2 Samuel17chapter 17

2 Samuel 17:15-16

Thus and thus did Ahithophel counsel: Hushai reports both counsels to Zadok and Abiathar the priests, still stationed in Jerusalem watching the city for David, and sends them running with the one order that matters, do not lodge in the plains of the wilderness tonight. The urgency is deliberate: Hushai has bought time with his speech, but he does not trust Absalom to stay talked out of Ahithophel's plan for long. The priests become the relay in a chain that already includes their own sons waiting outside the city walls.

The fords were where David had promised at 15:28 to wait for word from the priests, so the message finds him where the plan had left him. Hushai tells him to cross anyway. Basil of Caesarea takes the son of Jemini in the title of Psalm 7 to be Hushai, honored for valor shown under a pretended friendship.

2 Samuel 17:17-21

they might not be seen to come into the city: Jonathan and Ahimaaz, the priests' sons, wait outside the city at En-rogel because they cannot risk being seen going in, and a servant girl carries the message to them, an ordinary courier for word that will decide whether David lives. Discovered by a boy and pursued to Bahurim, they go down into a well in a man's courtyard, and the woman of the house spreads a covering and ground corn over the mouth of it, hiding two fugitives under a household chore. Barnes notes that had Absalom's servants found her still in the courtyard the spread grain might have given her away; instead they search, find nothing, and go home.

A young man saw Ahimaaz and Jonathan and told Absalom, so the two came to a house in Bahurim, the town where David had been cursed at 16:5. Albert Barnes remarks that not everyone there was a Shimei. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown take the well in the courtyard to be a household cistern, and Matthew Henry supposes it was dry.

The man's wife hid the well under a covering scattered with grain. Albert Barnes notes the Hebrew says the covering, which he suggests was the awning at the house door pulled down in haste, and the grain was barley set out as if to dry. The scene recalls Rahab hiding the spies at Joshua 2:6.

The woman tells Absalom's servants that Ahimaaz and Jonathan have crossed over the brook, a Hebrew word Albert Barnes finds only here. Her answer is false. John Cassian asks what a believer under the gospel would do in her place, and Matthew Henry adds that God kept Absalom from avenging himself on Zadok and Abiathar.

Ahimaaz and Jonathan urge King David to cross at once. Their warning names the advice of Ahithophel, the one plan that could still take David that night. Matthew Henry moves from this report to verse 23, where Ahithophel sees his advice set aside, goes home and hangs himself.

there lacked not one of them: All of David's company crosses the Jordan by morning light, and the narrator adds a detail he did not owe the reader, there lacked not one of them. Henry reads the completeness of the crossing as a figure of the greater Son of David, who said of those the Father gave him, of all that thou hast given me have I lost none, a likeness he draws rather than a citation the text itself makes. The flight becomes an orderly deliverance rather than a rout, every person accounted for on the far bank.

and hanged himself, and died: Ahithophel sets his affairs in order and hangs himself, the only such death recorded in the Old Testament. The only other self-hanging in Scripture is Judas at Matthew 27:5, and the two men share more than a method. Psalm 41:9, mine own familiar friend which did eat of my bread hath lifted up his heel against me, is read by the church as David's word for Ahithophel, and John 13:18 has Jesus quote the same verse of Judas. Henry notes that Ahithophel was still buried in his father's tomb, an honor his own end did not forfeit.

2 Samuel 17:24-26

Then David came to Mahanaim: David reaches Mahanaim, the strong city across Jordan that had already sheltered Ish-bosheth in the civil war after Saul's death, while Absalom crosses behind him with the levy Hushai's counsel raised. Absalom replaces Joab with Amasa as captain of the host; the two commanders are cousins, Amasa's mother Abigail and Joab's mother Zeruiah both counted among Jesse's household, so the rebellion is a family quarrel fought with family generals on both sides. The appointment does not survive the war: Joab kills Amasa at Gibeon in chapter 20.

The Hebrew here calls Ithra an Israelite, while 1 Chronicles 2:17 calls him an Ishmaelite; Albert Barnes corrects the text, and Matthew Henry reconciles the two as birth and adopted religion. Nahash is harder. John Wesley makes Nahash Jesse's wife, Jamieson, Fausset and Brown report Jesse himself as an option, and Barnes allows a first husband of Abigail's mother.

Gilead was the territory of Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh, as John Gill notes, so Absalom now brings the war onto the lands that fed his father. Matthew Henry sets this against David's mercy. David had spared the exile who now hunts his blood.

2 Samuel 17:27-29

Shobi the son of Nahash: Shobi son of the Ammonite king, Machir who had sheltered Mephibosheth at Lo-debar, and Barzillai the Gileadite meet the fleeing king with beds, basins, grain, honey, cheese and flocks, for they said the people is hungry, and weary, and thirsty, in the wilderness. None of the three owes David an oath the way Jonathan's household does; their kindness comes from outside Israel's own rebellion, an Ammonite, a man from the town that once hid Saul's grandson, and an old Gileadite of great wealth. Barzillai's welcome here is repaid at 19:31-39, when David offers to carry him to Jerusalem and Barzillai sends his son Chimham in his place.

Shobi, Machir and Barzillai brought beds, basins, and earthen vessels to David at Mahanaim. Adam Clarke takes the beds to be skins and mats, the basins wooden bowls for eating and kneading, and the earthen vessels sun-baked clay for water and cooking. Matthew Henry draws the duty of open hands toward the distressed.

The gift of cheese from the herd, sheep, curds and honey came when the people were hungry, exhausted, and thirsty in the wilderness. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that honey honored David as king. Albert Barnes reads the cheese from the herd as milch cows, and John Wesley sees God supplying from strangers what David's own family denied him.