2 Samuel19chapter 19

2 Samuel 19:1-3

David's grief turns Israel's victory into mourning, and the army that won the battle returns to the city by stealth, as men ashamed after a rout rather than men who had just put down a rebellion. The people's shame at their own king's grief is the ground Joab stands on in the verses that follow. Henry reads the moment as the greatest danger David faced to the loyalty of the men who had just saved his life.

2 Samuel 19:4

O my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, my son: David covers his face and repeats his son's name, a lament pattern the older commentators call the plainest cry of grief in Scripture. He never speaks Absalom's name without the possessive my son, holding the office of father through the ruin the son made of himself and of the kingdom. Clarke and Henry both weigh the mourning as excessive given what Absalom had done, yet neither dismisses a father's loss as a small thing.

2 Samuel 19:5-7

Joab's rebuke is blunt to the point of insolence, and the commentators say so plainly even while granting that the substance of it was right: the men who had just saved the king's life, his sons, his wives and his concubines, deserved better than to watch him mourn the man who tried to kill them all. His warning that not one man will stay with David that night if he does not go out to them is a threat as much as counsel, and it works within the verse. This is the last time in the chapter that Joab moves David by force of will rather than by office, before Amasa takes his place at verse 13.

2 Samuel 19:8

David does exactly what Joab told him, taking the seat in the public gate where a king heard his people and rendered judgment. Israel's army had already scattered to their own tents, each man going home once Absalom was dead rather than standing by a cause with no one left to lead it. Barnes reads David's obedience to Joab's rebuke as proof that he saw the justice of it despite the manner it was delivered in.

2 Samuel 19:9-10

The tribes argue among themselves over a king they had just driven out, and their own words indict the cause they followed: Absalom, whom we anointed over us, is dead in battle. That verb sits beside the true anointing named at 16:6, the Lord's anointed spoken over David while Saul still reigned, and sets a man-made anointing against the one God made and kept. Spurgeon preached the refrain bring the king back as a figure of the greater invitation still open to a king once rejected who returns in power.

2 Samuel 19:11-12

David works through Zadok and Abiathar rather than approaching Judah directly, sending word that ties the elders' silence to shame, since Judah had joined the rebellion and now hesitates to be first in welcoming him back. He calls them my brethren, my bones and my flesh, the same kinship language he extends to Amasa in the next verse, offering forgiveness before anyone asks for it. Clarke reads the approach as calculated rather than naive, since David needed Jerusalem's own tribe secured before anything else could hold.

2 Samuel 19:13

David swears Amasa into Joab's command outright, an oath sworn to the very man who led the army of the rebellion against him days before. Barnes reads it as evidence of how heavily Joab's independence weighed on David, the same weight behind 3:39's I am this day weak and 16:10's what have I to do with you. The promise holds only briefly; Joab kills Amasa within two chapters, one more death from the sword the prophet said would never leave David's house.

2 Samuel 19:14

The text credits David himself with bending the tribe's heart as one man, language usually kept for what only God does within a man. Judah answers within the same verse, sending back the word David wanted: return thou, and all thy servants. Clarke notes the strategy behind it, trusting men he had reason to distrust so that offered trust might draw trust back in return.

2 Samuel 19:15-18

The crossing at Jordan draws a company from every side: a thousand men of Benjamin under Shimei, Ziba with his fifteen sons and twenty servants, and a ferry boat to carry the king's household over, the first mention of such a vessel anywhere in Scripture. Henry calls the crossing the most solemn since Joshua led Israel over the same river, and notes that David had already remembered Jordan from exile at Psalm 42:6. Two men who had wronged David in his flight, Shimei and Ziba, are both named here crossing to meet him now that he returns.

2 Samuel 19:19-20

Shimei names his own sin before anyone can accuse him of it again, come the first this day of all the house of Joseph to meet the king he had cursed at Bahurim. Clarke observes that confession was the only ground available to him, and only his conduct afterward could prove it sincere. The house of Joseph title marks him a leading man among the northern tribes, not merely a private grudge holder acting alone.

2 Samuel 19:21-23

cursed the Lord’s anointed: Abishai's demand invokes the same title David used to spare Saul twice, the Lord's anointed, but turns it toward vengeance rather than restraint, and it is not the first time a son of Zeruiah has pushed David further than he wanted to go. David's answer, what have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah, matches his words at 16:10 almost exactly, and he swears the oath himself rather than let Abishai's logic decide it. Henry reads David's mercy that day as flowing from his own experience of God's mercy in restoring the kingdom his own sin had nearly cost him.

2 Samuel 19:24-25

Mephibosheth's unwashed feet, untrimmed beard and unwashed clothes since the day the king departed are a mourner's signs worn the whole length of David's exile, offered as evidence before he speaks a word in his own defense. Clarke reads the details as refuting Ziba's earlier report at 16:1-4 without David needing to ask a single question. David's first question still assumes Ziba's account was true, asking why Mephibosheth stayed behind rather than why he had mourned so long.

2 Samuel 19:26-28

Mephibosheth's account contradicts Ziba's directly: he had ordered an ass saddled to ride to David, lame as he was, and Ziba slandered him instead of doing as told. He calls David an angel of God able to judge between the two accounts and submits to whatever David decides, the same kindness of God David promised him at 9:3 now tested against a servant's word. Gregory the Dialogist read the episode centuries later as proof that even a man who usually carried the spirit of prophecy could still be deceived, since he remained a man.

2 Samuel 19:29-30

David cuts the dispute short rather than settling it, splitting the estate between two men whose stories cannot both be true. Barnes reads the division as David unwilling to make an enemy of Ziba while unable to disprove Mephibosheth, the same haste that marked his earlier sentence at 16:4. Mephibosheth answers by giving up his half outright, content that David has come home in peace, valuing the king's safety over the land Ziba had gained by lying.

2 Samuel 19:31-33

Barzillai crosses Jordan with David after supplying him through the hardest stretch of the exile at Mahanaim, and David offers to bring him to Jerusalem and feed him at his own table in return. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that no reward to Barzillai himself is ever recorded, though David's kindness to his son Chimham a few verses later stands in its place. Clarke calls the eighty-year-old's loyalty beyond suspicion, since a man that age has nothing left to gain by flattering a king.

2 Samuel 19:34-37

Barzillai declines the king's offer on the ground of age alone, fourscore years old and past discerning good from evil, unable to taste what he eats or hear the singers who would perform at court. Henry reads his speech as a pattern for old age generally, dead to the delights of sense that once moved him, asking only to die in his own city and be buried by his father's grave. He asks nothing for himself and everything for Chimham, who goes over with the king in his place.

2 Samuel 19:38-39

David grants Barzillai's request in full, taking Chimham in his father's place and promising to do for him whatever Barzillai asks. Barnes notes that Chimham's household is still remembered by name generations later at Jeremiah 41:17, settled near Bethlehem on land that may have come from David's own inheritance. The parting itself is warm rather than formal, a kiss and a blessing before Barzillai turns back toward Rogelim.

2 Samuel 19:40-43

Then the king went on to Gilgal: Judah escorts David across on the strength of nearest kinship, but Israel arrives asking why their brethren stole the king away without them, claiming ten parts in the king by tribal count against Judah's one. Judah answers that they gained nothing personally by it, only loyalty, yet the men of Judah spoke fiercer words than Israel did in reply. Henry reads the quarrel as the seed of the division that breaks open in the next chapter, since a people already arguing over who loves the king more is a people not far from arguing over who follows him at all.