Where Saul is held back by his insecurities as a leader, David inspires men who were on the verge of stoning him by rallying them to fight with him. Saul is stymied by political considerations while David trusts in G-d.

By Daniel Greenfield, Frontpage Magazine

At the end of this week, Jews around the world will celebrate the holiday of Purim. The annual commemoration of the divine salvation from extermination has a special resonance this year.

Haman, the Purim story’s central villain, the Persian Empire’s grand vizier, descended from the Amalekite peoples, has traditionally served as a stand-in for contemporary villains like Hitler, Stalin (Russian Jews celebrate a Stalin’s Purim marking the Communist tyrant’s death before he could execute his own holocaust in the USSR) as well as Hamas and other Islamic Jihadists.

But the events of Purim taking place some 2,300 years ago are also intimately linked to the exodus from Egypt, 3,300 years ago, and the establishment of the first Jewish monarchy several hundred years later under King Saul followed by King David and his dynasty.

And the very different styles of the two rulers.

After the miraculous exodus from Egypt, Amalek had defied G-d by ambushing and attacking the Jews. In response, G-d had commanded an eternal war against the nomadic bandit rovers (Exodus 17) and (Deuteronomy 25:19) and tasked every Jewish king with waging that war.

When King Saul receives the divine command to destroy Amalek, he flinches from the mission and loses his right to the monarchy.

It falls to the aged Prophet Samuel to finish the job, confronting King Agag of Amalek and telling him bluntly, “as thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women” (1 Samuel 15:33) before striking him down.

The story of Purim describes Haman as an ‘Agagite’ descended from that very king.

But it is King David who faces a crisis similar to the one that Israel is still living through.

After Saul and his army falls to the Philistines, the kingdom is in disarray. David and his small band of men return to their town only to find that the Amalekites had overrun it, “burned it with fire” and “their wives, and their sons, and their daughters, were taken captives”.

“David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep” (1 Samuel 30:4).

“The people spoke of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters” but David turns to G-d in search of answers.

And G-d tells him, “Pursue; for thou shalt surely overtake them, and shalt without fail recover all.” David and his men chase after the enemy. A third of them cannot go on, but the rest continue.

The Amalekites are overtaken “eating and drinking and feasting” with their spoils and David surprising them, strikes at twilight, defeats them and rescues all the captives.

In sharp contrast to Saul, King David puts his absolute trust in G-d, commits totally to a course of action, the destruction of the enemy and the rescue of the hostages, and follows through as rapidly as possible with no hesitation and no other considerations.

Where Saul is held back by his insecurities as a leader, David inspires men who were on the verge of stoning him by rallying them to fight with him. Saul is stymied by political considerations while David trusts in G-d.

That incident has important lessons for the present day as Israel, after going to war nearly a year and a half ago, has once again been reduced to trading terrorists for hostages or their bodies.

The initial courageous statements of principle after Oct 7 gave way to political pressure from the Biden administration, the EU, the UN, and other global forces, and then to domestic pressure campaigns insisting that hostage releases take priority over the destruction of Hamas.

What started out as a Davidic war of principle and courage gave way to a Saulite political slog. And this is what Hamas and its backers in the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar and others around the world had been counting on.

The more Israel tried to demonstrate that it was fighting a ‘just’ war as gently as possible, the more accusations of genocide and war crimes were hurled at it.

And Israel was back in the same familiar no-win scenario of fighting Islamic terrorism.

Saul’s mercy on Amalek was not a sign of his compassion, but his weakness and insecurity. In his desperate efforts to avert the prophecy and prevent David from succeeding him, he would violently lash out at everyone from his own son to the priests who had provided his rival with bread.

This led the sages to warn that “one who is compassionate to the cruel will ultimately be cruel to those to whom he should show compassion”. A commonplace liberal pattern today.

Israel could learn a good deal from King David’s determined approach to ‘hostage negotiations’. He does not parley with the enemy or even waste time on internal debates before turning to G-d to determine what to do.

It’s not that he doesn’t feel the agony of the losses. We are told that he wept along with his men until they could all no longer cry. But after that period of sorrow was done, he acted as quickly as he could, determinedly pursuing the enemy until they were his.

Today anyone who argues that the priority must be to destroy Hamas and win the war is accused of not caring enough about the hostages.

The cycle of recriminations over what happened on Oct 7 and the fate of the hostages has been cynically exploited by Qatar, which has embedded its corrupt operatives among some of the families of the hostages, by the media and the Left, to undermine and divide Israelis.

King David refuses to engage in recriminations or to be subject to them. His purpose during Israel’s ancient hostage crisis is not to debate the past, but to act resolutely. He also refuses to divide the fate of the captives from that of the war. Instead, he pursues the unitary purpose of destroying the enemy and saving the captives.

That is only possible because King David acts boldly, rapidly and unpredictably, following the Amalekite raiders at a faster speed than they ever expected and ambushing them.

He does not come to negotiate, but to slay them and save the captives, and putting his trust in G-d, he has no moral qualms about his mission. A problem that continues to trouble Israel even after Oct 7.

There is much that Israel could have learned and still can learn from King David’s approach to hostage negotiations. The first thing is to eliminate moral doubt about its rightness through faith. The second is to act quickly and debate later about the ‘endgame’ of the conflict. The third is to pursue the release of captives through the destruction of the enemy and by no other means.

And finally to recognize that wars are only won when the debate ends and the battle begins.

Hamas tactics, aided by Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the media, has been to delay Israel’s response, to stir up moral doubt using a propaganda campaign of fake atrocities and war crimes, with false accusations of genocide and constant lies about every military operation, and by demonstrating that it would kill hostages rather than allow Israel to rescue them.

That slowed down Israel’s response at every turn of the Oct 7 war. And the more the battles slow down, the more debates set in. Victory is the best answer to any argument. Israel would need to worry less about the opinions of every pro-terrorist institution from the UN to Haaretz if it delivered consistent mission-focused victories by acting decisively, accepting the risks and rebounding from losses with new operations rather than wallowing in the futility of disproving every lie and arguing over what could have been done differently. Doubt, moral and operational, is corrosive. It corroded King Saul’s nerve until he went mad while King David refused to doubt.

The secret of King David’s decisiveness was the same moral conviction that began when as a boy he confronted Goliath and told the Philistine giant, “You come at me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a javelin; and I come at you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted.” That moral certainty is sadly lacking today.

King Saul did not lack courage in response to some outrage, such as when Nahash the Ammonite besieged Jabesh Gilead and refused to accept their surrender unless each man agreed to have an eye put out.

It’s only when the way was not clear, doubt set in and the people no longer seemed to be behind him that Saul tended to become insecure and lose his clarity.

That is still Israel’s problem today. Its men are courageous when facing armed assaults, but arguments, smears and accusations rob them of their certainty and their momentum.

Israel doesn’t lose wars, instead it loses image campaigns and peace negotiations. And unless it reclaims the certainty that it had on Oct 7 and that Americans had on 9/11, that will continue.

Purim marked the return of certainty as the Jews of Persia who had become all too comfortable, who stayed in Sushan instead of returning to Jerusalem, were faced with sudden annihilation.

Some blamed the small minority of Jews who had returned from exile to resettle Israel, others Mordechai for refusing to bow to Haman, but that distant descendant of Saul did not doubt. He had become a Jew, a Man of Judah, not by descent, but through the moral certainty of a David.

And an exiled and downtrodden people suddenly found the strength to fight for their survival.

The post King David’s hostage negotiations appeared first on World Israel News.

By Jackie Hajdenberg, JTA

Last year, New York City’s Jewish Museum imported a new director from the Israel Museum. Now, it’s bringing the oldest archaeological evidence of the existence of King David from the Jerusalem museum, too.

The Tel Dan Stele, a stone fragment long held exclusively by the Israel Museum, is on view at the Jewish Museum on the Upper East Side until Jan. 5.

A 12-by-13 inch chunk of basalt, the Tel Dan Stele is a 9th-century BCE stone document acknowledging the military victories of a person whom scholars believe to be King Hazael of Aram, an area in contemporary Syria that includes what is today Damascus.

One of those victories was over a descendant of David, the king of ancient Israel.

When it was discovered in northern Israel in 1993, the Tel Dan Stele became the earliest evidence beyond the Bible that King David was a real figure.

“There is no archeological evidence surviving from the First Temple,” said James Snyder, who took the helm of the Jewish Museum a year ago.

“There is from the Second Temple, and that’s at the Israel Museum. From the First Temple, what therefore becomes important are these references to this archeological evidence of the time of the First Temple, and of evidence that reinforces biblical history.”

The First Temple, believed to have been built by David’s son King Solomon in the 10th century BCE, was destroyed during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 586 CE.

“What makes the Tel Dan Stele so important is that it’s the oldest archeological evidence of the existence of the House of David, which is the sort of touchstone or fountainhead for the unfolding thereafter of Judaism, Christianity and then Islam,” Snyder added.

In fact, it’s so old that the Aramaic used in the stele was still being written in the Phoenician alphabet — a language that predates Aramaic.

The ancient inscription refers to the “House of David,” in translation saying, “[I killed Jeho]ram son of [Ahab] king of Israel, and [I] killed [Ahaz]iahu son of [Jehoram kin]g of the House of David.”

Before coming to the Jewish Museum, the stele was on display for nearly two months at a biblical archaeology museum in Oklahoma. It was previously displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, just blocks from the Jewish Museum, a decade ago.

(A replica is also on display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.)

On view at the Jewish Museum — which recently opened an on-site kosher restaurant, filling the space left vacant by Russ & Daughters during the pandemic — only a few weeks, Snyder says the stele is a treasure for the institution, which he said is increasingly aiming to draw connections between Jewish history and material culture and contemporary art.

Snyder said the loan had been in the works for a few years — beginning while he ran the Israel Museum — but added that it feels particularly timely to have it in the museum after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“The House of David has equal importance to the three monotheistic faiths that percolated in the region over 1,500 years,” Snyder said.

“So it’s from Judaism to Christianity to Islam. So the House of David is really the monarchy that envisioned and enabled the unfolding of those monotheistic traditions, and they happened in sequence.”

He added, “This archeological fragment is a perfect example of the intersection of where archeology and biblical history meet.”

The artifact is displayed as part of an exhibition of standout items from the museum’s collection of more than 30,000 works, reflecting “an ever-evolving understanding of the relationship between art and global Jewish culture across time,” according to the museum’s website.

The museum is currently renovating its third- and fourth-floor galleries, which are scheduled to open in next fall.

Across from the stele is a video installation of poppies created this year by Israeli artist Michal Rovner, which explores the coexistence of beauty and violence in nature.

“Culture is an antidote to the polarization and politicization of the times we’re living in,” Snyder said. “Culture is an opportunity to engage in ways that get into a brighter time ahead.”

The post Tel Dan Stele, oldest archaeological evidence of King David, comes to NY’s Jewish Museum appeared first on World Israel News.

“The wealth of a nomadic society was not measured in palaces and monuments made of stone, but in things that were no less valued in the ancient world,” said Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef.

By Josh Plank, World Israel News

Researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), Tel Aviv University, and Bar-Ilan University have discovered 3,000-year-old remnants of purple fabric amazingly preserved in the desert climate of the Timna Valley, an ancient copper production district in southern Israel, the IAA announced last week.

This is the first time that purple-dyed textiles from the Iron Age have been found in Israel, though mollusk-shell waste and potsherds with patches of dye have provided evidence of the ancient dye industry.

“Now, for the first time, we have direct evidence of the dyed fabrics themselves, preserved for some 3,000 years,” said Dr. Naama Sukenik, curator of organic finds at the IAA.

The purple dye was associated with the nobility, priests, and royalty in ancient times and is often mentioned in the Bible.

“The gorgeous shade of the purple, the fact that it does not fade, and the difficulty in producing the dye, which is found in minute quantities in the body of mollusks, all made it the most highly valued of the dyes, which often cost more than gold,” Sukenik said.

According to Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef of Tel Aviv University, the dramatic finds should revolutionize our concepts of nomadic societies in the Iron Age.

Ben-Yosef identifies the copper-production center at Timna as part of the biblical kingdom of Edom, which lay to the south of the kingdom of Israel.

“The Edomite kingdom was a kingdom of nomads,” he said, noting the lack of evidence of any permanent settlements in the Edomite territory.

“Our new research at Timna has showed us that even without such buildings, there were kings in our region who ruled over complex societies, formed alliances and trade relations, and waged war on each other,” Ben-Yosef said.

“The wealth of a nomadic society was not measured in palaces and monuments made of stone, but in things that were no less valued in the ancient world – such as the copper produced at Timna and the purple dye that was traded with its copper smelters,” he said.

Ben-Yosef suggested that the findings may inform our understanding of the existence of the mighty kingdom of Israel during the reigns of David and Solomon.

“It is wrong to assume that if no grand buildings and fortresses have been found, then biblical descriptions of the United Kingdom in Jerusalem must be literary fiction,” he said.

The post Israel discovers royal purple cloth from King David’s era appeared first on World Israel News.

“The complex we exposed was built at a strategic location on the small hilltop,” excavation directors said.

By World Israel News Staff

A fortified complex from the time of King David  was exposed or the first time in archaeological excavations carried out by IAA in Hispin in the Golan Heights.

The archaeologists consider that the fort was built by the kingdom of Geshur, the ally of King David, in order to control the region.

The excavation was undertaken prior to the construction of a new neighborhood in Hispin, and funded by the Ministry of Housing and Construction and the Golan Regional Council, with the participation of many local residents.

According to Barak Tzin and Enno Bron, excavation directors on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The complex we exposed was built at a strategic location on the small hilltop, above the El-Al canyon, overlooking the region, at a spot where it was possible to cross the river.”

“The c. 1.5 m wide fort walls, built of large basalt boulders, encompassed the hill. In the excavation, we were astonished to discover a rare and exciting find: a large basalt stone with a schematic engraving of two horned figures with outspread arms. There may also be another object next to them.”

It is noteworthy that in 2019, a figure carved on a cultic stone stele was found in the Bethsaida Expedition Project, directed by Dr .Rami Arav of Nebraska University, at Bethsaida just north of the Sea of Galilee.

The stele, depicting a horned figure with outspread arms, was erected next to a raised platform (bama) adjacent to the city gate. This scene was identified by Arav as representing the Moon-God Cult.

The Hispin stone was located on a shelf next to the entrance, and not one, but two figures were depicted on it. According to the archaeologists, “it is possible that a person who saw the impressive Bethsaida stele, decided to create a local copy of the royal stele.”

The fortified city of Bethsaida is considered by scholars, to be the capital of the Aramean Kingdom of Geshur, that ruled the central and southern Golan 3,000 years ago. According to the Bible, the kingdom upheld diplomatic and family relations with the House of David; one of David’s wives was Maacah, the daughter of Talmi, King of Geshur.

Cities of the Kingdom of Geshur are known along the Sea of Galilee shore, including Tel En Gev, Tel Hadar and Tel Sorag, but sites are hardly known in the Golan. This unique fortified complex raises new research issues on the settlement of the Golan in the Iron Age (eleventh to tenth centuries BCE).

Following this discovery, changes in the development plans will be carried out together with the Ministry of Housing and Construction, in order that the unique fortified complex will not be damaged.

The complex will be developed as an open area along the El-Al river bank, where educational-archaeological activities will be carried out, as part of the cultural heritage and a link with the past.

The post Fortress from time of King David found in Golan Heights appeared first on World Israel News.

“The State of Israel and the state of the Jewish people will return to be governed as it was governed in the days of King David,” said MK Bezalel Smotrich.

By World Israel News Staff 

Even as Israel prepares to go to a second general election in 2019 after a crisis caused by a dispute over the connection between religion and state, Union of Right-Wing Parties (URWP) MK Bezalel Smotrich, seeking to become Justice Minister, says he wants to restore “to restore” Torah law.

“That is how it should be in a Jewish state,” he told Kan public radio on Monday.

“The State of Israel and the state of the Jewish people will return to be governed as it was governed in the days of King David and King Solomon by Torah law,” Smotrich said, though adding that “how society lives in 2019” would be taken into account.

Various members of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, have been embroiled in a longstanding dispute with the Israeli court system over where the lines are drawn between the powers of the two different branches.

In addition, the Union of Right-Wing Parties ran a campaign before the April 9 election on a platform that included introducing more Torah into Israeli life in addition to a tougher stance towards the Palestinian Authority.

The religion and state dispute which resulted in the passage last week of a law declaring September 17 as the date for another snap election did not involve Smotrich’s faction.

It was a fight between Haredi religious parties and Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman over the issue of ensuring a quota of Haredi yeshiva students serving in the military.

Though Liberman has been accused by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of using the issue as a pretext to bring down the prime minister, the ultimate result was Netanyahu’s inability to gain a parliamentary majority to rule.

In November 2018, Liberman quit the previous government, in which he served as defense minister, criticizing Netanyahu for the lack of an aggressive response to terrorist attacks from the Gaza Strip. His resignation ultimately led to the April election.

Liberman’s party platform includes a battle against what it views as religious coercion. The comments by Smotrich about instituting Torah law prompted Liberman to lash out at the URWP MK.

“This is no longer just a comment of a delusional hilltop youth, but a statement of intent, he wants a [religious law] Halachic state,” said Liberman. “Hilltop youth” is a reference to young activists who set up communities in Judea and Samaria which have not received governmental authorization.

Liberman himself lives in a community in Judea and Samaria, though authorized. His campaign touts a political right-wing though secular platform.

Latest public opinion polls show that Liberman and religious parties would have to join forces after the September election to ensure the formation of a right-wing government.

The post Israeli lawmaker calls for Torah law to rule Jewish State ‘as in days of King David’ appeared first on World Israel News.

Israeli families moved into two newly acquired buildings in the biblical city of Hebron. 

By: JNS and World Israel News Staff

A group of 15 Jewish families in Hebron took up residence in two buildings situated near the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs on Monday night, which they have named Beit Rachel (the House of Rachel) and Beit Leah (the House of Leah).

The names were bestowed in honor of the biblical sisters Rachel and Leah, who together with their husband Jacob, and Bilhah and Zilpah, were the forebears of the 12 tribes of Israel.

The residents affixed a mezuzah – a piece of parchment inscribed with passages from the Torah that is rolled up and enclosed in an often decorative case – to each doorpost and hung Israeli flags from the windows.

This event comes 50 years after a group of Israelis came to Hebron and began the process that subsequently led to the permanent establishment of a Jewish neighborhood in the historic city where King David was anointed and reigned for seven years before the Jewish capital was moved to Jerusalem. Hebron is in fact the site of the oldest Jewish community in the world. The biblical patriarch Abraham purchased the Tomb when his wife Sarah had died.

The post Israelis expand presence in Hebron, name buildings after biblical matriarchs appeared first on World Israel News.

A joint study by the Israel Antiquities Authority, Tel Aviv University, and Bar-Ilan University discovered stripped clothing worn by people who worked at copper mines in Timna, in southern Israel, during the time of Kings David and Solomon.

The post WATCH: Evidence reveals which color blue King Solomon wore appeared first on World Israel News.

President Donald Trump, speaking at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem Tuesday, proclaimed the historical connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, invoking the reign of King David.

Trump then continued with his theme of demanding that Muslim leaders stop supporting terror, assuring Jewish leaders that he is firmly committed to “halting” Iran’s support of terrorists and militias, in a clear reference to the Iranian government’s arming and funding of Hezbollah and Hamas.

The post WATCH: Trump proclaims ‘ancient and eternal’ Jewish ties to the Holy Land appeared first on World Israel News.

Tanakh (Scripture) has been brought to life again since 3000-year-old artifacts were discovered in the Valley of Elah, located 30 kilometers from Jerusalem, where David slew Goliath.

These ancient artifacts strengthen the credibility of the biblical accounts of daily life during the time of King David, which was based on devotion to God, in contrast to the surrounding pagan culture. These discoveries also help scholars understand the obscure terminology describing the temple of Solomon and Ezekiel’s prophetic vision.

In other words, it cannot be contested that Israel is the land of the Jewish people. It is our ancient heritage. We have had a connection to this land for over 3500 years and we will NEVER let it go.

The post WATCH: Archaeology Presents the Life of King David appeared first on World Israel News.