According to the Bible, King David was he strongest king in all Israelite history. Not only did he finally capture the city of Jerusalem, which had held out against the Israelites for four centuries, but he drove back the Philistines and extended his empire far to the north and all the way to the Euphrates River.
Archaeologists and biblical scholars now see the real David as more likely a local tribal chieftain, and the extensive conquests as belonging to a brief period under Kings Omri and Ahab in the ninth century. Carol Meyers (
The Oxford History of the Biblical World, Kinship and Kingship: The Early Monarchy) says that Saul, David, and Solomon all provided leadership above the kinship level, although whether all unequivocally qualify as kings of a national state is debated. She says that after more than a century and a half of archaeological excavation of Jerusalem, virtually no structural remains of the tenth century can be identified securely.