Two Celebrations, One Throne

“Stricken in years” is literally “come into days”, said of Abraham (Genesis 24:1) and Joshua (Joshua 23:1) near their ends. David came to the throne at thirty and reigned forty years (2 Samuel 5:4), so he is about seventy. The man who ran at Goliath now cannot keep warm under blankets.

“Cherish” is sokenet, a word for an attendant or steward; a related form names Shebna the treasurer in Isaiah 22:15. “Stand before the king” is court language for serving him. The servants start in the third person, “my lord the king”, and slip into “thy bosom”, speaking to David directly.

A search through all Israel for one young woman recalls the search for a queen in Esther 2:2–3. Shunem lay in Issachar at the edge of the Jezreel valley, where the Philistines camped before Saul’s last battle (1 Samuel 28:4), and where Elisha later lodged with a Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:8).

“Ministered” is sharat, the verb for priestly service and for Joshua’s service to Moses. The verse gives her beauty, her care and her work, and its closing clause, “knew her not”, sets the terms on which her name will matter again.

Adonijah was David’s fourth son, born at Hebron (2 Samuel 3:4). Amnon and Absalom were dead and Chileab is never heard of again, so he was probably the eldest surviving. The Hebrew “I” in “I will be king” is emphatic.

“Displeased” is ’atsav, to pain or grieve; David never once hurt him with a question. “Goodly” is said of Saul (1 Samuel 9:2) and Absalom’s beauty is described at length (2 Samuel 14:25). “Bare him after Absalom” means next in birth order; they had different mothers.

“Conferred with” is literally “his words were with”. Joab had been David’s commander since Hebron, and Abiathar was the only priest who escaped Saul’s massacre at Nob (1 Samuel 22:20). Adonijah has won two of David’s oldest companions.

Shimei and Rei are otherwise unknown; this Shimei is probably not the Benjamite curser, and some identify him with Shimei son of Elah, one of Solomon’s officers (4:18). “The mighty men” are the warriors named in 2 Samuel 23.

“Slew” is zabach, to kill for a sacrificial feast, as Absalom offered sacrifices when he launched his revolt at Hebron (2 Samuel 15:12). Zoheleth may mean “serpent” or “sliding” stone. En-rogel is the spring where David’s messengers once hid from Absalom (2 Samuel 17:17).

The list of the uninvited is also the cast of the next thirty verses: Nathan plans, Benaiah escorts, Solomon rides. Adonijah’s guest list drew the line between the two parties more clearly than any speech.

Bathsheba has not appeared since the birth of Solomon, when Nathan brought the name Jedidiah, “beloved of the LORD” (2 Samuel 12:24–25). The same prophet now comes to her again. “Doth reign” is a completed verb: Adonijah has made himself king.

“Counsel” is ’etsah, the word of Ahithophel and Hushai. New dynasties in Israel often killed the rival house; Baasha and Jehu wiped out their predecessors’ families (1 Kings 15:29; 2 Kings 10). Nathan’s fear for Bathsheba and her son is realistic.

“Sit upon my throne” becomes the chapter’s refrain, recurring about ten times in the mouths of Nathan, Bathsheba, David, Benaiah, Jonathan and the servants. “Assuredly” translates the emphatic particle ki, the tone of a formal oath.

“Confirm” is literally “fill up”, to complete someone’s words. Deuteronomy 19:15 required two witnesses to establish a matter, and Nathan arranges for the king to hear two.

“The chamber” is the inner room. The book repeats that the king was very old, and places Abishag at work in the room: Bathsheba, once the young woman David sent for, enters as another young woman attends him.

Two verbs, bowed and did obeisance, the full prostration of the court. David’s reply is two Hebrew words, literally “what to thee?”, the question of a tired king.

Nathan’s script in verse 13 did not include “by the LORD thy God”. Bathsheba adds it, making the promise an oath sworn in the divine name, and so a matter David cannot set aside without breaking faith with the LORD.

Hebrew “now” (’attah) and “thou” (’attah) sound identical, and many manuscripts read the second as “and thou, my lord the king, knowest it not”. Either way she sets Adonijah’s reign against the king’s ignorance.

Her list includes Abiathar and Joab but not Nathan, Zadok or Benaiah, and she calls her son “Solomon thy servant”, a courtier’s humility on his behalf. The details of the feast, oxen, fatlings and sheep in abundance, are meant to show how public the thing already is.

The eyes of Israel are on David, while David’s own eyes have been closed to what his son is doing. Her request is for a word, spoken publicly, naming the successor.

“Sleep with his fathers” is the formula that closes nearly every reign in Kings; its first use for David is in 2:10. “Offenders” is chatta’im, literally “sinners”, those who have missed the mark, here those treated as guilty by a new regime.

The timing is exactly as Nathan planned in verse 14. The book lets the arrangement show without comment, the prophet’s step landing on the queen’s last word.

Nathan is announced by servants, a formal entrance that makes his visit look like a separate audience. He bows “with his face to the ground”, the fullest court gesture, where Bathsheba’s bow was not described so.

Nathan uses the very words of the oath, “shall reign after me, and he shall sit upon my throne”, with Adonijah’s name in Solomon’s place. David hears his own promise spoken back to him with the wrong son in it.

“Gone down” fits the site; En-rogel lies below the city. “God save king Adonijah” is literally “let king Adonijah live”, the cry Hushai gave Absalom (2 Samuel 16:16). Nathan adds “the captains of the host”, a detail Bathsheba did not have.

“Me, even me thy servant” puts Nathan first on his list of those left out. He does not mention the oath at all; that part belonged to Bathsheba, and the prophet leaves it to her.

Nathan was the prophet who brought David the promise of a lasting house (2 Samuel 7). His question asks whether the king has now decided the matter of that house without telling him. Some manuscripts read “thy servants”, plural, meaning the whole loyal circle.

Bathsheba had evidently withdrawn when Nathan was announced, as court etiquette required, and she is called back. The king now summons, where before he was only visited.

David swore these words once before: “As the LORD liveth, who hath redeemed my soul out of all adversity” to the killers of Ishbosheth (2 Samuel 4:9). The oath of his early reign returns at its end.

“In my stead” is new: Solomon will not only reign after David but sit on the throne in his place now, while David lives. The effect is a co-regency, the living king handing over the seat himself.

“Let my lord king David live for ever” is the formula for addressing a king; Nehemiah uses it to Artaxerxes (Nehemiah 2:3). Spoken to a man at the end of his strength, it is courtesy and also the gratitude of a woman whose son has just been spared.

Priest, prophet and soldier: David summons one man from each of the three institutions that have to agree for a succession to hold. Adonijah had a priest and a general, but no prophet and not the guard.

Gihon was the spring in the Kidron valley below the city of David, its main water source, later channelled by Hezekiah’s tunnel (2 Chronicles 32:30). It lies within earshot of En-rogel, about half a mile down the same valley.

Saul and David were each anointed by a prophet alone, Samuel. Solomon is anointed by a priest and a prophet together. The trumpet is the shofar, the ram’s horn used for proclamations, as when Absalom had himself proclaimed at Hebron (2 Samuel 15:10).

“Ruler” is nagid, the title given to Saul and David when the LORD designated them (1 Samuel 9:16; 2 Samuel 7:8). “Over Israel and over Judah” names both halves of the kingdom separately, the two that had argued over David at the Jordan.

Benaiah commands the guard, so his “Amen” is the assent of the men with weapons in the palace. “Say so too” asks the LORD to speak the same word David has just spoken, making the king’s decree a thing to be ratified above.

“The LORD was with him” is the Books of Samuel’s summary of David’s rise (1 Samuel 16:18; 18:14). Benaiah asks that the phrase pass to the son, and then goes further: a greater throne.

The procession “went down” to Gihon and will “come up” again to the palace (verses 35 and 40). The topography carries the ceremony: down to the spring for the anointing, up to the throne for the seating.

The tabernacle here is the tent David pitched for the ark (2 Samuel 6:17), and the oil is presumably the holy anointing oil of Exodus 30:25. Samuel anointed David from a horn (1 Samuel 16:13) but Saul from a vial (1 Samuel 10:1); Solomon gets the horn.

“Pipes” are the chalil, a reed flute of festival and of prophetic bands; the prophets Saul met came down “with a psaltery, and a tabret, and a pipe” (1 Samuel 10:5). The sound carries down the Kidron valley to the other feast.

The guests hear it at the end of the meal, full and relaxed. Joab, the old soldier, picks out the shofar from the roar of the city before anyone else does. “Uproar” is a word for the roaring of a crowd or of the sea.

Jonathan son of Abiathar waited at this same spring, En-rogel, to carry news to David in Absalom’s revolt (2 Samuel 17:17). He is the messenger again, at the same spot, this time for the other side. “Valiant man” is ish chayil, a man of worth.

“Verily” translates aval, “no, but” or “on the contrary”; Jonathan’s first word cancels Adonijah’s hope before the sentence is out. He still calls David “our lord”, which tells the table where authority lies.

Adonijah had fifty men to run before him (verse 5). Solomon rode escorted by the Cherethites and Pelethites, the professional royal guard. Jonathan names them in his report because at this table the guard is what counts.

“Rang again” meant echoed in 1611, the sound bouncing back. Jonathan ends by pointing at the sound itself, “this is the noise that ye have heard”, the answer to Joab’s question of verse 41.

Jonathan’s report builds by piling up “and also” in Hebrew, gam, here and again at the start of verses 47 and 48, each addition worse for the listeners. The throne is already occupied.

The servants outbid Benaiah’s blessing, asking a better name as well as a greater throne. David bowing on his bed recalls Jacob, who at the end of his life “bowed himself upon the bed’s head” (Genesis 47:31).

“Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, which hath given” will return twice in this lane’s chapters, from Hiram, who blesses the LORD for giving David a wise son (5:7), and from Solomon at the temple’s dedication (8:15). David is the first to say it over Solomon.

“Afraid” is charad, to tremble violently, the word for Isaac trembling when he realised the blessing had gone to the other son (Genesis 27:33). The guests rise from the table and leave without a word.

The horns were the projecting corners of the altar, smeared with sacrificial blood (Exodus 29:12). Exodus 21:13–14 grants refuge at the altar for an unintended killing but allows a deliberate murderer to be taken from it; the question of which Adonijah is will not be settled today.

Adonijah asks for what this whole chapter has turned on, an oath, and he calls himself Solomon’s “servant” within a day of saying “I will be king”. “With the sword” will return when David speaks of Shimei (2:8).

“Not an hair... fall to the earth” was the people’s oath saving Jonathan from Saul (1 Samuel 14:45) and David’s promise to the woman of Tekoa about her son (2 Samuel 14:11). “A worthy man” is ben chayil, the same worth Adonijah credited Jonathan with in verse 42.

“Go to thine house” is a dismissal with limits, not a restoration to favour. David dealt with Absalom the same way: “let him turn to his own house, and let him not see my face” (2 Samuel 14:24).