Rivals - 2nd Samuel 4

Now that Abner is dead, the people allied with Saul’s son sees the writing on the wall and knows that he can’t be even close to the kind of leader that Abner was. They knew that they were at war with David, the knew that David won his wars, and it’s possible that they even knew that David was anointed by God to be the next king over Israel, so they do the only logical thing, they kill Saul’s son, the king of the northern tribes called Israel. They are so sure that they were right to kill this man that they cut off his head and brought it to David, I’m sure believing that they would be rewarded. To be fair, I think that this is probably how it would have worked with any other leader at that time, so they weren’t wrong to assume that this would benefit them because I’m sure that’s what they’ve seen and understood their whole lives. Unfortunately for them, David was no ordinary leader, so he has these two men who did this, who are brothers by the way, he has them executed.

Technically, this was in line with the Torah because they committed murder which was punishable by death, so he was adherent that way. David even compared what they did to the Amalekite kid who said that he killed Saul, who David also had killed. The IM says, “Again, David shoed great wisdom and judgment by executing the two men who killed Ishboseth. Although he was war with Ishbosheth, David did not condone the treachery of the assassins and put them to death. His wisdom and goodness finally united the tribes into one kingdom loyal to David.” David had the bodies of these two men mutilated with the hands and feet cut off and their bodies hung up over the pool in Hebron. The Torah forbids mutilation of dead bodies, but I guess we can’t all be perfect.

There is also a random verse thrown in, verse 4 that talks about Jonathan’s disabled son who was “lame of his feet.” When this boy was 5 years when Jonathan his father, and Saul his grandfather were killed, and his nurse took him and fled, I presume for his safety, just in case it turned into a purging of Saul’s family either by the Philistines who killed Jonathan and Saul or by David as he took over as king. It’s such sad commentary that these actions were so expected that the nurse took the boy and fled for his safety. Like I’ve never conquered a country before but I can’t imagine killing a rival’s family members just to optimize my chances of longevity on the throne. I would attribute my successful rule of a people contingent on the same factors that military victory hinges on, the will and blessing of God. If God willed me to sit on the throne, then he would keep my there as long as it served his purposes, so why would I kill rivals when they couldn’t overthrow me if it wasn’t God’s will. This is apparently David’s same attitude because he doesn’t kill rivals that we’ve seen so far, so we’ve got that going for us.