It is not without reason that the historical narrative sets in with David, and that the first event of his reign recorded is the taking of Jerusalem; for Jerusalem is from first to last the centre of the author's interest. He writes the history of Judah alone, touching upon the kingdom of Israel only in its relation to Judah. The desire to magnify and glorify the kingdom of Judah in its great days, especially under David and Solomon, to represent it as the most powerful, wealthy, and magnificent among the nations, not only of its time but of any time, frequently expresses itself in enormous exaggerations. David could raise a native army of a million and a half, almost as many as, according to Herodotus--who certainly does not underestimate the numbers--Xerxes mustered from the whole Persian empire for the invasion of Greece; he laid away, "out of his poverty," to build the temple, a hundred thousand talents of gold and a million talents of silver--over three times the national debt of the United Kingdom in 1912; at the dedication of the temple Solomon sacrificed 22,000 bullocks and 120,000 sheep and goats; and so on. It is evident that the author has raised the figures out of the grasp of his own imagination. From the same motive, if it is possible to avoid it, he tells nothing to discredit the kings whom he thus extols. David's sin in taking a census is necessarily related, because the sequel of it was the choice of a site for the future temple, but, characteristically, not God but Satan tempted him to number the people; otherwise none of the misdeeds and misfortunes which are set down so impartially in 2 Samuel is so much as alluded to by the Chronicler; David is in his pages the model king. Solomon fares as well; nothing is said of the perverting influence of his foreign wives nor the temples he erected to their gods. Indeed, his piety is such that he will not allow Pharaoh's daughter, apparently the only foreign wife the Chronicler gives him, to live in the city of David, for the neighbourhood of the ark is holy. Solomon's press-gangs were one of the greatest grievances of the tribes; the author of Chronicles takes pains to aver that Solomon raised his corvée from the remnants of the Hittites and other heathen; no Israelites were put to such work. In Kings we read that Solomon ceded twenty towns in Galilee to Hiram, king of Tyre, in payment for materials and services in the building of the temple; to the Chronicler such a transaction is unimaginable, and he amends it by making Hiram give the towns to Solomon.