The King Returns Through an Unsettled People

The report goes to Joab, the man who killed Absalom, and it uses the pair of verbs for mourning the dead, weeping and mourning, that David and his men used for Saul and Jonathan in 1:12.

“Victory” is teshu’ah, deliverance or salvation, the word for what the LORD wrought through Jonathan and through David in 1 Samuel 14:45 and 19:5. The psalmist praises God for turning mourning into dancing (Psalm 30:11); this day runs the other way.

“Gat them by stealth” is literally “stole themselves” into the city, the verb ganab. Absalom stole the hearts of Israel (15:6), and before the chapter ends Israel will accuse Judah of stealing the king (verse 41). The whole revolt is told in that one verb.

A covered face was a mourner’s sign; David went up Olivet with his head covered in 15:30. It also means the king cannot see the men who have just saved him. The cry repeats the words from the chamber over the gate almost exactly.

Joab counts the saved: sons, daughters, wives and concubines. The concubines on that list are the ten Absalom took on the roof. “Shamed the faces” picks up the shame of verse 3; the soldiers crept in like the defeated because the king made victory look like disgrace.

The Hebrew is sharper than the King James: “in loving those who hate thee and hating those who love thee”. “Princes nor servants” means officers and men alike. Joab ends with the sting, “it had pleased thee well”, literally “it would have been right in thine eyes”.

“Speak comfortably” is literally “speak to the heart”, the idiom of Boaz speaking kindly to Ruth (Ruth 2:13) and of Isaiah 40:2. Joab backs his warning with an oath by the LORD and a threat of desertion before nightfall.

The gate was the seat of judgment and royal audience. Absalom began his revolt by standing beside the gate way to intercept petitioners (15:2); David reclaims the kingdom by sitting in the same kind of place. The last clause turns to the other side: the rebels have gone home.

“At strife” means arguing among themselves, tribe against tribe. The men of Israel recall David’s record against the Philistines, the service that first made him beloved (1 Samuel 18:7), and admit that he fled from the country because of Absalom.

“Whom we anointed” is the only notice that Absalom was formally anointed; chapter 15 recorded only the trumpets and the cry “Absalom reigneth in Hebron”. The tribes own their share in the revolt in a single clause, then ask why no one is acting.

Zadok and Abiathar, who ran the intelligence chain in chapter 17, now carry diplomacy. Judah’s reluctance makes sense: Absalom was proclaimed at Hebron, Judah’s old capital (15:10), and David’s own tribe may have had most to fear from his return.

“Bones and flesh” is the formula of kinship, from Adam over Eve (Genesis 2:23) to the tribes at Hebron in 5:1. Abimelech once used the same words to win Shechem against his own brothers (Judges 9:2), and David is using them to win back a tribe that followed his son.

“God do so to me, and more also” is a self-curse, an oath sworn with one’s own life as the pledge. “In the room of Joab” means in place of him. Joab is not told; he learns what the appointment cost Amasa in chapter 20.

The Hebrew does not say who bowed Judah’s heart. “He” could be David, through his message, or Amasa, the new commander with influence among Absalom’s supporters. The invitation that results is short: return, you and all your servants.

Gilgal, near the Jordan by Jericho, was Israel’s first camp in the land under Joshua (Joshua 4:19), and the place where Samuel had the people “renew the kingdom” under Saul (1 Samuel 11:14). Kingship is being renewed there again.

Shimei arrives in the company of Judah’s men, not with his own tribe, attaching himself to the delegation of the side that has won. The book gives him his full identification once more, son of Gera, Benjamite, of Bahurim, as if reading out a charge sheet.

Shimei brings a thousand Benjamites, a following that makes him hard to execute quietly. Ziba arrives with the household numbers given in 9:10, fifteen sons and twenty servants. “Went over” is a verb for rushing, the one used when the Spirit rushed upon Samson and Saul.

“Ferry boat” is a guess by the translators. The Hebrew says roughly “the crossing crossed over”, which could mean a raft, a ford party, or a company sent across to bring the household. It is the king’s family, not the king, who need carrying.

“Impute” is chashab, to reckon or count, the verb used when Abram’s faith was counted for righteousness (Genesis 15:6). Shimei asks that his act not be entered in the king’s accounts. “Perversely” is from ’avah, to bend or twist.

Shimei is a Benjamite but claims to arrive first “of all the house of Joseph”, meaning the northern tribes as a bloc. Benjamin and Joseph were Rachel’s two sons, so the phrase stretches naturally; it also sets Shimei at the head of the tribes who have not yet returned.

Abishai has law on his side. Exodus 22:28 forbids cursing the ruler of the people, and David himself had built his conduct toward Saul on not touching “the LORD’s anointed”. Abishai turns David’s own reverence for the title into the case for execution.

“Adversaries” is the Hebrew satan, one who opposes or obstructs; David calls his own nephews satans to him this day. The word will turn up again in Solomon’s letter to Hiram, where the king rejoices that he has “neither adversary” (1 Kings 5:4).

“Thou shalt not die” is two Hebrew words, sealed with an oath. When David recalls it to Solomon he quotes it more narrowly: “I will not put thee to death with the sword” (1 Kings 2:8). The later wording leaves room the present one does not.

“Beard” is safam, the moustache and upper lip. Covering or neglecting it was a mourner’s sign (Ezekiel 24:17), and an unwashed garment went with it. The book dates the neglect exactly: from the day the king left to the day he came again “in peace”.

The Hebrew says simply that he “came Jerusalem”, which many read as “came from Jerusalem” to meet David at the river. The king’s question is the first thing Mephibosheth has been asked in the whole affair; in chapter 16 only Ziba was heard.

Mephibosheth had ordered an ass saddled. Ziba met David in 16:1 with “a couple of asses saddled”, and it is fair to wonder whose animals they were. Being lame, Mephibosheth could not follow on foot once the servant had gone with the mounts.

“An angel of God” is the comparison the woman of Tekoa used of David twice (14:17, 20), and Achish used it of David in 1 Samuel 29:9. Mephibosheth adds it without argument and hands the decision back: “what is good in thine eyes”.

“Dead men” is literally “men of death”, people who could lawfully have been killed by a new dynasty. The table is the one of 9:7–13. “Cry” is the word for appealing to the king for justice, and Mephibosheth says he has no standing left to do it.

The reply is curt, and “divide” carries no explanation. A later king will also settle an unverifiable dispute by ordering something divided, in 1 Kings 3:25, though Solomon’s order was a test and David’s is a ruling.

“Come again in peace” repeats the phrase from verse 24 exactly. The book dated his mourning to end at the king’s peaceful return, and Mephibosheth now names that return as the only thing he wanted. His answer uses the book’s own measure.

Rogelim means something like “fullers”, a town in Gilead otherwise unknown. “To conduct him over Jordan” is literally to send him off at the Jordan, the courtesy of escorting a guest to the edge of one’s own territory.

“Provided sustenance” is kilkel, the verb used of Joseph sustaining his father’s household in Egypt (Genesis 47:12), and of Solomon’s district officers who “provided victual” for the court (1 Kings 4:7). “Very great” means wealthy, as Nabal was “very great” in 1 Samuel 25:2.

“I will feed thee” is the same verb, kilkel, turned round. “With me” means at the king’s own table in the capital, a place at court for life, the honour Mephibosheth had been given in chapter 9.

The question is literally “how many are the days of the years of my life?”, the phrasing Pharaoh used to ask Jacob his age (Genesis 47:8). Barzillai answers a king’s invitation by counting what is left.

“Discern between good and evil” here means telling pleasant from unpleasant, the way Deuteronomy 1:39 speaks of children too young to know good and evil. Singing men and women were a mark of court luxury; Ecclesiastes 2:8 lists them among the things the king acquired.

“A little way” is all Barzillai offers, a short escort beyond the river. “Such a reward” uses gemulah, recompense. He thinks the service was small and the offer too large for it.

Chimham is probably Barzillai’s son; some Greek manuscripts add “my son”, and David later charges Solomon to show kindness to the sons of Barzillai (1 Kings 2:7). Jeremiah 41:17 mentions a lodging near Bethlehem called Geruth Chimham, perhaps land David gave him.

David repeats Barzillai’s own wording back to him, “that which shall seem good unto thee”, and then goes beyond it with an open promise. The deathbed charge in 1 Kings 2:7 shows that the promise was remembered.

A kiss and a blessing were the formal parting; Laban took leave of his daughters the same way (Genesis 31:55). “His own place” closes Barzillai’s part in the account at home, where he asked to be.

The escort is lopsided: all the people of Judah, but only half the people of Israel. The arithmetic of that sentence sets up the quarrel of the next three verses.

The men of Israel bring their complaint to the king himself, not to Judah. They still call Judah “our brethren”, even while accusing them of stealing him; the family language and the grievance arrive together.

Judah denies having been on the king’s payroll, eating at his cost or receiving a “gift”, a portion carried from his table. The chapter has been about exactly that: who eats with the king, Mephibosheth by grant and Barzillai by invitation declined.

Ten parts in the king is the first appearance of the ten-to-one reckoning that splits the kingdom under Jeroboam (1 Kings 11:31). The Greek reads “I am firstborn rather than thou” for “more right in David”. “Despise” is qalal, the root of Shimei’s cursing.