He treated the other prisoners from the various towns in a similar manner. Hanun, the original cause of the war, who had so deeply insulted David, was either killed or driven out of the kingdom. In his stead David appointed his brother Shobi as king. Meanwhile Abishai had been engaged in a war against the Idumæan king, and had utterly routed him in the Valley of Salt--probably in the neighbourhood of the rocksalt mountain, near the Dead Sea. Eighteen thousand Idumæans are said to have fallen there. The rest probably submitted; and for this reason David contented himself with placing excise officers and a garrison over them, as he had done in Damascus and the other Aramæan provinces. The Idumæans, however, seem later on to have revolted against the Israelitish garrison and the tax collectors, and to have massacred them. Joab therefore repaired to Idumæa, caused the murdered Israelites to be buried, and all Idumæan males to be put to death. He was occupied with this war of destruction during half a year, and so thoroughly was the task executed that only a few of the male sex could save themselves by flight. Amongst them was a son or a grandson of the Idumæan king. By these decisive victories, in the west over the Philistines, in the south over the Idumæans, in the east (on the opposite side of the Jordan) over the Moabites and Ammonites, and in the north over the Aramæans, David had raised the power of Israel to an unexpected degree. While, at the commencement of his reign, when he was first acknowledged king of all Israel, the boundaries of the country had been comprised between Dan and Beersheba, he now ruled over the widespread territory from the river of Egypt (Rhinokolura, El-Arish) to the Euphrates, or from Gaza to Thapsacus (on the Euphrates). The nations thus subdued were obliged annually to do homage by means of gifts, to pay tribute, and perhaps also to send serfs to assist in building and other severe labour. These wars and victories were better calculated than his early hardships to bring to light the great qualities of David's mind. Strong and determined as he was in every undertaking in which the honour and safety of his people were involved, he remained modest and humble, without a spark of presumption, after success had been attained. He erected no monument to commemorate his victories as had been done by Saul; like his general, Joab, he was imbued with the thought that to God alone was to be attributed the victory. The faith in God, to which David had given utterance when he prepared himself for the duel with the Rephaite Goliath (I Samuel xvii. 47), he preserved in all great contests. David elaborated this guiding thought in a psalm, which he probably chanted before the ark at the close of the war, and in which he gives a retrospect of his entire past life.