10 A History of Judaism
campaigns under the command of Joshua against the Canaanites, some
of whom were terrifying giants ‘in no wise like to the rest of mankind’,
whose ‘bones are shown to this day, bearing no resemblance to any that
have come within man’s ken’. The conquered land was parcelled out
among the Hebrew nation, but agricultural success bred wealth, which
in turn led to voluptuousness and neglect of the laws which Moses had
transmitted to them. Divine punishment for such impiety took the form
of disastrous civil wars, followed by subjection to foreigners (Assyrians,
Moabites, Amalekites, Philistines) and the heroic efforts of a series of
judges, granted power by the people both to rule and to lead them in
battle against their enemies. In due course the people demanded kings
as military leaders, and the judge Samuel, who had been divinely chosen
at birth to lead the nation and had been a prophet with direct guidance
from God since the age of eleven, in his old age reluctantly appointed
Saul as the first king of the Jews, with a mission (amply fulfilled) to fight
the neighbouring peoples.^6
At this stage in his narrative, Josephus traces the fortunes of the
people – designated as Jews, Israelites and Hebrews, apparently at
random – in a series of local wars. The Amalekites, a hereditary enemy
whose extirpation had been divinely ordained, continued to harass
Israel because Saul was insufficiently ruthless, wishing to spare Agag,
the Amalekite king, ‘out of admiration for his beauty and stature’. More
insistently dangerous opposition came from the Philistines, against
whom the Hebrews fought a series of campaigns in the course of which
a new king David made his name as a warrior, having been selected by
God to receive the kingdom as a prize not ‘for comeliness of body, but
for virtue of soul ... piety, justice, fortitude and obedience’. He had
already been anointed secretly by Samuel while still a shepherd boy.^7
When Saul died in battle against the Amalekites, David at first com-
posed laments and eulogies for the dead king and his son Jonathan;
these elegies, Josephus notes, ‘have survived to my own time’. David
was informed by God through a prophet in what city he should rule
over ‘the tribe called Judah’ and was told to settle in Hebron, while the
rest of the country was ruled by a surviving son of Saul. But the result
was civil war, which lasted many years until Saul’s son was murdered by
the sons of his own followers and ‘all the principal men of the people of
the Hebrews, the captains of thousands and their leaders’, came to
Hebron and offered their loyalty to David, as the king chosen by God
to save the Hebrews’ country by conquering the Philistines. With a large
combined force of troops from all the tribes and half- tribes (Judah,