The Empire of David—or Not?

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In Hamlet, the young prince of Denmark feigns madness and proclaims, “O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space.” Of course there is method in Hamlet’s madness, as there often is in the machinations of princes. Another prince (or future king) who feigns madness is David, who at one point evades service to King Achish of Gath by pretending to be mad (1 Samuel 21:11–16). This too is the calculated madness of a Machiavellian prince. David also claims to be king of a vast territory, which, while not “infinite space,” is still an expansive empire. Any modern map of the Empire of David and Solomon will show a wide sweep of territory, reaching far north of Israel into Aramean lands, and including to the east all of Ammon, Moab and Edom.

Are these claims, which are enshrined in most maps and histories of the biblical period, reliable? Some historians and archaeologists have dismissed these claims as unrealistic exaggerations. The so-called minimalist historians regard them as late fictions of the Persian or Hellenistic era, as political propaganda for the land claims of these periods. But the first systematic investigation of the textual, historical and archaeological basis for these claims has just come out, and it is a gripping exposé.

The book is David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Eerdmans, 2001), by Baruch Halpern, a distinguished biblical scholar. In one section, Halpern performs a brilliant reading of the text of David’s conquests (2 Samuel 8) and concludes that it conforms closely to the literary strategies of political propaganda known from other Near Eastern royal texts. A key aspect of these strategies is what Halpern calls “The Tiglath-Pileser Principle” (after the Assyrian king), whereby royal inscriptions always exaggerate but tend to avoid pure fabrication. In other words, kings (and their spokesmen) spin the truth as much as possible, but there is some truth at the heart of the spin. Hence, by reading for the minimal claims actually expressed, the critical reader comes closest to the historical truth. (Dare I say that modern politicians still practice this strategy, stretching the truth as far as it will hold?)

Consider, for example, David’s so-called conquest of Aram. We are told that “David smote Hadadezer, son of Rehob, king of Zobah, while he was on his way to restore (?) his stela at the river” (2 Samuel 8:3). We’re not told where this battle took place, whose stela it was, or the name of the river. A helpful scribe in the Masoretic tradition added the word “Euphrates” in the margin of the Hebrew text, and most versions and translations follow this note. But the text is ambiguous, purposefully so according to Halpern. By leaving the river unnamed, the author leads the reader to assume that the river is the Euphrates, on the northeast side of Aramean territory. By this implication, the readers—and later biblical writers—assumed that David’s conquests took in all of Aram up to the Euphrates (so 1 Chronicles 18:3; and so too the promise of the land in Genesis 15:18, Deuteronomy 1:7, etc.).

But the text just says “the river” and gives the name of the Aramean king. It doesn’t say where the events took place. Halpern points us to the account of the Ammonite war in 2 Samuel 10 for the solution to the puzzle. There the Ammonites hire Arameans from Rehob and Zobah, led by Hadadezer, to defend them. Other Aramean armies also join them. This battle is across the Jordan River. David and the Israelites defeat Hadadezer and the Arameans, but not near the Euphrates as 2 Samuel 8 subtly suggests. The text ends with the Arameans bringing David tribute and the telling statement, “the Arameans were afraid to help the Ammonites any more” (2 Samuel 10:19).

So did David conquer the territory of Aram? When we read 2 Samuel 8 with a critical eye, we find that the text doesn’t actually make this claim, though it may lead the unwary reader to believe it. The only actual victory over the Arameans was in Ammon, east of the Jordan River. The text of David’s conquests, however, reinforces this implication by saying that “David stationed garrisons in Aram of Damascus” (2 Samuel 8:6). But it doesn’t say that David conquered Damascus or even fought a battle there. Maintaining a garrison in Aramean territory (perhaps on the border with Ammon) is far less than ruling over Aram. In fact, there is no reason to assume that David’s kingdom ever extended north of Dan. The phrase “from Dan to Beersheba” consistently defines the extent of David’s and Solomon’s kingdoms. The rest is the “apparatus of implication,” as Halpern calls it.

Was David the king of infinite Syro-Palestinian space, or was he king of a nutshell? When the political rhetoric allows for a smaller kingdom, we must conclude that smaller is more realistic. The Tiglath-Pileser Principle applies to biblical kings too, and historians must be wary of royal claims. Halpern brilliantly charts a path between the unwary acceptance of political spin and the minimalist rejection of biblical history. History has a finer weave in the biblical texts, and we must learn to read it with the subtlety it deserves.

In Hamlet, the young prince of Denmark feigns madness and proclaims, “O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space.” Of course there is method in Hamlet’s madness, as there often is in the machinations of princes. Another prince (or future king) who feigns madness is David, who at one point evades service to King Achish of Gath by pretending to be mad (1 Samuel 21:11–16). This too is the calculated madness of a Machiavellian prince. David also claims to be king of a vast territory, which, while not “infinite space,” […]