Out of the quarrel at Gilgal steps a man of Belial — the narrator's label, as of Nabal (1 Samuel 25:25) — Sheba, the son of Bichri, a Benjamite: Saul's tribe again, as Shimei was. One trumpet, one slogan: We have no part in David, neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: every man to his tents, O Israel. The son of Jesse is the sneer Saul used (1 Samuel 20:27; 22:7); every man to his tents is a call to go home, which in a kingdom is a call to secede. The words will be heard again, almost unchanged, at Shechem when the kingdom breaks (1 Kings 12:16). The study marks the verse as a rehearsal of that day.

So every man of Israel went up from after David, and followed Sheba... but the men of Judah clave unto their king (v. 2). It is not said that Israel fought for Sheba; they went up from after David — they walked away. The revolt is a withdrawal, and that is why David will say in verse 6 that it may do more harm than did Absalom: Absalom wanted the throne and could be beaten in a field; a people that simply goes home cannot. Readers should set Judah's their king against Israel's we have no part. The crack of 19:43 has become a split, and the chapter is about whether it can be closed before it sets.

And David came to his house at Jerusalem — the first verse of the return itself, and it is this. The ten women his concubines, whom he had left to keep the house (15:16), whom Absalom took on the roof in the sight of all Israel (16:22): the king put them in ward, and fed them, but went not in unto them. So they were shut up unto the day of their death, living in widowhood. The study reads the verse slowly, because the narrator did not have to include it. They are provided for, and they are confined — the Hebrew phrase may mean a widowhood of life, widows while their husband lived. They had no part in any man's decision, and they bear the longest sentence in the book.

Why? The text does not say. Readers have supposed that women taken by a usurper could not return to the king's bed without seeming to confirm his claim (cf. 3:7; 16:21), or that the Law's rule against taking back a wife another had had (Deuteronomy 24:4) was felt to apply. Neither is stated. What the verse shows is the human cost of 12:11, falling not on David but on ten women named by number only. The study will not explain it away. Scripture records their fate as it recorded Tamar's desolate (13:20): without comment, in a sentence that lasts unto the day of their death.

David gives Amasa his first order as captain — Assemble me the men of Judah within three days (v. 4) — and Amasa tarried longer than the set time (v. 5). Whether he was slow, or Judah slow to follow Absalom's old general, the text does not say. David turns not to Joab but to Abishai: Now shall Sheba the son of Bichri do us more harm than did Absalom: take thou thy lord's servants, and pursue after him, lest he get him fenced cities. The order passes over Joab in silence; verse 7 says Joab's men went, and from verse 8 Joab is simply there. The study notes the narrator's economy: a king who has demoted Joab finds that Joab's army is still Joab's.

Lest he get him fenced cities — a secessionist with a walled town becomes a rival kingdom; the danger is exactly what verse 15 will show at Abel. Readers should see the shape of the pursuit: the Cherethites, and the Pelethites, and all the mighty men (v. 7) — the professional guard of 8:18, the men who went out with David over Kidron — against a militia that has gone home. Speed is the point, and Amasa's slowness is the fault that gives Joab his opening. Scripture does not say Amasa was disloyal, and the study will not; it says only that the delay happened, and that at Gibeon it cost him his life.

The great stone which is in Gibeon (v. 8) — Gibeon again, where Abner's twelve and Joab's twelve had killed each other (2:12-16) and Asahel had died. Amasa comes up; Joab's sword fell out of its sheath as he went — the narrator describes the dress so that the reader sees the trick: a sword in the hand looks picked up, not drawn. Art thou in health, my brother? — and the beard taken in the right hand for a kiss (v. 9). But Amasa took no heed to the sword that was in Joab's hand: so he smote him therewith in the fifth rib — the phrase of Abner's death (3:27) and Asahel's (2:23) — and struck him not again. One blow, by a cousin, under a greeting.

This is the second murder of a rival commander by Joab under a word of peace, and the narrator tells it as he told Abner's, flatly, so that the reader's own judgment supplies what the text withholds. David will name both together on his deathbed — Abner... and Amasa... whom he slew, and shed the blood of war in peace (1 Kings 2:5) — and the study takes that as the book's verdict. Readers have long heard the kiss of Gibeon beside the kiss in the garden (Luke 22:48), and Proverbs 27:6, the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. Verses 11-13 add the ugliest detail: the army halts to stare at Amasa wallowed in blood in the midst of the highway until a man drags him into a field and covers him.

Sheba shuts himself in Abel of Bethmaachah, far north near Dan (vv. 14-15; cf. 1 Kings 15:20); Joab's bank is up and the wall under assault. Then a voice: Hear, hear; say, I pray you, unto Joab, Come near hither (v. 16) — a wise woman, like Tekoah's (14:2), but speaking for herself and her city. She cites a proverb: They shall surely ask counsel at Abel: and so they ended the matter (v. 18) — Abel, it seems, was known as a place where disputes were settled by wisdom; and here is Joab settling one with a ram. Thou seekest to destroy a city and a mother in Israel. Mother is her word for her city, a mother-town with daughters, and the appeal lands.

Why wilt thou swallow up the inheritance of the LORD? — she reminds the king's general that the city is the LORD's, not the king's, and Joab, of all men, answers Far be it, far be it from me (v. 20) and states his terms: a man of mount Ephraim, Sheba... deliver him only, and I will depart (v. 21). Readers should see what the chapter has done: Joab, who killed Amasa with a greeting, is talked out of a massacre by a woman with a proverb. Deuteronomy 20:10 required terms of peace before a siege; the woman gets them after it has begun. The study sets her beside Abigail (1 Samuel 25) and the woman of Tekoah: the book's wise women do with words what its men do with swords, at less cost.

Then the woman went unto all the people in her wisdom. And they cut off the head of Sheba the son of Bichri, and cast it out to Joab. The narrator does not say what she said to them; in her wisdom covers it. One life for a city — the arithmetic Ahithophel offered (17:3) and Caiaphas will state (John 11:50) — and the study does not pretend it is comfortable. Sheba was a rebel on the Law's own terms (cf. Joshua 1:18), and the city had no cause to die for him; but a head over a wall is a grim end, and the narrator lets it be grim. He blew a trumpet — Joab's answers Sheba's — and they retired... every man to his tent, the phrase of verse 1, now meaning peace.

And Joab returned to Jerusalem unto the king. Not Amasa, not Abishai — Joab, with the rebellion ended and the rival dead, back at the king's side; verse 23 confirms it, Joab was over all the host of Israel. The demotion of 19:13 has lasted one chapter. The study notes the narrator's silence: David says nothing about Amasa here, and nothing about Joab, and the reader is left with 3:39 — these men the sons of Zeruiah be too hard for me. Whether David could not or would not act, the text does not say; 1 Kings 2:5-6 shows that he neither forgot nor forgave. The kingdom is saved, by a wise woman and a man who could not be governed.

The chapter ends with a list of officers (vv. 23-26), paralleling 8:16-18; the narrator closes the long story of the revolt by showing the state standing again. Joab... over all the host; Benaiah... over the Cherethites and over the Pelethites — the guard; Adoram... over the tribute — the Hebrew mas, forced labour, the levy of workers for the king's building (cf. 1 Kings 5:13-14); Jehoshaphat... recorder; Sheva... scribe; Zadok and Abiathar... the priests; and Ira also the Jairite... a chief ruler — the word is priest, as in 8:18, meaning here a royal minister. The study takes the list as the narrator's sign that the house is in order.

One name carries the future. Adoram — called Adoniram in 1 Kings 4:6 and Hadoram in 2 Chronicles 10:18; most take the names as one man's, though the study cannot prove it — will still be over the tribute under Rehoboam, and when the northern tribes repeat Sheba's cry, What portion have we in David? (1 Kings 12:16), it is Adoram whom all Israel stoned... that he died (1 Kings 12:18). The office named here is the one the kingdom will break on. Readers should hear in tribute what Samuel foretold of kings (1 Samuel 8:11-17), and see that David's court, restored, already carries the weight that Solomon's will make unbearable.