generosity. Saul's persecution, however, is so persistent that David
is compelled to flee, and he takes refuge with his country's enemy,
the Philistine king of Gath. At the decisive battle between Israel
and the Philistines on Gilboa, Saul perishes. Soon afterwards, David
is made king of Judah; and emerging successfully from the subsequent
struggle with Saul's surviving son, he becomes king over all Israel,
seizes Jerusalem, and makes it his civil and religious capital (1
Sam. xv.-2 Sam. viii.).

The story of his reign is told with great power and candour, and is
full of the most diverse interest--his guilty passion for Bathsheba,
which left its trail of sorrow over all his subsequent career, the
dissensions in the royal family, the unsuccessful rebellion of his
son Absalom, the strife between Israel and Judah (2 Sam. ix.-xx.).
The story is concluded in 1 Kings i., ii., by an account of the
intrigue which secured the succession of Solomon, and finally by the
death and testament of David. The appendix, which interrupts the story
and closes the book of Samuel (xxi.-xxiv.) consists of (_a_) two
narratives, with a dominant religious interest, which chronologically
appear to belong to the beginning of David's reign--the atonement by
which Jehovah's anger, expressed in famine, was turned away from the
land, xxi. 1-14, and the plague which, as a divine penalty, followed
David's census of the people (xxiv.); (_b_) two psalms--a song
of gratitude for God's gracious deliverances (xxii.=Ps. xviii.), and
a brief psalm expressing confidence in the triumph of justice,
xxiii. 1-7; (_c_) two lists of David's heroes and their deeds,
xxi. 15-22, xxiii. 8-39.

In the book of Samuel, even more distinctly than in the Hexateuch,
composite authorship is apparent. Little or no attempt has been made