Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

spread out, or measure. — Ver. 5. When David received information of the insults that had been heaped upon his ambassadors, he sent messengers to meet them, and direct them to remain in Jericho until their beard had grown again, that he might not have to set his eyes upon the insult they had received.

Ver. 6. When the Ammonites saw that they had made themselves stinking before David, and therefore that David would avenge the insult offered to the people of Israel in the persons of their ambassadors, they looked round for help among the powerful kings of Syria. They hired as auxiliaries (with a thousand talents of silver, i.e. nearly half a million of pounds sterling, according to 1 Chron. xix. 6) twenty thousand foot from Aram-Beth-Rehob and Aram-Zoba, and one thousand men from the king of Maacah, and twelve thousand troops from the men of Tob. Aram-Beth-Rehob was the Aramaean kingdom, the capital of which was Beth-Rehob. This Beth-Rehob, which is simply called Rehob in ver. 8, is in all probability the city of this name mentioned in Num. xiii. 21 and Judg. xviii. 28, wdiich lay to the south of Hamath, but the exact position of which has not yet been discovered: for the castle of Hunin, in the ruins of which Robinson imagines that he has found Beth-Rehob

1 " Cutting off a person's beard is regarded by the Arabs as an indignity quite equal to flogging and branding among ourselves. Many would rather die than have their beard shaved off" (Arvieux, Sitten der Beduinen-araber).

Niebuhr relates a similar occurrence as having taken place in modern times. In the year 1764, a pretender to the Persian throne, named Kerim Khan, sent ambassadors to Mir Mahenna, the prince of Bendervigk, on the Persian Gulf, to demand tribute from him; but he in return cut off the ambassadors' beards. Kerim Khan was so enraged at this, that he went the next year with a large army to make war upon this prince, and took the city, and almost the whole of his territory, to avenge the insult.

(Bill. Researches, p. 370), is to the south-west of Tell el Kadi, the ancient Laish-Dan, the northern boundary of the Israelitish territory; so that the capital of this Aramaean kingdom would have been within the limits of the land of Israel, — a thing which is inconceivable. Aram- Nahar aim is also mentioned in the corresponding text of the Chronicles, and for that reason many have identified I>eth-Rehob with Rehoboth, on u the river" (Euphrates), mentioned in Gen. xxxvi. 37. But this association is precluded by the fact, that in all probability the latter place is to be found in Rachabe, which is upon the Euphrates and not more than half a mile from the river (see Ritter, Erdlc. xv. p. 128), so that from its situation it can hardly have been the capital of a separate Aramaean kingdom, as the government of the king of Zoba extended, according to ver. 16, beyond the Euphrates into Mesopotamia. On Aram-Zoba, see at ch. viii. 3; and for Maacah at Deut. iii. 14. 31BTJ*K is not to be taken as one word and rendered as a proper name, hli-Tob, as it has been by most of the earlier translators; but K^K is a common noun used in a collective sense (as it frequently is in the expression *$?&*, ^^)3 " the men of Tob." lob was the district between Syria and Ammonitis, where Jephthah had formerly taken refuge (Judg. xi. 5). The corresponding text of the Chronicles (1 Chron. xix. 6, 7) is fuller, and differs in several respects from the text before us. According to the Chronicles, Hanun sent a thousand talents of silver to hire chariots and horsemen from Aram-Naharaim, Aram-Maacah, and Zobah. With this the Ammonites hired thirty-two thousand receb {i.e. chariots and horsemen: see at ch. viii. 4), and the king of Maacah and his people. They came and encamped before Medeba, the present ruin of Medaba, two hours to the south-east of Heshbon, in the tribe of Reuben (see at Num. xxi. 30, compared with Josh. xiii. 16), and the Ammonites gathered together out of their cities, and went to the war. The Chronicles therefore mention Aram-Naharaim (i.e. Mesopotamia) as hired by the Ammonites instead of Aram-Beth-Rehob, and leave out the men of Tob. The first of these differences is not to be explained, as Bertheau suggests, on the supposition that the author of the Chronicles took lktli-Reliob to be the same city as Rehoboth of tin' river in (Jen. xwvi. 37, and therefore substituted the well-known u Aram of the two rivers" as an interpretation of the rarer name Beth-Rehob, though hardly on good ground. For this conjecture does not help to explain the omission of " the men of Tob." It is a much simpler explanation, that the writer of the Chronicles omitted Betli-Reliob and Tob as being names that were less known, this being the only place in the Old Testament in which they occur as separate kingdoms, and simply mentioned the kingdoms of Maacak and Zoba, which frequently occur; and that he included " Aram of the two rivers,'' and placed it at the head, because the Syrians obtained succour from Mesopotamia after their first defeat. The account in the Chronicles agrees with the one before us, so far as the number of auxiliary troops is concerned. For twenty thousand men of Zoba and twelve thousand of Tob amount to thirty-two thousand, besides the people of the king of Maacah, who sent a thousand men according to the text of Samuel. But according to that of the Chronicles, the auxiliary troops consisted of chariots and horsemen, whereas only foot-soldiers are mentioned in our text, which appears all the more remarkable, because according to eh. viii. 4, and 1 Chron. xviii. 4, the king of Zoba fought against David with a considerable force of chariots and horsemen. It is very evident, therefore, that there are copyists' errors in both texts; for the troops of the Syrians did not consist of infantry only, nor of chariots and horsemen alone, but of foot-soldiers, cavalry, and war-chariots, as we may see very clearly not only from the passages already quoted in ch. viii. 4 and 1 Chron. xviii. 4, but also from the conclusion to the account before us. According to ver. 18 of this chapter, when Hadarezer had reinforced his army with auxiliaries from Mesopotamia, after losing the first battle, David smote seven hundred receb and forty thousand parashim of Aram, whilst according to the parallel text (1 Chron. xix. 18) he smote seven thousand receb and forty thousand foot. Now, apart from the difference between seven thousand and seven hundred in the case of the receb, which is to be interpreted in the same way as a similar difference in ch. viii. 4, the Chronicles do not mention any parashim at all in ver. 18, but foot-soldiers only, whereas in ver. 7 they mention only receb and parashim; and, on the other hand, there are no foot-soldiers given in ver. 18 of the text before us, but riders only, whereas in ver. 6 there are none but foot-soldiers mentioned, without any riders at all. It is evident that in both engagements the Syrians fought with all three (infantry, cavalry, and chariots), so that in both of them David smote chariots, horsemen, and foot.

Vers. 7-14. When David heard of these preparations and the advance of the Syrians into the land, he sent Joab and his brave army against the foe. D^iaan (the mighty meii) is in apposition to &Gyr03 (all the host): the whole army, namely the heroes or mighty men, i.e. the brave troops that were well used to war. It is quite arbitrary on the part of Then i us to supply vav before D'nuan; for, as Bertheau has observed, we never find a distinction drawn between the gibborim and the whole army. — Ver. 8. On the other hand, the Ammonites came out (from the capital, where they had assembled), and put themselves in battle array before the gate. The Syrians were alone on the field, i.e. they had taken up a separate position on

Medeba lay about four geographical miles in a straight line to the south-west of Rabbath-Ammon. — Ver. 9. When Joab saw that " the front of the war was (directed) against him both before and behind," he selected a picked body out of the Israelitish army, and posted them (the picked men) against the children of Aram (i.e. the Syrians). The rest of the men he gave to his brother Abishai, and stationed them against the

Ammonites. u The front of the bottle:" i.e. the face or front of the hostile army, when placed in battle array. Joab had this in front and behind, as the Ammonites had taken their stand before Rabbali at the back of the Israelitish army, and the

Syrians by Medeba in their front, so that Joab was attacked both before and behind. This compelled him to divide his army.

(the picked men in Israel) the Chronicles have TITW'SJ "una

(the men in Israel), the singular WIS being more commonly employed than the plural to denote the men of war. The 3 before?Hnfe^ is not to be regarded as suspicious, although the early translators have not expressed it, and the Masoretes wanted to expunge it. u The choice of Israel" signifies those who were selected in Israel for the war, i.e. the Israelitish soldiers. Joab himself took up his station opposite to the

Syrians with a picked body of men, because they were the stronger force of the two. He then made this arrangement with Abishai (ver. 11): " If Aram becomes stronger than I (i.e. overpowers me), come to my help; and if the Ammonites should overpower thee, I will go to help tJiee." Consequently the attack was not to be- made upon both the armies of the enemy simultaneously; but Joab proposed to attack the Aramaeans (Syrians) first (cf. ver. 13), and Abishai was merely to keep the Ammonites in check, though there was still a possibility that the two bodies of the enemy might make their attack simultaneously. — Ver. 12. u Be firm, and let us be firm (strong) for our people, and for the towns of our God: and Jehovah will do what seemeth Him good." Joab calls the towns of Israel the towns of our God, inasmuch as the God of Israel had given the land to the people of Israel, as being His own property. Joab and Abishai were about to fight, in order that Jehovah's possessions might not fall into the hands of the heathen, and become subject to their gods. — Ver. 13. Joab then advanced with his army to battle against Aram, and " they fled before himV — Ver. 14. When the Ammonites perceived this, they also fled before Abishai, and drew back into the city (Rabbah); whereupon Joab returned to Jerusalem, probably because, as we may infer from ch. xi. 1, it was too late in the year for the siege and capture of Rabbah.

Vers. 15-19. The Aramaeans, however, gathered together again after the first defeat, to continue the war; and Hadarezer, the most powerful of the Aramaean kings, sent messengers to Mesopotamia, and summoned it to war. It is very evident, not only from the words " he sent and brought out Aram, which was beyond the river," but also from the fact that Shobach, Hadarezer's general (Shophach according to the Chronicles), was at the head of the Mesopotamian troops, that the Mesopotamian troops who were summoned to help were under the supreme rule of Hadarezer. This is placed beyond all possible doubt by ver. 19, where the kings who had fought with Hadarezer against the Israelites are called his " servants," or vassals. DT'n 5|X^ (ver. 16) might be translated "and their army came;" but when we compare with this the HDKjn tfhj of ver. 17, we are compelled to render it as a proper name (as in the Septuagint, Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic) — " and they (the men from beyond the Euphrates) came (marched) to Helam" — and to take

D^n as a contracted form of BfcOn. The situation of this place has not yet been discovered. Ewald supposes it to be connected with the Syrian town Alamatha upon the Euphrates (Ptol. Geogr. v. 15); but this is not to be thought of for a moment, if only because it cannot be supposed that the Aramaeans would fall back to the Euphrates, and wait for the Israelites to follow them thither before they gave them battle; and also on account of ch. viii. 4 and 1 Chron. xviii. 3, from which it is evident that Ilelam is to be sought for somewhere in the neighbourhood of Hamath (see p. 360). For np*6n Kta we find Dn\i?K K3J, " David came to them" (the Aramaeans), in the Chronicles: so that the author of the Chronicles has omitted the unknown place, unless indeed Dnv*jj has been written by mistake for Q^n. — Vers. 17 sqq. David went with all Israel (all the Israelitish forces) against the foe, and smote the Aramaeans at Helam, where they had placed themselves in battle array, slaying seven hundred charioteers and forty thousand horsemen, and so smiting (or wounding) the general Shobach that he died there, i.e. that he did not survive the battle (Thenius). With regard to the different account given in the corresponding text of the Chronicles as to the number of the slain, see the remarks on ver. 6 (pp. 376-7). It is a fact worthy of notice, that the number of men who fell in the battle (seven hundred receb and forty thousand parashim, according to the text before us; seven thousand receb and fortv thousand ragli, according to the Chronicles) agrees quite as wrell with the number of Aramaeans reported to be taken prisoners or slain, according to ch. viii. 4 and 1 Chron. xviii. 4, 5 (viz. seventeen hundred parashim or a thousand receb, and seven thousand parashim and twenty thousand ragli of Aram-Zoba, and twenty-two thousand of Aram-Damascus), as could possibly be expected considering the notorious corruption in the numbers as we possess them; so that there is scarcely any doubt that the number of Aramaeans who fell was the same in both accounts (ch. viii. and x.), and that in the chapter before us we have simply a more circumstantial account of the very same war of which the result is given in ch. viii. and 1 Chron. xviii. — Ver. 19. " And when all the kings, the vassals of Hadarezer, saw that they were smitten before Israel^ they made peace with Israel) and became subject to them; and Aram was afraid to render any further help to the Ammonites." It might appear from the first half of this verse, that it was only the vassals of Hadarezer who made peace with Israel, and became subject to it, and that Hadarezer himself did not. But the last clause, " and the Aramaeans were afraid," etc., shows very clearly that Hadarezer also made peace with the- Israelites, and submitted to their rule; so that the expression in the first half of the verse is not a very exact one.

Ver. 1 (cf. 1 Chron. xx. 1). Siege of Rabbah. — " And it came to pass at the return of the year, at the time when the kings marched out, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the ximmonites and besieged Rabbah: but David remained in Jerusalem" This verse is connected with ch. x. 14, where it was stated that after Joab had put to flight the Aramaeans who came to the help of the Ammonites, and when the Ammonites also had fallen back before Abishai in consequence of this victory, and retreated into their fortified capital, Joab himself returned to Jerusalem. He remained there during the winter or rainy season, in which it was impossible that war should be carried on. At the return of the year, i.e. at the commencement of spring, with which the new year began in the month Abib (Nisan), the time when kings who were engaged in war were accustomed to open their campaign, David sent Joab his commander-in-chief with the whole of the Israeli tish forces to attack the Ammonites once more, for the purpose of chastising them and conquering their capital. The Chethibh MfcA©n should be changed into Mfen, according to the Keri and the text of the Chronicles. The K interpolated is a perfectly superfluous mater lectionis, and probably crept into the text from a simple oversight. The u servants " of David with Joab were not the men performing military service, or soldiers, (in which case "all Israel" could only signify the people called out to war in extraordinary circumstances,) but the king's military officers, the military commanders; and " all Israel" the whole of the military forces of Israel. Instead of " the children of Ammon " we find " the country of the children of Ammon," which explains the meaning more fully. But there was no necessity to insert H£ (the land or country), as ITWil is applied to men in other passages in the sense of "cast to the ground," or destroy {e.g. 1 Sam. xxvi. 15). Rabhali was the capital of Ammonitis (as in Josh. xiii. 25): the fuller name was Rabbatli of the children of Amnion. It has been preserved in the ruins which still exist under the ancient name of Rabbat-Ammdn, on the Nahr Amman, i.e. the upper Jabbok (see at Deut. iii. 11). The last clause, " but David sat (remained) in Jerusalem" leads on to the account which follows of David's adultery with Bathsheba (vers. 2-27 and ch. xii. 1-25), which took place at that time, and is therefore inserted here, so that the conquest of Rabbah is not related till afterwards (ch. xii. 26-31).

Vers. 2-27. David's Adultery. — David's deep fall forms a turning-point not only in the inner life of the great king, but also in the history of his reign. Hitherto David had kept free from the grosser sins, and had only exhibited such infirmities and failings as simulation, prevarication, etc., which clung to all the saints of the Old Covenant, and were hardly regarded as sins in the existing stage of religious culture at that time, although God never left them unpunished, but invariably visited them upon His servants with humiliations and chastisements of various kinds. Among the unacknowledged sins which God tolerated because of the hardness of Israel's heart was polygamy, which encouraged licentiousness and the tendency to sensual excesses, and to which but a weak barrier had been presented by the warning that had been given for the Israelitish kings against taking many wives (Deut. xvii. 17), opposed as such a warning was to the notion so prevalent in the East both in ancient and modern times, that a well-filled harem is essential to the splendour of a princely court. The custom to which this notion gave rise opened a dangerous precipice in David's way, ami led to a most grievous fall, that can only be explained, as O. v. Gerlach has said, from the intoxication consequent upon undisturbed prosperity and power, which grew with every year of his reign, and occasioned a long series of most severe humiliations and divine chastisements that marred the splendour of his reign, notwithstanding the fact that the great sin was followed by deep and sincere repentance.

Vers. 2-5. Towards evening David walked upon the roof of his palace, after rising from his couch, i.e. after taking his mid-day rest, and saw from the roof a woman bathing, namely in the uncovered court of a neighbouring house, where there was a spring with a pool of water, such as you still frequently meet with in the East. u The woman was beautiful to look upon." Her outward charms excited sensual desires. — Ver. 3. David ordered inquiry to be made about her, and found ("^Nsl_, " he, i.e. the messenger, said;" or indefinitely, "they said") that she was Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hethite. KvH, nonne, is used, as it frequently is, in the sense of an affirmation, " it is indeed so." Instead of Bathsheba the daughter of Eliam, we find the name given in the Chronicles (1 Chron. iii. 5) as Bathshua the daughter of Ammiel. The form W'V)2 may be derived from V^TO, in which 2 is softened into 1; for Bathsheba (with betli) is the correct and original form, as we may see from 1 Kings i. 11, 15, 28. Eliam and Ammiel have the same signification; the difference simply consists in the transposition of the component parts of the name. It is impossible to determine, however, which of the two forms was the original one. — Ver. 4. The information brought to him, that the beautiful woman was married, was not enough to stifle the sensual desires which arose in David's soul. " When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin" (Jas. i. 15). David sent for the woman, and lay with her. In the expression " he took her, and she came to him," there is no intimation whatever that David brought Bathsheba into his palace through craft or violence, but rather that she came at his request without any hesitation, and offered no resistance to his desires. Consequently Bathsheba is not to be regarded as free from blame. The very act of bathing in the uncovered court of a house in the heart of the city, into which it was possible for any one to look down from the roofs of the houses on higher ground, does not say much for her feminine modesty, even if it was not done with an ulterior purpose, as some commentators suppose. Nevertheless in any case the greatest guilt rests upon David, that he, a man upon whom the Lord had bestowed such grace, did not resist the temptation to the lust of the flesh, but sent to fetch the woman. " When she had sanctified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house." Defilement from sexual intercourse rendered unclean till the evening (Lev. xv. 18). Bathsheba thought it her duty to observe this statute most scrupulously, though she did not shrink from committing the sin of adultery. — Ver. 5. When she discovered that she was with child, she sent word to David. This involved an appeal to him to take the necessary steps to avert the evil consequences of the sin, inasmuch as the law required that both adulterer and adulteress should be put to death (Lev. xx. 10).

Vers. 6-18. David had Uriah the husband of Bathsheba sent to him by Joab, under whom he was serving in the army before Rabbah, upon some pretext or other, and asked him as soon as he arrived how it fared with Joab and the people (i.e. the army) and the war. This was probably the pretext under which David had had him sent to him. According to eh. xxiii. 39, Uriah was one of the glbborim (" mighty men ") of David, and therefore held some post of command in the army, although there is no historical foundation for the statement made by Josephus, viz. that he was Joab's armour-bearer or aide-decamp. The king then said to him, *' Go down to thy house (from the palace upon Mount Zion down to the lower citv, where Uriah's house was situated), and wash thy feet;" and when he had gone out of the palace, he sent a royal present after him. The Israelites were accustomed to wash their feet when they returned home from work or from a journey, to take refreshment and rest themselves. Consequently these words contained an intimation that he was to go and refresh himself in his own home. David's wish was that Uriah should spend a night at home with his wife, that he might afterwards be regarded as the father of the child that had been begotten in adultery. JINk'Q, a present, as in Amos v. 11, Jer. xl. 5, Esther ii. 18. — Ver. 9. But Uriah had his suspicions aroused. The connection between his wife and David may not have remained altogether a secret, so that it may have reached his ears as soon as he arrived in Jerusalem. " He lay down to sleep before the king's liouse with all the servants of his lord (i.e. the retainers of the court), and went not down to his house" " Before, or at, the door of the king's house," i.e. in the court of the palace, or in a building adjoining the king's palace, where the court servants lived. — Ver. 10. When this was told to David (the next morning), he said to Uriah, " Didst thou not come from the way (i.e. from a journey)? why didst thou not go down (as men generally do when they return from a journey) f " Uriah replied (ver. 11), " The ark (ark of the covenant), and Israel, and Judah, dwell in the huts, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord encamp in the field; and should I go to my house to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? By thy life, and by the life of thy soul, I do no such thing!" rri3D2 IfcPJ, to sit or sojourn in huts, is the same practically as being encamped in the field. Uriah meant to say: Whereas the ark, i.e. Jehovah with the ark, and all Israel, were engaged in conflict with the enemies of God and of His kingdom, and therefore encamped in the open country, it did not become a warrior to seek rest and pleasure in his own home. This answer expressed the feelings and the consciousness of duty which ought to animate one who was fighting for the cause of God, in such plain and unmistakeable terms, that it was well adapted to prick the king to the heart. But David's soul was so beclouded by the wish to keep clear of the consequences of his sin in the eyes of the world, that he did not feel the sting, but simply made a still further attempt to attain his purpose with Uriah. He commanded him to stop in Jerusalem all that day, as he did not intend to send him away till the morrow. — Ver. 13. The next day he invited him to his table and made him drunken, with the hope that when in this state he would give up his intention of not going home to his wife. But Uriah lay down again the next night to sleep with the king's servants, without going down to his house; for, according to the counsel and providence of God, David's sin was to be brought to light to his deep humiliation.

Vers. 14-27. When the king saw that his plan wras frustrated through Uriah's obstinacy, he resolved upon a fresh and still greater crime. He wrote a letter to Joab, with which he sent Uriah back to the army, and the contents of which were these: " Set ye Uriah opposite to the strongest contest, and then turn away behind him, that he may be slain, and die." 1 David was so sure that his orders would be executed, that he

1 " "We may see from this how deep a soul may fall when it turns away from God, and from the guidance of His grace. This David, who in the days of his persecution would not even resort to means that were really plausible in order to defend himself, was now not ashamed to resort to the greatest crimes in order to cover his sin. 0 God! how great is our strength

did not think it necessary to specify any particular crime of which Uriah had been guilty. — Ver. 16. The kind's wishes were fully carried out by Joab. " WJien Joab watched (i.e. blockaded) the city, he stationed Uriah just where he knew that there were brave men" (in the city). — Ver. 17. " And the men of the city came out (i.e. made a sally) and fought with Joab, and some of the people of the servants of David fell, and Uriah the Hethite died also" The literal fulfilment of the king's command does not warrant us in assuming that Joab suspected how the matter stood, or had heard a rumour concerning it. As a general, who was not accustomed to spare human life, he would be a faithful servant of his lord in this point, in order that his own interests might be served another time. — Vers. 18-21. Joab immediately despatched a messenger to the king, to give him a report of the events of the war, and with these instructions: " When thou hast told all the things of the war to theking to the end, in case the an^er of the kinp- should be excited (TO1?, ascend), and he should say to thee, Why did ye advance so near to the city to fight? knew ye not that they would shoot from the wall? Who smote Abimelech the son of Jerubbosheth (i.e. Gideon, see at Judg. vi. 32)? did not a wom.\n throw down a millstone from the wall, that he died in Thebez (Judg. ix. 53)? why went ye so nigh to the wall? then only say, Thy servant Uriah the Hethite has perished." Joab assumed that David might possibly be angry at what had occurred, or at any rate that he might express his displeasure at the fact that Joab had sacrificed a number of warriors by imprudently approaching close to the wall: he therefore instructed the messenger, if such should be the case, to announce Uriah's death to the king, for the purpose of mitigating his wrath. The messenger seems to have known that Uriah was in disgrace with the king. At the same time, the words " thy servant Uriah is dead also'' might be understood or interpreted as meaning that it was without, or even in opposition to, Joab's command, that Uriah went so far with his men,

when we lay firm hold of Thee! And how weak W(> become as soon as we turn away from Thee! The greatest saints would be ready for the worst of deeds, it Thou shouldst but leave them for a single moment without Thy

protection. Whoever reflects upon this, will give op all thought of selfurity and spiritual pride. " — Berleburg Bible.

and that he was therefore chargeable with his own death and that of the other warriors who had fallen. — Vers. 22 sqq. The messenger brought to David all the information with which Joab had charged him (n?^ with a double accusative, to send or charge a person with anything), but he so far condensed it as to mention Uriah's death at the same time. " When the men (of Rabbah) became strong against us, and came out to us into the field, and we prevailed against them even to the gate, the archers shot at thy servants down from the wall, so that some of the servants of the king died, and thy servant Uriah the Hethite is dead also." The K in the forms DWten Wjh instead of Dnton nh is an Aramaic mode of writing the words. — Yer. 25.

David received with apparent composure the intelligence which he was naturally so anxious to hear, and sent this message back to Joab: " Let not this tiling depress thee, for the sword devours thus and thus, Keep on with the battle against the city, and. destroy it." The construction of XHJJvS with HN ohj. is analogous to the combination of a passive verb with riK: " Do not look upon this affair as evil" (disastrous). David then sent the messenger away, saying, " Encourage thou him " (lit. strengthen him, put courage into him), to show his entire confidence in the bravery and stedfastness of Joab and the army, and their ultimate success in the capture of Rabbah. — In ver. 26 the account goes back to its starting-point. When Uriah's wife heard of her husband's death, she mourned for her husband. When her mourning was over, David took her home as his wife, after which she bore him a son (the one begotten in adultery). The ordinary mourning of the Israelites lasted seven days (Gen. 1. 10; 1 Sam. xxxi. 13). Whether widows mourned any longer we do not know. In the case before us Bathsheba would hardly prolong her mourning beyond the ordinary period, and David would certainly not delay taking her as his wife, in order that she might be married to the king as long as possible before the time of childbirth. The account of these two grievous sins on the part of David is then closed with the assurance that "the thing that David had done displeased the Lord," which prepares the way for the following chapter.

388 the second book of samuel.

The Lord left David almost a whole year in his sin, before sending a prophet to charge the haughty sinner with his misdeeds, and to announce the punishment that would follow. He did this at length through Nathan, but not till after the birth of JBathsheba's child, that had been begotten in adultery (compare vers. 14, 15 with ch. xi. 27). Not only was the fruit of the sin to be first of all brought to light, and the hardened sinner to be deprived of the possibility of either denying or concealing his crimes, but God would first of all break his unbroken heart by the torture of his own conscience, and prepare it to feel the reproaches of His prophet. The reason for this delay on the part of God in the threatening of judgment is set forth very clearly in Ps. xxxii., where David describes most vividly the state of his heart during this period, and the sufferings that he endured as long as he was trying to conceal his crime. And whilst in this Psalm he extols the blessedness of a pardoned sinner, and admonishes all who fear God, on the ground of his own inmost experience after his soul had tasted once more the joy and confidence arising from the full forgiveness of his iniquities; in the fifty- first Psalm, which was composed after Nathan had been to him, he shows clearly enough that the promise of divine forgiveness, which the prophet had given him in consequence of his confession of his guilt, did not take immediate possession of his soul, but simply kept him from despair at first, and gave him strength to attain to a thorough knowledge of the depth of his guilt through prayer and supplication, and to pray for its entire removal, that his heart might be renewed and fortified through the Holy Ghost. But Nathan's reproof could not possibly have borne this saving fruit, if David had still been living in utter blindness as to the character of his sin at the time when the prophet went to him.

Vers. 1-14. Nathan's Reproof. — Vers. 1 sqq. To ensure the success of his mission, viz. to charge the king with his crimes, Nathan resorted to a parable by which he led on the king to pronounce sentence of death upon himself. The parable is a very simple one, and drawn from life. Two men were living in a certain city: the one was rich, and had many sheep and oxen; the other was poor, and possessed nothing at all but one small lamb which he had bought and nourished (•???£ UL kept alive), so that it grew up in his house along with his son, and was treated most tenderly and loved like a daughter. The custom of keeping pet-sheep in the house, as we keep lap-dogs, is still met with among the Arabs (vid. Bochart, Hieroz. i. p. 594). There came a traveller (ty?£, a journey, for a traveller) to the rich man (B*K7 without an article, the express definition being introduced afterwards in connection with the adjective TO^jn; vid. Ewald, § 293a, p. 741), and he grudged to take of his own sheep and oxen to prepare (sc. a meal) for the traveller who had come to his house; "and he took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the man that had come to him." — Vers. 5, 6. David was so enraged at this act of violence on the part of the rich man, that in the heat of his anger he pronounced this sentence at once: "As the Lord liveth, the man who did this deserves to die; and the lamb he shall restore fourfold? The fourfold restoration corresponds to the law in Ex. xxi. 37. The culprit himself was also to be put to death, because the forcible robbery of a poor man's pet-lamb was almost as bad as man-stealing. — Vers. 7 sqq. The parable was so selected that David could not suspect that it had reference to him and to his sin. With all the greater shock therefore did the words of the prophet, " Thou art the man" come upon the king. Just as in the parable the sin is traced to its root — namely, insatiable covetousness — so now, in the words of Jehovah which follow, and in which the prophet charges the king directly with his crime, he brings out again in the most unsparing manner this hidden background of all sins, for the purpose of bringing thoroughly home to his heart the greatness of his iniquity, and the condemnation it deserved. "Jehovah the God of Israel hath said, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul, and I gave thee thy master s house and thy master s wives into thy bosom." These wrords refer to the fact that, according to the general custom in the East, when a king died, his successor upon the throne also succeeded to his harem, so that David was at liberty to take his predecessor's wives; though we cannot infer from this that he actually did so: in fact this is by no means probable, since, according to 1 Sam. xiv. 50, Saul had but one wife, and according to 2 Sam. iii. 7 only one concubine, whom Abner appropriated to himself. " And gave thee the house of Israel and Judah;" i.e. I handed over the whole nation to thee as king, so that thou couldst have chosen young virgins as wives from all the daughters of Judah and Israel. BJJp DW, u and if (all this was) too little, I would have added to thee this and that." — Ver. 9. " Why hast thou despised the word of Jehovah, to do evil in His eyes f Thou hast slain Uriah the Hethite ivith the sword, and taken his wife to be thy wife, and slain him with the sword of the Ammonites." The last clause does not contain any tautology, but serves to strengthen the thought by defining more sharply the manner in which David destroyed Uriah, i^n, to murder, is stronger than nsn- and the fact that it was bv the sword of the Ammonites, the enemies of the people of God, that the deed was done, added to the wickedness. — Vers. 10-12. The punishment answers to the sin. There is first of all (ver. 10) the punishment for the murder of Uriah: " The sword shall not depart from thy house for ever, because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife" etc. u For ever" must not be toned down to the indefinite idea of a long period, but must be held firmly in its literal signification. The expression "thy house," however, does not refer to the house of David as continued in his descendants, but simply as existing under David himself until it was broken up by his death. The fulfilment of this threat commenced with the murder of Amnon by Absalom (ch. xiii. 29); it was continued in the death of Absalom the rebel (ch. xviii. 14), and was consummated in the execution of Adonijah (1 Kings ii. 24, 25). — Vers. 11, 12. But David had also sinned in committing adultery. It was therefore announced to him by Jehovah, u Behold, I raise up mischief over thee out of thine own house, and will take thy wives before thine eyes, and (jive them to thy neighbour, that he may lie with thy wives before the eyes of this su?i (for the fulfilment of this by Absalom, see ch. xvi. 21, 22). For thou hast done it in secret; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before (in the face of) the sun." David's twofold sin was to be followed by a twofold punishment. For his murder he would have to witness the commission of murder in his own family, and for his adultery the violation of his wives, and both of them in an intensified form. As his sin began with adultery, and was consummated in murder, so the law of just retribution was also carried out in the punishment, in the fact that the judgments which fell upon his house commenced with Amnon's incest, whilst Absalom's rebellion culminated in the open violation of his father's concubines, and even Adonijah lost his life, simply because he asked for Abishag the Shunammite, who had lain in David's bosom to warm and cherish him in his old age (1 Kings ii. 23, 24). — Ver. 13. These words went to David's heart, and removed the ban of hardening which pressed upon it. He confessed to the prophet, " 7 have sinned against the Lord? " The words are very few, just as in the case of the publican in the Gospel of Luke (xviii. 13). But that is a good sign of a thoroughly broken spirit.... There is no excuse, no cloaking, no palliation of the sin. There is no searching for a loophole,... no pretext put forward, no human weakness pleaded. He acknowledges his guilt openly, candidly, and without prevarication " (Berleb. Bible). In response to this candid confession of his sin, Nathan announced to him, " The Lord also hath let thy sin pass by (i.e. forgiven it). Thou wilt not die. Only because by this deed thou hast given the enemies of the Lord occasion to blaspheme, the son that is born unto thee shall die." Y^, inf. abs. Piel, with chirek, because of its similarity in sound to the following perfect (see Ewald, § 240, c). S3, with wdiich the apodosis commences, belongs to the 15? which follows, and serves to give emphasis to the expression: "Nevertheless the son" (yid. Ges. § 155, 2, a). David himself had deserved to die as an adulterer and murderer. The Lord remitted the punishment of death, not so much because of his heartfelt repentance, as from His own fatherly grace and compassion, and because of the promise that He had given to David (ch. vii. 11, 12), — a promise which rested upon the assumption that David would not altogether fall away from a state of grace, or commit a mortal sin, but that even in the wrorst cases he would turn to the Lord again and seek forgiveness. The Lord therefore punished him for this sin with the judgments announced in vers. 10-12, as about to break upon him and his house. But as his sin had given occasion to the enemies of the Lord — i.e. not only to the heathen, but also to the unbelieving among the Israelites themselves — to blaspheme or ridicule his religion and that of all other believers also, the child that was begotten in adultery and had just been born should die; in order, on the one hand, that the father should atone for his adultery in the death of the son, and, on the other hand, that the visible occasion for any further blasphemy should be taken away: so that David was not only to feel the pain of punishment in the death of his son, but was also to discern in it a distinct token of the

Vers. 15-25. David's penitential Grief, and the Birth of Solomon. — Ver. 15. The last-mentioned punishment was inflicted without delay. When Nathan had gone home, the Lord smote the child, so that it became very ill. — Vers. 16, 17. Then David sought God (in prayer) for the boy, and fasted, and went and lay all night upon the earth. K3&, " he came" not into the sanctuary of the Lord (ver. 20 is proof to the contrary), but into his house, or into his chamber, to pour out his heart before God, and bend beneath His chastising hand, and refused the appeal of his most confidential servants, who tried to raise him up, and strengthen him with food. u The elders of his house,* judging from Gen. xxiv. 2, were the oldest and most confidential servants, " the most highly honoured of his servants, and those who had the greatest influence with him" (Clericus). — Ver. 18. On the seventh day, when the child died, the servants of David were afraid to tell him of its death; for they said (to one another), " Behold, while the child was still living, we spoke to him, and he did not hearken to our voice; how should we say to him, now the child is dead, that he should do harm?" (i.e. do himself an injury in the depth of his anguish.) — Vers. 19, 20. David saw at once what had happened from their whispering conversation, and asked whether the child was dead. When they answered in the affirmative, he rose up from the ground, washed and anointed himself, and changed his clothes; that is to say, he laid aside all the signs of penitential grief and mourning, went into the house of the Lord (the holy tent upon Mount Zion) and worshipped, and then returned to his house, and had food set before him. — Vers. 21 sqq. When his servants expressed their astonishment at all this, David replied, "As long as the boy lived, I fasted and icept: for

/ thought (said), Perhaps (who knows) the Lord may he gracious to me, that the child may remain alive. But now he is dead, why should I fast? can I bring him bach again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me." On this O. v. Gerlach has the following admirable remarks: " In the case of a man whose

penitence was so earnest and so deep, the prayer for the preservation of his child must have sprung from some other source than excessive love of any created object. His great desire was to avert the stroke, as a sign of the wrath of God, in the hope that he might be able to discern, in the preservation of the child, a proof of divine favour consequent upon the restoration of his fellowship with God. But when the child was dead, he humbled himself under the mighty hand of God, and rested satisfied with His grace, without giving himself up to fruitless pain." This state of mind is fully explained in Ps. li., though

his servants could not comprehend it. The form *J3rp is the imperfect Kal, *03IT according to the Chethibh, though the Masoretes have substituted as the Keri *33rn, the perfect with vav consec. — Yer. 23& is paraphrased very correctly by Clericus: " I shall go to the dead, the dead will not come to me." — Ver. 24. David then comforted his wife Bathsheba, and lived with her again; and she bare a son, whom he called Solomon, the man of peace (cf. 1 Chron. xxii. 9). David gave the child this name, because he regarded his birth as a pledge that he should now become a partaker again of peace with God, and not from any reference to the fact that the war with the Ammonites was over, and peace prevailed when he was born; although in all probability Solomon was not born till after the capture of Rabbah and the termination of the Ammonitish war. His birth is mentioned here simply because of its connection with what immediately precedes. The writer adds (in vers. 24, 25), " And Jehovah loved him, and sent by the hand (through the medium) of Nathan the prophet; and he called his son Jedidiali (i.e. beloved of Jehovah), for Jehovah 's sake." The subject to nr^!l (he sent) cannot be David, because this would not yield any appropriate sense, but must be Jehovah, the subject of the clause immediately preceding. " To send by the hand," i.e. to make a mission by a person (yid. Ex. iv. 13, etc.), is equivalent to having a commission performed by a person, or entrusting a person with a commission to another. We learn from what follows, in what the commission with which Jehovah entrusted Nathan consisted: " And he (Nathan, not Jehovah) called his (the -boy's) name Jedidiah." And if Nathan is the subject to " called," there is nothing to astonish in the expression " because of the Lord." The idea is this: Nathan came to David according to Jehovah's instructions, and gave Solomon the name Jedidiah for Jehovah's sake, i.e. because Jehovah loved him. The giving of such a name was a practical declaration on the part of Jehovah that He loved Solomon, from which David could and was intended to discern that the Lord had blessed his marriage with Bathsheba. Jedidiah, therefore, was not actually adopted as Solomon's name.

Vers. 26-31. Conquest of Kabbah, and Punishment of the Ammonites (comp. 1 Chron. xx. 1-3). — " Joab fought against Rabbah of the children of Amnion, and took the king's city." i"Dten "Vj?? the capital of the kingdom, is the city with the exception of the acropolis, as ver. 27 clearly shows, where the captured city is called " the water-city." Rabbah was situated, as the ruins of Amman show, on both banks of the river (Moiet) Amman (the upper Jabbok), in a valley which is shut in upon the north and south by two bare ranges of hills of moderate height, and is not more than 200 paces in breadth. " The northern height is crowned by the castle, the ancient acropolis, which stands on the north-western side of the city, and commands the whole city" (see Burckhardt, Syria ii. pp. 612 sqq., and Ritter, Erdkunde xv. pp. 1145 sqq.). After taking the water-city, Joab sent messengers to David, to inform him of the result of the siege, and say to him, " Gather the rest of the people together, and besiege the city (i.e. the acropolis, which may have been peculiarly strong), and take it, that I may not take the city (also), and my name be va^ed upon it," i.e. the glory of the conquest be ascribed to me. Luther adopts this explanation in his free rendering, "and I have a name from it." — Ver. 21). Accordingly David " gathered together all the people," — i.e. all the men of war who had remained behind in the land; from which we may see that Joab's besieging army had been considerably weakened during the long siege, and at the capture of the water-city, — " and fought against the acropolis, and took UP — Ver. 30. He then took their king's crown (" their king,"

viz. the king of the Ammonites) from off his (the king's) head; so that he had either been taken prisoner or slain at the capture of the city. The weight of the crown was a a talent of gold, and precious stones''' (sc. were upon it): as the writer of the Chronicles has correctly explained it by supplying H3. The Hebrew talent (equal to 3000 shekels) was 83J Dresden pounds. But the strongest man could hardly have borne a crown of this weight upon his head for however short a time; and David could scarcely have placed it upon his own head. We must therefore assume that the account of the weight is not founded upon actual weighing, but simply upon an approximative estimate, which is somewhat too high. David also took a great quantity of booty out of the city. — Ver. 31. He also had the inhabitants executed, and that with cruel tortures. " He sawed them in pieces with the satv and with iron harrows? n"J^^ Et^l, u he put them into the saw," does not give any appropriate sense; and there can be no doubt, that instead of Db^l we should read *i^J (from *w): u he cut (sawed) them in pieces."?H)2n nripEO^ " and with iron cutting tools? The meaning of the air. \ey. rniT3Q cannot be more precisely determined. The current rendering, " axes or hatchets," is simply founded upon the circumstance that "U3, to cut, is applied in 2 Kings vi. 4 to the felling of trees. The reading in the Chronicles, nilgai, is evidently a copyist's error, as we have already had PnJB?, " with the saw." The meaning of the next clause is a disputed point, as the reading itself varies, and the Masoretes read ppfta instead of the Chethibh p?D2, " he made them go through brick-kilns," i.e. burnt them in brick-kilns, as the LXX. and Vulgate render it. On the other hand, Thenius takes the Chethibh under his protection, and adopts Kimchi's explanation: " he led them through Malchan, i.e. through the place where the Ammonites burned their children in honour of their idol." Thenius would therefore alter p?E>3 into D3PE>n or D3?B2: u he offered them as sacrifices in their image of Moloch." But this explanation cannot be even grammatically sustained, to say nothing of the arbitrary character of the alteration proposed; for the technical expression ^?E>? ^3 "^?8!}j " *0 cause to go through the fire for Moloch" (Lev. xviii. 21), is essentially different from Tpton "i^yn, to cause to pass through Moloch, an expression that we never meet with. Moreover, it is impossible to see how burning the Ammonites in the image of Moloch could possibly be " an obvious mode of punishing idolatry," since the idolatry itself consisted in the fact that the Ammonites burned their children to Moloch. So far as the circumstances themselves are concerned, the cruelties inflicted upon the prisoners are not to be softened down, as Daaz and others propose, by an arbitrary perversion of the words into a mere sentence to hard labour, such as sawing wood, burning bricks, etc. At the same time, the words of the text do not affirm that all the inhabitants of Rabbah were put to death in this cruel manner. rB ip;X DJjn (without bh) refers no doubt simply to the fighting men that were taken prisoners, or at the most to the male population of the acropolis of Rabbah, who probably consisted of fighting men only. In doing this, David merely retaliated upon the Ammonites the cruelties with which they had treated their foes; since according to Amos i. 13 they ripped up women who were with child, and according to 1 Sam. xi. 2 their king Nahash would only make peace with the inhabitants of Jabesh upon the condition that the right eye of every one of them should be put out. It is sufficiently evident from this, that the Ammonites had aimed at the most shameful extermination of the Israelites. " Thus did he unto all the cities of the Ammonites" i.e. to all the fortified cities that resisted the Israelites. After the close of this war, David returned to Jerusalem with all the men of war. The war with the Syrians and Ammonites, including as it did the Edomitish war as well, was the fiercest in which David was ever engaged, and was also the last great war of his life.

The judgments threatened to king David in consequence of his sin with Bathsheba soon began to fall upon him and upon his house, and were brought about by sins and crimes on the part of his own sons, for which David was himself to blame, partly because of his own indulgence and want of discipline, and partly because of the bad example that he had set them. Having grown up without strict paternal discipline, simply under the care of their different mothers, who were jealous of one another, his sons fancied that they might gratify their own fleshly lusts, and carry out their own ambitious plans; and from this there arose a series of crimes, which nearly cost the king his life and throne. Amnon, David's eldest son, led the way with his forcible violation of his step-sister Tamar (vers. 1-22). The crime was avenged by her own brother Absalom, who treacherously assassinated Amnon, in consequence of which he was obliged to flee to Geshur and take refuge with his father-in-law (vers. 23-39).

Vers. 1-22. Amnon's Incest. — Vers. 1-14. The following occurrences are assigned in a general manner to the times succeeding the Ammonitish war, by the words " And it came to pass after this;" and as David did not marry Maacah the mother of Absalom and Tamar till after he had been made king at Hebron (see ch. iii. 3), they cannot well have taken place before the twentieth year of his reign. Amnon, the eldest son of David by Ahinoam the Jezreelite (ch. iii. 2), loved Tamar, the beautiful sister of his step-brother Absalom, so passionately that he became ill in consequence, because he could not get near to her as she was a virgin. Vers. 1 and 2 form one period. ISJL is a continuation of p"nriK ST1; and the words from DwUK^i to TJ-J3 are a circumstantial clause. *W: literally " it became narrow (anxious) to Amnon, even to making himself ill," i.e. he quite pined away, not " he pretended to be ill " (Luther), for it was not till afterwards that he did this according to Jonadab's advice (ver. 5). m?nnn: to make one's self ill, here to become ill, in ver. 5 to pretend to be ill. The clause fe^n!"6irp *3 is to be joined to the one which follows: " because she was a virgin, and it seemed impossible to him to do anything to herT The maidenly modesty of Tamar evidently raised an insuperable barrier to the gratification of his lusts. — Vers. 3-5. Amnon's miserable appearance was observed by his cousin Jonadab, a very crafty man, who asked him what was the reason, and then gave him advice as to the way in which he might succeed in gratifying his desires. Shimeah is called Shammah in 1 Sam. xvi. 9. — Ver. 4. " Why art thou so wasting away (?% thin, spare, here equivalent to wasting away, looking miserable), king's son, from morning to morning V9 i.e. day by day. " The morning" is mentioned because sick persons look worst in the morning. The advice given in ver. 5, — viz. " Lay thee down upon thy bed, and pretend to be ill; and when thy father comes to visit thee, say to him, May my sister Tamar come to me, and give me to eat?" etc., — was very craftily devised, as Amnon's wretched appearance would favour his pretence that he was ill, and it might be hoped that an affectionate father would gratify him, since even if the wish seemed a strange one, it might easily be accounted for from the marvellous desires of persons who are ill, particularly with regard to food, — desires which it is often very difficult to gratify. — Vers. 6 sqq. Amnon acted upon the advice, and begged his father, when he came to ask him how he was, to allow his sister Tamar to come and bake two heart-cakes for him before his eyes, which she very speedily did. 23? is a denom. from ™3?p? to make or bake heart-cakes. r\)2X> is a heart-strengthening kind of pastry, a kind of pancake, which could be very quickly made. It is evident from these verses that the king's children lived in different houses. Probably each of the king's wives lived with her children in one particular compartment of the palace. — Vers. 9 sqq. "And she took the pan and shook out (what she had prepared) before him. The air. \ey. n*}J^O signifies a frying-pan or sauce-pan, according to the ancient versions. The etymology is uncertain. But Amnon refused to eat, and, like a whimsical patient, he then ordered all the men that were with him to go out; and when this had been done, he told Tamar to bring the food into the chamber, that he might eat it from her hand; and when she handed him the food, he laid hold of her, and said, " Come, lie with me, my sister!" — Vers. 12, 13. Tamar attempted to escape by pointing to the wickedness of such a desire: " Pray, do not, my brother, do not humble me; for they do not such things in Israel: do not this folly."' The words recal Gen. xxxiv. 7, where the expression " folly " (nebalah) is first used to denote a want of chastity. Such a sin was altogether out of keeping with the calling and holiness of Israel (yid* Lev. xx. 8 sqq.). "And 7, ichither should I curry my slmmeV" i.e. shame and contempt would meet me everywhere. " And thou toouldst be as one of the fools in Israel." We should both of us reap nothing but shame from it. \\ hat Tamar still further said, " Novo therefore, I pray thee, speak to the king, for he will not refuse me to thee" is no doubt at variance with the law which prohibits marriage between step-brothers and sisters (Lev. xviii. 9, 11, xx. 17); but it by no means proves that the laws of Leviticus were not in existence at the time, nor does it even presuppose that Tamar was ignorant of any such law. She simply said this, as Clericus observes, " that she might escape from his hands by any means in her power, and to avoid inflaming him still more and driving him to sin by precluding all hope of marriage." l We cannot therefore even infer from these words of hers, that she really thought the king could grant a dispensation from the existing hindrances to their marriage. — Ver. 14. Amnon would not listen to her, however, but overpowered her, forced her, and lay with her.

Vers. 15-22. Amnon had no sooner gratified his animal passion, than his love to the humbled sister turned into hatred, which was even greater than his (previous) love, so that he commanded her to get up and go. This sudden change, which may be fully explained from a psychological point of view, and is frequently exemplified still in actual life, furnishes a striking proof that lust is not love, but simply the gratification of the animal passions. — Ver. 16. Tamar replied, "Do not become the cause of this great evil, (which is) greater than another that thou hast done to me, to thrust me away" i.e. do not add to the great wrong which thou hast done me the still greater one of thrusting me away. This is apparently the only admissible explanation of the difficult expression nnk"7tf, as nothing more is needed than to supply Wi. Tamar calls his sending her away a greater evil than the one already done to her, because it would inevitably be supposed that she had been guilty of some shameful conduct herself, that the seduction had come from her; whereas she was perfectly innocent, and had done nothing but what affection towards a sick brother dictated, whilst it was impossible for her to call for help (as prescribed in Deut. xxii. 27), because Amnon had sent the servants away, and Tamar could not in any case expect assistance from them. — Ver. 17. Amnon then called the boy who waited upon him, and ordered him to put out this person (the sister he had humbled), and to bolt the door behind her, so that it had the appearance of her having made a shameful proposal to him. — Ver. 18. Before stating that this command was obeyed, the writer inserts this

1 Josephus adopts this explanation: " This she said, as desirous to avoid her brother's violent passion at present" {Ant. viii. 8, 1).

remark: " She (Tamar) wore a long dress with sleeves (see Gen. xxwii. 3); for in this manner did the virgin daughters of the king dress themselves with mantles." BvTO is an accusative belonging to fUBJapflj and the meaning is that the king's daughters, who were virgins, wore long dresses with sleeves as cloaks. The cetoneth passim was not an ordinary under-garment, but was worn over the plain cetoneth or tunic, and took the place of the ordinary me'il without sleeves. Notwithstanding this dress, by which a king's daughter could at once be recognised, Amnon's servant treated Tamar like a common woman, and turned her out of the house. — Ver. 19. And Tamar took ashes upon her head, rent her sleeve-dress (as a sign of grief and pain at the disgrace inflicted upon her), laid her hand upon her head (as a sign that a grievous trouble had come upon her, that the hand of God was resting as it were upon her: vid. Jer. ii. 37), and " went going and cried" i.e. crying aloud as she went along. — Yer. 20. Then Absalom said to her, namely when she came home mourning in this manner, " Has Amnon thy brother been with theeV This was a euphemism for what had taken place (cf. Gen. xxxix. 10), as Absalom immediately conjectured. a And now, my sister, be silent; it is thy brother, do not take this thing to heart" Absalom quieted the sister, because he was determined to take revenge, but wished to conceal his plan of vengeance for the time. So Tamar remained in her brother's house, " and indeed desolate" i.e. as one laid waste, with the joy of her life hopelessly destroyed. It cannot be proved that DBb> ever means single or solitary. — Vers. 21, 22. When David heard "all these things," he became very wrathful; but Absalom did not speak to Amnon " from good to evil" (i.e. either good or evil, not a single word: Gen. xxiv. 50), because he hated him for having humbled his sister. The LXX. add to the words u he (David) was very wroth," the following clause: " He did not trouble the spirit of Amnon his son, because he loved him, for he was his first-born." This probably gives the true reason why David let such a crime as Amnon's go unpunished, when the law enjoined that incest should be punished with death (Lev. xx. 17); at the same time it is nothing but a subjective conjecture of the translators, and does not warrant us in altering the text. The fact that David was contented to be simply angry is probably to be accounted for partly from his own consciousness of

£ruilt, since he himself had been guilty of adultery; but it arose chiefly from his indulgent affection towards his sons, and his consequent want of discipline. This weakness in his character bore very bitter fruit.

Vers. 23-39. Absalom's Kevenge and Flight. — Vers. 23, 24. Absalom postponed his revenge for two full years. He then " kept sheep-shearing" which was celebrated as a joyous festival (see 1 Sam. xxv. 2, 8), " at Baal-Hazor, near JEphr aim" where he must therefore have had some property. The situation of Baal-Hazor cannot be precisely determined. The clause " which (was) beside Ephraim" points to a situation on the border of the tribe-territory of Ephraim (juxta Ephraim, according to the Onom. s.v. Baalasor); for the Old Testament never mentions any city of that name. This definition does not exactly tally with v. Raumer's conjecture {Pal. p. 149), that Baal-IIazor may have been preserved in Tell Asur (Rob. Pal. ii. p. 151, in. p. 79); for this Tell is about five Roman miles to the north-east of Bethel, i.e. within the limits of the tribe of Ephraim. There is greater probability in the suggestion made by Ewald and others, that Baal-Hazor is connected with the Hazor of Benjamin (Neh. xi. 33), though the situation of Hazor has not yet been thoroughly decided; and it is merely a conjecture of Robinson's that it is to be found in Tell Asur. The following statement, that " Absalom invited all the king's sons" (sc. to the feast), somewhat anticipates the course of events: for, according to ver. 24, Absalom invited the king himself, together with his courtiers; and it was not till the king declined the invitation for himself, that Absalom restricted his invitation to the royal princes. — Ver. 25. The king declined the invitation, that he might not be burdensome to Absalom. Absalom pressed him indeed, but he would not go, and blessed him, i.e. wished him a pleasant and successful feast (see 1 Sam. xxv. 14). — Ver. 26. Then Absalom said, " And not (i.e. if thou dost not go), may my brother Amnon go with me f" The king would not give his consent to this; whether from suspicion cannot be determined with certainty, as he eventually yielded to Absalom's entreaties and let Amnon and all the other king's sons go. From the length of time that had elapsed since Amnon's crime was committed, without Absalom showing any wish for revenge,

David might have felt quite sure that he had nothing more to fear. But this long postponement of revenge, for the purpose of carrying it eut with all the more certainty, is quite in the spirit of the East. — Ver. 28. Absalom then commanded his servants to put Amnon to death without fear, as he had commanded, as soon as his heart should become merry with wine and he (Absalom) should tell them to smite him. The arrangement of the meal is passed over as being quite subordinate to the main purpose of the narrative; and the clause added by the LXX. at the close of ver. 27, teal iiroinaev 'A/3ecraa\(ov ttotov Kara tov ttotov tov /3ao~t\£co<;, is nothing more than an explanatorv Moss, formed according to 1 Sam. xxv. 3G. The words " Have not I commanded you?" implied that Absalom would take the responsibility upon himself. — Ver. 29. The servants did as he commanded, whereupon the other king's sons all fled upon their mules. — Ver. 30. But whilst they were on the road, the report of what Absalom had done reached the ears of the king, and, as generally happens in such cases, with very great exaggeration: "Absalom hath slain all the king's sons, and there is not one of them lefty — Ver. 31. The king rent his clothes with horror at such a deed, and sat down upon the ground, and all his servants (courtiers) stood motionless by, with their clothes rent as well. This is the rendering adopted by Bottcher, as 3Stt has frequently the idea of standing perfectly motionless (e.g. Num. xxii. 23, 24; Ex. v. 20, etc.). — Ver. 32. Then Jonadab, the same person who had helped Amnon to commit his crime, said, " Let not my lord say (or think) that they have slain all the young men the king's sons, but Amnon alone is dead; for it ivas laid upon the mouth of Absalom from the day that he forced his sister Tamar" The meaning is either "they might see it (the murder of Amnon) by his mouth," or " they might gather it from what he said." IWfe nJVn: it was a thing laid down, i.e. determined (yid. Ex. xxi. 13). The subject, viz. the tiling itself, or the intended murder of Amnon, may easily be supplied from the context. DS *3 is undoubtedly used in the sense of "no but" The negation is implied in the thought: Let the king not lay it to heart, that they say all the king's sons are dead; it is not so, but only Amnon is dead..1.nadab does not seem to speak from mere conjecture; he is much too sun1 of what he says, lie might possibly have heard expressions from Absalom's lips which made him certain as to how the matter stood. — Ver. 34. " And Absalom fled." This statement follows upon ver. 29. When the king's sons fled upon their mules, Absalom also took to flight. — Vers. 30-33 are a parenthesis, in which the writer describes at once the impression made upon the king and his court by the report of" what Absalom had done. The apparently unsuitable position in which this statement is placed may be fully explained from the fact, that the flight of Absalom preceded the arrival of the rest of the sons at the king's palace. The alteration which Bottcher proposes to make in the text, so as to remove this statement altogether on account of its unsuitable position, is proved to be inadmissible by the fact that the account of Absalom's flight cannot possibly be left out, as reference is made to it again afterwards (vers. 37, 38, "Absalom had fled"). The other alterations proposed by Thenius in the text of vers. 34, 37, 38, are just as arbitrary and out of place, and simply show that this critic was ignorant of the plan adopted by the historian. His plan is the following: To the account of the murder of Amnon, and the consequent flight of the rest of the king's sons whom Absalom had invited to the feast (ver. 29), there is first of ail appended a notice of the report which preceded the fugitives and reached the king's ears in an exaggerated form, together with the impression which it made upon the king, and the rectification of that report by Jonadab (vers. 30-33). Then follows the statement that Absalom fled, also the account of the arrival of the king's sons (vers. 34-36). After this we have a statement as to the direction in which Absalom fled, the king's continued mourning, and the length of time that Absalom's banishment lasted (vers. 37, 38), and finally a remark as to David's feelings towards Absalom (ver. 39).

Jonadab's assertion, that Amnon only had been slain, was very speedily confirmed (ver. 34). The young man, the spy, i.e. the young man who was looking out for the return of those who had been invited to the feast, " lifted up his eyes and saw," i.e. saw as he looked out into the distance, " much people (a crowd of men) coming from the way behind him along the side of the mountain." VHnx T!7J?j & rV °^$ oirtaQev avrov (LXX.), per iter devium (Vulg.), is obscure; and "inK, " behind," is probably to be understood as meaning "to the west:" from the way at the back of the spy, i.e. to the west of his station. The following words, "inn 12TD, also remain obscure, as the position of the spy is not given, so that the allusion may be to a mountain in the north-west of Jerusalem quite as well as to one on the west.1 When the spy observed the crowd of men approaching, Jonadab said to the king (ver. 35), " Behold, the king's sons are coming: as thy servant said, so has it come to pass.» — Ver. 36. Jonadab had hardly said this when the king's sons arrived and wept aloud, sc. as they related what had occurred; whereupon the king and all his retainers broke out in loud weeping. — Ver. 37. " Only Absalom had fled and gone to Talmai the son of Ammihud, the king of Geshur." These words form a circumstantial clause, which the writer has inserted as a parenthesis, to define the expression "the king's sons" more particularly. If we take these words as a parenthesis, there will be no difficulty in explaining the following word "mourned," as the subject (David) may very easily be supplied from the preceding words "the king," etc. (ver. 36). To the remark that David mourned all his life for his son (Amnon), there is attached, just as simply and quite in accordance with the facts, the more precise information concerning Absalom's flight, that he remained in Geshur three years. The repetition of the words "Absalom had fled and gone to Geshur" may be accounted for from the general diffuseness of the Hebrew style. Talmai the king of Geshur was the father of Maacalu Absalom's mother (ch. iii. 3). The LXX. thought it necessary expressly to indicate this by inserting eh <yrjv Xafia^daS (al. yr/v Ma^dS). —Ver. 39. " And it (this) held king David bach from going out

1 The LXX. have very comprehensive additions here: first of all, after U nXevpccs rov 6'pov;, they have the more precise definition eu rfi Kotroifixoet, and then the further clause, " and the spy came and announced to the king," "Avlpx; iupuKot U rys olov rqg upm^v (?) \k pkpovq rov opovg, partly to indicate more particularly the way by which the king's sons came, and partly to fill up a supposed gap in the account. But they did not consider that the statement in ver. 35, " and Jonadab said to the king, Behold, the king's sons are coming," does not square with these additions; for if the spy had already informed the king that his sons were coming, there was no necessity for Jonadab to do it again. This alone is sufficient to show that the additions made by the LXX. are nothing but worthless glosses, introduced according to subjective conjectures and giving no foundation for alterations of the text.

to Absalom, for he comforted himself concerning Amnon, because he was dead." In adopting this translation of the difficult clause with which the verse commences, we take /3ni in the sense of NJ3, as the verbs rfa and *03 frequently exchange their forms; we also take the third pers. fern, as the neuter impersonal, so that the subject is left indefinite, and is to be gathered from the context. Absalom's flight to Geshur, and his stay there, were what chiefly prevented David from going out to Absalom. Moreover, David's grief on account of Amnon's death gradually diminished as time rolled on. '£OfcC?N DK¥ is used in a hostile sense, as in Deut. xxviii. 7, to go out and punish him for his wickedness. The *3 before En: might also be rendered " but" as after a negative clause, as the principal sentence implies a negation: " He did not go out against Absalom, but comforted himself" There is not only no grammatical difficulty in the way of this explanation of the verse, but it also suits the context, both before and after. All the other explanations proposed are either at variance with the rules of the language, or contain an unsuitable thought. The old Jewish interpretation (adopted in the Chaldee version, and also by the Rabbins), viz. David longed (his soul pined) to go out to Absalom (i.e. to see or visit him), is opposed, as Gusset has shown (in his Lex. pp. 731-2), to the conduct of David towards Absalom as described in ch. xiv., — namely, that after Joab had succeeded by craft in bringing him back to Jerusalem, David would not allow him to come into his presence for two wdiole years (ch. xiv. 24, 28). Luther's rendering, " and king David left off going out against Absalom," is not only precluded by the feminine ^n, but also by the fact that nothing has been said about any pursuit of Absalom on the part of David. Other attempts at emendations there is no need whatever to refute.

As David did not repeal the banishment of Absalom, even after he had comforted himself for Amnon's death, Joab endeavoured to bring him back to Jerusalem by stratagem (vers. 1-20); and when this succeeded, he proceeded to effect his reconciliation to the king (vers. 21-33). He may have been induced to take these steps partly by his personal attachment to Absalom, but the principal reason no doubt was that Absalom had the best prospect of succeeding to the throne, and Joab thought this the best way to secure himself from punishment for the murder which he had committed. But the issue of events frustrated all such hopes. Absalom did not succeed to the throne, Joab did not escape punishment, and David was severely chastised for his weakness and injustice.

Vers. 1—20. When Joab perceived that the king's heart was against Absalom, he sent for a cunning woman from Tekoah, to work upon the king and change his mind, so that he might grant forgiveness to Absalom. Yer. 1 is understood by the majority of commentators, in accordance with the Syriac and Vulgate, as signifying that Joab learned that the king's heart was inclined towards Absalom, was well disposed towards him again. But this explanation is neither philologically sustained, nor in accordance with the context. 3/, written with ^V and without any verb, so that n*n has to be supplied, only occurs again in Dan. xi. 28, where the preposition has the meaning " against." It is no argument against this meaning here, that if David had been ill disposed towards Absalom, there would have been no necessity to state that Joab perceived it; for we cannot see why Joab should only have perceived or noticed David's friendly feelings, and not his unfriendly feelings as well. If, however, Joab had noticed the re-awakening of David's good feelings towards Absalom, there would have been no necessitv for him to bring the cunning woman from Tekoah to induce him to consent to Absalom's return. Moreover, David would not in that case have refused to allow Absalom to see his face for two whole years after his return to Jerusalem (ver. 24). Tekoah, the home of the prophet Amos, the present Tekua, two hours to the south of Bethlehem (see at Josh. xv. 59, LXX.). The u wise woman" was to put on mourning, as a woman who had been mourning for a long while for some one that was dead (?3Knn, to set or show herself mourning), and to go to the king in this attire, and say what Joab had put into her mouth. — Ver. 4. The woman did this. All the old translators have given as the rendering of n$KH "lDKrn " the woman came (went) to the king," as if they had read N2TH. This reading is actually found in some thirty Codd. of De Rossi, and is therefore regarded by Thenius and tlie majority of critics as the original one. But Bottchcr lias very justly urged, in opposition to this, that "ip**^ cannot possibly be an accidental corruption of fcCTIl, and that it is still less likely that such an alteration should have been intentionally made. But this remark, which is correct enough in itself, cannot sustain the conjecture which Bottcher has founded upon it, namely that two whole lines have dropt out of the Hebrew text, containing the answer which the woman of Tekoah gave to Joab before she went to the kino;, since there is not one of the ancient versions which contains a single word more than the Masoretic text. Consequently we must regard "iBfcfrn as the original reading, and interpret it as a hysteron-proteron, which arose from the fact that the historian was about to relate at once what the woman said to the king, but thought it desirable to mention her falling down at the feet of the king before giving her actual words, " Help, 0 king" which he introduces by repeating the word "tofcifll. — Vers. 5 sqq. When the king asked her, "What aileth thee?" the woman described the pretended calamity which had befallen her, saying that she was a widow, and her two sons had quarrelled in the field; and as no one interposed, one of them had killed the other. The whole family had then risen up and demanded that the survivor should be given up, that they might carry out the avenging of blood upon him. Thus they sought to destroy the heir also, and extinguish the only spark that remained to her, so as to leave her husband neither name nor posterity upon the earth. The suffix attached to 13*1, with the object following (" he smote him, the other," ver. 6), may be explained from the diffuseness of the style of ordinary conversation (see at 1 Sam. xxi. 14). There is no reason whatever for changing the reading into ^, as the suffix i, though unusual with verbs rr7, is not without parallel; not to mention the fact that the plural W is quite unsuitable. There is also quite as little reason for changing HTDK^I into WDtS^I, in accordance with the Syriac and Arabic, as Michaelis and Thenius propose, on the ground that " the woman would have described her relatives as diabolically malicious men, if she had put into their mouths such words as these, * We will destroy the heir also.' " It was the woman's intention to describe the conduct of the relations and their pursuit of blood-revenge in the harshest terms possible, in order that she might obtain help from the king. She begins to speak in her own name at the word ^31 £" and so they shall quench and"), where she resorts to a figure, for the purpose of appealing to the heart of the king to defend her from the threatened destruction of her family, saying, " And so they shall quench the burning coal which is left." n?na is used figuratively, like to ^co7rvpovy the burning coal with which one kindles a fresh fire, to denote the last remnant. D^ ^r??: " so as not to set" i.e. to preserve or leave name and remnant (i.e. posterity) to my husband.

This account differed, no doubt, from the case of Absalom, inasmuch as in his case no murder had taken place in the heat of a quarrel, and no avenger of blood demanded his death; so that the only resemblance was in the fact that there existed an intention to punish a murderer. But it was necessary to disguise the affair in this manner, in order that David might not detect her purpose, but might pronounce a decision out of pity for the poor widow which could be applied to his own conduct towards Absalom. — Ver. 8. The plan succeeded. The king replied to the woman, u Go home, I will give charge concerning thee" i.e. I will give the necessary commands that thy son may not be slain by the avenger of blood. This declaration on the part of the king was perfectly just. If the brothers had quarrelled, and one had killed the other in the heat of the quarrel, it was right that he should be defended from the avenger of blood, because it could not be assumed that there was any previous intention to murder. This declaration therefore could not be applied as yet to David's conduct towards Absalom. But the woman consequently proceeded to say (ver. 9), "My lord, O king, let the guilt be upon me and upon my father's house, and let the king and his throne be guiltless." ND3? the throne, for the government or reign. The meaning of the words is this: but if there should be anything wrong in the fact that this bloodshed is not punished, let the guilt fall upon me and my family. The king replied (ver. 10), " Whosoever speaketh to thee, bring him to me; he shall not touch thee any more." *IvN does not stand for ^vV, "against thee;" but the meaning is, whoever speaks to thee any more about this, i.e. demands thy son of thee again. — Ver. 11. The crafty woman was not yet satisfied with this, and sought by repeating her petition to induce the king to confirm his promise on oath, that she might bind him the more firmly. She therefore said still further: " / pray thee, let the king remember Jehovah thy God, that the avenger of blood may no more prepare destruction, and that they may not destroy my son" The Chethib JV5nn is probably a copyist's error for nte"tn, for which the Masoretes would write rinnn, the construct state of ^31^ — a form of the inf. abs. which is not commonly used, and which may possibly have been chosen because H21H had become altogether an adverb (vid. Ewald, § 240, e). The context requires the inf. constr. nimn: that the avenger of blood may not multiply (make much) to destroy, i.e. may not add to the destruction; and rpn"i.n is probably only a verbal noun used instead of the infinitive. The king immediately promised on oath that her son should not suffer the least harm. — Vers. 12, 13. When the woman had accomplished so much, she asked permission to speak one word more; and having obtained it, proceeded to the point she wanted to reach: " And wherefore thinkest thou such things against people of God f And because the king speaJceth this word, he is as one inculpating himself since the king does not let his own rejected one return." B^N?, " like one who has laden himself with guilt," is the predicate to the clause "til "l^no*. These words of the woman were intentionally kept indefinite, rather hinting at what she wished to place before the king, than expressing it distinctly. This is more particularly applicable to the first clause, which needs the words that follow to render it intelligible, as HNT3 nnn^n is ambiguous; so that Dathe and Thenius are wrong in rendering it, " Why dost thou propose such things towards the people of God?" and understanding it as relating to the protection which the king was willing to extend to her and to her son. 2wr\ with?V does not mean to think or reflect " with regard to," but " against" a person. Ewald is quite correct in referring the word ri^T3 to what follows: such things, i.e. such thoughts as thou hast towards thy son, whose blood-guiltiness thou wilt not forgive. BwN ^V'pV, without the article, is intentionally indefinite, " against people of God," i.e. against members of the congregation of God. " This word" refers to the decision which the king had pronounced in favour of the widow.:wn w37j literally, in not letting him return.

In order to persuade the king to forgive, the crafty woman reminded him (rer. 1 1) of the brevity of human life and of the mercy of God: k' For ice must die, and (are) as water spilt upon the ground, which is not (cannot be) gathered up, and God does not take a soul away, but thinks thoughts, that lie may not thrust from Jlim one expelled*' Although these thoughts are intentionally expressed quite generally, their special allusion to the case in hand can easily be detected. We must all die, and when dead our life is irrevocably gone. Thou mightest soon experience this in the case of Absalom, if thou shouldst suffer him to continue in exile. God does not act thus; He does not deprive the sinner of life, but is merciful, and does not cast off for ever. — Ver. 15. After these allusions to David's treatment of Absalom, the woman returned again to her own affairs, to make the kin<r believe that nothing but her own distress had led her to speak thus: " And now that 1 hare come to speak this word to the king my lord, tvas (took place) because the people have put me in fear (se. by their demand that I should give up my son to the avenger of blood); thy handmaid said (i.e. thought), I will indeed go to the king, perhaps the king will do his handmaid's word" i.e. grant her request. — Ver. 16. " Yea, the king will hear, to save his handmaid out of the hand of the man that would destroy me and my son from the inlieritance of God." "^'X must be supplied before "iW'np: who is to destroy, i.e. who is seeking to destroy (yid. Gesenius, § 132, 3). aThe inheritance of God" was the nation of Israel (as in 1 Sam. xx vi. 19; cf. Deut. xxxii. 9). — Ver. 17. " Then thine handmaid thought, may the word of my lord the king be for rest (i.e. tend to give me rest); for as the angel of God (the angel of the covenant, the mediator of the blessings of divine grace to the covenant-nation), so is my lord the king to hear good and evil (i.e. listening to every just complaint on the part of his subjects, and granting help to the oppressed), and Jehovah thy God he with thee!" — Vers. 18 sqq. These words of the woman were so well considered and so crafty, that the king could not fail to see both what she really meant, and also that she had not come with her petition of her own accord. He therefore told her to answer the question without disguise: whether the hand of Joab was with her in all this. She replied, " Truly there is not (DK) anything to the rig/it hand or to the left of all that my lord the king saith," i.e. the king always hits the right point in everything that he says. u Yea, thy servant Joab, lie hath commanded me, and he hath put all these words into thy servant's mouth." V& is not a copyist's error, but a softer form of B^, as in Micah vi. 10 (vid. Ewald, § 53c, and Olshausen, Gramm. p. 425). — Yer. 20. " To turn the appearance of the king {i.e. to disguise the affair in the finest way) Joab hath done this; my lord (i.e. the king), however, is ivise, like the wisdom of the angel of God, to know all that is (happens) upon earth." She hoped by these flattering words to gain the king completely over.

Vers. 21-33. David then promised Joab, that the request which he had presented through the medium of the woman of Tekoah should be fulfilled, and commanded him to fetch Absalom back. The Chethib VVby (ver. 21) is the correct reading, and the Keri JWJJ has arisen from a misunderstanding. — Ver. 22. Joab thanked the king for this, and blessed him: " To-day thy servant knoiveth that I have found grace in thy sight, my lord, 0 king, in that the king hath fulfilled the request of his servant." It is pretty evident from this, that Joab had frequently applied to David for Absalom's return, without any attention being paid to his application. David therefore suspected that Joab had instructed the woman of Tekoah. The Chethib VW is not to be exchanged for the Keri T?.?£. — Ver. 23. Joab then went to Geshur (see ch. xiii. 37), and fetched Absalom back to Jerusalem. — Ver. 24. But David could not formve Absalom altogether. He said to Joab, " Let him turn to his own house, and my face he shall not see." This half forgiveness was an imprudent measure, and bore very bitter fruit. The further account of Absalom is introduced in vers. 25-27 with a description of his personal appearance and family affairs. — Ver. 25. There was no man in all Israel so handsome as Absalom. *lfcp ^L1?? u to much praising," i.e. so that he was greatly praised. From the sole of the foot even to the crown of his head, there was no fault (ffiD, bodily blemish) in him. — Ver. 26. " When he polled his head, and it took place from year to year that he polled it; for it became heavy upon him (too heavy for him), and so he polled it: they weighed the hair of his head, two hundred shekels by the king's weight." A strong growth of hair was a sign of great manly power, and so far a proof of

Absalom's beauty. The statement as to the weight of the hair cut off, viz. two hundred shekels, is in any case a round number, and much too high, although we do not know what the difference between the royal and the sacred shekel really was. According to the sacred reckoning, two hundred shekels would be about six pounds; so that if we were to assume that the royal shekel was about half the other, the number would be still much too high. It is evident, therefore, that there is an error in the text, such as we frequently meet with in the case of numbers, though we have no means of rectifying it, as all the ancient versions contain the same number. — Ver. 27. Unto Absalom there were born three sons, and one daughter named Tamar, who was beautiful in figure. Contrary to general usage, the names of the sons are not given, in all probability for no other reason than because they died in infancy. Consequently, as Absalom had no sons, he afterwards erected a pillar to preserve his name (ch. xviii. 18). The daughter's name is probably given as a proof of Absalom's great affection for his sister Tamar, whom Amnon had violated.1 — Vers. 28-30. After Absalom had sat for two whole years in his house at Jerusalem without seeing the king's face, he sent to Joab that he might obtain for him the king's full forgiveness. But as Joab would not come to him, even after he had sent for him twice, Absalom commanded his servants to set fire to one of Joab's fields which adjoined his own and was then full of barley, for the purpose of compelling him to come, as he foresaw that Joab would not take this destruction of his property quietly, but would come to him to complain. HJ?K, literally " at my hand," i.e. by the side of my field or property. The Chethib WWrtrn (" come, I will set it on fire") is a Iliphil formation, according to verbs V'Q, for which the Keri has "WWH, the ordinary Hiphil form of W in the second person plural, " go and set it on fire." — — Vers. 31, 32. When Joab came to Absalom's house in conse-

1 The LXX. have this additional clause, xotl yiutroci ywn 'Pofioci/Lc viu lukupuv kocI TtKTtt ocvtu tov 'A/3/a (and she became the wife of Kehoboam the son of Solomon, and bore him a son named Abia). Although this is quite at variance with 1 Kings xv. 2, where it is stated that the wife of lit'hoboam and mother of Abia (Abijam) was named 3Iaacah, the clause has been adopted by Thenius, who regards it as original, though for reasons which Bot tcher has shown to be worthless.

quence of this, and complained of it, Absalom said to him, u See, I have sent to thee, to say to thee, Come hither, and I will send thee to the king, to say to him, Wherefore have I come from Geshur? it were better for me that I were there still: and now I will see the king's face; and if there is any iniquity in me, let him put me to death." This half forgiving was really worse than no forgiveness at all. Absalom might indeed very properly desire to be punished according to the law, if the king could not or might not forgive him: although the manner in which he sought to obtain forgiveness by force manifested an evident spirit of defiance, by which, with the well-known mildness of David's temper, he hoped to attain his object, and in fact did attain it. For (ver. 33) when Joab went to the king, and announced this to him, the king sent for Absalom, and kissed him, as a sign of his restoration to favour. Nothing was said by Absalom about forgiveness; for his falling down before the king when he came into his presence, was nothing more than the ordinary manifestation of reverence with which a subject in the East approaches his king.

After his restoration to favour, Absalom soon began to aspire to the throne, setting up a princely court, and endeavouring to turn the hearts of the people towards himself, by addressing in a friendly manner any who came to seek redress from the king in matters in dispute, and by saying things adapted to throw suspicion upon his father's rule (vers. 1-6). When he had succeeded in this, he asked permission from the king to take a. journey to Hebron, under the pretence of wanting to fulfil a vow which he had made during his banishment; and when once there, he soon proceeded with his rebellious intentions (vers. 7-12). As soon as David heard of it, he determined to fly from Jerusalem, and crossed the Kidron with his faithful adherents. Having sent the priests with the ark of the covenant back to the city, he went up to the Mount of Olives, amidst the loud lamentations of the people. Hushai, who came to meet him, he sent to the city, to frustrate the counsel of Ahithophel, who was one of the conspirators, and to send

Information to him of what was going forward (vers. 13-37). When he readied the top, Ziba, Mephibosheth's servant, came to meet him with provisions and succour (ch. xvi. 1-4); whilst Shimci, a relation of the house of Saul, followed him with curses and stones (vers. 5-14).

With this rebellion the calamities which Nathan had predicted to David on account of his sin with Bathsheba began to burst upon him in all their fulness. The success of the rebellion itself may be accounted for, from the fact that the consciousness of his own fault not only made David weak towards his sons, but produced a want of firmness in his resolutions; whilst the imperfections and defects in the internal administration of the kingdom, when the time of the brilliant victories was past, became more and more perceptible to the people, and furnished occasion for dissatisfaction with his government, which Absalom was skilful enough to bend to his own purposes. During the time that this rebellion was in progress, David poured out his lamentations to the Lord (in Ps. xli. and lv.) as to the faithlessness of his most confidential councillors, and prayed for the judgment of retribution upon the conduct of this wicked band. After it had broken out, he uttered his longings to return to the sanctuary at Jerusalem, and his firm confidence that he should be delivered out of his distresses and reinstated in his kingdom first of all in Ps. iii. and lxiii. during his flight in the desert of Judah, and in Ps. lxi. and lxii. during his stay in the land to the east of the Jordan.

Vers. 1-6. Absalom seeks to secure the people's favour. — ■ Ver. 1. Soon afterwards (this seems to be the meaning of |3 nn«D as distinguished from £ ^t|N; cf. ch. iii. 28) Absalom set up a carriage (i.e. a state-carriage; cf. 1 Sam. viii. 11) and horses, and fifty men as runners before him, i.e. to run before him when lie drove out, and attract the attention of the people by a display of princely pomp, as Adonijah afterwards did ( 1 Kings i. 5). lie then went early in the morning to the side of the road to the gate of the palace, and called out to every one who was about to go to the king " for judgment," i.e. seek justice in connection with any matter in dispute, and asked him, " Of what city art thou?" and also, as we may see from the reply in ver. 3, inquired into his feelings towards the king, and then said, " Thy matters are good and right, but there is no hearer for thee with the king." Vriv signifies the judicial officer, who heard complainants and examined into their different causes, for the purpose of laying them before the king for settlement. Of course the king himself could not give a hearing to every complainant, and make a personal investigation of his cause; nor could his judges procure justice for every complainant, however justly they might act, though it is possible that they may not always have performed their duty conscientiously.— Ver. 4. Absalom also said, " Oh that I wight be judge in the land, and every one who had a cause might come before me; I would procure him justice /" *30fc* ^ is a wish: " who might (i.e. oh that one might) appoint me judge," an analogous expression to \R) ^ (vid. Gesenius, § 136, 1, and Ewald, § 329, c). *&j placed before N3J for the sake of emphasis, may be explained from the fact that a judge sat, so that the person who stood before him rose above him (comp. Ex. xviii. 13 with Gen. xviii. 8). P^V1?? to speak justly, or help to justice. — Ver. 5. And when any one came near to him to prostrate himself before him, he took him by the hand and kissed him. It was bv conduct of this kind that Agamemnon is said to have secured the command of the Grecian army (Euripid. Iphig. Aul. v. 337 sqq.). — Ver. G. Thus Absalom stole the heart of the men of Israel. 3? 333 does not mean to deceive or cheat, like 2? 333 in the Kal in Gen. xxxi. 20, but to steal the heart, i.e. to bring a person over to his side secretly and by stratagem.

Vers. 7-12. Absalom's rebellion. — Vers. 7, 8. After the lapse of forty (?) years Absalom said to the king, " Pray I will go (i.e. pray allow me to go) and perform a vow in Hebron which I voiced to the Lord during my stay at Geshur" (ver. 8). The number forty is altogether unsuitable, as it cannot possibly be understood either as relating to the age of Absalom or to the year of David's reign: for Absalom was born at Hebron after David had begun to reign, and David only reigned forty years and a half in all, and Absalom's rebellion certainly did not take place in the last few weeks of his reign. It is quite as inappropriate to assume, as the terminus a quo of the forty vears, either the commencement of Saul's reign, as several of the Rabbins have done, as well as the author of the marginal note in Cod. 380 of De Rossi 6lKB> rVDtei>), or the anointing of David at Bethlehem, as Luther (in the marginal note) and Lightfoto do: for the word "after" evidently refers to some event in the life of Absalom, to which allusion has previously been made, namely, either to the time of his reconciliation with David (ch. xiv. 33), or (what is not so probable) to the period of his return from Geshur to Jerusalem (ch. xiv. 23). Consequently the reading adopted by the Syriac, Arabic, and Vulgate, also by Theodoret and others, viz. " four years," must certainly be the correct one, and not u forty days," which we find in Codd. 70 and 96 in Kennicott, since forty days would be far too short a time for maturing the rebellion. It is true, that with the reading V31X we should expect, as a rule, the plural E",J\ At the same time, the numbers from two to ten are sometimes construed with a singular noun (e.g. 2 Kings xxii. 1; cf. Gesenius, § 120, 2). The pretended vow was, that if Jehovah would bring him back to Jerusalem, he would serve Jehovah.!"rin,-nx *uy " to do a service to Jehovah," can onlv mean to offer a sacrifice, which is the explanation given by Joseph us. The Chethib 2^ is not the infinitive, but the imperfect Hiphil: si reduxerit) reduxerit me, which is employed in an unusual maniier instead of the inf. absol., for the sake of emphasis. The Ken 3^ would have to be taken as an adverb " again;" but this is quite unnecessary. — Ver. 9. The king consented, and Absalom went to Hebron. Absalom had selected this city, probably assigning as the reason that he was born there, but really because his father David had been made king there, and also possibly because there may have been many persons there who had been displeased by the removal of the court to Jerusalem.— Ver. 10. When Absalom went to Hebron, he sent spies into all the tribes of Israel to say, " When ye hear the sound of the trumpet^ say, Absalom has become Ling in Hebron." We must suppose the sending of the spies to have been contemporaneous with the removal of Absalom to Hebron, so that ^7^i is used quite regularly, and there is no reason for translating it as a pluperfect. The messengers sent out are called "spies," because they were first of all to ascertain the feelings of the people in the different tribes, and were only to execute their commission in places where they could reckon upon support. The conspiracy had hitherto been kept very secret, as we may see from the statement in ver. 1 1: ik With Absalom there had gone two hundred men out of Jerusalem, invited (to the sacrificial festival), and going in their simplicity, who knew nothing at all of the affair." 0?^? &: nothing at all.)— Ver. 12. Moreover, Absalom sent for Ahithophel, David's councillor, to come from his own town Giloh, when he offered the sacrifices. The unusual construction of HK rbvfr with ^W may be explained from the pregnant character of the expression: he sent and bade come, i.e. he summoned Ahithophel out of his city. Giloh, Ahithophel' s home, was upon the mountains of Judah, to the south or south-west of Hebron (see at Josh. xv. 51). Ahithophel had no doubt been previously initiated into Absalom's plans, and had probably gone to his native city, merely that he might come to him with the greater ease; since his general place of abode, as king's councillor, must have been in Jerusalem. u And the conspiracy became strong; for the people multiplied continually ivith Absalom" (the latter is a circumstantial clause). These words give a condensed summary of the result of the enterprise.