it; but as he immediately afterwards falls a victim to blood revenge, nothing comes of the matter until Ishbaal is privily murdered in his sleep by two of his captains; then at last the elders of Israel come to Hebron, and David becomes king in succession to Saul.  What a length of time these affairs demand, how natural is their development, how many human elements mingle in their course,—­cunning, and treachery, and battle, and murder!  Chronicles indeed knows them all well enough, as is clear from incidental expressions in chaps. xi. and xii., but they are passed over in silence.  Immediately after his predecessor’s death the son of Jesse is freely chosen by all Israel to be king, according to the word of Jehovah by Samuel.  The sequence of x. 13, 14, xi. 1 does not admit of being understood in any other way, nor is it in point of fact otherwise understood, for it has actually been successful, at least to this extent, that the kingship of Ishbaal has virtually dropped out of traditional Bible history; after Saul came David is what is said.  We have before us a deliberate and in its motives a very transparent mutilation of the original narrative as preserved for us in the Book of Samuel.

As all Israel has made David the successor of Saul, and all Israel gone out with him to the conquest of Jerusalem (xi. 4),—­in 2Samuel v. 6 we hear only of David’s following,—­so now immediately afterwards, the noblest representatives of all the tribes of Israel, who even before he had attained the throne were in sympathy and indeed already on his side, are enumerated by name and numbers in three lists (xi. 10-xii. 40), which are introduced between what is said in 2Samuel v. 1-1110 and in 2Samuel v. 11 seq.  The first (xi. 10-47:  “these are the mighty men who took part with him with all Israel to make him king”) is the list of 2Samuel xxiii., which the Chronicler, as he betrays in chaps. xx., xxi., was acquainted with as it stood in that place, and here gives much too early, for it is for the most part warriors of David’s later campaigns who are enumerated. 1 The second list (xii.

************************************** 1.  The division into a group of three and another of thirty heroes, obscured in 2Samuel xxiii. by corruption of the text (Text der BB.  Sam. p. 213-216), has not been understood by the Chronicler, and thus been made quite unrecognisable.  In this way he has been able to bring in at the end (xi. 42-47) a string of additional names exceeding the number of thirty.  In ver. 42 his style unmistakably betrays itself, wherever it may be that he met with the elements. ****************************************