Yesterday, Eilat Mazar, a leading Israeli archaeologist who pioneered the excavation of ancient Jerusalem, died at the age of sixty-four. The granddaughter of Benjamin Mazar—who along with the soldier-scholar Yigael Yadin helped to establish the field of Israeli archaeology—she has done perhaps more than anyone to show how ancient structures and artifacts fit into the biblical narrative. Mazar was most recently engaged in the excavation of a royal complex south of the Temple Mount where, in 2018, she identified an ancient clay seal that may have belonged to the prophet Isaiah. But her most famous, and perhaps most controversial, finding was the ruins of building she believed was likely King David’s palace. She described how she came to this discovery in a 2006 essay:

There can be little doubt that King David had a palace. The Bible tells us that Hiram of Tyre (who would later help King Solomon build the Temple) constructed the palace for David: “King Hiram of Tyre sent envoys to David, with cedar logs, carpenters and stonemasons; and they built a palace for David” (2Samuel 5:11). Nine years ago [i.e., in 1997], I wrote an article . . . suggesting [that] the remains of King David’s palace might lie . . . in the northern part of the most ancient area of Jerusalem, known as the City of David.

I was struck by this idea while engaged in other research on the archaeology of Jerusalem. I had noticed the findings of the well-known British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, who dug here in the 1960s. In [what she termed] Area H, at the northern end of the City of David, Kenyon discovered a section of a massive public structure that she considered to be part of a new casemate wall built by King Solomon. She dated the wall, on the basis of the pottery associated with it, to the 10th century BCE, the time of King David and King Solomon, according to the Bible. . . . Perhaps this casemate wall, I speculated, was part of David’s palace.

Aside from the archeological discoveries there, the site fit quite well with . . . 2Samuel 5:17, which describes David in the City of David going down, or descending from his residence to the citadel or fortress (m’tsudah). The citadel or fortress to which he descended was of course the Jebusite stronghold, the “Fortress of Zion” that he had conquered a short time earlier.

It is clear from the topography of the City of David that David could have gone down to the citadel only from the north, as the city is surrounded by deep valleys on every other side. It also makes sense that the Jebusite stronghold would have been located at the high point in the City of David, that is, in its northernmost section. . . . If this was in fact the case, one can infer that after conquering the city, David’s palace was constructed north of this citadel (David went down to the fortress) and outside the northern fortifications of the city.

With this hypothesis in mind, Mazar set out to excavate the area, and found remains that, as she put it, “square perfectly with the biblical description” of David’s palace.

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].