King James Version · The united kingdom
2 Samuel 4
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And when ’s son heard that was in , his hands were feeble, and all the were troubled. And ’s son had two men that were captains of bands: the name of the one was , and the name of the other , the sons of a Beerothite, of the children of : (for also was to : And the Beerothites fled to Gittaim, and were there until this day.) And , ’s son, had a son that was lame of his feet. He was five years old when the tidings came of and out of , and his nurse took him up, and fled: and it came to pass, as she made haste to flee, that he fell, and became lame. And his name was . And the sons of the Beerothite, and , went, and came about the heat of the day to the house of , who lay on a bed at noon. And they came thither into the midst of the house, as though they would have fetched wheat; and they smote him under the fifth rib: and and his brother escaped. For when they came into the house, he lay on his bed in his bedchamber, and they smote him, and slew him, and beheaded him, and took his head, and gat them away through the plain all night. And they brought the head of unto to , and said to the king, Behold the head of the son of thine enemy, which sought thy life; and hath my the king this day of , and of . And answered and his brother, the sons of the Beerothite, and said unto them, As liveth, who hath out of all adversity, When one told me, saying, Behold, is , thinking to have brought good tidings, I took hold of him, and slew him in , who thought that I would have given him a reward for his tidings: How much more, when men have slain a person in his own house upon his bed? shall I not therefore now require his of your hand, and take you away from the earth? And commanded his young men, and they slew them, and their hands and their feet, and hanged them up over the pool in . But they took the head of , and buried it in the of in .
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
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.