A King Established Through Other People's Courage

2 Samuel 2–4 puts seven and a half years between Saul’s death and this gathering, with David ruling Judah alone at Hebron and a long war against Saul’s house. Chronicles leaves all of that out and goes straight from Gilboa to the whole nation at Hebron. “Bone and flesh” is the kinship claim Laban made to Jacob (Genesis 29:14).

“Leddest out and broughtest in” is the phrase Moses used asking for a successor, so that Israel would not be “as sheep which have no shepherd” (Numbers 27:17). 1 Samuel 18:16 says all Israel loved David because “he went out and came in before them”. The elders are quoting a record of service.

This is David’s third anointing: by Samuel in his father’s house (1 Samuel 16:13), by the men of Judah at Hebron (2 Samuel 2:4), and now by all Israel. “According to the word of the LORD by Samuel” is Chronicles’ own addition to 2 Samuel 5:3, tying the ceremony back to the prophet.

“Jebus” as a name for the city occurs only here and in Judges 19:10–11; letters from the fourteenth century BC found at Amarna already call it Urusalim. 2 Samuel 5:6 says “the king and his men” went; Chronicles says “David and all Israel”, making the capture of the capital an act of the whole nation.

Chronicles drops the Jebusites’ taunt about the blind and the lame and the water shaft David’s men climbed (2 Samuel 5:6–8). “Castle” is metsudah, a fortress. This is the first mention of Zion in Chronicles, a name that at first meant only this fortified ridge.

2 Samuel 5 never says how Joab won command of the army; Chronicles supplies it here. Joab is, as usual, called “the son of Zeruiah”, named from his mother, who was David’s sister (2:16). The king’s nephew earns the post by leading the assault.

The city of David was a narrow ridge of roughly a dozen acres running south from where the temple would stand, with steep valleys on three sides. Naming a conquered city after the conqueror made it the king’s own possession, outside any tribe’s land.

Millo means “the filling”, probably an earthwork or terraced platform. Solomon built it again (1 Kings 9:15) and Hezekiah repaired it (2 Chronicles 32:5). “Repaired” is literally “made to live”: Joab brought the rest of the city back to life.

“Waxed greater and greater” is the Hebrew idiom of going on and growing, used of Isaac who “went forward, and grew until he became very great” (Genesis 26:13). The LORD of hosts, the God of armies, is the title first heard at Shiloh (1 Samuel 1:3), and this is its first appearance in Chronicles.

In 2 Samuel the list of David’s heroes is tucked into an appendix near the end of his reign (2 Samuel 23:8–39). Chronicles moves it to the beginning, next to his coronation, and adds that it was “according to the word of the LORD”. “Strengthened themselves” is chazaq, the verb inside Hezekiah’s name.

2 Samuel 23:8 gives this man’s feat as eight hundred slain; Chronicles has three hundred. His title in the Hebrew wavers between “the thirty” and “the three”, and it may be shalishim, a word for senior officers. 27:2 puts a Jashobeam over the first monthly division of the army.

Eleazar is “one of the three mighties”, yet only two of the Three are named in this chapter. The third, Shammah, is missing, and the reason appears two verses on. Eleazar’s father Dodo has a name that means beloved, from the same root as David’s.

Pas-dammim is Ephes-dammim, “boundary of blood”, where the Philistines camped when Goliath came out (1 Samuel 17:1). Barley was the first grain harvested in spring. The people fleeing from the field meant losing the crop they needed to live on.

In 2 Samuel 23:9–12, Eleazar fights till his hand cleaves to his sword, and a separate man, Shammah, holds a field of lentils. Chronicles has only one field. A copyist’s eye seems to have jumped from one “the Philistines were gathered” to the next, merging two feats and losing Shammah’s name.

Adullam is the cave where David hid from Saul and four hundred men in distress, debt and discontent gathered to him (1 Samuel 22:1–2). The valley of Rephaim, south-west of Jerusalem, is where he beat the Philistines twice (14:9–16). 2 Samuel 23:13 dates this “in the harvest time”.

“The hold” is the same word as “castle” in verse 5, metsudah, but here it is a hiding place, not a captured city. The Philistine garrison sat in Bethlehem, David’s own birthplace, so the enemy occupied the town where he grew up.

“Longed” is hit’avah, craving, the word Numbers 11:4 uses when the people “fell a lusting” for meat in the wilderness. The well is a cistern by the town gate, water David drank as a boy. He speaks a wish aloud, not an order.

“Poured it out” is nasakh, the verb of the drink offering, a libation poured before God, as Israel drew water and poured it out at Mizpah (1 Samuel 7:6). “Brake through” is baqa, to split open, the word used for cleaving the Red Sea (Exodus 14:16).

The Law forbade drinking blood because “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11), and blood was to be poured out on the ground. David applies that rule to water bought with men’s lives. “With the jeopardy of their lives” is literally “with their souls”.

Abishai, Joab’s brother, is the man who offered to pin the sleeping Saul to the ground with a spear (1 Samuel 26:8) and to take Shimei’s head (2 Samuel 16:9). The Syriac reads “thirty” where the Hebrew has “three”, a confusion that runs through this passage.

The Hebrew says he was honoured “among the three, doubly”, a phrase that has never been settled. Abishai also saved David’s life when the giant Ishbi-benob nearly killed him (2 Samuel 21:16–17). He led a group but was not one of the first Three.

Kabzeel lay in the far south of Judah near Edom (Joshua 15:21). “Two lionlike men” translates the obscure ariel, “lion of God”, which may mean two champions, or two sons of a Moabite called Ariel; the Greek says “two sons of Ariel”. What Benaiah actually killed is not certain.

Five cubits is about seven and a half feet. 2 Samuel 23:21 gives no height; Chronicles supplies it, and the “spear like a weaver’s beam” is the phrase used of Goliath’s spear (1 Samuel 17:7). Killing the giant with his own weapon repeats what David did with Goliath’s sword (1 Samuel 17:51).

Benaiah’s father Jehoiada is called “a chief priest” in 27:5, so this fighter came from a priestly family. “Had the name” means a reputation, the Hebrew shem, which is the word the whole list is built on, men of a name.

2 Samuel 8:18 puts Benaiah over the Cherethites and Pelethites, foreign guards probably from Crete and Philistia. At Solomon’s order he later killed Joab at the altar and took his place over the army (1 Kings 2:34–35). The king’s bodyguard captain became his executioner.

Asahel, “light of foot as a wild roe”, was killed by Abner before David ruled all Israel (2 Samuel 2:18–23), yet he heads the Thirty. The roll includes men who died early. This Elhanan son of Dodo is a different man from Elhanan son of Jair, who killed Goliath’s brother (20:5).

Harod is the spring where Gideon picked his three hundred by how they drank (Judges 7:1–7), and 2 Samuel 23:25 calls this man the Harodite. Helez commands the seventh month’s division of twenty four thousand in 27:10. The Thirty became the officers of the standing army.

Ira leads the sixth month’s division (27:9) and Abi-ezer the ninth (27:12). Tekoa and Anathoth lie south and north of Jerusalem, one in Judah and one in Benjamin. A man from each comes from towns later known for the prophets Amos and Jeremiah.

Sibbecai killed the giant Sippai, one of the sons of the giant, in a battle at Gezer (20:4), and commands the eighth month in 27:11. 2 Samuel 23:28 has Zalmon where Chronicles has Ilai, a different name in the same slot.

Maharai commands the tenth month (27:13), and Heldai the Netophathite, “of Othniel”, the twelfth (27:15), probably this Heled. Two men from one small village near Bethlehem among David’s thirty is an indication of how local his first following was.

Gibeah was Saul’s own town, and Ithai is marked with care as a Benjamite from it. A man from Saul’s home city stands among David’s heroes. Benaiah the Pirathonite, from Ephraim, commands the eleventh month (27:14) and is a different man from Jehoiada’s son.

The brooks of Gaash run below the hill of Gaash in Ephraim, near where Joshua was buried (Joshua 24:30). Abiel is Abi-albon in 2 Samuel 23:31; the Arbathite came from Beth-arabah in the Jordan valley, near the desert.

Bahurim is the village where Shimei cursed and stoned David as he fled (2 Samuel 16:5), and where Jonathan and Ahimaaz hid in a well (2 Samuel 17:18). Shaalbim was a Danite town the Amorites held until Joseph’s house subdued them (Judges 1:35).

2 Samuel 23:32 has “of the sons of Jashen, Jonathan”, and the “sons of” may be a copying slip. Hararite probably means mountaineer, a man from the hill country. 2 Samuel’s next line names Shammah the Hararite, apparently the Shage here, making Jonathan his son.

Ahiam’s father is Sharar in 2 Samuel 23:33, not Sacar. For Eliphal son of Ur, 2 Samuel 23:34 has “Eliphelet the son of Ahasbai, the son of the Maachathite”. From here on the two versions of the list diverge more and more.

In the matching place 2 Samuel 23:34 names “Eliam the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite”. Eliam was Bathsheba’s father (2 Samuel 11:3), and Ahithophel was David’s counsellor who went over to Absalom. Neither name appears in Chronicles’ version of this line.

Carmel here is the town in the hill country of Judah, home of Nabal and Abigail (1 Samuel 25:2), not the northern mountain. 2 Samuel 23:35 gives Paarai the Arbite for Naarai son of Ezbai, the two names differing by a letter or two.

2 Samuel 23:36 has “Igal the son of Nathan of Zobah” here. Haggeri means the Hagrite, of the desert people the eastern tribes fought in 5:10 and 5:19. A man from a people Israel had defeated serves among David’s thirty.

Naharai came from Beeroth, one of the four Gibeonite towns that tricked Joshua (Joshua 9:17). The two captains who murdered Saul’s son Ish-bosheth were also Beerothites (2 Samuel 4:2). This one carried Joab’s weapons, a post of trust at the general’s side.

The Ithrites were one of the families of Kirjath-jearim (2:53), the town where the ark stayed for twenty years before David fetched it. Two men of that family are listed together, from the town whose ark David will go to bring up in chapter 13.

2 Samuel 23:39 ends its roll with Uriah the Hittite, “thirty and seven in all”. Chronicles carries on past him with sixteen more names found nowhere else. Zabad son of Ahlai may belong to the family of Sheshan in 2:31–36, where both names occur, though that is an inference.

From here the names turn east of the Jordan: a Reubenite, men of Ashtaroth and Aroer, a Moabite. Adina brought “thirty with him”, a band of his own. These look like leaders who joined David from the eastern tribes with their followers.

Maachah may be Hanan’s mother, in which case he is named after her as Joab and Abishai are named after Zeruiah. It may also mark a link with the Aramean kingdom of Maachah. Joshaphat the Mithnite comes from a place otherwise unknown.

Ashtaroth, in Bashan, is the old city where Chedorlaomer defeated the Rephaim in Genesis 14:5. Shama and Jehiel are brothers from Aroer, on the Arnon, the southern edge of Israelite land east of the Jordan. Pairs of brothers recur through the list.

The Tizite is a gentilic found nowhere else, from a town that has left no other trace. Jediael and Joha fought together as brothers, as did Joab, Abishai and Asahel. The unknown place is recorded because it identifies the men.

Ithmah the Moabite comes from the people Deuteronomy 23:3 barred from the assembly, yet David’s great-grandmother Ruth was a Moabite, and he once lodged his parents with the king of Moab (1 Samuel 22:3–4). Mahavite is otherwise unknown. Jeribai and Joshaviah are another pair of brothers.

Mesobaite may mean “from Zobah”, the Aramean kingdom David will defeat in 18:3. Obed carries the name of David’s grandfather. The roll ends without a total, unlike 2 Samuel’s thirty and seven, and simply stops.