1. a chariot with horses and fifty men running before him. All this vehicular pomp and circumstance, as other biblical references to chariots, horses, and runners in conjunction with kings suggest, is a claim to royal status. The gestures of usurpation are undertaken in Jerusalem, under David’s nose, yet the king, who has been described by the Tekoite woman as “knowing everything in the land,” does nothing.

2–5. This whole tableau of Absalom standing at the gate to the city, accosting each newcomer, professing sympathy for his cause, and announcing that were he the supreme judicial authority, he would rule in the man’s favor, is a stylized representation of the operation of a demagogue. It is hard to imagine realistically that Absalom would tell each person so flatly that, whatever the legal case, he would declare in his favor, but the point of the stylization is clear: the demagogue enlists support by flattering people’s special interests, leading them to believe that he will champion their cause, cut their taxes, increase their social security benefits, and so forth.

3. you have no one to listen to you from the king. The heart of Absalom’s demagogic pitch is his exploiting what must have been widespread dissatisfaction over the new centralized monarchic bureaucracy with its imposition of taxes and corvées and military conscription: there is no one in this impersonal palace to listen to you with a sympathetic ear, as I do.

5. he would reach out his hand and take hold of him and kiss him. The odd “rhyming” of Absalom’s kiss to each man he seduces and David’s kiss to Absalom at the end of the immediately preceding chapter is obvious. Could it suggest, retrospectively, that David’s kiss has an element of falseness that recurs, grossly magnified, in Absalom’s kiss? It should also be noted that Absalom’s gesture of “taking hold” of each of his political victims is verbally identical with Amnon’s “taking hold” of Tamar before the rape.

7. at the end of four years. The Masoretic Text has “forty years,” an untenable number in this narrative context, but four different ancient versions show “four years.”

pay my vow that I pledged to the LORD in Hebron. Haim Gevaryahu proposes that the vow is to offer an exculpatory sacrifice for the crime of manslaughter. With three years in Geshur and another four in Jerusalem, Absalom would have come to the end of the period of seven years of penance that, according to some ancient parallels, might have applied to such crimes. Absalom of course wants to go off to Hebron—David’s first capital city—in order to proclaim himself king at a certain distance from his father’s palace. It also appears that he feels he can call on a base of support from Judah, his father’s tribe. But why is David not suspicious when his son proposes to pay his cultic vow in Hebron rather than in Jerusalem? Gevaryahu, citing Greek analogues, makes the interesting suggestion that a fratricide who had not yet atoned for his crime was not permitted to worship in the same sanctuary as his father and brothers.

11. invited guests going in all innocence. In a shrewd maneuver, Absalom takes with him a large contingent of people not known to be his partisans, and not willing participants in the conspiracy, and in this way he wards off suspicion about the aim of his expedition. Once in Hebron, the two hundred men would presumably be caught up in the tide of insurrection.

14. Rise and let us flee. Suddenly, under the pressure of crisis, with intelligence that Absalom has overwhelming support, David shakes himself from his slumber of passivity, realizing he must move at once if he is to have any chance of surviving. Against superior forces, the walled city of Jerusalem would be a death trap. As Fokkelman aptly puts it, “Once again he is in contact with his old self. . . . Once again men seek his death and he enters the wilderness both figuratively and literally.”

15. Whatever my lord the king chooses, look, we are your servants. As the episode unfolds, there is a constant counterpoint between those who reveal their unswerving loyalty to David no matter how grim the outlook and the betrayal of David by his son and all those who have rallied to the usurper.

16. the king left his ten concubines to watch over the house. This gesture sounds as though it might be an expression of hope that David will return to Jerusalem. In the event, it produces a disastrous consequence that fulfills one of the dire terms of Nathan’s curse in chapter 12.

17. the king, and all the people with him, went out on foot. This restatement of the first clause of the previous verse reflects the device that biblical scholars call “resumptive repetition”: after an interruption of the narrative line—here, the introduction of the information about the concubines—the words just before the interruption are repeated as the main line of the narrative resumes. Moreover, the emphasis through repetition on going by foot suggests how David and his entourage have been reduced from royal dignity in this abrupt flight.

the outlying house. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “the house of distance.” It clearly means the last house in the settled area beyond the walls of the city.

18. all his servants were crossing over. The verb “to cross over” (‘avar), abundantly repeated, is a thematic focus of the episode. David and his followers are crossing over eastward from Jerusalem, headed first up the Mount of Olives and then down the long declivity to the Jordan, which they will cross (the verb ‘avar is often used for Jordan crossing) in their flight. The entire episode is unusual in the leisurely panoramic view it provides of the eastward march from the city. Instead of the preterite verb form ordinarily used for narration, participial forms (“were crossing over”) predominate, imparting a sense of something like a present tense to the report of the action.

Cherithites . . . Pelethites . . . Gittites. This elite palace guard, which we have encountered before, are Philistine warriors who became David’s followers, probably when he was residing in Gath. Ittai’s expression of loyalty suggests that they were more than mere mercenaries.

19. Ittai. His name is close to the preposition ʾiti, “with me.” Both Moshe Garsiel and Robert Polzin have proposed that the name has a symbolic function: Ittai is the loyalist who insists on remaining with David. Polzin notes that this preposition is constantly reiterated in the episode, rather than its synonym ʿim: David, for example, says to Ittai, “Why should you too go with us [ʾitanu]?”

stay with the king. This designation of the usurping son would be especially painful for David to pronounce. He does it in order to try to persuade Ittai that he should cast his fate with the person exercising the power of king.

20. Steadfast kindness to you. The translation reproduces the elliptical character of the Masoretic Text at this point. The Septuagint has an easier reading: “May the LORD show steadfast kindness to you.”

21. whether for death or for life. Given the grim circumstances, this loyal soldier unflinchingly puts death before life in the two alternatives he contemplates.

23. and the king was crossing over the Wadi Kidron. In the slow-motion report of the flight, reinforced by the participial verbs, David is now crossing the Kidron brook at the foot of the slope descending eastward from the walled city. He will then make his way up the Mount of Olives.

25. Bring back the Ark of God to the town. Given the difficulties David encountered in bringing the Ark to Jerusalem in the first place, and given the disastrous consequences at the time of Eli in carrying it out to the battlefield, it is understandable that he should want the Ark left in Jerusalem. He makes this act a token of his reiterated fatalism about his predicament.

27. and the king said to Zadok the priest. Again we see the distinctive biblical convention in the deployment of dialogue: when the first party speaks and the second party does not respond, and a second speech of the first party is introduced, there is an intimation of some sort of failure of response. Zadok is nonplussed by David’s instructions to return the Ark and also by David’s fatalism. Now, in his second speech, David provides a practical, strategic rationale for Zadok’s going back to the city with the Ark—he and his two acolytes will then be able to act as spies for David (see the end of his speech in verse 28).

30. his head uncovered. There is a difference of philological opinion as to whether the verb here means covered or uncovered. The usual meaning of the root is “to cover,” but an uncovered head is more likely as a gesture of mourning—which is clearly intended—and this could be an instance of the same term denoting antonyms, like the English verb “cleave.”

31. And to David it was told. The Masoretic Text reads, “And David told,” but both the Qumran Samuel and the Septuagint reflect the more likely idea—a difference of one Hebrew letter—that someone told David.

32. the summit, where one would bow down to God, and, look, coming toward him was Hushai. This crucial moment in the story is an especially deft manifestation of the system of double causation that Gerhard von Rad and others after him have attributed to the David narrative: everything in the story is determined by its human actors, according to the stringent dictates of political realism; yet, simultaneously, everything is determined by God, according to a divine plan in history. David, informed that his own shrewd political advisor Ahitophel is part of Absalom’s conspiracy, urgently and breathlessly invokes God, “Thwart, pray, the counsel of Ahitophel, O LORD.” Then he reaches a holy site, an altar on the crest of the Mount of Olives (“where one would bow down to God”), and here he sees Hushai, his loyalty betokened by the trappings of mourning he has assumed, coming toward him. Theologically, Hushai is the immediate answer to David’s prayer. Politically, David seizes upon Hushai as the perfect instrument to thwart Ahitophel’s counsel, so from a certain point of view David is really answering his own prayer through his human initiative. Yet the encounter with Hushai at a place of worship leaves the lingering intimation that Hushai has been sent by God to David.

34. say to Absalom, “Your servant, O king, I will be.” David, passive to a fault in the preceding episodes, now improvises in the moment of crisis a detailed plan for subverting Absalom, even dictating to Hushai the exact script he is to use when he comes before the usurper.

35. are not Zadok and Abiathar the priests there with you? David is both offering encouragement to Hushai, assuring him that he will not be the sole, isolated undercover agent in Jerusalem, and indicating to him what every spy needs to know, that there will be a reliable network for transmitting intelligence to the command center for which the spy is working.