Ziba the servant of Mephibosheth (v. 1) — the steward of chapter 9 — meets the fleeing king a little past the top of the hill with a couple of asses saddled and provisions much like Abigail's (1 Samuel 25:18): two hundred loaves... an hundred bunches of raisins... an hundred of summer fruits, and a bottle of wine. The gift is timely, and so is the explanation (v. 2): asses for the household, bread for the young men, wine for the faint. Then the king's question, where is thy master's son?, and Ziba's answer: Mephibosheth abideth at Jerusalem, hoping that to day shall the house of Israel restore me the kingdom of my father.

The study will not judge this from chapter 16, because the book does not. In 19:24-30 Mephibosheth will come to meet the returning king unwashed since the day he left, and say that Ziba deceived him — that he had meant to come and his servant took the asses and slandered him; David, hearing both, divides the land. Which man told the truth the narrator never says, and readers have argued it ever since. What this verse shows is only what David heard on the hill: a loyal steward, a generous gift, and a charge against the lame man at his table, with no one there to answer it.

Behold, thine are all that pertained unto Mephibosheth. On one man's word, with the accused absent, the king transfers the whole estate of Saul that he had restored for Jonathan's sake (9:7). Whatever the truth of Ziba's charge, the judgment is hasty, and the study says so without deciding the charge: he that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him (Proverbs 18:13), and he that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him (Proverbs 18:17). The neighbour will come in chapter 19. Readers should hold the verse in suspense until then.

Readers may also notice the state David is in. He has just lost his counsellor and his city; a man of the house of Saul is about to curse him for Saul's blood; and here is a report that the last heir of Saul is hoping for the throne. On the road, under chastening, fear of the old house is easy to believe. The narrator does not excuse the king, and does not accuse him; he records the gift received and the verdict given in the same breath, and lets I humbly beseech thee that I may find grace in thy sight close the scene with the steward's satisfaction. The study notes that the oath to Jonathan is being tested here, and not by Mephibosheth.

Bahurim — the village where Michal's husband wept after her (3:16), on the road down toward Jordan — and out of it Shimei, the son of Gera, of the family of the house of Saul, cursing and throwing stones at a king walking with his mighty men on either hand. Come out, come out, thou bloody man, and thou man of Belial (v. 7). His charge is all the blood of the house of Saul: Abner, Ishbosheth, perhaps the seven of chapter 21 if that came earlier. The narrator has gone to pains to clear David of Abner and Ishbosheth (3:28; 4:11); Shimei does not believe it, and Benjamin, it seems, did not either.

The study notes the irony the chapter does not state. Shimei is wrong about the blood — the narrator has settled that — and right about the thing: David is a bloody man, and the LORD has returned blood upon him; only the blood is Uriah's (12:9), of which Shimei knows nothing. Thou art taken in thy mischief is true, for the wrong reason. Readers should see that this is why David can bear it (v. 10): he knows a charge worse than Shimei's and a Judge who has already passed sentence. A man under God's chastening can afford to be cursed unjustly, because he has been judged justly.

Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? let me go over, I pray thee, and take off his head (v. 9). Abishai — who had wanted to pin Saul to the ground with one stroke (1 Samuel 26:8) — offers the soldier's answer, and David gives him an answer that recalls his complaint at Abner's death (3:39) and that he will give again in 19:22: What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah? The men of blood in David's house are his sister's sons, and he has spent a reign refusing their remedies (3:39). Dead dog is the phrase of 9:8, now in Abishai's mouth for a Benjamite, as David once used it of himself (1 Samuel 24:14).

So let him curse, because the LORD hath said unto him, Curse David. David does not mean that the LORD spoke to Shimei; he means that nothing reaches him that the LORD has not allowed, and that a curse on the road from Jerusalem is part of the sentence he has accepted (15:26). Verse 11 gives the reasoning: my son, which came forth of my bowels, seeketh my life: how much more now may this Benjamite do it? A man whose own son is hunting him has nothing left to protect from a stranger's tongue. The study notes that David never says Shimei is right; he says Shimei is permitted. Those are different, and the difference is faith.

It may be that the LORD will look on mine affliction, and that the LORD will requite me good for his cursing this day. The chapter's key verse, and a model of how to be cursed. It may be — no claim on God, only hope, as in 15:25-26. Look on mine affliction — the word of Leah (Genesis 29:32) and of Hannah (1 Samuel 1:11); the Hebrew text here reads iniquity where the margin and many read affliction or eye, and the study notes the uncertainty without pressing it. Requite me good for his cursing — the curse itself, borne without reply, may be turned by God into blessing. Readers have seen in this the Old Testament nearest approach to bless them that curse you (Luke 6:28).

The later history is in the book. When David returns, Shimei is first across the Jordan to beg pardon, and David swears he shall not die (19:16-23) — the good of this verse, perhaps, in the shape of a man who could be spared. On his deathbed David will tell Solomon to deal with him (1 Kings 2:8-9), and Solomon does (1 Kings 2:36-46); the study records that the forbearance of the road was not the whole story, and does not smooth it. What the road gives is a king walking under stones and dust (v. 13) who answers neither with his soldiers nor with his tongue, and arrives weary (v. 14) and able to rest.

The scene moves to Jerusalem: Absalom, and all the people the men of Israel, came to Jerusalem, and Ahithophel with him (v. 15), and Hushai the Archite, David's friend, comes to greet the new king: God save the king, God save the king — in Hebrew let the king live, twice, and the narrator leaves it unsaid which king. Absalom hears what he wants to hear and asks the question anyway (v. 17): Is this thy kindness to thy friend? why wentest thou not with thy friend? The word is hesed, and in Absalom's mouth it is a sneer; he has just left his own father on the road.

Hushai's answer (vv. 18-19) is built of the same ambiguity: whom the LORD, and this people, and all the men of Israel, choose, his will I be... as I have served in thy father's presence, so will I be in thy presence. Every clause can be read of David, and Absalom reads every clause of himself. The study notes that Scripture records the deception without comment, as it recorded Rahab's and Michal's (Joshua 2:4-6; 1 Samuel 19:14), and that its approval is of the outcome, 17:14. What the text invites the reader to see is a usurper so sure of himself that he will accept a courtier's word over a friend's absence.

Give counsel among you what we shall do (v. 20), and Ahithophel gives it: Go in unto thy father's concubines, which he hath left to keep the house — the ten women of 15:16. The counsel is political before it is anything else. To take a king's harem was to claim his throne; Ishbosheth read Abner's act with Rizpah that way (3:7), and Solomon will read Adonijah's request for Abishag so (1 Kings 2:22). Done in public it makes the breach past mending — all Israel shall hear that thou art abhorred of thy father — so that the waverers who hoped for a reconciliation must commit: then shall the hands of all that are with thee be strong.

The Law forbade it absolutely: the nakedness of thy father's wife shalt thou not uncover (Leviticus 18:8; 20:11; Deuteronomy 22:30), and Paul will name the same sin as unheard of even among Gentiles (1 Corinthians 5:1). Ahithophel knows that and counsels it, because it works. The study notes the shape of his wisdom: wholly clear-sighted, wholly without God, and the next verse will say that men took it as if God had spoken. Readers should also remember the ten women, who are given no voice here and will be shut up in ward... living in widowhood for the rest of their lives (20:3).

So they spread Absalom a tent upon the top of the house; and Absalom went in unto his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel. The text's own link is 12:11-12, and the study states it as the text does: I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun... thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun. The top of the house is the roof of 11:2, from which David saw Bathsheba. The sentence is executed on the spot where the sin began, by the son, in daylight, before everyone.

Readers should hold two things the text holds. The narrator says in 17:14 that the LORD was bringing evil on Absalom; he says in 12:11 that the LORD would raise this evil against David. Absalom's act is his own sin, counselled by Ahithophel and chosen by him, and it is at the same time the chastening Nathan foretold. Scripture does not resolve how God's sentence and a man's wickedness are the same event; it states both (cf. Genesis 50:20; Acts 2:23). The study notes that David is not told of this in the narrative; he will learn it as all Israel did, and the ten women bear the cost of two men's sins.

As if a man had enquired at the oracle of God — the word of God, the Hebrew says; such was Ahithophel's reputation both with David and with Absalom. The narrator pauses to tell us this at the end of chapter 16 for one reason: so that the reader will know, before chapter 17 opens, exactly how much weight the counsel about to be given carries, and therefore how much is at stake in David's one-line prayer on the hill, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness (15:31). The study reads the verse as the narrator's set-up for 17:14, where the oracle-like counsel is set aside by the LORD who gives real oracles.

There is a warning in the verse as well. Counsel can be as if from God — clear, effective, sure — and be the counsel to defile ten women on a roof. Wisdom detached from the fear of the LORD is still wisdom, and it is dangerous in proportion to its quality; the serpent, too, was more subtil than any beast (Genesis 3:1). Readers who weigh advice by how well it works should sit with this verse. The study notes the irony the narrator intends: the man whose word sounded like God's will hang himself when his word is not taken (17:23), and the real word of God is a shepherd-king's prayer on a hillside.