2 Samuel3chapter 3

2 Samuel 3:6-8

made himself strong for the house: Abner is the power behind Ish-bosheth's throne, and Clarke reads his taking of Saul's concubine Rizpah as a claim on the kingdom itself, the same reading the narrator later gives Absalom's act at 16:22 and Adonijah's request for Abishag at 1 Kings 2:21-22. Ish-bosheth's question is timid rather than accusing, and Gill notes he had been the one strongly supported by Abner throughout the war just named in verse 6. Abner's answer, a dog's head, weighs every service he has done the house of Saul against one suspicion voiced by a king he privately despises.

John Gill notes that Rizpah bore Saul two sons, and her story returns at chapter 21. Albert Barnes reads her father’s name, Aiah, as Edomite or Horite. Matthew Henry notes that the text never says whether the charge was true.

Albert Barnes finds the words that belongs to Judah obscure, and he reads them as Abner throwing back the charge of Ish-bosheth that he sided with Judah. Matthew Henry notes that Abner never denies the act. He answers with his record of loyalty.

2 Samuel 3:9-11

as the Lord hath sworn to David: Abner's oath, so do God to Abner and more also, is the same self-cursing form David himself will use at verse 35, and here it turns his whole army over to the man he has spent the chapter's opening fighting. He states the transfer as a thing already sworn, to set up the throne of David over Israel and over Judah from Dan even to Beer-sheba, language the book has not put in his mouth before this quarrel. Gill notes he speaks of the Lord's own oath as though his defection accomplishes it, and Ish-bosheth, who cannot answer him a word, is left holding a crown Abner has just declared forfeit.

John Gill traces the oath to 1 Samuel 15:28, where the LORD tore the kingdom from Saul. Dan and Beersheba marked the north and south ends. Matthew Henry reads the zeal of Abner as ambition turned to revenge.

Matthew Henry reads the silence as a weak king afraid of making his position worse. Adam Clarke calls it the lot of a king ruled by the commander of his own army. Ish-bosheth held the crown, and Abner held the power.

2 Samuel 3:12-14

Make thy league with me: Abner opens the negotiation with whose is the land, offering David the whole kingdom's allegiance, and Henry reads the providence of it without excusing the man: God can make those serviceable to his purpose who have no sincere love for it. David's one condition answers with a demand of his own, the return of Michal, and he prices her by the very sum he once paid Saul for her, an hundred foreskins of the Philistines, the bride price of 1 Samuel 18:25-27 named again as a legal claim rather than a memory.

Albert Barnes gives three motives for the demand: David’s love for Michal, the wrong done in taking her, and the weight of a daughter of Saul as his queen. Adam Clarke notes the danger of leaving her with another man. Through her, that man could claim the throne.

Albert Barnes notes that David sent to Ish-bosheth while the covenant with Abner was still secret. The weak king had to act at Abner’s word. Augustine reads David taking Michal back as a picture of forgiveness under the new covenant.

2 Samuel 3:15-16

took her from her husband: Ish-bosheth strips Michal from Phaltiel, the man Saul gave her to at 1 Samuel 25:44 while David was still in exile, and the narrator lets Phaltiel's grief stand without comment, following her weeping to Bahurim until Abner's one word ends it. Barnes reads David's legal right as intact since no divorce had passed between them, but the verse itself withholds any word from David or Michal about the reunion, an ordinary man's sorrow given more space in the text than the king's.

Albert Barnes places Bahurim on the southern edge of Benjamin, on the road from Jerusalem to the Jordan fords. The town returns as the home of Shimei at 16:5. Matthew Henry notes that Paltiel knew another man had a right to her when he took her.

2 Samuel 3:17-19

Ye sought for David in times past: Abner works two audiences before he ever reaches Hebron, the elders of Israel and the house of Benjamin, Saul's own tribe, and his argument to both is the word already spoken of David, by the hand of my servant David I will save my people Israel. Barnes reads Abner's influence as the very thing that had kept the elders from declaring for David until now, so his defection removes the last obstacle at a stroke. Spurgeon preached the phrase now then do it as a call to present obedience: light once given leaves no room for delay.

Adam Clarke finds no recorded promise in these exact words. He takes Abner to be summing up what the LORD had plainly purposed for David. Abner now argues from the promise he had fought against.

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that Abner told the elders the truth about David’s calling from God. They read his religious appeal as cover for revenge against Ish-bosheth. He then carried the answer of Benjamin to Hebron himself.

2 Samuel 3:20-21

David made Abner and the men: Abner comes to Hebron with twenty men and is received at David's table, the feast marking a peace already struck rather than one still being negotiated. Ambrose reads David's whole conduct toward a former enemy as the mark of the man, admiring valor even in one who had led the opposing army. Abner leaves in peace with a promise to gather all Israel, and the phrase he went in peace closes the scene twice, here and again at verse 22, before Joab reopens it.

Albert Barnes notes that Abner repeats the offer of verse 12, now that Michal has been returned. Adam Clarke holds that David sent him away in good faith. The covenant Abner promises would bind all Israel to David.

2 Samuel 3:22-25

brought in a great spoil with them: Joab returns from a raid to find the man who killed his brother Asahel already fed and dismissed under David's own safe conduct, and his question to the king, what hast thou done, is an accusation dressed as concern. JFB reads Joab's stated fear, that Abner came to deceive thee, as cover for two motives the narrator names plainly enough elsewhere: the blood feud from 2:23 and a general's fear of losing his place to a rival commander. Nothing in Joab's speech to David answers David's welcome of Abner; it only reinterprets it.

The report to Joab says a third time that Abner left in peace. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note the blood feud Joab had carried since Abner killed his brother Asahel at 2:23. Joab hears the name of that man first.

Joab comes to the king in person and puts two questions to him without waiting for an answer. Albert Barnes reads a man ready to act without scruple. Within three verses that readiness takes Abner’s life at the gate.

Joab names Abner son of Ner in full, the commander who had led the army of Saul against David. He charges Abner with spying out the movements of David and all his plans. John Gill hears an appeal to what David knew.

2 Samuel 3:26-27

sent messengers after Abner: Joab acts without David's knowledge, sending word to recall Abner from the well of Sirah and killing him quietly in the gate, the place of judgment and business turned into an ambush. The text names the motive Joab claims, for the blood of Asahel his brother, and Clarke reads underneath it the motive Joab does not claim, that Abner alive and reconciled to David would likely have taken the command Joab held. Blood avenging had a place under the law at a city of refuge; a private killing by deceit in an open gate answers to no such provision.

Adam Clarke notes that Joab later killed Amasa in the same way, at chapter 20. Clarke adds that the power of Joab left the king afraid to bring him to justice. He calls the murder unprovoked and wicked.

2 Samuel 3:28-30

guiltless before the Lord for ever: David's declaration puts the whole crime on Joab's house by name, a curse naming issue, leprosy, the crutch of the lame, death by the sword and want of bread across generations, and Barnes reads the curse itself as proof David did not accept Joab's claim to have acted as an avenger of blood under the law. The narrator names Abishai beside Joab as guilty of the same killing, though Joab alone struck the blow, because he had slain their brother Asahel at Gibeon in the battle answers the crime to Asahel's death and to nothing else Abner had done.

Adam Clarke notes that the verbs can be read as future, a prophecy that the guilt will rest on Joab. Albert Barnes reads the one who leans on a staff as a man lame or infirm. Matthew Henry reads it as blood guilt on a family.

John Wesley reads the words in the battle as the answer to the claim of Joab. Abner killed Asahel in war and in his own defense, and that gave no ground for murder. Matthew Henry adds that David only delayed the sentence.

2 Samuel 3:31-32

followed the bier: David orders the whole camp into mourning, Joab included, and then walks behind Abner's own bier himself, a public act JFB reads as sincere grief given a public form rather than grief alone. He weeps again at the grave with all the people, and Henry reads the honor paid to a man who had been David's enemy through most of the chapter as proof that David bore Abner no private malice even while he could not yet bring Joab to account for killing him.

Matthew Henry notes that Abner was brave in the field and could have served the kingdom well at this turn. Abner was buried at Hebron, the city where David reigned. All the people wept with the king.

2 Samuel 3:33-34

Died Abner as a fool dieth?: David composes a dirge over Abner, the second such lament the book records after the one over Saul and Jonathan at 1:19-27, and its question answers itself in the next line: thy hands were not bound, nor thy feet put into fetters, a man cut down by treachery rather than by any justice he had earned. Barnes reads the whole lament as the deliberate opposite of a fool's death, since Abner was neither guilty nor helpless but simply unwarned, and Wesley reads the line as a general warning against any death a man brings nearer by his own folly, applied here to the man who struck rather than the man who fell.

John Gill reads bound hands and fettered feet as the marks of a condemned criminal led out to die. Abner went free and still fell. Adam Clarke calls the dirge a heavy rebuke to Joab, sung by all the people.

2 Samuel 3:35-37

if I taste bread, or ought else: David fasts publicly until sundown and swears the same self-cursing oath Abner used at verse 9, so do God to me and more also, and the people read his refusal to eat as proof of a grief they could not have staged for him. Spurgeon preached the episode as the moment Joab's treachery first compromised a reign otherwise marked by justice, and the chapter records the verdict the fast was meant to earn: all Israel understood that day that it was not of the king to slay Abner.

Matthew Henry compares the fear of David to that of Jacob, whose sons Simeon and Levi made him odious by their slaughter at Genesis 34. The crime of Joab could have made David odious the same way. Everything the king did pleased the people.

John Gill notes that all Israel understood it that same day. The northern tribes had lost the commander who was bringing them to David, and they cleared David of his death. Charles Spurgeon holds that David neither ordered the crime nor could have prevented it.

a prince and a great man fallen: David's word to his own servants names what the murder cost Israel rather than only what it cost him: a prince and a great man, the very general whose defection had been about to hand him every remaining tribe without a further battle. Henry reads the line as David's own grief speaking honestly, weighing what Abner's life was worth to the kingdom now that it is gone.

though anointed king: David calls himself weak in the very sentence that names him anointed, one clause holding the title and the confession together: this day weak, though anointed king. Clarke reads the sons of Zeruiah, Joab and his brothers, as the true holders of power in Hebron at this point, David reduced to a shadow of the office God had already given him, and the king leaves the doer of evil unnamed and the sentence unenforced, a debt the book carries until David charges Solomon with it on his own deathbed at 1 Kings 2:5-6.