2 Samuel 2: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

After Saul's death, David asks the LORD where to go, moves to Hebron, and is anointed king over Judah; he sends thanks to the men of Jabesh-gilead for burying Saul. Meanwhile Abner, the commander of Saul's army, makes Saul's son Ishbosheth king over the rest of Israel, and the two sides meet at the pool of Gibeon. A contest between twelve men from each side turns into a full battle that David's men win, and Abner kills Joab's fast-running brother Asahel while fleeing. Abner calls for the fighting to stop, Joab sounds the horn, and both armies march home through the night.

Claim by Claim

1. 2:1
   • After this, David inquired of the LORD.
   • David asked whether he should go up into one of the cities of Judah.
   • The LORD told him to go up.
   • David asked where he should go up.
   • The LORD said to go up to Hebron.
2. 2:2
   • David went up to Hebron.
   • David's two wives went up with him.
   • One wife was Ahinoam of Jezreel.
   • The other wife was Abigail, who had been the wife of Nabal of Carmel.
3. 2:3
   • David brought up the men who were with him.
   • Each man came with his household.
   • They settled in the cities of Hebron.
4. 2:4
   • The men of Judah came.
   • The men of Judah anointed David king over the house of Judah there.
   • They told David that the men of Jabesh-gilead were the ones who buried Saul.
5. 2:5
   • David sent messengers to the men of Jabesh-gilead.
   • David told them they were blessed by the LORD.
   • David said they had shown this loyal kindness to their lord Saul.
   • David said they had buried Saul.
6. 2:6
   • David said may the LORD show them loyal kindness and faithfulness.
   • David said he too would do this good to them.
   • David gave as his reason that they had done this thing.
7. 2:7
   • David told them to let their hands be strong.
   • David told them to be valiant men.
   • David said their lord Saul was dead.
   • David said the house of Judah had anointed him king over them.
8. 2:8
   • Abner was the son of Ner.
   • Abner was the commander of Saul's army.
   • Abner took Ishbosheth the son of Saul.
   • Abner brought Ishbosheth over to Mahanaim.
9. 2:9
   • Abner made Ishbosheth king over Gilead.
   • Abner made him king over the Ashurites.
   • Abner made him king over Jezreel.
   • Abner made him king over Ephraim.
   • Abner made him king over Benjamin.
   • Abner made him king over all Israel.
10. 2:10
    • Ishbosheth son of Saul was forty years old when he began to reign over Israel.
    • Ishbosheth reigned two years.
    • The house of Judah followed David.
11. 2:11
    • David was king in Hebron over the house of Judah seven years and six months.
12. 2:12
    • Abner the son of Ner went out from Mahanaim to Gibeon.
    • The servants of Ishbosheth the son of Saul went out with him.
13. 2:13
    • Joab was the son of Zeruiah.
    • Joab and the servants of David went out.
    • The two groups met together by the pool of Gibeon.
    • One group sat on one side of the pool.
    • The other group sat on the other side of the pool.
14. 2:14
    • Abner said to Joab that the young men should arise and hold a contest before them.
    • Joab said, Let them arise.
15. 2:15
    • The young men arose.
    • They went over by number.
    • Twelve were from Benjamin, belonging to Ishbosheth the son of Saul.
    • Twelve were from the servants of David.
16. 2:16
    • Each man seized his opponent by the head.
    • Each man thrust his sword into his opponent's side.
    • They fell down together.
    • That place was called Helkath-hazzurim.
    • Helkath-hazzurim is in Gibeon.
17. 2:17
    • The battle that day was very severe.
    • Abner and the men of Israel were defeated before the servants of David.
18. 2:18
    • The three sons of Zeruiah were there.
    • The three sons were Joab, Abishai, and Asahel.
    • Asahel was swift of foot, like one of the gazelles of the field.
19. 2:19
    • Asahel pursued Abner.
    • Asahel did not turn to the right or to the left from following Abner.
20. 2:20
    • Abner turned around and looked behind him.
    • Abner asked whether it was Asahel.
    • Asahel answered that it was he.
21. 2:21
    • Abner told Asahel to turn aside to his right or his left.
    • Abner told him to seize one of the young men.
    • Abner told him to take that man's equipment for himself.
    • Asahel was unwilling to turn aside from following Abner.
22. 2:22
    • Abner spoke to Asahel again.
    • Abner told Asahel to turn aside from following him.
    • Abner asked why he should strike Asahel to the ground.
    • Abner asked how he could then face Joab, Asahel's brother.
23. 2:23
    • Asahel refused to turn aside.
    • Abner struck him with the butt end of the spear in the belly.
    • The spear came out from behind him.
    • Asahel fell down there.
    • Asahel died on the spot.
    • Everyone who came to the place where Asahel had fallen and died stood still.
24. 2:24
    • Joab and Abishai pursued Abner.
    • The sun was setting.
    • They came to the hill of Ammah.
    • The hill of Ammah lies before Giah on the way to the wilderness of Gibeon.
25. 2:25
    • The children of Benjamin gathered together behind Abner.
    • They became one band.
    • They took their stand on the top of one hill.
26. 2:26
    • Abner called to Joab.
    • Abner asked whether the sword would devour forever.
    • Abner asked whether Joab did not know that it would be bitter in the end.
    • Abner asked how long until Joab told the people to turn back from pursuing their brothers.
27. 2:27
    • Joab swore by the life of God.
    • Joab said that if Abner had not spoken, the people would have gone up in the morning, each from following his brother.
28. 2:28
    • Joab blew the trumpet.
    • All the people stood still.
    • They pursued Israel no more.
    • They fought no more.
29. 2:29
    • Abner and his men walked through the Arabah all that night.
    • They crossed the Jordan.
    • They went through all the Bithron.
    • They came to Mahanaim.
30. 2:30
    • Joab returned from following Abner.
    • Joab gathered all the people together.
    • Nineteen of David's servants were missing, besides Asahel.
31. 2:31
    • The servants of David had struck down men of Benjamin and men of Abner.
    • Three hundred and sixty men died.
32. 2:32
    • They took up Asahel.
    • They buried him in his father's tomb, which was in Bethlehem.
    • Joab and his men marched all night.
    • Daylight came to them at Hebron.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

2:1

"Asked the LORD" describes a formal procedure, not private prayer: a priest carried a sacred object (the ephod, holding lots called Urim and Thummim) and put yes-or-no questions to God through it. That is why the answers here come back one short phrase at a time. Hebron is a town in the hill country about twenty miles south of Jerusalem, the largest settlement in Judah, David's own tribe.

2:2

Abigail's first husband, Nabal, was a rich sheep owner near Carmel in Judah who refused David's men supplies and died soon after; David then married his widow. Jezreel here is a town in southern Judah, not the better-known valley in the north.

2:3

"Every man with his household" means each of David's roughly six hundred fighters brought his whole family. This is not a bodyguard arriving but a small population moving in, several thousand people settling the villages around Hebron.

2:4

Pouring olive oil on a man's head was the public ceremony that installed him in office; "anointed" in older Bibles means exactly this. Note that only Judah, David's own tribe, does it, the rest of Israel does not. Jabesh-gilead's act mattered because the Philistines had hung Saul's body on a city wall after killing him; men from Jabesh crossed the Jordan by night, took the body down, and buried it. They owed Saul: he had rescued their town early in his reign.

2:5

"Your lord" here simply means the king they served, Saul. David is publicly praising men who honored his rival, which costs him nothing and tells every northern tribe what kind of king he intends to be.

2:6

"Steady love and faithfulness" translates a fixed Hebrew pair (hesed we'emet) used of loyalty between parties bound to each other, a king to his subjects, a family to its dead. It means dependable commitment that is acted on, not warm feeling.

2:7

"Let your hands be strengthened" is a Hebrew idiom for take courage, pull yourself together. The last sentence is the point of the whole message: the men of Jabesh owed their loyalty to Saul, Saul is dead, and David is letting them know a throne is now filled elsewhere.

2:8

Abner was Saul's cousin as well as his army commander, which is why he, rather than anyone else, can install a surviving son. "Ishbosheth" means roughly "man of shame"; other passages call the same man Ishbaal or Eshbaal, and copyists appear to have replaced the element "baal" (a title for a god) with "bosheth," shame. Mahanaim lay east of the Jordan, well away from the Philistine forces that had just destroyed Saul's army in the north.

2:9

This is a list of territories, moving from east of the Jordan (Gilead) to the northern valleys and hill country. "The Ashurites" is uncertain: ancient versions read the tribe of Asher or the region of Geshur, and translators disagree. "All Israel" here means everything except Judah.

2:10

The numbers in this verse and the next do not line up: Ishbosheth reigns two years while David reigns in Hebron seven and a half. Explanations vary (a gap before Ishbosheth was installed, or a damaged number) and the text as it stands leaves the difference unexplained.

2:11

This half-verse quietly announces a divided nation. For seven and a half years Israel has two kings, one in the south at Hebron and one east of the Jordan at Mahanaim, and the rest of the chapter is the first blood spilled between them.

2:12

Gibeon was a town about six miles northwest of Jerusalem, inside the territory of Benjamin, Saul's own tribe, and so friendly ground for Abner. The "pool" was a large rock-cut water shaft, a landmark and a natural meeting point.

2:13

Zeruiah was David's sister, so Joab, Abishai, and Asahel are David's nephews. Israelite men are almost always identified by their father, so the repeated "son of Zeruiah" is unusual and may mean their father died young. The pool of Gibeon was a huge rock-cut shaft with a stairway spiraling down to water, and archaeologists have found it; the two armies sit facing each other across it.

2:14

The Hebrew word is the ordinary one for sport or play, used of games and contests. Abner is proposing that a fixed number of champions from each side fight in front of the two armies, a recognized way of settling a dispute without a full battle. It goes wrong in the next two verses.

2:15

Twelve against twelve, one representative for each of Israel's twelve tribes on each side. The symmetry is the point: both kings are claiming to speak for the whole nation.

2:16

Helkath-hazzurim means something like "field of sword-edges," or possibly "field of flints" or "field of sides", the Hebrew is unclear, and the name is preserved because it stuck to the spot. All twenty-four men kill each other simultaneously, so the contest settles nothing.

2:17

"Sore" in the King James means severe or harsh, not painful in the modern sense. What began as a formal duel has collapsed into a general battle.

2:18

Zeruiah was David's sister, so Joab, Abishai, and Asahel were David's nephews. They are named after their mother rather than their father throughout the books of Samuel, which is unusual and unexplained. Naming the three brothers here sets up what follows: killing one of them puts Abner in a blood feud with the other two.

2:21

Stripping a defeated enemy's weapons and armor was the normal prize of victory, kept or sold by the man who took them. Abner is offering Asahel an easier target with a payoff attached, so that he can claim a trophy without either of them being killed.

2:22

Under the custom of blood vengeance, a killing obliged the dead man's nearest male relative to hunt down the killer. Abner knows that if he kills Asahel he will have Joab after him for life; that, and not squeamishness, is what "how could I face your brother" means.

2:23

A spear had a metal-shod butt at the rear, pointed so it could be driven into the ground; that is the end Abner uses, striking backwards while running. The King James "under the fifth rib" is a guess at a Hebrew word that means the soft part of the belly. Men stopping at the spot is a mark of shock at who has fallen.

2:24

Ammah and Giah are place names that appear nowhere else and can no longer be located. The wilderness of Gibeon is the dry, broken country east of the town, dropping toward the Jordan valley.

2:25

The men of Benjamin are Saul's own tribe and Abner's core support. Reforming as a single unit on high ground is a defensive move: it turns a rout back into an army and forces Joab to attack uphill.

2:26

Both armies are Israelites, and the men pursuing and the men fleeing come from neighboring tribes. Abner's point is that a fight between kinsmen has no end point: whoever wins, the families on both sides are left owing each other blood.

2:27

Joab's answer is deliberately barbed and can be read two ways: either that if Abner had not called for a halt just now, the chase would have run until dawn, or that if Abner had not opened his mouth back at the pool, the whole day's killing would never have started. Either way Joab is putting the blame on Abner.

2:28

The ram's horn was the standard battlefield signal instrument. A single blast on it was the recognized order to break off an engagement, and troops responded to it as to a bugle call.

2:29

The Arabah is the deep rift valley running along the Jordan River. Bithron is otherwise unknown; the Hebrew may be a place name or may mean "the ravine" or "the whole forenoon," and translators split between them. The march takes Abner's men from west of the Jordan back across it to Mahanaim, roughly a twenty-mile night journey.

2:30

"There lacked" means these men were missing when the survivors were counted, which on a battlefield means dead. Naming Asahel separately from the nineteen marks him out as the loss that will actually matter to the story.

2:31

A score is twenty, so threescore is sixty and the total is 360. The lopsided figures, 360 against 20, are the writer's way of saying David's side won decisively, though Joab is the one who has to go home and bury his brother.

2:32

Burial in the ancestral tomb, a family cave or rock chamber reused over generations, was the proper end for an Israelite, as opposed to being left where he fell. Bethlehem is David's home town, which is where Zeruiah's family also belonged.