2 Samuel 5:8 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

David said on that day When the assault was made; Whosoever getteth up into the gutter That is, whosoever scaleth the fort, or getteth up to the top of it, where the gutter was. Or, as some understand it, cuts off their pipes of water, or their cisterns into which the water fell. Dr. Kennicott observes that “the Hebrew, צנור, zenur, gutter, occurs but once more in the Bible, and does not seem commonly understood in this place. The English version calls it, the gutter; the Vulgate, fistulas, pipes; Vatablus, canales; Junius and Tremellius, emissarium, a common sewer; Poole, tubus aquæ, a pipe for water; and Bochart, alveus, a bed or channel of a river. Most interpreters agree in making the word signify something hollow, and in applying it to water.” It may mean, he thinks, “a subterraneous passage, or great hollow, through which men could pass and repass for water. That this zenur, in the text, was such an under-ground passage, might be strongly presumed from the text itself; but it is proved to have been so by Josephus. For, speaking of this very transaction, he says, ‘The citadel being as yet in the possession of the enemy, the king promised that he would make any one general of all his forces who should ascend into the citadel, δια υποκειμενων φαραγγων, through the subterraneous cavities.' Here then we have subterraneous cavities most remarkably answering to zenur, and putting this interpretation upon a very solid footing.” Kenn. Dissert., vol. 1. p. 42. And the lame and the blind, that are hated of David's soul This, some think, plainly shows, that by the lame and the blind must be meant the idols of the Jebusites; because David certainly abhorred idolatry, but could never detest men for mere unblameable infirmities. But two things may be said in answer to this: 1st, That the lame and the blind Jebusites had probably themselves insulted David, and blasphemed God, and David might hate them in the same sense in which he often speaks of hating the wicked in his Psalms; that is, he might hate their ways, their dispositions, and actions. But, 2d, The original words may, and certainly should be rendered, as they are by the Seventy, who hate David's soul. He shall be chief and captain These words are not in the Hebrew here, but are fifty supplied from 1 Chronicles 11:6, where they are expressed. Wherefore they said That is, it became a proverb, or common saying, used by David and others: The blind and the lame shall not come into the house Or, into this house; that is, into the fort of Zion. The blind and lame Jebusites were set to keep that fort, and to keep others from coming into it; but now they themselves are shut out of it, and none of them was to be admitted to come into it again; which David might resolve to ordain, to keep up the memory of this great exploit, and of the insolent carriage of the Jebusites, and their unhappy success. Or, the blind and the lame shall not come into my house; namely, into the king's palace; which, though a general rule and decree of David, yet might be dispensed with in some special cases, as in that of Mephibosheth. But it is not necessary to understand this as a proverb; for the words may be rendered, as they are in the margin of our Bibles, Because they had said, Even the blind and the lame, he (that is, David) shall not come into the house; or, because they (the Jebusites) had said, The blind and the lame shall hinder him. They who understand, by the blind and the lame, the idols of the Jebusites, consider this clause as meaning, that from this time it became a proverb, Let not the blind and lame come into the house; that is, do not trust in idols, who have eyes and see not, &c.; and who are not able to do more for you than the lame and the blind.