He hoped to be well rewarded for his news, by David; whose intentions were so well known, that he presented him with Saul's crown and bracelet*. But, alas! he knew not David, and perished in the experiment: David ordering him to be killed for daring to slay the Lord's anointed.** David's treatment of this Amalekite, is agreeable to the customary rules of politics; and has nothing therefore remarkable in it, farther than it is rendered so by peculiar circumstances. Saul was declared to be rejected by God, and David was the pretender to his throne; it may therefore be imagined by some, that this man might have had some claim to _his_ private gratitude, especially considering the account the Amalekite gave of the matter. Who can help smiling at the relation of David's tearing his clothes off his back, and bursting into a sorrowful lamentation for the death of a man, to whose destruction he had so freely offered to lend assistance but just before? Upon this alteration of affairs, David, asking counsel of the Lord, was advised to leave Ziklag, and go to Hebron, one of the cities of Judah; whither he and all his men repaired.*** * 2 Sam. 10. ** Ver. 15. *** 2 Sam. ii. 1. There he got his partizans to anoint him king over Judah; at the same time that Abner, Saul's general, had, at Mahanaim, made Ishbosheth, Saul's son, king over Israel.* It may be remarked here, that David did not seem to claim in right of the sacred unction bestowed on him long since by Samuel. He realized his title indeed, as soon as he could make it out, by the law of force: but if his divine title to the Hebrew crown was universally known, and if, as has been urged, Ish-bosheth had none at all, how came David's title not to be universally acknowledged? Did only one tribe believe in it? Yet David, with the divine grant, was obliged to obtain the sovereignty by arms and intrigue! just for all the world like the wicked, who attain their desires by exactly the same means, to all external appearance. Upon this division of the kingdom, a battle was fought at the pool of Gibeon, between the army of Ish-bosheth, commanded by general Abner, and that of David, headed by Joab: victory declared in favour of the latter, with small loss on either side, except that Joab lost his brother Ahasel, who was killed by Abner's own hand.**