And David came to his house at Jerusalem; and the king took the ten women his concubines, whom he had left to keep the house, and put them in ward, and fed them, but went not in unto them. So they were shut up unto the day of their death, living in widowhood.
The king took the ten women his concubines. Jewish writers say that the widowed queens of Hebrew monarchs were not allowed to marry again, but were obliged to pass the rest of their lives in strict seclusion. So are the wives of the emperor of China. On the death of the reigning sovereign all his women are transferred from the palace to a separate mansion, where they live in seclusion during the rest of their lives (Macarlney, p. 375). David treated his concubines in the same manner, after the outrage committed on them by Absalom. They were not divorced, because they were guiltless; but they were no longer publicly recognized as his wives; nor was their confinement to a sequestered life a very heavy doom, in a region where women have never been accustomed to go much abroad.