Perhaps Nathan feared that it was too soon for David to dethrone El Elyon by building a temple to a foreign god within Jebusite Jerusalem. David may have chosen the site of the Gihon Spring, outside the walls, out of respect for Jebusite sensibilities. Or perhaps the tribes of Israel and Judah were averse to the idea: they may have become attached to Yahweh’s nomadic image and been reluctant to see him becoming like all the other gods of Canaan, confined to a particular sanctuary. Perhaps people feared the power that such a temple would bring to David. The biblical writers may have included the story of Yahweh’s refusal of a temple because they were disturbed that David, their ideal king, had failed to build a temple for his God. The Chronicler thought that David had been denied this high honor because he had shed too much blood and that Solomon had been given the privilege because he was a man of peace.16 We have seen that building had a religious significance in the cities of the ancient world. David had achieved other construction work in Jerusalem, as befitted a king. He had built himself a palace of cedar wood brought from the Lebanon; he had repaired the “Millo,” a word that seems to puzzle the biblical writers but probably referred to the old terraces on the Ophel. He had also built the Tower of David, a new citadel. To accommodate the growing number of civil servants, craftsmen, and soldiers that his expanding empire required, he had enlarged the city, breaking down the walls at one point to do so. But just as Moses, who had led the people out of Egypt, had died on the threshold of the Promised Land, David had led the people of Yahweh into Jerusalem but had not been permitted to build the temple that would one day make this Jebusite city the holiest place in the Jewish world.
He had at least been able to prepare the ground by purchasing the site of the future Temple of Solomon from Araunah, who may have been the last Jebusite king. David had sinned, our authors tell us, by ordering a census. This was always an unpopular measure, because it was usually a prelude to taxation and forced labor. As a result, God sent a plague upon the kingdom which killed seventy thousand people in three days. Finally David saw Yahweh’s “angel” standing beside the threshing floor of Araunah on Mount Zion, with his arm outstretched toward the city below. David could only avert the plague, he was informed by a court prophet, by building an altar to Yahweh on the site of this theophany. The biblical writers show David and Araunah working harmoniously together during this crisis. The incident is reminiscent of Abraham’s purchase of the Cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite. Like Ephron, Araunah wanted to give the place away without charging David a single shekel, but David, who could simply have annexed the area, behaved with admirable courtesy and respect toward his predecessor and insisted on paying the full price.17 Today many scholars believe that the site may have been one of the holy places of Jebusite Jerusalem: threshing floors were often used in Canaan for public meetings or prophetic divination or in the fertility cult of Baal, and a floor such as that owned by Araunah, in a high exposed position at the entrance of the city, could well have been used in the cult.18 The biblical writers do not mention this, perhaps because they were disturbed by the possibility of their Temple having been built on a pagan bamah (cult place), but such continuity was common in antiquity. Araunah shows no anger but seems quite willing to share this sacred space with David, even offering to pay for the first sacrifice on the new altar. Holiness was not something that human beings could own or feel possessive about. The theophany had shown that the place belonged to the gods, and in the next generation, the children of David and of Araunah would pray together on Mount Zion.
David is also said to have collected the materials for a new temple, sending to his ally Hiram, King of Tyre, for cedarwood and juniper. The Chronicler in particular cannot bear the idea that David took no part in the building of the Temple. He tells us that Yahweh had revealed the plan of the future sanctuary in minute detail and that David then passed on these divine instructions to his son Solomon.19 The Temple could thus be built “in accordance with what Yahweh with his hand had written in order to make the whole work clear for which he was providing the plans.”20 A king could not choose the site of a temple: it had to be built at a site which had been revealed as one of the “centers” of the world. That is why kings so often chose sites of former temples which were known to yield access to the divine. In the same way, an architect was not expected to be original when he designed a new temple. It was to be a symbol. The Greek from which this word derives means that two things have been put together, and in the premodern world this idea was taken very seriously. It was the basis of ancient religion. A temple had to be a copy of the god’s heavenly home, and it was this likeness which linked the celestial archetype with its earthly replica here below, making the two in some sense one. This close similarity was what made it possible for the deity to reside in his mundane sanctuary as he did in his heavenly palace. Consequently the plans of a temple had to be revealed, as they were to David, so that the dimensions and furnishings of the god’s home in the world above could be accurately reproduced on earth.
Yet there was also a strong political element in all this. By conveying the Ark to Jerusalem, David was gradually appropriating the city. First he had brought the most sacred object of his people to the foot of the Ophel and then, by purchasing the threshing floor of Araunah, was preparing the way for Yahweh’s eventual enthronement in his own temple on Mount Zion. Under Solomon, Yahweh would become the El Elyon of Jerusalem, its Most High God. In the same way, David was building a small empire for himself step by step. First he subjugated the Philistines; indeed, he may have defeated them in the Valley of Rephaim, southwest of Jerusalem, before he conquered the city. At some stage, he must also have incorporated the other city-states of Canaan into his empire, though the Bible does not mention this. They may have accepted vassal status. Finally he subdued the neighboring kingdoms of Moab and Edom, together with a substantial area in Syria. (See map.) The Israelites did not forget the Kingdom of David: never again would they be so politically powerful. There is no mention of the kingdom in any of the other Near Eastern texts of the period, however, and for this reason it has been thought by some to be a fantasy which, like the stories of the Patriarchs, has no real historical basis. But the general scholarly consensus is that the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah did indeed exist. Too many political, economic, and commercial details in the biblical account mesh with what we know of Near Eastern society at this time for the empire of David to be an entire fabrication. Mesopotamia and Egypt were both in decline, preoccupied with their own affairs, and may have had no contact with the Davidic state. Moreover, the Bible does not idealize the kingdom. Alongside the glowing descriptions, we also read of a nation bitterly divided against itself, exceeding its resources, and clearly heading for a crisis.
David may have been a hero posthumously, but he was not universally loved in his own lifetime. His son Absalom led a revolt against him, erecting a monument to himself at the spring of En Rogel, a cult-place associated with the Jebusite monarchy, and was acclaimed King of Israel and Judah at Hebron.