2 Samuel20chapter 20

2 Samuel 20:4-5

within three days, and be thou here present: David gives Amasa, Absalom's own general during the rebellion, command of the army he promised him at 19:13, a public bid to fold the rebel tribes back into the kingdom by honoring their commander. Amasa cannot raise the men of Judah on David's schedule, and the text does not say why, whether Judah is slow to serve under him or he is simply slow. The delay leaves a gap David cannot afford with Sheba still loose, and it is the door Joab will use to take back the post David just gave away.

John Gill offers three causes for the delay: Amasa's slackness, Judah's reluctance to serve under Absalom's general, or too little time. Albert Barnes adds a possible wavering of loyalty. The soldier's cry at verse 11 hints at that charge, and Barnes thinks Joab used it to justify the murder.

2 Samuel 20:6-7

do us more harm than did Absalom: David measures Sheba's danger by Absalom's, and turns not to Joab but to Abishai, still trying to keep the command from the man who killed his son against orders. The force that marches out is Joab's men in every way that matters, the Cherethites and the Pelethites and all the mighty men, David's standing guard rather than a fresh levy. Naming Abishai changes nothing on the ground; Joab is already present with his brother and his own troops.

Matthew Henry thinks David passed over Joab more for Absalom's blood than for Abner's, and quotes Bishop Hall that Joab smarted for a loyal disobedience. The Cherethites and Pelethites were the royal guard under Benaiah, named in the officer list at 8:18. David had sent his best.

2 Samuel 20:8-9

the great stone which is in Gibeon: Amasa reaches Joab's column first, and Joab's sword falls loose from its sheath as he steps forward, a detail the older commentators read as staged rather than accidental. Joab greets him as a brother and takes him by the beard to kiss him, the customary greeting between kinsmen, with the loose sword already in his other hand. The friendliness is the weapon; Amasa has no reason to watch a hand that seems only to be reaching for an embrace.

Joab had killed Abner by the same feigned friendship at 3:27. Gregory the Dialogist reads the right hand on the beard as the sweet word and the hidden left hand as the plotting heart. Matthew Henry judges a sin worse the more plotting it contains.

smote him therewith in the fifth rib: Amasa dies by the same stroke Abner did at 3:27, struck under the fifth rib in a moment staged to look like ordinary courtesy, and Scripture uses the identical phrase for both killings. Joab named a reason for Abner, the blood of his brother Asahel; here he gives none beyond taking back the command David had handed to his rival. The chase for Sheba resumes at once, led now by the man who had just removed him.

2 Samuel 20:11-13

he that is for David, let him go after Joab: One of Joab's men turns the murder into a loyalty test on the spot, pairing Joab's name with David's so that following Joab reads as following the king. Amasa's own body still lies in the highway, and the army stops in its tracks at the sight until someone drags him into a field and throws a cloth over him. Only once the corpse is out of view does the column move again, all of Amasa's newly gathered men included, after the man who killed him.

Amasa lay wallowing in his blood in the road, and Adam Clarke thinks he did not die at once. Matthew Henry and John Wesley note that a garment thrown over the body could hide it from the troops and still leave its cry before God, as with Abel at Genesis 4:10. Albert Barnes thinks the stopping nearly became a refusal.

The men all followed Joab to pursue Sheba. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown see the pairing of Joab's name with David's at verse 11 as the whole secret of the moment. John Gill thinks many of the men who passed later knew nothing of what had happened to Amasa on the road.

2 Samuel 20:14-15

went through all the tribes of Israel: Sheba runs the length of the land gathering support before he is finally cornered at Abel of Beth-maachah, a fortified city far north near the border with Syria. Joab's men lay siege the standard way, a bank cast up against the wall and battering begun, treating one walled city as the price of ending a national revolt.

Joab's troops built a siege ramp at Abel-beth-maacah against the outer rampart. Adam Clarke takes the Hebrew solelah as a siege tower for archers, and Albert Barnes keeps the sense of a mound, as in Assyrian palace carvings, set so the troops battering the wall could reach it. Matthew Henry blames the city for harbouring Sheba.

2 Samuel 20:16-19

cried a wise woman out of the city: An unnamed wise woman does what no man in the city attempted, calling Joab to the wall and negotiating before the first breach opens. She invokes the city's old reputation for settling disputes by counsel rather than the sword, and then names the city with a title that carries weight elsewhere in Scripture, a mother in Israel. Her question, why wilt thou swallow up the inheritance of the Lord, answers Sheba's own opening cry at verse 1 almost word for word, inheritance turned from a rebel's grievance into a plea for a city that belongs to God.

The woman confirms whom she is speaking to before she says a word of substance. Matthew Henry supposes this was the first time Joab ever treated with a woman in matters of war. Joab listens, and the siege halts.

The wise woman says that long ago people used to seek counsel at Abel to settle disputes. Adam Clarke admits the origin of the saying is unknown, though its sense seems to be that the counsel of Abel settled disputes by consent of both sides. Albert Barnes ranks Abel with Teman as a city of wisdom.

a mother in Israel: John Wesley explains that a great city was called a mother and the towns depending on it her daughters, which John Gill reads as a metropolitan city. Deborah bears the same title at Judges 5:7. Albert Barnes notes the woman speaks for the whole city as loyal.

2 Samuel 20:20-22

Far be it, far be it from me: Joab answers the accusation of wanting to swallow up the city by doubling his denial, then narrows the siege to one name, Sheba the son of Bichri, and no more. The woman's wisdom secures the trade David never got from a battlefield: Sheba's head is thrown over the wall, the siege lifts at a single trumpet blast, and the city that produced a proverb about counsel now proves it works. Joab returns to Jerusalem with the second rival off his path inside the same chapter.

John Gill and John Wesley reconcile Sheba's Benjamite birth with his home in the hill country of Ephraim, Gill by residence and Wesley by a place of that name within Benjamin. The woman promises the head before consulting anyone, and Adam Clarke takes this as proof of her sway in the city. Wesley thinks she may have governed it.

The whole matter ends with one death, where Joab's ramp had threatened a whole city. Her counsel answers the proverb of verse 18. Joab's return to Jerusalem restores him to the command David had taken from him, and verse 23 lists him over the army again.

2 Samuel 20:23-26

Now Joab was over all the host of Israel: The chapter closes with an officer list that answers the one at 8:16-18 almost office for office, Joab over the host again, Benaiah over the Cherethites and Pelethites, Zadok and Abiathar still the priests. Two differences stand out: Adoram now stands over the tribute David collects from conquered peoples, an office the first list did not have, and Sheva holds the scribe's post Seraiah held before. David's sons no longer close the list as chief rulers; Ira the Jairite does, a change the text does not explain, and the repetition marks a fresh start after two rebellions, Absalom's and Sheba's, closing the bracket the first list opened.

Adoram held charge of the forced labor. Albert Barnes places the office late in David's reign and allows two senses, tribute from other nations or command of forced labor. Israel stoned the same Adoram at 1 Kings 12:18, and Adam Clarke compares him to a chief tax officer.

Adam Clarke calls the scribe the king's secretary. John Gill takes Sheva as either the earlier scribe of 8:17 under another name or his successor after death or removal. Zadok and Abiathar hold the priesthood as before, and Abiathar keeps it until Solomon removes him at 1 Kings 2:27.

Ira the Jairite served David as priest. Albert Barnes suggests reading Ithrite, linking Ira to Jattir in Judah, and notes that the sons of David were called priests at 8:18. Adam Clarke says the ancient versions read priest to David and the Chaldee reads chief, and Clarke thinks Ira was a household chaplain.