Gary Rendsburg noted that Genesis often repeats the motif of the younger son. God favored Abel over Cain in ; Isaac superseded Ishmael in ; Jacob superseded Esau in ; Judah (fourth among Jacob’s sons, last of the original set born to Leah) and Joseph (eleventh in line) superseded their older brothers in ; Perez superseded Zerah in and ; and Ephraim superseded Manasseh in . Rendsburg explained Genesis’s interest with this motif by recalling that David was the youngest of Jesse’s seven sons (see ), and Solomon was among the youngest, if not the youngest, of David’s sons (see ). The issue of who among David’s many sons would succeed him dominates the Succession Narrative in through . Amnon was the firstborn, but was killed by his brother Absalom (David’s third son) in . After Absalom rebelled, David’s general Joab killed him in . The two remaining candidates were Adonijah (David’s fourth son) and Solomon, and although Adonijah was older (and once claimed the throne when David was old and feeble in ), Solomon won out. Rendsburg argued that even though firstborn royal succession was the norm in the ancient Near East, the authors of Genesis justified Solomonic rule by imbedding the notion of ultimogeniture into Genesis’s national epic. An Israelite could thus not criticize David’s selection of Solomon to succeed him as king over Israel, because Genesis reported that God had favored younger sons since Abel and blessed younger sons of Israel — Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Joseph, Perez, and Ephraim — since the inception of the covenant. More generally, Rendsburg concluded that royal scribes living in Jerusalem during the reigns of David and Solomon in the tenth century BCE were responsible for Genesis; their ultimate goal was to justify the monarchy in general, and the kingship of David and Solomon in particular; and Genesis thus appears as a piece of political propaganda.