” So, God compromised, by providing a central leader.
JEPHTHAH’S VOW
It doesn’t seem to have helped very much, as Israel still found themselves in constant hot water with God due to their idolatrous ways. After the death of one judge, Jair, they followed other gods again, and were put in captivity again, and again repented… only this time, God wasn’t buying it.
Judges 10:11-14 Yahweh said to the children of Israel, “Didn’t I save you from the Egyptians, and from the Amorites, from the children of Ammon, and from the Philistines? The Sidonians also, and the Amalekites, and the Maonites, oppressed you; and you cried to me, and I saved you out of their hand. Yet you have forsaken me, and served other gods: therefore I will save you no more. Go and cry to the gods which you have chosen. Let them save you in the time of your distress!”
God’s patience had run out; yes, it does happen, despite what Christians think (compare also Numbers 14:22-23; Jeremiah 15:1; etc.). Well, they really tried hard to put on a good show of repenting this time, so God forgave them one last time (Judges 10:15-16). This was in -1170, about 60 years before the anointing of Saul.
Meanwhile, a man named Gideon (no relation) had a son named Jephthah, who was the son of a prostitute. His brothers resented him and chased him out of the house, so he fled to another place. After the Ammonites invaded, they sent to bring him back to deliver them from the Ammonites because he was known to be a “mighty man of valor” (Judges 11:1-11).
He was testy at first, as is to be expected, but eventually agreed if they promised he would be “head over them” – a position dangerously close to king. Regardless, once he was in charge he sent to the Ammonites to attempt a diplomatic solution.
The Ammonites claimed Israel occupied what had once been their land; Jephthah disputed this, and used the argument “While Israel lived in Heshbon and its towns… three hundred years; why didn’t you recover them within that time?”
Now it’s possible that “three hundred years” was a round number, and not precisely three hundred years. Still, it must be close. Israel lived in Heshbon from when they conquered it three years before the entry to the Promised Land (it was on the other side of the river); which would mean this date should be -1170.
And arranging our judges and captivities as we have done, and allowing 49 years for Joshua’s leadership and the death of the elders who outlived him, it all fits nicely that this is 300 years after the conquering of Heshbon.
Back the story, diplomacy didn’t work so they warred, and obviously the Ammonites lost. But before leaving for the battle, Gideon made a foolish vow which many people have used to make God look bad; he said:
Judges 11:30-31 Jephthah vowed a vow to Yahweh, and said, “If you will indeed deliver the children of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be, that whatever comes forth from the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, it shall be Yahweh’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.”
God is known to be very hard-nosed about you keeping your vows, but He is also known to be quite averse to child sacrifice. This put Jephthah in an awkward spot… when, upon his return, his only child came out of the door first.
Judges 11:35-36 It happened, when he saw her, that he tore his clothes, and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you are one of those who trouble me; for I have opened my mouth to Yahweh, and I can’t go back.” She said to him, “My father, you have opened your mouth to Yahweh; do to me according to that which has proceeded out of your mouth, because Yahweh has taken vengeance for you on your enemies, even on the children of Ammon.”
She begged to be allowed two months to mourn, and “at the end of two months… she returned to her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed” (verse 39). And again, God’s harsh, unforgiving religion has taken a lot of flak for this; which is entirely unjustified.
First, God never asked for a vow like that to be made. But secondly, and far more importantly, God thought ahead to realize there would be times when your vows put you between a rock and hard place so He left you a way out; it was called “redemption”:
Leviticus 27:2-4 Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, ‘When a man makes a vow, the persons shall be for Yahweh by your valuation. Your valuation shall be of a male from twenty years old even to sixty years old, even your valuation shall be fifty shekels of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary. If it is a female, then your valuation shall be thirty shekels.
Leviticus 27:11-13 If it is any unclean animal, of which they do not offer as an offering to Yahweh, then he shall set the animal before the priest; and the priest shall value it, whether it is good or bad. As you the priest values it, so shall it be. But if he will indeed redeem it, then he shall add the fifth part of it to its valuation.
So, if you foolishly vow that something will belong to the Lord, specifically an unclean animal, like a human “which they do not offer as an offering to the Lord,” there is a method for redeeming – buying back – that animal or person from the Lord (see also Exodus 13:14-15).
In the case of a woman, it is specifically mentioned that the price is 30 shekels of silver – about six months of minimum wage (and, not coincidentally, the price Jesus, who redeemed the woman with his death, was valued at by the Pharisees and Judas).
So, it seems like Jephthah went through with his vow and sacrificed her as stated; but if so, that was his own fault, and the fault of the priests who didn’t know the law of God well enough. It was certainly not a fault of God or His system of laws.
After this a series of three judges came, of whom nothing noteworthy is said; however, to fit in the chronology they need to be more or less contemporary, as we’re left with 13 years to fill in this period (otherwise we have to take a bit of time away from Joshua, or overlap Saul and the Philistines).
Fortunately, we know one judge was from Zebulon, one from Ephraim, and one from Judah – fairly well spread out in Israel, which might have been an attempt by God to have more local judges since the consecutive thing also wasn’t working.
It didn’t work either, because in Judges 13:1-5, God sold them to the Philistines, a captivity which would last 40 years. At this point, God promised a son to a certain Manoah who would “begin to save Israel out of the hand of the Philistines” (Judges 13:5).
You know this son as Samson; and the Bible chooses its words carefully; Samson would only begin to lead Israel out of the captivity. He was born after the captivity began, so his lifetime is entirely contained within the 40 year captivity.
SAMUEL
But before we get to Samson’s story, we need to make a brief digression of about 20 years to tell the story of Samuel. Unfortunately, the book of Judges and the book of Samuel, which talk about the same period in history, have no connections between them that allow a secure dating. There is no event that is mentioned in both books, at least, not that anyone has found yet.
That makes this period very tricky to unravel, and what follows are the facts from both books arranged into a story that makes the most sense of any I can tell. In the end, it doesn’t matter for the bigger chronological picture.
We know that Saul ruled 40 years (Acts 13:21), and the Philistine captivity lasted 40 years before that. We also know that Samuel died shortly before he did, having lived to be 98 years old, so we can infer that Samuel was born about 20 years before the Philistine captivity happened.
His mother was barren, and prayed for a child – vowing that her firstborn would be given to God. God answered and so as soon as he was weaned, he was given to the temple to be raised there by the high priest Eli (1 Samuel 2:11).
Eli was a good priest, but his sons were not. So, for not restraining his sons as, say, Abraham would have done (Genesis 18:19),God cursed his house and prophesied the death of his sons (1 Samuel 3:11-14). Then time passed, while Samuel grew up – and everyone knew he was going to be a prophet (verses 19-20).
For the sins of the sons of Eli, among other things, God must have sold Israel into slavery into the Philistines at some point, since the first time they are mentioned in Samuel the Philistines are at war with Israel, having already considered the Hebrews their servants.
1 Samuel 4:9 Be strong, and behave like men, O you Philistines, that you not be servants to the Hebrews, as they have been to you. Strengthen yourselves like men, and fight!
Therefore, the 40 year captivity to the Philistines mentioned in Judges 13:1 must have already been underway. It’s impossible to say for how long, but to make the story make sense I’ve started it 19 years before the loss of the Ark, for reasons you’ll see in a moment.
Meanwhile, Samson was conceived shortly after the captivity began, and thus – if my 19-year-guess is right – Samson was 18 at this point. About this time, Samson wanted a particular Philistine wife, which was frowned upon by his parents, but he was stubborn and so they made it happen.
His marriage didn’t go well, and after his wife betrayed him to her relatives to get them out of a lost bet, he got mad and stomped off and killed some Philistines. Her father took this as a breakup, so he gave her to someone else.
At some point later Samson calmed down, and came back and found her remarried; her father said “Well, you left her” and Samson said “we were on a break!” Anyway, Samson stomped off again and burned a bunch of Philistine crops and grain fields.
When the other Philistines heard what happened and found out who did this and why, they then killed his (ex?) wife and her whole family. Samson responded by killing more Philistines. They of course put up whatever passed for “wanted” posters for him, so his own people tried to capture him to deliver him to the Philistines.
So guess what Samson did? Killed more Philistines – a thousand this time, with a donkey’s jawbone for a weapon. Then he found a prostitute in Gaza; the Philistines knew he was there and set a trap for him.
He evaded it, and in an act of pure caprice, woke up in the middle of the night and stole the gates and the posts of the city – which must have weighed around a ton, literally – and carried them up on top of a hill and left them there.
After that, people got the message: leave Samson alone. The Bible then says “He judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years” (Judges 15:20). So we’ll leave him doing that and go back to Samuel’s story.
About the time all of this was happening with Samson, the Ark was lost to the Philistines in the battle I mentioned above – where Eli’s evil priest sons died as well. When the news reached the temple, Eli fainted, fell backwards, and died.
Meanwhile, the Philistines discovered that the Ark wasn’t such a blessing if God didn’t like you. They also discovered God has a sense of humor – even if they didn’t think it was funny.
1 Samuel 5:2-5 The Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon. When they of Ashdod arose early on the next day, behold, Dagon was fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of Yahweh. They took Dagon, and set him in his place again. When they arose early on the next day morning, behold, Dagon was fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of Yahweh; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off on the threshold. Only Dagon’s torso was intact.
But that was the least of their problems; everywhere the Ark went, plague followed; the Philistines were overrun by mice and afflicted with tumors and boils – in fact, there is a fair argument that this is the first recorded incidence of the Bubonic plague – better known as the Black Plague.
Anyway, after 7 months of this they consulted their priests and they decided to send the Ark back to Israel loaded with offerings. They put it on a cart yoked to oxen without a driver and the oxen drove straight to Israel, and parked themselves in a field in Bethshemesh.
The Israelites, having learned nothing, decided to peek inside the Ark, so they melted like Nazis (1 Samuel 6:19). After this, they were afraid to do anything so asked the men of Kirhath-jearim to take it away – which they did, and it stayed there for 20 years (verses 20-21).
THE END OF THE CAPTIVITY
The very next story in 1 Samuel begins with Samuel saying “let’s go get the Ark, bring it up, and God will deliver you from the Philistine captivity” (1 Samuel 7:1). Why now, after 20 years? Generally, grand calls to action in a society like this happen as a response to some major event.
Remember, it was after 20 years. And that happens to be exactly the same amount of time as the book of Judges says that Samson judged Israel, during the same Philistine occupation of Israel. Is that a coincidence, do you think? Therefore this is our link between the two narratives – the judgeship of Samson.
Since when Samson died the Philistines were still in control of Israel he must have died at less than 39 years old; and since he was a captive for at least a year, to allow his hair to regrow, he most have been taken captive at 38.
Which means his first exploits must have begun, and his twenty years judging must have been reckoned from his 18th year – which is why we picked that date earlier. All of this tells us that the reason Samuel, after 20 years, finally said “let’s go get the Ark” is that it was only now officially HIS problem – the previous judge, Samson, having just died!
Samson seems to have made no particular effort to chase out the Philistines in his 20 years of judging, God having plainly said that Samson would begin to free the people from captivity, but pointedly not saying he would actually free them.
Anyway, I’m sure you know the story; Samson loved Delilah, and she kept nagging him to tell her how he was so strong, because she was a Philistine spy and for 20 years, no one had been able to kill him.
He, knowing this, kept telling her fake reasons for his strength, and she of course would tell the Philistines, who would try to capture him – and fail epically. She did this no less than three times. We tend to read this as a brief relationship, which it might have been, but there is no particular reason they couldn’t have been together for a decade.
Regardless, at some point he finally relented and told her the real reason – that he had never had a haircut or eaten anything made from grapes. Whereupon she of course did what she always did – told the Philistines. He was the strongest man to ever live, not the smartest – it’s important to note that distinction.
So he was captured, blinded, and yoked to a millstone to grind the grain. But then his hair began to grow again. And at some after that – long enough for hair to grow, but not so long the Philistines had tired of making fun of him – they had a party with 3,000 Philistines, who called him up to mock him.
He prayed for strength one last time, and pushed down the pillars that held the house up, and one last time did what Samson loved best – killed Philistines.His dying act killed 3,000 high ranking Philistines, thus weakening them significantly.
And his death would certainly have galvanized the population against the Philistines (nothing unites people like a martyr), whereupon Samuel gathered up the people and said now was the time to bring the Ark to free themselves.
1 Samuel 7:3 Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, “If you do return to Yahweh with all your heart… and serve him only; and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.”
The Ark must have also been brought back to the Tabernacle at this time, although it is not mentioned specifically. Then there were a few battles, some miraculous events, and then it says…
1 Samuel 7:13-15 So the Philistines were subdued, and they came no more within the border of Israel. The hand of Yahweh was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel. The cities which the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel… Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life.
This is the end of the 40 years of captivity that began in Judges 13:1, but not the end of the Philistine power who would continue to be an annoyance even into the times of David. Indeed, it says of Saul “There was severe war against the Philistines all the days of Saul”(1 Samuel 14:52).
But they “came no more within the border of Israel.” This is, incidentally, the first mention of Samuel as a judge; before this he had been called a prophet, but until this point, there is no mention of Samuel after the loss of the Ark and the death of Eli.
So evidently, Samuel was either in the shadow of Eli or Samson for the first 60 or so years of his life. Only from this point, was he henceforth a judge “all the days of his life.” And yet even here, Samuel was not to lead Israel alone – for following this, apparently immediately, the people demanded a king.
KING SAUL
Like Eli, Samuel’s sons were not good people and the Israelites used that as an excuse to request a king; but you have seen that they had been wanting a king for a century by this point; which is why God said this was not a rejection of Samuel, but of God as their king (1 Samuel 8:4-7).
So God told Samuel to warn them about all the bad things about having a king – conscription, taxes, imminent domain, and so on – and the people said “Taxes? That doesn’t sound so bad!” (1 Samuel 8:9-20).
God picked Saul, Samuel anointed him as king; interestingly, as noted a long time ago, the first king of Israel who changed the system of government to monarchy was Saul, son of Kish; just as the first king in Sumer was Etana, son of Cush, and built the city of Kish (just a different spelling of the same name). Probably a coincidence. Whatever.
Saul was a Benjamite, which was the smallest tribe in Israel due to the events in the early part of the judges period as recorded in Judges 19-21. His family was also not noble, and so he struggled to believe he could be king (1 Samuel 9:21). This modest attitude didn’t last once he had a taste of power, unfortunately (1 Samuel 15:17).
Early on his in reign he won a decisive victory against an Ammonite invasion, then in his second year he attacked the Philistine garrisons stationed outside the borders of Israel, declaring war; which he won, although by offering his own sacrifices, which was only for priests to do, he got in hot water with God (1 Samuel 13:7-14). The next 30 years or so were summed up as follows…
1 Samuel 14:47-48 Now when Saul had taken the kingdom over Israel, he fought against all his enemies on every side, against Moab, and against the children of Ammon, and against Edom, and against the kings of Zobah, and against the Philistines: and wherever he turned himself, he defeated them. He did valiantly, and struck the Amalekites,and delivered Israel out of the hands of those who despoiled them.
Noted how Saul attacked everyone else and left the Amalekites for last; because of all of these, they were the most powerful and the farthest away, ruling from Egypt. Remember, every time during the judges period that they were invaded, the Amalekites helped the Moabites or whomever.
But by the time of Samuel, Samson, and the Philistine captivity the Amalekites were not mentioned any more. Because by this point (-1151-1081) they were too busy dealing with uprisings from their Egyptian vassals in Thebes to help their allies in Canaan.
As you know already, they would lose that battle and be forced to retreat from Avaris in -1088, the 23rd year of Saul. The Egyptians pursued them to Sharuhen, and after a three year siege defeated them again.
Then the Theban 18th dynasty retreated to deal with problems from Nubia and Libya, and at this point – approximately the 30th year of Saul – God decided it was time to finish off the Amalekites once and for all, fulfilling a curse given four centuries earlier in the time of Joshua.
Saul was sent to kill everyone and everything in the “city of the Amalekites.” This is, presumably, Sharuhen, which Ahmose I had just conquered not that long before – which is probably why Samuel doesn’t mention a siege or attack of the city at all:
1 Samuel 15:5-9 Saul came to the city of Amalek, and laid wait in the valley. Saul said to the Kenites, “Go, depart, go down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them; for you showed kindness to all the children of Israel, when they came up out of Egypt.” So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites. Saul struck the Amalekites, from Havilah as you go to Shur, that is before Egypt. He took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.
Note that he went to the city, but then struck them from Havilah all the way to Shur, at the border of Egypt. This indicates that they were fleeing – and not holed up in their city for a siege. If this is indeed Sharuhen, there would be no fortifications left after Ahmose conquered it – so fleeing was the only option.
They were stopped at the border of Egypt, where there was certainly a large garrison of native Egyptian troops, and caught between hammer and anvil the Amalekites ceased to be a power forever. But Saul saved Apophis III:
1 Samuel 15:9 But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the cattle, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and wouldn’t utterly destroy them: but everything that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.
God was very angry at this, and said He regretted making Saul king and that the kingdom would be taken from him and given to someone else. Whereupon, shortly thereafter, Samuel found and anointed David as king.
Saul continued to rule for about a decade – no specific chronological information is given, but it must be somewhere in that range – while David was first his armorbearer and then his commander in chief, then a guerrilla force hiding in the mountains, then an exile in – of all places – the Philistine country.
But before all that happened, after he became his part-time armorbearer and harpist, David killed Goliath the Philistine which caused him to be catapulted to fame and be appointed general of the army (1 Samuel 18:5). His fame however made Saul jealous, and he secretly wanted to kill David.
But David was very close to Saul’s son Jonathan, and Saul gave David his own daughter Michal as a wife – partly because he thought the dowry he asked (100 foreskins of Philistines) would get him killed. It didn’t – in fact, David brought 200 (1 Samuel 18:20-27).
From that point Saul openly tried to kill David on many occasions, being saved either by Jonathan or Michal, or a miracle where anyone who tried to capture David for Saul – including Saul himself – started prophesying instead of killing him.
Anyway, Saul went back and forth between friendly and murdery, and finally David fled for good; he stopped on the way to get help from the high priest, who fed him and gave him the sword he used to kill Goliath.
Then David went to Gath, the hometown of Goliath so as you can imagine, that was awkward. He then fled to a cave and gathered 400 debtors and malcontents under Saul’s rule, who became the core of his army.
Then he went to the king of the Moabites, received asylum for his parents – he didn’t trust their safety under Saul’s rule – then returned to Judah (1 Samuel 22:1-5).Saul meanwhile found out that the high priest had helped David, and killed 85 priests and most of the Levites in the town of Nob – women and children, too. But one priest, Abiathar, escaped and joined up with David.
Meanwhile, the Philistines thought Hebrew civil war was a good time to start invading, so with God’s blessing David counterattacked and liberated the area from the Philistines (1 Samuel 23:1-6).Then he spent considerable time hiding in the mountains, always being one step ahead of Saul. And somewhere in the middle of all this, Samuel died (1 Samuel 25:1).
David passed up two good chances to kill Saul, figuring that if God had anointed him, God could kill him. Finally, realizing there could never be peace between them no matter what Saul said, he fled once more to the Philistines who had, apparently, decided to let bygones be bygones (1 Samuel 27:1-7).
In fact, the Philistines, in an ironic twist of fate, decided to appoint David as a general in their armies (verses 8-12). He was poised to join them in an attack against Saul, when the other Philistines realized he might be tempted to betray him and sent him back home (1 Samuel 29).
Returning home to Ziglag, he discovered the Amalekites – those whom Saul had apparently let slip through his fingers – had attacked it and taken the wives and children of David and his army hostage and burnt the city.
David pursued them and found a man who had been left behind, and upon interrogating him he said “I am a young man of Egypt, servant to an Amalekite; and my master left me, because three days ago I fell sick” (1 Samuel 30:13).
This is the first direct mention of Egypt after over 400 years (-1071) and we find here one of the last surviving Amalekites, still having one of the Egyptian slaves he had gathered in the glory days of his people, when they ruled Egypt less than 20 years earlier.
David caught up with the Amalekites, who were having quite a party, and David killed all but 400 of them who escaped. Meanwhile, the battle between the Philistines and the Israelites under Saul was going badly for Saul, and he was killed, along with Jonathan and two other of Saul’s sons.
Thinking David would reward the person who killed Saul, an Amalekite took Saul’s crown and bracelet to David, telling him that Saul and Jonathan were dead – and worse, taking credit for assisting his suicide.
David promptly killed him (2 Samuel 1:1-16), and this is the last mention of a Amalekite until the time of Hezekiah (-700), where some Simeonites “struck the remnant of the Amalekites who escaped, and have lived there to this day” (1 Chronicles 4:42-43).
These would be the descendants of the 400 who escaped David. And thus ends the tale of the Hyksos. God vowed to wipe them out and make them forgotten by history – and if you doubt His power to do that, ask historians if they ever existed.
KING DAVID
David returned to Hebron, and the locals hailed him as king after the death of Saul. But only the tribe of Judah, his own tribe, followed him; the rest of Israel rallied behind a son of Saul who escaped, Ishbosheth (2 Samuel 2:8-10).
Long story short, for several years there was war between their houses. There was drama, some backstabbing (literally and figuratively) and in the end, someone assassinated Ishbosheth effectively ending the war.
Finally Israel all came together to declare David king (2 Samuel 5:1-5), and he would reign for 40 years in total – 7 in Hebron, 33 in Jerusalem. Jerusalem, at that time, was still inhabited by the Canaanites which had never been fully driven out of the land (Joshua 15:63).
It was conquered in the early judges period (Judges 1:8),but by this point had apparently completely reverted to being a Canaanite city. Now Jerusalem is one of the most defensible cities in the world. Even the Romans, at the height of their power, struggled to conquer it.
Lamentations 4:12 The kings of the earth, and all the inhabitants of the world, would not have believed that the adversary and the enemy should have entered into the gates of Jerusalem.
Which explains the confidence of the inhabitants in the face of David (2 Samuel 5:6-7).The idea seems to have been that Jerusalem was so easy to defend, that even blind and lame people could defend it. Well, David conquered it anyway and established it as his capital.
The Philistines, his forever frenemies, decided to come up and lay siege to him in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 5:17-25). David had children and began to build a house for himself, which Hiram of Tyre sent goods and craftsmen for.
This is worth noting, because Hiram can be dated using secular dating, meaning outside the Bible, to have begun reigning in the 32nd year of David. Josephus said that the temple of Solomon was begun in Hiram’s 12th year, which was Solomons’ 4th year; meaning that Hiram overlapped with David’s reign by 8 years or so.
About this time, David sent to bring the Ark up; all this time it was apparently either still in Kirjath-Jearim, or at some new place that it had been moved to in the time of Samuel 40 years earlier called “Baale Judah.”
But he didn’t follow the right procedure, and someone died trying to prevent it from falling – the Ark was meant to be carried by hand, never on a cart (1 Chronicles 15:2, 12-15).So David was afraid to move it, and left it where it was for a while.
Interestingly, the Ark had apparently been separated from the Tabernacle which had remained at Shiloh; David built the Ark a new tent in Jerusalem to which he eventually moved the Ark (1 Chronicles 16:1).
So then David wanted to build God a proper temple, not a tabernacle, and the prophet Nathan came and said, in effect “your heart is in the right place, but you’ve killed too many people” (2 Samuel 8:1-16).
However He promised that his son would build the temple, and that his children would be kings forever. Even though David was not allowed to build the temple himself, he gathered spoil from the nations he conquered, to give Solomon a head start on the materials needed.
He proceeded to secure and expand the borders of Israel (2 Samuel 8:1-15) making the nations around him tributaries as far as the Euphrates river (verse 3), as God had promised Abraham (Genesis 15:18).
Then there were various wars and such, and then David had the whole Bathsheba incident – which I’m sure you remember – and he had Uriah the Hittite indirectly killed to cover it up. So God sent Nathan the prophet to him with a rebuke, and told him that because of this, “the sword shall never depart from your house” (2 Samuel 12:10).
Because of this, David had a great deal of family trouble, many of his sons were killed by another son, Absalom, who then started a civil war against his father who had to flee Jerusalem, whereupon Absalom declared himself king.
After a while, Absalom died in battle and David returned to Jerusalem, but then faced ongoing problems with his long-time general Joab, who tended to do things behind David’s back that he wouldn’t approve of.
Then David conducted a census, which made God very angry (2 Samuel 24); like with the moving of the Ark, it seems the problem wasn’t the census per se but how it was done; because whenever you conduct a census, God had commanded a tax to be paid to the temple which David apparently didn’t do (Exodus 30:12-14).
This caused a plague, which (after the loss of 70,000 people) David averted by making an offering on a certain threshing-floor which he purchased and which, later, would be used as the foundation for the temple of Solomon.
Then when David was old, another son of his named Adonijah decided to declare himself king even though the king had intended to make Solomon his heir. So Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, got David to anoint Solomon king and managed to thwart the succession crisis (1 Kings 1).
There was the usual housecleaning upon a new reign, which began in -1031; Solomon purged those seen as loyal to his brother, including the high priest who had supported his brother’s bid for king, which fulfilled the curse God had made to Eli to remove his seed from the priesthood (1 Kings 2:27).
The events in chapter 2 are said to have taken 3 years (1 Kings 2:39), and in -1029 Solomon made a treaty with Pharaoh and took his daughter for a wife. And to learn who she is – and we know her name – and also to identify the famous queen of Sheba, we have to switch to the history of Egypt again…