DAVID (Heb. " beloved"), king of Israel, the 9th and youngest son of Jesse, belonged to the tribe of Judah, and was probably educated in one of the schools of the prophets. He first publicly signalized himself by slaying Goliath of Gath, a gigantic Philistine, who had " defied the armies of Israel." Previously, he had acquired a considerable reputation as a skillful harper, and had subdued by his music the paroxysms of insanity which afflicted Saul at certain seasons. By Samuel lie was anointed king during the life-time of Saul, who soon began to regard him as a dangerous enemy, and persecuted him. A kind of intermittent war between the two was the consequence, in which D. was often reduced to great straits. At first, lie was simply iu the position of a guerrilla chief, and his comrades were mainly persons in desperate circumstances—" all who were in distress, in debt, or discontented." Latterly, he lived among the Philistines as one of themselves, and from the Philistine prince of Gath obtained a present of the strong fortress of Ziklag, after which he was joined by a class very different from his original outlaws—men of consideration, and tried warriors, from various tribes. The contest between him and Saul now assumed the dignity of a civil war. It was only closed by the death of the latter, whereupon D. ascended the throne of Judah, with the city of Hebron as his capital. The other tribes elected Ishbosheth, a son of Saul, to be their king, after whose murder D. first acquired possession of the entire kingdom, over which. he ruled from 1055 until his death in 1015 B.C. His first undertaking in his new office was a war against the Jebusites. He took their chief city, Jerusalem, and made it his residence, as also the center of the religious worship of the Hebrews. Subsequently, lie subjugated the Philistines, Amalekites, Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, and, after a long war, the Syrians. His kingdom now stretched from the Euphrates to the Meditcr• ranean, and from Syria to the Red sea, and contained a pop. of 5,000,000. He fostered navigation and trade, especially with Tyre, and sought to instruct the Hebrews in the arts. No less careful was he of the religion of his countrymen. He divided the priests
and Levites into classes, and appointed sacred singers and poets for the musical service of God. Law and justice likewise received improvements at his hands, through the institution of higher and lower judiciary courts, while he secured the stability of his power by the formation of a standing army. Besides this, there were 12 governors over the tribes of Israel, "who may perhaps be compared to the lord-lieutenants of English counties." D. was not, however, without his trials. Two conspiracies were formed against him in his own family, and although both failed, they greatly embittered his life. His sensual excesses also drove him into acts of criminality, the memory of which haunted him forever. "My sin is continually before me." Yet we cannot help rec ognizing in the man, in spite of all his errors and sins, a sincerity of moral feeling rarely equaled in history. His passions might lead him astray, but they never blinded his con science. The crime once committed, D. never tried to find excuses for it, and so blunt the edge of his deserved misery. The Psalms which he has left reveal to us the naked soul of the royal poet wrestling with a host of black troubles, fears, and doubts, out of which, however, as from the seething bosom of chaos, there emerges at last a " full orbed faith," made perfect by suffering and much tribulation. There has never been trust in God more clear, unwavering, and tender than that expressed in the 23d Psalm. It is this many-sided experience of life that has made the " Psalms of David" (though it is uncertain who made the collection, which contains many not written by David him self) the most precious heritage of the afflicted and tried in all ages of the Christian church.—By those theologians who look upon Jewish history as having a typical or allegorical meaning as well as a literal one, D. is regarded as a type of Christ.