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Jerusalem’s Origins

We know that from the beginning when Abraham, Isaac and Jacob entered and dwelt in Canaan, Jerusalem did not feature on their religious map. It was other places such as Bethel that became important places where the presence of God was felt, be it in a dream with angels and a ladder, or in other ways (Genesis 18). Jerusalem instead was a small town fortunate to make its living off the trade routes that passed east and west, and north and south through the town. She was established and lived as a Canaanite city.

The bible mentions that for a brief time there was some healthy connection with this city and Abraham- through his meeting with Malchizedek the king of Salem (Jerusalem) (Genesis 14:18-20). Later however, in the period of Joshua and the Judges we see that Jerusalem was an inhospitable place, one that Israelites feared to lodge in at nights (Judges 19:10-12). This status of Jerusalem continued only until David attacked the stronghold and made it his own. The beginning of Jerusalem’s sanctification began with David.

Jerusalem As Capital

David a man of Judah ruled his growing kingdom from his tribal city of Hebron. In many regards this was a disadvantage to the king who increasingly wanted to unite the tribes that lay spread out between the Mediterranean and east across the Jordan river; the tribes of Israel. For this reason and others, he turned Jerusalem a city that did not belong to Judah, and had no historical connections with any of the tribes, into their new capital. So now when coming to visit the king one did not have to enter the heartland of Judah, but rather instead go up to Jerusalem a place that now represented all the tribes. David wanted everyone to know that his kingdom was not a kingdom for Judah, but one for Israel.

Jerusalem As a Holy Center

Making Jerusalem historically relevant to the people of Israel was relatively easy when he gave it the status of capital for his new kingdom- however making it religiously significant was a more difficult matter. To rectify this spiritual void that Jerusalem represented he decided to introduce to the city the symbol of the presence of God, the ark, that had almost been left forgotten at Kiriath-jearim (1 Sam 7:1-2). He organized a welcoming ceremony and procession to accept the ark into Jerusalem where he erected a tent to cover it and made plans to build a permanent structure to house the presence of Yahweh. It was this move that immediately put Jerusalem on the religious map for all the Israelites.

Even when the kingdom split in the time of David’s grandson we see that Jerusalem had become a site of great veneration. The northern kingdom thus decided to establish their own religious sites such as Bethel, to distance them from the power that the religious center of Jerusalem had over the hearts of all the Israelites.

However Jerusalem’s identity as the invincible stronghold of the Lord was truly forged many centuries later when she withstood and survived a terrible siege from the Assyrian king Sennacherib in 701 BCE (2 Kings 18). This event cannot be underestimated. Not only did it launch Jerusalem into the status of a safe haven, but she also became a symbol of God’s salvation and his protective presence in the city. The theological ramifications of this historical event and the people’s spiritual reaction and interpretation of it, only helped further to fix Jerusalem’s character as the religious center for the people of Israel, a process that David had began many centuries earlier.

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