An Established Kingdom and Unfinished Accounts

“Charged” is tsavah, to command. A father’s deathbed charge has precedents: Jacob “made an end of commanding his sons” before he died (Genesis 49:33), and Moses charged Joshua before the people (Deuteronomy 31:7).

“The way of all the earth” is Joshua’s own phrase for his death (Joshua 23:14). “Be thou strong” repeats the charge given Joshua over and over (Joshua 1:6–9). “Shew thyself a man” is simply “be a man”, what the frightened Philistines told each other before fighting Israel (1 Samuel 4:9).

Statutes, commandments, judgments, testimonies: four of Deuteronomy’s words for the law in one breath. “That thou mayest prosper... whithersoever thou turnest” echoes the LORD’s charge to Joshua, “that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest” (Joshua 1:7).

The promise in 2 Samuel 7 had no “if” attached to the throne. The conditional form David quotes here appears in Psalm 132:12: “If thy children will keep my covenant... their children shall also sit upon thy throne.” The parenthesis “(said he)” marks a quotation within a quotation.

The belt and the shoes are literal. Joab killed Amasa with a sword that dropped from the girdle at his waist (2 Samuel 20:8–10), so the blood ran down over belt and sandals. David includes himself among the injured: “what Joab... did to me”.

“Hoar head” means grey hair. The phrase echoes Jacob’s fear that his sons would “bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave” (Genesis 42:38). “The grave” is Sheol, and “in peace” means a natural death in old age.

“Shew kindness” is chesed, loyalty repaid in kind. “They came to me” is literally “they drew near to me”, in the days when drawing near to David was dangerous. Barzillai himself declined a place at the table (2 Samuel 19:34–37); his sons receive it.

“Grievous” translates a rare word meaning sharp or painful, a curse that stings. David lays out the route of the flight, Bahurim, Mahanaim, the Jordan, as though walking Solomon over the ground. “Thou hast with thee” means Shimei lives close by, within reach of the court.

“Hold him not guiltless” uses naqah, the verb of the third commandment: the LORD “will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain” (Exodus 20:7). Cursing the ruler was itself forbidden (Exodus 22:28). David’s oath bound David; he leaves the man to his son’s judgment.

The city of David was the old Jebusite stronghold of Zion (2 Samuel 5:7–9). His tomb was still known a thousand years later: Peter tells the crowd at Pentecost that “his sepulchre is with us unto this day” (Acts 2:29).

2 Samuel 5:5 gives the Hebron reign more exactly as seven years and six months; here it is rounded. Forty years matches the reigns of Saul (Acts 13:21) and of Solomon (11:42), a round generation for each.

“Established” is kun, the verb of Nathan’s promise: “I will establish his kingdom... I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever” (2 Samuel 7:12–13). The promise’s language is now used of a fact.

“Comest thou peaceably?” is the question the trembling elders of Bethlehem put to Samuel when he arrived to anoint David (1 Samuel 16:4). The word is shalom; Adonijah answers with it, one word.

“I have somewhat to say” is literally “I have a word for thee”. Bathsheba’s reply, “say on”, is a single word, and she will give it twice (verses 14 and 16), neither encouraging nor refusing.

“Set their faces on me” means looked to me, expected me. “Turned about” is savav, the verb Chronicles uses when the LORD “turned the kingdom unto David” from Saul (1 Chronicles 10:14). Adonijah uses the language of transferred kingship about himself.

“Deny me not” is literally “do not turn back my face”, the idiom for sending a petitioner away rejected. The exchange has the formality of a court petition, though it takes place in the queen mother’s presence rather than the king’s.

The queen mother held real standing in Judah; later kings’ mothers are named in each reign’s summary, and Asa removed Maachah “from being queen” (15:13). Adonijah picks the one channel Solomon is least likely to refuse.

“Well” is tov, “good”, one word. Shimei will answer Solomon’s terms with the same word in verse 38. The book records her agreement and nothing more about what she thought of the request.

The scene reverses 1:16 and 1:31, where Bathsheba bowed low before David. Now the king rises and bows to her. The right hand was the seat of highest honour, the place Psalm 110:1 gives to the king at God’s side.

Bathsheba repeats Adonijah’s own words, “say me not nay”, and Solomon promises exactly that, “I will not say thee nay”, two verses before he refuses. The petition is called “small” by the one person who may not know what it weighs.

Bathsheba calls Adonijah “thy brother”, and she passes on only the request. Adonijah’s speech about the kingdom having been his, and all Israel expecting him to reign, she leaves out.

Solomon answers with sarcasm, “ask for him the kingdom also”, and the Hebrew sentence runs on raggedly as he names the elder brother and the two backers, as if the thought came faster than the grammar. Abishag’s link to David is what makes the marriage a claim.

“Against his own life” is literally “with his life”, at the cost of it. The oath formula calls down harm on the swearer if the word is not carried out, and Solomon uses it before he has consulted anyone.

“Made me an house” quotes Nathan’s promise that the LORD would make David a house (2 Samuel 7:11). Solomon already has an heir: Rehoboam was forty-one at his accession after Solomon’s forty years (14:21), so he was born about a year before this.

“Fell upon him” is paga’, to strike down, the verb David used when he ordered the Amalekite killed (2 Samuel 1:15). It will recur for Joab (verses 29–34) and Shimei (verse 46), each time with Benaiah as the hand.

Abiathar fled to David from the massacre at Nob, and David told him, “abide thou with me... with me thou shalt be in safeguard” (1 Samuel 22:23). Anathoth was one of the priests’ towns in Benjamin (Joshua 21:18). “At this time” leaves the sentence suspended rather than cancelled.

Abiathar was Eli’s great-great-grandson, through Ahimelech, Ahitub and Phinehas (1 Samuel 14:3; 22:20). This is the first time Kings says an event happened “that he might fulfil the word of the LORD”; the book will say it many times.

The aside about Absalom is pointed. Joab stayed with David through that revolt, and killed Absalom himself; his choice of Adonijah was not the drift of a habitual rebel but a deliberate bet, made with the old king still alive.

Solomon does not debate the sanctuary; his order is three Hebrew words. The Greek adds an exchange in which Solomon asks Joab why he fled to the altar and Joab answers that he was afraid and fled to the LORD.

“I will die here” may be defiance, or a calculation that Solomon would not shed blood at the altar, or a wish to die in the sanctuary rather than as a condemned man; the book does not say which. Benaiah reports the words exactly: “thus said Joab”.

Deuteronomy 19:11–13 covers a murderer who flees to a city of refuge: the elders are to fetch him and hand him over, and so “put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel”. Solomon applies that logic to the altar itself.

Abner is “captain of the host of Israel” and Amasa “captain of the host of Judah”, one commander for each half of the kingdom. Joab killed both, the northern general at Hebron and Absalom’s general at Gibeon, each while pretending friendship.

David pronounced a curse on Joab’s house after Abner’s murder: “let it rest on the head of Joab, and on all his father’s house” (2 Samuel 3:29). Solomon now asks that the blood rest on Joab’s seed and that peace rest on David’s.

“Went up” to the tent on its height. Joab is buried at his own estate “in the wilderness”, probably the wilderness of Judah east of Bethlehem, near the family tomb where his brother Asahel was laid (2 Samuel 2:32).

Zadok now holds the priesthood alone, and his line continues to the end of the monarchy and beyond; Ezekiel names the sons of Zadok as the only priests fit to serve in his vision of the temple (Ezekiel 44:15).

Shimei’s home was Bahurim, just over the Mount of Olives. Solomon orders him to build a house in the capital, under the eyes of the court: house arrest within a city.

The Kidron was the brook David crossed weeping as he fled Absalom (2 Samuel 15:23), and the road to Bahurim beyond it was where Shimei cursed him. “Thy blood shall be upon thine own head” is the formula the spies used to Rahab (Joshua 2:19).

“The saying is good”: Shimei agrees in the same one word Bathsheba gave Adonijah. No oath is recorded here, though Solomon will say in verse 42 that he made Shimei swear by the LORD; the Greek adds an oath in verse 37.

Achish son of Maoch was the king of Gath who sheltered David from Saul (1 Samuel 27:2). Forty years and more have passed, so this Achish son of Maachah is probably a son or grandson, though some think the same long-lived king.

“Saddled his ass” is the phrase used of Ahithophel before he went home to die (2 Samuel 17:23). Gath lies to the west, toward the Philistine plain, the opposite direction from the Kidron and Bahurim.

“Was come again”: Shimei came back, which suggests he did not think he had forfeited his life or did not expect to be reported. Someone did report him; the court was watching.

“Protested” in 1611 meant declared solemnly or warned, not objected. Solomon quotes his warning in a broader form than verse 37 gave it, “walkest abroad any whither”, and quotes Shimei’s reply back to him word for word.

“The oath of the LORD” makes the broken promise an offence against God as well as against the king. The pairing of oath and commandment gives Solomon two charges where one would do.

“Privy to” meant having secret knowledge of something. Solomon appeals to Shimei’s own heart as witness rather than to any evidence, and names the cursing of 2 Samuel 16 without describing it.

Shimei cursed David; David’s son is to be blessed. The pairing carries the old pattern of the promise to Abraham, “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee” (Genesis 12:3).

Benaiah’s third execution completes David’s list. After this verse the ancient Greek translation inserts a long collection of notices about Solomon’s wisdom, wives, buildings and provisions that the Hebrew places later or omits.