I go the way of all the earth (v. 2) — Joshua's words before his death (Joshua 23:14). Be thou strong therefore, and shew thyself a man echoes the LORD's charge to Joshua, be strong and of a good courage (Joshua 1:6-7), and like that charge it is defined at once by the Law: keep the charge of the LORD thy God... his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and his testimonies, as it is written in the law of Moses (v. 3). Manhood, in David's last words, is obedience. The king of Deuteronomy 17:18-20 was to copy the Law and read it all his days; David hands Solomon a book before he hands him a list.

If thy children take heed to their way... there shall not fail thee (said he) a man on the throne of Israel. The study names a tension readers have long felt. In 2 Samuel 7:14-16 the promise was that sin would bring the rod, but my mercy shall not depart away from him, and the throne shall be established for ever; here David quotes it with an if. Psalm 132:11-12 has the if as well; Psalm 89:30-37 holds both. Some read the condition as governing each king's enjoyment of the promise, not the promise itself; some note that the throne of Israel — all the tribes — was in fact lost after Solomon (1 Kings 11:11-13), while a lamp remained in Judah. Both halves stand in Scripture.

Thou knowest also what Joab the son of Zeruiah did to me (v. 5) — perhaps the killing of Absalom against the king's order (2 Samuel 18:14) and the rough rebuke that followed (19:5-7); the text does not specify. Then the charge that matters in law: what he did to the two captains... Abner the son of Ner, and... Amasa the son of Jether, whom he slew, and shed the blood of war in peace (2 Samuel 3:27; 20:10). The blood of war upon his girdle... and in his shoes — the girdle where Amasa's killer wore his sword (20:8). Do therefore according to thy wisdom, and let not his hoar head go down to the grave in peace. Wisdom is the word the next chapter will make Solomon's.

How should readers judge this? Some hear justice long delayed: Joab twice murdered men under a word of peace; the Law said blood defileth the land until the slayer's blood answers it (Numbers 35:33), and David had confessed at Abner's grave that he was too weak to act (2 Samuel 3:39); Solomon's own words (vv. 31-33) frame the death as taking away innocent blood. Others hear a dying man settling a grudge — what Joab... did to me stands first — and leaving his son the work he would not do himself. The study will not whitewash the scene, nor flatten it: the guilt was real, and so, it seems, was the resentment.

Between the two hard charges, one of kindness: shew kindness unto the sons of Barzillai the Gileadite, and let them be of those that eat at thy table: for so they came to me when I fled because of Absalom (v. 7; 2 Samuel 17:27-29; 19:31-39). Then Shimei: which cursed me with a grievous curse in the day when I went to Mahanaim: but he came down to meet me at Jordan, and I sware to him by the LORD, saying, I will not put thee to death with the sword (v. 8; 2 Samuel 16:5-13; 19:16-23). Now therefore hold him not guiltless... his hoar head bring thou down to the grave with blood. The oath, it seems, bound David and not his son.

Readers have found this the hardest verse in David's farewell, and the study says so. One reading: Shimei had cursed the LORD's anointed, a crime under Exodus 22:28; David pardoned him for his own reign, as a king may, but did not and could not pardon him for ever, and he leaves the matter to Solomon's wisdom rather than prescribing a sentence. Another: David keeps the letter of his oath — I will not put thee to death — while arranging its breach. The text does not choose for us, and it is worth noticing that Solomon, in the event, will give Shimei a fair condition (v. 37) and execute him only when he breaks it.

So David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David (v. 10) — the phrase that will close many reigns in Kings, here first used in the book of an actual death (Bathsheba spoke of it in 1:21); the city of David is the stronghold he took from the Jebusites (2 Samuel 5:7-9). Forty years: seven years reigned he in Hebron, and thirty and three years reigned he in Jerusalem. The figures agree with 2 Samuel 5:4-5, which gives the Hebron years more exactly as seven years and six months; forty is the round total, and 1 Chronicles 29:27 repeats it. Peter will say on the day of Pentecost that David's sepulchre is with us unto this day (Acts 2:29).

The study pauses on the shortness of the notice. The life that filled two books of Samuel ends in two verses, and the narrator moves on at once: Then sat Solomon upon the throne of David his father; and his kingdom was established greatly (v. 12). Readers should mark established: the chapter will end on the same word (v. 46), and between the two verses lie three deaths and a banishment. The establishing in verse 12 is the LORD's gift; the establishing in verse 46 is that gift secured by a sword. The study lets the reader hold both, as the narrator seems to intend.

Comest thou peaceably? And he said, Peaceably (v. 13). Adonijah's words to Bathsheba are a strange mixture: the kingdom was mine, and... all Israel set their faces on me — an overstatement — and then it was his from the LORD (v. 15), an admission. His request: Abishag the Shunammite to wife (v. 17). Bathsheba agrees to ask, and goes to the king, who rises, bows, and seats her on his right hand (v. 19) — the place of honour for the king's mother. Whether she understood what she was asking, or understood it all too well, the text does not say, and readers have argued both. The study leaves her as the narrator does, unexplained.

Ask for him the kingdom also; for he is mine elder brother. Solomon hears a claim. In that world a man who took a king's woman was seen to take something of his place — Abner with Rizpah (2 Samuel 3:7), Absalom on the roof (16:21-22); Abishag was not David's wife, since the king knew her not (1 Kings 1:4), but she had been of his household. Solomon names the faction too: Abiathar the priest, and... Joab. He swears that Adonijah shall be put to death this day (v. 24), and Benaiah fell upon him that he died (v. 25). The condition of 1 Kings 1:52 had been if wickedness shall be found in him; Solomon judged that it was. Readers may weigh whether the request was a plot or folly.

Abiathar is spared death but not office: Get thee to Anathoth, unto thine own fields; for thou art worthy of death (v. 26) — Anathoth, a priests' town in Benjamin (Joshua 21:18). Solomon gives two reasons for mercy: thou barest the ark of the LORD God before David my father (2 Samuel 15:24-29), and thou hast been afflicted in all wherein my father was afflicted — since the day he escaped the slaughter at Nob and fled to David (1 Samuel 22:20-23), bringing the ephod (23:6). The man who had stood by David in every flight is undone by one choice at the end. The study notes the sadness of it, and that Solomon remembers his faithfulness.

That he might fulfil the word of the LORD, which he spake concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh. The narrator says so plainly. The man of God had told Eli that there shall not be an old man in thine house for ever, and I will raise me up a faithful priest (1 Samuel 2:31-35; cf. 3:12-14). Abiathar descends from Eli by the usual reading of 1 Samuel 14:3 and 22:20; Zadok will be put in the room of Abiathar (v. 35), and later Scripture names the sons of Zadok as the priests who kept the charge (Ezekiel 44:15). A word spoken generations before is seen fulfilled in a politics of the moment: the study takes that as the narrator's point.

Joab had turned after Adonijah, though he turned not after Absalom (v. 28) — the narrator's fairness to him even here. He fled unto the tabernacle of the LORD, and caught hold on the horns of the altar, as Adonijah had (1:50). But the Law had said of the man who slays his neighbour with guile, thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die (Exodus 21:14). Benaiah says Come forth; Joab answers Nay; but I will die here (v. 30) — perhaps hoping the king would not dare to kill him in the holy place, perhaps choosing where he would die. Solomon's reply: Do as he hath said, and fall upon him, and bury him.

That thou mayest take away the innocent blood, which Joab shed, from me, and from the house of my father. Solomon frames the act in the Law's terms (Deuteronomy 19:12-13): the blood of Abner and Amasa — two men more righteous and better than he... my father David not knowing thereof (v. 32) — lay on the king's house until it was answered. Upon David, and upon his seed... shall there be peace for ever from the LORD (v. 33). Benaiah kills him, and he is buried in his own house in the wilderness (v. 34). The study notes that the general who served David through his whole reign dies at an altar with no word of mercy, and that the narrator does not mourn him.

Shimei is given terms (vv. 36-37): Build thee an house in Jerusalem, and dwell there, and go not forth thence any whither; the day he crosses the brook Kidron — the stream David crossed weeping in flight (2 Samuel 15:23), on the way toward Shimei's Bahurim — thou shalt surely die. The saying is good, says Shimei (v. 38). Three years later two servants flee unto Achish son of Maachah king of Gath (v. 39); Shimei saddles his ass and fetches them back. Gath lies to the west, not over Kidron; but the terms had said any whither (v. 36), and Solomon holds him to them, calling his word the oath of the LORD (v. 43).

Thou knowest all the wickedness which thine heart is privy to, that thou didst to David my father (v. 44): Solomon ties the sentence to the curse of 2 Samuel 16, as David had. Readers again differ: a man given a fair rule who broke it knowingly, or a pretext found at last for the end David wanted. The study notes that the narrator gives Shimei three years and a choice, and lets him choose. So the king commanded Benaiah... which went out, and fell upon him, that he died. And the kingdom was established in the hand of Solomon. The chapter's last word answers verse 12, and the reader is left to weigh how it came.