Thou hast shamed this day the faces of all thy servants (v. 5). Joab finds the king with his face covered, crying O my son Absalom (v. 4), the victory turned into mourning (v. 2), and the army creeping into Mahanaim as people being ashamed steal away when they flee in battle (v. 3). His rebuke is brutal and exact: thou lovest thine enemies, and hatest thy friends; if Absalom had lived, and all we had died this day, then it had pleased thee well. The men who kept the charge of 18:5 now hear that their king would have traded them all for the rebel. The study notes that Joab is right about the army, and does not say that he is right about everything.

Readers should weigh the speaker. Joab killed Absalom against the king's order (18:14), and now rebukes the king for grieving the death he caused; he threatens, I swear by the LORD, if thou go not forth, there will not tarry one with thee this night (v. 7), and the threat carries because it is true. The narrator records no answer from David, only that the king arose, and sat in the gate (v. 8). Some have read Joab's speech as loyalty, some as insolence that David will remember — Amasa replaces him in verse 13, and 1 Kings 2:5-6 settles the account. The study holds both: a servant who saved the kingdom, and could not be forgiven for how.

Then the king arose, and sat in the gate. The chamber over the gate (18:33) was for grief; the gate itself is where a king is seen and judgment is given (15:2). David comes down from the one to the other, and all the people came before the king — the army is kept, as Joab said it would be. The study notes what the verse does not say: that David's grief was wrong. It says only that a king cannot stay in the chamber; the living need him in the gate. For Israel had fled every man to his tent — the phrase of 18:17. The rebellion has dissolved, and no one has yet said what comes next.

Verses 9-10 give the mood of the tribes: all the people were at strife, remembering that the king saved us out of the hand of our enemies and delivered us out of the hand of the Philistines, and that Absalom, whom we anointed over us, is dead in battle. Whom we anointed — the narrator lets Israel admit it; the revolt was not Absalom's alone. Why speak ye not a word of bringing the king back? The king who was carried out on the people's weeping must be carried back on their word, and he waits for it. Readers may see here the first open question of the chapter: who brings the king home, and who is first?

David sends to Zadok and Abiathar (v. 11) to prod the elders of Judah: Why are ye the last to bring the king back...? Ye are my brethren, ye are my bones and my flesh (v. 12) — Judah had gone over to Absalom at Hebron, and David reaches for kinship rather than reproach. Then the surprising clause: say ye to Amasa, Art thou not of my bone, and of my flesh? God do so to me, and more also, if thou be not captain of the host before me continually in the room of Joab. Absalom's general (17:25), David's own nephew, is offered Joab's place under an oath. The text gives no reason; readers have supplied two — to win Judah by pardoning its commander, and to be rid of the man who killed Absalom.

The study notes the success and the cost. He bowed the heart of all the men of Judah, even as the heart of one man (v. 14) — the plan works: Return thou, and all thy servants. But a king who brings back one tribe by private appeal, before the others have answered, has given the rest cause to say why have our brethren the men of Judah stolen thee away? (v. 41); and a king who gives the army to Amasa over Joab's head has not reckoned with Joab, who will kill Amasa at Gibeon (20:10) as he killed Abner (3:27). Scripture does not call the appointment a mistake; it records what followed, and lets the reader judge how grief and policy were mixed.

At the Jordan (vv. 15-18) Judah comes to Gilgal, and Shimei the son of Gera — the man of the stones (16:5-13) — hurries down with a thousand men of Benjamin and with Ziba, and falls before the king: Let not my lord impute iniquity unto me... thy servant doth know that I have sinned (vv. 19-20), the first this day of all the house of Joseph — Joseph standing, it seems, for the northern tribes, though Shimei is a Benjamite. Abishai asks the question he asked on the road: Shall not Shimei be put to death for this, because he cursed the LORD's anointed? (v. 21). Exodus 22:28 forbade cursing a ruler; the Law is on Abishai's side.

What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah, that ye should this day be adversaries unto me? — the Hebrew word is satan, an adversary; the sons of Zeruiah (3:39; 16:10) are again the voice David refuses. Shall there any man be put to death this day in Israel? for do not I know that I am this day king over Israel? A restored king begins with pardon, not executions — the mark, readers have said, of a man who knows himself pardoned. Thou shalt not die. And the king sware unto him (v. 23). The study records honestly that in 1 Kings 2:8-9 David will tell Solomon not to hold Shimei guiltless, and that Solomon kills him (1 Kings 2:46); the oath bound David, and he kept it, no further.

Mephibosheth the son of Saul — Jonathan's son, called by the house — came down to meet the king, and had neither dressed his feet, nor trimmed his beard, nor washed his clothes, from the day the king departed (v. 24): the signs of a mourner, as the narrator gives them, and the first answer to Ziba's charge of 16:3. Wherefore wentest not thou with me? (v. 25 — the verse says when he was come to Jerusalem, which many take as from Jerusalem, since the meeting is at the Jordan; the study notes the difficulty). His account: my servant deceived me... I will saddle me an ass... because thy servant is lame (v. 26) — the asses of 16:1, on his telling, were his, and were taken from him.

He hath slandered thy servant unto my lord the king; but my lord the king is as an angel of God: do therefore what is good in thine eyes. He makes his charge and then gives up his case; verse 28 adds that all his father's house were but dead men, and that he has no right... to cry any more unto the king. Is he telling the truth? The study will not settle it, because the narrator does not. Readers have found his unwashed feet and his surrender of the land (v. 30) convincing; others note that Ziba, with fifteen sons and twenty servants at the ford (v. 17), was a strong accuser, and that the lame man's story cannot be checked. Both tellings fit the text: David must judge without knowing.

Why speakest thou any more of thy matters? I have said, Thou and Ziba divide the land. The king cuts him off and splits the estate he had given whole to Ziba on the hill (16:4). Readers have read the verdict three ways: as weariness — a king at the Jordan with a nation to settle has no time to try a case; as a hedge — half to each, in case either is lying; or as a quiet reversal, since Ziba had been given all and now keeps half. The study offers none as certain. What it notes is that the oath to Jonathan (1 Samuel 20:15; 2 Samuel 9:7) is honoured in the form of a half-share, decided without a hearing, and that Proverbs 18:17 is still waiting at the ford.

Yea, let him take all, forasmuch as my lord the king is come again in peace unto his own house (v. 30). The reply has been heard two ways as well: as the word of a man who wanted only the king and never the land — the reading most Christian readers have taken, and the study finds natural; or as the bitterness of one who has lost half his inheritance to a liar and says so. Scripture leaves him there, and does not mention him again except in 21:7, where the king spared Mephibosheth... because of the LORD's oath. The study takes 21:7 as the book's last word on him: whatever David decided about the land, he kept the oath about the life.

Barzillai the Gileadite (17:27) comes down from Rogelim to see the king over Jordan — a very aged man, even fourscore years old, a very great man who had fed the court at Mahanaim (v. 32). David's offer is the best he has: Come thou over with me, and I will feed thee with me in Jerusalem (v. 33) — a place at the king's table, what he gave Mephibosheth (9:7). Barzillai declines, in the loveliest speech of old age in the historical books: can I discern between good and evil? can thy servant taste what I eat or what I drink? can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing women? Good and evil here is pleasant and unpleasant, not right and wrong, as the context shows.

Readers have set the verse beside Ecclesiastes 12:1-5, the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them — and Barzillai says it without complaint. He asks only to die in mine own city, and be buried by the grave of my father and of my mother (v. 37), and offers thy servant Chimham in his place — a son, by the usual reading, though the verse does not say so; 1 Kings 2:7 speaks of the sons of Barzillai. David takes Chimham, kisses and blesses the old man (v. 39), and sends him home. Jeremiah 41:17 mentions the habitation of Chimham, which is by Bethlehem; some suppose David settled him on family land there. The study offers that as a possibility, no more.

The chapter ends in a quarrel the whole book has been preparing. All the men of Israel ask why our brethren the men of Judah have stolen thee away (v. 41); Judah answers the king is near of kin to us and denies having profited (v. 42); Israel replies we have ten parts in the king — ten tribes to one — and we have also more right in David than ye (some ancient versions read we are the firstborn rather than you; the study notes the variant without choosing). And the words of the men of Judah were fiercer than the words of the men of Israel. The narrator ends not with the king restored but with his people shouting across him.

The study reads the verse as the hinge between Absalom's revolt and Sheba's. Israel had anointed Absalom (v. 10); David won Judah back by a private appeal (vv. 11-14); the north feels overlooked and says so; and 20:1 follows at once — We have no part in David. Under that again lies the old fault line of 2:4 and 5:1-3, Judah's king and Israel's king, which will split for good in 1 Kings 12:16 in words almost identical to Sheba's. Readers should not take sides; the narrator does not. He shows that a kingdom brought home by one tribe's kinship is held together by something thinner than the covenant of chapter 7.