their bones and had them deposited in the hereditary sepulchre of Kish at Gibeah. Saul’s house fell, but scarcely with David’s consent--a sacrifice to the religious belief of the time. DAVID AND ABSALOM [Sidenote: [_ca._ 990-970 B.C.]] David had gloriously overcome the foes of Israel, but he had not attained to winning the mastery over his own unruly passions. The same man who could guide his people step by step with strength and dexterity, did not possess enough firmness of will to train his own sons. The bitter fruit could not fail to appear. Our records tell the story, with a plain objectivity, with an unsparing impartiality, and from a high moral standpoint that it would be hard to parallel. [Illustration: GATE OF JOPPA, JERUSALEM] Whilst Joab is with the army before Rabbath-Ammon, David transgresses with the wife of a captain who has gone to the war. In order to escape the responsibility for the consequences which do not fail to follow, David had Uriah, the husband, sent home with a message concerning the state of the war. But, ostensibly from a feeling of soldierly duty, although he probably knew what had happened, he refuses to visit his wife and hastens back to the army. Only one means now remains to hide the king’s fault. David gives Uriah a letter to Joab which disposes of the troublesome accuser. Joab must place him at a dangerous place in the battle and leave him to his fate. The plan succeeds; Uriah’s wife Bathsheba duly bewailed her spouse and then became the wife of her seducer. When Bathsheba had given birth to a child, that which Uriah had already suspected or discovered could no longer be concealed, and the prophet Nathan becomes spokesman for the public conscience. First in a parable, and then in plain language, he announces to David the judgment of Jehovah. David, thereby showing his true greatness, instead of being angered by Nathan, owns his guilt. The child falls sick, and, in spite of David’s prayer, dies after seven days. In the child’s death David recognises Jehovah’s judgment on his own sin. But he cannot prevent his example from speedily ripening into evil fruit in his grown sons. His first-born, Amnon, is consumed by a passion for his half-sister, Tamar. By a stratagem, suggested by an unscrupulous flatterer at the court, he manages to get her into his power. A feigned sickness offers an excuse for her visit to him. When the deed has been accomplished, he roughly thrusts the dishonoured maiden from him with pitiless violence, a sure sign that it was not love, but savage desire which had prompted him.