therefore, as foon as he heard it, he fent meffengers to congratulate them upon it, with prayers for the divine bleffing in requital of their gratitude and affection to their fovereign; and an affurance that he alfo would requite them: notifying at the fame time his advancement to the throne, by Judah; and exhorting them to fhew themfelves fons of valour, although their master SAUL was dead; intimating that he being now invested with the regal office, was ready to protect them, as Saul had done; perhaps too infinuating, that true fortitude required them to affert the cause of justice, and leaving them to judge whose that was. WHAT effect this message had upon them we know not; yet I think we may fairly conjecture it had a good deal; fince we find that upon this half tribe's joining with Reuben and Gad to come over to David, they made up together a body of an hundred and twenty thousand men. СНАР. CHAP. II. Abner afferts Ifhbofheth's Claim to the Crown. The Battle of Gibeon. NE of Saul's Sons yet survived, whose name was Iskbosheth, who being in all probability lefs martial than the rest, went not to the war; though now advanced to the age of ambition, and not pass'd the ardour of youth, having reached his fortieth year, at the time of his father's death *. A man of this character would in all probability have easily refigned his claim to the crown, and fubmitted to David, had he not been afferted and fupported by the power of Abner, the son of Ner, Saul's general, and near kinfman; whofe intereft and ambition (and it may be, his envy alfo) strongly fwayed him against his duty. For it appears fufficiently from the fequel of his history, that he was well acquainted with David's divine defignation to the throne ; but, should he now fubmit to it, he must This fhews him to have been born in the first year of Saul's reign, who reigned forty years. Acts xiii. 21. no no more hope for the fupreme command of the army. Joab was in poffeffion of that (though not formally vefted with it) under David; and well deferved to be fo: and it was not probable he would difplace him, a tried friend, and a near kinsman, to make for an inveterate enemy, newly recon way ciled. NOR was this all: Ishbofheth was Abner's near kinfman; whom if he did not support, the intereft of his tribe, and of his family, muft fall with his own. ADD to all this, that Abner commanded under Saul in all the expeditions he made against David: and it appears fufficiently from the history, that David was greatly an overmatch for him, in all military conduct and skill: nay more, I think, it appears, from the adventure of the camp, when David had both the king and the general in his power, that he upbraids Abner with pretending to more merit from his military skill, than he was juftly entitled to.-Art not thou (Abner) a valiant man, (faith he *) and who is like to thee in Ifrael? * 1 Sam. xxvi. 15. Where Wherefore then haft thou not kept thy lord the king? Reproaches of this kind are not easily forgiven in rivals; especially in rivals successful and fuperior. THESE then are the difficulties that seem to have obftructed Abner's fubmiffion to David; envy, ambition, intereft, and perfonal pique. And nothing is more difficult, than a steady pursuit of duty with so many obftructions in the way: and therefore, whilst David was foliciting his interest with Judah, Abner folicited that of Ifhbofheth with the reft of the tribes. His first care was to move the compaffion of the army in his favour: and to this end, he carried him about through the camps, as the vulgate, Grotius, and St. Jerom, tranflate the expreffion; and then gained the tribes gradually to his interest: but the English tranflators, by the word Mahanaim, (whofe literal tranflation is camps) underftand the city of that name, in the tribe of Gad, beyond Jordan; and the fequel of the history fufficiently juftifies that translation. Here Ifbbofbeth fixed his refidence: and the first part of the country gained to his in tereft, tereft, is faid to be that of Gilead, in the half tribe of Manasseh, on the other fide Jordan alfo, and contiguous to Gad; where IfhboSheth could refide with more fafety, out of the reach of David, and the Philiftine incurfions. Abner then proceeded to Ashur, and fo on gradually through the rest of the tribes, until he came to Benjamin, and fixed his refidence in Gibeon, formerly the metropolis of the Gibeonites, and made, after the league with them, a Levitical city. FROM Abner's fixing his refidence with his forces in this place, I think we may fairly infer, that it was now poffeffed by men in whom he could confide; and confequently, not by Gibeonites, the mortal enemies to his house. And if not by Gibeonites, it could of right be only inhabited by Levites, because it was a Levitical city, although in the tribe of Benjamin. And how Ifhbofheth could gain fuch confidence with the defcendants of Levi, whofe brethren his father maffacred, is not easy to conceive; unless these were Levites put in poffeffion of that city, when Saul extirpated the Gibeonites, in his zeal for the children of |