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2 Samuel 20 Commentary
by Brad Boyles
Concubines, intestines, and a severed head being thrown over a wall! This chapter is not for the faint of heart. Coming off the heels of a civil war, David is drawn back in. At the end of 2 Samuel 19, there were glimpses of a dispute brewing. Here in 2 Samuel 20, we read of a man named Sheba who successfully managed to pull the 10 tribes of Israel away from David’s kingdom.
However, before we get into that, why did David go back to Jerusalem and put his 10 concubines under watch? This was a sad and direct result of both David and Absalom’s sin. David should not have taken them as concubines in the first place, and if you remember, Absalom raped these women on the roof in plain sight of all of Israel. Because of that fact, David would have been viewed as detestable if he were to become intimate with them after they had been defiled by Absalom. It is a horrific ending to their lives, but David, in mercy, makes sure all their needs are provided for.
“He could not well divorce them; he could not punish them, as they were not in the transgression; he could no more be familiar with them, because they had been defiled by his son; and to have married them to other men might have been dangerous to the state: therefore he shut them up and fed them – made them quite comfortable, and they continued as widows to their death.”
Adam Clarke
Now, let’s get back to the action. In the previous chapter, David demoted Joab and promoted Amasa to the position of commander. As we find out here in 2 Samuel 20, Amasa was not a great military leader. David gave him an order and he failed to follow through. Whether it was because of jealousy, weakness, or loyalty we do not know, but Joab felt it was necessary to end Amasa’s life.
In Eastern culture, it is customary to greet a man by kissing his beard. Joab pretended to do this while driving a dagger through Amasa’s stomach, ripping out his bowels. Unfortunately, this is the way Joab operated. He was so bold as to murder the army commander in front of his soldiers and those men then turned around and immediately followed Joab!
From there, Sheba was next on the list. But David’s army would not capture him. The people inside the city feared David’s army and they turned on Sheba, cutting off his head and throwing it over the wall to satisfy Joab and his men. This inflammatory feud between the tribes of Israel and the tribe of Judah foreshadows what we will see later when the nation is shattered into two factions led by different kings.