STUDIES IN SAMUEL No. 43

2 Samuel 3:1-39

October 21, 2001

Text Comments

v.1 The battle about which we read last Lord's Day, in chapter 2, we now learn was representative of other battles of which we are given no details.

v.2 This "fruitfulness" was a sign of God's blessing of David's house. The narrator records this information here to illustrate that God's favor was with David.

v.7 There may have been domestic peace and tranquillity in David's house, but not in Saul's.

v.8 That is, "Am I a lackey of David and the tribe of Judah?" It is not entirely clear whether Abner is offended because he never touched the concubine or offended because his touching her was a trifle that Ish-Bosheth should have been grateful to overlook, dependent as he was on Abner's help.

v.11 No doubt this was not entirely due to the flare-up over the concubine. Years of civil war had passed and, apparently, it was becoming more obvious to Abner that David's progress was irresistible. [Gordon, Com., 216] In fact, in v. 17 we will learn that there was growing pressure from within Israel itself to anoint David king. This was due, largely no doubt, to the fact that so long as Ish-Bosheth hung on there was no hope of recovering territory lost to the Philistines.

v.12 Abner obviously does not want anyone else - perhaps Ish-Bosheth especially - making deals with David. He is concerned about guaranteeing his own safety and his own place in David's kingdom. And, no doubt, he could deliver more to David than anyone else in Israel.

v.14 Protocol must be observed. David communicates directly with Ish-Bosheth, Saul's remaining heir, who would be responsible to fulfill King Saul's commitments, even though his bargain is really with Abner. He had paid the price for her that her father had demanded. Now he wanted what was justly his. Of course, it was a way, as well, to test the readiness of Abner to act in loyalty to David.

v.15 Ish-Bosheth complies with David's request because he is taking orders from Abner. This compliance, of course, is virtually an act of abdication.

v.16 "The circle of misery" brought on by Saul's callousness now widens to include Paltiel, Michal's new husband. Saul, of course, had no right to give David's wife to another man, as the narrator makes clear by the way he puts it in 1 Samuel 25:44. "Saul gave David's wife…" The point of all of this is, of course, that with the transfer of Michal, Saul's daughter, Israel is publicly being transferred to David as well. It is the public demonstration that Ish-Bosheth is ceding power to David.

v.18 This statement, of course, is self-condemning, for it means that Abner knew very well what the Lord's will was and had been resisting it throughout the civil war. But he knows and he knows that the Israelites know that their chances against the Philistines are much better under David. Abner's speech is like the speech of many politicians who use religion for their own advantage, but whose hearts are clearly not in it. If he were a faithful man, he would have acknowledged David from the outset!

v.23 You may have noticed that three times in vv. 21-23 the narrator tells us that Abner departed from David in peace. He is building the case, so important at the time, that David did not have any part in Abner's murder, was not complicit in it, and did not approve of it.

v.24 Notice, Joab leaves off the "in peace."

v.25 It sounds as if Joab is primarily concerned that Abner has deceived David. In v. 27 we learn that was not his concern at all.

v.26 See how carefully the narrator reminds us that David had no part in this. He didn't even know what Joab was up to.

v.27 Vengeance was on his mind, no doubt. But we cannot believe that a man like Joab was not, at the same time, eliminating a dangerous rival as the top military man in Israel. Asahel had been killed fairly in the field. Abner was killed deceitfully and by stealth.

v.29 "leans on a crutch" is a guess. "Holds a spindle" is more likely, meaning that Joab's family, so proud of their warrior qualities, would have someone who was effeminate, given to women's work.

v.30 A summary of the narrator's moral judgment. "in battle" at the end of the sentence indicates that the law of revenge should not have been operative in this case. Joab had no legal standing to do what he did.

v.37 David's public display of grief ensured that Joab's reckless and evil act would not torpedo the negotiations that were then underway to reunite Israel under David.

You may have noticed how often "all the people" occurs in vv. 31-37 (the NIV omits "the people" after "all" in v. 35). The narrator wants us to know that everyone understood that David had no part in Abner's murder.

v.39 David cannot deal with Joab as he deserves, but leaves the judgment to God. Given that David summarily executes the assassins of Ish-Bosheth in the next chapter - men he had much less reason to fear, of course - , it is hard to believe that this failure to deal with Joab is not some indication of a weakness on David's part. Not an uncharacteristic weakness of leaders, by the way: a refusal to stand up to their important supporters and assistants. Joab's deeds will eventually catch up with him. Remember, before his death, David instructs his son Solomon to punish Joab and Solomon had him executed. 1 Kings 2:5-6, 28-35. What Joab thought about all of this we are left to wonder.

Now, the drift of all of that history is plain enough. Abner is brought over to David's side, effectively bringing an end to the civil war, and Ish-Bosheth is forced to hand Michal over to David, effectively ceding the throne to him and giving up his claim to succeed his father, Saul. Ish-Bosheth was a weak man. Had matters been left to him there probably wouldn't have been a civil war. He could never have rallied Israel behind himself. But Abner was strong enough to provoke a civil war and did so. But, as time passed, it became clear to this worldly-wise man that his hopes of carrying the day were fading and that, in order to guarantee both his safety and a place for himself in David's government, he needed to effect some rapprochement with David. This he did and David was entirely willing to negotiate with him. Joab's treachery might well have undone these carefully laid plans to unite the kingdom under David, but David's own decisive action convinced Israel that he was innocent of any betrayal and, as we will see next time, the elders of Israel came to David to anoint him king over the entire kingdom of Israel. All of that is clear enough. And, to be sure, it is the narrative's main point, being part of the account of David's ascent to the throne of Israel.

However, texts like these offer opportunity to descend to the details and to consider subjects that, while not the main point of a text, are clearly part of its teaching. A truly Christian mind is formed not only from the broad outline of biblical teaching, but from its details, its comment on points too small to be caught in the net of the law and the gospel. Wisdom literature is full of teaching like that and so is the historical narrative of the Bible. For, in truth, reality itself, human life itself, is likewise made up of matters both great and small. Tonight we have the opportunity, in the midst of this narrative of David's ascension to Israel's throne, to pick up such a detail, such a fine point of biblical truth and teaching, such a fine point that, when embraced, gives a polish, a finish to a Christian man or woman's understanding and outlook.

In the middle of this narrative relating David's progress to the throne we have the remarkable scene with Michal and Paltiel. What is that doing there? We hear nothing before or after about Paltiel. But the narrator paints him vividly in v. 16, desolate at the loss of his wife, but powerless in the presence of stronger men. Paltiel's happiness is devoured in the maw of political power being exercised by men who seem to have little or no thought for human feelings.

In previous years this small episode would have been passed over with scarcely any comment. And what comment there was would have likely taken the form of saying that personal feelings were not allowed to stand in the way of God's election of David as king of Israel. [Cf. Baldwin, TOTC, 189] But, now that we have come to a much greater appreciation of the narrative artistry of the OT history, we are more inclined to want to ponder what Paltiel's tears suggested to this narrator and why he felt it important to include this little, sad scene. Obviously the narrator does not explain himself. He does not tell us what he thinks about the decision of David to demand Michal back, even though it tore apart her marriage and home. But it was his decision to record Paltiel's grief and make us see how bitter a blow this was personally to a man who had done no harm to David.

Robert Alter, a scholar who has done a great deal to convince the world of biblical scholarship that the writers of the OT narratives were literary artists of the first order and that everything in their narrative is there for a purpose, suggests that with characteristic subtlety the narrator is showing us something of the human price of political power. He is forcing us to confront more honestly than we want to do how ordinary people suffer for the sake of the plans and purposes of the great. Alter writes,

"If history, in the hackneyed aphorism, is the story told by the victors, this narrative achieves something closer to the aim that Walter Benjamin defined as the task of the historical materialist, 'to brush history against the grain.'" [Alter, Com, xxiv]

In other words, the narrator is not permitting us to hear the account of David's rise to power without having to acknowledge that there was a human cost to this. Think, for example, of some Afghani mothers and fathers who have lost children in the American bombing of late, perhaps people who had no particular loyalty to the Taliban, who just wanted to eke out their meager lives in peace. They didn't ask for Osama bin Laden to come to their country nor for the USA to attack it. And think of the loved ones of those killed on September 11 many of whom, earlier that morning, couldn't have told you who Osama bin Laden was. Or think of the photo editor in Florida, a man who died of Anthrax simply because he worked in the wrong place at the wrong time. The great contest now underway in the world is sweeping up countless numbers of little people into its terrible maw. Such has always been the way of the world.

Alter goes on to point out that what is very interesting and perhaps important is that, while we are shown Paltiel weeping, we hear nothing about Michal's feelings at being wrenched away from a husband who obviously loves here dearly. But, the next time Michal enters the picture, we find her bitterly accusing David of his cavorting before the Ark of the Covenant as it is led into Jerusalem (this in chapter 6). Alter points out that

"With a fine sense of the tactics of exposition, the narrator tells us exactly what Michal is feeling but not why. … The scorn for David welling up in Michal's heart is thus plausibly attributable in some degree to all of the following: the undignified spectacle which David is just now making of himself; Michal's jealousy over the moment of glory David is enjoying while she sits alone, a neglected co-wife, back at the provisional palace; Michal's resentment over David's indifference to her all these years, over the other wives he has taken, over being torn away from the devoted Paltiel; David's dynastic ambitions - now clearly revealed in his establishing the Ark in the 'City of David' - which will irrevocably replace the house of Saul." [The Art of Biblical Narrative, 123]

Michal's subsequent words to David seize on the immediate occasion, the leaping and cavorting, as the particular reason for her anger, but the biblical writer knows as well as any psychologically minded modern that one's emotional reaction to an immediate stimulus can have a complicated prehistory; and by suppressing any causal explanation in his initial statement of Michal's scorn, he beautifully suggests the 'overdetermined' nature of her contemptuous ire, how it bears the weight of everything that has not been said but obliquely intimated about the relation between Michal and David.

[I interrupt Alter to remind us that Michal had, at first, been drawn to David, you remember, had even tricked her Father so as to aid David's escape from him. In fact, we are told twice in 1 Samuel 18 that Michal loved David. Obviously things have deteriorated badly since then and, so far as we can tell, that deterioration did not bother David over much.] Now, back to Alter. Remember, we are now at 2 Sam. 6:20ff.

"Michal, who at last must have her say with David, does not wait until he has actually entered the house, but goes out to meet him (perhaps, one might speculate, with the added idea of having her words ring in the ears of the retinue outside). The exchange of whipsaw sarcasms between the two reflects the high-tension fusion of the personal and the political in their relationship. When Michal addresses David in the third person as king of Israel, it is not in deference to royalty but in insolent anger at this impossible man who does not know how to behave like a king. She makes David an exhibitionist in the technical, sexual sense ("as some worthless fellow might indeed expose himself": apparently his skirts were flying high as he cavorted before the Ark), stressing that the hungry eyes of the slavegirls have taken it all in - an emphasis which leads one to suspect there is a good deal of sexual jealousy behind what is ostensibly an objection to his lack of regal dignity. …

In all this, the writer is careful to conceal his own precise sympathies. He does not question the historically crucial fact of David's divine election…but theological rights do not necessarily justify domestic wrongs, and the anointed monarch of Israel may still be a harsh and unfeeling husband to the woman who has loved him and saved his life." [124-125]

Alter concludes by noting that the last thing we hear about Michal, in 2 Sam. 6:23, viz. that she remained childless the rest of her life --the greatest curse upon a woman of that day and culture - is, itself, an ambiguous statement. Was she childless because she was cursed of God who closed her womb on account of her sin, or was she childless because, after this last exchange, David refused to have anything more to do with her and so, by his own indifference to her, condemned her to barrenness.

Now, Alter's exposition is, I think, very suggestive, even if it is difficult to know how far we may safely describe the narrator's viewpoint. Surely it is important that we see Paltiel weeping. Surely it is important that the narrator gives us nothing to suggest that David loved Michal or that he demanded her return out of any personal affection for her. And, he surely intends for us to see the relationship between David and Michal, which had started with her love for him - whether or not requited - deteriorate into lifelong bitterness.

One way or another, we are being shown how in the ordinary course of affairs, as God's providence works out his purpose in the world, smaller people often suffer for no other reason than that they are caught up in the maelstrom of conflict between the great and powerful. This is a fact of life and the Bible does not hide it from us. Most people in the world are not in a position to exercise influence over events in the world. Most of us are caught up in those events, for better or for worse. Think of folk who have lost their jobs in recent days because of what Arab terrorists did a month ago.

What are we to do with this? Well, part of thinking biblically about our daily life is the recognition that much of what happens is a complete mystery to us, we cannot explain it. It does not seem fair or right to us, but it happens nonetheless. And what does the Bible tell us in view of that fact? "Fear God and keep his commandments," that is all. Don't think you will make sense of this world, for you will not. Don't imagine that the good guys will always win and the bad guys lose: that a man who loves his wife like Paltiel obviously did, will always get to keep her or that a marriage that seemed to be made in heaven - Michal, Saul's daughter who loved David, and David, Saul's successor - will turn out happily.

In my work I live with this all the time. Most of the tears that are shed before me are Paltiel's tears. And I have no explanation for them except that this sinful, dying world, even though it is also a world of grace, is hard on people and will be and must be until it comes to an end. We cannot say this often enough to ourselves because we are always so tempted and so often succumb to the temptation to think that it is possible to provide a simpler explanation. We think we can explain the sorrows of another or think we ought to be able to explain our own.

Our comfort, the Bible tells us repeatedly, lies not in explanation, but in two things: the knowledge that God knows what he is doing, even if we do not, and the fact that Jesus Christ entered this world and suffered the same confusing sorrows we suffer and so knows what we are going through. The older we get, and the wiser, the more often we should be found silent, shaking our heads, turning our eyes to heaven and confessing to our God and Father that we are trusting him - in defiance of what we see and hear - we are trusting him to do right! Here is the lesson and it is one we American, psychologized, and often superficially scientifically minded, Christians need to take to heart. We do not know what God is doing. Much suffering in the world is beyond any satisfactory explanation. Much injustice comes from what we might well have thought or predicted would have produced justice and harmony. One image of the truly biblically minded saint is that of a man or a woman with a hand over his or her mouth and eyes lifted to heaven!

But, there is one thing more here. I haven't found it yet in a commentary, but I do wonder. Do we have in Paltiel an ominous foreshadowing of 2 Samuel 11 and David's own destruction of another home. Once again we are shown a faithful husband, once again we never hear anything of what the wife thinks about what happens. Surely it is not unlikely that our narrator is also setting the stage for David's terrible sins by letting us know that he knew very well how heart wrenching it could be to break up a marriage and so letting us know how utterly inexcusable David's adultery was.

In that case also we are made here, in seeing Paltiel, if only for a moment, to feel the woe of the world and to recognize that David, of all men, should have been the last, the very last, to visit that woe upon another marriage.

How dependent we are every day and all the time upon the grace and goodness and kindness of the Lord. It is by his mercy that we are not consumed. How little we understand of what is going on around us. How little we can explain the purpose of things. But we know that God is on his throne, that he does what pleases him in heaven and on earth, and we know that we have a High Priest who is touched with a feeling of our infirmities. And that, finally, is all we need to know.