deserts, tribes and empires 11
Simeon, Levi, Benjamin, Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, Zebulun, Naph-
tali, Dan and Asher, and Reuben and Gad from across the Jordan),
David feasted in Hebron to celebrate his confirmation as king and
marched on Jerusalem. Jerusalem was inhabited at this time by Jebusites
‘of the Canaanitic race’. No reason is given by Josephus for the assault,
but once David had conquered the citadel and rebuilt Jerusalem he
named it ‘City of David’ and chose it as his royal residence. Five hun-
dred and fifteen years had elapsed between the original conquest of
Canaan by Joshua and the capture of Jerusalem by David.^8
Josephus described at length the great victories of David against the
Philistines and then the subjection to his rule of the surrounding nations.
They were forced to pay tribute to him, so that he amassed ‘such wealth
as no other king, whether of the Hebrews or other nations, ever did’. On
his death there was buried with him in Jerusalem so much money that
1,300 years later a Jewish high priest raided one of the chambers in
David’s tomb in order to buy off a besieging army. Many years after
that (just a century before Josephus was writing), King Herod opened
up another chamber and extracted another large sum.^9 Despite his ear-
lier claims about the unequalled wealth of David, Josephus asserted,
illogically, that it was exceeded by his son and successor Solomon,
whose wisdom far surpassed even that of the Egyptians. Undistracted
by the continuous warfare which had preoccupied his father, Solomon
built in Jerusalem the great temple for God which David had planned
but not started. Copies of the letters written by Solomon to Hiram, king
of Tyre, to request help in acquiring cedars of Lebanon for the purpose
in return for grain could still be found in the public archives in Tyre – as
anyone could discover, Josephus said, by enquiry with the relevant pub-
lic officials. Solomon ruled for eighty years, having come to the throne
at the age of fourteen, but the glories of his reign were not to last after
his death, when his realm was split into two. Rehoboam, Solomon’s son,
was ruler only of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin in the south, in the
region of Jerusalem, while the Israelites in the north, with their capital
in Shechem, established their own centres for sacrificial worship in
Bethel and Dan, with different religious practices, to avoid having to go
to Jerusalem, ‘the city of our enemies’, to worship. To this innovation
Josephus ascribed ‘the beginning of the Hebrews’ misfortunes which
led to them being defeated in war by other races and to their falling
captive’ – even though he admits that the degeneracy of Rehoboam and
his subjects in Jerusalem itself invited divine punishment.^10
The initial agent of divine vengeance was Shishak, king of Egypt, and