was regained, he collected his faithful followers around him with his 600 Cherethites and Pelethites for a nucleus, Absalom against Ahithophel’s advice allowing him time for this.  In the neighbourbood of Mahanaim, in the wood of Ephraim, the decisive blow was struck.  Absalom fell, and with his death the rebellion was at an end.  It was Joseph that, in the first instance, penitently sent a deputation to the king to bring him back.  Judah, on the other hand, continued to hold aloof.  Ultimately a piece of finesse on the king’s part had the effect of bringing Judah also to its allegiance, though at the cost of kindling such jealousy between Israel and Judah that Sheba the Benjamite raised a new revolt, this time of Israelites, which was soon, however, repressed by Joab.

David seems to have died soon afterwards.  His historical importance is very great.  Judah and Jerusalem were wholly his creation, and, though the united kingdom of Israel founded by him and Saul together soon fell to pieces, the recollection of it nevertheless continued in all time to be proudly cherished by the whole body of the people.  His personal character has been often treated with undue disparagement.  For this we must chiefly blame his canonisation by the later Jewish tradition which made a Levitical saint of him and a pious hymn-writer.  It then becomes a strange inconsistency that he caused military prisoners to be treated with barbarity, and the bastard sons of Saul to be hanged up before the Lord in Gibeon.  But if we take him as we find him, an antique king in a barbarous age, our judgment of him will be much more favourable.  The most daring courage was combined in him with tender susceptibility; even after he had ascended the throne be continued to retain the charm of a pre-eminent and at the same time child-like personality.  Even his conduct in the affair of Uriah is not by any means wholly to his discredit; not many kings can be mentioned who would have shown repentance public and deep such as he manifested at Nathan’s rebuke.  Least to his credit was his weakness in relation to his sons and to Joab.  On the other hand, the testament attributed to him in 1Kings ii. cannot be justly laid to his charge; it is the libel of a later hand seeking to invest him with a fictitious glory.  In like manner it is unjust to hold him responsible for the deaths of Abner and Amasa, or to attribute to him any conspiracy with the hierocracy for the destruction of Saul, and thus to deprive him of the authorship of the elegy in 2Samuel i, which certainly was not the work of a hypocrite.

Solomon had already reached the throne, some time before his father’s death, not in virtue of hereditary right, but by palace intrigue which had the support of the bodyguard of the Six Hundred.  His glory was not purchased on the battlefield.  So far was he from showing military capacity that he allowed a new Syrian kingdom to arise at Damascus, a far more dangerous thing for Israel than that of