power, Saul wanted to kill him. Saul and David each had their own army
(1 Samuel 26). “There was a long war between the house of Saul and the
house of David” (2 Samuel 3:1). The prophet Samuel sanctioned David’s tri-
umph (Friedman 1987:38).
David was ruthless toward his enemies. When he engaged in battles, he
killed thousands. In his raids upon the Geshurites, Girzites and Amalekites,
he took plunder and “left neither man nor woman alive” (1 Samuel 28:9). He
took gold and silver from the nations he subdued (2 Samuel 8:11).
Although David was a messianic figure ruling by divine right, he had his
moral imperfections. He fell in love with Bathsheeba, the wife of Uriah the
Hittite, and she became pregnant by him; David had her husband killed
(2 Samuel 11). David had wives and concubines (2 Samuel 5:13). Nevertheless,
David is regarded as the Messianic ideal because his kingdom was the height
of the United Monarchy.
Solomon, one of David’s sons, continued to centralize the power of the
state (Weber 1952:45; Bendix 1977:206–207, 213; Fahey 1982:68). “Solomon had
seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines” (1 Kings
11:3). Solomon’s marriages were for political purposes. By marrying the daugh-
ters of other kings, he strengthened his alliances (Friedman 1987:42). Solomon’s
“wives turned away his heart” (1 Kings 11:3). “He grew mad in his love of
women, and laid no restraint on himself in his lusts” (Antiq 8.7.5). Since
Solomon even outdid David in wives and concubines, he was not as true to
God (1 Kings 11:4). Both David and Solomon’s sexual immorality were seen
as turning away from God.
Under Solomon’s rule, the first temple in Jerusalem was built. Despite the
experience of slavery in Egypt, Solomon used forced labor to get stone from
Lebanon to construct the temple (1 Kings 5:13). With the construction of the
Temple, the Jerusalem priests established a cult monopoly. This led to a conflict
with priests in the North (Weber 1952:161, 182–183). The urban monarchy
supported the Jerusalem priests while the rural tribes supported the priests
in the North.
The centralization of power in Jerusalem was also a result of the process
of urbanization. A Patrician class emerged in Jerusalem and along with it a
Plebeian class. After reducing the peasants to debt slavery, the patricians
drove them off their land. The peasants went to the city of Jerusalem and in
the process became a plebeian class. One of the factors that drove them into
debt was mandatory military service. Some peasants continued to work on
208 • Warren S. Goldstein