2Sa 5:12 | KD | STEP | David’s Palace, Wives and Children (comp. ). - King Hiram of Tyre sent messengers to David, and afterwards, by the express desire of the latter, cedar-wood and builders, carpenters and stone-masons, who built him a house, i.e., a palace. Hiram ( Hirom in 1Ki 5:2; Huram in the Chronicles; lxx Χειράμ; Josephus, Εἴραμος and Εἴρωμος), king of Tyre, was not only an ally of David, but of his son Solomon also. He sent to the latter cedar-wood and builders for the erection of the temple and of his own palace (1Ki 5:8.; 2Ch 2:2.), and fitted out a mercantile fleet in conjunction with him (1Ki 9:27-28; ); in return for which, Solomon not only sent him an annual supply of corn, oil, and wine (1Ki 5:11; ), but when all the buildings were finished, twenty years after the erection of the temple, he made over to him twenty of the towns of Galilee (1Ki 9:10.). It is evident from these facts that Hiram was still reigning in the twenty-fourth, or at any rate the twentieth, year of Solomon’s reign, and consequently, as he had assisted David with contributions of wood for the erection of his palace, that he must have reigned at least forty-five or fifty years; and therefore that, even in the latter case, he cannot have begun to reign earlier than the eighth year of David’s reign over all Israel, or from six to ten years after the conquest of the Jebusite citadel upon Mount Zion. This is quite in harmony with the account given here; for it by no means follows, that because the arrival of an embassy from Hiram, and the erection of David’s palace, are mentioned immediately after the conquest of the citadel of Zion, they must have occurred directly afterwards. The arrangement of the different events in the chapter before us is topical rather than strictly chronological. Of the two battles fought by David with the Philistines ( ), the first at any rate took place before the erection of David’s palace, as it is distinctly stated in that the Philistines made war upon David when they heard that he had been anointed king over Israel, and therefore in all probability even before the conquest of the fortress of the Jebusites, or at any rate immediately afterwards, and before David had commenced the fortification of Jerusalem and the erection of a palace. The historian, on the contrary, has not only followed up the account of the capture of the fortress of Zion, and the selection of it as David’s palace, by a description of what David gradually did to fortify and adorn the new capital, but has also added a notice as to David’s wives and the children that were born to him in Jerusalem. Now, if this be correct, the object of Hiram’s embassy cannot have been “to congratulate David upon his ascent of the throne,” as Thenius maintains; but after he had ascended the throne, Hiram sent ambassadors to form an alliance with this powerful monarch; and David availed himself of the opportunity to establish an intimate friendship with Hiram, and ask him for cedar-wood and builders for his palace. is not the only one of the kind; but in , David says to his son Solomon, “The word of the Lord came to me, saying, A son shall be born to thee - Solomon - he shall build an house for my name;” from which it is very obvious, that Solomon was not born at the time when David determined to build the temple and received this promise from God in consequence of his intention. To this we have also to add , where David sees Bathsheba, who gave birth to Solomon a few years later, from the roof of his palace. Now, even though the palace is simply called “the king’s house” in this passage, and not the “house of cedar,” as in , and therefore the house intended might possibly be the house in which David lived before the house of cedar was built, this is a very improbable supposition, and there cannot be much doubt that the “king’s house” is the palace ( ; ) which he had erected for himself. Lastly, not only is there not the slightest intimation in the whole of the account given in 2 Samuel 7 that David was an old man when he resolved to build the temple, but, on the contrary, the impression which it makes throughout is, that it was the culminating point of his reign, and that he was at an age when he might hope not only to commence this magnificent building, but in all human probability to live to complete it. The only other solution left, is the assumption that there are errors in the chronological date of Josephus, and that Hiram lived longer than Menander affirms. The assertion that Solomon commenced the erection of the temple in the eleventh or twelfth year of Hiram’s reign was not derived by Josephus from Phoenician sources; for the fragments which he gives from the works of Menander and Dius in the Antiquities (viii. 5, 3) and c. Apion (i. 17, 18), contain nothing at all about the building of the temple (vid., Movers, p. 141), but he has made it as the result of certain chronological combinations of his own, just as in Ant . viii. 3, 1, he calculates the year of the building of the temple in relation both to the Exodus and also to the departure of Abraham out of Haran, but miscalculates, inasmuch as he places it in the 592nd year after the Exodus instead of the 480th, and the 1020th year from Abraham’s emigration to Canaan instead of the 1125th. And in the present instance his calculation of the exact position of the same event in relation to Hiram’s reign was no doubt taken from Menander; but even in this the numbers may be faulty, since the statements respecting Balezorus and Myttonus in the very same extract from Menander, as to the length of the reigns of the succeeding kings of Tyre, can be proved to be erroneous, and have been corrected by Movers from Eusebius and Syncellus; and, moreover, the seven years of Hiram’s successor, Baleazar , do not tally with Eusebius and Syncellus, who both give seventeen years. Thus the proof which Movers adduces from the synchronism of the Tyrian chronology with the biblical, the Egyptian, and the Assyrian, to establish the correctness of Menander’s statements concerning Hiram’s reign, is rendered very uncertain, to say nothing of the fact that Movers has only succeeded in bringing out the synchronism with the biblical chronology by a very arbitrary and demonstrably false calculation of the years that the kings of Judah and Israel reigned.)

‏ 2 Samuel 5:12

David’s Palace, Wives and Children (comp. 1Ch 14:1-7). - King Hiram of Tyre sent messengers to David, and afterwards, by the express desire of the latter, cedar-wood and builders, carpenters and stone-masons, who built him a house, i.e., a palace. Hiram (Hirom in 1Ki 5:2; Huram in the Chronicles; lxx Χειράμ; Josephus, Εἴραμος and Εἴρωμος), king of Tyre, was not only an ally of David, but of his son Solomon also. He sent to the latter cedar-wood and builders for the erection of the temple and of his own palace (1Ki 5:8.; 2Ch 2:2.), and fitted out a mercantile fleet in conjunction with him (1Ki 9:27-28; 2Ch 9:10); in return for which, Solomon not only sent him an annual supply of corn, oil, and wine (1Ki 5:11; 2Ch 2:9), but when all the buildings were finished, twenty years after the erection of the temple, he made over to him twenty of the towns of Galilee (1Ki 9:10.). It is evident from these facts that Hiram was still reigning in the twenty-fourth, or at any rate the twentieth, year of Solomon’s reign, and consequently, as he had assisted David with contributions of wood for the erection of his palace, that he must have reigned at least forty-five or fifty years; and therefore that, even in the latter case, he cannot have begun to reign earlier than the eighth year of David’s reign over all Israel, or from six to ten years after the conquest of the Jebusite citadel upon Mount Zion. This is quite in harmony with the account given here; for it by no means follows, that because the arrival of an embassy from Hiram, and the erection of David’s palace, are mentioned immediately after the conquest of the citadel of Zion, they must have occurred directly afterwards. The arrangement of the different events in the chapter before us is topical rather than strictly chronological. Of the two battles fought by David with the Philistines (2Sa 5:17-25), the first at any rate took place before the erection of David’s palace, as it is distinctly stated in 2Sa 5:17 that the Philistines made war upon David when they heard that he had been anointed king over Israel, and therefore in all probability even before the conquest of the fortress of the Jebusites, or at any rate immediately afterwards, and before David had commenced the fortification of Jerusalem and the erection of a palace. The historian, on the contrary, has not only followed up the account of the capture of the fortress of Zion, and the selection of it as David’s palace, by a description of what David gradually did to fortify and adorn the new capital, but has also added a notice as to David’s wives and the children that were born to him in Jerusalem. Now, if this be correct, the object of Hiram’s embassy cannot have been “to congratulate David upon his ascent of the throne,” as Thenius maintains; but after he had ascended the throne, Hiram sent ambassadors to form an alliance with this powerful monarch; and David availed himself of the opportunity to establish an intimate friendship with Hiram, and ask him for cedar-wood and builders for his palace. ^{▼▼The statements of Menander of Ephesus in Josephus (c. Ap. i. 18), that after the death of Abibal his son Hirom (Εἴρωμος) succeeded him in the government, and reigned thirty-four years, and died at the age of fifty-three, are at variance with the biblical history. For, according to these statements, as Hiram was still reigning “at the end of twenty years” (according to 1Ki 9:10-11), when Solomon had built his palaces and the house of the Lord, i.e., twenty-four years after Solomon began to reign, he cannot have ascended the throne before the sixty-first year of David’s life, and the thirty-first of his reign. But in that case the erection of David’s palace would fall somewhere within the last eight years of his life. And to this we have to add the repeated statements made by Josephus (l.c. and Ant. viii. 3, 1), to the effect that Solomon commenced the building of the temple in Hiram’s twelfth year, or after he had reigned eleven years; so that Hiram could only have begun to reign seven years before the death of David (in the sixty-third year of his life), and the erection of the palace by David must have fallen later still, and his determination to build the temple, which he did not form till he had taken possession of his house of cedar, i.e., the newly erected palace (2Sa 7:2), would fall in the very last years of his life, but a very short time before his death. As this seems hardly credible, it has been assumed by some that Hiram’s father, Abibal, also bore the name of Hiram, or that Hiram is confounded with Abibal in the account before us (Thenius), or that Abibal’s father was named Hiram, and it was he who formed the alliance with David (Ewald, Gesch. iv. 287). But all these assumptions are overthrown by the fact that the identity of the Hiram who was Solomon’s friend with the contemporary and friend of David is expressly affirmed not only in 2Ch 2:2 (as Ewald supposes), but also in 1Ki 5:15. For whilst Solomon writes to Hiram in 2Ch 2:3, “as thou didst deal with David my father, and didst send him cedars to build him an house to dwell therein,” it is also stated 1Ki 5:1 that “Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants unto Solomon; for he had heard that they had anointed him king in the room of his father: for Hiram was a lover of David all days (all his life).” Movers (Phönizier ii. 1, p. 147ff.) has therefore attempted to remove the discrepancy between the statements made in Josephus and the biblical account of Hiram’s friendship with David and Solomon, by assuming that in the narrative contained in the books of Samuel we have a topical and not a chronological arrangement, and that according to this arrangement the conquest of Jerusalem by David is followed immediately by the building of the city and palace, and this again by the removal of the holy ark to Jerusalem, and lastly by David’s resolution to build a temple, which really belonged to the close of his reign, and indeed, according to 2Sa 7:2, to the period directly following the completion of the cedar palace. There is a certain amount of truth at the foundation of this, but it does not remove the discrepancy; for even if David’s resolution to build a temple did not fall within the earlier years of his reign at Jerusalem, as some have inferred from the position in which it stands in the account given in this book, it cannot be pushed forward to the very last years of his life and reign. This is decidedly precluded by the fact, that in the promise given to David by God, his son and successor upon the throne is spoken of in such terms as to necessitate the conclusion that he was not yet born. This difficulty cannot be removed by the solution suggested by Movers (p. 149), “that the historian necessarily adhered to the topical arrangement which he had adopted for this section, because he had not said anything yet about Solomon and his mother Bathsheba:” for the expression “which shall proceed out of thy bowels” (2Sa 7:12} is not the only one of the kind; but in 1Ch 22:9, David says to his son Solomon, “The word of the Lord came to me, saying, A son shall be born to thee - Solomon - he shall build an house for my name;” from which it is very obvious, that Solomon was not born at the time when David determined to build the temple and received this promise from God in consequence of his intention.

To this we have also to add 2Sa 11:2, where David sees Bathsheba, who gave birth to Solomon a few years later, from the roof of his palace. Now, even though the palace is simply called “the king’s house” in this passage, and not the “house of cedar,” as in 2Sa 7:2, and therefore the house intended might possibly be the house in which David lived before the house of cedar was built, this is a very improbable supposition, and there cannot be much doubt that the “king’s house” is the palace (2Sa 5:11; 2Sa 7:1) which he had erected for himself. Lastly, not only is there not the slightest intimation in the whole of the account given in 2 Samuel 7 that David was an old man when he resolved to build the temple, but, on the contrary, the impression which it makes throughout is, that it was the culminating point of his reign, and that he was at an age when he might hope not only to commence this magnificent building, but in all human probability to live to complete it. The only other solution left, is the assumption that there are errors in the chronological date of Josephus, and that Hiram lived longer than Menander affirms. The assertion that Solomon commenced the erection of the temple in the eleventh or twelfth year of Hiram’s reign was not derived by Josephus from Phoenician sources; for the fragments which he gives from the works of Menander and Dius in the Antiquities (viii. 5, 3) and c. Apion (i. 17, 18), contain nothing at all about the building of the temple (vid., Movers, p. 141), but he has made it as the result of certain chronological combinations of his own, just as in Ant. viii. 3, 1, he calculates the year of the building of the temple in relation both to the Exodus and also to the departure of Abraham out of Haran, but miscalculates, inasmuch as he places it in the 592nd year after the Exodus instead of the 480th, and the 1020th year from Abraham’s emigration to Canaan instead of the 1125th. And in the present instance his calculation of the exact position of the same event in relation to Hiram’s reign was no doubt taken from Menander; but even in this the numbers may be faulty, since the statements respecting Balezorus and Myttonus in the very same extract from Menander, as to the length of the reigns of the succeeding kings of Tyre, can be proved to be erroneous, and have been corrected by Movers from Eusebius and Syncellus; and, moreover, the seven years of Hiram’s successor, Baleazar, do not tally with Eusebius and Syncellus, who both give seventeen years. Thus the proof which Movers adduces from the synchronism of the Tyrian chronology with the biblical, the Egyptian, and the Assyrian, to establish the correctness of Menander’s statements concerning Hiram’s reign, is rendered very uncertain, to say nothing of the fact that Movers has only succeeded in bringing out the synchronism with the biblical chronology by a very arbitrary and demonstrably false calculation of the years that the kings of Judah and Israel reigned.)