2 Samuel23chapter 23

2 Samuel 23:1-3

the last words of David: David's titles are stacked in rising order: son of Jesse, the man raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, the sweet psalmist of Israel. The Spirit of the LORD spake by me is David's own account of how the psalms were made, one of only four occurrences of that name of the Spirit in these two books, and Acts 1:16 says the same thing of him from the other side. The oracle itself is one sentence: he that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.

2 Samuel 23:4-5

The just ruler is morning light after rain, and then David turns the figure on himself: although my house be not so with God. His last recorded words hold his failure and his hope in one verse, for the everlasting covenant of 2 Samuel 7 is ordered in all things, and sure, resting on God's oath rather than the house's record. This is all my salvation, and all my desire is a dying man's summary of the covenant, and the commentators read the chapter's placement beside the ruin of chapters 11 to 20 as the point.

2 Samuel 23:6-7

The oracle ends with the counterpart: the sons of Belial are thorns that cannot be taken with hands, handled only with iron and the spear shaft, and burned where they lie. The just rule of verse 3 and the burning of verse 7 are one picture, not two, for a ruler in the fear of God is also the end of the ungovernable.

2 Samuel 23:8-12

The kingdom was won by named men, and the book writes their names down before it closes. The first three carry one refrain, the LORD wrought a great victory, said over Eleazar whose hand clave unto the sword and over Shammah who held a lentil field alone, so the roll of heroes credits God in its own words. The exploits are told without ornament: a weary hand, a bean patch, and the people returning only to spoil.

2 Samuel 23:13-17

The scene is set in the outlaw years, the cave of Adullam, with a Philistine garrison holding Bethlehem and their troop camped in the valley of Rephaim, the valley that bears the giants' name. David speaks a longing for the water of his home well and three men treat it as an order, breaking through the host to draw it. He will not drink what cost blood to fetch and pours it out unto the LORD, the only offering fit for a devotion that great, and the older writers read the scene as the measure of what his men would do for him unasked.

2 Samuel 23:18-19

Abishai, the brother of Joab: Abishai heads the second rank of three, honourable above the thirty and short of the first three, and the list says both without embarrassment. Joab himself, commander of the whole army, appears in this roll only as his brothers' relative and his armourbearer's master, and the narrator leaves that silence unexplained.

2 Samuel 23:20-23

Benaiah's three exploits are a soldier's resume told in one breath: two lionlike men of Moab, a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow, and an Egyptian disarmed with a staff and killed with his own spear, the enemy's weapon turned as Goliath's sword was. David set him over his guard, and under Solomon he rises to command the whole host in Joab's place at 1 Kings 2:35. The list is also a preview of the next reign for those reading on.

2 Samuel 23:24-38

Asahel the brother of Joab: The thirty are given as names and towns, and the roll keeps its dead: Asahel has been in his grave since Abner killed him at 2:23, and he stands first. The company is wider than Israel, with Zelek the Ammonite and Uriah's fellow foreigners on equal footing, drawn from the men who gathered to David in the cave days. At verse 34 stands Eliam the son of Ahithophel, and since Bathsheba is called the daughter of Eliam at 11:3, some draw the line that makes Ahithophel her grandfather; it is an inference from two verses, and the page says so.

2 Samuel 23:39

The roll of David's faithful ends on Uriah the Hittite, the man David killed, one chapter before the book ends. The narrator adds nothing, and the placement carries the whole weight: every reader who has come through chapter 11 reads the last name and hears it. Scripture keeps the record of the wronged where the king must see it.