2 Samuel2chapter 2

2 Samuel 2:1

David does not march for Hebron on his own judgment; he enquires of the Lord first, the pattern that marks the whole chain running through 5:19, 5:23 and 21:1. Saul's one recorded enquiry as king went unanswered at 28:6, and the contrast between the two kings is drawn without a word of comment here. The Lord answers in two exchanges, first the city and then the tribe, and David waits for both.

2 Samuel 2:2-3

Ahinoam the Jezreelitess and Abigail the Carmelite, already David's wives from the wilderness years, go up with him to Hebron, and his fighting men bring their own households as well. The move reads as a whole camp resettling rather than one man alone taking a throne. Hebron itself was a city of the priests and lay at the center of Judah, near the graves of the patriarchs.

2 Samuel 2:4

anointed David king over the house of Judah: The men of Judah anoint David king at Hebron, the second of the three anointings that carry him to the throne: Samuel's private anointing at 16:13, this public one over Judah alone, and the anointing over all Israel still to come at 5:3. The kingdom promised long before arrives one tribe at a time. In the same verse the men of Judah bring David word that Jabesh-gilead buried Saul, joining the report of loyalty to the report of a new king in one breath.

2 Samuel 2:5-7

David sends a blessing to Jabesh-gilead for the kindness they showed Saul in burying him, calling it kindness and truth and promising to requite it. The vocabulary anticipates the kindness shown later to Jonathan's line at 9:3, though here it is spoken over the grave of the king David never raised his own hand against. The message closes with a summons, let their hands be strengthened, for Judah has already made David king, an invitation to the rest of Israel left open rather than forced.

2 Samuel 2:8-9

Abner, captain of Saul's host, takes Ish-bosheth and makes him king, not over Judah but over Gilead, the Ashurites, Jezreel, Ephraim, Benjamin and the rest of Israel. Chronicles gives the same man's name as Esh-baal, and the readings among the scholars hold that Samuel's text substitutes bosheth, shame, for baal in later transmission. The kingdom Abner builds is Abner's in substance; Ish-bosheth's name fills the verse, but every verb belongs to the son of Ner.

2 Samuel 2:10-11

forty years old when he began to reign: Ish-bosheth is forty years old when he begins to reign and reigns two years, while David reigns in Hebron over Judah alone seven years and six months. The five and a half years the text does not account for have drawn more than one reading: some hold Abner spent that time subduing the northern tribes before crowning Ish-bosheth, others that the two-year count marks only the settled portion of a longer, contested reign. The verse states both numbers plainly and leaves the gap between them unexplained.

2 Samuel 2:12-13

Abner leads Ish-bosheth's servants out to Gibeon, and Joab leads David's servants out to meet him, and the two companies sit down on opposite sides of one pool. The meeting looks at first like a parley, and the next verses turn it into a battlefield. This is the opening move of the long war between the house of Saul and the house of David that 3:1 will name outright.

2 Samuel 2:14-16

Abner proposes that the young men arise and play before them, and Joab agrees, but the game is twelve against twelve with swords, and every pair falls together, each man's blade in his fellow's side. The place is named Helkath-hazzurim from what happened there, a field remembered by its dead rather than by any victor. What began as a contest between champions ends as mutual slaughter with no survivor on either side of the pairs.

2 Samuel 2:17

The mock combat becomes a full battle, and Abner is beaten before the servants of David. It is the first defeat named in the war between the two houses, and it sets the pattern 3:1 will state as a rule: David grew stronger and stronger, and the house of Saul grew weaker and weaker.

2 Samuel 2:18-19

Three sons of Zeruiah are named among David's men, Joab, Abishai and Asahel, and Asahel alone is singled out as light of foot as a wild roe. He fixes on Abner in the rout and will not turn aside to the right hand or the left, pursuit becoming the whole of his attention. The same speed that lets him catch a fleeing general carries him past every warning the following verses will give him.

2 Samuel 2:20-23

Abner asks Asahel by name to turn aside and take a lesser man's armor rather than force a fight he does not want, twice, and twice Asahel refuses. Abner kills him with the hinder end of his own spear, driving the butt through his body rather than the point, which the older writers read as a mark of reluctance rather than skill. The debt is not settled here; Joab collects it in the next chapter, and a killing that opens as self-defense becomes the ground for a murder among brothers.

2 Samuel 2:24-25

the hill of Ammah: Joab and Abishai keep after Abner until sundown, and the children of Benjamin gather themselves into one troop on a hilltop, the tribe of Saul's own house standing by Ish-bosheth's general. The loyalty is tribal as much as political, the same Benjamin that gave Israel its first king now closing ranks around his son's captain. The chase has reached its limit, and the next verses turn from pursuit to parley.

2 Samuel 2:26-28

Abner calls out to Joab with a question rather than a threat, shall the sword devour for ever, and do you not know it will be bitterness in the end? The line reads as plain prophecy of the two years' war still to come between the houses. Joab answers that the people would have stood down at morning regardless, then blows the trumpet himself, and the fighting stops for that day without either man claiming the other yielded first.

2 Samuel 2:29

Abner and his men walk through the night, crossing the Jordan and the whole length of Bithron to reach Mahanaim by morning. The march is given in geography rather than comment, the defeated general covering ground the way a man moves when he has nothing left to say.

2 Samuel 2:30-31

Joab gathers his men and counts the cost: nineteen of David's servants are missing along with Asahel, against three hundred and sixty of Benjamin and Abner's men who have fallen. The ratio is stated without triumph, a lopsided victory recorded in numbers rather than praised in words. The house of David has won the field on the very day the two houses first drew swords against each other.

2 Samuel 2:32

Asahel is carried home and buried in his father's tomb at Bethlehem, the town that has already given the book its king and will go on giving it its center of gravity through the mighty men of chapter 23. Joab and his men march all night and reach Hebron at daybreak, and the chapter that opened with David enquiring of the Lord closes with a burial and an army coming home to him. The long war of 3:1 is already in motion before this chapter's last verse ends.