1. all the tribes of Israel came to David. “The tribes of Israel,” in keeping with the consistent usage of the preceding narrative, refers to the northern tribes that had been loyal to the house of Saul. With the assassination of Abner and then of Ish-Bosheth, they understandably now turn to David.

2. you were the one . . . It is you. The language of the tribal representatives puts considerable emphasis on the second-person pronoun: you are the one that we, and God, have chosen. The divine declaration of David’s legitimacy as ruler, quoted by the tribal spokesmen, is appropriately given the elevated status of poetry.

3. all the elders of Israel came to the king. This is not a duplication of the report in verse 1 from another source, as is often claimed. The convention used here is the well-attested one of “resumptive repetition”: when an interrupted narrative strand is resumed, a phrase from the point of interruption is repeated verbatim to mark the return to the main line. Here, the move to confirm David as king of Israel, with which the episode began, after the insertion of the tribes’ dialogue (verses 1–2), is carried forward. It is the role of the tribal rank and file to proclaim fealty, but of the elders to sign a pact and anoint David, and so “elders” is now strategically substituted for “tribes” of the first verse. One should note that the tribes come “to David” whereas the elders come “to the king,” for they are about to consummate the official business of kingmaking.

4. forty years he was king. In biblical usage, this is a formulaic number—in Judges often used to indicate a full term of governing. But the specificity of “seven years and six months” in Hebron has the look of a real number, whether or not it is historically precise.

6. the king went . . . to Jerusalem. The chronological link between this action and what precedes, as well as the chronology of the subsequent events in the chapter, is not clear. The principle of organization appears to be thematic or ideological rather than temporal. What we have here is a catalogue of salient actions by which David consolidates his new monarchy: the conquest of a capital city in the center of the north-south axis of the country that does not belong to any tribal territory (the same logic that led to the creation of Washington as capital in the District of Columbia, not part of any state); the construction of a palace with the assistance of a Phoenician alliance; the begetting of many offspring, including the future heir to the throne, Solomon; the defeat of the Philistines. The birth of Solomon is the clearest indication that these notices do not follow the chronology of the preceding narrative.

the blind and the lame. This puzzling phrase, together with its even more enigmatic occurrence in verse 8, is a notorious crux. The most disparate theories have been proposed for how to read the words of the text and how to reconstruct what is said to go on in the conquest of the city. The Qumran Samuel scroll for this verse reads: “You shall not enter here, for the blind and the lame have incited [hesitu for Masoretic hesirkha], saying, ‘David shall not enter here.’” This variant has the advantage of fluency, but one suspects it may have been invented to make a difficult traditional text more intelligible. The explanation proposed by Yigal Yadin is probably the most plausible: he points to a Hittite text for the swearing in of troops in which a blind woman and a lame man are set before the men with the monitory imprecation that their fate will be like that of those wretches if they fail in their duty. The Jebusites, then, might have displayed the lame and the blind on the ramparts with an analogous curse against those who would presume to attack the city. This taunting curse would explain why these maimed figures are “despised by David.”

8. Whoever strikes down the Jebusite and reaches the conduit. These words are the other salient element of the crux, with debate still raging over the meaning of “conduit” (tsinor). Some scholars have claimed it refers here to the windpipe, or a lower part of the anatomy, of the Jebusites who are to be struck down, but there is no Hebrew evidence for tsinor as anything but a water channel or tube, and the argument from the analogy of shape is a weak one. Moreover, the verb used here, naga‘, means primarily “to touch,” and in some biblical contexts, “to reach” or “take charge of” but not “to strike.” The most likely reference, then, is to a daring route of surprise access into the city. A frequently proposed candidate is Warren’s Shaft, discovered in 1867, an underground tunnel feeding in from the Gihon Spring on a slope outside the wall to the east. Though everything about this report remains uncertain, David may be saying that whoever manages to crawl through the tunnel, make his way up the vertical shaft that transects it, and cut down the Jebusites within the town together with their loathsome display of lame and blind will be given a great reward. (The reward clause is missing; one is supplied in the parallel verse in Chronicles—“will become a chief and commander.”)

No blind man nor lame shall enter the House. The story is thus given an etiological turn as an explanation for a known taboo, evidently pertaining to the temple but perhaps to David’s “house” (that is, the palace). One wonders whether there is an invitation here to think of Jonathan’s lame son—which would be another gesture for denying the Saulides all future claim to the throne.

11. Hiram king of Tyre. Hiram as a provider of timber and artisans points forward to Solomon’s construction of the Temple. If this is the Hiram with whom Solomon had dealings, David’s palace building would have been undertaken rather late in his own reign in order to coincide with Hiram’s regnal span.

13. from Jerusalem. Some Septuagint versions read “in Jerusalem.”

17. the Philistines heard. David’s assumption of the throne of all the tribes of Israel means that he has decisively cast aside his vassal status, and so the Philistines, who all along have been warring with the northern tribes, assemble their united forces (“all the Philistines”) to suppress the new monarchy.

the stronghold. The claim often made that this refers to the stronghold at Adullam (compare 1 Samuel 22) is unlikely because the battle here is entirely in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem. This would have to be the stronghold within the city, referred to in verse 9. David can “go down” to it because his residence in Jerusalem could be topographically above the stronghold.

18. the Valley of Rephaim. The location is outside the walls of the Jebusite city, a couple of miles to the west.

20. burst through my enemies . . . like a bursting of water. The existing place-name is etiologically reinscribed to fit the military victory. Baal-Perazim may mean “god of earthquakes.” The image of bursting through—the Hebrew term means “breach”—could suggest that David’s forces have succeeded in punching a hole in the Philistine lines rather than in producing a general rout.

23. opposite the willows. The Hebrew bekha’im resists botanic identification—mulberry tree, pear tree, mastic bush, and others have been proposed. Some think it is a place-name, but the next verse makes that unlikely.

24. the sound of marching in the tops of the willows. Presumably, this is the wind. But it gives a sense that mysterious unseen agents of the LORD are advancing against the Philistines. More practically, some interpreters have proposed that the sound of the wind in the branches provided a cover for the sound of David’s troops stealthily advancing for their surprise attack from the rear.

25. from Geba till you come to Gezer. Unlike the first victory, David now inflicts a general defeat on the Philistine forces, driving them back from the territory in central Canaan that they had occupied after triumphing over Saul at Gilboa. David has now completed the consolidation of his rule over all the land, and his real troubles are about to begin.