Eight years had gone by since Saul had fallen at Gilboa, and David had at last attained the object which he had persistently aimed at through so many changes of fortune. But he did not feel secure so long as male descendants of Saul were still surviving. Still he would not lay hands on them himself. Now the Hivites of Gibeon nourished a deadly hatred against Saul’s family, because, “in his zeal for the children of Israel,” Saul’s hand had lain heavy upon them. David offered “to make atonement for the wrong which Saul had done them,” and thereupon they demanded: because their land had borne no fruit for three years, that seven men of Saul’s family should be delivered to them “to be hanged before Jehovah at Gibeah,” the home of Saul. Just seven male descendants of Saul survived, two sons of his concubine, Rizpah, and five grandsons, whom Saul’s eldest daughter had borne to Adriel. These David took and “delivered into the hands of the Gibeonites and they hanged them in the hill before Jehovah.” Only Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s son, David spared, remembering his oath of friendship to Jonathan. Moreover, Mephibosheth was young and lame in both feet; in the night of terror after the battle of Gilboa, his nurse had let him fall. David left him his inheritance intact, in so far that he was allowed to take possession of Saul’s portion in Gibeah, and the king ordered that the bones of Saul and Jonathan should be brought from Jabesh to Zelah near Gibeah, where Saul’s father rested. In the tribe of Benjamin, which had been Saul’s and, among the friends of his house, David’s deeds were not forgotten; these men hated “David, the man of blood.”[c] FOOTNOTES [1] _Histoire du Peuple d’Israel_, Paris, 1889, p. 175. [Illustration: ANCIENT JEWISH FOUNTAIN] CHAPTER V. DAVID’S REIGN [Sidenote: [_ca._ 1002-990 B.C.]] The eyes of Israel were now all turned to David. All the tribes of Israel, in the persons of their nobles, came to Hebron and said: “Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh. And moreover, in times past, even when Saul was king, thou wast he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel: and the Lord thy God said unto thee, Thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be ruler over my people Israel.” Thereupon the elders of Israel anointed David to be their king before Jehovah in Hebron. Nothing denotes more clearly than these words of our chronicler, the idea which animated all Israel in calling upon David to mount the throne of Saul. He still lived in their memory as the renowned leader in the struggle with the Philistines. And the memory of the days of Saul must have been all the more vivid, the more inglorious and mean the present appeared.