2 Samuel 4: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

News of Abner's death leaves Ishbosheth, Saul's son, without courage, and Israel shaken. Two of his own raiding captains, Rechab and Baanah, kill him in his bed at midday, cut off his head, and carry it to David at Hebron expecting a reward. David reminds them how he executed the man who reported Saul's death, declares them guilty of killing an innocent man in his own house, and has them put to death; Ishbosheth's head is buried in Abner's tomb.

Claim by Claim

1. 4:1
   • Saul's son heard that Abner had died in Hebron.
   • His hands grew slack.
   • All Israel was dismayed.
2. 4:2
   • Saul's son had two men who were captains of raiding bands.
   • The name of the one was Baanah.
   • The name of the second was Rechab.
   • They were sons of Rimmon the Beerothite.
   • They were of the children of Benjamin.
   • Beeroth was also reckoned as belonging to Benjamin.
3. 4:3
   • The Beerothites fled to Gittaim.
   • They have lived there as resident foreigners until this day.
4. 4:4
   • Jonathan son of Saul had a son who was lame in both feet.
   • He was five years old when the report about Saul and Jonathan came from Jezreel.
   • His nurse picked him up and fled.
   • As she hurried to flee, he fell.
   • He became lame.
   • His name was Mephibosheth.
5. 4:5
   • The sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, Rechab and Baanah, set out.
   • They came to the house of Ishbosheth about the heat of the day.
   • Ishbosheth was lying down for his midday rest.
6. 4:6
   • They came into the middle of the house.
   • They came as fetchers of wheat.
   • They struck him in the belly.
   • Rechab and Baanah his brother escaped.
7. 4:7
   • They came into the house.
   • He was lying on his bed in his bedroom.
   • They struck him.
   • They killed him.
   • They removed his head.
   • They took his head.
   • They went by way of the Arabah all night.
8. 4:8
   • They brought the head of Ishbosheth to David at Hebron.
   • They said to the king: this is the head of Ishbosheth son of Saul.
   • They called Ishbosheth David's enemy.
   • They said Ishbosheth had sought David's life.
   • They said the LORD had given vengeance to their lord the king this day on Saul and on his offspring.
9. 4:9
   • David answered Rechab and Baanah his brother, the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite.
   • David said to them: as the LORD lives.
   • David said the LORD had redeemed his life out of all distress.
10. 4:10
    • David said a man told him that Saul was dead.
    • David said that man considered himself a bearer of good news.
    • David said he seized him.
    • David said he killed him at Ziklag.
    • David said that was the reward he gave him for his news.
11. 4:11
    • David asked how much more it would be when wicked men had killed a righteous man in his own house upon his bed.
    • David asked whether he should not now require the dead man's blood from their hand.
    • David said he would remove them from the earth.
12. 4:12
    • David commanded his young men.
    • They killed them.
    • They cut off their hands and their feet.
    • They hung them up over the pool in Hebron.
    • They took the head of Ishbosheth.
    • They buried it in Abner's tomb in Hebron.

Words Worth Explaining

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

4:1

The King James here says only "Saul's son"; the name Ishbosheth is supplied from the wider account. After Saul died in battle, Ishbosheth was made king over the northern tribes while David ruled only Judah from Hebron. Abner, Saul's army commander and the real power behind Ishbosheth, had just changed sides to David and been murdered (chapter 3). "His hands were feeble" is a Hebrew idiom for losing the nerve or strength to act.

4:2

"Captains of bands" means commanders of raiding parties, mobile units that made quick attacks on enemy territory, rather than a standing army. Beeroth was one of the towns of the Gibeonites, a non-Israelite people who had made a treaty with Israel; the town lay inside the territory allotted to the tribe of Benjamin, which is why the writer stops to explain that it "was reckoned to Benjamin."

4:3

"Sojourners" means resident foreigners: people living in a place that is not their ancestral home, tolerated but without the land rights of the locals. "Until this day" means down to the time the account was written, not the reader's own day.

4:4

This verse interrupts the story to note that Jonathan's crippled son Mephibosheth was the only male heir of Saul's line left besides Ishbosheth, and that a man with a permanent physical disability was in practice never going to be made king. Jezreel is the broad valley in northern Israel; the "news out of Jezreel" is the report of Israel's defeat by the Philistines, in which Saul and Jonathan both died. Mephibosheth's name appears elsewhere as Merib-baal; "bosheth" means "shame" and was substituted by later scribes for the name of the god Baal.

4:5

In that climate work stopped during the hottest hours and households slept; a king resting at noon with the house quiet explains how two men could walk in unchallenged.

4:6

The King James "under the fifth rib" is a guess at an obscure Hebrew phrase that simply means the belly or abdomen; it recurs in Samuel for a fatal stab wound. This verse is difficult in the Hebrew, and the ancient Greek version reads differently: there the woman keeping the door had been cleaning wheat and had dozed off, which is how the brothers got in.

4:7

"The plain" is the Arabah, the deep rift valley running south along the Jordan River and down toward the Dead Sea, the route from Ishbosheth's capital east of the Jordan to Hebron in the south, a long overnight journey. Carrying the severed head was the standard way of proving to a distant ruler that a rival was actually dead.

4:8

"Seed" means offspring or descendants. The brothers are speaking the language of blood vengeance: they present the killing not as murder but as a debt settled on David's behalf against Saul's whole family line, and they expect to be paid for it.

4:9

"As the LORD liveth" is the standard Hebrew oath formula, binding the speaker's words to the life of God himself. "Redeemed my soul" uses "soul" in its ordinary Hebrew sense of life, and "redeem" in its ordinary sense of buying back or ransoming, as one would ransom a captive.

4:10

David is recalling the events of 2 Samuel 1: a man came to him claiming he had finished off the wounded Saul, brought Saul's crown as proof, and expected to be rewarded, and David had him executed instead. Ziklag was the town in Philistine territory given to David by the Philistine king Achish during the years David was a fugitive from Saul.

4:11

"Require his blood of your hand" is a legal idiom: to hold someone answerable for a death and exact the penalty for it. In Israelite law an unavenged killing left a claim outstanding that had to be settled, normally by the dead man's nearest relative, but here by the king.

4:12

Cutting off the hands and feet singled out the limbs that had done the deed, and hanging the bodies in public (rather than burying them the same day, as custom required) was the most degrading treatment available and served as a visible warning. Burying Ishbosheth's head in Abner's tomb is the deliberate opposite: an honorable burial in the grave of a man David had publicly mourned.