Where the people of Israel were slain before the servants of David, and there was there a great slaughter that day of twenty thousand men.
The people of Israel were slain. This designation, together with the immense slaughter mentioned later, shows the large extent to which the people were enlisted in this unhappy civil contest. The army of Absalom would be, as in all Eastern wars, an immense heterogeneous mass of people; and the first shock, the spilt blood of a few, generally decides the fate of the day.