Biblion Bible Commentary
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Shimei Throws Stones
2 Samuel 16:1-23
1 When David was a little past the top, behold, Ziba the servant of Mephibosheth met him with a couple of donkeys saddled, and on them two hundred loaves of bread, and one hundred clusters of raisins, and one hundred summer fruits, and a container of wine. · WEB
A servant's convenient story wins an estate, a Benjamite curses a king who will not let anyone silence him, and a usurper takes a roof in public.
"Where is your master's son?" Ziba said to the king, "Behold, he is staying in Jerusalem; for he said, 'Today the house of Israel will restore me the kingdom of my father'" 2 Samuel 16:3.
Ziba arrives at the worst possible moment with supplies and an accusation, and David transfers Mephibosheth's whole estate on the strength of it, without hearing the other side 2 Samuel 16:4. The story is barely credible — no faction was proposing a lame grandson of Saul as king — and the counter-testimony comes later, from a man who had not dressed his feet or trimmed his beard since the king left 2 Samuel 19:24–27. A frightened ruler in a hurry made a judgment on one witness's word, and never fully undid it 2 Samuel 19:29.
"Be gone, be gone, you man of blood, and wicked fellow! Yahweh has returned on you all the blood of Saul's house" 2 Samuel 16:7–8.
Shimei's accusation is false in its particulars — David had gone to extraordinary lengths not to shed Saul's blood 1 Samuel 24:6 2 Samuel 1:14 2 Samuel 4:11 — and lands on something true anyway: this is a man of blood, and there is blood on this house, though not the blood Shimei names.
"What have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah? Because he curses, and because Yahweh has said to him, 'Curse David,' who then shall say, 'Why have you done so?'" 2 Samuel 16:10.
Abishai offers to take the man's head and David refuses, as he has refused this family's solutions before. His reasoning is remarkable for a king with an armed escort and a stone-thrower on the hillside: perhaps God is in this, and if so, silencing it changes nothing. Then the sentence that shows how far his mind has traveled — behold, my son, who came out of my bowels, seeks my life. How much more this Benjamite? 2 Samuel 16:11. A man whose own son is hunting him has lost the capacity to be outraged by a stranger.
"It may be that Yahweh will look on the wrong done to me, and that Yahweh will repay me good for the cursing of me today" 2 Samuel 16:12.
The hope is left open-ended and the vengeance is left with God — the same instinct that spared Saul twice, now exercised while everything is being lost rather than while everything is being gained.
So they spread a tent for Absalom on the top of the house, and Absalom went in to his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel 2 Samuel 16:22.
Ahithophel's first counsel is a public claim on the harem — the unmistakable signal that the break is irreversible, so that waverers commit. It is also, precisely, the oracle: I will take your wives before your eyes... for you did this secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun 2 Samuel 12:11–12. On the roof of the house where a king once watched a woman bathing, his son does the same thing in daylight before the nation, on the advice of that woman's grandfather. Ten women who chose none of it pay for all of it 2 Samuel 20:3.
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