The main outcome of the reign of David and Solomon was the unification of Judea and Israel into a single centralized state, which, however, was not monolithic. The early state in Israel was characterized by the concentration of a strong central authority in Jerusalem. In this regard, the personal qualities of the king and his ability to maintain a balance of power and often opposing interests of different tribes and social groups were important in political life. Under David, the kinship of the gentile nobility and the service nobility began to converge in a single state socio-political structure, which included the army, the administrative apparatus and the clergy. The development of statehood during the reign of David and Solomon followed the path of creating a centralized Ancient Eastern state in ancient Israel. This was actively resisted by the traditional structures and social groups of ancient Israeli society: part of the gentile nobility and clergy, ordinary peasants who were dissatisfied with the performance of labor service (mas) on royal construction works, which was expressed in the uprisings of Absalom, Sheba (under David), Jeroboam (under Solomon).
Keywords: early state, David, Solomon, labor service, district system, governors.
The question of the degree of socio-political development of ancient Israeli state institutions during the reign of David and Solomon causes a special controversy among foreign scientists and is currently an urgent problem for historians of the ancient Near East. Foreign researchers who wrote before the second half of the eighties of the XX century, - U. Albright, D. Wright, D. Bright, M. Noth, and J. Aharoni-based their research on biblical traditions (Albright, 1963; Wright, 2003; Bright, 1981; Noth, 1960; Aharoni, 1979). However, the second half of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties of the XX century was marked by the emergence of biblical minimalism (J. Garbini and T. L. Thompson [Garbini, 2003, p. 130; Thompson, ...
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