Ammonites

97:9.14Af­ter the de­feat of the Phil­is­tines, David gained pos­ses­sion of the “ark of Yah­weh,” brought it to Je­ru­sa­lem, and made the wor­ship of Yah­weh of­fi­cial for his king­dom. He next laid heavy trib­ute on the neigh­bor­ing tribes—the Edom­ites, Moabites, Am­monites, and Syr­i­ans.

97:9.3Pre­ten­tious He­brew his­tory be­gins with Saul’s ral­ly­ing the north­ern clans to with­stand an at­tack by the Am­monites upon their fel­low tribes­men—the Gilea­dites—east of the Jor­dan. With an army of a lit­tle more than three thou­sand he de­feated the en­emy, and it was this ex­ploit that led the hill tribes to make him king. When the ex­iled priests rewrote this story, they raised Saul’s army to 330,000 and added “Ju­dah” to the list of tribes par­tic­i­pat­ing in the bat­tle.

97:9.4Im­me­di­ately fol­low­ing the de­feat of the Am­monites, Saul was made king by pop­u­lar elec­tion by his troops. No priest or prophet par­tic­i­pated in this af­fair. But the priests later on put it in the rec­ord that Saul was crowned king by the prophet Samuel in ac­cor­dance with di­vine di­rec­tions. This they did in or­der to es­tab­lish a “di­vine line of de­scent” for David’s Ju­dahite king­ship.

97:9.5The great­est of all dis­tor­tions of Jew­ish his­tory had to do with David. Af­ter Saul’s vic­tory over the Am­monites (which he as­cribed to Yah­weh) the Phil­is­tines be­came alarmed and be­gan at­tacks on the north­ern clans. David and Saul never could agree. David with six hun­dred men en­tered into a Phil­is­tine al­liance and marched up the coast to Es­draelon. At Gath the Phil­is­tines or­dered David off the field; they feared he might go over to Saul. David re­tired; the Phil­is­tines at­tacked and de­feated Saul. They could not have done this had David been loyal to Is­rael. David’s army was a poly­glot as­sort­ment of mal­con­tents, be­ing for the most part made up of so­cial mis­fits and fugi­tives from jus­tice.