Jerusalem Becomes David's City

"Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh… The LORD said to thee, Thou shalt feed my people Israel." The elders anoint David king over Israel. "David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years."

The Jebusites say: "Except thou take away the blind and the lame, thou shalt not come in hither." "Nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David." "Whosoever getteth up to the gutter [tsinnor], and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind, that are hated of David's soul…" "Wherefore they said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house."

"And Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David, and cedar trees, and carpenters, and masons: and they built David an house." David takes more wives and concubines in Jerusalem. The Philistines spread out in the valley of Rephaim; David asks the LORD and defeats them at Baal-perazim, and again when he hears "the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees."

Jerusalem before David

Jerusalem was a city long before David. The Amarna letters (14th century BC) include six letters from its ruler Abdi-Heba to Pharaoh. The early city lay on the narrow southeastern ridge (the City of David) above the Gihon spring.

The tsinnor

The word tsinnor ("gutter," "shaft," "conduit," or perhaps a tool or the windpipe) is unclear. Since Charles Warren's discovery in 1867, many linked it to "Warren's Shaft," a vertical shaft above the Gihon spring. Later excavations (Reich and Shukron) showed the shaft is natural and was not usable as a water shaft in the Bronze and early Iron Ages; a Middle Bronze fortified pool and towers protected the spring. Joab's route remains unknown.

The blind and the lame

The verse is obscure in Hebrew, and the Greek and Latin differ. It seems to turn the Jebusites' taunt into a proverb. Later law excluded blemished priests from the sanctuary (Leviticus 21:18); the narrator explains a saying, not endorsing contempt for disabled people. David's later kindness to lame Mephibosheth (chapter 9) stands beside it.

David's palace?

Eilat Mazar (2005–2008) excavated a "Large Stone Structure" at the top of the City of David and identified it as David's palace, built with Phoenician help. Finkelstein, Herzog, Singer-Avitz and Ussishkin dispute its date and unity; Avraham Faust argues it was an important building begun earlier. See the investigation.