Two Kings, One People, and a Widening Wound

The ephod’s answers were short, so David frames his questions to be answered briefly: yes, and then a single place-name. “Go up” is literal, since Hebron stands in the hills well above Ziklag. It was the town of Abraham’s tomb at Machpelah (Genesis 23:19) and of Caleb’s inheritance.

The two wives are listed again with their towns. Both will bear David sons in Hebron (3:2–3). Abigail is still identified through Nabal, which may keep his Carmel estate attached to her name and, through her, to David.

“Every man with his household” turns a war band into a population. “The cities of Hebron” are the villages round the town, and six hundred families would have been a noticeable arrival in them.

David’s second anointing. Samuel’s, in Bethlehem, was private (1 Samuel 16:13); this one is by the men of Judah, and the third will be by all Israel (5:3). The report about Jabesh is placed straight after the oil, as the first piece of business the new king takes up.

“Kindness” is chesed, the loyalty owed within a bond, here shown to a dead man who can no longer repay it. David calls Saul “your lord”, acknowledging the tie the men of Jabesh had to him rather than pretending it never existed.

“Kindness and truth” is the pairing chesed and emet, used of the LORD himself in Exodus 34:6. David prays it over them and then adds his own share, promising a good turn from the king of Judah as well.

“Let your hands be strengthened” is an encouragement, but it also reminds Jabesh that its protector is gone. Jabesh lies in Gilead, the first territory Abner will claim for Ish-bosheth (verse 9), so the letter reaches into contested ground.

Abner was Saul’s cousin (1 Samuel 14:50). Ish-bosheth, “man of shame”, is called Eshbaal in 1 Chronicles 8:33; scribes often replaced baal with bosheth. Mahanaim, beyond the Jordan on the Jabbok, is where Jacob met the camps of angels (Genesis 32:2), safely out of Philistine reach.

The list moves from east to west: Gilead first, then the Ashurites (perhaps Asher, or Geshur as some versions read), Jezreel, Ephraim, Benjamin. The Hebrew even changes its preposition partway through the list, and “all Israel” is claimed at the end more than possessed.

Forty years old is a surprising age for a son of Saul, and it leaves the chronology of these years hard to fit together. “Followed David” is literally “were after David”, the phrase the book will use of each tribe as it chooses a king.

Seven years and six months, repeated at 5:5 and 1 Kings 2:11. The half-year is precise, a sign that these reign lengths came from a record kept with some care.

Gibeon is a Benjamite town about six miles north-west of Jerusalem, the town whose people tricked Joshua into a treaty (Joshua 9). Abner leads the march toward Judah’s border; the initiative in this war is his.

Joab is named from his mother Zeruiah, David’s sister (1 Chronicles 2:16), and his father is never named. A great rock-cut pool at Gibeon, with a spiral stair down to the water, was excavated in 1956; Jeremiah 41:12 mentions “the great waters that are in Gibeon”.

“Play” is the verb for sport or entertainment, used of Samson made to perform for the Philistines (Judges 16:25) and of David dancing before the ark (6:21). Two commanders sit and watch while young men do the fighting for them.

Twelve a side, counted off “by number”, a number with the weight of the twelve tribes behind it. Benjamin is Saul’s tribe, and its men are said to “pertain to” Ish-bosheth, as if belonging to a household rather than a nation.

“Caught every one his fellow by the head” means by the hair. Helkath-hazzurim is usually taken as “field of blades” or “field of flints”; the King James margin gives “the field of strong men”. Twenty-four men die together and a place gets a name.

The contest settles nothing, and what it starts is called “a very sore battle”. Abner’s army is still called “the men of Israel”, David’s only “the servants of David”, and the servants win.

The three sons of Zeruiah are David’s nephews, and they will shape his reign as much as he does. “Wild roe” is tsebi, the gazelle, the same word as “the beauty of Israel” in David’s lament (1:19).

“Turned not to the right hand nor to the left” is the phrase Deuteronomy and Joshua use for keeping the law without deviating (Deuteronomy 5:32; Joshua 1:7). Here it describes a young man who will not be diverted from the enemy commander.

Abner has to look back and ask to be sure, which suggests Asahel is still some distance behind. The answer in Hebrew is a single word, “I”, clipped and breathless.

Stripping a fallen man of his armour was the prize of a single combat. Abner offers Asahel an easier trophy: take any of the young men and his gear. Asahel wants the commander or nothing.

“Hold up my face” means be able to look Joab in the eye. Abner is thinking ahead to the blood feud before he has struck a blow, and he names the older brother who will one day collect it.

The butt of a spear was often spiked for planting in the ground, like Saul’s spear at 1 Samuel 26:7, and Abner does not even turn it round. The King James “fifth rib” recurs in the killings of Abner (3:27), Ish-bosheth (4:6) and Amasa (20:10). Men stop at the body, as they will at Amasa’s (20:12).

The hill of Ammah and Giah are otherwise unknown, placed only by “the way of the wilderness of Gibeon”. Sunset gives the chase a natural ending, and the two surviving brothers are still running.

Benjamin closes up around Abner on high ground, the right move for a beaten force. “One troop” is a word for a band bound together, and it is Saul’s own tribe that holds together round Saul’s cousin.

The Hebrew speaks of the “mouth” of a sword, its edge, so a sword that devours is a natural picture. “Bitterness in the latter end” warns that a war between brothers leaves nothing sweet for the winner either.

Joab’s reply can be read two ways. If Abner had not proposed the “play” that morning, the men would have gone home; or if Abner had not called out now, the chase would have gone on until morning. The King James wording allows either sense.

The trumpet is the shofar, the ram’s horn. Joab will end two more battles by the same signal, after Absalom’s death (18:16) and at Abel (20:22). He is the one who decides when David’s wars stop.

“The plain” is the Arabah, the Jordan rift. Bithron may be a ravine, or the word may mean “the whole forenoon”, so that they marched through the night and all the next morning. Abner’s road runs east, back across the river.

Asahel is counted separately from the nineteen, as though one brother outweighs the rest of the missing. Twenty dead is a light cost for the winning side.

Three hundred and sixty of Abner’s men die against twenty of David’s, a lopsided count for a battle between two halves of one nation. The losers are listed first as “of Benjamin”, Saul’s tribe bearing most of the price.

Asahel is buried in Bethlehem, David’s own town, in his father’s tomb; the father is never named. Joab marches all night and reaches Hebron at daybreak, while Abner marches all night toward Mahanaim (verse 29). Both armies are walking away from each other in the dark.