David enquired of the LORD. The man who went to Ziklag on his own counsel (1 Samuel 27:1) and came back to the ephod in the ashes (1 Samuel 30:7-8) now will not take a single step toward the throne without asking — and he asks twice, Shall I go up? and Whither? The answer is Hebron: the city of Abraham's tomb (Genesis 23:19), Caleb's inheritance (Joshua 14:13-14), a city of refuge and of priests (Joshua 21:11-13), and the chief town of the hill country of Judah, whose elders had received his gifts (1 Samuel 30:26-31).

The contrast with the next movement of the chapter is deliberate. David's kingship begins with an oracle; Ishbosheth's begins with Abner (v. 8). One throne is sought from God, the other arranged by a general. The narrator does not editorialise, but he has put the two beginnings side by side, and the rest of the book will show which one holds. For readers the lesson is in the order of David's verbs: enquire, then go up.

They anointed David king over the house of Judah — his second anointing, public this time, by his own tribe. The first was in secret at Bethlehem, by Samuel, among his brothers (1 Samuel 16:13); the third will be by all Israel at Hebron (5:3). The study notes that David does not seize the whole kingdom on the strength of the first anointing. He is king where he is received, and waits — seven years and six months (v. 11) — for the rest. God's promise and its fulfilment are not the same day.

The first news the new king hears is of a kindness done to the old one: the men of Jabeshgilead buried Saul (1 Samuel 31:11-13). David's response (vv. 5-7) is to bless them — blessed be ye of the LORD — and to promise to requite you this kindness. Jabesh is across the Jordan, in the territory Abner is about to claim for Ishbosheth (v. 9), so the message is also an overture; but the blessing is sincere, and it tells Israel what kind of king has arisen in Judah: one who honours loyalty to Saul.

Let your hands be strengthened, and be ye valiant — David speaks to Jabeshgilead as a king speaks to subjects, and the two clauses that follow tell them why: your master Saul is dead, and the house of Judah have anointed me. He does not demand their allegiance; he states the facts and lets them draw the conclusion. Verse 6's the LORD shew kindness and truth unto you pairs the two words that run through the covenant language of the Old Testament — steadfast love and faithfulness — and asks God to be to Jabesh what Jabesh was to Saul.

The text does not record a reply. The next verse shows Abner moving first: Jabesh and all Gilead go with Ishbosheth (vv. 8-9). David's overture fails, humanly, and he does not press it with an army. The narrator will later show the men of Jabesh remembered when David gathers Saul's bones (21:12-14). Kindness offered and not taken up is still recorded by God; the study lets that stand without pretending the chapter ends in unity.

But Abner — the first word is the hinge. Saul's cousin and general (1 Samuel 14:50), the man David mocked across the valley at Hachilah (1 Samuel 26:14-16), survives Gilboa and takes the surviving son of Saul over Jordan to Mahanaim, out of Philistine reach. Ishbosheth is not among the sons who died (1 Samuel 31:2). His name appears as Esh-baal in 1 Chronicles 8:33 and 9:39; many take Ishbosheth, man of shame, as a later substitution for a name that contained baal, as with Mephibosheth/Meribbaal (4:4; 1 Chronicles 8:34). The study notes it as a widely held view.

The verb is took. Ishbosheth does not go up; he is taken, and the narrator never has him anoint himself, enquire of God, or lead an army. Abner made him king (v. 9) over a list of regions that reads grandly — Gilead... Jezreel... Ephraim... Benjamin... all Israel — but that in verse 10 shrinks to two years, against David's seven and a half. The Ashurites of verse 9 are variously read (Asherites, Geshurites); the study leaves the name as the KJV gives it.

A difficulty should be named. Ishbosheth reigned two years; David was king in Hebron seven years and six months (v. 11), and chapter 5 has all Israel come to David only after Ishbosheth's death. Readers reconcile the figures in several ways — that Abner took time to recover the land from the Philistines before Ishbosheth was crowned, or that two years counts only the period of open war, or that the numbers come from different sources. The text itself does not explain, and the study does not choose.

But the house of Judah followed David. The verb is the ordinary one for walking after someone; Judah walked after David, and Israel was walked by Abner. The sentence quietly draws the line that will run through the book: the house of Saul and the house of David (3:1), north and south, a division that will close under David and open again after Solomon (1 Kings 12:16). For now it is two kings over one people, and the next verses show what that costs.

The two armies sit down facing each other across the pool of Gibeon (v. 13) — a great rock-cut cistern, still visible — and Abner proposes that the young men... arise, and play before us. The word is the one used for sport or performance; here it is a contest of champions, twelve against twelve, of the kind ancient armies sometimes used to settle a matter without full battle (cf. 1 Samuel 17:8-9). Joab, David's nephew and commander (1 Chronicles 2:16), agrees at once. Neither man asks God anything.

The play kills all twenty-four: they caught every one his fellow by the head, and thrust his sword in his fellow's side; so they fell down together (v. 16). The place is named Helkathhazzurim — the KJV margin gives the field of strong men; others read the field of sides or of flints; the study offers the name as the text does. The game decides nothing, and a very sore battle follows (v. 17). Readers should notice how lightly civil war begins — as sport, by two generals, on a pleasant afternoon — and how much blood it takes before anyone asks the question of verse 26.

The three sons of David's sister Zeruiah (1 Chronicles 2:16) are named together for the first time, and the narrator marks the youngest: Asahel was as light of foot as a wild roe — a gazelle. He is fast enough to catch Abner on open ground, and that is his undoing. Speed without judgment runs straight into a spear; the text does not say so, but it arranges the facts so that the reader will.

The pursuit (vv. 19-23) is told with unusual care. Abner looks back, recognises the boy, and twice tells him to turn aside and take some lesser man's armour — wherefore should I smite thee to the ground? how then should I hold up my face to Joab thy brother? (v. 22). Abner does not want this death; he knows what Joab is. Asahel refused, and Abner kills him with the hinder end of the spear, the butt, driven backward with such force that it passes through him. Everyone who reaches the body stood still.

The verse is the seed of the next two chapters. Abner killed Asahel in open battle, after two warnings, with a blow that reads like an attempt to stop him rather than murder him. Joab will kill Abner in the gate of Hebron for the blood of Asahel his brother (3:27), and David will call that murder (3:28-29, 39). The narrator has given the reader the facts needed to judge between them, and the Law's own distinction — the slayer who struck in enmity and the one who did not (Numbers 35:20-24) — lies behind the telling.

Under the fifth rib is the KJV's phrase for a thrust to the belly; it recurs for Abner (3:27), Ishbosheth (4:6) and Amasa (20:10), as if the book were counting the wounds of this civil war. As many as came... stood still — the men stop at the body of the fastest of them. There is a moment of sheer human grief in the middle of the fighting, and the narrator gives it a whole clause.

At sunset, from a hilltop where Benjamin has rallied (vv. 24-25), the man who began the day's killing asks to end it: Shall the sword devour for ever? knowest thou not that it will be bitterness in the latter end? Abner proposed the play; Abner killed Asahel; and Abner is the one who sees where it leads. His last phrase names the thing exactly — their brethren. This is Israel killing Israel, and every man on both hills knew it.

Joab's answer (v. 27) is sour and honest: had Abner not spoken, the pursuit would have gone on till morning. He blows the trumpet and the people stood still, and pursued after Israel no more (v. 28). The count (vv. 30-31) is nineteen of David's men and Asahel against three hundred and sixty of Benjamin and Abner's men. Readers will see that Joab obeys the appeal and remembers the death; the bitterness Abner foresaw in the latter end falls first on Abner himself (3:27).

Two night marches end the chapter. Abner goes all that night through the plain, and passed over Jordan to Mahanaim (v. 29); Joab carries his brother to Bethlehem, lays him in the sepulchre of his father — Zeruiah's husband is never named in Scripture — and goes on all night to reach Hebron at break of day. Bethlehem is David's town and Asahel's; the boy who ran like a gazelle is buried a few miles from where the shepherd was anointed.

The chapter leaves Joab standing in Hebron at dawn with a grave behind him. The narrator does not tell us what he said to David; he tells us in the next chapter what he did to Abner. The first battle of the civil war has settled nothing except the thing that will drive the next chapters: a blood-debt between the two generals. The study notes that David is absent from the whole fight — neither consulted nor present — and that the war of Judah and Israel is, at this stage, a war of two captains.