2 Samuel: A Messianic Jewish Commentary

Before we begin

The book of 2 Samuel opens with a funeral and ends with an altar. Its first three chapters cover the hardest stretch of David’s life: the death of Saul and Jonathan, seven and a half years ruling only Judah from Hebron, a civil war between brothers, and the murder of the one man who could have ended it in peace. David is anointed, but most of Israel does not yet accept him. He is a king without a whole kingdom.

That is exactly why these chapters matter to us. We believe Yeshua is the anointed Son of David, recognized now by some and waiting to be received by all Israel. David in Hebron is the first time Scripture shows us that pattern: a true king, truly anointed, waiting for the kingdom to come to him.

How this commentary is built. We read the text first, in Hebrew where it matters, because Torah comes first and the Prophets are measured by it. Then we hear the sages: the Talmud, the Midrash, Rashi, Radak and Rambam. Then our own teachers: the FFOZ End of Days lessons, Rabbi Efraim Palvanov and Ariel Cohen Alloro, along with our own Benei Avraham classes. Last, we ask what the passage shows us about Mashiach.

A word on our teachers. Rabbi Palvanov and Ariel Cohen Alloro bring a great deal of Kabbalah and gematria. We use their insights as remez, a hint that opens a door, and never as proof. Gematria can show a connection the text already makes, but it cannot make a doctrine by itself. Where a teacher’s framework goes beyond what Benei Avraham confesses (for example, on reincarnation or on the nature of God), we take the insight and leave the framework. “To the Torah and to the testimony” (Isaiah 8:20) is the test for all of it, our own words included.

Scripture is quoted from the King James Version with Hashem in place of LORD, as in our Statement of Faith.

Chapter 1 · The Crown, the Liar and the Song of the Bow

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1:1–10 · An Amalekite brings David a crown

David has just come back from destroying an Amalekite raiding band that burned Ziklag (1 Samuel 30). On the third day a man runs into camp with torn clothes and dirt on his head. Saul and Jonathan are dead, he says, and he was there. When David asks who he is, he answers, “I am an Amalekite” (1:8). Then he tells his story:

“So I stood upon him, and slew him, because I was sure that he could not live after that he was fallen: and I took the crown that was upon his head, and the bracelet that was on his arm, and have brought them hither unto my lord” (1:10).

There is a problem. The previous chapter already told us how Saul died: “Saul took a sword, and fell upon it” (1 Samuel 31:4). So who is telling the truth?

What the sages say. Radak gives both main answers. First, citing “the ancients,” he says the man lied: Saul had already fallen on his sword and died, and the Amalekite found the body and made up a story to win David’s favor. Second, he allows that Saul fell on his sword but did not die at once, and the Amalekite finished him off. In his comment on 1 Samuel 31, Radak leans toward the first answer: “perhaps the Amalekite lied… he found him dead… to find favor in David’s eyes.”

The Midrash goes further and asks who this “Amalekite” really was. Pesikta de-Rav Kahana (3:16) records Rabbi Yitzchak’s view that he was Doeg the Edomite, the man who slaughtered the priests of Nob at Saul’s command (1 Samuel 22:18). Yalkut Shimoni (Nach 141) records that he was Doeg’s son, “and some say Doeg himself.” On that reading, David’s words “thy blood be upon thy head” point back to the blood of Nob. Rashi reports the Pesikta’s view and then says honestly, “this does not sit well with me.” So we hold it as a midrash, not as history.

Why an Amalekite? The real point is not his family but his nation. Saul lost the kingdom over Amalek. Hashem commanded him to blot out Amalek, and he spared King Agag and the best of the flocks (1 Samuel 15). The Talmud remembers it this way:

Saul sinned once and it was counted against him; David sinned twice and it was not counted against him. (Yoma 22b)

The same page says that when Saul argued for mercy toward Amalek, a heavenly voice answered him: “Be not righteous overmuch” (Ecclesiastes 7:16). Misplaced mercy toward Amalek became Saul’s undoing, and now a man of Amalek stands over his body holding his crown.

Our teachers. Rabbi Palvanov, in his class “Understanding Edom #1 – Esau & Amalek,” teaches that Amalek is “the anti-Israel,” the force that attacked Israel straight after the Red Sea for no reason except to make them fail. He points out the letters: יִשְׂרָאֵל Yisrael ends with lamed, the only letter that reaches above the line, toward Heaven. עֲמָלֵק Amalek ends with kuf, which reaches below the line. One rises toward God, the other sinks away from Him. Chassidic teachers have long noted that Amalek (עמלק) has the same numerical value as safek (ספק), doubt: both equal 240. Ariel Cohen Alloro, in his video “New World Order – Hiram and the Freemasons – Part 11,” also works with the number 240 for Amalek. Amalek’s weapon is doubt, and doubt is what this man is selling David: the old king is gone, the crown is in my hand, take it now.

The Talmud also says that “the seed of Esau will fall only into the hand of the seed of Joseph” (Bava Batra 123b, on Obadiah 1:18). Saul came from Benjamin, Joseph’s full brother and the other son of Rachel. Rachel’s house was given the task against Amalek and did not finish it in Saul’s day. It was finished later by Mordechai, “the son of Kish, a Benjamite” (Esther 2:5), against Haman “the Agagite” (Esther 3:1). Rabbi Palvanov, in his class “Understanding Mashiach ben Yosef,” ties this to Mashiach ben Yosef: the Josephite Messiah is the one given power over Amalek. What Saul left undone, Hashem did not leave undone.

1:11–16 · David will not take the crown this way

The Amalekite expected a reward. Instead David tears his clothes and mourns:

“Then David took hold on his clothes, and rent them; and likewise all the men that were with him: And they mourned, and wept, and fasted until even, for Saul, and for Jonathan his son, and for the people of Hashem, and for the house of Israel; because they were fallen by the sword” (1:11–12).

Halachah from this verse. The Talmud learns the laws of kriah, tearing one’s garment, from these words (Moed Katan 26a). We tear for a nasi: that is “Saul.” We tear for the head of the court: that is “Jonathan.” And we tear at terrible news: that is “the people of Hashem and the house of Israel.” The Talmud limits that last case to news that affects most of the community. When Jews tear their clothes at a funeral today, they are doing what David did here.

Then David turns to the messenger:

“How wast thou not afraid to stretch forth thine hand to destroy Hashem’s anointed?… Thy blood be upon thy head; for thy mouth hath testified against thee, saying, I have slain Hashem’s anointed” (1:14, 16).

A legal question. Torah law does not put a man to death on his own confession. So how could David execute him? Rambam answers directly:

David’s execution of the Amalekite convert because of his own statement… was a directive for that hour only, or was by royal law. (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Sanhedrin 18:6)

In other words, this was not an ordinary court case. It was the king acting to protect the honor of the anointing itself.

Hebrew lesson: מְשִׁיחַ יְהוָה (meshiach Hashem), “Hashem’s anointed.” The word mashiach simply means “anointed one,” someone poured over with oil. Rabbi Palvanov, in his class “Understanding Edom #2 – Trump & Herod,” reminds us that in the Tanakh mashiach almost always describes a living king or priest, “a messiah with a lowercase m.” Saul is meshiach Hashem even after he was rejected, even while he hunted David. David refused to harm him twice (1 Samuel 24 and 26), and now he will not reward the man who says he did.

FFOZ explains what the anointing meant: “The anointing of the king symbolizes the investment of God’s Holy Spirit upon the new king… The Prophet Samuel anointed both King Saul and King David, and the Holy Spirit rushed on them” (End of Days, Lesson 22–23, “The Ten Tribes–Shechinah”). David honors the anointing because it came from Hashem, not because Saul deserved it.

Messianic reading. The Amalekite offers David the crown by a shortcut, through the death of the anointed and a lie. David refuses. Centuries later the adversary showed the Son of David “all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them,” and offered them for one act of worship. Yeshua answered, “Thou shalt worship Hashem thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:8–10). When the crowds wanted to “take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone” (John 6:15). The true king does not grab the kingdom. He receives it from the hand of Hashem, in Hashem’s time.

1:17–27 · The Song of the Bow

“And David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and over Jonathan his son: (Also he bade them teach the children of Judah the use of the bow: behold, it is written in the book of Jasher.)” (1:17–18).

What is “the bow”? Rashi reads it plainly: now that Israel’s mighty men have fallen, the men of Judah must be trained for war and taught to draw the bow. Many modern readers think Keshet, “The Bow,” is the name of the song. Either way, David turns grief into readiness.

What is the “book of Jasher”? The Talmud gives three answers (Avodah Zarah 25a):

• Rabbi Yochanan: it is the book of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, who were called yesharim, the upright, so it is Genesis. Where does Genesis teach Judah the bow? “Thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies” (Genesis 49:8). What kind of warfare puts the hand by the neck? Drawing a bow.
• Rabbi Elazar: it is Deuteronomy, from “do that which is right (hayashar)” (Deuteronomy 6:18). Judah’s blessing there is “let his hands be sufficient for him” (33:7): warfare with both hands, the bow.
• Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani: it is Judges, where “every man did that which was right in his own eyes,” and where Hashem left nations “to teach them war” (Judges 3:2).

Rashi follows Rabbi Yochanan. That sends us straight back to Jacob’s blessing of Judah. FFOZ makes the same connection: Jacob said Judah would take leadership and overcome his enemies, and “the meaning of his words remained obscure until the Prophet Samuel anointed a shepherd boy from Judah” (End of Days, Lesson 12, “Acharit HaYamim”). Our Statement of Faith begins its picture of Mashiach with the next verse: “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah… until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be” (Genesis 49:10). At the very moment Judah’s scepter begins, David reaches back to Genesis 49.

“How are the mighty fallen!”

“The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen! Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice” (1:19–20).

David does not want the enemy to rejoice. He also does not rejoice himself. The Talmud teaches how serious that is. On Psalm 7, “Shiggaion of David… concerning the words of Cush the Benjamite,” the sages read “Cush” as Saul and imagine Hashem saying to David:

David, are you singing a song over the downfall of Saul? Had you been Saul and he David, I would have destroyed many Davids before him. (Moed Katan 16b)

Here in 2 Samuel 1, David sings a lament, not a victory song. “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth” (Proverbs 24:17).

The curse on Gilboa. “Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain, upon you… for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with oil” (1:21). Metzudat David explains that David curses the place where the disaster happened. Leather shields were rubbed with oil so blows would slide off. Radak adds a second reading: “as if Saul had not been anointed with oil as king.” The shield lies in the dirt, unoiled, and so does the anointed one. Even the image of the curse is about anointing.

Not divided in death. “Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided” (1:23). Jonathan knew David would be king (1 Samuel 23:17). He could have left his father. He stayed and died beside him. At Ein Dor, Samuel had told Saul, “to morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me” (1 Samuel 28:19). Rabbi Yochanan reads “with me” as “in my portion” (Berakhot 12b), meaning that Saul was forgiven and would share the portion of the righteous. Our Statement of Faith leaves open whether the scene at Ein Dor is to be read literally, and teaches that the dead sleep until the resurrection. Read that way, Saul and Jonathan lie down together and will rise together. FFOZ describes the morning of that day: “The fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, arrive from Hebron to see the fulfillment of the promises given to them” (End of Days, Lesson 17, “The Last Trumpet”).

Jonathan. “I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women” (1:26).

The Mishnah gives the meaning:

Any love that depends on a thing: when the thing ceases, the love ceases… such was the love of Amnon and Tamar. Love that does not depend on a thing… such was the love of David and Jonathan. (Pirkei Avot 5:16)

Amnon’s love was desire, and it turned into hatred (2 Samuel 13:15). Jonathan’s love was covenant: “the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David” (1 Samuel 18:1). Jonathan was the heir to the throne, and he handed David his own robe and sword (18:4). That is a love that gains nothing for itself.

Ariel Cohen Alloro, in his video “The Tale of the Seven Beggars by Rabbi Nachman – Part 3,” points out that ahavat David viYehonatan (אהבת דוד ויהונתן), “the love of David and Jonathan,” equals ahavat Yisrael (אהבת ישראל), “love of Israel”: both are 949. He says plainly that it is “no gay stuff.” It is the pattern for how Jews are meant to love one another. We add the well-known fact that ahavah (אהבה, love) and echad (אחד, one) are both 13. Two souls knit into one.

Messianic reading. Yeshua said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Jonathan laid down his crown for David. Yeshua laid down his life. And when the Son of David came near Jerusalem, the city that would reject him, “he beheld the city, and wept over it” (Luke 19:41), as David wept over the king who hunted him. “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you” (Matthew 5:44) is not a new idea. David lived it on the day his enemy died.

Chapter 2 · Hebron, and a War Between Brothers

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2:1–4 · David asks first, then goes up to Hebron

“David enquired of Hashem, saying, Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah? And Hashem said unto him, Go up. And David said, Whither shall I go up? And he said, Unto Hebron” (2:1).

Saul is dead and the road to the throne is open, but David does not move until he asks. He asks twice: whether, and where. That is the difference between David and Saul in one verse.

Why Hebron? Rashi and Radak do not comment here, but later commentators do. The Chida (Chomat Anakh) says the merit of the patriarchs buried in the Cave of Machpelah helped establish David’s throne. The Alshich ties Hebron to Jacob’s prophecy of Judah’s kingship. FFOZ reminds us that Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov “were ultimately entombed in the same cave,” that “Jewish tradition associates the cave of Machpelah with the garden of Eden, the resurrection from the dead, and eternal life,” and that, according to legend, “the resurrection of the righteous will begin with those who sleep in the Machpelah tomb” (End of Days, Lesson 5, “Signs of the Times”). David’s kingdom begins in the city of the resurrection hope. It was also the inheritance of Caleb of Judah, the spy who trusted Hashem (Joshua 14:13–14).

Hebrew lesson: חֶבְרוֹן (Chevron). The root ח־ב־ר means to join or bind together, as in chaver, a friend or companion. The kingdom that would one day join all twelve tribes begins in the city whose name means joining.

“And the men of Judah came, and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah” (2:4).

Three anointings. David is anointed three times:

1. In private, by the prophet: Samuel anoints him in his father’s house, and “the Spirit of Hashem came upon David from that day forward” (1 Samuel 16:13).
2. By part of the nation: the men of Judah anoint him king in Hebron (2 Samuel 2:4).
3. By all Israel: all the tribes come to Hebron and anoint him over the whole nation (2 Samuel 5:3).

Rabbi Palvanov, in his class “The Truth About the Lost Tribes of Israel,” puts the history plainly: “King David was the first to actually unify all 12 tribes under one Kingdom… first he was [in Hebron] for the first seven years.” In his class “The Amazing Link Between the Biblical Judges and the Prime Ministers of Israel,” he adds about our own time, “Shaul was not the perfect King; it took another couple people until he got to David. So it’s a process.”

Messianic reading. Our Statement of Faith teaches that Yeshua came first in the pattern of Mashiach ben Yosef (suffering, rejected, hidden among the nations) and will return as Mashiach ben David to gather Israel and restore the kingdom. David’s three anointings trace the same path. Yeshua was anointed by Hashem: “God anointed Yeshua of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38). He is received now by a remnant. He waits for the day when all Israel says, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of Hashem” (Matthew 23:39), and “so all Israel shall be saved” (Romans 11:26). David in Hebron is a real king whose kingdom has not yet fully come. That is where we live too.

2:4–7 · A blessing for the men who buried Saul

David’s first act as king is a blessing for his enemy’s friends. The men of Jabesh-Gilead had risked their lives to take Saul’s body down from the wall of Beth-shan and bury it (1 Samuel 31:11–13). Saul had rescued their city at the start of his reign (1 Samuel 11).

“Blessed be ye of Hashem, that ye have shewed this kindness unto your lord, even unto Saul, and have buried him. And now Hashem shew kindness and truth unto you” (2:5–6).

Kindness to the dead is called chesed shel emet, true kindness, because the dead can never repay it. David’s words, chesed ve’emet, “kindness and truth,” are the same words Jacob used when he asked Joseph to bury him in the land (Genesis 47:29). When Yeshua died, Joseph of Arimathea did the same kind of chesed and asked for his body (Mark 15:43). A king who honors those who were loyal to his rival is a king people can trust.

2:8–11 · A rival king named “Shame”

“But Abner the son of Ner, captain of Saul’s host, took Ishbosheth the son of Saul… and made him king… over all Israel” (2:8–9).

Hebrew lesson: אִישׁ־בֹּשֶׁת (Ish-bosheth), “man of shame.” In Chronicles his name is Eshbaal (1 Chronicles 8:33). Radak explains that baal and bosheth are the same: the prophets call Baal “the shameful thing” (Hosea 9:10; Jeremiah 11:13). Scripture does the same with Jerubbaal and Jerubbesheth, and with Meribbaal and Mephibosheth. Even so, Radak admits that the reason for the names “was known to them and not to us.”

Ariel Cohen Alloro, in his video “The Lost Word of the Freemasonry – Part 6,” calls him “the king of shame.” He describes him as a king who “belonged to the tree of Yosef” (through Rachel’s son Benjamin) and who could not defend himself, held up only by Abner.

Ish-bosheth reigns two years. “But the house of Judah followed David. And the time that David was king in Hebron over the house of Judah was seven years and six months” (2:10–11).

The extra six months. First Kings 2:11 says David reigned seven years in Hebron. Second Samuel 5:5 says seven years and six months. The Talmud notices the gap and teaches that for six months David was struck with tzaraat, the Shechinah left him, and the Sanhedrin kept away from him, so those months are not counted in his forty years (Sanhedrin 107a–b). Even the anointed king’s years are counted by his walk with Hashem.

2:12–17 · The pool of Gibeon: “Let the young men play”

The two armies meet on either side of the pool of Gibeon.

“And Abner said to Joab, Let the young men now arise, and play before us. And Joab said, Let them arise” (2:14).

Twelve men from each side step forward, each one grabs his opponent by the head, and all twenty-four die together. The place is named Chelkat haTzurim, “the field of blades” (2:16).

The word for “play” is visachaku, from צחק, the same root as Yitzchak. The Midrash uses this very verse to explain Genesis 21:9, where Sarah sees Ishmael metzachek, “mocking” or “playing,” with Isaac. Rabbi Elazar the son of Rabbi Yose HaGelili says this kind of “play” means bloodshed, and proves it from 2 Samuel 2:14 (Bereshit Rabbah 53:11). When grown men in power call killing a game, Scripture calls it murder.

The Jerusalem Talmud gives four reasons why Abner died the way he did, and the first is this verse:

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: because he made sport of the blood of the young men. (Jerusalem Talmud, Peah 1:1; also Vayikra Rabbah 26:2)

We will come back to the other three.

2:18–23 · Asahel, swift as a gazelle

“And Asahel was as light of foot as a wild roe” (2:18). Asahel, Joab’s youngest brother, chases Abner and will not turn aside. Twice Abner warns him: “Turn thee aside from following me: wherefore should I smite thee to the ground? how then should I hold up my face to Joab thy brother?” (2:22). Asahel refuses, and Abner kills him with a backward thrust of his spear “under the fifth rib” (2:23).

Abner did not want this. He knew it would start a blood feud with Joab. The Talmud later brings the case before King Solomon (Sanhedrin 49a). Joab claims he killed Abner as Asahel’s blood-avenger. Solomon answers that Asahel was a rodef, a pursuer, and a man may defend himself against a pursuer. Joab answers that Abner was skilled enough to strike the fifth rib, so he could have stopped Asahel by wounding a limb instead. Torah requires even a man defending his life to use the least force that will save him. The sages take that rule seriously, even in the middle of a battle.

2:24–32 · “Shall the sword devour for ever?”

At sunset, on a hill, Abner calls out to Joab:

“Shall the sword devour for ever? knowest thou not that it will be bitterness in the latter end? how long shall it be then, ere thou bid the people return from following their brethren?” (2:26).

Joab blows the shofar and the war stops for the night. The words that matter are “their brethren.” This is Israel against Israel: the house of Saul, from Benjamin, the son of Rachel, against the house of David, from Judah, the son of Leah. The family quarrel between Rachel’s house and Leah’s house started with Joseph and his brothers and goes on through the whole history of Israel.

FFOZ shows how the split between north and south was healed in part even before the exile, as northern refugees settled in Judah and intermarried there: “By the time Judah went into exile, the nation was already composed of families from all twelve tribes of Israel” (End of Days, Lessons 22–23, “The Ten Tribes–Shechinah”). The prophets promise that it will be healed completely:

“Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph… and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick… and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all… And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd” (Ezekiel 37:19, 22, 24).

Messianic reading. “All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword,” Yeshua told Peter (Matthew 26:52). Abner’s question, “Shall the sword devour for ever?”, is still the question of Jewish history. The answer is a king of David’s house under whom Joseph and Judah are one stick. Our Statement of Faith holds both halves of that hope: Mashiach ben Yosef and Mashiach ben David, one Messiah in two comings, healing the oldest split in the family.

Chapter 3 · Abner Turns, and Joab Strikes

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3:1 · Stronger and stronger, weaker and weaker

“Now there was long war between the house of Saul and the house of David: but David waxed stronger and stronger, and the house of Saul waxed weaker and weaker” (3:1).

David does not win by one great battle. He grows, slowly, while the other house shrinks. Yochanan the Immerser said of Yeshua, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Hashem’s kingdom often comes this way: not by a sudden overthrow but by steady growth while the old order fades. As Rabbi Palvanov says in his class “The Amazing Link Between the Biblical Judges and the Prime Ministers of Israel,” “it’s a process.”

3:2–5 · Six sons born in Hebron

The text stops to list David’s sons born in Hebron. Each name will matter later.

• Amnon, son of Ahinoam. He will later commit the crime against Tamar (2 Samuel 13), the “love that depends on a thing.”
• Chileab, son of Abigail. Chronicles calls him Daniel (1 Chronicles 3:1). Rashi brings Rabbi Yitzchak’s teaching: scoffers said Abigail’s child was really Nabal’s, so the child’s face came to look like David’s. The Talmud gives another reason for the name: he outdid Mephibosheth in Torah learning (Berakhot 4a).
• Absalom, son of Maacah, daughter of Talmai king of Geshur. The Midrash connects this marriage to the Torah’s law of the captive woman, which is followed right away by the law of the rebellious son: “Whoever marries a captive woman will end up with a rebellious son,” because David desired Maacah in war and Absalom came of it (Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Tetze 1; see Deuteronomy 21:10–21).
• Adonijah, son of Haggith. He will try to take the throne from Solomon (1 Kings 1).
• Shephatiah, son of Abital.
• Ithream, son of “Eglah David’s wife.” Rav teaches that Eglah is Michal, called “calf” (eglah) because she was as beloved to David as a calf. Rav Chisda suggests she bore him on the day she died, but the Talmud rejects that and concludes she had children only until the episode of 6:20–23 (Sanhedrin 21a).

The Torah lesson. The Torah warns the king, “Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away” (Deuteronomy 17:17). In David’s best season, the seeds of his worst years are being planted. Amnon, Absalom and Adonijah all come from this list. Success is when a king most needs to guard his house.

3:6–11 · “Am I a dog’s head?”

Ish-bosheth accuses Abner of taking Rizpah, Saul’s concubine. In the ancient world, taking the old king’s concubine was a claim to his throne. Abner explodes:

“Am I a dog’s head, which against Judah do shew kindness this day unto the house of Saul thy father?… So do God to Abner, and more also, except, as Hashem hath sworn to David, even so I do to him; To translate the kingdom from the house of Saul, and to set up the throne of David over Israel and over Judah, from Dan even to Beersheba” (3:8–10).

Ariel Cohen Alloro, in his video “The Lost Word of the Freemasonry – Part 6,” tells this story vividly: Abner took what belonged to the king, “even you don’t do this usually,” the weak king protested, and Abner “passed to the side of David.” The striking thing is Abner’s own words. He knew all along that Hashem had sworn the kingdom to David. He fought against it anyway, and only an insult made him change sides. The Talmud blames him for exactly this: Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak says Abner was punished because he delayed David’s kingdom by two and a half years (Sanhedrin 20a).

3:12–16 · Michal comes home, and Paltiel weeps

Abner sends messengers to David: “Whose is the land?… Make thy league with me, and, behold, my hand shall be with thee, to bring about all Israel unto thee” (3:12). The Jerusalem Talmud catches the order of his words: Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish says Abner was punished because he put his own name before David’s (Peah 1:1).

David’s condition is that Abner bring back Michal, “which I espoused to me for an hundred foreskins of the Philistines” (3:14). Saul had given her to another man, Paltiel son of Laish (1 Samuel 25:44). Now she is taken from him:

“And her husband went with her along weeping behind her to Bahurim. Then said Abner unto him, Go, return. And he returned” (3:16).

In our Benei Avraham class “Divorce, Remarriage, and Redemption in Torah and Messiah,” we noted that “the rabbis debated whether her second union was valid, a story showing the tangled pain of broken marriages.” The Talmud’s answer honors Paltiel (Sanhedrin 19b). His real name was Palti, and he was called Paltiel because “God saved him” (pilto El) from sin. Knowing that Michal was still David’s wife, he planted a sword between himself and her. He wept because he was losing the mitzvah he had kept. They were “like young men” (bachurim, a play on Bahurim) who had never been together. Rabbi Yochanan says Joseph’s restraint was great, Boaz’s was greater, and Palti’s was the greatest of all.

Scripture gives this man one verse, walking and weeping behind a woman he never touched. The sages make him a hero of holiness. Not every faithful servant in Scripture is a king.

3:17–21 · Abner gathers Israel to David

Abner goes to the elders of Israel:

“Ye sought for David in times past to be king over you: Now then do it: for Hashem hath spoken of David, saying, By the hand of my servant David I will save my people Israel out of the hand of the Philistines, and out of the hand of all their enemies” (3:17–18).

He goes even to Benjamin, Saul’s own tribe. He comes to Hebron with twenty men, David makes a feast, and Abner promises, “I will arise and go, and will gather all Israel unto my lord the king” (3:21). David sends him away “in peace.” The word shalom comes three times in verses 21–23.

This is Genesis 49:10 beginning to come true: “unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” The general who held up the rival throne becomes the one gathering Israel to the true king.

3:22–30 · Joab strikes Abner in the gate

Joab comes back from a raid, hears that Abner has left in peace, and confronts David. Then, without David’s knowledge, he sends after Abner and brings him back:

“Joab took him aside in the gate to speak with him quietly, and smote him there under the fifth rib, that he died, for the blood of Asahel his brother” (3:27).

Abner killed Asahel under the fifth rib, and he dies the same way. The Talmud reads every detail (Sanhedrin 49a). Rabbi Yochanan says the “fifth rib” is where the gall and liver hang. He also says that “in the midst of the gate” means Joab held a kind of court, putting the questions about Asahel to Abner before striking. Rabbi Abba bar Kahana reads the place-name Bor-Sirah, where Abner was called back from, as “pitcher” and “thorn.” Those were the two signs of David’s mercy toward Saul that Abner had brushed aside: the corner of the robe and the spear and water-jug (1 Samuel 24, 26).

That brings us to the other two reasons the Jerusalem Talmud gives for Abner’s death (Peah 1:1). The Rabbis say he blocked a reconciliation between Saul and David: when David showed Saul the corner of his robe, Abner said, “It was torn on a thorn.” “Some say” it was because he could have protested the massacre of the priests of Nob and did not. Abner was strong and he was brave. Kohelet Rabbah (9:11) says it was easier to move a wall six cubits thick than one of Abner’s legs. But a strong man who stays silent in front of evil has also chosen something.

Our teachers on Abner. Ariel Cohen Alloro, in his video “The Trinity – Part 06,” reads the name Avner, אבנר, as av ner, “father of the lamp.” David himself is later called ner Yisrael, “the lamp of Israel” (2 Samuel 21:17). He notes that אבנר equals 253, and Avner ben Ner equals 555. A Midrash on Kohelet (Yalkut Shimoni, Nach 285) describes the moment Joab struck him: the two men grappled, Israel pleaded, and the answer came, “he has put out my lamp.” The man who could have brought the lamp of Israel to all the tribes is put out at the gate of Hebron.

David’s response. David will not let Abner’s blood touch his kingdom:

“I and my kingdom are guiltless before Hashem for ever from the blood of Abner the son of Ner: Let it rest on the head of Joab, and on all his father’s house; and let there not fail from the house of Joab one that hath an issue, or that is a leper, or that leaneth on a staff, or that falleth on the sword, or that lacketh bread” (3:28–29).

The Talmud adds a sobering lesson (Sanhedrin 48b). Rav Yehudah says in Rav’s name that every one of these curses came true in David’s own descendants: an issue in Rehoboam, leprosy in Uzziah, leaning on a staff in Asa, falling by the sword in Josiah, and lacking bread in Jeconiah. Words spoken in anger, even when the anger is righteous, do not always land where we aim them. Yeshua taught, “Bless them that curse you” (Luke 6:28). When Solomon finally judged Joab, he said Joab had fallen on “two men more righteous and better than he,” Abner and Amasa (1 Kings 2:32). Ariel Cohen Alloro, in his video “The 4 sons from the Passover Haggadah – Part 26,” dwells on that verse and on Solomon’s blessing that follows it: “but upon David, and upon his seed, and upon his house, and upon his throne, shall there be peace for ever from Hashem” (1 Kings 2:33).

3:31–39 · The king follows the bier

“And David said to Joab, and to all the people that were with him, Rend your clothes, and gird you with sackcloth, and mourn before Abner. And king David himself followed the bier” (3:31).

Halachah. The Mishnah rules that a king does not leave his palace to follow a bier. Rabbi Yehudah says he may, as David followed Abner’s. The Sages answer that David did it only to calm the people (Mishnah Sanhedrin 2:3). The Gemara adds that David walked back and forth between the men and the women so everyone could see he had not ordered the killing (Sanhedrin 20a).

Then David laments again:

“Died Abner as a fool dieth? Thy hands were not bound, nor thy feet put into fetters: as a man falleth before wicked men, so fellest thou” (3:33–34).

He fasts until sundown, and “all the people took notice of it, and it pleased them” (3:36). Then he says the words that close the section:

“Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel? And I am this day weak, though anointed king; and these men the sons of Zeruiah be too hard for me: Hashem shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness” (3:38–39).

Hebrew lesson: רַךְ (rach), “weak, tender, soft.” David calls himself rach though he is mashuach, anointed. The Targum, which Rashi quotes, renders it, “I this day am a commoner, though raised to kingship.” David has the oil but not yet the power. Joab and his brothers have the swords, and David leaves judgment to Hashem.

Messianic reading. David’s men, the sons of Zeruiah, wanted to win by the sword. Later David would say to them, “What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah?” (2 Samuel 16:10; 19:22). When two disciples wanted to call down fire on a Samaritan village, the Son of David “turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of” (Luke 9:54–55). Before Pilate he said, “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight” (John 18:36). The prophet saw this King coming “lowly, and riding upon an ass” (Zechariah 9:9), and the word to Zerubbabel, of David’s line, was “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, saith Hashem of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6).

David in Hebron is anointed, mourning and “tender,” and he refuses to build his throne on blood. That is the pattern of Mashiach ben Yosef: humble, wronged, trusting Hashem for vindication. The same David, a few chapters later, is crowned by all Israel and takes Jerusalem. That is the pattern of Mashiach ben David. Both are one man, in two seasons.

Drawing it together

1. Hashem’s anointed is Hashem’s to judge. From the Amalekite’s lie to Joab’s dagger, the sin in these chapters is men trying to settle the kingdom with their own hands. David’s strength is that he will not. He asks Hashem before he moves (2:1), and he leaves vengeance to Hashem (3:39).

2. True love is covenant. David and Jonathan, the men of Jabesh-Gilead and Paltiel ben Laish all show a love that “does not depend on a thing.” That is ahavat Yisrael, the love that holds the people together.

3. Words have weight. A lie about killing Saul cost a man his life. A boast (“let the young men play”) and a slight (“whose is the land?”) are remembered in Abner’s judgment. A curse spoken over Joab fell on David’s own sons. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21).

4. The kingdom comes in stages. David is anointed by the prophet, then by Judah, then by all Israel. Yeshua was anointed by Hashem, is followed now by a remnant, and will be received by all Israel when he returns. We live in the Hebron years: the king is real, and the kingdom is still being gathered.

5. Joseph and Judah will be one. The war between the house of Saul and the house of David is a family war. Ezekiel promises that the stick of Joseph and the stick of Judah will become one in the hand of Hashem, under “David my servant.” Our hope is not that one side wins, but that the family is healed under one shepherd.

Questions for discussion

1. Why did David execute the Amalekite instead of rewarding him? What does Rambam say about how this was allowed?
2. Which Torah practice at funerals today comes from 2 Samuel 1:11–12?
3. According to Rabbi Yochanan, what is the “book of Jasher,” and how does it connect to Judah and the bow?
4. Explain Pirkei Avot 5:16. How is Jonathan’s love different from Amnon’s?
5. David was anointed three times. Name each one. How does this match the two comings of Mashiach in our Statement of Faith?
6. What does the word “play” in 2 Samuel 2:14 have to do with Ishmael in Genesis 21:9?
7. Give the four reasons the Jerusalem Talmud gives for Abner’s death. Which do you think is most important, and why?
8. Why do the sages call Paltiel ben Laish a hero?
9. What does Sanhedrin 48b teach about David’s curse on Joab? What does Yeshua teach about cursing?
10. David says, “I am this day weak, though anointed king.” How is that a picture of Mashiach?

Sources

Scripture: 1 Samuel 11, 15–31; 2 Samuel 1–5, 13, 16, 19, 21; 1 Kings 1–2; 1 Chronicles 3, 8; Genesis 21, 23, 47, 49; Deuteronomy 6, 17, 21, 33; Judges 3; Esther 2–3; Ezekiel 37; Zechariah 4, 9; Proverbs 18, 24; Matthew 4, 5, 23, 26; Mark 15; Luke 6, 9, 19; John 3, 6, 15, 18; Acts 10; Romans 11.

Talmud and Midrash: Avodah Zarah 25a; Moed Katan 16b, 26a; Yoma 22b; Berakhot 4a, 12b; Bava Batra 123b; Sanhedrin 19b–20a, 21a, 48b, 49a, 107a–b; Mishnah Sanhedrin 2:3; Pirkei Avot 5:16; Jerusalem Talmud Peah 1:1; Bereshit Rabbah 53:11; Vayikra Rabbah 26:2; Kohelet Rabbah 9:11; Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 3:16; Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Tetze 1; Yalkut Shimoni, Nach 141 and 285.

Commentators: Rashi on 2 Samuel 1:2, 1:18, 3:3, 3:39; Radak on 1 Samuel 31:4–5, 2 Samuel 1:10, 1:21, and 1 Chronicles 8:33; Metzudat David on 2 Samuel 1:21; Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Sanhedrin 18:6; Chida, Chomat Anakh, and Alshich on 2 Samuel 2.

Our teachers and materials: First Fruits of Zion, End of Days (5786), Lesson 5, “Signs of the Times”; Lesson 12, “Acharit HaYamim”; Lesson 17, “The Last Trumpet”; Lessons 22–23, “The Ten Tribes–Shechinah”; Rabbi Efraim Palvanov, “Understanding Edom #1 – Esau & Amalek” (https://youtu.be/NAqVj0_AJQE), “Understanding Edom #2 – Trump & Herod” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZxVH91iHPs), “Understanding Mashiach ben Yosef” (https://youtu.be/HUxIh1LdM3o), “The Truth About the Lost Tribes of Israel” (https://youtu.be/RRLA9HYkdgI) and “The Amazing Link Between the Biblical Judges and the Prime Ministers of Israel” (https://youtu.be/v9dSVisEJI8); Ariel Cohen Alloro, “New World Order – Hiram and the Freemasons – Part 11” (https://youtu.be/xxZF29CUAY4), “The Tale of the Seven Beggars by Rabbi Nachman – Part 3” (https://youtu.be/6x3I9u6FMtI), “The Lost Word of the Freemasonry – Part 6” (https://youtu.be/smsXDZg9iGE), “The Trinity – Part 06” (https://youtu.be/gBTeMz87-Uc) and “The 4 sons from the Passover Haggadah – Part 26” (https://youtu.be/5pUIETFpPNU); Benei Avraham class, “Divorce, Remarriage, and Redemption in Torah and Messiah” (https://youtu.be/-LJgB5sWMn0); Benei Avraham Statement of Faith.

Before we begin

In chapters 1–3 David was a king waiting in Hebron. In chapters 4–6 the waiting ends. The last king of Saul’s house is murdered in his bed. All the tribes come to Hebron and anoint David over all Israel. He takes Jerusalem, defeats the Philistines twice, and brings the Ark of the Covenant up to the City of David with dancing and the sound of the shofar.

Each step comes with a warning. David will not take a throne handed to him by murderers. He makes the Ark welcome in the wrong way first, and a man dies. When he dances before Hashem with all his might, his own wife despises him. These chapters teach that the kingdom of Hashem has to be received in Hashem’s way.

We read as before: the text first, in Hebrew where it matters; then the Sages; then our own teachers (the FFOZ End of Days lessons, Rabbi Efraim Palvanov and Ariel Cohen Alloro, and our Benei Avraham classes); and last, what the passage shows us about Mashiach. Gematria and Kabbalah are offered as hints, never as proof, and everything is tested by the Torah (Isaiah 8:20). Scripture is quoted from the King James Version with Hashem in place of LORD, as in our Statement of Faith.

Chapter 4 · The End of the House of Saul

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4:1–4 · Weak hands, and a lame boy

“And when Saul’s son heard that Abner was dead in Hebron, his hands were feeble, and all the Israelites were troubled” (4:1).

Abner had been the real strength behind Ish-bosheth’s throne. When Abner dies, the king’s hands go limp. Ariel Cohen Alloro, in his video “The Lost Word of the Freemasonry – Part 6,” calls Ish-bosheth “the king of shame”: a son of the house of Rachel who could not protect himself and was held up only by Abner.

Two of his own officers, Baanah and Rechab, are from Beeroth in Benjamin, Saul’s own tribe (4:2–3). The danger comes from inside the house.

Then the text stops for one verse to introduce someone we will meet again:

“And Jonathan, Saul’s son, had a son that was lame of his feet. He was five years old when the tidings came of Saul and Jonathan out of Jezreel, and his nurse took him up, and fled: and it came to pass, as she made haste to flee, that he fell, and became lame. And his name was Mephibosheth” (4:4).

Hebrew lesson: מְפִיבֹשֶׁת (Mefiboshet). In Chronicles his name is Meriv-baal (1 Chronicles 8:34; 9:40). As we saw with Ish-bosheth, Scripture replaces baal with boshet, “shame.” The Talmud honors him as a teacher of Torah: it pictures David asking, “Mefiboshet my teacher, did I rule correctly?” (Berakhot 4a). The same passage then says that his name was really Ish-bosheth, so the Talmud itself mixes the two sons of Saul’s house. We hold it as a teaching, not as history.

Why tell us about a lame boy here? Because when the house of Saul is gone, David will look for anyone left of it “that I may show him kindness for Jonathan’s sake” (2 Samuel 9:1), and this lame son of Jonathan will eat at the king’s table “as one of the king’s sons” (9:11). The verse is placed here so that, in the middle of the killing, we remember the covenant of love between David and Jonathan.

Messianic reading. Yeshua told his host, “When thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind” (Luke 14:13). In his parable the master of the house says, “Bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind” (14:21). The King’s table has room for the lame son of the enemy’s house.

4:5–8 · Murder at midday

Rechab and Baanah come “about the heat of the day to the house of Ish-bosheth, who lay on a bed at noon” (4:5). They come in “as though they would have fetched wheat” (4:6), strike him “under the fifth rib,” cut off his head, and walk all night to Hebron.

What the Sages say. Rashi and the Targum explain the wheat: they came in with the traders buying wheat. Metzudat David adds that they disguised themselves as wheat buyers so no one would notice them. The Greek Septuagint tells it differently: the doorkeeper of the house was sifting wheat and fell asleep.

The phrase “under the fifth rib” has now appeared three times. Abner killed Asahel that way (2:23), Joab killed Abner that way (3:27), and now Ish-bosheth dies that way. The Talmud reads the “fifth rib” as the place where the gall and liver hang (Sanhedrin 49a). Blood answers blood, in the same place, until the cycle is broken.

They bring the head to David with a speech: “Behold the head of Ish-bosheth the son of Saul thine enemy, which sought thy life; and Hashem hath avenged my lord the king this day of Saul, and of his seed” (4:8). They do not only claim a reward. They claim that their murder was Hashem’s will.

4:9–12 · “A righteous person in his own house upon his bed”

David answers with an oath:

“As Hashem liveth, who hath redeemed my soul out of all adversity, when one told me, saying, Behold, Saul is dead, thinking to have brought good tidings, I took hold of him, and slew him in Ziklag… How much more, when wicked men have slain a righteous person in his own house upon his bed? shall I not therefore now require his blood of your hand, and take you away from the earth?” (4:9–11).

David’s first words answer their speech. They said Hashem had avenged him. David says Hashem has redeemed him, “out of all adversity,” without their help. He does not need murderers to do Hashem’s work.

“A righteous person.” Ish-bosheth was a rival king set up against Hashem’s anointed. Why call him righteous? Malbim explains that tzaddik here means innocent in law: “they killed a righteous man who had committed no capital offense.” He was asleep in his own house. Whatever his politics, he had done nothing for which a court could kill him.

The Torah’s words. David’s phrase “take you away from the earth” is uvi’arti etchem min ha’aretz, “I will burn you away from the land.” It is the Torah’s own language for removing a murderer and other capital evil: “so shalt thou put the evil away (uvi’arta) from among you” (Deuteronomy 19:19; see 19:13 and 21:9). David is not taking revenge. He is doing what the Torah commands a ruler to do with innocent blood.

The killers are executed, and “they cut off their hands and their feet, and hanged them up over the pool in Hebron” (4:12): the hands that did the deed and the feet that ran with the news, shown in public so that all Israel would know the king had no part in it. Ish-bosheth’s head is buried in Abner’s tomb in Hebron. The king and his general, who quarreled in life, lie together in death.

Messianic reading. Some people think good may come from evil. Paul rejected that thinking: “let us do evil, that good may come… whose damnation is just” (Romans 3:8). Twice now a man has brought David a crown or a head and expected thanks. Twice David has refused to let his kingdom be built that way. The kingdom of the Son of David is built on Hashem’s promise, not on someone else’s crime.

Chapter 5 · King Over All Israel

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5:1–3 · “We are thy bone and thy flesh”

“Then came all the tribes of Israel to David unto Hebron, and spake, saying, Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh. Also in time past, when Saul was king over us, thou wast he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel: and Hashem said to thee, Thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be a captain over Israel” (5:1–2).

The tribes give three reasons. He is family (“bone and flesh”). He has already led them in battle (“leddest out and broughtest in”). And Hashem has chosen him to shepherd them: the word translated “feed” is tir’eh, “you will shepherd.”

The shepherd tested. The Midrash says Hashem tested David with sheep before giving him people. David led the small lambs out first to graze on the tender grass, then the older sheep to the middling grass, and only then the strong ones to the tough grass. Hashem said, “One who knows how to shepherd the flocks, each according to its strength, will come and shepherd My people” (Shemot Rabbah 2:2, on Psalm 78:70–71).

“So all the elders of Israel came to the king to Hebron; and king David made a league with them in Hebron before Hashem: and they anointed David king over Israel” (5:3). This is David’s third anointing: first by Samuel in his father’s house, then by Judah, now by all Israel. Before they anoint him, he makes a covenant with them “before Hashem.” The king is bound to the people as much as they are bound to him.

Messianic reading. When the wise men asked where the King of the Jews would be born, the scribes answered from Micah, and Matthew finishes the quotation with these very words: “out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule (literally, shepherd) my people Israel” (Matthew 2:6; Micah 5:2; 2 Samuel 5:2). Ezekiel promised, “I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David” (Ezekiel 34:23). Yeshua said, “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). He is also “bone and flesh” with Israel: “it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren” (Hebrews 2:17).

5:4–5 · Thirty years old

“David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months: and in Jerusalem he reigned thirty and three years over all Israel and Judah” (5:4–5).

Scripture gives the age of thirty to more than one servant of Hashem. Joseph “was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh” (Genesis 41:46). The Levites began their service in the Mishkan at thirty (Numbers 4:3). And “Yeshua himself began to be about thirty years of age” when he began his work (Luke 3:23). We could not find a classical source that ties these together; Rashbam only says that thirty is the age fit for high office. We offer the pattern as our own observation: the Josephite son, the Levite servant and the Davidic king all begin at thirty, and so does Yeshua.

David’s seventy years. David lived seventy years (thirty plus forty). The Midrash says these were a gift. Adam was shown the souls of the generations and saw David. Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer (19) has Adam say, “I took seventy of my years and added them to his days.” Yalkut Shimoni (Bereshit 41) adds that David had been allotted only three hours of life. Adam lived 930 years instead of a thousand, and the seventy he gave away became the life of the king.

5:6–10 · Jerusalem and “the blind and the lame”

“And the king and his men went to Jerusalem unto the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land: which spake unto David, saying, Except thou take away the blind and the lame, thou shalt not come in hither: thinking, David cannot come in hither. Nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David” (5:6–7).

A city never conquered. Rabbi Palvanov, in his class “Revelations from Jerusalem,” points out that Joshua defeated the king of Jerusalem but did not take the city, and that “the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day” (Joshua 15:63; see Judges 1:21). For four hundred years the city at the border of Judah and Benjamin stayed in Canaanite hands. David is the one who takes it.

Who were “the blind and the lame”? The Sages give two answers.

First answer: Rashi, following the Sifre, says the Jebusites were descendants of Avimelech. They had two idols, one blind and one lame, named after Yitzchak and Yaakov, with Avraham’s oath to Avimelech (Genesis 21:23) in their mouths. Their message was: you cannot come in while the oath of your fathers stands.

Second answer: Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer (36) remembers that Avraham bought the Cave of Machpelah from the Jebusites and swore that his descendants would not take Jebus against their will. The Jebusites wrote that oath on images of copper. The “blind and lame” are those images, “that have eyes and see not.”

Radak quotes both. Either way, the Sages heard in this verse a question about the oaths of the fathers. David waited until those generations had passed and then took the city. In the second telling, he also paid for it.

The tzinnor. David promises that whoever goes up by the tzinnor and strikes the Jebusites will be chief (5:8); Chronicles tells us it was Joab (1 Chronicles 11:6). Rashi and Radak read tzinnor as the high point of the tower. Many modern scholars think it is the water shaft that ran from the Gihon spring up into the city. The Sages’ reading and the archaeologists’ reading are both possible; the text does not decide.

Hebrew lesson: צִיּוֹן (Tziyon). FFOZ explains that Zion comes from tziyyun, a marker or memorial stone: a place Hashem has designated. “The name Zion might originally have been applied to Jebusite Jerusalem. ‘David captured the stronghold of Zion, that is the city of David.’” FFOZ also passes on a Jewish folk tale that the name Yerushalayim joins Avraham’s Yireh, “Hashem will provide” (Genesis 22:14), with Malki-Tzedek’s Shalem (Genesis 14:18) (End of Days, Lesson 26, “Giant Ox and Leviathan”).

Messianic reading. The verse ends with a proverb: “The blind and the lame shall not come into the house” (5:8). A thousand years later the Son of David entered the House in Jerusalem, “and the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them.” Right after, the children cried, “Hosanna to the Son of David” (Matthew 21:14–15). Isaiah had promised that in the days of redemption “the eyes of the blind shall be opened… then shall the lame man leap as an hart” (Isaiah 35:5–6). What was shut out at the founding of the city is welcomed in by its King.

“And David went on, and grew great, and Hashem God of hosts was with him” (5:10). The Hebrew is holech vegadol, “going and growing great,” the same pattern as 3:1. The reason is in the last words: Hashem was with him.

5:11–12 · For His people Israel’s sake

Hiram king of Tyre sends cedar, carpenters and masons, and they build David a house (5:11). For the first time a foreign king honors Israel’s king. Isaiah saw this pattern for the days of Mashiach: “the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee” (Isaiah 60:10).

“And David perceived that Hashem had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for his people Israel’s sake” (5:12).

Radak explains: Hashem did this for Israel, so they would have a good shepherd. Metzudat David says that David understood his kingdom was raised for Israel’s sake, “and he did not credit it to himself.” This may be the most important verse in the chapter. The throne does not exist for the king. It exists for the people.

Messianic reading. Yeshua told his disciples, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them… But ye shall not be so… I am among you as he that serveth” (Luke 22:25–27), and “the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

5:13–16 · Sons born in Jerusalem: Natan and Shlomo

David takes more wives and concubines in Jerusalem, and the Torah’s warning to the king still stands (Deuteronomy 17:17; see our note on 3:2–5). Among the sons born there are “Shammua, and Shobab, and Nathan, and Solomon” (5:14).

Two of these names matter for the Messiah’s family tree. Matthew traces Yeshua’s line from David through Shlomo (Matthew 1:6). Luke traces it through Natan (Luke 3:31). Ariel Cohen Alloro, in his video “I Shall Be Who I Shall Be – The Spirit of God & The Flying Serpent – Part 10,” notices this too, and counts Luke’s generations from Natan.

How do the two lists fit together? As we said in our shiur on the Son of David, “Teachers answer in different ways. Some say the line passes through Miriam, who was also of David.” Many add that Luke’s line through Natan avoids the curse on Jeconiah, of Shlomo’s line: “no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David” (Jeremiah 22:30). What everyone agrees on is that the King must truly be of David. Both of David’s sons born in Jerusalem stand behind the Messiah.

5:17–25 · The Valley of Rephaim and the Lord of the breakthrough

When the Philistines hear that David is king over all Israel, they come up to “the valley of Rephaim” (5:18).

Hebrew lesson: רְפָאִים (Refa’im). The Rephaim were a people of giants (Deuteronomy 2:20–21; 3:11). FFOZ notes they “were rumored to be descendants of the Nephilim” (End of Days, Lesson 3, “The Day and the Hour”), which takes us back to our Shabbat Noach study, When Angels Fell, and to Rabbi Palvanov’s teaching on the Nephilim in his class “Anunaki: Giants & Aliens in the Torah.” In the Prophets the word also means the shades of the dead (Isaiah 26:14, 19). David, who once fought a giant with a sling, now meets the Philistines in the valley named for giants.

David asks first. “Shall I go up to the Philistines? wilt thou deliver them into mine hand?” (5:19). Hashem says yes, and David wins at a place he names Baal-perazim: “Hashem hath broken forth upon mine enemies before me, as the breach of waters” (5:20).

Hebrew lesson: פ־ר־ץ (paratz), “to break through.” This is the root of Peretz, the son of Judah and Tamar who “broke through” first at his birth (Genesis 38:29) and the ancestor of David (Ruth 4:18–22). The Midrash says that every “breaker” comes from Peretz, and proves it from Micah: “The breaker is come up before them… and their king shall pass before them, and Hashem on the head of them” (Micah 2:13; Bereshit Rabbah 85:14). Radak quotes a midrash that reads the same verse about the redemption: “the breaker is Eliyahu, and their king is the Branch, son of David.” Ariel Cohen Alloro, in his video “The Trinity – Part 12,” teaches that the story of Peretz is “the main story in the Torah about the birth of Mashiach,” and that Peretz means to break through. At Baal-perazim the son of Peretz sees Hashem break through ahead of him.

The idols. The Philistines left their idols, “and David and his men burned them” (5:21; the Hebrew says “took them away,” and Chronicles says they were burned, 1 Chronicles 14:12). The Talmud explains: they burned them first, as the Torah commands (Deuteronomy 7:25), but once Ittai the Gittite, a Gentile, had nullified them, they could be carried off (Avodah Zarah 44a). The gods that were brought to fight for the Philistines end up as plunder.

The sound in the treetops. The Philistines come again, and this time Hashem gives a different plan: circle behind them, and wait. “And let it be, when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou shalt bestir thyself: for then shall Hashem go out before thee” (5:24). Rashi explains: “these are angels walking on the treetops, whom I send to help you.” Victory at Baal-perazim did not mean the same tactics would work twice. David had to ask again, and he had to wait for the sound.

Messianic reading. Before Shavuot, Yeshua told his disciples to “wait for the promise of the Father” in Jerusalem (Acts 1:4). They waited, and “suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind” (Acts 2:2). Hashem’s people move when Hashem moves.

Chapter 6 · The Ark Comes to the City of David

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6:1–5 · A new cart

David gathers thirty thousand chosen men and goes to “Baale of Judah, to bring up from thence the ark of God, whose name is called by the name of Hashem of hosts that dwelleth between the cherubims” (6:2). Rashi explains that Baale of Judah is Kiryat-Yearim (1 Chronicles 13:6), where the Ark had stayed for twenty years since the Philistines sent it back (1 Samuel 7:1–2). The Ark “is called a name,” Rashi says, because the Name of Hashem of hosts was upon it.

Rabbi Palvanov, in his class “Understanding Edom #2 – Trump & Herod,” tells the story simply: David made Jerusalem his capital, and although Hashem would not let him build the Temple, he wanted at least to bring the Ark there. “It was great. It was a party.”

But “they set the ark of God upon a new cart” (6:3). That is how the Philistines had sent it back (1 Samuel 6:7). The Torah had commanded something else. The Ark was to be carried by the Levites of Kohath, “upon their shoulders” (Numbers 7:9; see 4:15).

What the Sages say. Rava asks why David was punished, and answers that David had called the Torah “songs”: “Thy statutes have been my songs” (Psalm 119:54). Hashem said, in effect: Words of Torah are not music to sing in passing. I will make you stumble in something even schoolchildren know. The verse every child learned was that the Ark is carried on the shoulder, “and yet he brought it on a wagon” (Sotah 35a).

6:6–9 · Uzzah

“And when they came to Nachon’s threshingfloor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it. And the anger of Hashem was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God” (6:6–7).

In the same class, “Understanding Edom #2 – Trump & Herod,” Rabbi Palvanov describes the Ark as surrounded by something like divine electricity: “He couldn’t handle the holiness and the power of the ark of the covenant.” The Torah had warned the Levites, “they shall not touch any holy thing, lest they die” (Numbers 4:15).

What the Sages say. The Talmud gives two readings of “for his error” (al hashal), from Rabbi Yochanan and Rabbi Elazar, without telling us which said which: one says it was “because of his error,” the other that he was irreverent before the Ark (Sotah 35a). The Midrash adds Hashem’s rebuke: the Ark carried those who carried it (at the Jordan, Joshua 3–4), so how much more could it carry itself! (Bamidbar Rabbah 4:20).

Yet the same page offers comfort. Rabbi Yochanan says that Uzzah came to the World to Come, because the verse says he died “with the ark of God”: “just as the Ark endures forever, so Uzzah came to the World to Come” (Sotah 35a). Our Statement of Faith teaches that the dead sleep until the resurrection; Uzzah’s judgment in this world was not the last word about him.

David’s fear. “And David was displeased, because Hashem had made a breach upon Uzzah: and he called the name of the place Perez-uzzah” (6:8). The same word again: paratz. At Baal-perazim, Hashem broke through David’s enemies. Here He breaks out against Israel’s carelessness. Chronicles gives David’s own conclusion: “Hashem our God made a breach upon us, for that we sought him not after the due order” (1 Chronicles 15:13).

“And David was afraid of Hashem that day, and said, How shall the ark of Hashem come to me?” (6:9).

Messianic reading. Uzzah meant to help. Paul wrote about Israel that “they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge” (Romans 10:2). Good intentions do not replace the Torah’s instructions. Yeshua did not do away with holiness. He taught his disciples to come near to the Father with reverence and in the way the Father appoints.

6:10–12 · Three months in the house of Obed-edom

David turns the Ark aside to “the house of Obed-edom the Gittite” (6:10). For three months it stays there, “and Hashem blessed Obed-edom, and all his household” (6:11).

Who was Obed-edom? His name means “servant of Edom,” and “Gittite” sounds like a man of Gath, a Philistine city. Radak explains that he was a Levite, among the gatekeepers and singers (1 Chronicles 15:18, 24; 26:4–8), and was called Gittite because he had lived in Gath. In the same class, “Understanding Edom #2 – Trump & Herod,” Rabbi Palvanov says the same: “He was a Levite, but he was born in the Philistine town… a genuine servant of God, a righteous person.”

How he was blessed. The Talmud says Obed-edom swept and sprinkled the floor before the Ark, honoring it every day. Then it reasons: if this blessing came for honoring an Ark that neither ate nor drank, how much more for one who hosts a Torah scholar in his home (Berakhot 63b). Rav Yehuda bar Zevida explains the blessing from Chronicles: Obed-edom’s wife (literally “the mother-in-law”) and his eight daughters-in-law each bore six children at one birth, which is how Chronicles counts “threescore and two of Obed-edom” (1 Chronicles 26:5–8; Berakhot 63b–64a).

Messianic reading. “How shall the ark of Hashem come to me?” (6:9). Many readers have heard this verse behind Luke’s story of Miriam. She traveled “into the hill country… of Juda” (Luke 1:39), the same region the Ark came from. Elisabeth said, “And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (1:43). The baby in her womb leaped for joy (1:44), as David would leap before the Ark. “And Mary abode with her about three months” (1:56), as the Ark stayed three months in the house of Obed-edom. As the Ark carried the tablets of the covenant, Miriam carried the Messiah who would be the living expression of that covenant. We do not make Miriam more than she was, a righteous daughter of Israel. But Luke tells her story in the language of the Ark.

Yeshua also taught, “He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward” (Matthew 10:41). The house that receives what belongs to Hashem is blessed.

6:12–15 · The Ark goes up with joy

When David hears that the house of Obed-edom has been blessed, he goes back for the Ark, and this time it is done right. Chronicles says plainly that “the children of the Levites bare the ark of God upon their shoulders” (1 Chronicles 15:15).

“And it was so, that when they that bare the ark of Hashem had gone six paces, he sacrificed oxen and fatlings” (6:13). The Talmud records a dispute about this (Sotah 35b). Rav Pappa bar Shmuel says that at every step they offered an ox and a fatling, and at every six steps seven bulls and seven rams (1 Chronicles 15:26). Rav Chisda objects, “If so, you have filled the whole land of Israel with altars!” He reads it as an ox and a fatling every six steps, and seven bulls and seven rams every six sets of six. Either way, the way up to Jerusalem was a road of offerings.

“And David danced before Hashem with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of Hashem with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet (shofar)” (6:14–15).

The linen ephod. Radak says it was a garment of honor, not one of the priestly garments, so anyone could wear it. The king laid aside his royal robes and dressed like a servant of the Sanctuary.

Halachah from this verse. Rambam closes his laws of Sukkot with this scene. “The joy with which a person rejoices in doing the mitzvah and in love of Hashem who commanded it is a great service. Whoever holds himself back from this joy deserves to be punished.” Whoever lowers himself in such joy is “the great one, the honored one, who serves out of love.” And he quotes David: “There is no greatness or honor except rejoicing before Hashem” (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Shofar, Sukkah ve-Lulav 8:15). On Simchat Torah, when we dance with the scrolls, we are doing what David did here.

Our teachers. Ariel Cohen Alloro, in his video “about Hasidut & Kabbalah – Part 1 of 2,” teaches that true kingship in holiness is shiflut, lowliness: “Like David HaMelech said, I am in my eyes nothing. When Michal… was laughing at him that he danced with everybody… he said, I am nothing.” The kingdom of holiness is held by someone who keeps giving up his own honor.

Messianic reading. David the king, wearing a linen ephod, offering sacrifices and blessing the people in Hashem’s Name, looks for a moment like a priest-king. Psalm 110 speaks of a king who is “a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek” (Psalm 110:4), and Zechariah of the Branch who “shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne” (Zechariah 6:13). Hebrews applies both to Yeshua (Hebrews 5:6; 7:1–17). He serves the Father as king and as priest.

6:16 · From the window

“And as the ark of Hashem came into the city of David, Michal Saul’s daughter looked through a window, and saw king David leaping and dancing before Hashem; and she despised him in her heart” (6:16).

Notice what the verse calls her: not “David’s wife” but “Saul’s daughter.” She watches from a window, apart from the people. Radak explains her thinking: she believed it was not fitting for a king to act like a commoner, even before the Ark.

6:17–19 · The tent, the offerings, and bread for everyone

“And they brought in the ark of Hashem, and set it in his place, in the midst of the tabernacle that David had pitched for it” (6:17). David offers burnt offerings and peace offerings, blesses the people “in the name of Hashem of hosts” (6:18), and gives every man and woman “a cake of bread, and a good piece of flesh, and a flagon of wine” (6:19).

Hebrew lesson: eshpar and ashishah. The Talmud discusses these rare words. Rav Chanan bar Abba says eshpar is one sixth of a bull and ashishah is one sixth of an ephah of flour; Shmuel says ashishah is a jug of wine (Pesachim 36b). Rashi follows Rav Chanan on the meat and Shmuel on the wine. The point is generosity: “as well to the women as men,” every person went home fed.

The tent of David. Many teachers connect this tent with Amos’ promise, “In that day will I raise up the tabernacle (sukkah) of David that is fallen” (Amos 9:11), which James quoted at the council in Jerusalem to show that Gentiles who seek Hashem are part of the restoration (Acts 15:16–17). We should be careful here. The tent in 2 Samuel 6 is an ohel. Amos speaks of the sukkah of David that has fallen, meaning his royal house and kingdom. FFOZ reads Amos 9:11 as the Messianic Era, when the people of the world “wall up its breaches, raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old,” and as the heart of Sukkot in the Kingdom (End of Days, Lesson 31, “The Appointed Times”). The restoration Amos promises is the house of David itself, raised again by the Son of David.

Messianic reading. The king who blesses the people in Hashem’s Name and gives bread to all of them points ahead. Yeshua “took the five loaves… and blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. And they did all eat, and were filled” (Matthew 14:19–20).

6:20–23 · Michal and David

“Then David returned to bless his household. And Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David, and said, How glorious was the king of Israel to day, who uncovered himself to day in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself!” (6:20).

David answers:

“It was before Hashem, which chose me before thy father, and before all his house, to appoint me ruler over the people of Hashem, over Israel: therefore will I play before Hashem. And I will yet be more vile than thus, and will be base in mine own sight: and of the maidservants which thou hast spoken of, of them shall I be had in honour” (6:21–22).

What the Sages say. The Midrash imagines the whole argument (Bamidbar Rabbah 4:20). Michal says, “All my father’s house were modest and holy, and you stand uncovering yourself like one of the empty fellows.” David answers: “Did I make merry before a king of flesh and blood? Before the King of kings I made merry.” “Your father’s house sought their own honor and set aside the honor of Heaven; I do not.” And about the maidservants: “They are not amahot, maidservants, but imahot, mothers; may I have a portion with them in the World to Come.” Rashi explains 6:22 simply: “Among them I will be honored: they do not mock me.” Radak adds that lowering oneself before Hashem is not disgrace but honor.

“Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death” (6:23). The Talmud discusses this verse (Sanhedrin 21a). Rav Chisda suggests that she bore a child on the day of her death (the Eglah of 3:5), but the Talmud rejects that and concludes that until this day she had children, and from then on she had none. Whichever way we read it, no child of Saul’s daughter would sit on David’s throne. The house of Saul ends here.

Messianic reading. “For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke 14:11). Miriam sang the same truth when she carried the Messiah: “He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree” (Luke 1:52). The King who entered Jerusalem “lowly, and riding upon an ass” (Zechariah 9:9) washed his disciples’ feet (John 13:4–5). David was not ashamed to look foolish before the maidservants of Israel, and the Son of David was not ashamed of the lowly either.

Drawing it together

1. The kingdom is not built on crime. Twice David has been handed a dead rival’s crown or head. Twice he has refused, and judged those who brought them by the Torah. The house of David begins with clean hands.

2. The king is a shepherd. The tribes come to David because Hashem chose him to shepherd Israel, and David knew his kingdom was “for his people Israel’s sake.” Yeshua, the Good Shepherd, came “not to be ministered unto, but to minister.”

3. Ask, and ask again. David inquired of Hashem before Hebron, before the first battle, and before the second, and the answers were different each time. Faithfulness means listening every time, not repeating last year’s victory.

4. Holiness has a form. Uzzah’s death and the new cart teach that love for Hashem does not replace His instructions. The second time, the Levites carried the Ark on their shoulders, as the Torah commands, and the result was joy and blessing.

5. Joy before Hashem is greatness. David danced with all his might, and Rambam made it a principle: there is no greatness or honor except rejoicing before Hashem. Michal’s dignity left her childless. David’s humility left him honored.

6. The blind and the lame are welcome. The Jebusites’ proverb shut them out of the house. Mephibosheth, lame from childhood, will eat at David’s table, and the Son of David healed the blind and the lame in the Temple.

Questions for discussion

1. Why did David execute Rechab and Baanah, though they killed his rival? Which Torah phrase does he use in 4:11?
2. Why is Mephibosheth introduced in 4:4, in the middle of the story of Ish-bosheth’s murder?
3. What three reasons do the tribes give for making David king (5:1–2)? How does Matthew 2:6 use 2 Samuel 5:2?
4. What two explanations do the Sages give for “the blind and the lame” (5:6–8)? How does Matthew 21:14–15 answer this verse?
5. What does 5:12 teach about why Hashem gives a kingdom?
6. Why do Natan and Shlomo matter for the Messiah’s genealogy?
7. What does paratz (“break through”) have to do with Peretz, Baal-perazim and Perez-uzzah?
8. According to Sotah 35a, why did David put the Ark on a cart? What was the Torah’s instruction?
9. How was Obed-edom blessed, and what lesson does the Talmud draw from it?
10. What does Rambam learn from David’s dancing? How did Michal see it differently?

Sources

Scripture: Genesis 2, 14, 21, 22, 23, 29, 38, 41; Numbers 4, 7; Deuteronomy 2, 3, 7, 17, 19, 21; Joshua 3–4, 15; Judges 1; Ruth 4; 1 Samuel 6–7; 2 Samuel 2–3, 9, 16, 19; 1 Chronicles 3, 8, 9, 11, 13–15, 26; Psalm 78, 110, 119; Isaiah 26, 35, 60; Jeremiah 22; Ezekiel 34; Amos 9; Micah 2, 5; Zechariah 4, 6, 9; Matthew 1, 2, 10, 14, 21; Mark 10; Luke 1, 3, 9, 14, 22; John 10, 13; Acts 1, 2, 15; Romans 3, 10; Hebrews 2, 5, 7.

Talmud and Midrash: Berakhot 4a, 63b–64a; Pesachim 36b; Sotah 35a–35b; Sanhedrin 21a, 49a; Avodah Zarah 44a; Bereshit Rabbah 85:14; Shemot Rabbah 2:2; Bamidbar Rabbah 4:20; Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 19, 36; Yalkut Shimoni, Bereshit 41; Sifre (as cited by Rashi on 2 Samuel 5:6).

Commentators: Rashi on 2 Samuel 4:6, 5:6, 5:8, 5:24, 6:2, 6:14, 6:19, 6:22; Targum Jonathan on 4:6; Radak on 5:6, 5:8, 5:12, 6:11, 6:14, 6:16, 6:20, 6:22 and on Micah 2:13; Metzudat David on 4:6 and 5:12; Malbim on 4:11; Rashbam on Genesis 41:46; Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Shofar, Sukkah ve-Lulav 8:15. The Septuagint on 4:6.

Our teachers and materials: First Fruits of Zion, End of Days (5786), Lesson 3, “The Day and the Hour”; Lesson 26, “Giant Ox and Leviathan”; Lesson 31, “The Appointed Times”; Rabbi Efraim Palvanov, “Revelations from Jerusalem” (https://youtu.be/SxzIBUZSiP4), “Understanding Edom #2 – Trump & Herod” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZxVH91iHPs) and “Anunaki: Giants & Aliens in the Torah” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvCgyvflt4k); Ariel Cohen Alloro, “The Lost Word of the Freemasonry – Part 6” (https://youtu.be/smsXDZg9iGE), “I Shall Be Who I Shall Be – The Spirit of God & The Flying Serpent – Part 10” (https://youtu.be/71jsK4wNfgE), “The Trinity – Part 12” (https://youtu.be/W-somJq3JsM) and “about Hasidut & Kabbalah – Part 1 of 2” (https://youtu.be/VGJWzni7cR0); Benei Avraham, The Son of David (Sukkot 5787) and When Angels Fell (Shabbat Noach 5787); Benei Avraham Statement of Faith.

Before we begin

Chapter 7 is the center of the book of Samuel, and one of the centers of the whole Bible. David wants to build Hashem a house. Hashem answers that He will build David a house: a dynasty, a son, a throne that lasts forever. Every later promise about the Messiah, the son of David, grows out of this chapter. Chapter 8 shows the kingdom that promise rests on: David’s wars, his officers, and the line that sums up his reign, “David executed judgment and justice unto all his people.” Chapter 9 shows the king’s heart: he goes looking for anyone left of Saul’s house, finds a lame man hiding across the Jordan, and seats him at his own table for life.

We read as before: the text first; then the Sages; then our own teachers (the FFOZ End of Days lessons, Rabbi Efraim Palvanov and Ariel Cohen Alloro, and our own Benei Avraham classes); and last, what the passage shows about Mashiach. Gematria and Kabbalah are offered as hints, never as proof, and everything is tested by the Torah (Isaiah 8:20). Scripture is quoted from the King James Version with Hashem in place of LORD, as in our Statement of Faith.

Chapter 7 · Hashem Builds David a House

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7:1–3 · A house of cedar and a tent of curtains

“And it came to pass, when the king sat in his house, and Hashem had given him rest round about from all his enemies; that the king said unto Nathan the prophet, See now, I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains” (7:1–2).

David looks at his own house, built for him by Hiram’s carpenters (5:11), and then at the tent he pitched for the Ark (6:17), and the difference troubles him. He does not yet say what he wants. Nathan understands and answers, “Go, do all that is in thine heart; for Hashem is with thee” (7:3).

The order of the commandments. The Talmud teaches that Israel was given three commandments to carry out on entering the land: to appoint a king, to cut off the seed of Amalek, and to build the Chosen House. Rabbi Yosei’s baraita derives the order from this chapter: first “when the king sat in his house, and Hashem had given him rest round about,” and only then “the king said unto Nathan… I dwell in an house of cedar” (Sanhedrin 20b, on Deuteronomy 12:10–11). Rashi says the same on 7:1: the condition of Deuteronomy 12:10, rest from all enemies, has now been met, so the next verse, “the place which Hashem your God shall choose,” has come into force. David saw it, and his heart moved.

Radak adds a caution. David still had wars ahead (chapter 8), so the rest was not yet complete. That is one reason the building waited for Solomon, whose name means peace.

7:4–7 · “Shall you build Me a house?”

That same night the word of Hashem comes to Nathan:

“Go and tell my servant David, Thus saith Hashem, Shalt thou build me an house for me to dwell in? Whereas I have not dwelt in any house since the time that I brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt, even to this day, but have walked in a tent and in a tabernacle” (7:5–6).

Nathan had spoken from his own good sense. Now he has to go back with a different answer. Even a prophet is corrected when he speaks without a word from Hashem, and he is honest enough to say so.

Why not David? The chapter does not say. Chronicles does: “Thou hast shed blood abundantly, and hast made great wars: thou shalt not build an house unto my name” (1 Chronicles 22:8; 28:3). The Midrash softens it. Hashem tells David, “Because you shed much blood, I cannot build it by your hand, but it will be in your name” (Midrash Tehillim 62:4). Another midrash says that if David had built it, it could never have been destroyed, and Hashem, foreseeing Israel’s sins, preferred a House He could pour out His anger on instead of His people (Pesikta Rabbati 2). The Temple’s own dedication psalm is titled “A Psalm and Song at the dedication of the house of David” (Psalm 30:1). Midrash Tehillim explains: “Since you planned to build it, even though your son Solomon builds it, I call it by your name” (Midrash Tehillim 30:3). And when Solomon brought the Ark into the Holy of Holies, the gates would not open for him until he prayed, “remember the mercies of David thy servant” (2 Chronicles 6:42; Shabbat 30a).

Hebrew lesson: בַּיִת (bayit), “house.” The word runs through the whole chapter. David wants to build Hashem a bayit, a building. Hashem promises to build David a bayit, a household and a dynasty (7:11). Then David’s son will build Hashem’s bayit (7:13), and David prays for his own bayit forever (7:16, 25–29). The wordplay is the message. Hashem will not be housed by David. He will house David.

7:8–11 · “I took you from the sheepfold”

Before the promise, Hashem reminds David where he came from:

“I took thee from the sheepcote, from following the sheep, to be ruler over my people, over Israel: and I was with thee whithersoever thou wentest, and have cut off all thine enemies out of thy sight, and have made thee a great name, like unto the name of the great men that are in the earth” (7:8–9).

Three things Hashem has done: taken him, been with him, cut off his enemies. Then three things He will do: make David a name, plant Israel in a place of its own (7:10), and give rest from enemies (7:11). The Hebrew of 7:11 says it plainly: “Hashem telleth thee that he will make thee an house.”

Our Statement of Faith quotes Micah’s “out of thee shall he come forth” and the shepherd David of Ezekiel 34 and 37. The shepherd from Bethlehem who was taken “from following the sheep” becomes the pattern of the Shepherd King to come.

7:12–16 · The promise

“And when thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men: but my mercy shall not depart away from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before thee. And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever” (7:12–16).

What is promised. Our Son of David shiur put it in three lines: he will come from David’s own body; he will build a House for Hashem’s name; his throne will last forever. Four times the words “for ever” fall in five verses.

Solomon first. The Sages read these verses first of all about Solomon. Rashi says the “rod of men” was Hadad and Rezon, the enemies raised up against Solomon (1 Kings 11:14, 23), and the “stripes of the children of men” was Ashmedai, the demon who pushed him off his throne in the legend of Gittin 68b. Radak says the chastening is a father’s rod, not death, and that “my mercy shall not depart” applies not only to Solomon but to Rehoboam and all David’s seed. The Targum softens the language of sonship: “I will be to him as a father, and he will be to Me like a son.” Abarbanel reads it the same way: the son “from your loins” is Solomon, not Absalom or Adonijah.

The kingdom is forever. Rambam makes this a law. “Once David was anointed, he acquired the crown of kingship, and the kingship belongs to him and to his male descendants forever, as it says, ‘thy throne shall be established for ever’” (Hilchot Melachim 1:7, quoting 7:16). A king from another tribe may arise, as Jeroboam did, but “the kingship will cease from his house”; only “the kings of the house of David stand forever” (Hilchot Melachim 1:9). This is why every Jewish prayer for redemption asks for the Branch of David.

“I will be his father.” Rabbi Palvanov, in his class “Understanding Mashiach ben Yosef,” reminds us that the title son of God is used in the Tanakh for Solomon, for the Messiah and for all Israel, and that it should not frighten us: “if a Christian tells you Jesus was a son of God,” it is a Jewish idea first. Our Statement of Faith says the same: “Son” is a royal title. Hashem calls all Israel “my son, even my firstborn” (Exodus 4:22). He tells David of Shlomo, “he shall be my son” (2 Samuel 7:14). The Midrash takes the next step. On Psalm 89:27, “I will make him my firstborn,” Rabbi Natan says: just as I made Jacob a firstborn, “so I will make the King Messiah a firstborn, as it says, ‘Also I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth’” (Shemot Rabbah 19:7).

Before Yeshua’s day. The Dead Sea Scrolls show how the promise was read two centuries before Yeshua. A scroll from Qumran quotes 2 Samuel 7:11–14 and explains: “’I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to me.’ This is the Branch of David who will arise with the Interpreter of the Torah… in Zion in the last days, as it is written, ‘I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen’” (4Q174, column 1, lines 10–13, citing Amos 9:11). So when the Brit Hadashah applies this verse to the Messiah, it is reading it the way Jews in the land already read it.

Messianic reading. The angel’s words to Miriam are this chapter in one sentence: “the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:32–33). Peter at Shavuot says David “knew that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins… he would raise up Messiah to sit on his throne” (Acts 2:30), and Paul in Antioch traces the same line: “Of this man’s seed hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Saviour, Yeshua” (Acts 13:23). Hebrews opens with 7:14 itself: “I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son” (Hebrews 1:5). FFOZ applies the verse one step further, to the resurrection: “As the LORD promised regarding the Son of David, the overcomers will be adopted and elevated to the status of children of God through resurrection: ‘I will be a father to him and he will be a son to Me’” (End of Days, Lessons 53–54, “The End of Days–Bright Morning Star”; see Revelation 21:7).

Read it our way: the promise is a chain. Solomon is the first link, and he fell under the rod. The chain did not break, because Hashem’s mercy “shall not depart.” Every king of Judah was measured against it, and the prophets kept pointing past them to one more son of David, who would build the House, sit on the throne forever, and be called Hashem’s son in the fullest sense. That is who we confess Yeshua to be: not Hashem Himself, but the Son whom Hashem has set on David’s throne.

Natan’s two lines. We noted in chapter 5 that David’s sons born in Jerusalem included both Natan and Shlomo, and that Luke traces Yeshua’s line through Natan while Matthew traces it through Shlomo. The prophet Natan who speaks in this chapter is not David’s son, but it is worth noticing that the name sits on both sides of the promise: the prophet who delivers it and the son through whom Luke says it reached Yeshua.

7:17–24 · “Who am I, O Lord Hashem?”

“Then went king David in, and sat before Hashem, and he said, Who am I, O Lord Hashem? and what is my house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?” (7:18).

He sat. Rashi says David sat before the Ark. The Sages learned from this verse that no one may sit in the Temple court except the kings of the house of David (Sotah 40b; Tosefta Sanhedrin 4:4). Radak adds that even they did not really sit at ease; the word means he settled himself to pray. A king, in the presence of the King, begins with “Who am I?”

“The Torah of man.” Verse 19 ends with a phrase that has puzzled every reader: “and is this the manner of man, O Lord Hashem?” The Hebrew is vezot torat ha’adam, “and this is the Torah of man.” Rashi gives three readings, one of them a question: is such news fit for flesh and blood? Radak reads torat as “the manner befitting,” and brings a midrash that ha’adam, “the man,” is Moses, the greatest of the prophets: Moses brought Israel out of Egypt, David freed them from the kingdoms; Moses split the sea, David split rivers; Moses gave five books of Torah, David five books of Psalms. The Targum reads it about the age to come: “You have spoken of Your servant’s house for the world to come, and this is fitting for the sons of men.” David understood that a promise reaching “for a great while to come” was not about his lifetime.

One nation in the earth. “And what one nation in the earth is like thy people, even like Israel, whom God went to redeem for a people to himself… to do for you great things and terrible, for thy land, before thy people, which thou redeemedst to thee from Egypt” (7:23). The Talmud asks what is written in the tefillin of the Master of the world, and answers with this sentence as Chronicles has it: “Who is like thy people Israel, one nation in the earth” (Berakhot 6a; 1 Chronicles 17:21). Israel binds Hashem’s oneness on its arm every morning; Hashem, so to speak, binds Israel’s oneness on His. David’s prayer stands in the middle of that love.

7:25–29 · “Do as Thou hast said”

David ends by asking Hashem to do what He has promised: “let the house of thy servant David be established before thee. For thou, O Hashem of hosts, God of Israel, hast revealed to thy servant, saying, I will build thee an house: therefore hath thy servant found in his heart to pray this prayer unto thee” (7:26–27).

David prays because Hashem promised. The promise did not make prayer unnecessary; it made prayer possible. Yeshua taught his disciples to pray “Thy kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10), which is this prayer in three words: establish the house of David as You have said.

Chapter 8 · The Kingdom Established

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8:1–8 · The wars

Chapter 8 is a summary, not a diary. In a few verses David subdues the Philistines, Moab, Zobah, Aram of Damascus and Edom, and the kingdom promised in chapter 7 takes shape on the map.

Moab. “He smote Moab, and measured them with a line, casting them down to the ground; even with two lines measured he to put to death, and with one full line to keep alive” (8:2). The severity surprises us. Moab had sheltered David’s parents when he fled from Saul (1 Samuel 22:3–4), and Ruth the Moabitess was his great-grandmother. Rashi explains that the king of Moab had killed David’s father, mother and brothers whom David left in his care, for Scripture never records them coming home. The Midrash fills in the story: one brother escaped to Nahash king of Ammon, who refused to give him up, and that is the “kindness” Nahash showed David (Bamidbar Rabbah 14:1; 2 Samuel 10:2). The Torah warns us not to read these chapters as a license. It explains them, and then it holds the king to its own standard.

Horses. “David houghed all the chariot horses, but reserved of them for an hundred chariots” (8:4). Rashi and Radak both say why: “he shall not multiply horses to himself” (Deuteronomy 17:16). A king who kept every captured horse would be on the road back to Egypt. David kept what he needed and no more.

The king’s law. The Torah’s law of the king (Deuteronomy 17:14–20) stands behind the whole chapter: not many horses, not many wives, not much silver and gold, and a copy of the Torah at his side. David’s record in this chapter is mixed. He limits the horses; he dedicates the silver and gold to Hashem (8:11); but chapter 5 already showed him multiplying wives. The next chapters will show where that leads.

8:9–14 · Tribute, and a name

Toi king of Hamath sends his son with gifts of silver, gold and bronze. “Which also king David did dedicate unto Hashem, with the silver and gold that he had dedicated of all nations which he subdued” (8:11). Isaiah saw the same picture for the days of Mashiach: “the wealth of the Gentiles shall come unto thee… they shall bring gold and incense” (Isaiah 60:5–6). David kept almost none of it. Chronicles tells us what it was for: the Temple his son would build (1 Chronicles 22:14).

“And David gat him a name when he returned from smiting of the Syrians in the valley of salt, being eighteen thousand men” (8:13). The Hebrew says Aram, Chronicles says Edom (1 Chronicles 18:12), and Psalm 60 counts twelve thousand. Radak reconciles the three: Aram and Edom were both in the field; Abishai began the battle and Joab finished it; eighteen thousand fell in all, twelve thousand of them by Joab. Rashi says simply that there were two battles. Rashi also explains “gat him a name”: David buried the enemy dead, as Israel will do after Gog (Ezekiel 39:13). A king who buries his enemies makes a name worth having.

8:15 · Judgment and justice

“And David reigned over all Israel; and David executed judgment and justice unto all his people” (8:15).

This is the verse the whole chapter was written for. The Hebrew is mishpat u-tzedakah, judgment and righteousness, the pair Hashem chose Avraham to teach his children (Genesis 18:19) and the pair Isaiah promises the Branch of David will bring (Isaiah 9:7; 11:4; Jeremiah 23:5).

What the Sages say. The Talmud asks how one judge can do both at once. Strict judgment gives the winner what is his; charity gives the loser something he is not owed. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korcha answers that it is a mitzvah to seek compromise, “judgment that has peace in it” (Zechariah 8:16), and that David’s mishpat u-tzedakah means exactly this (Sanhedrin 6b). Another view says David judged strictly, and when the losing party was poor, paid the judgment out of his own pocket: judgment to one, charity to the other. Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi says that even without paying, removing stolen property from a man is charity to him. All three readings agree that a king’s justice is measured by what happens to the weak.

Messianic reading. “Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever” (Isaiah 9:7). The Branch of David “shall execute judgment and justice in the earth” (Jeremiah 23:5). What David did for forty years, the Son of David will do forever.

8:16–18 · The king’s officers

Joab over the army; Jehoshaphat the recorder; Zadok and Ahimelech the priests; Seraiah the scribe; Benaiah over the Cherethites and Pelethites; “and David’s sons were chief rulers” (8:16–18).

Two priests. Radak explains that David appointed Zadok, of the line of Eleazar, as High Priest, and Ahimelech son of Abiathar, of the line of Ithamar, as his deputy. Both lines of Aaron served together under David; Solomon would later remove Abiathar’s house, fulfilling the word against Eli (1 Kings 2:27).

Cherethites and Pelethites. On the plain reading these were David’s foreign bodyguard, loyal men from the Philistine coast. The Talmud reads the names as the Sanhedrin: Kereti, because they cut (koretim) their decisions, and Peleti, because their deeds are wonderful (mufla’im) (Sanhedrin 16b; Berakhot 4a). Either way, the verse shows a king who surrounded himself with men he could trust.

“David’s sons were priests.” The Hebrew of 8:18 says David’s sons were kohanim. They were of Judah, not Levi, so the Targum renders rabrevin, “great ones,” Rashi follows it, and Chronicles says “chief at the king’s hand” (1 Chronicles 18:17). Radak adds the Sages’ view that they were scholars of Torah. Ariel Cohen Alloro, in his video “The Tale of the Seven Beggars by Rabbi Nachman – Part 1,” notices the same verse and plays with it: Shlomo’s name equals five times kohen (375 = 5 × 75), so “when you’re talking about Mashiach ben David, you can say you’re talking about the priest.” We take the hint lightly, but it points at something real. Psalm 110 gives the son of David a priesthood “after the order of Melchizedek,” and Zechariah sees the Branch who “shall be a priest upon his throne” (Zechariah 6:13). Hebrews builds its whole picture of Yeshua on those two verses (Hebrews 5–7).

Chapter 9 · The King’s Table

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9:1–5 · “Is there yet any left of the house of Saul?”

“And David said, Is there yet any that is left of the house of Saul, that I may shew him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” (9:1).

In the ancient world a new dynasty hunted down the old one. David goes looking for the old one in order to be kind to it. The reason is a covenant. Jonathan had made David swear, “thou shalt not cut off thy kindness from my house for ever” (1 Samuel 20:15), and the two of them swore “in the name of Hashem” (20:42). Radak says David remembered the oath now, after the wars were over and the kingdom was in order: if a worthy descendant could be found, he would raise him up. When David asks a second time, he calls it “the kindness of God” (9:3), chesed Elohim, which Radak explains as “because of the oath of God that was between them.”

Hebrew lesson: חֶסֶד (chesed). The word appears three times in nine verses (9:1, 3, 7). It is covenant loyalty, kindness that keeps a promise after the person you promised is gone. Jonathan is dead. Nobody would have blamed David for forgetting. Chesed is what you do when nobody would blame you.

Ziba, a servant of Saul’s house, knows where a son of Jonathan is: “in the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, in Lo-debar” (9:4), across the Jordan. Radak says Lo-debar is simply a place name. But the Talmud hears the words: lo davar, “no thing.” Ziba later tells David that Mephibosheth is “without a thing,” without Torah, and David finds him “full of a thing,” full of Torah (Shabbat 56a). The lame man hiding in Nowhere turns out to be a scholar.

9:6–8 · “A dead dog such as I”

“Now when Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, was come unto David, he fell on his face, and did reverence. And David said, Mephibosheth. And he answered, Behold thy servant! And David said unto him, Fear not: for I will surely shew thee kindness for Jonathan thy father’s sake, and will restore thee all the land of Saul thy father; and thou shalt eat bread at my table continually” (9:6–7).

Mephibosheth comes in afraid. He is the grandson of the king David replaced, and he has been lame since the day the news came from Jezreel (4:4). David’s first word is his name, and his second is “Fear not.” Then three gifts: kindness, his grandfather’s land, and a seat at the king’s table “continually.”

Mephibosheth answers, “What is thy servant, that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am?” (9:8). Thirty years earlier David had said the same words to Saul, Mephibosheth’s grandfather: “After whom is the king of Israel come out? after whom dost thou pursue? after a dead dog” (1 Samuel 24:14). David knows what it is to be hunted and to call himself a dead dog. Now he is the king, and he does the opposite of what was done to him.

Our teachers. In chapter 4 we saw the Talmud’s picture of Mephibosheth as David’s teacher in Torah, whom David consulted before every ruling (Berakhot 4a). Read with this chapter, the “dead dog” at the king’s table was the man who kept the king honest.

9:9–13 · At the king’s table, as one of the king’s sons

David gives Ziba the work of farming Saul’s land for Mephibosheth, “but Mephibosheth thy master’s son shall eat bread alway at my table” (9:10). Ziba, with fifteen sons and twenty servants, answers that he will do all the king commands. Then the chapter closes:

“So Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem: for he did eat continually at the king’s table; and was lame on both his feet” (9:13).

The last words of the chapter are the lame feet. Scripture wants us to hold both pictures at once: the king’s table, and the man who cannot walk to it on his own.

Not the end of the story. Ziba will later slander Mephibosheth to David during Absalom’s revolt, and David will divide the land between them (2 Samuel 16:1–4; 19:24–30). The Talmud is hard on David for this. Rav says David accepted Ziba’s slander; Shmuel defends him. And when David said, “thou and Ziba divide the land,” a heavenly voice answered, “Rehoboam and Jeroboam will divide the kingdom” (Shabbat 56a–b). Even a king’s covenant kindness has to be guarded against the next whisper.

Messianic reading. This chapter is the Gospel told in advance. A king, out of covenant love for someone else, seeks out a crippled member of the enemy’s house who is hiding in Nowhere; he calls him by name, tells him not to fear, restores his inheritance, and seats him at the royal table as a son, for life. Yeshua said, “Blessed are ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20), and told the parable of the master who filled his table with “the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind” (Luke 14:21). He said of himself, “the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). And he promised his disciples, “that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:30). We come to the King’s table as Mephibosheth did: for someone else’s sake, lame on both feet, and welcomed “as one of the king’s sons.”

Our Statement of Faith says that through Yeshua “we are brought nearer to the Father.” David’s table in Jerusalem is a small picture of that nearness, and the Temple that his son would build is a larger one. The Torah’s own word for it is chesed: a promise kept to the children of the man you loved.

Drawing it together

1. Hashem builds the house. David wanted to do something for Hashem. Hashem answered by doing something for David that David could never do for himself. The kingdom of the Messiah is Hashem’s gift, not man’s project.

2. The promise has links. Solomon was the first son of David to be called Hashem’s son, and he fell under the rod. The mercy did not depart. The prophets, the Qumran scroll and the Brit Hadashah all read 2 Samuel 7 forward to one more Son, and we confess that Son to be Yeshua, seated on David’s throne by the Father, not in the Father’s place.

3. Justice is measured by the weak. Mishpat u-tzedakah is the summary of David’s reign and the promise of the Messiah’s. The Sages test it by what happens to the poor man in court. Isaiah tests it the same way: “with righteousness shall he judge the poor” (Isaiah 11:4).

4. A king within the Torah. David houghed the horses because of Deuteronomy 17 and dedicated the gold to Hashem. The law of the king is the measure of every king, and the Messiah is the king who keeps it fully.

5. Chesed seeks. David went looking for Saul’s house to show kindness to it. Covenant love does not wait to be found; it searches, calls by name, and sets a place at the table.

Questions for discussion

1. What did David want to do in 7:1–2, and why did Hashem say no? What do the Midrash and Chronicles add?

2. How does the word bayit, “house,” change meaning through chapter 7?

3. List the four things promised in 7:12–16. Which of them were fulfilled in Solomon, and which point beyond him?

4. How do Rabbi Palvanov and our Statement of Faith explain the title “son of God” in 7:14?

5. What does the Qumran scroll 4Q174 say about 2 Samuel 7:14? Why does that matter for how we read the Brit Hadashah?

6. Why did David sit before Hashem (7:18), and what did the Sages learn from it?

7. What is the Talmud’s problem with “judgment and justice” in 8:15, and what are its answers?

8. Why did David cripple most of the captured horses (8:4)?

9. What covenant lay behind David’s question in 9:1? Where in 1 Samuel was it made?

10. In what ways is Mephibosheth’s story a picture of how Yeshua receives people?

Sources

Scripture: Genesis 18; Exodus 4; Deuteronomy 12, 17; 1 Samuel 20, 22, 24; 2 Samuel 4–6, 10, 16, 19; 1 Kings 2, 11; 1 Chronicles 17, 18, 22, 28; 2 Chronicles 6; Psalm 30, 60, 89, 110; Isaiah 9, 11, 60; Jeremiah 23; Ezekiel 34, 37, 39; Amos 9; Micah 5; Zechariah 6, 8; Matthew 6; Luke 1, 6, 14, 19, 22; Acts 2, 13; Hebrews 1, 5–7; Revelation 21.

Talmud and Midrash: Berakhot 4a, 6a; Shabbat 30a, 56a–b; Sotah 40b; Sanhedrin 6b, 16b, 20b; Gittin 68b; Tosefta Sanhedrin 4:4; Shemot Rabbah 19:7; Bamidbar Rabbah 14:1; Midrash Tehillim 30:3 and 62:4; Pesikta Rabbati 2; Yalkut Shimoni on Samuel.

Commentators: Rashi on 2 Samuel 7:1, 7:14, 7:18–19, 8:2, 8:4, 8:13, 8:18; Radak on 7:1, 7:14, 7:18–19, 8:2, 8:4, 8:13, 8:17–18, 9:1–4; Targum Jonathan on 7:14, 7:19, 8:18; Abarbanel on 7:10–16; Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melachim 1:7–9.

Other: 4Q174 (4QFlorilegium), Dead Sea Scrolls, fragment 1, column 1, lines 10–13.

Our teachers and materials: First Fruits of Zion, End of Days (5786), Lessons 53–54, “The End of Days–Bright Morning Star”; Rabbi Efraim Palvanov, “Understanding Mashiach ben Yosef” (https://youtu.be/HUxIh1LdM3o); Ariel Cohen Alloro, “The Tale of the Seven Beggars by Rabbi Nachman – Part 1” (https://youtu.be/k7rdVP6uZ4o); Benei Avraham, The Son of David (Sukkot 5787) and the class on the Davidic descent of Messiah, “The Essence and Mission of Yeshua from a Jewish Perspective” (https://www.youtube.com/live/NcguCQbsk8E); Benei Avraham Statement of Faith.

Before we begin

Chapters 7–9 showed David at his best: the promise of an everlasting house, a kingdom ruled with judgment and justice, and a lame man seated at the king’s table. Chapters 10–12 show the same king fall. A war with Ammon begins with a kindness refused (chapter 10). While the army is in the field, David stays home, takes another man’s wife, and has the man killed (chapter 11). Then Natan the prophet comes with a story about a lamb, and David hears the three words that every reader of the Bible knows: “You are the man” (chapter 12). David repents, the child dies, Shlomo is born, and Rabbah falls.

These are hard chapters, and the Sages did not find them easy either. Some defended David; some did not. We will listen to both, because our own Statement of Faith holds two things together that this story holds together: Hashem “judges wickedness, rebellion, cruelty, idolatry, and hidden sin,” and Hashem “calls every soul to repentance.” David’s story is where the Bible shows us what repentance looks like in a king, and why his house still needed a greater Son.

We read as before: the text first; then the Sages; then our own teachers (the FFOZ End of Days lessons, Rabbi Efraim Palvanov, Ariel Cohen Alloro, and our own Benei Avraham classes); and last, what the passage shows about Mashiach. Gematria and Kabbalah are offered as hints, never as proof, and everything is tested by the Torah (Isaiah 8:20). Scripture is quoted from the King James Version with Hashem in place of LORD, as in our Statement of Faith.

Chapter 10 · The War with Ammon

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10:1–5 · A kindness refused

“Then said David, I will shew kindness unto Hanun the son of Nahash, as his father shewed kindness unto me” (10:2).

Nachash’s kindness. What had Nachash, king of Ammon, done for David? Scripture does not say, and Nachash was no friend of Israel (1 Samuel 11). Rashi, following the Midrash, tells the story: when David fled from Shaul he left his father, mother and brothers with the king of Moab (1 Samuel 22:3–4), and the king of Moab killed them, except one brother who escaped to Nachash. Moab demanded him back; Nachash refused. “That is the kindness Nachash did for David” (Bamidbar Rabbah 14:1; Rashi and Radak on 10:2). It explains why David struck Moab so hard in chapter 8, and why he owed Ammon a debt.

“You shall not seek their peace.” The Ammonite princes talk Chanun out of it: “Thinkest thou that David doth honour thy father?” Rashi hears a Torah argument in their mouths: Israel is commanded concerning Ammon and Moab, “thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days” (Deuteronomy 23:6), so how can David be seeking Chanun’s peace? He must be spying. The Midrash agrees with the princes more than with David. On that verse of Deuteronomy it says: “You find that whoever comes to them with the attribute of mercy ends in disgrace. Who? David… ‘I will show kindness to Chanun’… and it ended in disgrace, and he had to fight four nations.” And it draws the lesson of Kohelet, “Be not righteous over much” (Ecclesiastes 7:16): do not be more lenient than the Torah (Bamidbar Rabbah 21:5; Radak on 10:2). We do not have to agree that David’s kindness was a sin to see the point. The chapter that ends in David’s great sin begins with David being kinder than the Torah asked, and the reward of it was humiliation.

Half a beard. Chanun shaves half the beard of each envoy and cuts their robes off at the hip. Radak explains that Israelites did not shave the beard except in mourning (Jeremiah 41:5), so to be shaved was a disgrace, and the robe was cut to the place that must be covered. David meets them with a king’s tact: “Tarry at Jericho until your beards be grown.” A shamed man is not sent back into the city to be stared at.

10:6–14 · Two fronts

Ammon hires Aram, twenty thousand foot soldiers and more. Yoav finds the battle “before and behind,” Ammon at the city gate and Aram in the open field. He splits the army with his brother Avishai and makes a pact: “If the Syrians be too strong for me, then thou shalt help me: but if the children of Ammon be too strong for thee, then I will come and help thee” (10:11).

Then the one speech in all of Scripture that we hear from Yoav as a man of faith:

“Be of good courage, and let us play the men for our people, and for the cities of our God: and Hashem do that which seemeth him good” (10:12).

Radak reads it phrase by phrase. “For our people,” that they not fall to the sword or captivity. “For the cities of our God,” that the enemy not take them and settle them, “for then they would not be the cities of our God but the cities of other gods.” And “Hashem will do what is good in His eyes”: we will fight with all our strength, “and salvation is Hashem’s” (Radak on 10:12). The Hebrew is chazak venitchazak, “be strong and let us strengthen ourselves,” the words we say when we finish a book of the Torah. Yoav gives his men everything a commander can give, courage and a plan, and then puts the outcome in Hashem’s hands. That is the Torah’s picture of faith: not the absence of effort, but effort that does not pretend to control the result.

Aram flees, Ammon runs back inside the city, and Yoav goes home. The city is not yet taken. That unfinished siege is the setting for chapter 11.

10:15–19 · Aram makes peace

Hadadezer brings up Aram from beyond the river, and David himself crosses the Jordan and breaks them at Chelam. Shovach, the general, dies on the field. “And when all the kings that were servants to Hadarezer saw that they were smitten before Israel, they made peace with Israel, and served them” (10:19). Radak reads chapters 10 and 11 as one story: the “return of the year” in 11:1 is counted from when these kings went out to war. The wars of chapter 8 and chapter 10 are the same long war, told first in summary and then in detail.

The kingdom is at its height. Every enemy is beaten, every border is quiet, and the king has nothing left to prove. The Torah warned the king about that moment: “lest his heart be lifted up above his brethren” (Deuteronomy 17:20). Rabbi Palvanov, in his class “Understanding Mashiach ben Yosef, Part 2,” reminds us that Rambam defines the Messiah as a king who “meditates on the Torah and keeps the commandments like David his father.” What follows shows us why the Torah had to say like David, and not simply David.

Chapter 11 · David and Bat-Sheva

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11:1 · When kings go forth

“And it came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried still at Jerusalem” (11:1).

A letter too many. The Hebrew has a ketiv and qere here. The written word is hamal’achim, “the messengers”; the reading is hamelachim, “the kings” (Minchat Shai; Radak on 11:1). Rashi says this is simply the season when armies march, when the grain stands in the fields and the horses find food. Radak prefers the plain sense: a year after the kings of chapter 10 went out to fight. Either way the sentence turns on its last clause. Kings go forth, and the king stayed home.

The king at ease. Nothing in the verse accuses David. He had earned his rest; the general could manage a siege. But the Torah’s king is not meant to be a king at ease while Israel is in the field. Uriah will say it to David’s face in verse 11, and David will have no answer.

11:2–5 · The roof

“And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon” (11:2).

The Sages on the roof. The Talmud tells the story with a frame around it. Rav Yehudah said in Rav’s name: “A person should never bring himself to a test, for David king of Israel brought himself to a test and stumbled.” David had prayed, “Examine me, O Hashem, and prove me” (Psalm 26:2), and Hashem answered that He would test him, and in a matter of the flesh. David tried to prepare himself and still fell. Bat-Sheva was washing behind a screen; Satan came as a bird, David shot an arrow at it, the arrow struck the screen, and he saw her (Sanhedrin 107a). The Sages are not excusing David. They are saying that a righteous man who asks for a test he has not been given is already in the wrong, and that the fall begins before the roof.

Not yet ripe. The same page says something that explains the whole chapter: “Bat-Sheva the daughter of Eliam was fit for David from the six days of creation, but he ate her unripe” (Sanhedrin 107a). The word is pagah, an unripe fig. She was meant to be his wife, the mother of Shlomo; the sin was not the woman but the hour. Ariel Cohen Alloro builds on exactly this in his video “The 4 sons from the Passover Haggadah – Part 16”: Bat-Sheva is “the fig that was not ready,” and David, like Adam in the garden, “didn’t wait, he ate it too quick”. In another video, “Emmanuel, Jesus and the fig tree – Part 39,” he adds that in the Kabbalah Uriah is the one who “kept the fruit” for David without knowing it, like a shell that guards a fruit until it ripens. We offer these as hints, not as proof. But notice what it does: it puts David’s sin in the same family as Adam’s. The fruit was not forbidden forever. It was taken before its time.

Who she was. “Is not this Bath-sheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” (11:3). Eliam is one of David’s thirty mighty men, “the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite” (23:34). The Talmud draws the line: Bat-Sheva was Achitophel’s granddaughter (Sanhedrin 69b, 101b). Uriah too is one of the thirty (23:39). David took the wife of one of his own heroes, the granddaughter of his own counselor. When Achitophel joins Avshalom’s revolt in chapter 15, remember this verse.

Uriah the Hittite. Radak says he was either a convert or an Israelite called “Hittite” because he had lived among the Hittites, like Ittai the Gittite. The Talmud takes the second view: he “dwelt in Chet” (Kiddushin 76b). Either way he is a man who has thrown in his lot with Israel, and he will prove more loyal to the ark than the king is.

11:6–13 · The man who would not go home

David’s cover-up begins with a kindness: “Go down to thy house, and wash thy feet” (11:8), and a gift from the king’s table. Uriah sleeps at the palace door instead. When David asks why, Uriah answers:

“The ark, and Israel, and Judah, abide in tents; and my lord Joab, and the servants of my lord, are encamped in the open fields; shall I then go into mine house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? as thou livest, and as thy soul liveth, I will not do this thing” (11:11).

Every word is a reproach the speaker does not know he is making. The ark is in a tent; the king is in a house of cedar. Israel is in the field; the king is on his roof. Uriah will not do with his own wife what David has done with Uriah’s. Radak hears the double oath, “as thou livest, and as thy soul liveth,” as in this world and in the world to come. David tries once more, with wine, and the drunk Hittite is still more faithful than the sober king.

Our Benei Avraham class “The Real Jewish Reason We Need a Messiah” once discussed a tradition that softens this scene: that soldiers of David’s army gave their wives a conditional bill of divorce before going to war, so that Bat-Sheva was technically unmarried, and Uriah’s refusal to go home kept it so. The tradition is real (Shabbat 56a; Ketubot 9b), and we will come back to it. But the person who raised it in class answered it well: “Natan rebukes him by giving him an analogy to what he had done. So the idea that he was free of sin doesn’t make any sense.” The text does not let Uriah’s loyalty become David’s loophole.

11:14–25 · The letter

“Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die” (11:15).

David sends the letter by Uriah’s own hand. Yoav carries it out, and other men die with Uriah (11:17). Then Yoav sends word to David with a strange instruction: if the king is angry about the losses and asks why they went so near the wall, remind him of Avimelech, killed by a woman’s millstone at Tevetz (Judges 9:53), “then say thou, Thy servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also” (11:21). Yoav knows the king’s anger will vanish at that name. David’s answer is the coldest sentence he ever speaks: “Let not this thing displease thee, for the sword devoureth one as well as another” (11:25).

Murder by agency. Jewish law holds the one who strikes, not the one who sends: “One who says to his agent, Go kill a person, the agent is liable and the sender is exempt.” But the Talmud records that “Shammai the Elder says in the name of Chaggai the prophet: the sender is liable, as it is said, ‘him thou hast slain with the sword of the children of Ammon’” (2 Samuel 12:9; Kiddushin 43a). The Gemara explains Shammai to mean that a human court cannot execute the sender, but Heaven holds him guilty. Radak says the same on Natan’s words: “as if you yourself struck him, since you commanded Yoav to put him in the place of danger… for a king’s command is not disobeyed, it is as if he killed him” (Radak on 12:9). A king cannot hide behind the Ammonite archers.

Hebrew lesson: שָׁלַח (shalach), “to send.” Count the sendings. David sent Yoav to the war (11:1). He sent and inquired about the woman (11:3). He sent messengers and took her (11:4). She sent and told him (11:5). He sent to Yoav for Uriah (11:6). He sent the letter (11:14). Yoav sent the report (11:18). David sent and fetched the widow (11:27). And then, in the first words of chapter 12: “And Hashem sent Natan” (12:1). A king who does everything through messengers, so that his own hands stay clean, is answered by a Messenger he did not send.

11:26–27 · “The thing that David had done”

“And when the mourning was past, David sent and fetched her to his house, and she became his wife, and bare him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased Hashem” (11:27).

The narrator has said nothing for twenty-six verses. Now one sentence, and the Hebrew is stronger than the English: vayera hadavar… be’einei Hashem, “the thing was evil in the eyes of Hashem.” The same word Natan will use: “to do evil in his sight” (12:9).

Did David sin? Here the Sages divide, and we should hear them fairly.

Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani said in Rabbi Yonatan’s name: “Whoever says David sinned is nothing but mistaken,” for Scripture says “Hashem was with him” (1 Samuel 18:14), and the Shechinah does not rest on a sinner. How then does he read “to do evil”? “He sought to do, but did not do.” The Gemara spells out the defense: Uriah should have been tried by the Sanhedrin and was not, but “you have valid marriage with her,” because “whoever goes out to a war of the house of David writes a bill of divorce for his wife” (Shabbat 56a; Ketubot 9b); and Uriah was a rebel against the kingdom, because he said “my lord Yoav” in the king’s presence (11:11), so his death was not murder.

But the Gemara also records Rav, who says of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, the editor of the Mishnah: “Rebbi, who descends from David, turns the verse over and expounds it in David’s favor.” Rav’s own view is the verse from Kings: “When you examine David you find nothing against him, except the matter of Uriah the Hittite” (1 Kings 15:5; Shabbat 56a). The defense is a loving descendant’s defense. Scripture itself keeps the exception.

Another page says what we think is the deepest word on the matter. Rabbi Yochanan taught in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai: “David was not fit for that deed, nor were Israel fit for that deed” of the golden calf. “Then why did they do it? To tell you that if an individual sinned, we say to him, Go to the individual; and if the community sinned, we say to them, Go to the community” (Avodah Zarah 4b–5a). Israel’s fall at Sinai teaches a nation how to repent; David’s fall teaches a man. And the same page calls David, from the words “the man who was raised up on high” (2 Samuel 23:1), “the man who raised up the yoke of repentance.”

Our teachers. When this came up in our class “The Real Jewish Reason We Need a Messiah,” the teaching was plain: “David knew what he was doing. He had an affair with Bat-Sheva and set it up so that her husband would be killed in battle… and he was punished.” And then: “Even though he could not be convicted of adultery in a court of law, it was still sin before the eyes of Hashem, because of what the prophet said, and because of his punishment, and because he repented.” That is how we read it at Benei Avraham. The conditional divorce and the charge of rebellion may be true as law. The verse says “the thing was evil in the eyes of Hashem,” and Hashem’s eyes are the court that matters.

Messianic reading. Matthew’s genealogy of Yeshua names four women before Miriam: Tamar, Rachav, Ruth, and “her that had been the wife of Urias” (Matthew 1:6). Matthew does not even write her name. He writes the sin. The Son of David is born into a line that carries David’s worst day in its record, and the Gospel does not hide it, any more than Samuel did. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), kings included. That is the first reason the house of David needed a Son who would not fall.

Chapter 12 · “You Are the Man”

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12:1–6 · The poor man’s lamb

“There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds: but the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb… and there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock… but took the poor man’s lamb” (12:1–4).

The parable. Radak explains it plainly: the rich man is David with his many wives, the poor man is Uriah with his one wife, “which he had bought,” because a man acquires his wife by kiddushin. The lamb that “lay in his bosom” is the wife of a man’s youth. David, who did not understand that it was a parable, says the thief deserves to die, which Radak notes is more than the law requires, since theft is not a capital crime, and then gives the legal penalty: “he shall restore the lamb fourfold” (Exodus 21:37).

The traveler. Who is the “traveller” who comes to the rich man and for whom the lamb is slaughtered? The text calls him three things: a passer-by (helech), then a guest (orei’ach), then “the man” (ha-ish). Rava said: “At first the verse calls it a passer-by, then it calls it a guest, and at last it calls it a man” (Sukkah 52b). Rashi brings it on our verse: this is the evil inclination. It comes as a traveler passing through; then it is a guest who stays the night; then it is the man of the house. The sin on the roof began as a glance.

Fourfold. David’s own sentence became his sentence. “Thus it happened to him,” says Rashi, “he was struck in four children: the child, Amnon, Tamar and Avshalom” (Rashi on 12:6; Yoma 22b). The Greek translation reads “sevenfold,” but the Hebrew and the Sages count four, and the next chapters count them with us.

12:7–12 · “You are the man”

“And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man” (12:7).

Two words in Hebrew: atah ha-ish. Natan does not argue. He lets David’s own justice turn around and face him. Then Hashem speaks in the first person, and the list is a list of gifts: I anointed you, I delivered you from Shaul, I gave you your master’s house, “and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things” (12:8). Radak paraphrases: “If you had stood firm and not sinned, I would have added to you honor and greatness as much again.” Sin is never the only way to get what we want; it is the way that despises the Giver. “Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of Hashem?” (12:9).

“Your master’s wives.” The Sages were careful here. The majority holds that a king may not marry a king’s widow, so “thy master’s wives” means the women of Shaul’s house who were lawful for David: Merav and Michal (Sanhedrin 19b). Rashi says Michal. The point of the verse is not a list; it is that everything David had was given.

Measure for measure. “The sword shall never depart from thine house… I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun. For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel” (12:10–12). Radak matches each sentence to its sin: for the taking of Uriah’s wife, his own wives taken; for the killing, the sword in his house forever. It is fulfilled when Avshalom pitches a tent on this same roof (16:22). Radak also asks the question we would ask: if Hashem decreed it, how was Avshalom guilty? He answers with Rav Saadiah Gaon that Natan’s words have two parts. Hashem would raise up trouble from David’s house; what Avshalom did with it was his own choice (Radak on 12:11). The decree sets the stage. The sinner still chooses.

A hint from our teachers. Ariel Cohen Alloro notices in his video “The Tale of the Seven Beggars by Rabbi Nachman – Part 3” that ha-ish, “the man,” has the numerical value 316, the same as the short form of Yeshua’s name. He says it with a smile and we pass it on the same way. But in another video, “The 4 sons from the Passover Haggadah – Part 16,” he adds something that is not a number: when Natan spoke, “David didn’t find excuses: because my wife, because this, because him. He said immediately, I have sinned.”

12:13–14 · “I have sinned against Hashem”

“And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against Hashem. And Nathan said unto David, Hashem also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die” (12:13).

Two words. Chatati laShem. Compare Shaul, who also said “I have sinned,” and went on: “yet honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people” (1 Samuel 15:30). David adds nothing. No defense, no request. And forgiveness comes in the same breath. Radak explains “you shall not die”: “although you are liable to death, God has accepted your confession and your repentance, and you will not die the death of the wicked… but you will be punished in this world” (Radak on 12:13). The Talmud puts the contrast in one line: “Shaul sinned once and it was counted against him; David sinned twice and it was not” (Yoma 22b). Both men sinned. One repented with his whole heart.

Psalm 51. The psalm’s title reads: “when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bath-sheba.” It is David’s confession written out in full, and it has been Israel’s confession ever since. “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned… Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me” (Psalm 51:4, 10–11). FFOZ reminds us that “the kings of Israel received the Holy Spirit at the time of their anointing… David wrote his psalms under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit” (End of Days, Lesson 24, “Table of Abraham”). David knew what Shaul had lost when the Spirit departed from him (1 Samuel 16:14), and he asks for the one thing that matters.

No sacrifice for this. The Torah has a sin offering for the sin done in error, and none for the sin done “with a high hand”: “that soul shall be cut off” (Numbers 15:27–31). Our class “The Real Jewish Reason We Need a Messiah” made this the center of the lesson: “There was no sacrifice that David could give to make up for that sin, because it was an intentional, high-handed sin. The only thing he could do was to truly make teshuvah and to receive the punishment of his sin.” David says so himself in the psalm: “For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it… The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalm 51:16–17). Rabbi Palvanov, in his class “Jesus in the Talmud,” makes the same point from Hosea and the Psalms: Hashem “wants devotion, prayer, repentance,” and, as Hosea says, “we will pay bulls with our lips” (Hosea 14:3; 14:2 in English Bibles). The Hebrew word is parim, bulls, the animals of the sin offering; the King James has “calves.” The Talmud says it in its own way: “Great is repentance, for it overrides a prohibition of the Torah… it brings the redemption near… intentional sins become to the penitent as merits” (Yoma 86b).

The Talmud also counts the ways atonement works, and our class “The Real Jewish Reason We Need a Messiah” read it aloud: for a positive commandment neglected, repentance alone; for a prohibition, repentance suspends and Yom Kippur atones; for a sin punishable by cutting off or death, “repentance and Yom Kippur suspend, and suffering completes the atonement”; and for the profaning of the Name, only death completes it (Yoma 86a). Read verse 14 with that list in your hand: “because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of Hashem to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.” David profaned the Name before the nations. Natan tells him he will not die, and tells him what the suffering will be.

“The enemies of Hashem.” Rashi and Radak both note that the Hebrew is a euphemism, “a way of honor toward Heaven”: Scripture says “the enemies of Hashem” rather than write that David had caused Hashem Himself to be blasphemed. The Targum reads it plainly: you have opened the mouth of the enemies of the people of Hashem. A king’s hidden sin, once known, gives the nations a weapon against the God of Israel. That is why it cannot be hidden, and why it cannot go unpunished.

Messianic reading. Paul reaches for David at the exact point where he explains how a sinner is counted righteous: “Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered” (Romans 4:6–7, quoting Psalm 32:1–2). The psalm of David’s forgiveness becomes the pattern of everyone’s. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9) is 2 Samuel 12:13 written for the whole congregation. And Yeshua’s parable of the two men in the Temple is Natan’s parable turned toward us: the man who said only “God be merciful to me a sinner… went down to his house justified” (Luke 18:13–14).

But hold the other half too. David was forgiven and still buried a child, lost a daughter to her brother, and fled from his son. The Statement of Faith says that we believe “in grace, mercy, repentance, and forgiveness, but not in lawlessness.” Forgiveness and consequences are not opposites in the Torah. The Son of David would teach the same: to the woman taken in adultery he said “neither do I condemn thee,” and in the same breath, “go, and sin no more” (John 8:11).

12:15–23 · The child

“David therefore besought God for the child; and David fasted, and went in, and lay all night upon the earth” (12:16).

For seven days David lies on the ground. When the child dies his servants are afraid to tell him, and then astonished when he rises, washes, worships, and eats. His explanation is one of the clearest statements of faith in the Bible:

“While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (12:22–23).

Radak says the fasting “was only a form of prayer, as a man prays for the sick; but after he died, why should I fast?” And he notes that David did not mourn this infant as he later mourned Amnon and Avshalom, because an infant this young may not fall under the laws of mourning at all (Radak on 12:20–22). We would add that David received the death as the judgment Natan had announced, and did not argue with it. “I shall go to him” is spoken by a man who knows where the dead are. He had written, “my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell” (Psalm 16:9–10), the verse Peter quoted at Shavuot about the Son of David who did not see corruption (Acts 2:25–31). David’s first comfort after his sin is the resurrection.

12:24–25 · Shlomo, and Yedidyah

“And David comforted Bath-sheba his wife, and went in unto her, and lay with her: and she bare a son, and he called his name Solomon: and Hashem loved him. And he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet; and he called his name Jedidiah, because of Hashem” (12:24–25).

Two names. There is a ketiv and qere in verse 24 too: the written text says he called his name Shlomo, the reading says she did. Radak takes the ketiv one step further: the “he” is Hashem, who had already told David, “his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days” (1 Chronicles 22:9). Then Natan brings a second name from Hashem, Yedidyah, “beloved of Hashem.” Radak connects it to the promise of chapter 7: “and Hashem loved him, as He had said, ‘he shall be My son, and I will be his father’” (Radak on 12:24). The Midrash says Shlomo had three names, Yedidyah, Kohelet and Shlomo, and Rabbi Yehoshua counts seven (Kohelet Rabbah 1:1).

The comfort of Bat-Sheva. The first child of this marriage was born of sin and died. The second is the child of repentance, and Hashem loves him. From this son comes every king of Yehudah and, as Matthew writes it, “David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias… and Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Yeshua, who is called Messiah” (Matthew 1:6, 16). The Talmud notes the same thing from the other side: Achitophel thought greatness was coming to him, “but it was not so; rather from Bat-Sheva his granddaughter came Shlomo the king” (Sanhedrin 101b). What Achitophel’s treason could not take, Hashem gave through a repentant king and a comforted widow.

Natan, again. We have met the name Natan in chapter 5 (David’s son) and chapter 7 (the prophet). Here the prophet names the son of Bat-Sheva, and Luke traces Yeshua’s line through David’s son Natan rather than Shlomo (Luke 3:31). Zechariah sees the end of days with “the family of the house of David apart… the family of the house of Nathan apart” (Zechariah 12:12). Rashi gives both readings: Natan the prophet, or “Natan son of David, as it says, ‘Shammua and Shovav and Natan and Shlomo’” (Rashi on Zechariah 12:12). Rabbi Palvanov has taught us that page of the Talmud in his class “Understanding Mashiach ben Yosef, Part 2,” where the mourning in Zechariah 12 is read, by one opinion, as mourning for Mashiach ben Yosef (Sukkah 52a). The prophet who said “You are the man” stands in the same verse as the house of David at the end of days. Judgment and hope share a name.

12:26–31 · Rabbah falls

Yoav takes the lower city and sends for David: “lest I take the city, and it be called after my name” (12:28). Whatever else Yoav is, he will not steal his king’s glory, even from a king who has just used him to murder a comrade.

The crown. “And he took their king’s crown from off his head, the weight whereof was a talent of gold with the precious stones: and it was set on David’s head” (12:30). The Talmud asks two questions. Malkam can be read “their king” or as Milkom, the Ammonite idol (Rashi), and an idol’s crown is forbidden for use; Rav Nachman answers that Ittai the Gittite, still a Gentile, annulled it. And how could a man wear a talent of gold? Rav Yehudah said in Rav’s name: it was “fit to rest on the head of David.” Rabbi Yose ben Rabbi Chanina said there was a lodestone in it that held it up; Rabbi Elazar said the “talent” was the value of its jewel (Avodah Zarah 44a). The crown of Ammon ends on David’s head. The Torah’s word about Ammon, “thou shalt not seek their peace,” has run its full course, from refused kindness to a captured crown.

The hard verse. “And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron… and made them pass through the brickkiln” (12:31). Rashi and Radak read it as it sounds, as execution; Radak notes the ketiv, bamalken, which hints at Molech, the fire-god of Ammon, so that the Ammonites were given what their god demanded. The Targum reads “dragged them through the streets.” Many modern readers, with Chronicles, read it as forced labor at the saws and kilns. We do not soften it. David in this chapter is a forgiven man, not yet a finished one, and the Bible lets us see both.

The cup. The Talmud imagines the banquet of the world to come. The cup of blessing is passed to Avraham, who declines because of Yishmael; to Yitzchak, because of Esav; to Yaakov, because he married two sisters; to Moshe, who did not enter the land; to Yehoshua, who had no son. Then: “They say to David, Take it and bless. He says to them, I will bless, and it is fitting for me to bless, as it is said, ‘I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of Hashem’” (Psalm 116:13; Pesachim 119b). FFOZ asks the question we were all thinking: “Why doesn’t David reply, ‘Uriah the Hittite and his wife bring charges against me’?” And answers: “I prefer to understand David as a shorthand name for the Messiah, the Son of David. It behooves the Son of David to offer the benediction” (End of Days, Lesson 24, “Table of Abraham”). The cup that David could lift only as a forgiven sinner, the Son of David lifted at his last Pesach and gave to his disciples: “This cup is the new testament in my blood” (Luke 22:20). The cup of salvation is kos yeshu’ot. David named it before he knew the Name.

Drawing it together

1. The fall begins before the roof. David stayed home when kings go forth, and asked for a test he had not been given. The Sages read the whole chapter as a warning against bringing oneself to a trial.

2. Hashem’s eyes are the court. The conditional divorce and the charge against Uriah may be good law. “The thing was evil in the eyes of Hashem,” and Rav kept Scripture’s own exception: “save only in the matter of Uriah.”

3. Repentance is two words and a whole heart. Chatati laShem. Shaul said the first word and added a request; David added nothing, and was forgiven in the same breath. Psalm 51 is that moment written out for all Israel.

4. Forgiven and still chastened. No offering covers a high-handed sin. Repentance and suffering completed David’s atonement: the child, Amnon, Tamar, Avshalom. Grace does not cancel consequence; it changes what the consequence is for.

5. Out of repentance, the Son. The child of sin died; the child of repentance was Shlomo, “beloved of Hashem,” and from him the line of Mashiach. The Gospel names “her that had been the wife of Urias” in Yeshua’s genealogy on purpose. The Son of David came for people with that kind of record.

Questions for discussion

1. What kindness had Nachash shown David (10:2), and why did the Ammonite princes suspect him? What does the Midrash learn from it about being “righteous over much”?

2. Read Yoav’s speech in 10:12. How does it hold together human effort and trust in Hashem?

3. What does 11:1 tell us about where David should have been? How does Uriah’s answer in 11:11 expose the king?

4. The Talmud says David “sought to do but did not do.” What is that defense, and why did Rav keep the exception “save only in the matter of Uriah”? Where does our Statement of Faith land?

5. Count the times someone “sends” in chapter 11. Who sends in 12:1?

6. Why does the parable work on David when a direct accusation might not have? What are the three names of the traveler, and how did the Sages read them?

7. Compare David’s “I have sinned” (12:13) with Shaul’s (1 Samuel 15:24–30). What is different?

8. Why was there no sacrifice David could bring (Numbers 15:30; Psalm 51:16–17)? How does Yoma 86a’s list of atonements fit verses 13–14?

9. What does “I shall go to him” (12:23) tell us about David’s hope? Where did Peter use David’s words at Shavuot?

10. Why do you think Matthew wrote “her that had been the wife of Urias” instead of Bat-Sheva’s name? What does that say about the Son of David?

Sources

Scripture: Genesis 2–3; Exodus 21; Numbers 15; Deuteronomy 17, 23; Judges 9; 1 Samuel 11, 15, 16, 18, 22; 2 Samuel 5, 7, 8, 13, 15, 16, 23; 1 Kings 15; 1 Chronicles 20, 22; Psalm 16, 26, 32, 51, 116; Ecclesiastes 7; Jeremiah 41; Hosea 14; Zechariah 12; Matthew 1; Luke 3, 18, 22; John 8; Acts 2; Romans 3, 4; 1 John 1.

Talmud and Midrash: Shabbat 56a; Pesachim 119b; Yoma 22b, 86a–b; Sukkah 52a–b; Ketubot 9b; Kiddushin 43a, 76b; Sanhedrin 19b, 69b, 101b, 107a; Avodah Zarah 4b–5a, 44a; Bamidbar Rabbah 14:1, 21:5; Kohelet Rabbah 1:1; Midrash Tehillim 51; Minchat Shai on 2 Samuel 11:1.

Commentators: Rashi on 2 Samuel 10:2–4, 11:1, 12:4, 12:6, 12:8, 12:14, 12:26, 12:30–31, and on Zechariah 12:12; Radak on 2 Samuel 10:2, 10:4–5, 10:12, 11:1, 11:3, 11:11, 12:1–13, 12:20–24, 12:30–31; Targum Jonathan on 11:11, 12:14, 12:31; Rav Saadiah Gaon as cited by Radak on 12:11; Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melachim 11:4.

Our teachers and materials: First Fruits of Zion, End of Days (5786), Lesson 24, “Table of Abraham” (the Holy Spirit; the banquet of the righteous); Rabbi Efraim Palvanov, “Understanding Mashiach ben Yosef, Part 2” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmrYeHRoiBE) (Sukkah 52a and Zechariah 12; Rambam’s Messiah “like David”) and “Jesus in the Talmud” (https://youtu.be/kfF0-q-g2XI) (prayer and repentance in place of sacrifice); Ariel Cohen Alloro, “The 4 sons from the Passover Haggadah – Part 16” (https://youtu.be/2wG2JyhU6RA) (Bat-Sheva and the unripe fig), “The Tale of the Seven Beggars by Rabbi Nachman – Part 3” (https://youtu.be/6x3I9u6FMtI) (atah ha-ish), and “Emmanuel, Jesus and the fig tree – Part 39” (https://youtu.be/uwnZEiYqt0g) (Uriah as keeper of the fruit); Benei Avraham class “The Real Jewish Reason We Need a Messiah” (https://youtu.be/bS6xdApTxco) on why we need Mashiach (intentional sin, Yoma 86a, David and Bat-Sheva, Psalm 51); Benei Avraham Statement of Faith, sections 11–12.

Before we begin

Natan had said two things to David: “the sword shall never depart from thine house” and “I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house” (12:10–11). Chapters 13–15 are the first payment. Amnon, David’s firstborn, violates his half-sister Tamar; Avshalom, her full brother, waits two years and kills him; Avshalom flees, is brought back, is forgiven with a kiss, and then steals the kingdom. By the end of chapter 15 David is walking up the Mount of Olives barefoot and weeping, with his head covered, while his son is crowned in Chevron, the city where David himself was first anointed.

These are the saddest chapters in David’s life, and the Sages read them with a steady eye: the Talmud counts Amnon, Tamar and Avshalom among the “fourfold” David owed for the lamb (Yoma 22b), and the Midrash says plainly that David did not discipline his son, and this is where it led (Shemot Rabbah 1:1). But they also found in these chapters the first halakhah of modesty, a lesson about oil and wisdom, a king who would not use the ark as a lucky charm, a Gentile whose loyalty shames Israel, and a psalm written on the way up the mountain. And for us, the road David walks in chapter 15, over the Kidron, up the Mount of Olives, betrayed by his closest counselor, is a road the Son of David would walk a thousand years later.

We read as before: the text first; then the Sages; then our own teachers (the FFOZ End of Days lessons, Rabbi Efraim Palvanov, Ariel Cohen Alloro, and our own Benei Avraham classes); and last, what the passage shows about Mashiach. Gematria and Kabbalah are offered as hints, never as proof, and everything is tested by the Torah (Isaiah 8:20). Scripture is quoted from the King James Version with Hashem in place of LORD, as in our Statement of Faith.

Chapter 13 · Amnon and Tamar

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13:1–14 · “No such thing ought to be done in Israel”

“And it came to pass after this, that Absalom the son of David had a fair sister, whose name was Tamar; and Amnon the son of David loved her” (13:1).

Who Tamar was. The verse calls her Avshalom’s sister, not Amnon’s, and the Sages noticed. Rashi says she was Avshalom’s sister “from his mother,” Ma’achah the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur (3:3). The Talmud goes further: Tamar was the daughter of a “beautiful captive” (Deuteronomy 21:10–14), conceived before her mother converted, which is why she could say to Amnon, “speak unto the king; for he will not withhold me from thee”: by the strict law she was not forbidden to him (Sanhedrin 21a; Rashi and Radak on 13:13). That does not make the deed less ugly. It makes it worse. A lawful way was open, and Amnon chose rape.

A friend wise for evil. “Jonadab was a very subtil man” (13:3). The Hebrew says chacham me’od, “very wise,” and Rav says: “wise for wickedness” (Sanhedrin 21a; Rashi on 13:3). He designs the trick, the feigned sickness and the request for Tamar’s cooking, and David, who sends his daughter into the trap, never suspects his nephew. Notice that David is the one who “sent” again (13:7). The king who sent for Bat-Sheva now sends Tamar.

Tamar’s words. Everything that is right in this scene is said by the victim. “Nay, my brother, do not force me; for no such thing ought to be done in Israel: do not thou this folly” (13:12). The word is nevalah, the Torah’s word for Dinah’s violation (Genesis 34:7). She appeals to Israel’s standard, to his own future (“thou shalt be as one of the fools in Israel”), and to the lawful road through the king. Amnon “would not hearken unto her voice” (13:14), the same words used of Israel refusing the prophets. Radak adds that when Amnon’s love turned to hatred, that too was from Hashem, “to make the disgrace greater,” so that the sword Natan promised would come: “immorality that leads to the sword, measure for measure” (Radak on 13:15).

13:15–22 · A great fence

“Then Amnon hated her exceedingly… And Amnon said unto her, Arise, be gone” (13:15).

Tamar tears the robe that marked her as a king’s virgin daughter, puts ashes on her head, and goes out crying. The Talmud learns something from her public grief: “Tamar built a great fence at that hour,” for people said, if this could happen to a king’s daughter, how much more to anyone, and “at that hour they decreed against seclusion” of a man with an unmarried woman (Sanhedrin 21a–b; Radak on 13:19 calls it a tradition from David’s own court). The laws of yichud that guard every Jewish home begin with Tamar’s cry. Her shame was not wasted.

Her two brothers fail her in opposite ways. Avshalom tells her to be quiet (“he is thy brother”) and takes her into his house, where she lives “desolate.” David “was very wroth” (13:21), and does nothing. Avshalom “spake unto his brother Amnon neither good nor bad” (13:22), and waits.

Our teachers. The Mishnah rules that “the story of Amnon and Tamar is read and translated” in the synagogue, and the Gemara asks the obvious question: should we not spare David’s honor? No (Megillah 25a–b). Scripture tells the truth about the royal house, and so do we. There is no page of the Bible that is read only in private.

13:23–39 · The sheepshearing

Two years later Avshalom holds a feast at Ba’al Chatzor and asks for the king and all his sons; when David declines he asks for Amnon by name. “Why should he go with thee?” says David (13:26), and lets him go anyway. The servants are given their order, “when Amnon’s heart is merry with wine… smite Amnon” (13:28), and the king’s sons flee on their mules. The first report says all the princes are dead. It is Yonadav, the wise-for-evil friend, who corrects it coolly: “for by the appointment of Absalom this hath been determined from the day that he forced his sister Tamar” (13:32). He knew. He had known for two years.

Fourfold. David had said of the rich man in Natan’s parable, “he shall restore the lamb fourfold” (12:6). The Talmud counts: “the child, Amnon, Tamar and Avshalom” (Yoma 22b; Rashi on 12:6). Two of the four have now fallen. The father who sinned in secret with a woman and a sword watches his son sin openly with a woman, and his other son answer with a sword.

Three years in Geshur. Avshalom flees to his grandfather Talmai (Radak on 13:37), and the chapter ends with a verse the Hebrew makes hard to read: vatechal David hamelech latzet el Avshalom. Rashi calls it “a shortened verse” and supplies the missing word from the Targum: the soul of David longed to go out to Avshalom (Rashi and Radak on 13:39). David’s heart was going out to his son before Yoav ever lifted a finger. That is the father the next chapter plays upon.

Chapter 14 · The Wise Woman and the Kiss

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14:1–20 · Oil and wisdom

“And Joab sent to Tekoah, and fetched thence a wise woman” (14:2).

Why Tekoa? The Mishnah says “Tekoa is first for oil,” and Rabbi Yochanan explains Yoav’s choice: “because they are accustomed to olive oil, wisdom is found among them” (Menachot 85b; Rashi and Radak on 14:2). The Sages mean it half as a proverb: the oil of the lamp and the oil of the mind. Radak adds that Yoav had sensed the king’s heart leaning toward Avshalom but afraid to say so, and gave the woman “the substance, not every word”; she had to be wise enough to answer the king on her feet (Radak on 14:1–3).

The parable. Like Natan, she brings a case: two sons, one killed the other, and the clan demands the survivor’s life, which would leave her husband “neither name nor remainder upon the earth” (14:7). David rules for mercy, and swears it: “there shall not one hair of thy son fall to the earth” (14:11). Then she turns the case on him as Natan did: “the king doth not fetch home again his banished” (14:13).

“Yet doth He devise means.” Her next sentence is one of the most quoted in the chapter: “For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again; neither doth God respect any person: yet doth he devise means, that his banished be not expelled from him” (14:14). The commentators are honest that the plain sense is about David. Rashi reads “let the king devise plans” so that the banished one is not kept away from him; Radak gives both, that God devises plans that His banished not be cast off, or that the king should. The Targum hears a judge who cannot take a bribe for a life (Rashi, Radak and Targum on 14:14). Radak also notes her theology: everyone dies, “except by miracle at the resurrection of the dead,” and God is not partial, which is exactly why He gave Israel courts, witnesses and cities of refuge instead of blood feuds. Later teachers took the phrase about God’s banished and made it a motto of repentance; the Sages did not, and we will not put words in their mouths. But the sentence is true as it stands. Death is certain; God shows no favoritism; and God is the one who thinks of ways to bring the exile home. “The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10) is that sentence with a name in it.

“As an angel of God.” Twice she tells David he discerns like “an angel of God” (14:17, 20). Rashi explains: an angel does not take back a good word out of anger or hatred. She is binding the king to his own oath. David sees Yoav’s hand, and Yoav gets his way: “go therefore, bring the young man Absalom again” (14:21).

14:21–33 · Half a pardon

“And the king said, Let him turn to his own house, and let him not see my face” (14:24).

Two years of silence. Avshalom is home and not home. Into that silence the narrator drops his portrait: no blemish “from the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head,” and hair that weighed two hundred shekels when he cut it once a year (14:25–26). The Sages read the hair two ways. Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi says Avshalom was a lifelong nazirite who cut his hair once a year (Nazir 4b–5a; others say every thirty days or every Shabbat eve). And the Mishnah says: “Avshalom gloried in his hair, therefore he was hanged by his hair” (Sotah 1:8; Sotah 10b: “Avshalom rebelled with his hair”). Radak says what the beauty did: it made him proud, and he rebelled, “perhaps because he heard that the king meant to make Shlomo king after him” (Radak on 14:25). Three sons and a daughter are born to him, and the daughter is named Tamar (14:27). Scripture does not say why; we may think we know.

Yoav’s field. When Yoav will not come, Avshalom burns his barley. The Talmud remembers it: “whoever burns his neighbor’s crop leaves no son to inherit him,” which is why the man with three sons could say, “I have no son” (18:18; Sotah 11a; Radak on 18:18 says they died). Avshalom’s message to the king is a dare: “if there be any iniquity in me, let him kill me” (14:32). Radak hears the defense behind it: I did not kill Amnon for nothing (Radak on 14:32).

The kiss. “And the king kissed Absalom” (14:33). No word passes between them. Ralbag notices from the Hebrew that it was not a kiss on the mouth. There is no confession and no correction, only a father’s weakness dressed as mercy. The Midrash makes the judgment the text leaves unspoken: on the verse “he that spareth his rod hateth his son” (Proverbs 13:24), it says David “did not chasten Avshalom his son and did not discipline him; he went out to evil ways and sought to kill his father, lay with his concubines, and caused him to walk barefoot and weeping, and many thousands of Israel fell” (Shemot Rabbah 1:1). Forgiveness without repentance is not the Torah’s mercy. It is the mercy that Natan refused David, and that David, to his cost, did not refuse his son.

Messianic reading. Yeshua’s parable of the lost son has the same shape and the opposite ending: a son who leaves, a father whose heart goes out before the son returns, a running embrace and a kiss (Luke 15:20). The difference is one line: “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight” (Luke 15:21). David had said chatati to Natan; Avshalom never says it to David. The kiss that heals is the kiss that answers repentance. The other kind of kiss we will meet again in this book, on Yoav’s lips (20:9), and in the garden across the Kidron (Luke 22:48).

Chapter 15 · “Absalom Reigneth in Chevron”

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15:1–6 · Stealing hearts at the gate

“And Absalom rose up early, and stood beside the way of the gate… and said, See, thy matters are good and right; but there is no man deputed of the king to hear thee” (15:2–3).

Chariots, horses, fifty runners: Rashi, borrowing what the Talmud says of Adoniyah’s fifty, pictures men with their spleens removed and their soles hardened for running (Rashi on 15:1; Sanhedrin 21b). Then the daily work: catching plaintiffs on the road to the king’s court, flattering each one, promising justice he could not give, refusing their bow and kissing them instead. FFOZ’s lesson on the twelve thrones explains why the gate mattered: “In ancient Israel, the king administered justice in the city gates, not the palace… Devious Absalom used to subvert King David’s justice by intercepting plaintiffs on their way to the gate of Jerusalem” (End of Days, Lesson 25, “Twelve Thrones,” on 2 Samuel 15:2–4 and Psalm 122). The throne of David is a throne “for judgment” (Psalm 122:5); to steal the people’s trust in the king’s justice is to steal the kingdom.

“So Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel” (15:6). The Mishnah counts the theft: “because he stole three hearts, the heart of his father, the heart of the court, and the heart of Israel, three darts were thrust into him” (Sotah 1:8; 18:14). Measure for measure runs through the whole story.

15:7–12 · The vow in Chevron

“And it came to pass after forty years, that Absalom said unto the king, I pray thee, let me go and pay my vow, which I have vowed unto Hashem, in Hebron” (15:7).

Forty years. Avshalom was not forty years old, and David had not reigned forty years. Rashi and Radak follow the Sages: forty years “from the time Israel asked Shmuel for a king”; rebellion against the kingdom came full circle from the day the kingdom was demanded (Rashi and Radak on 15:7; Nazir 5a and Temurah 14b in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua). Radak does the arithmetic and lands in David’s thirty-seventh year.

A vow as a cover. He asks for Chevron, Radak says, “because his father was anointed king there” (Radak on 15:7), and David answers with the words he does not know are the last he will say to his son: “Go in peace” (15:9). Two hundred invited guests go with him “in their simplicity”; the Yerushalmi says they were heads of the Sanhedrin, tricked by a note from the king, and that in Chevron they prayed, “let us fall into David’s hand, and let not David fall into ours” (Yerushalmi Sotah 1:8; Rashi and Radak on 15:11). And then the name that turns a prince’s tantrum into a revolution: “Absalom sent for Ahithophel the Gilonite, David’s counsellor” (15:12).

Achitophel. We met him through his granddaughter Bat-Sheva (11:3 with 23:34). Scripture says his counsel “was as if a man had enquired at the oracle of God” (16:23). The Sages say David first called him “my teacher,” then “my colleague,” then “my disciple” (Sanhedrin 106b, reading Psalms 55:14–15 and 41:10), that he had no share in the world to come (Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:2), and that he did not live out half his days: thirty-three years (Sanhedrin 106b, on Psalm 55:24). The Psalms are where David bleeds about him: “it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company” (Psalm 55:13–14).

15:13–23 · Over the Kidron

“And David said unto all his servants… Arise, and let us flee” (15:14).

David does not fight for the city. Radak says he fled lest Avshalom trap him inside, and lest Yerushalayim be judged as a city that went astray (Radak on 15:14). He leaves ten concubines to keep the house, a detail we will need in the next chapter, and the whole court walks out.

Ittai. Among them are six hundred men from Gat and their captain Ittai, a foreigner who, the Talmud says elsewhere, was still a Gentile when he annulled the idol’s crown for David (Avodah Zarah 44a). David tries to send him home: “thou art a stranger, and also an exile… mercy and truth be with thee” (15:19–20). Rashi hears a king who cannot even promise food to the man who follows him. Ittai’s answer is Ruth’s answer in a soldier’s mouth: “As Hashem liveth, and as my lord the king liveth, surely in what place my lord the king shall be, whether in death or life, even there also will thy servant be” (15:21). A Philistine from Goliath’s city swears by Hashem and binds himself to the king of Israel in his defeat. Yeshua asked the same of his disciples: “where I am, there shall also my servant be” (John 12:26).

The Kidron. “The king also himself passed over the brook Kidron, and all the people passed over, toward the way of the wilderness” (15:23). The country weeps aloud. A thousand years later the Son of David “went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden” (John 18:1), on the night he was betrayed by “mine own familiar friend… which did eat of my bread” (Psalm 41:9; John 13:18). FFOZ traces the road back the other way: at the end of days the Messiah “proceeds directly from the top of the Mount of Olives toward the Temple Mount, crossing the Kidron Valley,” and the eastern gates open to “the King of glory” (End of Days, Lesson 19, “Banner on a Mountain,” on Psalm 24:7). The king goes out over the Kidron in tears; the King comes back over it in glory. Rabbi Palvanov, in his class “Third Rome #2: Russia, Iran, and Gog u’Magog,” taught us Zechariah’s picture of that day, when “his feet shall stand… upon the mount of Olives” (Zechariah 14:4).

15:24–29 · “Carry back the ark”

“And the king said unto Zadok, Carry back the ark of God into the city: if I shall find favour in the eyes of Hashem, he will bring me again, and shew me both it, and his habitation: but if he thus say, I have no delight in thee; behold, here am I, let him do to me as seemeth good unto him” (15:25–26).

Rashi says David had meant to take the ark with him, and the priests had set it down to one side while the people passed. Then he changes his mind. Israel had once carried the ark into battle as a charm and lost it to the Philistines (1 Samuel 4). David will not do that. The ark belongs in Yerushalayim; whether David belongs there is Hashem’s to decide. Radak calls it “accepting the decree with love,” and hears in “shew me both it, and his habitation” a man who feels Hashem’s hidden face (Radak on 15:25–26). This is the same David who said “I have sinned against Hashem” in chapter 12: he does not bargain with God, and he does not use God.

Evyatar goes up. A small phrase hides a large event: “and Abiathar went up” (15:24). The Sages say this was the day Evyatar lost the priesthood: he inquired of the Urim and Tummim and was not answered, and Tzadok was answered in his place, as the word against Eli’s house required (Yoma 73b; Rashi and Radak on 15:24). David sends the two priests and their sons back as his eyes and ears in the city.

15:30–37 · Up the Mount of Olives

“And David went up by the ascent of mount Olivet, and wept as he went up, and had his head covered, and he went barefoot: and all the people that was with him covered every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up” (15:30).

A psalm, not a lament. The third psalm is titled “A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.” The Talmud asks: a psalm? It should say a lament! Rabbi Shimon ben Avishalom answers with a parable of a man who owes a debt: before he pays it he is sad; once he has paid he rejoices. When Hashem told David, “I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house,” David was afraid it would be a slave or a bastard who would show him no pity; when he saw it was Avshalom, he was glad, and sang (Berakhot 7b). On the same page Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai says “a wayward child in a man’s house is harder than the war of Gog and Magog,” because of Gog David wrote “why do the heathen rage?” but of Avshalom, “Hashem, how are they increased that trouble me!” (Psalm 3:1). The Midrash pictures him composing it on this very slope: “if he weeps, why does he sing, and if he sings, why does he weep?” (Midrash Tehillim 3). Both, because he is paying what he owes to a Father who is still his Father. “I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for Hashem sustained me” (Psalm 3:5).

The prayer and the answer. News comes that Achitophel is with Avshalom, and David prays one sentence: “O Hashem, I pray thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness” (15:31). He reaches the top of the mount, “where he worshipped God”: Rashi says the summit from which a man coming to Yerushalayim could see the tent of the ark and bow; Radak says David bowed there “like a man taking leave of his beloved as he goes into exile” (Rashi and Radak on 15:32). And the answer to his prayer is already walking toward him: Chushai the Arkite, “David’s friend,” in torn clothes with earth on his head. David sends him back into the city to be the fool who defeats the wise man. “Before they call, I will answer” (Isaiah 65:24).

Messianic reading. Hold the picture. The anointed king, rejected by his own people, goes out of Yerushalayim over the Kidron and up the Mount of Olives, weeping, barefoot, his head covered, betrayed by the friend who ate his bread, and he says, “here am I, let him do to me as seemeth good unto him.” Yeshua “beheld the city, and wept over it” from that same mount (Luke 19:41), crossed that same brook with a traitor behind him, and prayed in the garden, “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). David’s going out was the fruit of his sin; Yeshua’s was for ours. But the road is the same road, and the Son walked it in his father’s footsteps on purpose. The ark stayed in the city when David left. When the Son of David left, the Presence went with him, and “the veil of the temple was rent in twain” (Matthew 27:51). And both stories turn on the same hinge: “if I shall find favour in the eyes of Hashem, he will bring me again.” He did.

Drawing it together

1. The sword came from inside. Natan’s word was kept to the letter: evil “out of thine own house.” Amnon’s lust, Avshalom’s revenge, Avshalom’s revolt. The Talmud counts them against the lamb.

2. Tamar’s cry became a fence. The one person in chapter 13 who speaks the Torah is the victim, and the Sages built the law of yichud on her grief. Nothing suffered for Hashem’s standard is wasted.

3. Half a pardon is no pardon. David’s kiss without Avshalom’s confession is the picture of what forgiveness is not. The father in Yeshua’s parable kisses a son who says “I have sinned.”

4. The king who would not use God. David sent the ark back and put himself in Hashem’s hands: “let him do to me as seemeth good unto him.” That is the posture of repentance, three years after Natan.

5. The road over the Kidron. Rejected, weeping, betrayed, barefoot, the anointed one went out of the city, and sang a psalm. The Son of David walked the same road, for us, and will come back over it as King.

Questions for discussion

1. Why does Scripture call Tamar “Absalom’s sister” (13:1)? What do Rashi and the Talmud make of it, and does it excuse Amnon?

2. What did the Sages learn from Tamar’s public grief (Sanhedrin 21a–b)? Why does the Mishnah insist that this story be read and translated in the synagogue?

3. David was “very wroth” (13:21) and did nothing. What does Shemot Rabbah 1:1 say about that? Where else in these chapters do we see it?

4. Read 14:14. What did the woman of Tekoa mean, and how have later readers used the sentence? Is the later reading true even if it is not the plain sense?

5. Compare the king’s kiss (14:33) with the father’s kiss in Luke 15:20–21. What is missing in 2 Samuel?

6. Why does Scripture dwell on Avshalom’s hair (14:26)? How does the Mishnah (Sotah 1:8) connect it to his death?

7. What does FFOZ Lesson 25, “Twelve Thrones,” say about justice in the gate, and how does Avshalom exploit it (15:2–6)?

8. Who was Achitophel to David (Psalm 55:13–14)? Why does the Brit Hadashah hear Psalm 41:9 at the Last Supper?

9. Why did David send the ark back (15:25–26)? How is this different from what Israel did in 1 Samuel 4?

10. Trace David’s route in chapter 15 and compare it with Yeshua’s on the night he was betrayed (John 18:1; Luke 22:39–42) and with his return (Zechariah 14:4; End of Days Lesson 19, “Banner on a Mountain”).

Sources

Scripture: Genesis 34; Deuteronomy 21; 1 Samuel 4, 8; 2 Samuel 3, 11–12, 16–18, 20, 23; 1 Kings 1; 1 Chronicles 27; Psalm 3, 24, 41, 55, 122; Proverbs 13; Isaiah 65; Zechariah 14; Matthew 27; Luke 15, 19, 22; John 12, 13, 18.

Talmud and Midrash: Berakhot 7b; Yoma 22b, 73b; Megillah 25a–b; Nazir 4b–5a; Sotah 1:8 (Mishnah), 10b, 11a; Yerushalmi Sotah 1:8; Sanhedrin 10:2 (Mishnah), 21a–b, 106b; Avodah Zarah 44a; Menachot 85b; Temurah 14b; Shemot Rabbah 1:1; Midrash Tehillim 3.

Commentators: Rashi on 2 Samuel 13:1–3, 13:13, 13:15, 13:32, 13:39, 14:2, 14:14, 14:17, 15:1, 15:7, 15:11, 15:19–20, 15:24, 15:30–32, and on Psalm 3; Radak on 13:1–2, 13:15, 13:19, 13:37–39, 14:1–3, 14:14, 14:25–26, 14:32, 15:7, 15:11, 15:14, 15:19, 15:24–26, 15:32, 15:37, 18:18; Targum Jonathan on 13:39, 14:14, 15:37; Ralbag on 14:33.

Our teachers and materials: First Fruits of Zion, End of Days (5786), Lesson 19, “Banner on a Mountain” (the Messiah’s entry from the Mount of Olives across the Kidron), and Lesson 25, “Twelve Thrones” (justice in the gate, 2 Samuel 15:2–4); Rabbi Efraim Palvanov, “Third Rome #2: Russia, Iran, and Gog u’Magog,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvHpZLbsHZY, on Zechariah 14 and the Mount of Olives; Benei Avraham, The Son of David (Sukkot 5787); Benei Avraham Statement of Faith.

Before we begin

Chapter 15 left David at the top of the Mount of Olives, barefoot and weeping, with Chushai sent back into the city to defeat the counsel of Achitofel. Chapters 16–18 are the road down the other side. On the way David meets two men of the house of Shaul: Tziva, who brings him bread and a lie, and Shimei, who brings him stones and a curse. In Yerushalayim Avshalom takes his father’s concubines on the roof, and two counselors fight for his ear: Achitofel, whose advice was like a word from God, and Chushai, David’s friend. Hashem defeats the good counsel. Achitofel goes home and hangs himself. At Machanayim strangers feed the king. In the forest of Efrayim Avshalom’s head is caught in a tree, and Yoav kills him against the king’s command. The chapter ends with two runners and a question: “Is the young man Avshalom safe?”

In the Hebrew Bible chapter 18 ends there, at verse 32. The cry that every reader remembers, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee,” is the first verse of chapter 19 in Hebrew (18:33 in English Bibles). We discuss it here, because it closes this story, but on our website it opens the next chapter.

We read as before: the text first; then the Sages; then our own teachers (the FFOZ End of Days lessons, Rabbi Efraim Palvanov, Ariel Cohen Alloro, and our own Benei Avraham classes); and last, what the passage shows about Mashiach. Gematria and Kabbalah are offered as hints, never as proof, and everything is tested by the Torah (Isaiah 8:20). Scripture is quoted from the King James Version with Hashem in place of LORD, as in our Statement of Faith.

Chapter 16 · Bread, Stones, and a Roof

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16:1–4 · Tziva’s gift

“And when David was a little past the top of the hill, behold, Ziba the servant of Mephibosheth met him, with a couple of asses saddled, and upon them two hundred loaves of bread” (16:1).

The first person David meets on the far side of the mountain brings exactly what he needs: donkeys for the household, bread and summer fruit for the young men, wine for the faint. And with the food, a story. Where is Mefiboshet? “He abideth at Jerusalem: for he said, To day shall the house of Israel restore me the kingdom of my father” (16:3). The Metzudat David hears how it would have sounded: Mefiboshet expected the crown back “seeing the turmoil among David’s sons, a brother who killed his brother and rose against his father, which never happened among Shaul’s sons” (Metzudat David on 16:3). It was plausible. It was a lie. And David, hungry, grieving and on the run, believes it on the spot: “Behold, thine are all that pertained unto Mephibosheth” (16:4).

Did David accept slander? The Talmud argues it out. Rav says, “David accepted lashon hara.” Shmuel says, “David did not accept lashon hara; he saw evident signs himself,” because when Mefiboshet met him later he had not dressed his feet, trimmed his beard or washed his clothes (19:25) (Shabbat 56a). Rav Yehudah, in Rav’s name, draws the consequence from the end of the story, when David tells Mefiboshet, “Thou and Ziba divide the land” (19:30): “At that moment a heavenly voice went out and said, Rechav’am and Yarov’am will divide the kingdom.” And: “Had David not accepted slander, the kingdom of the house of David would not have been divided, Israel would not have worshipped idols, and we would not have been exiled from our land” (Shabbat 56b). The Gemara elsewhere rules like Shmuel, that David did not accept it (Yoma 22b), but it keeps Rav’s warning on the page.

We need not decide between them to learn the lesson. A king on the run is the easiest man in the world to lie to. “He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him” (Proverbs 18:17). The Torah demands two witnesses for exactly this reason (Deuteronomy 19:15). Tziva’s bread was real. His testimony was not, and David took both from the same hand.

16:5–14 · Shimei’s curse

“And when king David came to Bahurim, behold, thence came out a man of the family of the house of Saul, whose name was Shimei, the son of Gera: he came forth, and cursed still as he came. And he cast stones at David” (16:5–6).

Who Shimei was. Bachurim is a town of Binyamin; Michal’s husband Palti wept behind her as far as Bachurim (3:16). Shimei walks along the ridge above the road throwing stones and dirt, and Radak notes that he was too far away for them to reach: “he was throwing toward him from opposite” (Radak on 16:13). His words are the poison: “Come out, come out, thou bloody man, and thou man of Belial: Hashem hath returned upon thee all the blood of the house of Saul.” Radak says Shimei meant the blood of Avner and Ish-Boshet, which he blamed on David (Radak on 16:7; the Metzudat David names Ish-Boshet). He was wrong on the facts (chapters 3–4 show David innocent of both). But he was not wrong that David was a man of blood. He just named the wrong blood.

The Sages remember Shimei as a great man gone wrong. Rashi on 16:10 calls him a head of the Sanhedrin. The Talmud says he was Shlomo’s teacher, and that “as long as Shimei ben Gera lived, Shlomo did not marry Pharaoh’s daughter” (Berakhot 8a; Gittin 59a). David himself would later call it “a grievous curse” (1 Kings 2:8), and the Talmud reads the Hebrew word nimretzet as an acronym of Shimei’s five insults: “an adulterer, a Moabite, a murderer, an oppressor, an abomination” (Shabbat 105a).

“Let him curse.” Avishai, Yoav’s brother, offers to take off “this dead dog’s” head. Mefiboshet had called himself a dead dog (9:8); David had called himself one before Shaul (1 Samuel 24:14). Now Avishai calls Shimei one, and David says no:

“What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah? so let him curse, because Hashem hath said unto him, Curse David… Behold, my son, which came forth of my bowels, seeketh my life: how much more now may this Benjamite do it? let him alone, and let him curse; for Hashem hath bidden him. It may be that Hashem will look on mine affliction, and that Hashem will requite me good for his cursing this day” (16:10–12).

Radak gives two readings of “Hashem hath said unto him.” Either it is as if God said it, because God wills this wandering of mine; or “He stirred his spirit to shame me, as punishment for my iniquity” (Radak on 16:10). Either way David does not see Shimei first. He sees Hashem, and he sees Natan’s word being fulfilled. The Hebrew of verse 12 has a written and a read form: the reading is be’eini, which Rashi explains as “the tears of my eye”; the written form be’oni Radak reads as “my affliction” (Rashi and Radak on 16:12; the KJV follows the written form). Either way David hopes that Hashem will see what he is suffering and turn the curse into a blessing. It is the hope of Bilam’s story: “Hashem thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee” (Deuteronomy 23:5).

Hebrew lesson: קְלָלָה (kelalah), “curse.” The root is kal, “light.” To curse someone is to treat him as light, as of no weight; the opposite of kavod, “honor,” whose root means “heavy.” Shimei says David weighs nothing now. David answers that only Hashem decides how much a man weighs, and he leaves his weight in Hashem’s hands.

The Sages on silence. The Talmud teaches: “Those who are insulted and do not insult back, who hear their disgrace and do not answer, who act out of love and rejoice in suffering, of them Scripture says, ‘Let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might’” (Judges 5:31; Shabbat 88b; Gittin 36b; Yoma 23a). The teaching does not name David, but he is its picture on the road to Bachurim. The Yalkut adds a single line on 16:13: “they went in the way of humility” (Yalkut Shimoni, Shmuel 151).

Why David spared him. Yalkut and Targum give a further reason. The Targum to Esther says that David “looked at him with the spirit of prophecy, and saw that Mordechai and Esther were destined to come from him” (Targum to Esther 2:5, which reads “Mordechai… the son of Shimei” as this Shimei). The Yalkut has Hashem say to David, “you saved Shimei so that he would father the righteous one” (Yalkut Shimoni 151, on 19:23). The Talmud tells the same history from the other side, as Israel’s complaint: “See what a Judean did to me,” that “David did not kill Shimei, from whom Mordechai was born” (Megillah 12b–13a). Out of the man who cursed the king came the man who saved the Jews in Persia. David’s restraint on that road reached a thousand years ahead.

Our teachers. Rabbi Palvanov, in his class “Understanding Mashiach ben Yosef, Part 3,” has taught us the midrash of the suffering Messiah in Pesikta Rabbati. The Messiah cries out to Hashem, “Am I not flesh and blood?” and Hashem answers that he accepted his suffering from the six days of creation, and that Hashem Himself has not entered His throne since the Temple was destroyed. Then the Messiah says, “Now my mind is settled. It is enough for the servant to be like his master.” And in that same passage, “at that hour David was weeping and saying, ‘My strength is dried up like a potsherd’” (Pesikta Rabbati 36, on Psalm 22:15). The verse David weeps goes on: “and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.” Rabbi Palvanov taught it this way: “David foresaw the suffering of Mashiach.” On the road to Bachurim, with dust thrown on his head, David lived a little of what he foresaw.

Rabbi Palvanov, in his class “Bringing Mashiach Today,” also reminded us of the Talmud’s strange name for the Messiah: “the leper of the house of Rabbi,” from Isaiah 53, “yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God” (Sanhedrin 98b). “It might very well be,” he said, “that we won’t recognize him… he’ll be outcast, he’ll be a leper.” The Talmud says David, too, was stricken for six months after Bat-Sheva, “the Shechinah departed from him, and the Sanhedrin separated from him” (Sanhedrin 107a). The rejected king on the Bachurim road is a man under judgment who accepts it, and that is exactly why he can be a picture of the Messiah who was “esteemed stricken” though the judgment was for others.

Messianic reading. Yeshua taught, “Bless them that curse you” (Luke 6:28), and lived it: “when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2:23). That last phrase is David’s “let him alone… it may be that Hashem will look on mine affliction.” The difference is the one we keep meeting in these chapters. David suffered the curse as the fruit of his own sin; the Son of David suffered it for ours. “Messiah hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13).

16:15–23 · Two counselors, and a roof

Chushai’s greeting. Chushai comes to Avshalom with “Long live the king, long live the king” (16:16). Avshalom is suspicious: “Is this thy kindness to thy friend?” Chushai answers that he will serve the one “whom Hashem, and this people, and all the men of Israel, choose” (16:18). The Malbim says Chushai spoke exactly as David had put in his mouth. We would add an observation of our own: in all his speech Chushai never says which king he means, and never says that Hashem has chosen Avshalom. A loyal man can tell the truth even while he deceives a usurper.

Achitofel’s counsel. Avshalom asks Achitofel what to do, and the answer is as cold as it is shrewd: “Go in unto thy father’s concubines… and all Israel shall hear that thou art abhorred of thy father: then shall the hands of all that are with thee be strong” (16:21). Rashi explains: the people were afraid “the son will make peace with his father, and we will be hated by the king.” Radak: the counsel was sound though evil, “for by it the hands of all who were with him were strengthened, and they knew his father would never again make peace with him” (Rashi on 16:21; Radak on 16:23). There must be no road back.

“So they spread Absalom a tent upon the top of the house; and Absalom went in unto his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel” (16:22). Natan had said, “he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun. For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel” (12:11–12). Radak on 12:11 names this tent. It was on “the top of the house”: the same roof from which David first saw Bat-Sheva (11:2). The Mishnah counts the cost to Avshalom too: “because he lay with his father’s ten concubines, ten spears were thrust into him” (Mishnah Sotah 1:8).

“As if a man had inquired of God.” “And the counsel of Ahithophel… was as if a man had enquired at the oracle of God” (16:23). The Hebrew has the word ish, “a man,” read aloud but not written in the text, and the Sages noticed. The Yerushalmi says that when people doubted Achitofel’s advice he told them to ask the Urim and Tummim, and they found it so; and on the missing word: “the verses could not call him a man” (Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 10:2; Radak on 16:23 brings the midrash, “he was not a man but an angel”). This is the man David prayed against. Great wisdom without the fear of Heaven is the most dangerous thing in this book.

Chapter 17 · Counsel against Counsel

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17:1–14 · “Hashem had appointed to defeat the good counsel”

Achitofel’s plan is the best military advice in the Bible: twelve thousand men, tonight, while David is tired; scatter the people; “I will smite the king only… the man whom thou seekest is as if all returned: so all the people shall be in peace” (17:2–3). Rashi: kill the one man and the war is over. Radak: a thousand from each tribe. It “pleased Absalom well, and all the elders of Israel” (17:4).

Then Avshalom asks for a second opinion. Chushai’s speech is a masterpiece of flattery and fear. Your father is a bear robbed of her cubs; he will be hiding in a pit; the first loss will start a panic. Instead, gather “all Israel… from Dan even to Beer-sheba, as the sand that is by the sea… and that thou go to battle in thine own person” (17:11). We will fall on him “as the dew falleth on the ground”; if he hides in a city, all Israel will drag it into the river with ropes. Radak notes how Chushai began: “although all his counsels are sound, this time he erred” (Radak on 17:7). Every image is bigger than the last, and every one flatters Avshalom: you at the head of all Israel, like the sand of the sea, the promise to Avraham.

“And Absalom and all the men of Israel said, The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel. For Hashem had appointed to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, to the intent that Hashem might bring evil upon Absalom” (17:14).

The Metzudat David says it plainly: Chushai’s counsel was not really better; “Achitofel’s counsel was truly the way to reach the goal, but this was from Hashem, who decreed to defeat the good counsel of Achitofel” (Metzudat David on 17:14). David’s one-line prayer on the Mount of Olives, “turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness” (15:31), is answered here. “There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against Hashem” (Proverbs 21:30). “Hashem bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought… The counsel of Hashem standeth for ever” (Psalm 33:10–11).

Hebrew lesson: עֵצָה (etzah), “counsel.” The word appears again and again in these chapters (15:31, 34; 16:20, 23; 17:7, 11, 14, 23). Isaiah gives it as a name of the Messiah: “Wonderful, Counsellor” (Isaiah 9:6), pele yo’etz, and says the spirit on the Branch of David will be “the spirit of counsel and might” (Isaiah 11:2). Achitofel was yo’etz David, David’s counselor (15:12). His counsel was brilliant and godless, and it failed. The Messiah’s counsel is wisdom joined to the fear of Hashem, and it stands.

17:15–22 · The well at Bachurim

Chushai passes both plans to the priests, and the priests’ sons, Yehonatan and Achima’atz, wait at Ein Rogel outside the city for a servant girl to bring the word. A boy sees them and tells Avshalom. They run to a house in Bachurim, Shimei’s own town, and climb down into a well in the courtyard. The woman of the house spreads a cloth over the well’s mouth and grain on top, and sends the searchers off in the wrong direction (17:17–20). It is Rachav’s story again (Joshua 2), a woman hiding the messengers of Israel’s true king. In the very town that produced the curse, there was a house that kept faith. That night David’s whole company crosses the Jordan, “there lacked not one of them” (17:22).

17:23 · Achitofel goes home

“And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father” (17:23).

Achitofel was the only man in Yerushalayim who understood what Avshalom’s choice meant. Radak: “he chose to kill himself rather than be killed by David,” for he knew that once his counsel was rejected, Avshalom’s side would fall (Radak on 17:23). He went home and gave his last instructions. The Talmud preserves them: “Three things Achitofel commanded his sons: Do not take part in a quarrel; do not rebel against the kingdom of the house of David; and if the festival of Shavuot is clear, sow wheat” (Bava Batra 147a). He died telling his sons not to do the very thing he had done.

The Sages also say he died by his own judgment. When David dug the foundations of the Temple, the waters of the deep rose; David asked whether the Name might be written on a shard and cast into the deep to stop them, and cursed whoever knew the answer and kept silent: “may he be strangled in his throat.” Achitofel knew, reasoned from the law of the sotah, and answered. “And the curse was fulfilled,” the Gemara says, quoting our verse (Makkot 11a). “Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days” (Psalm 55:23): the Talmud says Achitofel lived only thirty-three years (Sanhedrin 106b).

Messianic reading. David wrote of him, “Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me” (Psalm 41:9), and the Talmud reads that verse of Achitofel (Sanhedrin 106b). Yeshua quoted it of Yehudah at the last supper (John 13:18). The parallel is close and terrible: a trusted counselor of the anointed king, who ate at his table, who betrayed him to his enemies, who, when it all turned, went out and hanged himself (Matthew 27:5; Acts 1:16–20). Peter said the Holy Spirit “by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas” (Acts 1:16). David wrote his own grief, and the Spirit wrote the Son of David’s.

17:24–29 · A table in the wilderness

Avshalom crosses the Jordan with all Israel and makes Amasa his general, a cousin of Yoav (17:25). David reaches Machanayim, the city where Ish-Boshet once reigned (2:8), and three men come out to meet him with beds and bowls, wheat and barley, beans and lentils, honey, butter, sheep and cheese, “for they said, The people is hungry, and weary, and thirsty, in the wilderness” (17:29).

Look at who they are. Shovi son of Nachash of Rabbat Ammon: Rashi and the Midrash say this is Chanun himself, the king who shamed David’s envoys, “called Shovi because his evil inclination was quieted for a time,” or as Rav says, “because he repented” (Rashi on 17:27; Midrash Tehillim 3). Radak finds that far-fetched, and thinks Shovi was an Israelite living in Rabbah, or perhaps a convert whom David spared (Radak on 17:27). Machir son of Ammiel of Lo Devar: the man who had sheltered Mefiboshet (9:4). Years ago David took in Machir’s charge; now Machir takes in David. Barzillai of Gilad, an old man we will meet again (19:32–40). An Ammonite, a Benjamite’s protector and a Gileadite feed the king of Yehudah, while his own son hunts him. David had once written, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies” (Psalm 23:5). At Machanayim he ate at one.

Chapter 18 · “Is the Young Man Safe?”

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18:1–5 · “Deal gently with the young man”

David divides his army in three, under Yoav, Avishai and Ittai the Gittite, and means to lead it himself. The people refuse: “now thou art worth ten thousand of us” (18:3). Rashi: in your glory you count as ten thousand men like us. Radak brings the Targum’s reading: you will help us more by praying in the city than ten thousand fighters would. So David stands at the gate as the army goes out, and gives one order in the hearing of everyone: “Deal gently for my sake with the young man, even with Absalom” (18:5). Radak: “Though he wronged me, I am a father who pities.”

18:6–18 · The terebinth and the pit

“And the battle was in the wood of Ephraim… and the wood devoured more people that day than the sword devoured” (18:6, 8). Rashi and the Targum: the wild beasts of the forest; Radak and the Metzudat David: the trees themselves, as men fled through them and fell.

“And Absalom rode upon a mule, and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he was taken up between the heaven and the earth” (18:9).

Hanged by his hair. The Mishnah reads Avshalom’s death as measure for measure: “Avshalom gloried in his hair, therefore he was hanged by his hair. Because he lay with his father’s ten concubines, ten spears were thrust into him. Because he stole three hearts, his father’s heart, the court’s heart and the heart of Israel, three darts were driven into him” (Mishnah Sotah 1:8). The Gemara adds: “He took a sword to cut it off, and at that moment Sheol split open beneath him” (Sotah 10b; Rashi on 18:9). Hair he had prized above everything now held him for his enemies; a cut would have freed him, and he could not make it.

Yoav’s darts. One soldier saw him hanging and would not touch him: “Though I should receive a thousand shekels of silver in mine hand, yet would I not put forth mine hand against the king’s son: for in our hearing the king charged thee” (18:12). Yoav takes three shevatim, “and thrust them through the heart of Absalom, while he was yet alive in the midst of the oak” (18:14), and his ten armor-bearers finish him. Radak explains that the three were for the three hearts, and the ten young men for the ten spears of the Mishnah (Radak on 18:14).

Under a heap of stones. “And they took Absalom, and cast him into a great pit in the wood, and laid a very great heap of stones upon him” (18:17). Scripture buried two others this way: Achan, who stole from Hashem (Joshua 7:26), and the king of Ai, hanged on a tree till evening (Joshua 8:29). The Torah says, “he that is hanged is accursed of God” (Deuteronomy 21:23). Avshalom, who had raised a monument to himself in the King’s Valley because “I have no son to keep my name in remembrance” (18:18), lies under a cairn in a forest pit.

The pillar. He had three sons (14:27); how could he say he had none? The Talmud gives two answers: he had no son fit for kingship; or, “whoever burns his neighbor’s crop leaves no son to inherit him,” and he burned Yoav’s barley (Sotah 11a; Radak on 18:18 says the sons died). Reish Lakish reads “Absalom had taken”: “he took a bad bargain for himself.” Rabbi Chanina bar Pappa reads “the King’s Valley”: “in the deep counsel of the King of the world” (Sotah 10b). The custom of throwing stones at the monument now called Yad Avshalom in the Kidron Valley is a later Jerusalem folk custom, not a teaching of the Sages; the monument that stands there today is a Second Temple tomb.

Messianic reading. Two sons of David hang on a tree in the Bible’s story. One rebelled against his father, stole the hearts of Israel, and died “accursed of God” by Yoav’s darts while the king begged for his life. The other obeyed his Father to the end, gave his heart for Israel, and was hanged on a tree “being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Galatians 3:13). Avshalom was hanged “between the heaven and the earth.” So was Yeshua, and that is where he stood between Heaven and us.

18:19–32 · Two runners

Achima’atz son of Tzadok wants to run with the news of victory. Yoav refuses him, “because the king’s son is dead,” and sends the Kushi instead; Radak says he was a Cushite who joined Israel, or an Israelite dark of skin (Radak on 18:21). Achima’atz begs to run anyway, takes the plain road, and arrives first.

David sits “between the two gates” (18:24). The watchman sees one runner, then another. “He is a good man, and cometh with good tidings” (18:27). Achima’atz cries “Shalom!” and blesses Hashem for the victory, and the king asks only one thing: “Is the young man Absalom safe?” Achima’atz dodges: “I saw a great tumult, but I knew not what it was” (18:29). Radak hears him explain that Yoav sent them so quickly that they did not stay to learn more. Then the Kushi arrives with the same victory and the same question, and answers it: “The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is” (18:32).

Hebrew lesson: שָׁלוֹם (shalom). The king’s question is hashalom la-na’ar le-Avshalom, literally “Is there shalom for the young man, for Avshalom?” And the young man’s name is Av-shalom, “my father is peace.” When Avshalom left for Chevron his father’s last words to him were lech beshalom, “Go in peace” (15:9). Achima’atz’s first word to the king is shalom (18:28). The whole chapter asks one question of a son whose very name answered it: there was peace for him in his father, and he would not have it. “There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked” (Isaiah 57:21).

19:1 · “Would God I had died for thee”

“And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (19:1 in Hebrew; 18:33 in English Bibles).

Eight times “my son.” The Talmud counts the word beni in this verse and in 19:5, and finds eight. “Seven, to raise him from the seven compartments of Gehinnom; and the eighth,” some say, “to join his head to his body,” and others say, “to bring him into the world to come” (Sotah 10b). The Sages would not leave Avshalom in the pit. A father’s tears, they say, reach further down than any son can fall.

We hear in that verse the end of what began in chapter 12. David had sentenced the rich man: “he shall restore the lamb fourfold.” The child, Amnon, Tamar, and now Avshalom (Yoma 22b): the fourth payment is the heaviest. And we hear what the Midrash said in chapter 14: “David did not chasten Avshalom his son and did not discipline him… and caused him to walk barefoot and weeping, and many thousands of Israel fell” (Shemot Rabbah 1:1). The father who would not correct his son wished he could die for him.

Messianic reading. “Would God I had died for thee.” David could only wish it. He could not die for Avshalom, and if he had, it would not have saved him; David was a sinner himself, paying his own debt. The Son of David did what his father could only cry for. “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Messiah died for us” (Romans 5:8). “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13), and Yeshua laid it down for his enemies too. The father’s cry over the rebel son is the Father’s heart toward a rebel world; the Son’s death is the answer to the cry.

Drawing it together

1. A king in trouble is easy to lie to. Tziva’s bread and Tziva’s slander came from the same hand. The Sages argue whether David believed it; they agree on what it cost.

2. Under the curse, David looked up. “Let him curse; for Hashem hath bidden him.” David accepted the stones as Hashem’s discipline, and Hashem turned the curse ahead into a blessing: Mordechai came from Shimei.

3. Counsel without the fear of Heaven fails. Achitofel’s advice was like the word of God, and Hashem defeated it in answer to one sentence of prayer. The Messiah’s name is Pele Yo’etz, and his counsel stands.

4. Strangers spread a table. An Ammonite, Mefiboshet’s protector and an old Gileadite fed the king whose own son hunted him. Kindness David had shown came back to him in the wilderness.

5. Two sons on a tree. Avshalom, the rebel, hanged accursed between heaven and earth. Yeshua, the obedient Son, hanged “made a curse for us,” doing what David could only wish: “would God I had died for thee.”

Questions for discussion

1. Did David accept Tziva’s slander? Give Rav’s and Shmuel’s arguments (Shabbat 56a–b). What does Proverbs 18:17 teach about hearing only one side?

2. Why did David refuse to let Avishai kill Shimei (16:10–12)? Which of Radak’s two readings of “Hashem hath said unto him” do you find more convincing?

3. How did David’s restraint toward Shimei bear fruit in the days of Esther, according to the Targum and the Yalkut?

4. What does the Talmud teach about those who are insulted and do not insult back? How did Yeshua fulfill it (1 Peter 2:23)?

5. Why did Achitofel tell Avshalom to take the concubines (16:21)? How does this fulfill Natan’s word in 12:11–12, and why does it matter that it happened on the roof?

6. Compare Achitofel’s counsel and Chushai’s (17:1–14). Why does the text call Achitofel’s “the good counsel”? What does the Hebrew lesson on etzah teach about the Messiah?

7. What did Achitofel tell his sons before he died (Bava Batra 147a)? Why is it ironic? How does his end foreshadow Judas (Psalm 41:9; Acts 1:16)?

8. Who were Shovi, Machir and Barzillai? What does it mean that these three fed David at Machanayim?

9. How does the Mishnah explain the way Avshalom died (Sotah 1:8)? What does Deuteronomy 21:23 say about one who is hanged, and how does Galatians 3:13 use it?

10. Read 19:1 aloud. What does the Talmud make of the eight times “my son”? What did David wish that the Son of David actually did?

Sources

Scripture: Deuteronomy 19, 21, 23; Joshua 2, 7, 8; Judges 5; 1 Samuel 24; 2 Samuel 2–4, 9, 11–12, 14–15, 19; 1 Kings 2; Psalm 22, 23, 33, 41, 55; Proverbs 18, 21; Isaiah 9, 11, 53, 57; Esther 2; Matthew 27; Luke 6; John 13, 15; Acts 1; Romans 5; Galatians 3; 1 Peter 2.

Talmud and Midrash: Berakhot 8a; Shabbat 56a–b, 88b, 105a; Yoma 22b, 23a; Megillah 12b–13a; Sotah 1:8 (Mishnah), 10b, 11a; Gittin 36b, 59a; Bava Batra 147a; Sanhedrin 98b, 106b, 107a; Makkot 11a; Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 10:2; Shemot Rabbah 1:1; Midrash Tehillim 3; Pesikta Rabbati 36; Yalkut Shimoni, Shmuel 151; Targum to Esther 2:5.

Commentators: Rashi on 2 Samuel 16:10, 16:12, 16:21, 17:3, 17:27, 18:3, 18:8–9; Radak on 12:11, 16:7, 16:10, 16:12–13, 16:23, 17:1–3, 17:7, 17:23, 17:27, 18:3, 18:5, 18:8, 18:14, 18:18, 18:21, 18:29; Metzudat David on 16:3, 16:8, 17:14, 18:8; Malbim on 16:18–19; Targum Jonathan on 18:3, 18:8.

Our teachers and materials: Rabbi Efraim Palvanov, “Mashiach & End of Days” lectures (“Understanding Mashiach ben Yosef, Part 3,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfUfOgNXkEc, on Pesikta Rabbati 36 and David’s tears over the suffering Messiah; “Bringing Mashiach Today,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwn6-yKJ1_I&t=74s, on Sanhedrin 98b and the outcast “leper” Messiah; “The Coming Solar Eclipse,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i26WUOoSIYM, on the Sanhedrin’s separation from David, Sanhedrin 107a); Benei Avraham Statement of Faith.

Before we begin

Chapter 18 ended with two runners and a question: “Is the young man Avshalom safe?” Chapter 19 opens with the answer, and with a father’s cry that has never been forgotten. Then the long road back begins. The tribes argue over who will bring the king home. At the Jordan three men come down to meet him: Shimei, who cursed him; Mefiboshet, who mourned for him; and Barzillai, who fed him. The king pardons, judges and blesses, and almost at once the tribes quarrel over who owns him. In chapter 20 that quarrel becomes a revolt: “We have no portion in David.” Yoav kills Amasa with a kiss, and a wise woman of Avel ends the war with one head over a wall. Chapter 21 steps back from the story to a famine, a debt of blood owed to the Gibeonites, a mother guarding her sons’ bodies through a whole summer, and the last of the giants. At the end of it David is called “the lamp of Israel.”

A note on numbering. In the Hebrew Bible chapter 19 has 44 verses, because the lament “O my son Absalom” is 19:1 (18:33 in English Bibles). We follow the Hebrew numbering, as on our website, so in chapter 19 the King James verse number is one less than ours. Chapters 20 and 21 are the same in both.

We read as before: the text first; then the Sages; then our own teachers (the FFOZ End of Days lessons, Rabbi Efraim Palvanov, Ariel Cohen Alloro, and our own Benei Avraham classes); and last, what the passage shows about Mashiach. Gematria and Kabbalah are offered as hints, never as proof, and everything is tested by the Torah (Isaiah 8:20). Scripture is quoted from the King James Version with Hashem in place of LORD, as in our Statement of Faith.

Chapter 19 · The Road Back

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19:1–9 · “Would God I had died for thee”

“And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (19:1).

Eight times “my son.” The Talmud counts the word beni in this verse and in verse 5, and finds eight: “Seven, to raise him from the seven compartments of Gehinnom. And the eighth: some say, to join his head to his body; and some say, to bring him into the World to Come” (Sotah 10b; Rashi on 19:1 counts five in the first verse and three in the fifth). The Sages would not leave Avshalom in the pit. A father’s tears, they say, reach further down than any son can fall.

Yoav’s rebuke. The army comes home from victory “by stealth… as people being ashamed steal away when they flee in battle” (19:4). Yoav goes in to the king: “Thou hast shamed this day the faces of all thy servants, which this day have saved thy life… in that thou lovest thine enemies, and hatest thy friends” (19:6–7). If the king does not go out, “there will not tarry one with thee this night”; the Metzudat David reads it as a harm worse than any so far (Metzudat David on 19:8). Yoav is hard, and he is right. David gets up, wipes his face, and sits in the gate, and the people come before him (19:9). A king may weep for his son, but he may not abandon the people who bled for him.

Messianic reading. “Would God I had died for thee.” David could only wish it. Had he died, it would not have saved Avshalom; David was a sinner paying his own debt. The Son of David did what his father could only cry for: “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Messiah died for us” (Romans 5:8). The father’s cry over the rebel son is the Father’s heart toward a rebel world; the Son’s death is the answer to the cry.

19:10–16 · “Why speak ye not a word of bringing the king back?”

All the tribes are arguing: “The king saved us out of the hand of our enemies… and now he is fled out of the land for Absalom. And Absalom, whom we anointed over us, is dead in battle. Now therefore why speak ye not a word of bringing the king back?” (19:10–11).

David does not march back into Yerushalayim. He waits to be brought. He sends Tzadok and Evyatar to the elders of his own tribe: “Why are ye the last to bring the king back to his house?… Ye are my brethren, ye are my bones and my flesh” (19:12–13). The Metzudat David explains: you will bring me back in the end anyway; you are my own tribe; why let the others go first? Radak notes that while David was still dictating the message, word arrived by messengers and letters from all Israel, which is why the sentence breaks off in the middle (Radak on 19:12–13).

Then a surprise: “And say ye to Amasa, Art thou not of my bone, and of my flesh?… if thou be not captain of the host before me continually in the room of Joab” (19:14). Amasa had commanded Avshalom’s army. Radak says David hated Yoav for killing Avshalom and wanted him out of command (Radak on 19:14). It works: “he bowed the heart of all the men of Judah, even as the heart of one man” (19:15). But we will see in chapter 20 what Yoav does with his demotion.

Hebrew lesson: לְהָשִׁיב (lehashiv), “to bring back.” The phrase lehashiv et hamelech, “to bring back the king,” comes again and again in these verses (19:11, 12, 13); Yehudah answers with shuv, “return” (19:15); and then “the king returned” (19:16). It is the root of teshuvah. The king will not force his way home; he waits for his people to say the word. The prophet Hoshea saw the same thing at the end of days: “Afterward shall the children of Israel return (yashuvu), and seek Hashem their God, and David their king; and shall fear Hashem and his goodness in the latter days” (Hosea 3:5). The Targum reads it: “and obey the Messiah son of David their king.”

Messianic reading. Yeshua said to Yerushalayim, “Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of Hashem” (Matthew 23:39). And Peter preached in the Temple, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted (return)… and he shall send Yeshua the Messiah… whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things” (Acts 3:19–21). The question of 19:11 is still the question: why speak ye not a word of bringing the king back? The Son of David, like his father, waits to be invited home by his own brothers, his bone and his flesh.

19:17–24 · Shimei comes down first

The man who stoned David on the way out is the first to meet him on the way back. Shimei hurries down with a thousand men of Binyamin, Tziva and his sons with him, and falls before the king as he crosses the Jordan: “Let not my lord impute iniquity unto me… For thy servant doth know that I have sinned: therefore, behold, I am come the first this day of all the house of Joseph to go down to meet my lord the king” (19:20–21).

“The house of Yosef.” Why does a Benjamite call himself the first of the house of Yosef? Radak gives the plain sense: Binyamin, Efrayim and Menashe are counted together as the house of Yosef. Then he brings a midrash: “Yosef’s brothers repaid him evil and he repaid them good; so I repaid you evil, repay me good.” And another: all Israel is called Yosef (Amos 5:15; Psalm 80:2), and all Israel is waiting to see what you do with me (Radak on 19:21). Rashi makes the same political point: “All Israel sinned against you, and I more than all. If you accept me, all Israel will trust that you will accept them; if not, they will be afraid to return” (Rashi on 19:21).

Avishai has not changed: “Shall not Shimei be put to death for this, because he cursed Hashem’s anointed?” (19:22). Neither has David: “What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah…? shall there any man be put to death this day in Israel? for do not I know that I am this day king over Israel?” (19:23). Rashi hears the second question as wonder: until now I thought so great a man would not curse me unless God had cut off my kingship; now that he regrets it, I know I am king (Rashi on 19:23). The Metzudat David adds that this day is like the first day of a reign, and a king who takes revenge on the day he is crowned teaches the people never to crown him (Metzudat David on 19:23). “Thou shalt not die. And the king sware unto him” (19:24).

David kept his oath for the rest of his life. On his deathbed he told Shlomo, “I sware to him by Hashem, saying, I will not put thee to death with the sword. Now therefore hold him not guiltless: for thou art a wise man” (1 Kings 2:8–9). Mercy was given on the day of return; justice was left for another day.

Messianic reading. The day the king comes back is a day of pardon. “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life” (Romans 5:10). Shimei came down first, before the loyal men, and found mercy because he came; Yeshua told of a father who saw his son “a great way off” and ran to him (Luke 15:20). Radak’s midrash says it plainly: Yosef repaid evil with good. The greater Son of Yosef and David does the same.

19:25–31 · Mefiboshet’s feet

“And Mephibosheth the son of Saul came down to meet the king, and had neither dressed his feet, nor trimmed his beard, nor washed his clothes, from the day the king departed until the day he came again in peace” (19:25).

Mefiboshet had been in mourning the whole time the king was gone. Tziva’s story (16:3) was a lie: “my servant deceived me: for thy servant said, I will saddle me an ass… because thy servant is lame. And he hath slandered thy servant unto my lord the king” (19:27–28). And David, who now has the truth in front of him, splits the difference: “Thou and Ziba divide the land” (19:30).

The Sages on David’s judgment. We met this argument in chapter 16. Rav says David accepted slander; Shmuel says he did not, “because he saw evident signs” (Shabbat 56a), and Shmuel’s proof is our verse. Rav Yehuda in Rav’s name draws the consequence from “divide the land”: a heavenly voice said, “Rechav’am and Yarov’am will divide the kingdom,” and had David not accepted slander, the kingdom would not have been divided (Shabbat 56b). The Gemara also hears Mefiboshet’s reply as a quiet protest: “I said, When will you come in peace? and you do this to me? I have no complaint against you, but against the One who brought you back in peace.” That, it says, is why Chronicles calls him Meriv-Baal (1 Chronicles 8:34), “because he made a quarrel with his Master” (Shabbat 56b). Elsewhere the Talmud remembers Mefiboshet as David’s teacher, the one David asked, “Did I judge rightly?” (Berakhot 4a).

Whatever was in his heart, his words are beautiful: “Yea, let him take all, forasmuch as my lord the king is come again in peace unto his own house” (19:31). He wanted the king more than the inheritance.

Messianic reading. Yeshua was asked why his disciples did not fast. “Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast” (Matthew 9:15). Mefiboshet is the picture of a disciple in the days between: unwashed, untrimmed, mourning, waiting, until the day the king comes back “in peace.” And when he comes, the field will not matter: “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Messiah Yeshua my Lord” (Philippians 3:8).

19:32–41 · Barzillai, and Kimham of Beit Lechem

Barzillai, the old Gileadite who fed the king at Machanayim (17:27–29), escorts him to the Jordan. David invites him to Yerushalayim to eat at the king’s table. Barzillai refuses: “I am this day fourscore years old: and can I discern between good and evil? can thy servant taste what I eat or what I drink? can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing women?… Let thy servant, I pray thee, turn back again, that I may die in mine own city” (19:36, 38).

The Talmud argues about him. Rav said, “Barzillai the Gileadite was a liar,” because there was a maidservant in Rebbi’s house who at ninety-two still tasted the pots. Rava said he had been steeped in licentiousness, “and whoever is steeped in licentiousness, old age jumps upon him” (Shabbat 152a; Rashi on 19:36 brings Rava). Whether we take the Gemara’s warning or Barzillai’s humility, he knew his season was over, and he gave the king’s table to the next generation: “Behold thy servant Chimham; let him go over with my lord the king” (19:38).

The king kissed Barzillai and blessed him (19:40), and did not forget. On his deathbed David told Shlomo, “shew kindness unto the sons of Barzillai the Gileadite, and let them be of those that eat at thy table” (1 Kings 2:7). Centuries later Jeremiah mentions a place called Gerut Kimham, “which is by Bethlehem” (Jeremiah 41:17), and the Targum explains it as the place “which David gave to Kimham son of Barzillai” (Targum on Jeremiah 41:17; Rashi there adds, when he returned from Avshalom’s war).

Our observation. A man from across the Jordan who fed the king in the wilderness was given a lodging place beside Beit Lechem, the city of David. The kindness of strangers to the anointed king is remembered for generations, and it is remembered at Bethlehem. “Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only… he shall in no wise lose his reward” (Matthew 10:42).

19:42–44 · “We have ten parts in the king”

The crossing ends in a quarrel. Yehudah brought the king over; the rest of Israel arrive and are offended: “Why have our brethren the men of Judah stolen thee away…?” Yehudah answers, “Because the king is near of kin to us.” Israel answers back: “We have ten parts in the king, and we have also more right in David than ye: why then did ye despise us, that our advice should not be first had in bringing back our king? And the words of the men of Judah were fiercer than the words of the men of Israel” (19:42–44).

Rashi and Radak read the ten parts as the ten tribes. Rashi: though he is closer to you, I have the larger claim. Radak: Yehudah spoke harshly, the king kept silent, “and so Israel grew angry and followed Sheva ben Bichri” (Rashi and Radak on 19:44). Both sides wanted the king. Neither wanted the other. The very next verse is a trumpet.

FFOZ teaches that the Messiah will heal exactly this wound. Isaiah promised that in his days “Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim” (Isaiah 11:13), and Ezekiel, that Hashem will make them “one nation in the land… and one king shall be king to them all” (Ezekiel 37:22; End of Days, Lesson 22, “The Ten Tribes–Shechinah”). The tribes at the Jordan were fighting over who had more of David. In the end there will be one people with one King, and no one will need to steal him from anyone.

Chapter 20 · A Portion in David

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20:1–3 · “We have no portion in David”

“And there happened to be there a man of Belial, whose name was Sheba, the son of Bichri, a Benjamite: and he blew a trumpet, and said, We have no part in David, neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: every man to his tents, O Israel” (20:1).

The words are a curse that will come back. When the kingdom split in the days of Rechav’am, the northern tribes shouted almost the same thing: “What portion have we in David? neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: to your tents, O Israel: now see to thine own house, David” (1 Kings 12:16). The Talmud even joins the two stories: a baraita says that Sheva ben Bichri is the same man as Nevat, the father of Yarov’am (Sanhedrin 101b). Whether or not we take the identification literally, the Sages saw that the split of the kingdom began here, in a quarrel at the Jordan.

Hebrew lesson: חֵלֶק (chelek), “portion.” “We have no chelek in David.” The word runs through the Bible. The Levites had no chelek in the land, because “Hashem is his inheritance” (Deuteronomy 10:9); David sang, “Hashem is the portion (chelek) of mine inheritance” (Psalm 16:5). The Mishnah opens its chapter on the world to come with the same word: “All Israel have a portion (chelek) in the world to come” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1), and goes on to list those who lose it. To say “we have no chelek in David” is to cut oneself off from the king Hashem chose. Paul wrote to Gentile believers that they were once “without Messiah, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,” and are now “made nigh by the blood of Messiah” (Ephesians 2:12–13). Sheva tore a portion away; the Son of David gives one.

The ten women. David comes home and puts the ten concubines Avshalom had taken (16:22) under guard for the rest of their lives, “living in widowhood” (20:3). The Yerushalmi records two views. Rabbi Yehuda bar Pazi, in Rabbi Yochanan’s name, says they were permitted to David, but he had them brought before him and refused them, to master his own desire. The Rabbis of Caesarea say they were truly forbidden to him (Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 2:3; Radak on 20:3 brings both). Either way, ten women paid for Avshalom’s sin and for David’s. Natan’s word in 12:11 still had a cost.

20:4–13 · A kiss at the great stone in Givon

David gives Amasa, his new general, three days to call up Yehudah. Amasa is late. David sends Avishai instead, and Yoav goes with him. At “the great stone which is in Gibeon” Amasa comes to meet them.

“And Joab said to Amasa, Art thou in health (hashalom atah), my brother? And Joab took Amasa by the beard with the right hand to kiss him. But Amasa took no heed to the sword that was in Joab’s hand: so he smote him therewith in the fifth rib” (20:9–10). Rashi says the sword was strapped so that it would fall out, and Yoav caught it as if by accident; Radak says he held it in his left hand so Amasa would not be on guard (Rashi and Radak on 20:8). Then Yoav steps over the body and takes back the army.

Why was Amasa late? The Talmud puts Yoav on trial before Shlomo. Yoav says, “Amasa was a rebel against the kingdom,” because he delayed past the king’s appointed time. Shlomo answers that Amasa “found them beginning a tractate” and would not interrupt their Torah study for the king’s command, reasoning from the word rak in Joshua 1:18. Yoav had no such excuse; he was the real rebel, who later followed Adoniyahu (Sanhedrin 49a; Rashi on 20:5). The Gemara concludes that Avner and Amasa “were better than he” (1 Kings 2:32) because they reasoned from Torah, and Yoav did not. At the end of his life David told Shlomo what Yoav had done “to the two captains of the hosts of Israel, unto Abner… and unto Amasa… whom he slew, and shed the blood of war in peace” (1 Kings 2:5). Ariel Cohen Alloro, in his video “The 4 sons from the Passover Haggadah – Part 26,” has taught us the end of that chapter: when Shlomo removed Yoav’s blood-guilt, he blessed the house of David that “upon his throne, shall there be peace for ever from Hashem” (1 Kings 2:33).

Hashalom atah: the word shalom again. In chapter 18 David asked, hashalom lana’ar, “Is it well with the young man?” Now Yoav asks it of Amasa with a dagger in his hand. “The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart” (Psalm 55:21). “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful” (Proverbs 27:6).

Messianic reading. One night in a garden on the Mount of Olives, another man came with an armed crowd, said “Hail, master; and kissed him” (Matthew 26:49). “Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?” (Luke 22:48). Yoav killed a commander who stood in his way; Yehudah betrayed the King himself. Both used the sign of brotherhood as a weapon. And as Amasa lay in the road, “every one that came by him stood still” (20:12): the death of an innocent man stops the crowd.

20:14–22 · The wise woman of Avel

Sheva runs north through all the tribes to Avel Beit Ma’achah, at the very top of the land, and Yoav lays siege. The ramp is up and the wall is being battered when a voice calls from the city: “Hear, hear; say, I pray you, unto Joab, Come near hither, that I may speak with thee” (20:16).

“They were wont to speak in old time, saying, They shall surely ask counsel at Abel: and so they ended the matter. I am one of them that are peaceable and faithful in Israel: thou seekest to destroy a city and a mother in Israel: why wilt thou swallow up the inheritance of Hashem?” (20:18–19).

“They shall surely ask.” The Targum hears a rebuke: “Remember now what is written in the book of the Torah, to inquire of a city first… so you should have asked at Avel whether they would make peace” (Targum on 20:18). Rashi says the same: you should have called for peace first, and if they had answered peace you would not have fought them (Rashi on 20:18). The Midrash names the law: “When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it” (Deuteronomy 20:10; Bereshit Rabbah 94:9). “A mother in Israel”: the Targum calls Avel a great metropolis, and the Metzudat David explains that the smaller towns depended on it like daughters on a mother.

Who was she? The Midrash identifies the wise woman as Serach bat Asher. She reads shelumei emunei Yisrael, “the peaceable and faithful in Israel,” as “I am the one who completed* (hishlamti) the number of Israel”: the seventieth soul who went down to Egypt (Bereshit Rabbah 94:9; Kohelet Rabbah 9:18). Rashi brings the same midrash: she was the faithful one who told Yaakov that Yosef was alive and showed Moshe where Yosef’s coffin lay (Rashi on 20:19). Rabbi Palvanov taught us her story this year in his class “Lebanon & Iran in the End of Days”: Serach, daughter of Asher, who sang to Yaakov that Yosef was alive and was blessed with long life; who was there when Israel went down into Egypt and named again in the census at the end of the wilderness (Genesis 46:17; Numbers 26:46); who showed Moshe where Yosef’s coffin lay. “She also helped King David,”* he said. “There was a certain wise lady… that came out and was able to bring peace… to end this revolution without harming the people, so that nobody would suffer from the civil war.” And the Zohar, he added, says she now teaches in an academy in Heaven. Whatever we make of her thousand years, the Sages chose well: the woman who carried Israel’s memory from Yosef to Moshe is the one who remembered the Torah’s law of peace when the general forgot it.

One man for the city. Yoav answers: “Far be it, far be it from me, that I should swallow up or destroy… deliver him only, and I will depart from the city” (20:20–21). The woman “went unto all the people in her wisdom,” and Sheva’s head comes over the wall.

The Sages made a law from this moment. If enemies say, “give us one of you and we will kill him, or we will kill you all,” all must die rather than hand over one soul. But if they name a man, “like Sheva ben Bichri,” he may be handed over. Reish Lakish adds: only if he is liable to death, like Sheva; Rabbi Yochanan: even if not (Yerushalmi Terumot 8:4; Tosefta Terumot 7). The Rambam rules like Reish Lakish, and adds that “we do not instruct them so in advance” (Rambam, Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 5:5).

Messianic reading. Another council, a thousand years later, used the same reasoning. “It is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not” (John 11:50). John says Kayafa spoke more than he knew: “he prophesied that Yeshua should die for that nation; and not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad” (John 11:51–52). Sheva was handed over because he was guilty, a rebel against David’s house. Yeshua was handed over though he was innocent, the heir of David’s house, and he died to gather the scattered tribes that Sheva had divided. “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9): the wise woman saved a city by one death; the Son of David saved the world by his.

20:23–26 · David’s officers, and a famine

The chapter closes with a list of David’s ministers, like the one in 8:16–18. Yoav is back over the army. The last name is “Ira also the Jairite was a chief ruler (kohen) about David” (20:26). The Targum (as Radak quotes it) and Rashi on the Talmud say Ira was David’s teacher. The Talmud draws a lesson from the word kohen: Rabbi Abba bar Zavda said, “Whoever gives all his priestly gifts to one kohen brings famine into the world.” Was Ira a kohen to David alone? Rather, David sent all his gifts to him, “and it is written after it, And there was a famine in the days of David” (Eruvin 63a; Rashi on 20:26). The Sages read the last verse of chapter 20 and the first verse of chapter 21 together, and so will we.

Chapter 21 · Famine, Bones, and Giants

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The last four chapters of the book step back from the story of Avshalom and Sheva and gather other events of David’s reign: a famine, the giants, a song (22), David’s last words and his mighty men (23), and a plague (24). Chapter 21 begins with a debt left over from Shaul.

21:1–6 · Three years of famine

“Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David enquired of Hashem. And Hashem answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites” (21:1).

David searches himself first. The Talmud says David searched one sin each year. The first year he suspected idolatry, since the Torah warns that idolatry shuts up the heavens (Deuteronomy 11:16–17); the second year, sexual sin (Jeremiah 3:3); the third year, those who pledge charity in public and do not give (Proverbs 25:14). He found none, and said, “The matter depends only on me,” and he sought Hashem; Reish Lakish says it was through the Urim (Yevamot 78b). The answer had two parts: Shaul “was not eulogized as he should have been,” and Shaul had killed the Gibeonites. Where did Shaul kill Gibeonites? He destroyed Nov, the city of priests (1 Samuel 22:19), and the priests of Nov had supplied the Gibeonites with water and food, “so Scripture counts it as if he killed them” (Yevamot 78b–79a).

Who were the Gibeonites? “The Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites; and the children of Israel had sworn unto them” (21:2). They had tricked Yehoshua into a covenant (Joshua 9), and Israel kept the oath though it was gained by deceit. FFOZ explains their strange place: as Canaanites they could not be received as ordinary converts, and as covenant partners they could not be destroyed or driven out, so they became “a separate people within the nation of Israel” who kept Israel’s religion but did not marry into it (End of Days, Lesson 25, “Twelve Thrones”). The Midrash calls them gerim gerurim, people who attached themselves to Israel not for the sake of Heaven, and has Hashem draw them near anyway (Bamidbar Rabbah 8:4; compare Yerushalmi Kiddushin 4:1). An oath sworn in Hashem’s name to outsiders four hundred years earlier still bound Israel, and Shaul’s zeal “to the children of Israel and Judah” (21:2) did not excuse breaking it.

The Gibeonites’ price. David asks, “Wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of Hashem?” (21:3). They refuse silver and gold, and demand seven of Shaul’s sons to hang “unto Hashem in Gibeah of Saul, whom Hashem did choose” (21:6). The Talmud says David saw in this the measure of the Gibeonites: “This nation is distinguished by three signs: they are merciful, they are bashful, and they do acts of kindness… whoever has these three signs is fit to cleave to this nation.” He tried to appease them and they would not be appeased, so David decreed that they could not marry into Israel (Yevamot 79a; the decree is already mentioned on 78b). Mercy is the family likeness of the children of Avraham (Genesis 18:19). Yeshua said the same in his own way: “Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful” (Luke 6:36).

21:7–9 · Spared for an oath

“But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of Hashem’s oath that was between them” (21:7). Years before, Yehonatan had made David swear not to cut off his kindness from his house forever (1 Samuel 20:15, 42). One oath, to the Gibeonites, demands blood; another, to Yehonatan, protects it.

The Talmud asks whether David played favorites. Rav Huna says David passed Shaul’s descendants before the Ark, and whomever the Ark held was for death. What about Mefiboshet? After going back and forth, the Gemara concludes that David prayed beforehand that the Ark would not hold him (Yevamot 79a). The Midrash tells it with the altar instead of the Ark (Bamidbar Rabbah 8:4).

The seven are two sons of Ritzpah, Shaul’s concubine, and five sons “of Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel” (21:8). Michal had no children (6:23); these were her sister Merav’s sons (1 Samuel 18:19). Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korcha learns from this: “Merav bore them and Michal raised them, so they are called by her name. Whoever raises an orphan in his house, Scripture counts it as if he gave birth to him” (Sanhedrin 19b).

A hard question. The Torah says, “the children shall not be put to death for the fathers” (Deuteronomy 24:16). How could seven sons die for Shaul’s sin? The Talmud does not hide the difficulty. Rabbi Chiya bar Abba in the name of Rabbi Yochanan says: “It is better that one letter be uprooted from the Torah than that the Name of Heaven be desecrated publicly” (Yevamot 79a). The nations had seen Israel swear by Hashem and then break the oath; the Name had to be cleared before the world. We do not have to be comfortable with this verse to learn from it: breaking an oath made in Hashem’s name is not a private sin, and its cost can fall on those who did not commit it.

21:10–14 · Ritzpah’s vigil

“And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night” (21:10).

From the barley harvest in Nisan “until water dropped,” the rains of Tishri, says Rashi: half a year (Rashi on 21:10). The Midrash counts seven months, to the seventeenth of Marcheshvan (Bamidbar Rabbah 8:4). For all that time a mother sat on a rock in sackcloth and chased away the birds by day and the jackals by night. In chapter 3 Ritzpah was a prize two men fought over (3:7). Here she is the bravest person in the chapter, and she has no words at all.

The Torah says a hanged man’s body “shall not remain all night upon the tree” (Deuteronomy 21:23), and these bodies hung for months. The Talmud explains this too: Rabbi Yochanan in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Yehotzadak says it was done so that the Name of Heaven would be sanctified publicly. People passing by asked what these men had done, and were told: “They are king’s sons, who stretched out their hands against strangers who had joined Israel.” And the nations said, “There is no nation as worthy to cleave to as this one,” and a hundred and fifty thousand joined Israel (Yevamot 79a; Rashi on 21:10).

Ritzpah’s vigil moved David. He went to Yavesh Gilad and brought back the bones of Shaul and Yehonatan, which the men of Yavesh had rescued from the wall of Beit She’an (1 Samuel 31:11–13), gathered the bones of the seven, and buried them all “in the country of Benjamin in Zelah, in the sepulchre of Kish his father… And after that God was intreated for the land” (21:14). The Talmud says the time for Shaul’s eulogy had already passed (Yevamot 79a). But the man Shaul hunted gave him what he could: an honorable grave in his father’s tomb.

Messianic reading. Another son of a king hung “before Hashem” outside a city, and the Torah’s law was not set aside for him. “The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day… besought Pilate… that they might be taken away” (John 19:31). “There stood by the cross of Yeshua his mother” (John 19:25), and a rich man, Yosef of Arimathea, gave the body an honorable grave (Matthew 27:57–60). The seven sons died for their father’s sin, and the Name was sanctified among the nations. The Son died for sins not his own, “and not for that nation only” (John 11:52), and the nations still come to him.

21:15–22 · The lamp of Israel and the sons of the giant

The last scene is the Philistine wars, and four giants “born to the giant in Gath” (21:22). David “waxed faint,” and Yishbi-benov, with a spear of three hundred shekels of bronze, meant to kill him; “But Abishai the son of Zeruiah succoured him, and smote the Philistine, and killed him. Then the men of David sware unto him, saying, Thou shalt go no more out with us to battle, that thou quench not the light (ner) of Israel” (21:16–17).

Yishbi-benov. The Talmud tells a long story about this verse. Rav Yehuda in Rav’s name reads the giant’s name as “a man who came over the matter of Nov.” Hashem said to David: through you Nov was destroyed, Doeg was banished, and Shaul and his three sons were killed; do you choose that your line should end, or that you be delivered into the hand of an enemy? David chose the enemy. The Satan appeared to him as a deer while he was hunting and drew him into Philistine land, where Yishbi seized him. Far away, Avishai was washing his hair before Shabbat and saw stains of blood in the water, and he knew. He rode to David, killed Yishbi’s mother Orpah, and rescued the king, and Rav Yehuda in Rav’s name reads “succoured him” as “helped him in prayer” (Sanhedrin 95a; Rashi on 21:17). Even here, at the end, the sin of Nov is still being paid for; the same debt that brought the famine brought the giant.

Orpah and Ruth. The mother of the four giants is called Harafah, and the Talmud says she was Orpah, Ruth’s sister-in-law, the one who kissed Naomi and turned back while Ruth clung to her (Ruth 1:14). Rava says: in reward for the four tears Orpah shed for her mother-in-law, four mighty men came from her. And Rabbi Yitzchak: “Let the sons of the one who kissed come and fall into the hands of the son of the one who clung” (Sotah 42b). Rav Chisda names the four: Saf, Madon, Goliath and Yishbi-benov. The two daughters-in-law of Moav each had descendants. One line ended in giants who defied Israel; the other ended in David, and through him in the Messiah, whose genealogy names Ruth (Matthew 1:5).

“Elchanan… slew Goliath.” Verse 19 says that Elchanan son of Ya’arei Oregim of Beit Lechem killed “Goliath the Gittite.” The King James adds “the brother of” from 1 Chronicles 20:5, which says Elchanan son of Ya’ir killed Lachmi, Goliath’s brother. The Targum and Rashi read it differently: Elchanan is David himself, and ya’arei oregim means his family wove the curtain for the Sanctuary (Rashi on 21:19; Targum on 21:19). Radak reports the Targum and admits, “Why David is called Elchanan, I do not know,” and prefers the reading of Chronicles. We note both and do not need to decide. Our own Benei Avraham study When Angels Fell traced the giants from before the flood to these last four: “the Nephilim kept coming back, until Moshe, Yehoshua and David finished them off.”

Hebrew lesson: נֵר (ner), “lamp.” “That thou quench not the ner of Israel.” The Targum translates it “the kingdom of Israel”; the Metzudat David says, “The king is like a lamp that shines and gives light to all.” Hashem promised that David would always have “a lamp* (nir) before me in Jerusalem” (1 Kings 11:36), and the Psalm says, “I have ordained a lamp (ner) for mine anointed” (Psalm 132:17). Ariel Cohen Alloro has taught us in his video “The Trinity – Part 06” that Avner’s name means av ner, “father of the lamp,” because “one of the names of David… is ‘candle,’ ‘the candle of Israel.’”* David’s men would not let their lamp go out in a skirmish with a giant. Hashem would not let it go out in the exile either.

Messianic reading. The lamp of David burns in his Son. Zechariah the priest sang of “the dayspring from on high… to give light to them that sit in darkness” (Luke 1:78–79). Yeshua said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). And at the end, the city “had no need of the sun… for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light (lamp) thereof” (Revelation 21:23), and he says of himself, “I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star” (Revelation 22:16).

Drawing it together

1. The king waits to be brought back. “Why speak ye not a word of bringing the king back?” David would not force his way home; the Son of David waits for his brothers to say, “Blessed is he that cometh.”

2. The day of return is a day of mercy. Shimei, who stoned the king, came down first and was pardoned. Radak’s midrash: Yosef repaid evil with good.

3. Mourning while the king is away. Mefiboshet did not wash or trim until the king came back in peace, and then wanted the king more than the land.

4. Jealousy over the king becomes rebellion against him. “Ten parts in the king” turned in one verse into “no portion in David.” The Messiah will make Ephraim and Yehudah one.

5. One death for many. The wise woman saved her city by giving up a guilty man. Kayafa prophesied without knowing it that one innocent man would die for the nation and gather the scattered children of God.

6. Oaths and mercy. The Gibeonites’ oath was kept at a terrible price; Yehonatan’s oath spared Mefiboshet. Mercy, the Sages said, is the mark of Avraham’s children.

7. The lamp of Israel. The giants fell, Orpah’s sons before Ruth’s son. The lamp Hashem ordained for His anointed has not gone out.

Questions for discussion

1. Read 19:1 and 19:5–9. Why does Yoav rebuke David, and was he right? What does the Talmud make of the eight times “my son” (Sotah 10b)?

2. Why does David wait for the tribes to bring him back (19:11–15)? How do Hosea 3:5, Matthew 23:39 and Acts 3:19–21 apply the same idea to the Messiah?

3. Why did Shimei call himself “the first of all the house of Yosef” (19:21)? What do Rashi and Radak say? Why did David pardon him that day?

4. How did Mefiboshet show his loyalty (19:25)? Compare Matthew 9:15. Why did David divide the land, and what does the Talmud say it cost (Shabbat 56b)?

5. What did Barzillai give up, and what did he ask for Kimham? What do 1 Kings 2:7 and Jeremiah 41:17 tell us about how David repaid him?

6. How did “ten parts in the king” turn into “no portion in David” (19:44–20:1)? How do Isaiah 11:13 and Ezekiel 37:22 answer it?

7. Compare Yoav’s kiss (20:9) with Judas’s (Matthew 26:49). What does Sanhedrin 49a say about why Amasa was late?

8. Who was the wise woman of Avel, according to the Midrash? What did she remind Yoav from the Torah (Deuteronomy 20:10)? How is her “one man for the city” like and unlike John 11:50?

9. Why did the Gibeonites’ oath still bind Israel after four hundred years? What three signs mark Avraham’s children (Yevamot 79a)?

10. What did Ritzpah do, and what did it lead David to do? How does Deuteronomy 21:23 connect her vigil with John 19:31?

11. What does the Talmud teach about Orpah and Ruth (Sotah 42b)? Why does it matter that Ruth is named in Matthew 1:5?

12. What does it mean to call the king “the lamp of Israel” (21:17)? Trace the lamp through 1 Kings 11:36, Psalm 132:17, John 8:12 and Revelation 21:23.

Sources

Scripture: Genesis 18, 46; Numbers 26; Deuteronomy 10, 11, 20, 21, 24; Joshua 1, 9; Ruth 1; 1 Samuel 18, 20, 22, 31; 2 Samuel 3, 6, 8, 12, 16–18; 1 Kings 2, 11, 12; 1 Chronicles 8, 20; Psalm 16, 55, 80, 132; Proverbs 25, 27; Isaiah 8, 11; Jeremiah 3, 41; Ezekiel 37; Hosea 3; Amos 5; Matthew 1, 5, 9, 10, 23, 26, 27; Luke 1, 6, 15, 22; John 8, 11, 19; Acts 3; Romans 5; Ephesians 2; Philippians 3; Revelation 21, 22.

Talmud and Midrash: Berakhot 4a; Shabbat 56a–b, 152a; Eruvin 63a; Yevamot 78b–79a; Sotah 10b, 42b; Sanhedrin 19b, 49a, 95a, 101b; Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1; Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 2:3; Yerushalmi Terumot 8:4; Yerushalmi Kiddushin 4:1; Tosefta Terumot 7; Bereshit Rabbah 94:9; Bamidbar Rabbah 8:4; Kohelet Rabbah 9:18; Targum Yonatan on 2 Samuel 20:18, 21:17, 21:19 and Jeremiah 41:17; Targum on Hosea 3:5.

Commentators: Rashi, Radak and Metzudat David on 2 Samuel 19–21; Rashi on Jeremiah 41:17; Rambam, Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 5:5.

Our teachers: FFOZ, End of Days, Lessons 22–23 (“The Ten Tribes–Shechinah”) and 25 (“Twelve Thrones”); Rabbi Efraim Palvanov, “Lebanon & Iran in the End of Days” (on Serach bat Asher), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOUTSoOJA4c; Ariel Cohen Alloro, “The Trinity – Part 06” (on Avner and “the lamp of Israel”), https://youtu.be/gBTeMz87-Uc, and “The 4 sons from the Passover Haggadah – Part 26” (on 1 Kings 2:33), https://youtu.be/5pUIETFpPNU; Benei Avraham, When Angels Fell and The Son of David (Sukkot 5787).

A note on one source: FFOZ cites “Genesis Rabbah 5:3” for the Gibeonites as converts out of fear; we could not find it there, and cite instead Bamidbar Rabbah 8:4 and Yerushalmi Kiddushin 4:1, where the teaching appears.

Before we begin

These are the last three chapters of 2 Samuel. The book does not end with a battle or a death. It ends with a song, a last testament, a list of names, and an altar.

Chapter 22 is David’s great song of deliverance, which also stands in the book of Psalms as Psalm 18: “Hashem is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer.” Chapter 23 gives “the last words of David”: a short prophecy about a righteous ruler who rises like the morning sun, followed by the roll of David’s mighty men, which ends with a name that stops the reader, Uriyah the Chitti. Chapter 24 tells of David’s census, the plague that followed, and the threshing floor of Aravnah the Yevusi, where the angel stopped, David built an altar, and the plague was stayed. That threshing floor became the Temple Mount.

Our own observation on the shape of the last four chapters: a famine and a plague stand at the two ends (21:1–14; 24), giants and mighty men stand inside them (21:15–22; 23:8–39), and at the center are two poems (22; 23:1–7). The book closes by looking past David’s story to what it was for: praise, the Messiah, and the house of Hashem.

We read as before: the text first; then the Sages; then our own teachers (the FFOZ End of Days lessons, Rabbi Efraim Palvanov, Ariel Cohen Alloro, and our own Benei Avraham classes); and last, what the passage shows about Mashiach. Gematria and Kabbalah are offered as hints, never as proof, and everything is tested by the Torah (Isaiah 8:20). Scripture is quoted from the King James Version with Hashem in place of LORD, as in our Statement of Faith.

Chapter 22 · The Rock of My Salvation

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22:1 · “In the day that Hashem had delivered him”

“And David spake unto Hashem the words of this song in the day that Hashem had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul” (22:1).

When was it sung? Rashi: “in his old age, after all his troubles had passed over him and he was delivered from them all.” Radak: “David composed this song at the end of his days, when Hashem had given him rest.” Why is Shaul named apart from “all his enemies”? Rashi answers that Shaul was “his enemy and pursuer more than all of them,” and Radak that Shaul “was weighed against all his enemies” (Rashi and Radak on 22:1). The Midrash adds that a fellow Israelite pursuing you is harder to bear than all the nations (Midrash Tehillim 18).

Two versions. The song appears again as Psalm 18, with many small differences. Radak says the wording differs but “the meaning is one.” The Abarbanel has a fuller answer: David composed the song in his youth as a private song “between him and God,” to sing after every rescue, and at the end of his life, when he set it in the book of Psalms for others to pray, he adjusted the wording; he counts seventy-four differences and gives a reason for each (Abarbanel on 22:1; the Malbim follows him). One small example: here Hashem “was seen (vayera) upon the wings of the wind” (22:11); in Psalms He “did fly (vayede).” The Midrash reads both: “From here we learn that He has many worlds, and He goes to appear in them” (Midrash Tehillim 18; Radak on 22:11).

Sung after the giants. Why does the song come right after the giants fell (21:15–22)? The Midrash says David sang only after he had been reviled and his enemies had fallen, and then draws the lesson for the end of days: “So when the Messiah comes, no song is sung until the Messiah is reviled,” citing “wherewith they have reproached the footsteps of thine anointed” (Psalm 89:51; Midrash Tehillim 18, Rabbi Yudan). The Sages also remember that this chapter is a haftarah: on the last day of Pesach Israel reads the Song at the Sea, and the prophets’ reading is “And David spake” (Megillah 31a). The song of Moshe at the sea and the song of David at the end of his wars are read together.

The Talmud tells of a king who did not sing. The Holy One wished to make Chizkiyahu the Messiah after the defeat of Sancheriv, but the Attribute of Justice objected: “David, king of Israel, who said so many songs and praises before You, You did not make Messiah; and Chizkiyahu, for whom You did all these miracles, did not say a song before You” (Sanhedrin 94a, Bar Kappara). Praise is part of what the Messiah’s house is made of.

22:2–20 · “He drew me out of many waters”

“Hashem is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; the God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge” (22:2–3).

Hebrew lesson: צוּר (tzur), “rock.” The word frames the whole song: “Hashem is my rock” (22:2), “the God of my rock” (22:3), “who is a rock, save our God?” (22:32), “Hashem liveth; and blessed be my rock” (22:47). David had hidden in rocks for years, in the caves of Adullam and Ein Gedi (1 Samuel 22:1; 24:3). He learned that the rock that saves is not stone. Moshe had sung, “He is the Rock, his work is perfect” (Deuteronomy 32:4), and the prophets called Hashem “the Rock of Israel” (23:3; Isaiah 30:29). Paul said of the rock that followed Israel in the wilderness, “that Rock was Messiah” (1 Corinthians 10:4).

“The horn of my salvation.” Keren yish’i (22:3). When Zechariah the priest heard that the Messiah was coming, he sang the same words: “Blessed be Hashem God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, and hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David” (Luke 1:68–69).

The storm. David was in “the waves of death,” “the sorrows of hell (Sheol)” (22:5–6), and he called out, “and he did hear my voice out of his temple” (22:7). Then the whole creation moves: the earth shakes, smoke and fire, Hashem bows the heavens and comes down, rides on a cherub, thunders, sends arrows and lightning, lays bare the channels of the sea (22:8–16). It is Sinai and the Red Sea at once, and all of it for one man: “He sent from above, he took me; he drew me out of many waters… he delivered me, because he delighted in me” (22:17, 20).

Our observation. Yamsheni, “he drew me out,” is the word Pharaoh’s daughter used when she named Moshe: “because I drew him (meshitihu) out of the water” (Exodus 2:10). The God who drew Moshe out of the Nile drew David out of the floods.

Messianic reading. Peter preached that God raised Yeshua, “having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it” (Acts 2:24). The Son of David went down into the waters of death that David only felt around him, and was drawn out of them on the third day.

22:21–28 · “According to my righteousness”

“Hashem rewarded me according to my righteousness: according to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me… With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful, and with the upright man thou wilt shew thyself upright. With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure; and with the froward thou wilt shew thyself unsavoury” (22:21, 26–27).

How can David, after Bat-Sheva and Uriyah, speak of the cleanness of his hands? The Abarbanel says the song was composed in his youth, so (we may add) long before Bat-Sheva, and kept in the book of Psalms afterward. And the next chapter will call David “the man who raised up the yoke of repentance” (Moed Katan 16b, on 23:1). A man who has truly returned may speak again of righteousness, not as one who never fell but as one whom Hashem has made clean (Psalm 51:9).

Measure for measure. Rashi on Psalms calls these verses “measure for measure.” On our chapter he reads them of the fathers: the merciful, the upright and the pure are the three patriarchs, “whose righteousness the Holy One repaid to their children,” and “with the perverse” is Pharaoh (Rashi on 22:26–27). Radak: to one who is merciful in his ways, “You show that You are merciful by doing him good,” and the punishment of the perverse comes “by his own twisted way” (Radak on 22:26–27). The Targum reads verse 28 as Israel’s hope: the people “called a dark people in this world, You are destined to redeem” (Targum on 22:28).

Messianic reading. “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy” (Matthew 5:7). “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” (Matthew 7:2). Yeshua taught the same measure, and added that the Father’s mercy goes before ours: “while we were yet sinners, Messiah died for us” (Romans 5:8).

22:29–51 · “Thy gentleness hath made me great”

“For thou art my lamp, O Hashem: and Hashem will lighten my darkness” (22:29). In chapter 21 David’s men called him “the lamp of Israel”; here David says who his lamp is.

“Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation: and thy gentleness (anvatcha) hath made me great” (22:36). The word is humility. Rashi: “You enlarged toward me the measure of Your humility.” Radak on the psalm: “as if You lowered Your glory to attend to me” (Rashi on 22:36; Radak on Psalm 18:36). The Talmud teaches the same of God everywhere: “Wherever you find the might of the Holy One, blessed be He, there you find His humility,” with proofs from the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings (Megillah 31a, Rabbi Yochanan; Deuteronomy 10:17–18; Isaiah 57:15; Psalm 68:5–6).

Messianic reading. Paul sang the same song of the Son: he “humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him” (Philippians 2:8–9). God’s humility made David great; the Son’s humility made him Lord.

“Head of the nations.” “Thou hast kept me to be head of the heathen: a people which I knew not shall serve me. Strangers shall submit themselves unto me” (22:44–45). The Targum reads the song’s climax as the redemption: “because of the miracle and redemption that You will do for Your Messiah and for the remnant of Your people… all the nations will confess, There is no God but Hashem” (Targum on 22:32). FFOZ hears these verses on the lips of the Messiah in the end of days: “You have placed me as head of the nations; a people whom I have not known serve me” (Psalm 18:43; End of Days, Lesson 19, “Banner on a Mountain”). And Paul quotes verse 50 to explain why the Gentiles praise the God of Israel: “For this cause I will confess to thee among the Gentiles, and sing unto thy name” (Romans 15:9; 22:50).

Migdol and magdil. The last verse has a written and a read form. Psalm 18 says magdil, “He makes great the salvations of His king”; here the reading is migdol, “a tower of salvation.” Every Jew says this verse at the end of the grace after meals, and the custom is to say magdil on weekdays and migdol on Shabbat, festivals and Rosh Chodesh (Mishnah Berurah 189:5). The Abudarham gives a reason he received from his teachers: magdil is in Psalms, from before David was king; migdol is in the Prophets, when he was already king, and Shabbat is the king of days (Abudarham, Laws of Blessings 1:67). The Midrash reads both: redemption comes “little by little,” growing like the dawn (magdil); and “what is migdol? That King Messiah is made for them like a tower” (Midrash Tehillim 18, Rabbi Yudan).

“He sheweth mercy to his anointed (meshicho), unto David, and to his seed for evermore” (22:51). Radak says David speaks of himself and his descendants. The song ends where Natan’s promise began: “thy throne shall be established for ever” (7:16).

Chapter 23 · The Last Words of David

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23:1–7 · “The sweet psalmist of Israel”

“Now these be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said, The Spirit of Hashem spake by me, and his word was in my tongue” (23:1–2).

The last words. Rashi: “the last prophecy of David. And what was the first? The words of the song” in chapter 22. Radak: these were the last of all his songs and psalms, “for after this the holy spirit did not appear upon him” (Rashi and Radak on 23:1). The Targum calls them “the words of the prophecy of David, which he prophesied concerning the end of the world” and the consolation that is to come (Targum on 23:1).

“Raised up on high.” The Talmud reads hukam al as “who raised up the yoke of repentance” (Moed Katan 16b, Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani in the name of Rabbi Yonatan). David’s greatness is not that he never fell. It is that he showed every sinner in Israel the way back.

Hebrew lesson: נְעִים זְמִרוֹת יִשְׂרָאֵל (ne’im zemirot Yisrael). “The sweet singer of Israel’s songs.” A zemer is a song sung to an instrument; the book of Psalms is Tehillim, praises, but its headings are full of mizmor, from the same root. David’s title in his last words is not “king” or “warrior” but singer. Israel has prayed in his words for three thousand years.

“He that ruleth over men must be just.” “The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds” (23:3–4). The Talmud hears a daring reading in the words: “I rule over man. Who rules over Me? The righteous; for I issue a decree, and he annuls it” (Moed Katan 16b, Rabbi Abahu). The Targum reads it as the Messiah outright: “He said that He would appoint for me a king, who is the Messiah, who is destined to arise and rule in the fear of Hashem,” and of the righteous, “you are destined to shine like the light of the morning” (Targum on 23:3–4). David’s house was not yet what that ruler would be: “although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure” (23:5). The Targum adds that the kingdom is “kept for the world to come” (Targum on 23:5).

Another David. Ariel Cohen Alloro, in his video “The 4 sons from the Passover Haggadah – Part 3,” has taught us the Talmud’s reading of “David their king, whom I will raise up” (Jeremiah 30:9): “The Holy One is destined to raise up for them another David,” for it says “I will raise up,” not “I raised up” (Sanhedrin 98b, Rav Yehuda in the name of Rav). When Rav Papa asked how that fits “David my servant shall be their prince for ever” (Ezekiel 37:25), Abaye answered: “like a Caesar and a half-Caesar,” a king and his viceroy.

Messianic reading. Yeshua asked the Pharisees how the Messiah could be David’s son, “How then doth David in spirit call him Lord?” (Matthew 22:43); David’s last words say the same: “The Spirit of Hashem spake by me.” The ruler who “must be just, ruling in the fear of God” is the Branch on whom rests “the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Hashem” (Isaiah 11:2). The “light of the morning, when the sun riseth” is “the Sun of righteousness… with healing in his wings” (Malachi 4:2), “the dayspring from on high” (Luke 1:78). And the “everlasting covenant… sure” is what Isaiah called “the sure mercies of David” (Isaiah 55:3), which Paul preached were fulfilled when God raised Yeshua from the dead (Acts 13:34).

23:8–12 · The first three

“These be the names of the mighty men whom David had: The Tachmonite that sat in the seat, chief among the captains; the same was Adino the Eznite: he lift up his spear against eight hundred, whom he slew at one time” (23:8).

David himself. The Talmud reads the first name as David. Rabbi Abahu: “These are the names of David’s mighty deeds.” Yoshev bashevet, “who sat in the seat”, is read of David sitting to teach Torah, in the days of his teacher Ira the Ya’iri and after him. Tachkemoni: Rav says Hashem told him, “Since you humbled yourself, be like Me (kamoni): I decree and you annul.” Adino ha’Etzni: when he sat in Torah study he made himself soft as a worm (me’aden), and when he went to war he hardened himself like wood (etz). And the eight hundred: he shot one arrow and felled eight hundred, and sighed for the two hundred more he might have, until a heavenly voice said, “Only in the matter of Uriyah the Chitti” (Moed Katan 16b; Rashi on 23:8).

Then Elazar son of Dodo, whose hand “clave unto the sword” after the people fled (23:9–10), and Shammah son of Agee, who stood alone in a field of lentils (23:11–12). Twice the verse says the same thing: “and Hashem wrought a great victory.” The mighty men were mighty because Hashem stood with them.

23:13–17 · Water from the well of Bethlehem

David was in the stronghold of Adullam, and the Philistines held Beit Lechem, his own town. “And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Beth-lehem, which is by the gate!” Three mighty men broke through the Philistine camp, drew the water, and brought it. “Nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto Hashem. And he said, Be it far from me, O Hashem, that I should do this: is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives?” (23:15–17).

The plain sense. Radak: if he drank it, “it would be as though he drank their blood,” since they brought it at the risk of their lives; so he poured it on the ground for Hashem, since there was no altar there (Radak on 23:16). Radak also brings a view of the Sages closer to the plain sense: it was Sukkot, and David poured it as a water libation.

The Talmud’s reading. The Gemara reads the “water” as Torah: David had a question of law. Rav Huna says Philistines were hiding in Israelite barley stacks, and David asked whether one may save oneself with another’s property; the answer was that it is forbidden, “but you are king, and a king may break through to make a road for himself.” Others give other questions (Bava Kamma 60b–61a; Rashi on 23:16 follows it). Radak calls this reading “very far from the plain sense,” and we read the story as he does.

Messianic reading. The king refused to drink what had cost other men their blood. The Son of David, born in that same Beit Lechem, did the opposite: he drank the cup himself, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will” (Matthew 26:39), and then gave his disciples a cup to drink: “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you” (Luke 22:20). David poured out the water so that no one’s blood would be drunk. Yeshua poured out his blood so that all who thirst may drink: “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” (John 7:37).

23:18–39 · The mighty men

Avishai, Yo’av’s brother, chief of the second three. Then Benayahu son of Yehoyada, “the son of a valiant man, of Kabzeel, who had done many acts, he slew two lionlike men of Moab: he went down also and slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow” (23:20).

Benayahu. The Talmud reads every phrase as Torah. “Son of a living man” (ben ish chai, the written form): “even in his death he is called living,” for the righteous in their death are called living. “Many acts” (rav pe’alim): “he increased and gathered workers for Torah.” “The two Ariel of Moav”: “he left none like him in the First Temple or the Second.” And the lion in the pit on a snowy day: “some say he broke blocks of ice and went down and immersed; some say he learned the Sifra of the house of Rav on a winter day” (Berakhot 18a–b).

The thirty. Then thirty names and more: Asah’el, killed by Avner long ago (2:23), stands first. Among them is “Eliam the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite” (23:34); the Talmud joins him to “Bath-sheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite” (11:3; Sanhedrin 69b). And the list ends: “Uriah the Hittite: thirty and seven in all” (23:39).

Our observation. No commentator we found remarks on it, but every reader feels it: the last word of David’s roll of honor is the name of the man David killed. Scripture does not let the king, or us, forget. The Talmud’s heavenly voice said the same in Moed Katan: David’s record was perfect, “only in the matter of Uriyah the Chitti.” Uriyah is counted among the mighty men forever, faithful to the end, and David’s song and last words are read beside his name.

Messianic reading. FFOZ calls the 144,000 of Revelation “the hosts of Hashem and the mighty men of King Messiah,” numbered for battle like David’s men (End of Days, Lesson 49, “Day of Harvest”; Revelation 7:4–8). The Messiah too has a roll of names: “I will not blot out his name out of the book of life” (Revelation 3:5). And like David’s, it is a roll of the forgiven.

Chapter 24 · The Threshing Floor

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24:1–9 · “Go, number Israel and Judah”

“And again the anger of Hashem was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah” (24:1).

Who moved David? Chronicles tells it differently: “And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel” (1 Chronicles 21:1). Rashi on our verse admits, “I do not know why” Hashem was angry. Radak suggests sins done in secret, or a return of the anger of Avshalom’s revolt or the famine, and says the impulse in David’s heart to count them “is the Satan, as it says in Chronicles” (Rashi and Radak on 24:1). Rabbi Palvanov, in his class “Revelations from Jerusalem,” taught us the same story and said simply: “We don’t take censuses… which requires a lot of meditation and explanation.”

Why was it wrong? The Talmud says Hashem answered David for a word he once said to Shaul, “If Hashem have stirred thee up against me” (1 Samuel 26:19): “You called Me an inciter? I will make you stumble in a matter that even schoolchildren know,” the law that when Israel is counted, “they shall give every man a ransom for his soul” (Exodus 30:12; Berakhot 62b, Rabbi Elazar). David counted without the half-shekel. The Talmud forbids counting Israel “even for a mitzvah”: Shaul counted his army by lambs (1 Samuel 15:4; Rabbi Yitzchak). Rabbi Elazar says one who counts Israel transgresses a negative commandment, and Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak says two, from “which cannot be measured nor numbered” (Hosea 1:10; Yoma 22b). Israel is not a sum to be possessed; it is Hashem’s promise to Avraham, “as the sand of the sea.”

Yo’av, of all people, objects: “why doth my lord the king delight in this thing?” (24:3). He loses, and for nine months and twenty days the captains count from Dan to Be’er Sheva (24:8). FFOZ notes that a biblical census counts the men fit for war, “David’s census serves a similar function” (End of Days, Lesson 49, “Day of Harvest”). David counted his strength; he had just sung, “thou hast girded me with strength to battle” (22:40).

24:10–17 · “Let us fall now into the hand of Hashem”

“And David’s heart smote him after that he had numbered the people. And David said unto Hashem, I have sinned greatly” (24:10). Gad the seer comes with three choices: seven years of famine, three months of flight before enemies, or three days of plague (24:13). Chronicles says three years of famine (1 Chronicles 21:12); Radak reconciles them: three years had already passed in the famine of chapter 21, three more would make six, and the seventh year would be hungry until harvest (Radak on 24:13). Rashi notes that the three choices match the three ends David once named for Shaul: Hashem shall smite him, his day shall come, or he shall descend into battle (1 Samuel 26:10; Rashi on 24:12).

“I am in a great strait: let us fall now into the hand of Hashem; for his mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man” (24:14). Rashi brings Rabbi Alexandri: if David chose the sword, Israel would say he trusts his warriors; if famine, that he trusts his storehouses; so he chose “something in which all are equal.” Radak adds that famine would also put them in human hands, going down to Egypt for grain (Rashi and Radak on 24:14; Yalkut Shimoni 165). Rabbi Palvanov said it in one line in his class “Revelations from Jerusalem”: “I prefer something that comes directly from Hashem than something that depends on people.”

Seventy thousand die from Dan to Be’er Sheva. The Talmud says that when Hashem told the angel “It is enough (rav),” He meant, “Take the great one among them, through whom many debts can be paid,” and at that hour Avishai son of Tzeruyah died, who was equal to the majority of the Sanhedrin (Berakhot 62b, Rabbi Elazar; Radak on 24:16). The faithful warrior who had saved David’s life (21:17) is counted as a ransom for many.

“Hashem saw.” Chronicles says, “as he was destroying, Hashem beheld, and he repented him of the evil” (1 Chronicles 21:15). What did He see? Rav: Yaakov our father. Shmuel: the ashes of Yitzchak, “God will provide (yireh) himself a lamb” (Genesis 22:8). Rabbi Yitzchak Nafcha: the atonement money (Exodus 30:16). Rabbi Yochanan: the Temple, “in the mount of Hashem it shall be seen” (Genesis 22:14); and the Gemara prefers the Temple (Berakhot 62b).

“Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly: but these sheep, what have they done? let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me, and against my father’s house” (24:17). It is the best thing David says in the whole chapter. The shepherd who counted the sheep as his own now calls them innocent and asks the blow to fall on him.

Messianic reading. “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). David asked to take the blow and could not, because he was the guilty one. The Son of David took it though he was innocent: “All we like sheep have gone astray… and Hashem hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). The Torah asked a half-shekel “ransom for his soul” when Israel was counted (Exodus 30:12); “the Son of man came… to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45), and we were redeemed “not with corruptible things, as silver and gold… but with the precious blood of Messiah, as of a lamb without blemish” (1 Peter 1:18–19).

24:18–25 · The threshing floor of Aravnah

“And Gad came that day to David, and said unto him, Go up, rear an altar unto Hashem in the threshingfloor of Araunah the Jebusite” (24:18). Radak says the angel was stopped by that threshing floor as a sign that “there will be the Temple, the house of prayer and service,” and that David had to “go up” because the site is higher than the city (Radak on 24:16, 18).

Aravnah. “All these things did Araunah, as a king, give unto the king” (24:23); the Hebrew says Aravnah hamelech, “Aravnah the king.” Rashi: “he was the chief of the Yevusi.” Radak: he had been king of the Yevusim in Yerushalayim, and was allowed to stay because he had taken on the commandments of the sons of Noach (Rashi and Radak on 24:23). The Talmud calls him a ger toshav, a resident stranger who had left idolatry (Avodah Zarah 24b, Rav Nachman). Rabbi Palvanov, in his class “Revelations from Jerusalem,” taught us the Arizal’s teaching that Aravnah carried a spark of Malki-Tzedek, king of Shalem, who came out to bless Avraham (Genesis 14:18), and a spark of Efron, who sold Avraham the cave of Machpelah (Genesis 23). “Just like Shem ran out from the city to greet Abraham and blessed him and bowed down to him, Aravna does the same thing to David,” he said, and the Jebusite kings of the city bore names beginning with Adoni (Joshua 10:1); Aravnah greets David as adoni hamelech, “my lord the king.”

“Not of that which doth cost me nothing.” Aravnah offers everything for free: the floor, the oxen, the threshing sledges for wood. David refuses: “Nay; but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto Hashem my God of that which doth cost me nothing” (24:24). Here he pays fifty shekels of silver; Chronicles says six hundred shekels of gold (1 Chronicles 21:25). The baraita answers: he took fifty from each tribe, six hundred in all; others say fifty for the floor and the oxen, and six hundred for the whole Temple site (Zevachim 116b; Rashi on 24:24). Like Avraham at Machpelah, David pays full price so that no one could ever say the place was not Israel’s.

Mount Moriah. Chronicles names the place: “Then Solomon began to build the house of Hashem at Jerusalem in mount Moriah, where Hashem appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite” (2 Chronicles 3:1). It is the mountain where Avraham bound Yitzchak and said, “In the mount of Hashem it shall be seen” (Genesis 22:14). Rabbi Palvanov, in his class “Understanding Mashiach ben Yosef, Part 2,” has taught us that Yitzchak on Mount Moriah was willing to give his life: “It sounds like Messiah ben Joseph, no? …the suffering servant who’s willing to give up his life to usher in the Messianic age.” The book of Samuel ends on the same mountain, with a plague stopped by an offering: “So Hashem was intreated for the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel” (24:25).

Hebrew lesson: גֹּרֶן (goren), “threshing floor.” A goren is a high, open, flat place where the wind blows, where grain is beaten and the chaff is blown away. It was on Boaz’s goren that Ruth asked him to spread his wing over her, and from that night came Oved, Yishai and David (Ruth 3–4). The house of David began on a threshing floor in Beit Lechem and ends on a threshing floor in Yerushalayim, and there the Temple would stand. Yochanan the Immerser said of the Messiah, “whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor (threshing floor), and gather his wheat into the garner” (Matthew 3:12).

Radak’s last word. On the last verse Radak brings a midrash: all who fell in David’s days fell only because they did not demand the building of the Temple; “if so, how much more for us, in whose days it was destroyed,” and that is why the Sages set the daily prayer, “Return Your Presence to Zion” (Radak on 24:25).

Messianic reading. David bought the place and built an altar; Shlomo built the house; the Son of David stood in its courts and said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up… he spake of the temple of his body” (John 2:19, 21). The costly offering on Moriah points to the offering that cost the most: “ye are bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20). And the prayer Radak names is still ours; FFOZ’s lessons describe its answer, the Temple rebuilt in the days of the Messiah and the Shechinah returning to dwell in it (End of Days, Lessons 19, “Banner on a Mountain,” and 24, “Table of Abraham”).

Drawing it together

1. The Rock sings. David’s last great song begins and ends with tzur: Hashem is the rock that does not move. The Midrash says the Messiah, too, will sing only after he is reviled; and Paul said the Rock was Messiah.

2. Humility makes great. “Thy gentleness hath made me great.” Wherever God’s might is, His humility is there too; the Son who humbled himself was exalted.

3. The last words point forward. David’s last prophecy is about a just ruler who rises like the morning sun. The Targum says plainly: the Messiah, destined to arise and rule in the fear of Hashem.

4. Names remembered, and one name not hidden. The mighty men are counted, and the list ends with Uriyah. The Messiah’s book of life is a roll of the forgiven, not of the faultless.

5. Do not count what is not yours. Israel belongs to Hashem. David counted, and then asked that the blow fall on him and not the sheep; the Good Shepherd did what David could only ask.

6. The offering that costs. David would not offer what cost him nothing. On that threshing floor, Moriah, the Temple was built, and the book of Samuel ends with an altar and the plague stayed.

Questions for discussion

1. Why do Rashi and Radak think David sang chapter 22 at the end of his life, while the Abarbanel thinks he composed it in his youth? Why are there two versions (here and Psalm 18)?

2. What does the Midrash learn from the fact that the song comes right after the giants fall (Midrash Tehillim 18 on Psalm 89:51)?

3. Trace the word tzur, “rock,” through chapter 22. What does 1 Corinthians 10:4 add?

4. How can David speak of “the cleanness of my hands” (22:21)? How does “the yoke of repentance” (Moed Katan 16b) help?

5. What does “thy gentleness (humility) hath made me great” mean (22:36; Megillah 31a)? Compare Philippians 2:8–9.

6. Why do we say magdil on weekdays and migdol on Shabbat in the grace after meals? What does the Midrash make of the two words?

7. What does the Targum say about 23:3–4? How do Malachi 4:2 and Luke 1:78 read “the light of the morning, when the sun riseth”?

8. Why would David not drink the water from the well of Bethlehem (23:16–17)? How does Luke 22:20 turn the image around?

9. Why do you think the list of mighty men ends with Uriyah the Chitti (23:39)?

10. Why was it wrong for David to count Israel (24:1–10; Exodus 30:12; Berakhot 62b; Yoma 22b)? Who moved him, according to 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles?

11. Why did David choose the plague over famine or war (24:14)? What did Hashem “see” when He stopped the angel (Berakhot 62b)?

12. Why did David insist on paying for the threshing floor (24:24)? How do 2 Chronicles 3:1 and Genesis 22:14 connect it to the Temple and the Akedah?

Sources

Scripture: Genesis 14, 22, 23; Exodus 2, 30; Deuteronomy 10, 32; Joshua 10; Ruth 3–4; 1 Samuel 15, 20, 22, 24, 26; 2 Samuel 2, 7, 11, 21; 1 Kings 2; 1 Chronicles 21; 2 Chronicles 3; Psalm 18, 51, 68, 89; Isaiah 11, 30, 53, 55, 57; Jeremiah 30; Ezekiel 37; Hosea 1 (2:1 in Hebrew); Malachi 4 (3:20 in Hebrew); Matthew 3, 5, 7, 22, 26; Mark 10; Luke 1, 22; John 2, 7, 10; Acts 2, 13; Romans 5, 15; 1 Corinthians 6, 10; Philippians 2; 1 Peter 1; Revelation 3, 7.

Talmud and Midrash: Berakhot 18a–b, 62b; Yoma 22b; Megillah 31a; Moed Katan 16b; Bava Kamma 60b–61a; Sanhedrin 69b, 94a, 98b; Avodah Zarah 24b; Zevachim 116b; Midrash Tehillim 18; Yalkut Shimoni 165; Targum Yonatan on 2 Samuel 22:28, 22:32, 23:1–7.

Commentators and halachah: Rashi, Radak, Abarbanel and Malbim on 2 Samuel 22–24; Rashi and Radak on Psalm 18; Abudarham, Laws of Blessings; Mishnah Berurah 189:5.

Our teachers: FFOZ, End of Days, Lessons 19 (“Banner on a Mountain”), 24 (“Table of Abraham”) and 49 (“Day of Harvest”); Rabbi Efraim Palvanov, “Revelations from Jerusalem” (on the census, the threshing floor and Aravnah), https://youtu.be/SxzIBUZSiP4, and “Understanding Mashiach ben Yosef, Part 2” (on Yitzchak and Mashiach ben Yosef), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmrYeHRoiBE; Ariel Cohen Alloro, “The 4 sons from the Passover Haggadah – Part 3” (on “another David,” Sanhedrin 98b), https://youtu.be/lZjq4w_5Psw.