1. My son, my son, Absalom! Much of the way experience transforms David in the course of his story can be seen through his changing responses to the deaths of those close to him. When Jonathan and Saul died, he intoned an eloquent elegy. When Abner was murdered, he declaimed a much briefer elegy, coupled with a speech dissociating himself from the killing. When his infant son by Bathsheba died, he spoke somber words about his own mortality and the irreversibility of death. Now, the eloquent David is reduced to a sheer stammer of grief, repeating over and over the two Hebrew words, beni ʾAvshalom, “my son, Absalom.” Although the narrator continues to refer to David only as “the king,” in the shifting conflict between his public and private roles the latter here takes over entirely: Absalom is not the usurper who drove him from the throne but only “my son,” and David is the anguished father who would rather have died, that his son might have lived.

3. for the troops had heard on that day. Before the battle they had all heard David’s admonition to his commanders to do no harm to Absalom. Now they hear of his grief and are smitten with shame and apprehension—whether out of empathy for their beloved leader, or guilt over the complicity some of their number share in Absalom’s death, or fear of potential violence between David and Joab.

4. the troops stole away . . . as troops disgraced in their flight from the battle. This striking image of victory transformed into the bitterness of defeat picks up verbal threads, as Moshe Garsiel has perceptively noted, from the beginning of Absalom’s insurrection (chapter 15). There, the usurper stood at the gate, as David is here made to go out and sit in the gate. Absalom was said to “steal the heart” of the men of Israel as here the men steal away, and in order to recover dominion David is enjoined to speak to their heart (verse 8). The disheartened slipping away of the troops suggests that Joab is addressing an imminent danger of the disintegration of the army.

5. the king covered his face. The gesture makes perfect psychological sense, while the verb used, laʾat, is the same one David chose when he said “Deal gently [leʾat] with the lad Absalom.”

6. within the house. The implication is that Joab speaks with David in private. The thematic opposition to this term is “in the gate,” where Joab will send David.

You have today shamed all your servants who have saved your life today. Again and again here Joab insists on the word “today.” It is this very moment, he suggests, this crucial turning point, that you must seize in order to reestablish your reign. You cannot allow yourself to think of the past, of your history as Absalom’s father: as king, you must confront today, with its challenge and its political responsibilities.

7. to love those who hate you and to hate those who love you. Joab uses rhetorical exaggeration in order to elevate David’s paternal attachment to Absalom into a generalized, perverse political principle: if you show such extravagant fondness for the usurper who sought your life, then you are behaving as though all your enemies were your friends and your friends your enemies.

For you have said today that you have no commanders or servants. That is, by exhibiting such love for your archenemy, you are showing flagrant disregard for the loyal officers and followers to whose devotion you owe your life.

8. speak to the heart of your servants. This personal act of rallying the men is deemed urgently necessary by Joab because the army has already begun to disperse (“steal away”).

if you go not out . . . not a man shall spend the night with you. These words are a naked threat: if David does not follow Joab’s order, the commander will encourage the army to abandon the king, and he will be alone, without power or troops, engulfed in “a greater evil” than any that has befallen him in his long and arduous career. In all this, Joab’s verbal assault on David, however motivated by pressing considerations of practical politics, is also a defense of his own flouting of David’s injunction to protect Absalom. David at this point knows only the bare fact of his son’s death, not who was responsible for it. This is something that he will inevitably soon learn, and that bitter knowledge is surely registered in his decision to replace Joab with Amasa (verse 14).

9. the king arose and sat in the gate. Fokkelman brilliantly observes the disparity between Joab’s exhortation and the report of David’s action. Joab had said, “go out, and speak to the heart of your servants.” Instead of these active gestures, we see David passively sitting in the gate while the troops come to him, and we are given no reported speech for him. In Fokkelman’s reading, this gap between command and act “call[s] up the image of a man beaten to a pulp, who can barely stand, and does only the minimum requested or expected of him.”

10. deliberating. The verb nadon in this verse is conventionally related to the noun madon, “quarrel” or “contention.” But in fact what the people say is not contentious, and it is preferable to derive the passive (perhaps implicitly reflexive) verbal form here from dun, to judge, consider, or deliberate.

12. Why should you be the last to bring back the king. Throughout this episode, there is a central focus on who will be first and who will be last to show support for the Davidic restoration. The northern tribes, Israel, have already evinced support (verse 10), and David is concerned to enlist the backing of his own tribe, Judah, which had largely swung to Absalom during the insurrection.

regarding his house. Or simply, “to his house.” Many textual critics regard this phrase as a mistaken scribal duplication of the same phrase earlier in this verse.

13. You are my bone and my flesh. That is, you are Judahites, just as I am, and so there is actual kinship between us.

14. to Amasa . . . “Are you not my bone and my flesh?” Now the phrase is no longer hyperbolic, for Amasa is David’s nephew. The extraordinary offer of the post of commander of the army to Absalom’s general in the rebellion reflects David’s knack for combining personal and political motives. It is a slap in the face to Joab, the killer of David’s son, against whom David evidently does not dare to take any more direct steps of vengeance. At the same time, the hesitation of the Judahites in rallying behind the restored king suggests that an act such as the appointment of Amasa as commander may be required to enlist their support. Joab, not surprisingly, will not quietly acquiesce in his abrupt dismissal from the office he has held since the beginning of David’s career.

15. he inclined the heart. It is not clear whether the Hebrew, characteristically overgenerous in its use of pronouns, intends the “he” to refer to David or to Amasa. In either case, David’s overture succeeds in bringing the tribe of Judah into his camp.

16. to bring the king across the Jordan. The verb ʿavar, “cross over,” and its causative form, haʿavir, “to bring across,” which thematically defined David’s exodus from Jerusalem in chapter 15, dominates this episode, too, as the crossing over in flight to the east is reversed by the crossing over westward back to Jerusalem.

17. Shimei son of Gera. There is an approximate symmetry between David’s encounters in his exodus from Jerusalem and those that now occur in his return. Then he met a hostile Shimei, now he meets a contrite Shimei. Then he met Ziba, who denounced his master Mephibosheth; now he meets Mephibosheth himself, who defends his own loyalty. Then he spoke with Ittai, the loyalist who insisted on accompanying him; now he speaks with Barzillai, the proven loyalist who refuses to accompany him back to the capital. The encounter with Hushai, who becomes David’s secret agent, has no counterpart here.

21. first of all the house of Joseph to go down to meet my lord the king. Shimei, who has rushed down to the Jordan in order to demonstrate his newfound loyalty to David, uses “the house of Joseph” loosely to refer to the northern tribes. He is, of course, actually from the tribe of Benjamin. He “goes down” because his hometown of Bahurim is in the high country near Jerusalem.

22. For this should not Shimei be put to death? Abishai remains true to character, for the third time prepared to kill someone on the impulse of the moment.

23. What do I have to do with you, sons of Zeruiah. These words by now are a kind of refrain, as David seeks to dissociate himself from the murderous sons of Zeruiah. It is noteworthy that though Abishai alone has just spoken, David, mindful of the killing of Absalom, includes Joab as well in his protest by using the plural “sons of Zeruiah.”

Should today a man of Israel be put to death? David’s “today” is an implicit rejoinder to Joab’s “today” in the confrontation over his mourning Absalom. This day of victorious return is a moment for national reconciliation and hence for a general amnesty for both the Saulides and the supporters of Absalom. In the course of time, it will appear that David in effect restricts his pledge not to harm Shimei to an extended “today.”

25. he had not dressed his feet or trimmed his moustache, and his garments he had not laundered. These acts of mourning, reported to us by the authoritative narrator, are an indication that in fact Mephibosheth remained loyal to David throughout the insurrection, and that Ziba’s denunciation was a self-interested calumny. (Some interpret “dressing”—literally “doing”—the feet as cutting the toenails, though the parallel usage often cited from Deuteronomy has “toenails,” not “feet,” as the object of the verb “to do.”)

26. when he came from Jerusalem. The Masoretic Text simply says “Jerusalem” but this encounter presumably takes place down by the Jordan. One version of the Septuagint removes the word from this verse and places it at the end of verse 25.

27. I’ll saddle me the donkey . . . for your servant is lame. The evident implication is that it would have taken the crippled Mephibosheth some time to get ready to go after the fleeing king. Meanwhile, his servant headed out before him in order to denounce him, perhaps actually leaving his master awaiting his help to saddle the donkey.

29. For all my father’s house are but men marked for death to my lord the king. Mephibosheth’s choice of words—the literal phrasing of the Hebrew is “men of death”—is an oblique, perhaps inadvertent, concession that he shares what must have been the general suspicion among the Saulides that David was responsible for the chain of violent deaths in the house of Saul.

30. Why should you still speak your words? David cuts off Mephibosheth impatiently, picking up the “still” that the anxious supplicant has just twice used.

you and Ziba shall divide the field. This “Solomonic” judgment may actually be another sign that David has lost his ruler’s grip. For if Ziba has told the truth about his master, Mephibosheth as a traitor would deserve nothing, except perhaps capital punishment. And if Ziba was lying, then the servant would deserve nothing except a harsh legal penalty for defamation. Perhaps Mephibosheth is paying a price for having betrayed that he thought David was responsible for the Saulide deaths: in this reading, David knows Mephibosheth is telling the truth, but he punishes him for assuming David was involved in the killings by decreeing Mephibosheth will lose half his property.

31. Let him even take all. By this verbal gesture, Mephibosheth shows himself loyal to David to the end, regardless of personal benefit. These words could well be an implicit judgment on the unwisdom of David’s decree.

32. Barzillai the Gileadite. David’s three encounters at the ford of the Jordan from a progressive series on the scale of loyalty: first Shimei, who has heaped insults on him and now pleads for forgiveness; then Mephibosheth, whose loyalty, although probably genuine, has been called into question by Ziba; and then the unswervingly devoted old man, Barzillai.

35. How many are the days of the years of my life. Though this rhetorical question literally echoes the question that Pharaoh asks the aged Jacob, the meaning is the opposite—not “How long have I lived?” but “How long could I possibly have left to live?”

38. your servant Chimham. This is presumably Barzillai’s son.

40. the king kissed Barzillai. This entire catastrophic sequence in the David story began with David’s cold kiss to the son from whom he had been estranged, followed by Absalom’s calculated kiss for every man he enlisted to his cause at the gate of the city. Now the king bestows a kiss of true affection upon the loyal old man who provided for him and his troops in their moment of need.

41. the king crossed over . . . and Chimham crossed over with him, and . . . they brought the king across. The crossing over eastward of the banished king, which never should have occurred, is now decisively reversed, as David and all his people come across the Jordan and head for Jerusalem. But, as the immediately following dialogue intimates, David’s political troubles are far from over.

to Gilgal. This is the gathering place where Saul was consecrated as king and later severed by Samuel from his role as God’s anointed.

half of the people of Israel as well. In all likelihood, “half” is used loosely to indicate simply that some members of the northern tribes took part in bringing David to Gilgal.

42. and they said to the king. Although their complaint is addressed to the king, he never answers them. Instead, as Fokkelman notes, the scene breaks down into a squabble between Israelite and Judahite. Once again, David appears to be losing his regal grip.

43. the king is kin to us. That is, David is actually a member of the tribe of Judah.

44. We have ten parts in the king, even in David, more than you. Though ten to one might merely be idiomatic for great preponderance, it seems likely that they allude to the fact that they are ten tribes to Judah’s one—if David is king of the entire nation, this gives them ten times the claim to the king that Judah has. The phrase “even in David” (or, “also in David”) is a little odd, and the Septuagint reads instead, “also I am firstborn more than you.” It should be noted that all the pronouns in this dialogue in the Hebrew are cast in the first-person singular, referring to a singular, collective “man of Israel” and “man of Judah,” but that usage doesn’t quite work in English.

the word of the men of Judah was harsher than the word of the men of Israel. The episode concludes in a clash of words, to be followed by a clash of swords. The implication of the greater “harshness” (or, “hardness”) of the Judahite words is aptly caught by the medieval Hebrew commentator David Kimchi: “Their word was harsher and stronger than the word of the men of Israel, and the men of Judah spoke harshly to the men of Israel, with the king saying nothing to them. Therefore the men of Israel were incensed and they followed after [the rebel] Sheba son of Bichri.”