Peace Negotiated, Then Cut Down at the Gate

The Hebrew uses running participles: David was going on and growing strong, the house of Saul going on and growing weak. The shift is described as a slow process over years rather than decided in any one battle, and no battle between the two houses is named.

Amnon means “faithful” or “steadfast”, a name his conduct toward his half-sister Tamar will empty of meaning (chapter 13). Ahinoam of Jezreel is named in 1 Samuel 25:43 just as Michal is given to another man, and her son takes the first place.

Chileab is called Daniel in 1 Chronicles 3:1 and is never heard of again. Geshur was a small Aramean kingdom north-east of the Sea of Galilee, beyond Ish-bosheth’s Gilead, so the marriage gave David an ally at his rival’s back. Absalom will run to this grandfather (13:37).

Adonijah means “my lord is the LORD”, and he will one day try to take the throne (1 Kings 1:5). Shephatiah means “the LORD judges”. Of the mothers, Haggith and Abital are known only as names in this list.

Six sons from six mothers, each wife with one son born in Hebron. Only Eglah is given the label “David’s wife”, which is odd, since all of them were; no one knows why she alone carries it.

“Made himself strong” is the same reflexive verb as David strengthening himself at Ziklag (1 Samuel 30:6), but here it may mean Abner was strengthening his own hold within Saul’s house. The phrase is neutral enough to cover loyalty and ambition at once.

Rizpah will reappear in 21:10, guarding her sons’ bodies for months. Taking a dead king’s concubine could amount to a claim on the throne, which is why Absalom does it openly (16:22) and why Solomon executes Adonijah for asking for Abishag (1 Kings 2:22).

“Dog’s head” is an insult found nowhere else, a picture of the most worthless thing imaginable. “Against Judah” may be read “belonging to Judah”: am I a dog of Judah’s? Abner’s reply lists his loyalty in full and never actually denies the charge.

“So do God to Abner, and more also” is the standard self-curse of an oath, used by Ruth (Ruth 1:17) and by Eli (1 Samuel 3:17). Abner speaks of what the LORD swore to David as though everyone in Saul’s court already knew it.

“Translate” is used in its older sense of carrying something across from one place to another. “From Dan even to Beer-sheba” is the stock expression for the whole land, north to south (Judges 20:1; 1 Samuel 3:20).

“Could not answer a word” is the same phrase used of Joseph’s brothers when they realised who he was (Genesis 45:3). The king has the title, and the commander has the army, and one silent line settles which of them matters.

“On his behalf” is uncertain in Hebrew and may mean “on the spot” or “in his own stead”. “Whose is the land?” can be heard two ways: the land is yours by right, or the land is mine to hand over. Abner means both.

“Well” translates the one word tov, good. David agrees in a word and then sets his single condition. “See my face” means be received at court, and Abner will not be received without Michal.

David names the price Saul set, a hundred foreskins, though he paid two hundred (1 Samuel 18:25, 27). He sends the demand to Ish-bosheth, not to Abner, making the king of Israel sign away his own sister.

Phaltiel is the Phalti of Gallim to whom Saul gave Michal (1 Samuel 25:44). Ish-bosheth carries out the order himself, sending men to take his sister from her husband, and so undoes one of his father’s own acts of policy.

Bahurim lay just east of the Mount of Olives, on the road down toward the Jordan; Shimei will come out of it to curse David (16:5). Abner speaks two words to Phaltiel, “Go, return”, and the verse reports his obedience in one more.

“In times past” is the Hebrew idiom “yesterday and the day before”, meaning for some time now. Abner reminds the elders that they wanted David back when Saul was alive and David was winning Saul’s battles.

No earlier passage records this exact oracle about David, though its words recall the commission once spoken over Saul: to save Israel from the Philistines (1 Samuel 9:16). Abner quotes the LORD to win the elders over, the same LORD he fought against a few verses before.

“Spake in the ears” means spoke directly, face to face. Benjamin is named separately because it was Saul’s tribe and the hardest to win; Abner canvasses it himself before carrying the answer to Hebron.

Twenty men is a small escort, the size of a delegation that expects to be safe. The “feast” is a mishteh, a drinking banquet, the formal sign that a treaty was being sealed as guests at one table.

Abner gives David his full title, “my lord the king”, before a single tribe has made him one. “Went in peace” appears here for the first of three times in three verses, as if the account were stamping the fact onto the page.

Joab arrives from a raid with plunder, the kind of work that kept an army paid. The second “in peace” is set right against his return, and “behold” marks the moment the two lines of the account meet.

The men give Joab Abner’s full name, “the son of Ner”, as if announcing an enemy. The third “gone in peace” is spoken by them, and it is the phrase Joab cannot bear.

“What hast thou done?” is the question God asked Eve (Genesis 3:13) and Samuel asked Saul (1 Samuel 13:11), put here by a nephew to his king. “Quite gone” doubles the Hebrew verb: gone, really gone.

“Thy going out and thy coming in” is the idiom for military movements. The spy charge claims to protect David, and it also serves Joab, who stood to lose his command to a better-known general.

The well of Sirah was a short way north of Hebron; Josephus put it about twenty furlongs out. The clause “but David knew it not” is short, blunt and deliberate: the book will not let the recall be charged to the king.

Hebron was one of the six cities of refuge (Joshua 20:7), where an avenger could not simply kill a man. Joab kills Abner in its gate, the very place where such cases were to be heard, and the blow falls under the fifth rib, as Asahel’s did (2:23).

“Guiltless” is naqi, clear of blood. David makes the declaration “before the LORD” and “for ever”, a formal disowning of the killing aimed at both heaven and the northern tribes Abner had just been courting.

The curse names five afflictions: a running discharge, leprosy, the staff, which may mean the spindle, a woman’s tool, violent death, and hunger. Each would cut Joab’s house off from worship, war or bread, and the curse falls on “all his father’s house”, not only on Joab.

Abishai is named for the first time as sharing the deed. The closing words, “at Gibeon in the battle”, are the key: Asahel fell in open war after two warnings, which was no ground for blood vengeance at all.

Joab is ordered to tear his clothes and wear sackcloth in public for the man he killed. A king walking behind the bier was unusual; the bier is a mittah, the same word as the couch Saul sat on at Endor (1 Samuel 28:23).

A Benjamite general is buried in the capital of Judah, as an honoured man. Ish-bosheth’s head will later be laid in this same tomb (4:12), so the two leaders of Saul’s house end up together in Hebron.

“Fool” here is nabal, the word and the name of Abigail’s first husband (1 Samuel 25:25). The first line of the dirge asks whether Abner deserved a fool’s end, and the next verse answers it.

The fetters are bronze chains, the word used of Samson’s in Gaza (Judges 16:21). “Wicked men” is literally sons of injustice. Abner died free and unarmed, not as a prisoner under sentence, and that is what makes the death murder.

“Meat” in 1611 meant any food. David swears the same self-curse Abner used in verse 9, “so do God to me, and more also”, binding himself to fast until sunset for the man he fed at his own table the day before.

“It pleased them” is literally “it was good in their eyes”. The comment that everything the king did pleased the people sits oddly in the middle of a funeral, but it records the political turning point: the public now trusts him.

“All Israel” is the telling phrase, the northern tribes as well as Judah. Abner’s death could have ended the negotiations, and the verse reports that it did not, because the north believed David had no part in it.

“Prince” is sar, a commander or high official. David calls the rival general a great man “in Israel”, not merely in Saul’s house, and says it to his own servants, who had fought against him at Gibeon.

“Weak” is rak, soft or tender, and “too hard” is qashim, harsh: the soft king against the hard nephews. David leaves the reckoning to the LORD for now, and it is settled only on his deathbed, in his charge to Solomon (1 Kings 2:5–6).