l a child when his father died: had he
been old enough to bear arms, he would have taken a part in
the battle of Gilboa with his brothers.. The expressions
used in the account of his elevation to the throne prove
that he was a minor (2 Sam. ii. 8, 9); the statement that he
was forty years old when he began to reign would seem,
therefore, to be an error (ii. 10).

Gibeah was too close to the frontier to be a safe residence for a
sovereign whose position was still insecure; Abner therefore installed
Ishbaal at Mahanaim, in the heart of the country of Gilead. The house
of Jacob, including the tribe of Benjamin, acknowledged him as king, but
Judah held aloof. It had adopted the same policy at the beginning of
the previous reign, yet its earlier isolation had not prevented it from
afterwards throwing in its lot with the rest of the nation. But at that
time no leader had come forward from its own ranks who was worthy to be
reckoned among the mighty men of Israel; now, on the contrary, it had on
its frontier a bold and resolute leader of its own race. David lost no
time in stepping into the place of those whose loss he had bewailed.
Their sudden removal, while it left him without a peer among his own
people, exposed him to the suspicion and underground machinations of his
foreign protectors; he therefore quitted them and withdrew to Hebron,
where his fellow-countrymen hastened to proclaim him king.* From that
time onwards the tendency of the Hebrew race was to drift apart into two
distinct bodies; one of them, the house of Joseph, which called itself
by the name of Israel, took up its position in the north, on the banks
of the Jordan; the other, which is described as the house of Judah, in
the south, between the Dead Sea and the Shephelah. Abner endeavoured to
suppress the rival kingdom in its infancy: he brought Ishbaal to Gibeah
and proposed to Joab, who was in command of David's army, that the
conflict should be decided by the somewhat novel expedient of pitting
twelve of the house of Judah against an equal number of the house of
Benjamin. The champions of Judah are said to have won the day, but the
opposing forces did not abide by the result, and the struggle still
continued.**

* 2 Sam. ii. 1--11. Very probably Abner recognised the
Philistine suzerainty as David had done, for the sake of
peace; at any rate, we find no mention in Holy Writ of a war
between Ishbaal and the