2 Samuel 4:1-12 - Sutcliffe's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

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2 Samuel 4:12. David slew them. What a glory to Israel to have a king clothed with justice: a righteous monarch makes a righteous nation. This act of David would elevate him in the eyes of good men.

REFLECTIONS.

How awful and rapid was the fall of Saul's house, and without war. Abner was dead; Mephibosheth was an infant, and lame; Ishbosheth and all his friends were troubled. Why then did he not send and make a covenant with David? Ah, Abner was dead, and now the dispirited prince had no minister of state, nor captain-general to keep the nation in awe.

A still greater calamity was at hand. Rechab and Baanah, two brothers, whom he had raised to rank, as generals, and to whom he had entrusted his person, conspired to slay him, and solely with the hope of procuring great preferment with David. Saul's court had been wicked and bloody: he had taught his servants to shed innocent blood, and now they practise the art on his own family. He had shed the blood of all the priests at Nob; and now God shed the blood of all his house, with the exception of Mephibosheth.

Wicked men we see are often infatuated to their own destruction. Could those brothers, living much at court, be ignorant of the sentence David had passed on the young man who slew Saul? And could they think that slaying their inoffensive master while sleeping on his bed, would procure them promotion and reward? In what country could they live after so foul a deed? Surely they realize an ancient proverb; he whom God is about to destroy, is first mad.

While we see in the tragic fall of Saul's house, all the agents acting from mean and mercenary motives, we also see them all acting in behalf of David, and fulfilling the sentence of heaven against the disobedient king. What then have the righteous to fear, while God is their defence: and what have the wicked not to fear when that defence is departed from them? Every object is armed against them, and their own shadow makes them afraid.

Related Commentaries of 2 Samuel 4:1

2 Samuel 4:1-12

1 And when Saul's son heard that Abner was dead in Hebron, his hands were feeble, and all the Israelites were troubled.

2 And Saul's son had two men that were captains of bands: the name of the one was Baanah, and the name of the othera Rechab, the sons of Rimmon a Beerothite, of the children of Benjamin: (for Beeroth also was reckoned to Benjamin:

3 And the Beerothites fled to Gittaim, and were sojourners there until this day.)

4 And Jonathan, Saul's son, had a son that was lame of his feet. He was five years old when the tidings came of Saul and Jonathan out of Jezreel, and his nurse took him up, and fled: and it came to pass, as she made haste to flee, that he fell, and became lame. And his name was Mephibosheth.b

5 And the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, Rechab and Baanah, went, and came about the heat of the day to the house of Ishbosheth, who lay on a bed at noon.

6 And they came thither into the midst of the house, as though they would have fetched wheat; and they smote him under the fifth rib: and Rechab and Baanah his brother escaped.

7 For when they came into the house, he lay on his bed in his bedchamber, and they smote him, and slew him, and beheaded him, and took his head, and gat them away through the plain all night.

8 And they brought the head of Ishbosheth unto David to Hebron, and said to the king, Behold the head of Ishbosheth the son of Saul thine enemy, which sought thy life; and the LORD hath avenged my lord the king this day of Saul, and of his seed.

9 And David answered Rechab and Baanah his brother, the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, and said unto them, As the LORD liveth, who hath redeemed my soul out of all adversity,

10 When one told me, saying, Behold, Saul is dead, thinking to have brought good tidings, I took hold of him, and slew him in Ziklag, who thought that I would have given him a reward for his tidings:

11 How much more, when wicked men have slain a righteous person in his own house upon his bed? shall I not therefore now require his blood of your hand, and take you away from the earth?

12 And David commanded his young men, and they slew them, and cut off their hands and their feet, and hanged them up over the pool in Hebron. But they took the head of Ishbosheth, and buried it in the sepulchre of Abner in Hebron.