Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Pool of Gibeon
2 Samuel 2:12-32
12 Abner the son of Ner, and the servants of Ishbosheth the son of Saul, went out from Mahanaim to Gibeon. · WEB
A contest of champions turns into a bloodbath, a fast young man will not stop chasing, and the blood feud that shapes the reign begins.
Abner said to Joab, "Please let the young men arise and compete before us!" Joab said, "Let them arise!" 2 Samuel 2:14.
The two armies meet at a pool and sit down on opposite sides, and the generals propose a contest — twelve against twelve, a limited combat to settle things without a battle. What follows is the chapter's grim joke: they each caught his opponent by the head and thrust his sword in his fellow's side; so they fell down together 2 Samuel 2:16. Twenty-four men kill each other simultaneously, the contest settles nothing, and the battle it was meant to prevent begins at once. Civil war has no mechanism for staying small.
Asahel pursued Abner. He didn't turn to the right hand or to the left from following Abner 2 Samuel 2:19.
Asahel is Joab's youngest brother, as light of foot as a wild gazelle 2 Samuel 2:18, and he has found the one prize worth taking: the enemy commander. Abner warns him twice, and the second warning is the sentence the rest of the book turns on — why should I strike you to the ground? How then could I look Joab your brother in the face? 2 Samuel 2:22. The veteran knows exactly what killing this boy will cost, and tries hard not to do it. Youth, speed, and the certainty of being right carry Asahel onto the spear butt anyway.
Abner with the back end of the spear struck him in the body... and he fell down there and died in the same place 2 Samuel 2:23.
Even the weapon is a mercy that failed — a blow with the blunt end, meant to wind him rather than kill. It kills him, and the men who come after stop in their tracks at the sight. From this moment Joab is owed a brother, and the debt will be collected on a man under a flag of truce, at a cost to David that runs through the whole reign 2 Samuel 3:27.
"Shall the sword devour forever? Don't you know that it will be bitterness in the latter end?" 2 Samuel 2:26.
Abner's plea from the hilltop is the truest thing said in the chapter, and it is spoken by the man who started the war by crowning Ishbosheth. People who begin conflicts often discover their wisdom about them somewhere around sundown. Joab's reply is barbed — if you had not spoken, surely then in the morning the people would have gone away 2 Samuel 2:27 — and he blows the trumpet anyway.
The casualty count closes the chapter: nineteen of David's men and Asahel, three hundred sixty of Abner's 2 Samuel 2:30–31. Israelites on both sides of every number. The march home to Hebron takes all night, and the youngest son of Zeruiah is buried at Bethlehem on the way.
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