Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/145

 History of the Israelites and their Religion. 127 about by means of a small standing army, recruited from Israelites and foreigners. These soldiers by profession served to enlist and bring into discipline the raw material that in times of great necessity was furnished by the whole nation. Saul was the first who suc- ceeded in binding together in a common cause, from north to south, the main tribes, numbering Ephraim, Manasseh, Judah, and Benjamin. His statecraft, with an army to support it, was con- tinued on a much larger scale by his more fortunate successor. David was eminently qualified by nature as well as by circum- stances to fill the place left vacant by the death of Saul, and rescue the country from the critical position in which the disaster on Mount Gilboa had placed it. The high post he had filled in the army of Saul had brought him into notice, and rendered him popular with his own tribe of Judah. When later he had been obliged to take to the wilderness in order to escape the jealous hatred of the king, he had successively headed a lawless band and become the host and ally of the Philistines. His perils and hair- breadth escapes, the genius he displayed in adverse fortune, his adventures and exploits, had surrounded his name with the halo and the poetry of a hero of romance. 1 His first care was directed to the formation of an army, levied from the whole mass of the people, and commanded severally by his old trusty companions, as well as Saul's and Jonathan's officers. We know that he used his army to carry on incessant war against the Philistines, albeit the various events and incidents of his campaigns have not come down to us ; but there is no doubt as to his having subdued them and compelled them to acknowledge his supremacy. This brilliant achievement enabled him to devote his attention to matters near home. Hitherto he had lived at Hebron, to the extreme south of Hebrew territory, on the march of the Canaanites, far remote from the land of Ephraim and the northern tribes, which ill brooked submitting to a man of the small tribe of Judah. To facilitate his journeys among his new subjects, yet not wishing to remove from his own tribe, on whose staunch loyalty he could always rely, he selected the insignificant city of the Jebusites, easy of defence, and which, under the name of Jerusalem, has been and still is endeared to all men. The Jebusites were a small clan of the Canaanite stock ; and 1 With regard to David's kingdom and its vast extension, see 2 Sam. viii. to the end. — Editor.