CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES—
2 Samuel 3:22. “Joab came from pursuing,” etc. “Whither, it is not said, but probably outside the Israelitish territory near the tribe of Judah. In the incomplete organisation of David’s court such expeditions were necessary for the support of the large army.… Probably Abner had purposely chosen the time when Joab with the army was absent to carry out his plan.” (Erdmann.)
2 Samuel 3:24-25. Joab may have spoken what he believed to be the truth concerning Abner, or he was prompted by a fear that the older and more renowned general would take his place at the head of David’s army.
2 Samuel 3:26. “The Well of Sirah.” According to Josephus, only about two and a half English miles from Hebron.
2 Samuel 3:27. “When Abner was returned.” Joab probably used David’s name to recall him. “Abner’s conduct bespeaks his entire reliance upon David’s good faith.” (Biblical Commentary.)
2 Samuel 3:27. “In the gate.” Literally “to the middle of the gate.” It was no doubt roofed, and “Joab drew Abner to the middle of the inner gate space because it was not so light there, and one could better escape the notice of the passers-by.” (Erdmann.) “For the blood of Asahel.” This was no doubt the plea which Joab used; but Abner had slain Asahel in battle and in self-defence, and Josephus and most commentators ascribe the murder to jealousy.
2 Samuel 3:29. “Let it rest.” Literally, turn, or be hurled. “This strong expression, instead of the ordinary ‘let it come,’ answers to the enormity of the crime and the energy of David’s righteous anger.” (Erdmann.) “Hath an issue” “One that pines away miserably with seminal or mucous flow. Compare Leviticus 15:2.” (Erdmann.) “That leaneth on a staff.” This last word means a distaff, and many scholars take this phrase to designate an effeminate or weakly person. “The Greeks also had their ‘Hercules with the distaff’ as a type of unmanly feebleness, and for a warrior like Joab there could be no worse wish than that there might be a distaff-holder among his descendants.” (Bottcher.) In favour of this reading, Erdmann remarks that one that holds a staff is not necessarily a cripple, since the staff was held by rulers, by old men, by travellers, and by shepherds (Judges 5:14; Numbers 21:18; Zechariah 8:4; Luke 6:3; Micah 7:14, etc.), and that where a cripple is described with a staff the expression is different (Exodus 21:19.) However, Gesenius, Ewald, Phillippson, Keil, and others render the word crutch or staff. Ancient Jewish writers regard this imprecation of David’s as sinful.
2 Samuel 3:31. “Before Abner.” In the presence of his corpse. They were to take part in the funeral procession.
2 Samuel 3:33. “A fool.” A nabal, or worthless man.
2 Samuel 3:34. “Thy hands were not bound.” This means, either “Thou hadst not made thyself guilty of any crime, so as to die like a malefactor, in chains and bonds” (Keil), or, “with free hands, with which he might have defended himself; with free feet, with which he might have escaped from overpowering force. Without suspecting evil, he was attacked and murdered as a defenceless man.” (Erdmann.)
2 Samuel 3:35. “To eat meat.” “It is uncertain whether David was to eat with the people (cf. 2 Samuel 12:17), i.e., to take part in the funeral meal that was held after the burial, or whether the people simply urged him to take some food for the purpose of soothing his own sorrow.” (Keil.)
2 Samuel 3:38. “A prince,” etc. A prince by reason of his position—a great man because of his intellectual endowments.
2 Samuel 3:39. “Weak, though anointed.” Most commentators understand David to mean that he was too weak—too lately come into power—to be able to visit upon Joab and his brother the just reward of their crime, but Erdmann objects to this view—
(1). Because it would have been very unwise to acknowledge his fear before such men; and
(2). Because it would have been untrue, for he who had conquered Abner, and who had the people on his side, must have possessed the power to punish Joab. He understands the first adjective to signify soft, and hard to apply, not to the contrast between himself and the sons of Zeruiah as to political situation but as to disposition. While he, though a king, is absorbed in grief, they are unmoved and indifferent.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 2 Samuel 3:22-39
THE MURDER OF ABNER
I. Unprincipled men judge others by themselves. A man looking in a glass sees a reflection of himself—not perhaps of the man he ought to be or might have been, but exactly what he is. So a bad man is apt to think, when he looks upon his brother, that he is but a reflection of himself in character, that his motives, and hopes, and intentions are the same as his own. Not being accustomed himself to act from principle, but in all things to put his own supposed interest in the foremost place, he thinks every other man must do the same. This was the way in which Joab regarded Abner and his conduct. He knew that if he were in Abner’s place he should not hesitate to do what he now charged him with doing if he thought he should gain by it, and was, or pretended to be, far more suspicious of his honesty than David was. Or if he really believed that Abner was in earnest in his professions of loyalty to David, still judging him by his own standard, he looked forward to what would happen in the future. He knew that in the same circumstances he should endeavour to supplant all David’s old servants, and never rest till he attained to the highest honour the king could bestow. That would involve a decrease of his power—a prospect his ambitious spirit could not brook. Hence his anger and his revenge.
II. In God’s government of the world, one bad man is often the means of removing another. Neither God nor godlike creatures delight in destructive work—they love to build up rather than to destroy—to dispense reward rather than retribution. But as in the natural world the ground must be cleared of weeds if the corn is to have space to grow, so the power of evil men must be limited, and they sometimes removed from the earth, that the good may live and multiply. And this work of removal is often done by their own kind, and it is the only work for God that they can do. Wicked men cannot bring any positive blessing upon the world, but they can be used in this negative way to lessen the evil and make room for the work of the good. When the fire burns up the weeds and clears the ground for the sower, one destructive force in nature is used to destroy another, and when one bad man, in his self-seeking and passion, ends the career of another, he is the unconscious instrument in the hands of God of clearing the ground for the work of godly men. So was it with Joab in relation to Abner—both were godless, and consequently hindrances to the progress and happiness of the kingdom of God in Israel, and when one was permitted to fall by the sword of the other, one moral destroyer was used for the destruction of another that God’s servant might find the place and do the work allotted to him.
III. Although one man is thus the retribution of God to another, the responsibility of the deed rests upon himself. Every human action must be judged, not by its consequences, but by its character. Men have sometimes murdered one whom they rightly judged to be an enemy of their country; but even if the belief was correct, neither it nor the good consequences arising from the deed affected its morality. The belief may be right and the consequences may be according to the belief, but the end can never justify the use of means which are contrary to the command of God. Still less can the results of such an act as that of Joab’s justify the doer or lessen his guilt in the smallest degree. Joab was a murderer, although he was a sword of retribution in the hand of God. If he had slain Abner because he believed him to be a traitor to David and an enemy to God, the motives which actuated him could not have absolved him from blood-guiltiness. Still less can the fact of Abner’s guilt justify a deed done purely from motives of revenge and jealousy, although that deed brought just punishment to a bad man. The fact that God overrules men’s sin to further His purposes, does not do away with the sinfulness. (See also chapter 4)
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
2 Samuel 3:28-29. These words have often been regarded as an expression of exaggerated passion … but David here wishes nothing more than what the law predicts, and it can never be sinful to wish God to do what, in accordance with His will, He must do. The extension of the curse to the descendants clearly refers to the threatenings of the law; and in both cases the offensive character disappears, if we only remember that whoever by true repentance freed himself from connection with the guilt was also exempted from participation in the punishment.—Hengstenberg.
2 Samuel 3:38. This verse has been made the text of many sermons on the death of great men. We subjoin the outline of one. I. A man has fallen. I do not mean a mere male human individual, one whom the tailor rather than the mantua maker clothes,—a walking thing that wears a hat. I speak of that which God meant when He said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Marred sadly now by the concussion of that fearful fall, but capable of restoration through the cross, and justifying well, in the renewal of its fair proportions and its countenance erect, the sacred record, “God has made man upright”—a man that has a mind and uses it—a man that has a heart and yields to it—a man that shapes his circumstances—a man that cares not for himself … a man to make occasions—a man to meet emergencies—a man to dare not only but to bear.… II. A great man has fallen. A great man first must be a man, and then must find or make the occasion to be great. In every man that is a man there is, potentially, a great man.… III. A prince has fallen. A prince in place. The head, as the word simply means, of twenty millions of free people, so constituted and declared by their own choice and act. A prince in rank … a prince in power … a prince in quiet dignity—a prince in calm indomitable resolution—a prince in utter disregard of consequences, when the right is seen and done.… “Know ye not”—who does not know, who does not feel, who does not own that it is so?—Bishop Doane on the Death of President Taylor of the United States. 1850.
2 Samuel 3:39. David was weak, not so much because Joab was strong, as because he himself shrank from doing what he knew to be right in the case. Had he put Joab to death, public opinion would have sustained him in the execution of justice; and even if it had not, he would have had the inward witness that he was doing his duty to the State. For a magistrate to be weak, is to be wicked. He is set to administer and execute the law without fear or favour; and whensoever he swerves from justice from either cause, he is a traitor at once to God and to the commonwealth. “Weak!” this is not to speak like a man, not to say a king.—Taylor.
It seems surprising that David, who was then in the flower of his age, and who had long been distinguished for his courage and skill as a military leader, should now decline into a subordinate position as a warrior, and that Joab should occupy the principal place in the wars of Israel and should exercise a dominant influence over David, so that the king was constrained to say this.… Was this unhappy condition a consequence of his polygamy? Was this multiplication of wives, contrary to God’s command, a cause of effeminacy and softness? Did it disqualify him for the hardness of the field, and afford an opportunity for such bold, ambitious, and insidious persons as Joab, who profited by his weakness and favoured it, to gain a mastery over him?… If David had done what his conscience told him was right, and what he did to the murderers of Ishbosheth; if he had fully trusted God, and done justice with courage, according to God’s law (Genesis 9:6); relying on God, and not looking to the carnal advantages he derived from the military skill of Joab and Abishai, he would probably have prevented other murders, such as that of Ishbosheth and Amasa; and he would have been spared the sorrow of giving on his deathbed the warrant of execution against Joab to be put in effect by Solomon. “Impunity invites to greater crimes.” “He is cruel to the innocent who spares the guilty.”—Wordsworth.