Where Was Abigail?

A word before you start. This post reads alongside 2 Samuel 13–14. That’s the story of a rape inside King David’s family and the murder that followed it. I don’t retell those scenes in detail here, but they stand behind everything below. If they touch something in your own story, there’s a note at the end for you.

Some stories in the Bible are told so that you’ll remember another story while you read them.

2 Samuel 13 is one of those. It’s the darkest chapter in David’s family history, and on its surface it’s about David’s children: Amnon, Tamar, Absalom. But all through it, faintly, like a song playing in another room, you can hear an older story. It’s a story from David’s wilderness years, about a rich fool, a sheepshearing feast, and a woman who rode down a mountain road and stopped a slaughter.

Once you hear it, you can’t stop hearing it. And it leaves you with a question that nobody in 2 Samuel 13 says out loud, but the whole chapter is asking.

Where was Abigail?

The woman on the mountain road

First, the older story. You’ll find it in 1 Samuel 25. I’ve written about it at more length elsewhere, so here’s the short version.

David isn’t king yet. He’s a fugitive with six hundred men, hiding from Saul in the wilderness. For months his men have camped alongside the flocks of a very rich man named Nabal and protected his shepherds. At shearing time, which is feast time, David sends to ask for a share. Nabal sends back an insult. And David straps on his sword and tells four hundred men to do the same. By morning, he swears, there won’t be one male left alive in Nabal’s house (25:22).

Nabal’s wife hears about it. The narrator has already told us about her: “the woman was discerning … but the man was harsh and badly behaved” (25:3). And then she does something no one asked her to do. She loads donkeys with bread and wine and meat and figs. She sends them ahead. “But she did not tell her husband Nabal” (25:19). She rides down a mountain road, straight into the path of an armed man on his way to kill.

²³When Abigail saw David, she hurried and got down from the donkey and fell before David on her face and bowed to the ground. ²⁴She fell at his feet and said, “On me alone, my lord, be the guilt. Please let your servant speak in your ears, and hear the words of your servant. ²⁵Let not my lord regard this worthless fellow, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is with him. But I your servant did not see the young men of my lord, whom you sent. ²⁶Now then, my lord, as the LORD lives, and as your soul lives, because the LORD has restrained you from bloodguilt and from saving with your own hand, now then let your enemies and those who seek to do evil to my lord be as Nabal. (1 Samuel 25:23–26)

Then she talks. It’s a long, careful speech, and it works. She talks David out of it. And David’s answer is one of the most beautiful things he ever says:

³²And David said to Abigail, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me! ³³Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodguilt and from working salvation with my own hand! (1 Samuel 25:32–33)

Hold on to three things from that scene, because 2 Samuel is going to hand every one of them back to us bent out of shape.

She was sent by the LORD. That’s David’s own reading: “Blessed be the LORD … who sent you” (25:32). Nobody else put her on that road.

She spoke her own words. Nobody scripted her. She saw what was coming and found the words herself.

She kept a man from “saving with his own hand.” That’s the phrase she uses (25:26) and David repeats (25:33). It’s a strange phrase in English, and an important one in Hebrew.

Save, deliver — יָשַׁע — yāšaʿ — in the causative stem, to deliver, save; to give victory to (BDB)

To “save with your own hand” is to take your vindication into your own hands. It means getting your justice by your own sword, in your own time. That’s the thing Abigail stood between David and. And David blessed God for it. And then, one more line:

³⁵Then David received from her hand what she had brought him. And he said to her, “Go up in peace to your house. See, I have obeyed your voice, and I have granted your petition.” (1 Samuel 25:35)

“I have obeyed your voice.” In Hebrew it’s šāmaʿtî bĕqôlēk, “I listened to your voice.”

Remember that line. It’s going to matter more than anything else in this post.

Nabal’s shadow

Now read 2 Samuel 13 with that story in your ear. Here’s what you’ll start to hear.

The word in Tamar’s mouth

When Amnon seizes his half-sister Tamar, she pleads with him:

¹²She answered him, “No, my brother, do not violate me, for such a thing is not done in Israel; do not do this outrageous thing. ¹³As for me, where could I carry my shame? And as for you, you would be as one of the outrageous fools in Israel. Now therefore, please speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you.” (2 Samuel 13:12–13)

“This outrageous thing” is hannĕbālâ. “One of the outrageous fools” is kĕʾaḥad hannĕbālîm. Both come from the same root as a name we’ve just met.

Foolish, fool — נָבָל — nābāl — foolish, senseless, especially of the man who has no perception of ethical and religious claims, with the added idea of ignoble, disgraceful; as a noun, the impious and presumptuous fool (BDB)

Robert Bergen hears an allusion here, “perhaps,” as he cautiously puts it: Amnon would become one of the “Nabals” in Israel.¹ Tamar is telling her brother exactly what kind of man he’s about to become, and the word she reaches for is Nabal’s name. As Abigail said of her husband, “as his name is, so is he” (1 Samuel 25:25).

One more detail. In 1 Samuel 25, it’s Abigail who names the fool. In 2 Samuel 13, it’s Tamar. In both stories a woman sees the folly clearly, says so out loud, and calls the man back from it. (Tamar’s last line, “please speak to the king,” is one readers have long argued over: a real way out, or a way out of the room? Nothing below rests on it.) Hold that thought.

The sheepshearing

Two years later, Absalom throws a party.

²³After two full years Absalom had sheepshearers at Baal-hazor, which is near Ephraim, and Absalom invited all the king’s sons. (2 Samuel 13:23)

Shear — גָּזַז — gāzaz — to shear sheep (BDB)

It’s the same verb, gāzaz, and the same occasion. In 1 Samuel 25 the shearers appear in verses 2, 4, 7 and 11. In 2 Samuel 13 they appear in verses 23 and 24.² Sheepshearing in Israel was a feast: food, wine and celebration. It’s the setting of Nabal’s party. Now it’s the setting of Absalom’s.

The merry heart

²⁸Then Absalom commanded his servants, “Mark when Amnon’s heart is merry with wine, and when I say to you, ‘Strike Amnon,’ then kill him. Do not fear; have I not commanded you? Be courageous and be valiant.” (2 Samuel 13:28)

Now set that beside the end of Nabal’s night:

³⁶And Abigail came to Nabal, and behold, he was holding a feast in his house, like the feast of a king. And Nabal’s heart was merry within him, for he was very drunk. (1 Samuel 25:36)

A heart “merry” with wine. In Hebrew it’s ṭôb lēb, literally a heart that’s “good.” The next morning Abigail tells him everything. “His heart died within him, and he became as a stone” (25:37). Ten days later, “the LORD struck Nabal, and he died” (25:38).

Amnon’s merry heart is the cue for his murder. Bergen says the sheepshearing, the banquet and the revelry “link this passage with 1 Samuel 25 and prepare the reader for the untimely death of a ‘Nabal.’”³

“A feast like the feast of a king”

There’s one more echo, and it’s hiding in a textual footnote.

The standard Hebrew text of 2 Samuel 13:27 says Absalom “pressed him until he let Amnon and all the king’s sons go with him.” The ancient Greek translation of Samuel has one more sentence at the end of that verse: “And Absalom made a feast like the feast of the king.”⁴ Some scholars think that sentence was original and a copyist’s eye skipped it, because the line before it ends with the same word, “king.” Anderson takes that view, and a Dead Sea Scrolls copy of Samuel seems to have had room for the extra words.⁵ Others are less sure.

Either way, notice whose feast that sentence describes. Go back to 1 Samuel 25:36: Nabal “was holding a feast in his house, like the feast of a king.” In Hebrew that’s mišteh kĕmišteh hammelek, and the Greek of 2 Samuel 13:27 says the same thing of Absalom. If the longer reading is original, the narrator has dressed Absalom’s party in Nabal’s exact words. If it was added by a later scribe, then a very early reader heard 1 Samuel 25 in this chapter so clearly that he wrote it into the margin. Either way, someone heard it.⁶

The question underneath

So you’ve got a fool named by a woman, a sheepshearing, a merry heart and a feast like a king’s. David Firth gathers these echoes and then draws out what they’re for:

“Interweaving motifs from 1 Sam. 25 and 2 Sam. 11–12 … implicitly ask why no one intervenes in the way Abigail did.”⁷

That’s the question. In 1 Samuel 25, a woman with no power at all rode out and stood in front of an armed man, and blood didn’t flow. In 2 Samuel 13, there’s a feast and a fool and a heart merry with wine, just like before. But nobody rides down the mountain.

Nobody rode down the mountain

Who could have?

That matters, so I want to be careful here. The question “where was Abigail?” can easily turn into an accusation against the wrong people. It can land on the sisters and mothers and friends of every survivor who has ever asked, why didn’t I see it, why didn’t I stop it? That’s not where this text points. So let’s look at who in 2 Samuel 13 actually had knowledge and actually had power.

Jonadab had knowledge. He’s David’s nephew and Amnon’s friend, the one who designed the sickbed trap in the first place. After the murder he tells David that Absalom had planned it “from the day he violated his sister Tamar” (13:32). He knew. For two years he knew.

David had power. He heard what Amnon did. “He was very angry” (13:21). And the text records nothing else, no word and no act. Then two years later, when Absalom pressed him, David sent Amnon to the feast (13:27).

Absalom’s servants had the swords in their hands. Absalom had to tell them, “Do not fear; have I not commanded you?” (13:28). Nobody refused.

There were plenty of people with access, information and authority. Nobody used them to stand in the gap.

And here’s the hardest part. There was an Abigail in 2 Samuel 13. It was Tamar.

Look at it again. Tamar saw the folly coming. She named it: nĕbālâ, the fool’s deed. She appealed to what is “not done in Israel.” She did what Abigail did on that mountain road: she stood between a man and his violence and spoke.

The difference wasn’t in the woman. It was in the man.

¹⁴But he would not listen to her, and being stronger than she, he violated her and lay with her. (2 Samuel 13:14)

In Hebrew: wĕlōʾ ʾābâ lišmōaʿ bĕqôlāh, “he was not willing to listen to her voice.”

That’s the line I told you to hold on to. When Abigail spoke, David said, šāmaʿtî bĕqôlēk, “I have listened to your voice” (1 Samuel 25:35). When Tamar spoke, Amnon “would not listen to her voice.” It’s the same verb with the same object. And then a second time, after it was over, when she begged him not to throw her out: “But he would not listen to her” (13:16).⁸

So when we ask “where was Abigail?”, the text’s answer isn’t that no woman spoke. A woman spoke as wisely and bravely as Abigail ever did. The answer is that the man in front of her wouldn’t listen. And then every other person who could have done something did nothing.

I want to say that as plainly as the text does. Tamar didn’t fail to stop it. She did all she could. The failure belongs to the ones who would not listen, and to the ones who knew and stayed quiet.

Then a wise woman does come

Here’s the twist.

In chapter 14, a wise woman does finally come before David. She falls on her face. She speaks Abigail’s language almost word for word. And she talks the king into something. It just isn’t the same thing.

Absalom has fled after the murder. He’s been in exile for three years. David’s general Joab sets out to bring him back. So:

²And Joab sent to Tekoa and brought from there a wise woman and said to her, “Pretend to be a mourner and put on mourning garments. Do not anoint yourself with oil, but behave like a woman who has been mourning many days for the dead. ³Go to the king and speak thus to him.” So Joab put the words in her mouth. (2 Samuel 14:2–3)

⁴When the woman of Tekoa came to the king, she fell on her face to the ground and paid homage and said, “Save me, O king.” (2 Samuel 14:4)

She tells David a made-up story about her two sons. One killed the other in a quarrel, and now the clan wants the surviving son’s life. David promises to protect him. Then she says this:

⁹And the woman of Tekoa said to the king, “On me be the guilt, my lord the king, and on my father’s house; let the king and his throne be guiltless.” (2 Samuel 14:9)

If you’ve just read 1 Samuel 25, that sentence should stop you cold. Let’s set the two women side by side.

What’s the same

Both fall on their faces before David (1 Samuel 25:23; 2 Samuel 14:4).

Both are called wise. Abigail is “discerning” (ṭôbat-śekel, literally “good of understanding,” 25:3). The Tekoite is “a wise woman” (ʾiššâ ḥăkāmâ, 14:2).

Both offer to carry the guilt. Here’s the Hebrew, because the closeness matters, and so does the small difference:

• Abigail: bî-ʾănî ʾădōnî heʿāwōn, “On me, I, my lord, be the guilt” (1 Samuel 25:24)
• The Tekoite: ʿālay ʾădōnî hammelek heʿāwōn, “On me, my lord the king, be the guilt” (2 Samuel 14:9)

Iniquity, guilt — עָוֺן — ʿāwōn — iniquity, guilt, or the punishment of iniquity (BDB)

Neither sentence has a verb. Both say “my lord” and “the guilt.” The prepositions differ: Abigail says bî, “in/on me,” and the Tekoite says ʿālay, “upon me.” So it’s not a word-for-word quotation. But it’s close, and the idea is the same. Firth notes that in both scenes a woman offers to bear iniquity “as they intercede for someone guilty, something otherwise unparalleled.”⁹

Both call themselves David’s servant, and in a mirror image. Hebrew has two words for a female servant.

Maid, maidservant — שִׁפְחָה — šipḥâ — maid, maid-servant (BDB)

Maid, handmaid — אָמָה — ʾāmâ — maid, handmaid; used of oneself in polite address (BDB)

Abigail calls herself ʾāmâ six times and šipḥâ twice. The Tekoite calls herself šipḥâ six times and ʾāmâ twice.¹⁰ It’s six and two, then two and six, an exact reversal. Firth, who points it out, is careful: “So precise a reversal is perhaps accidental.”¹¹ I’d add one detail. The Dead Sea Scrolls copy of Samuel reads ʾāmâ instead of šipḥâ at 14:19, so even the count isn’t quite settled in every manuscript.¹² But the shape is striking.

Both talk about bloodshed and saving. Abigail kept David from “bloodguilt” and from “saving with [his] own hand” (25:26, 33). The Tekoite begs the king to stop “the avenger of blood” (gōʾēl haddām, 14:11). And her very first words are “Save me, O king” (hôšîʿâ, 14:4), the same verb, yāšaʿ.

What’s different

Now look at what’s turned inside out.

Who sent her? “Blessed be the LORD … who sent you this day,” David said to Abigail (25:32). Of the Tekoite the text says, “Joab sent to Tekoa” (14:2). It’s the same verb, šālaḥ, with a different sender. And she isn’t the first. Two chapters earlier, “the LORD sent Nathan to David” (12:1) with a story to tell the king. Now Joab sends a woman with a story to tell the king. The prophet’s method is the same, but the one doing the sending has changed.

Whose words? Abigail found her own words. “Joab put the words in her mouth” (14:3), and when David asks, the woman admits it: “it was he who put all these words in the mouth of your servant” (14:19).

Is the guilt real? Abigail’s offer was costly and sincere. She really was standing between David and four hundred swords. The Tekoite makes her offer after David has already said he will give orders about her case (14:8). That timing makes it a move in an argument, not a risk she’s taking. Firth, following J. Hoftijzer, notes that Abigail bears no guilt, while the woman will be guilty of accusing the king.¹³ And her line “let the king and his throne be guiltless” lands strangely. To anyone who has read chapters 11 and 12, the king and his throne are anything but.

What happens next? This is the difference that matters most. Abigail’s speech prevented bloodshed. The Tekoite’s speech and actions, in Firth’s words, “trigger more” violence.¹⁴ Abigail sent David home with his sword still sheathed. The Tekoite’s speech brings Absalom home. Within a few chapters Absalom will steal the people’s hearts, take his father’s throne and drive David out of Jerusalem barefoot and weeping.

So 2 Samuel 14 finally answers the question 2 Samuel 13 asked. Where was Abigail? Here, at last, is a wise woman on her face before the king, offering to take the guilt on herself. But nobody sent her except a general with an agenda, and she speaks lines he wrote for her. Her intercession isn’t a way of escape. It opens the gate for more blood.

It’s an Abigail with no Abigail inside her.

God saw that there was no one

So we’re left with something like an empty chair. A woman spoke, and the man wouldn’t listen. The ones who knew and the ones who ruled said nothing. Then a counterfeit intercessor showed up and made it worse.

Is that where the Bible leaves it?

There’s a passage in Isaiah that reads like it was written for this exact empty chair. Isaiah 59 describes a people where justice has collapsed. Nobody calls for it, truth stumbles in the public square, and the one who turns from evil becomes prey. Then:

¹⁵Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. The LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. ¹⁶He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him. ¹⁷He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak. ¹⁸According to their deeds, so will he repay, wrath to his adversaries, repayment to his enemies; to the coastlands he will render repayment. (Isaiah 59:15–18)

²⁰“And a Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression,” declares the LORD. (Isaiah 59:20)

I want to show you four words in that passage. Nobody I read connects them to 2 Samuel 13, so this is my own observation from the Hebrew, and I’ll mark it as such.¹⁵ But I don’t think it’s a stretch, because every one of these four words is a word we’ve already met in this post.

“Wondered”

“He … wondered that there was no one to intercede.” The Hebrew is wayyištômēm.

Be desolated, be appalled — שָׁמֵם — šāmēm — to be desolated; to be appalled, awestruck; in the reflexive stem, to be appalled (BDB)

It’s the same root as one of the saddest words in 2 Samuel 13. “So Tamar lived, a desolate woman, in her brother Absalom’s house” (13:20). There the word is šōmēmâ. I need to be precise: the stem and the sense are different. Tamar is “desolate,” laid waste like an abandoned land. God is “appalled,” the way you’re stunned when you see something that shouldn’t be. It’s the same root with two different meanings, so I’m not saying Isaiah is quoting Samuel.

But think about what the root means. The word that describes what was done to Tamar is the word Isaiah uses for God’s reaction to a world where no one steps in. He isn’t indifferent to the empty chair. He’s appalled by it.

“To intercede”

“There was no one to intercede.” The word is mapgîaʿ.

Make entreaty, interpose — פָּגַע — pāgaʿ — to meet, encounter; in the causative stem, to make entreaty, to interpose (BDB)

To interpose means to put yourself between. It’s what Abigail did on the mountain road and what Tamar tried to do in that room. Only a handful of verses in the Bible use this verb in this causative sense. Two of them are in Isaiah 53, the chapter about the suffering Servant: “the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (53:6), and “he … makes intercession for the transgressors” (53:12).¹⁶ Isaiah 59 is the scene before that rescue. God looks for someone to stand in the gap and finds no one.

“His own arm brought him salvation”

This is the phrase that took my breath away, because it reverses Abigail’s exactly.

Abigail kept David from hôšēaʿ yādĕkā lāk, “saving with your own hand” (1 Samuel 25:26). David blessed her for keeping him from “working salvation with my own hand” (25:33). For a man to save himself by his own hand was to take vengeance into his own fist. It was sin, and David knew it.

Isaiah 59:16: wattôšaʿ lô zĕrōʿô, “his own arm brought him salvation.” It’s the same verb, yāšaʿ, with the same idea of saving by one’s own strength. But it isn’t forbidden here. It’s the one hope.

David was not allowed to save with his own hand, because his hand was a sinner’s hand and his anger was a sinner’s anger. That’s what Abigail saw. But when no one intercedes, when the woman’s voice is ignored and the king is angry and does nothing and the intercessor turns out to be a fake, God’s own arm moves. And Isaiah is careful to say what it’s dressed in: “righteousness as a breastplate,” and “garments of vengeance.” Notice that too. “According to their deeds, so will he repay” (59:18). The arm that saves is also the arm that brings justice. God isn’t the king who is very angry and does nothing.

“A Redeemer”

“And a Redeemer will come to Zion.” The word is gōʾēl.

Redeem, act as kinsman — גָּאַל — gāʾal — to act as kinsman, do the part of next of kin; to redeem (BDB)

The gōʾēl was the next of kin. He was the family member responsible to buy back what was lost, to protect the vulnerable and, in the case of murder, to pursue justice. That’s why the Tekoite’s whole speech turned on him: “let the king invoke the LORD your God, that the avenger of blood (gōʾēl haddām) kill no more” (2 Samuel 14:11). In this story the gōʾēl is a threat to be held off.

And think about what happened to Tamar’s own next of kin. Her father did nothing. Her full brother Absalom took her into his house and told her to be quiet. Bergen says Absalom “cast himself as something of a kinsman-redeemer,” and then took his revenge two years later at a feast.¹⁷ Nobody in Tamar’s family acted as a true gōʾēl. Nobody redeemed what was lost. One of them managed her silence, and the other settled a score.

Isaiah says the true one is coming. He’s a next of kin who doesn’t keep quiet and doesn’t settle scores. He comes to redeem.

The arm of the LORD

Who is this Redeemer? Whose arm is this?

Isaiah himself answers a few chapters later, at the beginning of the Servant song: “Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?” (Isaiah 53:1). The arm that brings salvation in chapter 59 has a face in chapter 53. And the apostle John reads that verse about Jesus. After all His signs, many still didn’t believe, “so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: ‘Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’ ” (John 12:38).

Jesus is the arm of the LORD.

Set Him beside the two women of 2 Samuel 14 and 1 Samuel 25 one last time.

Like Abigail, He was sent by the LORD. Not by a Joab, not by anyone with an angle. “The Father who sent me” is how He talks about His own coming again and again in John’s Gospel.

Like Abigail, He offered to carry guilt that wasn’t His own. But His offer wasn’t a figure of speech, like the Tekoite’s, and it wasn’t only a willingness, like Abigail’s. He actually carried it. “The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). That’s pāgaʿ again, the word for interposing, the word for putting something where it lands. He stood in the gap, and the guilt landed on Him.

And unlike every man in 2 Samuel 13, He listens. The book of Hebrews says His intercession never stops: “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25). The verb “save” is there, and so is “intercede.” The arm and the intercessor turn out to be the same Person. And He isn’t a fake.

Where was Abigail? For Tamar, in that house, in that chapter, no one came. The text doesn’t pretend otherwise, and neither should we. I won’t tell you it all worked out for her. The narrator never mentions her again after 13:20, and I won’t put words in his mouth.

But the God of Isaiah 59 looked at a world where no one stepped in, and He was appalled. He didn’t call it fine. He didn’t call it the way things go in powerful families. Then He sent His own arm. In Jesus there is finally an Intercessor nobody hired and nobody scripted. He’s a Redeemer who doesn’t manage your silence. He’s a King who, when a woman cries out, listens to her voice.

If this story is close to your own

If you’re reading this and no one stepped in for you, I want you to hear something. That wasn’t a small thing, and it wasn’t your fault. It’s the kind of thing God Himself is appalled by. The people who should have listened and didn’t, and the ones who knew and stayed quiet, carry that. You don’t.

And if you’re reading this as someone with knowledge or authority, a parent, a pastor, a friend who knows something, then this story is talking to you. The question “where was Abigail?” is for people in your seat. If you know, don’t wait two years. Listen to the voice in front of you. And act.

If you’d like to talk with someone at Estrella Mountain Church, you can write to us at info@emcaz.org, or reach Denny Harkins on our staff directly at dennyh@emcaz.org. What you share will be held with care, and you can tell it whenever you’re ready, at your own pace.

If you’re anywhere in the U.S. and want to talk with someone right now, the National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN) is free and confidential, day or night: 800-656-HOPE (4673), or online at rainn.org.

And if a child is in danger now, tell someone who can act, today: call 911. You can also call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453.

Notes

Footnotes

1. Robert D. Bergen, 1, 2 Samuel, New American Commentary 7 (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996), on 2 Sam 13:12–13, where he calls the phrase “perhaps a not-so-subtle allusion” to Nabal. Lexical definitions in this post: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1907) [BDB], cited from the outline of each entry (נָבָל p. 614; גָּזַז p. 159; עָוֺן p. 730; שִׁפְחָה p. 1046; אָמָה p. 51; יָשַׁע p. 446; שָׁמֵם p. 1030; פָּגַע p. 803; גָּאַל p. 145). ↩

2. All counts and forms in this post were checked in the Hebrew text (Westminster Leningrad Codex, via the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible). gāzaz: 1 Sam 25:2, 4, 7, 11; 2 Sam 13:23, 24. nĕbālâ and nābāl (plural): 2 Sam 13:12, 13. ṭôb lēb … bayyāyin: 2 Sam 13:28; lēb nābāl ṭôb: 1 Sam 25:36. ↩

3. Bergen, 1, 2 Samuel, on 2 Sam 13:23–29. ↩

4. Alfred Rahlfs, ed., Septuaginta, rev. Robert Hanhart (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2006), at 2 Kgdms 13:27 (potos kata ton poton tou basileōs); the English rendering is the editor’s. The plus is also attested in the Old Latin. ↩

5. A. A. Anderson, 2 Samuel, Word Biblical Commentary 11 (Dallas: Word, 1989), on 2 Sam 13:27, explaining the loss from the Masoretic text by homoioteleuton (hammelek … hammelek) and noting that the spacing of 4QSamᵃ suggests the longer text. David G. Firth, 1 & 2 Samuel, Apollos Old Testament Commentary 8 (Nottingham: Apollos; Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009), Notes on the Text at 13:39–14:33, treats the pluses at 13:21–22, 27 and 34 as probably explanatory. ↩

6. The link between the Greek plus at 2 Sam 13:27 and 1 Sam 25:36 (mišteh kĕmišteh hammelek) is the editor’s own observation; none of the commentaries cited here draws it. ↩

7. Firth, 1 & 2 Samuel, on 2 Sam 13 (Form and Structure). Firth there lists the sheepshearing (1 Sam 25:2–8), the heart merry with wine (13:28; 1 Sam 25:36) and Tamar’s play on the root nbl (13:12–13). ↩

8. 1 Sam 25:35, šāmaʿtî bĕqôlēk; 2 Sam 13:14, wĕlōʾ ʾābâ lišmōaʿ bĕqôlāh; 2 Sam 13:16, wĕlōʾ ʾābâ lišmōaʿ lāh. The pairing of 1 Sam 25:35 with 2 Sam 13:14 is the editor’s own observation from the Hebrew text. Firth (1 & 2 Samuel, Comment on 14:28–33) notes that Amnon’s two refusals to listen (13:14, 16) are matched by Joab’s two refusals to come (14:29). ↩

9. Firth, 1 & 2 Samuel, on 2 Sam 14 (Form and Structure). The difference in prepositions (bî at 1 Sam 25:24; ʿālay at 2 Sam 14:9) is from the Hebrew text. ↩

10. ʾāmâ in 1 Sam 25: vv. 24 (twice), 25, 28, 31, 41; šipḥâ in 1 Sam 25: vv. 27, 41. šipḥâ in 2 Sam 14: vv. 6, 7, 12, 15, 17, 19; ʾāmâ in 2 Sam 14: vv. 15, 16 (WLC). ↩

11. Firth, 1 & 2 Samuel, on 2 Sam 14 (Form and Structure). ↩

12. The Qumran reading at 14:19 is recorded from the Lexham Dead Sea Scrolls interlinear and the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia apparatus. ↩

13. Firth, 1 & 2 Samuel, on 2 Sam 14 (Form and Structure), citing J. Hoftijzer, “David and the Tekoite Woman,” Vetus Testamentum 20 (1970): 424–32 (not consulted directly). Firth also cites Bruce C. Birch on the irony of “let the king and his throne be guiltless.” On the range of readings of the formula at 14:9 (court language, a confession of guilt, a later expansion), see Anderson, 2 Samuel, on 14:9. ↩

14. Firth, 1 & 2 Samuel, on 2 Sam 14 (Form and Structure). ↩

15. The connections drawn between Isa 59:15–20 and 1 Sam 25 / 2 Sam 13–14 are the editor’s own observations from the Hebrew text; no commentary cited here makes them. Forms checked in the WLC: Isa 59:16, wayyištômēm (Hithpolel of šāmēm), mapgîaʿ (Hiphil participle of pāgaʿ), wattôšaʿ lô zĕrōʿô (Hiphil of yāšaʿ); Isa 59:20, gôʾēl; 2 Sam 13:20, šōmēmâ; 2 Sam 14:4, hôšîʿâ; 2 Sam 14:11, gōʾēl haddām; 1 Sam 25:26, hôšēaʿ yādĕkā; 1 Sam 25:31, lĕhôšîaʿ; 1 Sam 25:33, hōšēaʿ yādî. The same pair, šāmēm (Hithpolel) and “my own arm brought me salvation,” recurs at Isa 63:5. ↩

16. The Hiphil of pāgaʿ occurs at Isa 53:6, 12; 59:16; Jer 15:11; 36:25; and Job 36:32 (WLC). ↩

17. Bergen, 1, 2 Samuel, on 2 Sam 13:20–22. ↩