THIS MIGHT SURPRISE YOU
The answer
Seven years and six months. "The time that David was king in Hebron over the house of Judah was seven years and six months" (2 Samuel 2:11). In those years Abner made Saul's son Ishbaal king over the northern tribes, and "there was a long war between the house of Saul and the house of David" (3:1). Only after Ishbaal's death did all the tribes come to Hebron and anoint David king over Israel (5:1-3).
Why it’s interesting
The forty-year reign of 2 Samuel 5:4 splits into those seven and a half years at Hebron and thirty-three in Jerusalem (5:5). The note in the New Oxford Annotated Bible reads the long war as a sign that Saul's family had more support than 1 Samuel's unflattering picture of him suggests. Forty years is also a round number, the length of a generation.
Scholarly consensus
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