Joab’s advice
19
📚And it was told Joab, “See, the king is weeping and mourning for Absalom”. 2 📚And the victory that day was turned into mourning, for all the people. For the people heard it told that day how the king was grieved for his son. 3 📚And that day the people came by stealth into the city, like people steal away ashamed when they flee in battle.4 📚And the king covered his face, and the king cried out with a loud voice, “O my son Absalom! O Absalom, my son, my son!”
5 📚And Joab came into the house to the king and said 📖, “Today you have brought shame to the faces of all your servants, who saved your life today, and the lives of your sons and of your daughters and the lives of your wives and the lives of your concubines, 6 📚by loving your enemies and hating your friends. For today you have shown that you have no concern for leaders or servants. For today I understand that if Absalom had lived, and all of us had died today, then it would have pleased you well. 7 📚Now therefore get up! Go out and speak to the hearts of your servants. For I swear by the LORD, if you do not go out, not one will stay with you tonight. And that will be worse for you than all the bad things that have happened to you from your youth until now”.
8 📚Then the king arose and sat in the gate. And they told all the people, saying, “Look, the king is sitting in the gate”. And all the people came before the king, for Israel had fled, each man to his tent.
David returns to Jerusalem
9 📚And all the people, throughout all the tribes of Israel, were quarreling, saying, “The king saved us from the hands of our enemies, and delivered us from the hands of the Philistines, and now he has fled from the land, because of Absalom.
19:9 The people remembered, too late to avert a tragedy, what David had done for them.⚜
10 📚And Absalom, whom we anointed over us, is dead in battle. Now therefore why do you not speak a word about bringing the king back?”
19:10 They confess that the rebellion was far more than the one man Absalom and a few of his friends usurping power.⚜
11 📚And King David sent to Zadok and to Abiathar the priests, saying, “Speak to the elders of Judah and say, ‘Why are you the last to bring the king back to his house, since the words of all Israel have come to the king, to his house? 12 📚You are my brethren, you are my bones and my flesh. Why then are you the last to bring back the king?’
19:12 David is signifying that he will not seek vengeance on those who followed Absalom.⚜
13 📚And you are to say to Amasa 📖, ‘Are you not of my bone and of my flesh? God do harm to me, and more also, if you do not become commander of the army before me continually in place of Joab 📖.’ ”
14 📚And he turned the hearts 📖 of all the men of Judah as one man so that they sent this word to the king: “Return and all your servants”. 15 📚So the king came back and arrived at the Jordan. And Judah came to Gilgal, going to meet the king to conduct the king over the Jordan.
19:9-15 David did not immediately march back to Jerusalem at the head of his victorious army. Absalom’s revolt had produced disunity among the people of Israel, and David wanted to win their loyalty and approval before he returned. In particular he appealed to Judah where the rebellion had started.⚜
16 📚And Shimei the son of Gera, a Benjamite, who was from Bahurim, hurried and came down with the men of Judah to meet King David. 17 📚And there were a thousand men of Benjamin with him, and Ziba 📖 the servant of the house of Saul, and his fifteen sons and his twenty servants with him. And they went over the Jordan before the king. 18 📚And they went over to ferry the king’s household across, and to do whatever he thought good. And Shimei, the son of Gera, fell down before the king when he had crossed the Jordan, 19 📚and said to the king, “Let not my lord hold me guilty, and do not remember what your servant did perversely the day that my lord the king went out of Jerusalem, so that the king should take it to his heart. 20 📚For your servant knows that I have sinned. Therefore, see, today I have come the first of all the house of Joseph 📖 to come down to meet my lord the king”.
19:18-20 Shimei admits his sin (2 Sam 16:5-8). Such people will do anything to save their unworthy necks.⚜
21 📚But Abishai the son of Zeruiah answered and said, “Shall not Shimei be put to death for this, because he cursed the Lord’s anointed?”
19:21 The law did not demand death for the sin of cursing a ruler (Ex 22:28). Abishai was the same sort of man as his brother Joab. David lumps them together more than once (2 Sam 3:39; 16:10).⚜
22 📚And David said, “What is there between me and you, you sons of Zeruiah, that today you should be my adversaries? Should any man be put to death today in Israel? For do I not know today that I am king over Israel?”
19:22 It was time to show mercy to enemies and David knew it.⚜
23 📚Therefore the king said to Shimei, “You will not die”. And the king swore to him.
19:23 David did not trust Shimei, but he kept this oath as long as he lived. See 1 Kings 2:8-9.⚜
24 📚And Mephibosheth, the grandson of Saul, came down to meet the king, and he had not taken care of his feet or trimmed his beard or washed his clothes from the day the king departed until the day he came back in peace. 25 📚And it came about, when he came to Jerusalem to meet the king, that the king said to him, “Why did you not come with me, Mephibosheth?”
26 📚And he answered 📖, “My lord the king, my servant deceived me. For your servant said, ‘I will saddle a donkey for myself so that I may ride on it, and go to the king’, because your servant is lame. 27 📚And he has slandered your servant to my lord the king. But my lord the king is like an angel of God. So do whatever is good in your eyes. 28 📚For all of my father’s house were but dead men before my lord the king. Yet you placed your servant among those who eat at your own table. What right, therefore, do I have to cry any more to the king?”
29 📚And the king said to him, “Why speak any more of your matters? I have said, ‘You and Ziba shall divide the land.’ ”
19:29 David himself did not know whom to believe. Often leaders of God’s people, hearing conflicting stories, find themselves in a similar position.⚜
30 📚And Mephibosheth said to the king, “Let him even take all of it, since my lord the king has come back in peace to his own house”.
31 📚And Barzillai, the Gileadite, came down from Rogelim and crossed the Jordan with the king, to conduct him over the Jordan. 32 📚Now Barzillai was a very old man, eighty years of age; and he had provided for the king while he was staying at Mahanaim, for he was a very great man. 33 📚And the king said to Barzillai, “You come over with me, and I will provide for you with me in Jerusalem”.
34 📚And Barzillai said to the king, “How long do I have to live, that I should go up with the king to Jerusalem? 35 📚Today I am eighty years old, and can I discern between good and bad? Can your servant taste what I eat or what I drink? Can I any longer hear the voice of singing men and singing women? Why then should your servant be a burden to my lord the king? 36 📚Your servant will go a little way over the Jordan with the king, but why should the king repay me with such a reward? 37 📚Please let your servant turn back again, so that I may die in my own city and be buried by the grave of my father and my mother. But see your servant Kimham. Let him go over with my lord the king, and do for him whatever seems good to you”.
19:37 Kimham may have been Barzillai’s son.⚜
38 📖And the king answered, “Kimham shall go over with me, and I will do for him whatever seems good to you. And I will do for you whatever you ask me”.
39 📚And all the people crossed the Jordan. And when the king had crossed, the king kissed Barzillai and blessed him; and he returned to his own place.
40 📚Then the king went on to Gilgal, and Kimham went on with him, and all the people of Judah and also half the people of Israel conducted the king.
19:40 Verses 9-14.⚜
41 📚And then all the men of Israel came to the king and said to the king, “Why have our brethren the men of Judah stolen you away and brought the king and his household and all David’s men with him, over the Jordan?”
42 📚And all the men of Judah answered the men of Israel, “Because the king is a close relative of ours. Why then are you angry about this matter? Have we eaten at all at the king’s expense? Or has he given us any gift?”
43 📚And the men of Israel answered the men of Judah and said, “We have ten parts in the king, so we also have more right to David than you. Why then did you despise us? Was it not our advice first to bring back our king?” And the words of the men of Judah were fiercer than the words of the men of Israel.
19:41-43 The men of the northern tribes of Israel had spoken before the men of Judah of bringing David back (v 11), but Judah performed the ceremony of bringing him over Jordan. In the argument which resulted, Israel claimed their right on the ground of numbers (v 43), Judah claimed theirs on the ground of relationship (v 42). What should have been a time of united rejoicing became an occasion for jealousy and dissension.⚜