You might have seen a pain scale in your doctor's office before. One common type shows a series of numbered cartoon faces moving from 0 (smiling and pain-free) to 10 (weeping in agony.) A doctor would ask a person in pain which face matched up with what they were feeling. They might seem simple.
In our day this might be more than one. For Israelite King Echov, one particular foreign wife, Isabel, was one too many. King David is said to have had eighteen wives and concubines, seven mentioned by name in the OT and the others mentioned in the oral tradition.
Even when King Saul died, David didn't immediately take his throne. David became king of his own tribe, Judah, while Saul's son Ishbosheth ruled the rest of the nation. Finally, Ishbosheth died, and David was invited to be king of all Israel.here at Hebron, the local leaders of the tribe of Judah agreed to make David their king. The other eleven tribes of Israel, however, followed Saul's right hand man Abner, who made Saul's son Ishbosheth their king. And so Israel was divided for seven and a half years.