2 Samuel 3: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The war between Saul's house and David's house drags on, with David growing stronger; the chapter lists the six sons born to David at Hebron. Abner, Saul's commander, quarrels with Ishbosheth over Saul's concubine and then negotiates to bring Israel over to David, who first demands the return of his wife Michal. After Abner leaves Hebron in peace, Joab calls him back and kills him for the death of Asahel, and David publicly mourns Abner and declares himself and his kingdom guiltless of the killing.

Claim by Claim

1. 3:1
   • There was a long war between the house of Saul and the house of David.
   • David grew continually stronger.
   • The house of Saul grew continually weaker.
2. 3:2
   • Sons were born to David in Hebron.
   • David's firstborn was Amnon.
   • Amnon's mother was Ahinoam of Jezreel.
3. 3:3
   • David's second son was Chileab.
   • Chileab's mother was Abigail, who had been the wife of Nabal of Carmel.
   • David's third son was Absalom.
   • Absalom's mother was Maacah, the daughter of Talmai.
   • Talmai was king of Geshur.
4. 3:4
   • David's fourth son was Adonijah.
   • Adonijah's mother was Haggith.
   • David's fifth son was Shephatiah.
   • Shephatiah's mother was Abital.
5. 3:5
   • David's sixth son was Ithream.
   • Ithream's mother was Eglah, David's wife.
   • These sons were born to David in Hebron.
6. 3:6
   • There was war between the house of Saul and the house of David.
   • During that war Abner was making himself strong in the house of Saul.
7. 3:7
   • Saul had a concubine named Rizpah.
   • Rizpah was the daughter of Aiah.
   • Ishbosheth asked Abner why he had gone in to his father's concubine.
8. 3:8
   • Abner became very angry at Ishbosheth's words.
   • Abner asked whether he was a dog's head belonging to Judah.
   • Abner said he had been showing loyal kindness to the house of Saul, Ishbosheth's father.
   • Abner said he had shown that kindness to Saul's brothers and to his friends.
   • Abner said he had not delivered Ishbosheth into David's hand.
   • Abner said Ishbosheth was charging him this day with a fault concerning this woman.
9. 3:9
   • Abner invoked God to do so to him and more also.
   • Abner said the LORD had sworn an oath to David.
   • Abner swore he would do for David just as the LORD had sworn to him.
10. 3:10
    • Abner said the kingdom would be transferred from the house of Saul.
    • Abner said the throne of David would be established over Israel and over Judah.
    • That rule would extend from Dan to Beersheba.
11. 3:11
    • Ishbosheth could not answer Abner another word.
    • Ishbosheth's inability to answer was because he feared Abner.
12. 3:12
    • Abner sent messengers to David in his place.
    • Abner's messengers asked whose the land was.
    • Abner told David to make his covenant with him.
    • Abner said his hand would be with David.
    • Abner said his hand would be with David to bring all Israel over to him.
13. 3:13
    • David said it was good.
    • David said he would make a covenant with Abner.
    • David said he required one thing of Abner.
    • David said Abner would not see his face unless he first brought Michal, Saul's daughter, when he came to see his face.
14. 3:14
    • David sent messengers to Ishbosheth, Saul's son.
    • David demanded that Ishbosheth give him his wife Michal.
    • David said he had betrothed Michal to himself for a hundred foreskins of the Philistines.
15. 3:15
    • Ishbosheth sent and took Michal from her husband.
    • Her husband was Paltiel the son of Laish.
16. 3:16
    • Her husband went with her, walking and weeping behind her.
    • He followed her as far as Bahurim.
    • Abner told him to go back.
    • He returned.
17. 3:17
    • Abner had a word with the elders of Israel.
    • Abner said they had previously been seeking David to be king over them.
18. 3:18
    • Abner told them to act now.
    • Abner said the LORD had spoken to David.
    • Abner reported the LORD saying he would save his people Israel by the hand of his servant David.
    • Abner reported the LORD saying he would save them from the hand of the Philistines and from the hand of all their enemies.
19. 3:19
    • Abner also spoke in the ears of Benjamin.
    • Abner also went to speak in the ears of David in Hebron.
    • Abner told David all that seemed good to Israel and to the whole house of Benjamin.
20. 3:20
    • Abner came to David at Hebron.
    • Twenty men came with Abner.
    • David made a feast for Abner and the men who were with him.
21. 3:21
    • Abner said to David that he would arise and go.
    • Abner said he would gather all Israel to his lord the king.
    • Abner said they would make a covenant with David.
    • Abner said David would reign over all that his soul desired.
    • David sent Abner away.
    • Abner went in peace.
22. 3:22
    • David's servants and Joab came back from a raiding party.
    • They brought a great spoil with them.
    • Abner was not with David in Hebron.
    • David had sent Abner away, and he had gone in peace.
23. 3:23
    • Joab and all the army with him arrived.
    • Joab was told that Abner the son of Ner had come to the king.
    • Joab was told that the king had sent Abner away and that he had gone in peace.
24. 3:24
    • Joab came to the king.
    • Joab asked David what he had done.
    • Joab said Abner had come to him.
    • Joab asked why David had sent Abner away.
    • Joab said Abner had gone off free.
25. 3:25
    • Joab said David knew Abner the son of Ner.
    • Joab said Abner had come to deceive David.
    • Joab said Abner had come to know David's going out and his coming in.
    • Joab said Abner had come to know all that David was doing.
26. 3:26
    • Joab went out from David.
    • Joab sent messengers after Abner.
    • The messengers brought Abner back from the well of Sirah.
    • David did not know about it.
27. 3:27
    • Abner returned to Hebron.
    • Joab took Abner aside into the middle of the gate to speak with him privately.
    • Joab struck Abner there in the belly.
    • Abner died.
    • Abner was killed for the blood of Asahel, Joab's brother.
28. 3:28
    • David heard of it afterward.
    • David said that he and his kingdom were guiltless before the LORD forever.
    • David said they were guiltless of the blood of Abner the son of Ner.
29. 3:29
    • David said the bloodguilt should rest on the head of Joab and on all his father's house.
    • David said the house of Joab should never be without one who has a discharge.
    • David said the house of Joab should never be without one who is leprous.
    • David said the house of Joab should never be without one who holds a spindle or leans on a staff.
    • David said the house of Joab should never be without one who falls by the sword.
    • David said the house of Joab should never be without one who lacks bread.
30. 3:30
    • Joab and his brother Abishai killed Abner.
    • They killed him because Abner had put their brother Asahel to death.
    • Asahel was killed at Gibeon in the battle.
31. 3:31
    • David spoke to Joab and to all the people who were with him.
    • David told them to tear their clothes.
    • David told them to gird themselves with sackcloth.
    • David told them to mourn before Abner.
    • King David himself walked behind the bier.
32. 3:32
    • They buried Abner in Hebron.
    • The king lifted up his voice and wept at Abner's grave.
    • All the people wept.
33. 3:33
    • The king chanted a lament over Abner.
    • The king asked whether Abner should die as a fool dies.
34. 3:34
    • David said Abner's hands had not been bound.
    • David said Abner's feet had not been put into bronze fetters.
    • David said Abner fell as one falls before wicked men.
    • All the people wept over Abner again.
35. 3:35
    • All the people came to make David eat bread while it was still day.
    • David swore an oath.
    • David invoked God to do so to him and more also.
    • David swore he would not taste bread or anything else before the sun set.
36. 3:36
    • All the people took notice of it.
    • It was good in their eyes.
    • Everything the king did was good in the eyes of all the people.
37. 3:37
    • All the people and all Israel knew that day.
    • They knew that it had not been from the king to put Abner the son of Ner to death.
38. 3:38
    • The king spoke to his servants.
    • The king asked whether they did not know that a prince and a great man had fallen that day in Israel.
39. 3:39
    • David said he was weak that day, though anointed king.
    • David said the sons of Zeruiah were too hard for him.
    • David said the LORD would repay the doer of evil according to his evil.

Words Worth Explaining

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

3:1

"House of Saul" and "house of David" mean more than households: each is a royal line together with the soldiers, officials and tribes loyal to it. After Saul's death Israel split, with Saul's son ruling the northern tribes and David ruling Judah in the south.

3:2

Hebron is a town in the hill country about twenty miles south of Jerusalem, and was David's capital while he ruled Judah alone, before he took Jerusalem. A king having several wives at once was normal in the ancient Near East; the marriages were usually alliances as much as anything, and a row of sons by different mothers was a sign of a secure dynasty, and, later, a source of rival claims to the throne.

3:3

Abigail had been married to Nabal, a wealthy sheep owner of Carmel in Judah, and David married her after Nabal's death (1 Samuel 25). Geshur was a small Aramean kingdom east of the Sea of Galilee, outside Israel, so David's marriage to its king's daughter was a treaty with a foreign state.

3:6

Abner was Saul's cousin and the commander of his army; after Saul's death he was the man who put Saul's son Ishbosheth on the throne and kept him there. "Made himself strong" describes him taking more and more real power for himself within the losing side.

3:7

A concubine was a secondary wife: a woman legally attached to a man and living in his household, but of lower rank than a full wife, often because she brought no family alliance or bride price with her. The accusation is not merely a private one, a dead king's concubines passed to his successor, so a man who took one was understood to be staking a claim to the throne itself. That is why the charge enrages Abner and why Ishbosheth is frightened to press it.

3:8

Calling someone a dog was a heavy insult: dogs in that world were unowned scavengers, not pets, and "a dog's head" is roughly "a worthless creature." The Hebrew here is ambiguous and can be read either as "Am I a dog's head?" followed by "today I show loyalty to Saul's house," or as "Am I a dog's head belonging to Judah?", that is, a traitor working for David's side.

3:9

"So do God to Abner, and more also" is a standard oath formula: the speaker calls down an unnamed punishment on himself if he fails to do what he swears. The penalty is deliberately left unstated.

3:10

"From Dan to Beersheba" was a set phrase for the whole land, naming the northernmost and southernmost towns, like saying "from top to bottom of the country."

3:12

"Whose is the land?" is a bare question in the Hebrew and can be taken more than one way: as Abner conceding that the land is really David's, or as Abner reminding David that he, Abner, controls it and can hand it over. The "league" is a covenant, a formal, binding agreement sworn before God, not an informal understanding.

3:13

Michal was Saul's daughter and David's first wife. Saul had later taken her back and given her to another man. Getting her back mattered politically as well as personally: a marriage tie to the old royal family strengthened David's claim to rule the north.

3:14

A bridegroom paid a bride price to the bride's father. Saul had set this one at a hundred Philistines' foreskins, expecting David to be killed trying to collect it (1 Samuel 18). The foreskins were proof the dead men were Philistines, since Philistines did not practice circumcision and Israelites did. The Philistines were a people of five cities on the coastal plain, Israel's main military enemy in this period.

3:15

Michal had been living for years as Phaltiel's wife, since Saul handed her over after David fled. She is moved from one marriage to another by the decision of two men negotiating a treaty, and the text never records her being asked.

3:16

Bahurim was a village east of Jerusalem, near the boundary of Benjamin's territory, roughly the point where Phaltiel would have been leaving Ishbosheth's country and entering David's.

3:17

The "elders" were the heads of the leading families and clans. They were not a formal parliament, but no king could rule the tribes without their backing, so their agreement was what actually delivered the north to David.

3:19

Benjamin was Saul's own tribe, and had the most to lose from the crown passing to David of Judah. Their agreement was therefore the hardest to get and the most decisive.

3:20

Sharing a meal was how agreements were sealed in this culture. Eating at David's table made the arrangement public and placed both men under the obligations of host and guest, which is part of what makes Joab's later act so shocking.

3:21

To be sent away "in peace" means under the king's personal guarantee of safe conduct. Abner leaves as a protected guest, not as an enemy who has slipped away, and the phrase is repeated three times in the next few verses to press the point.

3:22

The "spoil" is goods, livestock and weapons stripped from a defeated enemy. Raiding of this kind was how an army in this period fed and paid itself.

3:26

The exact site of the well of Sirah is unknown; it was evidently a stopping place a short distance north of Hebron on Abner's road home.

3:27

The gateway of a walled town was a deep, roofed passage used as the town's public space (market, court and meeting place), so drawing a man aside there looked entirely ordinary. Two further things would have struck the first hearers: Hebron was one of the towns of refuge, where a man who had killed someone was supposed to be safe from private revenge until his case was heard; and Abner had killed Asahel in open battle, after warning him off, which was not murder. "Under the fifth rib" translates a Hebrew word for the belly or abdomen.

3:28

In Israelite law an unavenged killing left "bloodguilt", a debt of blood, resting on the killer, and on the community or ruler who tolerated it, until it was paid or purged. David is publicly disclaiming that liability, which matters because a king who was thought to have murdered the north's commander could not expect the north to accept him.

3:29

This is a curse listing the standard marks of a household under judgment: a bodily discharge and a skin disease both made a person ritually unclean and cut off from normal community and worship life ("leper" in the King James Version covers a range of skin conditions, not the modern disease of that name); leaning on a staff means crippled, though the Hebrew is disputed and some read it as handling a spindle, that is, reduced to women's work; falling by the sword means violent death; lacking bread means destitution.

3:30

Under the custom of blood vengeance, the nearest male relative of a murdered man had the duty of hunting down the killer. Joab and Abishai are claiming that duty for their brother Asahel, but Asahel had died in battle, which was not held to be murder, so the narrator's flat statement here reads as an accusation rather than a defense.

3:31

Tearing one's clothes and putting on sackcloth (coarse, uncomfortable cloth woven from goat hair) were the ordinary public signs of grief. The bier was the frame or stretcher on which the body was carried to the grave; there was no coffin. Walking directly behind it was the place of the chief mourner, so David is publicly taking the role of Abner's family, in front of the whole army, and making Joab join the mourning for the man he murdered.

3:33

The word rendered "fool" does not mean stupid. It means a disgraceful, worthless person, and a "fool's death" is the death such a man deserves, an executed criminal's end. The question expects the answer no.

3:34

Bound hands and fettered feet were the marks of a prisoner being led to execution. The lament says Abner was neither condemned nor a captive: he walked in free and unguarded, and was cut down by treachery.

3:35

Going without food until sunset was a recognized act of mourning. The Israelite day ended at sundown, so David is fasting for what remained of the day of the funeral. In the King James Version "meat" means food of any kind, not flesh specifically.

3:38

"Prince" here translates a Hebrew word meaning a commander or chief man, not a king's son. Abner held no claim to the throne; he was the most powerful soldier and statesman in the north.

3:39

Zeruiah was David's sister, so Joab, Abishai and the dead Asahel were David's own nephews and among his earliest and most powerful supporters, which is why he says he cannot control them. "Anointed" refers to the ceremony that made a king: olive oil was poured on his head to mark him out as chosen for the office.