xxiii. 34), and was doubtless well aware of the sad fate

of Uriah, his son Eliam’s brother-officer. See Blunt’s _Coincidences_, p. II. x. pp. 136, 137. Art. _Ahithophel_, Smith’s _Bib. Dict._

302 – See Ps. xli. 9; lv. 12, 13, 20.

303 – Probably an inhabitant of Erech, a place of uncertain site. See Smith’s _Bib. Dict._

304 – Compare the account of Abner and Rizpah, p. 320.

305 – To this period belong Psalms iii., iv., xlii.

306 – Thomson, _The Land and the Book_, p. 490.

307 – Ibid.

308 – “Now for the first time called _Israel_, as distinct from Judah. But it is likely that, although it now first appears, this distinction had actually grown up while David reigned over Judah only, and Ishbosheth over the other tribes.” Kitto, _Bibl. Illustr._ III. 424.

309 – Sometimes called Abel-maim, _Abel on the waters_ (2 Chr. xvi. 4). “Taking advantage of an oblong knoll of natural rock that rises above the surrounding plain, the original inhabitants raised a high mound sufficiently large for their city. With a deep ‘trench’ (2 Sam. xx. 15) and strong wall, it must have been almost impregnable. The country on every side is most lovely, well watered, and very fertile. The neighbouring fountains and brooks would convert any part of this country into a paradise of fruits and flowers; and such, no doubt, was Abel, when she was called a ‘mother in Israel.’” (2 Sam. xx. 19.) Thomson, _The Land and the Book_, p. 217.

310 – See Calendar, p. 155, and Article _Rizpah_, in Smith’s _Bib. Dict._

311 – See Rawlinson’s _Five Great Monarchies_, II. 333, _n._

312 – Jahn’s _Hebrew Commonwealth_, p. 76.

313 – The life of David admits of a fivefold division. (i) His shepherd life at Bethlehem; (ii) His courtier life with Saul at Gibeah; (iii) His life as an outlaw; (iv) His Kingly life at Hebron during 7½ years, and (v) at Jerusalem during 33 years, in all 40. His history will be ever memorable, whether we regard _the work he achieved_, or _his own personal character_.

(i) _His work._ “He had succeeded to a kingdom distracted with civil dissension, environed on every side, or occupied by powerful and victorious enemies, without a capital, almost without an army, without any bond of union between the tribes. He left a compact and united state, stretching from the frontier of Egypt to the foot of Lebanon, from the Euphrates to the sea. He had crushed the power of the Philistines, subdued or curbed all the adjacent kingdoms; he had formed a lasting and important alliance with the great city of Tyre. He had organized an immense disposable force: every month 24,000 men, furnished in rotation by the tribes, appeared in arms, and were trained as the standing militia of the country. At the head of his army were officers of consummate experience, and, what was more highly esteemed in the warfare of the time, of extraordinary personal activity, strength, and valour[314].” He had also given especial attention to the management of public worship, as the most efficacious means of promoting religion and morality, and, consequently, obedience to the Invisible, Supreme Monarch. The solemn transfer of the Ark of the Covenant, at which almost all the people were present, had made a deep impression on their minds, and had awakened them to a sincere adoration of Jehovah. These favourable dispositions he had upheld and strengthened by suitable regulations in the service of the priests and Levites, and especially by the instructive and animating Psalms, which were composed partly by himself, and partly by other poets and prophets[315]. “In comparison with the hymns of David, the sacred poetry of all other nations sinks into mediocrity. They have embodied so exquisitely the universal language of religious emotion that they have entered, with unquestioned propriety, into the ritual of the holier and more perfect religion of Christ. The songs which cheered the solitudes of the desert caves of Engedi, or resounded from the voice of the Hebrew people as they wound along the glens or the hill-sides of Judea, have been repeated for ages in almost every part of the habitable world, in the remotest islands of the ocean, among the forests of America or the sands of Africa[316].”

(ii) _His character._ Obedience to the Divine commands was ever with David the axiom of his life, and in every step he took he shewed the greatest anxiety to act as God’s servant (2 Sam. ii. 1; 1 Sam. xxiii. 2, 4). All deliverance from danger, and all victories from first to last, he ascribed to the Divine aid, and neither in the hour of danger, nor the more trying hour of prosperity, did he go after “strange gods,” or introduce any idolatrous rites. It was, probably, to this feature of his administration that God referred, when He described him as _a man after His own heart_ (1 Sam. xiii. 14, Comp. Acts xiii. 22), rather than to his private virtues. And yet these were of no mean order. “Shepherd, soldier, poet, king, the romantic friend, the chivalrous leader, the devoted father,” he was eminent alike for his exalted piety, and his noble patriotism. “During a war of seven years he never lifted his sword against a subject, and at the end of it he punished no rebels, and remembered no offence but the murder of his rival (2 Sam. iv. 10–12).” The adultery with Bath-sheba, the murder of Uriah, the numbering of the people, with a view, probably, to foreign conquests, are the deep blots on his fame, and the chief instances in which he forgot alike himself and his God. “And yet when we look at the piety of his youth, the depth of his contrition, the strength of his faith, the fervour of his devotion, the loftiness and variety of his genius, the largeness and warmth of his heart, his eminent valour in any age of warriors, his justice and wisdom as a ruler, and, above all, his adherence to the worship and will of God, we may well regard him as a model of kingly authority and spiritual obedience[317].”

Moreover, not only was he the ancestor of Christ after the flesh, not only was the blessing of the Promise expressly transferred to his family, but in his humiliation and exaltation, as the king of the people of God, and as the vanquisher of heathen nations, he was a type of HIM whose coming he foretold in many of the Psalms, and who is not called the son of Abraham, or of Jacob, or of Moses, but the “_Son of David_.” Kurtz’s _Sacred History_, p. 189; Article _David_, in Smith’s _Bib. Dict._

314 – Milman’s _History of the Jews_, I. 305.

315 – Jahn’s _Hebrew Commonwealth_, p. 75.

316 – Milman’s _History of the Jews_, I. 307.

317 – Angus, _Bible Handbook_, p. 437; Jahn’s _Hebrew Commonwealth_, p. 76; Chandler’s _Life of David_, pp. 582–587.

318 – See _Table of Weights and Measures_ in the _Appendix_, pp. 492, 493. “Each country needed what the other could supply. The wheat of the plains of Galilee and the oil of the hill-country of Judah maintained the royal household of Hiram (Comp. Acts xii. 20); the skill of the Phœnician artists supplied the want of it among the Israelites.”――Kenrick’s _Phœnicia_, p. 355.

319 – See p. 346. Milman’s _History of the Jews_, I. 311.

320 – Milman’s _History of the Jews_, I. 315.

321 – “These successive terraces were an imitation of the Assyrian style of architecture, which at this time prevailed more or less all over Syria, and particularly at Tyre.” Lewin’s _Jerusalem_, p. 255; Art. _Palace_ in Smith’s _Bib. Dict._

322 – The chief architect of the Temple was Hiram (1 K. vii. 13, 40), called also Huram in 2 Chr. ii. 13; iv. 11, 16, an Israelite on his mother’s side, of the tribe of Dan or Naphtali, by birth a Tyrian.

323 – In 2 Chron. iii. 4, the height is said to have been 120 cubits. See Milman’s _History of the Jews_, I. p. 313.

324 – See p. 122.

325 – “Such a copious use of gold was a practice known to the Phœnicians, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians.” Rawlinson’s _Bampton Lectures_, p. 107.

326 – The functions of the priests and Levites had already been duly arranged by David. (i) The Priests were divided into 24 courses (1 Chr. xxiv. 1–19; 2 Chr. xxiii. 8; Luke i. 5), each of which served in rotation for one week, the special services of the week being assigned by lot (Luke i. 9). (ii) Of the Levites 24,000 were over the work of the temple; 6,000 were officers and judges; 4,000 were porters or sentries, and as such bore arms (1 Chr. ix. 19; 2 Chr. xxxi. 2); 4,000 formed the choir of singers and musicians. See Arts. _Priests_ and _Levites_ in Smith’s _Bib. Dict._

327 – Comp. Psalms xxiv, xlvii, xcvii, xcviii, cvi.

328 – See p. 153.

329 – So called from its cedar pillars. Similarly the halls of the Nimroud palace “were supported by rows of pillars, not of stone, but of wood, and the Hall of Lebanon was supported by 3 rows of cedar pillars, 15 in a row, making 45 in the whole.” Lewin’s _Jerusalem_, p. 270. Rawlinson’s _Bampton Lectures_, p. 106.

330 – Baalath was a town of Dan near the Philistine plain. For the two Beth-horons, see p. 212. “The importance of the road on which the two Beth-horons are situated, the main approach to the interior of the country from the hostile districts on both sides of Palestine――Philistia and Egypt on the west, Moab and Ammon on the east――at once explains and justifies the frequent fortification of these towns at different periods of the history. This road is still, as in ancient times, the great road of communication and heavy transport between Jerusalem and the sea-coast.” Robinson’s _Bibl. Res._ II. 252. Smith’s _Bib. Dict._, Art. _Beth-horon_.

331 – The exact site of Gezer has not been found, but it must have been between the lower Beth-horon and the sea, on the regular coast-road of communication with Egypt. Smith’s _Bibl. Dict._

332 – For Hazor see pp. 201, 214. For Megiddo (now _el-Lejjûn_), see p. 240. It was a principal station on the caravan route from Egypt to Damascus, “and for a long while possessed a large khan, mentioned by Maundrell and many travellers after him.” Van de Velde, I. 353.

333 – Tiphsah (= πόρος, “a ford”), the Thapsacus of the Greeks and Romans, “must have been a place of considerable trade, the land-traffic between the East and West passing through it, first on account of its fordway (which was the lowest upon the Euphrates), and then on account of its bridge, while it was likewise the point where goods were both embarked for transport down the stream, and also disembarked from boats which had come up to it, to be conveyed on to their final destination by land.” Smith’s _Bib. Dict._

334 – “A region variously identified with (i) the south of Arabia, (ii) Sofala on the coast of Africa opposite to Madagascar, and (iii) India; the first was probably its locality, though the Jewish fleets may also have visited India.” Kenrick’s _Phœnicia_, p. 357.

335 – Milman’s _History of the Jews_, I. 322. “Notwithstanding the long export of silver from the mines of Tartessus by the Phœnicians, who drew from them the wealth by which they founded so many powerful colonies, the Carthaginians, who succeeded the Phœnicians in their possession, derived from them the revenues by which they were enabled to pay their mercenary armies. Even in the Roman times 40,000 men were employed as miners within a circuit of 400 stadia near Carthagena, and the workings yielded a revenue to the republic of 20,500 drachmas daily.” Kenrick’s _Phœnicia_, p. 211.

336 – “The Palace of Solomon was below the Temple Platform, and in laying the solid foundations of Millo, provision had been made for a double passage from the Palace to the Temple, about 250 ft. long and 42 ft. wide, formed of bevelled stones, and rising by a gentle incline to one of the gates of the Inner Temple. This marvellous subterranean approach, impregnable from its nature to the ravages of time, still remains, though painfully disfigured; it is called to this day the Temple of Solomon.” Lewin’s _Jerusalem_, p. 270.

337 – See Milman’s _History of the Jews_, I. 326–328; Art. _Solomon_ in Smith’s _Bib. Dict._; Jahn’s _Hebrew Commonwealth_, 78, 79; Kitto’s _Daily Bible Illustrations_, IV. 127–132.

338 – See p. 254.

339 – The disunion of the kingdom of Solomon, though apparently sudden, had been brought about by many pre-disposing causes. From the earliest period there had been a jealous rivalry between the powerful tribes of Ephraim and Judah, like that between the houses of York and Lancaster in our own history.

For upwards of 400 years the leadership of the nation had been practically in the hands of Ephraim. From this tribe had come the great hero Joshua; to it belonged, at least by his place of birth, the great prophet Samuel; and though from “little Benjamin” had come the first king, yet hereditary ties as well as geographical position had united it to the house of Joseph. Within the boundaries, moreover, of Ephraim had been the sanctuaries of Shechem and Shiloh, which would naturally make it the resort of numbers from all parts of the country. Hence the spirit of jealousy this tribe was ever ready to evince if any exploit was performed or advantage gained in which it had not the lion’s share. Hence its complaints against Gideon[340], against Jephthah[341], against David[342].

But its influence, hitherto so great, began to wane when the victories of the latter prince exalted the tribe of Judah to its proud pre-eminence. For seven years Ephraim supported Ishbosheth’s rival throne at Mahanaim, but when he died, and David captured Jebus, gave to the nation a fortress and a capital, and transferred thither the Tabernacle, the glories of Shechem and of Shiloh began to vanish away. For a time David’s personal influence preserved the semblance of union, and many Ephraimites were in high favour about his person (1 Chr. xii. 30;