World English Bible · The united kingdom
1 Samuel 31
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Now the fought against Israel; and the men of Israel fled from before the , and fell down slain on . The overtook and his sons; and the killed , , and , the sons of . The battle went hard against , and the archers overtook him; and he was greatly distressed by reason of the archers. Then said to his armor bearer, "Draw your , and thrust me through with it, lest these come and thrust me through and abuse me!" But his armor bearer would not, for he was terrified. Therefore took his and fell on it. When his armor bearer saw that was , he likewise fell on his , and with him. So with his three sons, his armor bearer, and all his men that same day together. When the men of Israel who were on the other side of the valley, and those who were beyond , saw that the men of Israel fled and that and his sons were , they abandoned the cities and fled; and the came and lived in them. On the next day, when the came to strip the slain, they found and his three sons fallen on . They his head, stripped off his armor, and sent into the land of the all around, to carry the news to the house of their idols and to the people. They put his armor in the house of the , and they fastened his body to the wall of . When the inhabitants of heard what the had done to , all the valiant men arose, went all night, and took the body of and the bodies of his sons from the wall of ; and they came to and burned them there. They took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in , and seven days.
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The world at this moment · The united kingdom, 1050 BC to 931 BC ›
Saul, David, and Solomon. A rare window when both Egypt and Mesopotamia are weak, which is how a small kingdom in the corridor between them could briefly become a regional power.
- The power vacuum
- This is the whole political explanation for the united kingdom. Egypt is fragmented, Assyria is recovering but still local, the Hittites are gone, and nobody is in a position to object to a strong state in the corridor. It lasts about a century, and Israel's golden age fits exactly inside it.
- Phoenicia
- Tyre under Hiram is the commercial power of the coast, and supplies the cedar, the craftsmen, and the shipping for Solomon's building programme. The alliance is trade, not charity: Israel had grain and a land route, Tyre had timber and ships.
- Egypt
- Weak enough that a pharaoh gives a daughter in marriage to an Israelite king, which is the opposite of Egyptian practice in stronger centuries. Late in the era it recovers under a new house, and Shishak will invade within five years of Solomon's death.
- Further afield
- Greece is still in its dark age but beginning to recover, and will adopt the Phoenician alphabet within a century or two. Carthage is founded by settlers from Tyre by tradition in 814 BC. In the Americas the Olmec centre shifts to La Venta.