A complex process of occupation, involving both battles of annihilation and treaty agreements with indigenous peoples, has been simplified in the biblical account of the wars of Joshua (13th century bce). Gradually, the unity of the invaders dissolved (most scholars believe that the invading element was only part of the Hebrew settlement in Canaan; other Hebrews, long since settled in Canaan from patriarchal times, then joined the invaders’ covenant league). Individual tribes made their way with varying success against the residue of Canaanite resistance. New enemies, Israel’s neighbours to the east and west, appeared, and the period of the judges (leaders, or champions) began.
The Book of Judges, the main witness for the period, does not speak with one voice on the religious situation. Its editorial framework describes repeated cycles of apostasy, oppression, appeal to God, and relief through a champion sent by God. Israel’s troubles prior to the institution of the monarchy under Saul (11th century bce) were caused by the weakness of the disunited tribes and were thus accounted for by the covenantal sin of apostasy. The individual stories, however, present a different picture. Apostasy does not figure in the exploits of the judges Ehud, Deborah, Jephthah, and Samson; YHWH has no rival, and faith in him is periodically confirmed by the saviours he sends to rescue Israel from its neighbours. This faith is shared by all the tribes; it is owing to their common cult that a Levite from Bethlehem could serve first at an Ephraimite and later also at a Danite sanctuary. The religious bond, preserved by the common cult, enabled the tribes to work together under the leadership of elders or an inspired champion in time of danger or religious scandal.
Both written and archaeological testimonies, however, point to the Hebrews’ adoption of Canaanite cults—the Baal worship of Gideon’s family and neighbours in Ophrah in Judges, chapter 6, is an example. The many cultic figurines (usually female) found in Israelite levels of Palestinian archaeological sites also give colour to the sweeping indictments of the framework of the Book of Judges. But these phenomena belonged to the private, popular religion; the national God, YHWH, remained one—Baal sent no prophets to Israel—though YHWH’s claim to exclusive worship was obviously not effectual. Nor did his cult conform with later orthodoxy; Micah’s idol in Judges, chapter 17, and Gideon’s ephod (priestly or religious garment) were considered apostasies by the editor, in accord with the dogma that whatever is not orthodoxy is apostasy—heterodoxy (nonconformity) being unrecognized and simply equated with apostasy.
To the earliest sanctuaries and altars honoured as patriarchal foundations—at Shechem, Bethel, Beersheba, and Hebron in Cisjordan (west of the Jordan); and at Mahanaim, Penuel, and Mizpah in Transjordan (east of the Jordan)—were added new sanctuaries and altars at Dan, Shiloh, Ramah, Gibeon, and elsewhere. A single priestly family could not operate all these establishments, and so Levites rose to the priesthood; at private sanctuaries even non-Levites might be consecrated as priests. The Ark of the Covenant was housed in the Shiloh sanctuary, staffed by priests of the house of Eli, who traced their consecration back to Egypt. But the ark remained a portable palladium in wartime; Shiloh was not regarded as its final resting place. The law in Exodus 20:24–26, which authorized a plurality of altar sites and the simplest forms of construction (earth and rough stone), suited the plain conditions of this period. The period of the united monarchy The religious and political problem
The decentralized tribal league could not cope with the constant pressure of external enemies—camel-riding desert marauders who pillaged harvests annually and iron-weaponed Philistines (an Aegean people settling coastal Palestine c. 12th century bce) who controlled key points in the hill country occupied by the Israelites. In the face of such threats, a central authority that could mobilize the forces of the entire league and create a standing army had to be established. Two attitudes were distilled in the crisis—one conservative and anti-monarchic, the other radical and pro-monarchic. The conservative attitude appears first in Gideon’s refusal to found a dynasty in Judges 8:23: “I will not rule you,” he tells the people, “my son will not rule over you; YHWH will…!” This theocratic view pervades one of the two contrasting accounts of the founding of the monarchy fused in chapters 8–12 of the First Book of Samuel (see Samuel, books of). The popular demand for a king was viewed as a rejection of the kingship of God, and in response to the demand there appeared a series of inspired saviours, from Moses and Aaron (14th–13th century bce) through Jerubbaal, Bedan, and Jephthah to Samuel (11th century bce) himself. The other, more radical account depicts the monarchy as a gift of God, designed to rescue his people from the Philistines (1 Samuel 9:16). Both accounts represent the seer-judge Samuel as the key figure in the founding of Israel’s monarchy, and it is not unlikely that the two attitudes struggled within him.
Palestine during the time of David and Solomon.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
The Benjaminite Saul was made king (c. 1020 bce) by divine election and by popular acclamation after his victory over the Ammonites (a Transjordanian Semitic people), but his career was clouded by conflict with Samuel, the major representative of the old order. Saul’s kingship was bestowed by Samuel and had to be accommodated to the ongoing authority of that man of God. The two accounts of Saul’s rejection by God (through Samuel) involve his usurpation of the prophet’s authority. King David (10th century bce), whose forcefulness and religious and political genius established the monarchy on an independent spiritual footing, resolved the conflict. The Davidic monarchy
The essence of the Davidic innovation was the idea that, in addition to divine election through Samuel and public acclamation, David had received God’s promise of an eternal dynasty; a conditional (perhaps earlier) and an unconditional (perhaps later) form of this promise exist in Psalms, chapter 132 and 2 Samuel, chapter 7, respectively. In its developed form, the promise was conceived of as a covenant with David, paralleling the covenant with Israel and instrumental in the latter’s fulfillment—the covenant being that God would channel his benefactions to Israel through the chosen dynasty of David. With this new status came the inviolability of the person of God’s anointed (a characteristically Davidic idea) and a court rhetoric—adapted from pagan models—in which the king was styled “the [firstborn] son of God.” An index of the king’s sanctity was his occasional performance of priestly duties. Yet the king’s mortality was never forgotten: he was never deified, and, although prayers and hymns might be said on his behalf, they were never addressed to him as a god.
David, bronze sculpture by Donatello, early 15th century; in the Bargello Museum, Florence.Patrick
David captured the Jebusite stronghold of Jerusalem and made it the seat of a national monarchy (Saul had never moved the seat of his government from his birthplace, the Benjaminite town of Gibeah, about three miles north of Jerusalem). Then, fetching the ark from an obscure retreat, David installed it in his capital, asserting his royal prerogative (and obligation) to build a shrine for the national God and thus at the same time joining the symbols of the dynastic and the national covenants. This move of political genius linked the God of Israel, the chosen dynasty of David, and the chosen city of Jerusalem in a henceforth indissoluble union.
David planned to build a temple to house the ark, but the tenacious tradition of the ark’s portability in a tent shrine forced the postponement of the project to the reign of his son Solomon. As part of his extensive building program, Solomon erected the Temple on a Jebusite threshing floor, located on a hill north of Jerusalem, which David had purchased to mark the spot where a plague had been halted. The ground plan of the Temple—a porch with two freestanding pillars before it, a sanctuary, and an inner sanctum—followed Syrian and Phoenician sanctuary models. A bronze “sea” resting on bulls and placed in the Temple court had a Babylonian analogue. The Temple of Jerusalem resembled Canaanite and other Middle Eastern religious structures but was also different from them: notably, in the inner sanctum of the Temple there was no image of God but only the ancient ark covered by the wings of large cherubim. YHWH, who was enthroned upon celestial cherubim, was thus symbolically present in the Temple.