Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament · 2 Samuel Capítulo 17

“And even if he (the hearer, 2 Samuel 17:9) be a brave man, who has a lion's heart (lion-like courage), he will be thrown into despair; for all Israel knows that thy father is a hero, and brave men (are those) who are with him.”

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“Yea ( כּי , profecto ), I advise: let all Israel be gathered round thee from Dan to Beersheba (see at Judges 20:1), numerous as the sand by the sea; and thou thyself go into the war.” פניך , thy person, i.e., thou thyself be marching. The plural הלכים is used because of פניך . For בּ הלך , to enter into anything, see 1 Kings 19:4; Isaiah 45:16; Isaiah 46:2. קרב , war, the early translators have confounded with קרב .

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“And come we to him (if we come upon him) in one of the places where he is found, we let ourselves down upon him, as the dew falls upon the earth; and of him and all the men with him there will not be one left.” נחנוּ might be a contraction of אנחנוּ , as in Genesis 42:11; Exodus 16:7-8, etc.: “so we upon him,” equivalent to “so shall we come upon him.” But if this were the meaning, we should expect עליו והינוּ . It is more correct, therefore, to take נחנוּ ekat ot as the first pers. perf. of נוּח , as the early translators have done: so do we let ourselves down upon him. (For נוּח as applied to an army encamping, see Isaiah 7:2, Isaiah 7:19; and as denoting the swarming of flies and grasshoppers, Isaiah 7:19 and Exodus 10:14.) In Ahithophel's opinion, it would be possible with a very small army to crush David and his little band, however brave his followers might be, and in fact to annihilate them altogether.

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“And if he draw back into a city, all Israel lays ropes to that city, and we drag it to the brook, till there is not even a little stone found there.” עד־הנּחל : inasmuch as fortified cities were generally built upon mountains. צרור signifies a little stone, according to the ancient versions. Hushai speaks in hyperboles of the irresistible power which the whole nation would put forth when summoned together for battle, in order to make his advice appear the more plausible.

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And he secured his end. Absalom and all Israel thought his advice better than that of Ahithophel; for it was intended to commend itself to Absalom and his supporters. “The counsel appeared safe; at the same time it was full of a certain kind of boasting, which pleased the younger men” (Clericus). All that Hushai had said about the bravery and heroism of David and his followers, was well founded. The deception lay in the assumption that all the people from Dan to Beersheba would crowd around Absalom as one man; whereas it might easily be foreseen, that after the first excitement of the revolution was over, and great calmness ensued, a large part of the nation and army would gather round David. But such a possibility as this never entered the minds of Absalom and his supporters. It was in this that the divine sentence referred to in 2 Samuel 17:14 was seen: “The Lord had commanded (appointed) it, to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, that he might bring the evil (intended) upon Absalom.”

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“Jonathan and Ahimaaz (the sons of the priests: 2 Samuel 15:27) stood at the Rogel spring (the present well of Job or Nehemiah, at the south-east corner of Jerusalem: see at Job 15:7), and the maid-servant (of one of the high priests) went and told them (Hushai's message), and they went and told it to king David; for they durst not let themselves be seen to come into the city.” They had therefore been staying at the Rogel spring outside the city. After what had taken place publicly, according to 2 Samuel 15:24., Absalom could not be in any doubt as to the views of the high priests. Consequently their sons could not come into the city, with the intention of leaving it again directly, to inform David of the occurrences that had taken place there as he had requested (2 Samuel 15:28). The clause “and they went and told David” anticipates the course of the affair, according to the general plan adopted by Hebrew historians, of communicating the result at the very outset wherever they possibly could.

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“And a lad (servant) saw them, and told Absalom.” Absalom had most likely set spies to watch the priests and their sons. But the two sons who had noticed the spy hurried into the house of a man at Bahurim, who had a well (or cistern that was dry at the time) in his court, and went down into the well.

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And the man's wife spread a covering ( המּסך , the covering which she had close at hand) over the well (over the opening into the cistern), and scattered groats ( ריפות , peeled barley: Proverbs 27:22) upon it, so that nothing was noticed. The Vulgate explanation is a very good one: “ quasi siccans ptisanas ” (as if drying peeled barley).

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When Absalom's servants came and asked for the priest's sons, the woman said, They have gone over the little water-brook ( המּים מיכל , ἁπ. λεγ. ), and thus led them wrong, so that they did not find them.

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It is still further stated in conclusion, that when Ahithophel saw that his advice was not carried out, he saddled his ass and returned to his home, and there set his house in order and hanged himself, because he could foresee that Absalom would lose his cause through not taking his advice, and it would then be all over with himself. Thus was David's prayer ( 2 Samuel 15:31) fulfilled.

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The account of the civil war, which terminated with Absalom's defeat and death, is introduced in 2 Samuel 17:24-26 with a description of the relative position of the two hostile parties. David had come to Mahanaim, a city probably a fortified one, on the east of the Jordan, not far from the ford of the Jabbok (see at 2 Samuel 2:8). Absalom had also gone over the Jordan, “he and all the men with him,” i.e., all the fighting men that he had gathered together according to Hushai's advice, and encamped in the land of Gilead.

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