The Capture of Jerusalem and the Bringing Up of the Ark
David takes the Jebusite stronghold and makes it his capital. Months later the Ark of the Covenant, which had stood twenty years at Kiriath-jearim, is brought up to the City of David with music and dancing.
Hebron was the capital of a single tribe. David needed a city belonging to no one, and chose the Jebusite stronghold of Zion. Its defenders were so confident that, the text says, they manned the walls with "the blind and the lame." David announced that whoever struck first would command the army; Joab went up through the water shaft, and the city fell. It became the City of David, and Hiram of Tyre sent cedars and craftsmen to build him a palace.
The second step was to bring the Ark back to the centre of national life. For twenty years it had stood in a private house at Kiriath-jearim. David placed it on a new cart—and at the threshing floor of Nachon the oxen stumbled; Uzzah put out his hand to steady it and died. Frightened, David left the Ark at the house of Obed-edom for three months, and that household was blessed.
The second attempt was done properly: Levites carried it on their shoulders, with a sacrifice every six paces. David, girded in a linen ephod, danced before it with all his strength. Michal, Saul's daughter, watched from a window and despised him. David answered: before the Lord, who chose me instead of your father, I will make myself lower still. Jerusalem was now capital, political and spiritual at once.
How we know
On the chronology
Academic history dates this event differently. In the age of the kings the divergence is not the one familiar from the Persian period, where Seder Olam runs about a hundred and sixty-five years short. Here academic chronology reckons some reigns as overlapping — father and son on the throne together — so its span from the division of the kingdom to the destruction of the Temple comes out nearly three decades shorter. The gap therefore grows: a hundred and thirty-five years at the division, a hundred and fifty-four at Sennacherib, a hundred and sixty-four at the destruction. The anchors of the academic count are external documents: the battle of Qarqar (853), Jehu's tribute on the Black Obelisk (841), the fall of Samaria (722), Sennacherib's campaign (701), Megiddo and Nebuchadnezzar's campaigns in the Babylonian Chronicles (609, 605, 597). Both dates appear on the timeline when the divergence layer is on.
Sources
Tanakh
- Shmuel II 5:6–12 — the taking of the stronghold of Zion, the water shaft and the building of the city
- Shmuel II 6 — the bringing of the Ark: Uzzah, the house of Oved-Edom, David’s dancing and Michal
- Divrei HaYamim I 15–16 — the second attempt — on the shoulders of the Levites, with shofar and psalms
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Sotah 35a — why Uzzah died and what the error with the cart was
- Yoma 12a — Jerusalem was given to no single tribe — a city belonging to all Israel
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.
People and places
King David · Hebron (Cave of the Patriarchs) · Jerusalem · Samuel · Psalms · Michal daughter of Saul · Joab son of Zeruiah · Ish-Boshet son of Saul