Saul was [?] years old when he began to reign, and for two years he reigned over Israel (1 Samuel 13:1)
… And now your kingdom will not last. Jehovah will certainly find for himself a man agreeable to his heart; and Jehovah will commission him as a leader over his people, because you did not keep what Jehovah commanded you." (1 Samuel 13:14).
Forty years old Ish-bosheth, Saul's son, was when he became king over Israel, and for two years he ruled as king. Only the house of Judah proved themselves followers of David (2 Samuel 2:10).
And the number of the days that David proved to be king in Hebron over the house of Judah came to be seven years and six months (2 Samuel 2:11).
Thirty years old was David when he became king. For forty years he ruled as king. In Hebron he ruled as king over Judah for seven years and six months; and in Jerusalem he ruled as king for thirty-three years over all Israel and Judah (2 Samuel 5:4,5).
And the days that David had reigned over Israel were forty years. In Hebron he had reigned seven years, and in Jerusalem he had reigned thirty-three years (1 Kings 2:11).
And David himself had grown old and satisfied with days, and so he made Solomon his son king over Israel (1 Chronicles 23:1).
And they continued eating and drinking before Jehovah on that day with great rejoicing; and they proceeded a second time to make Solomon the son of David king and to anoint him to Jehovah as leader and also Zadok as priest. And Solomon began to sit upon Jehovah's throne as king in place of David his father and to make a success of it, and all the Israelites were obedient to him (1 Chronicles 29:22,23).
The first time Solomon was made king was his inferior coregency with David, the second time must therefore be a full coregency.
And the days that Solomon had reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel were 40 years (1 Kings 11:42).
But from then on they demanded a king and God gave them Saul, son of Kish, a man from the tribe of Benjamin, for 40 years (Acts 13:21).
From 2 Samuel 2 it is apparent that David became king over Judah in Hebron and Ishbosheth became king over Israel a matter of days after Saul’s death.
| Accession | 1st regnal year | Last regnal year | |
| Saul | 1116 | 1115 | 1076 |
| David | 1076 | 1075 | 1036 |
| Solomon | 1037 | 1036 | 997 |
We take the coregency to be 1 year only so that there are 509 years from Saul’s accession in 1116 to the fall of the kingdom in 607. This being the number of days that Jerusalem was besieged before the wall was broken through.
And it came about in the 9th year of his being king in the 10th month on the 10th day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon came, yes he and all his military force, against Jerusalem, and began camping against it and building a siege wall all around. And the city came to be under siege until the 11th year of king Zedekiah (2 Kings 25:1,2)
In the 4th month on the 9th day of the month, the famine also got to be severe in the city and there proved to be no bread for the people of the land. Finally the city was broken through (Jeremiah 52:6,7)
On the 9th day of the month, the famine was severe in the city and there proved to be no bread for the people of the land. And the city got to be breached, and all the men of was fled by night (2 Kings 25:3,4)
And in the 5th month on the 7th day of the month, that is to say the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. Nebuzaradan, the chief of the bodyguard, the servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem, and he proceeded to burn the house of Jehovah and the kings house (2 Kings 25:8,9).
So the siege started on 588Tebbeth10 and ended on 586Tammuz9 (586 was the 19th of Nebuchadnezzar). It therefore lasted 509 days.
We can deduce that Solomon’s last regnal year was 997 by counting backwards through all of the reigns of the Kings 274 years, from the fall of Samaria, known to be in the year 723N to 722N, which was the 9th of Hoshea of Israel. We can also deduce it by counting backwards 390 years from the fall of the Kingdom at the accession of Jehoiakim in 607. Knowing that Solomon reigned for 40 years we know that his 4th year was 1033.
And it came about in the 480th year after the sons of Israel came out from the land of Egypt, in the 4th year, in the month of Ziv, that is the 2nd month, after Solomon became king over Israel, that he proceeded to build the house to Jehovah (1 Kings 6:1).
So the first year after they came out was 1512, so they came out in 1513. But we read in Exodus:
And the dwelling of the sons of Israel who had dwelt in Egypt was 430 years. And it came about at the end of the 430 years, it even came about on this very day, that all the armies of Jehovah went out of the land of Egypt (Exodus 12:40,41).
Now the sons of Israel cannot have dwelt in the land of Egypt for 430 years because Israel himself wasn’t born until 1858 (see [101]). However the armies of Jehovah could have dwelt there for 430 years since they existed for that length of time. In fact they began with an exodus from Haran in Mesopotamia, since his promise was to make Abraham into a great Nation, or large army one might say. So the 430 year period, in the literal meaning, is the time from the commencement of the army of Jehovah, which was the inauguration of the first Abrahamic covenant:
I shall make a great nation out of you (Genesis 12:2)
to the exodus on 1513Nisan14. So this covenant was inaugurated in 1943Nisan, at which time Abraham was ‘dwelling in Egypt’, in some sense. But that is only the literal meaning, and Moses himself was using ‘sons of Israel’ to mean the same with their forefathers in this meaning. But the 430 year period and the end of the 430 year time period are both mentioned twice in the scripture, so they are not invariant in the symbolic or prophetic meaning. So there is a further period of 430 years being referred to here. To get this period we realise that the holy spirit inspired Moses to word things saying that the sons of Israel who had dwelt in Egypt would experience a 430 year dwelling period. So truly they really do experience a 430 year period themselves which must start from the exodus, and end with a further exodus from a ‘dwelling’ in a greater Egypt. This Egypt is simply a political ruling of the area by Egypt, as it was in the case of Abraham’s crossing of the Euphrates.
This ends in 1083Nisan, 7 years before the accession of David. But when David was anointed by Samuel we read:
So Jesse had 7 of his sons pass before Samuel, still Samuel said to Jesse: Jehovah has not chosen these (1 Samuel 16:10).
As in the case of Pharaoh’s dream respecting 7 cows, we take these 7 sons as 7 years, for 7 is temporal and therefore successive in the holy book. So we have 7 years passing before Samuel without a son being anointed, then finally David is anointed. What does this mean? Or as God asks the question:
For how long will you be mourning for Saul, while I, on the other hand, have rejected him from ruling as king over Israel (1 Samuel 16:1) ?
Answer: 7 years. Then we read:
Then the men of Judah came and anointed David there as king over the house of Judah (2 Samuel 2:4).
Saul was rejected by God from ruling as king for the last 7 years of his reign. During this period of 7 times, the Jews had no king, since they had rejected God and God had rejected Saul:
It is not you whom they have rejected, but it is I whom they have rejected from being king over them (1 Samuel 8:7).
So this period of 7 years was rather like the Gentile Times, it was a kingship malediction. And David lived like a wild beast during his seven times of exile, hiding in caves and living in the open as a fugitive. Whereas we read of Nebuchadnezzar:
And you they will be driving away from men, and with the beasts of the field your dwelling will come to be...and seven times themselves will pass over you, until you know that the Most High is ruler in the kingdom of mankind, and that to the one he wants he gives it (Dan 4:25).
The first thing that the bible records David doing after his anointing by Samuel as King is fighting Goliath. He said to him:
You are coming to me with a spear and with a Javelin, but I am coming to you with the name of Jehovah of armies, the God of the battle lines of Israel, whom you have taunted (1 Samuel 17:45).
Later we read:
So that Saul placed him over the men of war, and it seemed good in the eyes of all the people, and also in the eyes of the servants of Saul (1 Samuel 18:5).
The bible and ancient History show us that even though the sons of Israel conquered most of the holy land and settled it under Joshua, Israel kept falling to the peoples around about who were generally under the power of the world superpower of the Egyptians up until King David. In particular, the Philistines would have been in submission in some way to the Egyptians at the time of Goliath. So when David saved Israel from the Philistines, he was saving them actually from the Egyptians. So this salvation could also be regarded as all of the armies of Jehovah coming out of Egypt at the end of 430 years.
So we take this appointment, this anointing as occurring 430 years after 1513 i.e. in 1083. Now Samuel conducted a sacrifice for the whole of Jesse’s family when he anointed David, for which the whole family had to be sanctified (1 Samuel 16). This must have been the Passover, for David prefigured Jesus, the greatest Passover sacrifice. So we have David anointed on 1083Nisan14.