‘What he did for me’: David's Warning about Joab in 1 Kings 2.5

1. Introduction

1 Kings 2.5–6 is part of David's testament of 2.1–9. He orders Solomon to kill Joab in 2.6, and in 2.5 provides a rationale for this assassination. The introduction of this rationale runs as follows: ‭השעֿרשא‬ ‭תא‬ ‭תעדי‬ ‭התא‬ ‭םגו‬ ‭אשמע‬ ‭לו‬ ‭רנ־ןב‬ ‭רנבאל‬ ‭לארשי‬ ‭תואבצ‬ ‭ירש־ינשל‬ ‭השע‬ ‭רשא‬ ‭היורצ־ןב‬ ‭באוי‬ ‭יל‬ ‭רתי־ןב‬. The NRSV's translation of these verses is representative of most: ‘Moreover you know also what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me, how he dealt with the two commanders of the armies of Israel, Abner son of Ner, and Amasa son of Jether’. ¹ I will show here that the key to interpreting the rationale for the killing of Joab lies in understanding the connection that David makes between what Joab has done ‭יל‬ and what he has done ‭אשמעלו‬ … ‭רנבאל‬. David's explanation makes sense if we translate ‭יל‬ as ‘for me’ rather than ‘to me’, as it is otherwise universally rendered. The preposition in this case is a lamed of interest or (dis)advantage, sometimes called the dativus commodi et incommodi or the benefactive dative. It indicates an object who has received an advantage or disadvantage. ² Clearly, when David tells Solomon that he knows what Joab did ‭אשמעלו‬ … ‭רנבאל‬, the lamed functions to indicate disadvantage—Joab has killed Abner and Amasa, as David explains when he goes on to say ‭םלשב‬ ‭המחלמ־ימד‬ ‭םישו‬ ‭םגרהיו‬, ‘he killed them and shed blood of war in peace’, a reference to the fact that Joab killed both men under false pretenses, when they thought they were at peace with him. ³ (Readers familiar with issues of textual criticism in 2.5 will see here that this is a reading of the MT and the majority of the witnesses, but not of the lxx^L; the text-critical issues will be addressed below.) But it makes most sense to see these deaths as acts done ‘for’ David, to benefit him, rather than ‘to’ him, to disadvantage him. This translation allows us to see clearly the connection that David is trying to draw between what Joab has done ‘for’ him and ‘to Abner … and Amasa’, and only once this is clear can we truly see what warning David is trying to give Solomon about Joab. David is pointing to a pattern of stealthy killings by Joab (ones done ‘in peace’) that benefitted the king—not ones done to his detriment—in order to hint to Solomon that he could suffer the same fate as Abner and Amasa should Joab act to kill him in order to benefit Adonijah, Solomon's rival for the throne.

2. The Text-critical Issues in 2.5

Before examining this pattern of Joab's behavior to which David is pointing, however, and why David sees the need to use this as the reason to warn Solomon about Joab, we must consider an important text-critical issue in 2.5. For those scholars who follow LXX^L's text of 2.5, ⁴ there is a clear connection between what Joab did ‘to’ David and ‘to’ Abner and Amasa. While in the MT David says that Joab ‘killed them and shed blood of war in peace’, lxx^l reads ‘he avenged’ instead of ‘he shed’. ⁵ And whereas in the MT of 2.5 David says further that Joab ‘put blood of war on his belt which is around his waist and on his sandal which is on his feet’, in the LXX (and not only in the Lucianic recension) David says that Joab put ‘innocent blood’ on his belt and sandal, ⁶ while the Lucianic recension has David state that Joab put this innocent blood ‘on my belt which is around my waist and on my sandals which are on my feet’. In the lxx^l, the innocent blood that Joab has spilled in taking vengeance on the two generals has fallen upon David. Joab has done something ‘to’ the disadvantage of David, as David sees it, in making the king responsible in some way for these murders, and attributing bloodguilt to David's house that David is now asking Solomon to remove by assassinating Joab.

It is well known that there are many differences between the MT and LXX in the Solomonic narrative, and there is no consensus in scholarship as to the relationship between them. D.W. Gooding, for example, argues that the LXX of 1 Kings 2–11 has altered a received text, and that one of the tendencies in these alterations is to improve the presentation of David and Solomon. ⁷ On the other hand, Julio Trebolle Barrera and Adrian Schenker, for example, argue that the LXX reflects a more original text than the MT. ⁸ Furthermore, A.G. Auld and Frank Polak have suggested that the MT and LXX have each independently altered an older text that lies behind both of them. ⁹ So, one could argue that resolving the textual variances in 2.5 cannot really be discussed in isolation from the larger debate as to the relationship between the MT and the lxx in the Solomonic narrative as a whole.

Yet even if, for example, scholars such as Trebolle and Schenker are correct in regard to the priority of the Septuagint in 1 Kings 2–11, each individual variant does, to some degree, need to be examined on its own merits, for a general tendency need not apply in every case. Only once we judge each difference between the MT and lxx can that individual case function as a brick—or a gap—in the wall of an argument for an overall relationship between the two texts. We can see the case of 2.5, in fact, as a piece of evidence that supports the general arguments of Gooding and others for the priority of the MT—although, to be clear, this is simply one piece of evidence that may run against a general trend; there is not space here to make a full argument for a general theory of the relationship between the MT and lxx in 1 Kings. The LXX's ‘innocent blood’ in place of the MT's ‘blood of war’ makes it clear that Solomon has a legitimate reason to kill Joab: David is saying that Joab, by shedding ‘innocent blood’, is a murderer. This would seem to be an improvement in clarity of explanation over the MT's vaguer ‘blood of war’, a phrase that appears nowhere else in the Bible, and so it provides a legal basis for Joab's death and thus a more positive picture of David, who suggests the killing, and of Solomon, who carries it out. In the LXX, unlike the MT, David provides a clear and legitimate reason to kill Joab. And a comparison of the lxx and the Lucianic recension in 2.5 supports the claim of Dominique Barthélemy and others that the latter is a corrupted version of the lxx. ¹⁰ In the lxx^l, David states that Joab ‘avenged’ (rather than merely ‘shed’) this ‘innocent blood’, providing Joab with a motive for the murders. This advances further the LXX's claim that the killings of Abner and Amasa were crimes, and not just killings, for Joab was spilling innocent blood for reasons of vengeance. Moreover, in the lxx^l, David says that the ‘innocent blood’ Joab ‘avenged’ has fallen ‘on my belt which is around my waist and on my sandals which are on my feet’. This second change follows the direction set by the LXX, since it has David provide Solomon with yet another righteous justification for the killing of Joab, for in the lxx^l David is also suggesting that these murders have placed bloodguilt on him. The LXX, in short, would seem, in 2.5 at least, to have altered the original text that we see in the MT in order to have David provide Solomon with a legitimate legal reason to kill Joab. The lxx^l has continued this logic in its alteration, by adding a motive for Joab's murders, as well as by adding a religious reason to order Joab's death: the removal of bloodguilt from David. Both alterations improve the presentation of David and Solomon, for they eliminate doubt that David and Solomon have legitimate reasons to conspire in Joab's death.

One final argument for the secondary nature of the LXX^L in 2.5 is that it reconciles David's rationale for Joab's killing in 2.5–6 with the one that Solomon provides to Benaiah in 2.31–33. There, Solomon has charged Benaiah to kill Joab (2.29), but Benaiah does not do so when Joab refuses to leave the sanctuary and the altar (2.30). When Benaiah reports to Solomon that he has not carried out the assassination, the new king refers specifically to the deaths of Abner and Amasa, and now tells Benaiah to ‘fall upon him [Joab] and bury him, and turn aside from me and from my father's house the innocent blood ¹¹ that he has shed’ (2.31–32). There is a legitimate reason to kill Joab, Solomon tells Benaiah. He does not want Joab dead merely because he is suspicious that Joab might act against him; if Benaiah were to kill him for this reason alone, then Benaiah would be guilty of murder, and murder at the altar. Instead, Solomon puts his mind at ease by telling him in these verses that Joab is a murderer, and that his bloodguilt will affect Solomon and his house negatively until it is atoned through Joab's own death, and so Benaiah need not worry about retaliation, human or otherwise, for the assassination he is to carry out at the altar. ¹² The fact that the lxx^l of 2.5 directly corresponds to 2.31–32 suggests a scribe who is trying to clarify and coordinate a received text, and is yet another argument for the priority of the MT in 2.5, for it is a general tendency of the Lucianic recension to alter the LXX's text to harmonize a prediction or order with its fulfillment. ¹³ And at this point, the lxx^l is again simply following and extending the tendency of the LXX to emphasize Joab's guilt and thus Solomon's innocence: in the MT of 2.32, Solomon tells Benaiah that ‘Yhwh will turn aside his blood upon his [Joab's] head’, while in the lxx, Solomon states that ‘the Lord will turn aside the blood of his unrighteousness upon his head’. ¹⁴ While the lxx of 2.5 does not directly echo the rationale that Solomon gives in 2.31–33 for Joab's death, the Lucianic recension merely follows a trend already established in the lxx when it does so. It makes most sense to see the lxx and Lucianic recension at 2.5 as altering the more original text retained by the MT. ¹⁵

3. Joab's Killings for David

Scholars who are committed to Trebolle's approach to the relationship between the MT and lxx may not be convinced of this argument for the priority of the MT in 2.5, even though the LXX, and particularly the LXX^L, provide easier readings than the MT in this verse, since these textual witnesses clarify David's reasoning for killing Joab, improve the presentation of David and Solomon, and, in the case of the Lucianic recension, coordinate David's rationale in 2.5 with Solomon's in 2.31–33. Such scholars, however, can still see this article as an attempt to explain the sense of the MT, which does not provide readers with a clear connection between what Joab has done ‭יל‬ (‘to/for’ David) and what he has done ‘to’ Abner and Amasa. The clearer we can be about the sense of each of the texts, the clearer the basis we will have for a comparison to establish the relationship between them. And in the MT, regardless of how Solomon justifies Joab's killing in 2.31–33, in 2.5 David does not appear to be speaking about Joab placing bloodguilt upon him. David says that Joab ‘put blood of war on his belt which is around his waist and on his sandal which is on his feet’, whereas Solomon tells Benaiah that by killing Joab he will turn aside ‭יבא‬ ‭תיב‬ ‭לעמו‬ ‭ילעמ‬, ‘from upon me and from upon my father's house’, the blood that Joab has shed. In 2.5, David simply does not seem to refer to himself as bearing responsibility for Joab's bloodshed; Solomon provides this rationale to Benaiah because he wants to assuage his fears and assure him that he will not suffer retaliation when he cuts down Joab at the altar.

Since bloodguilt does not seem to be behind David's rationale in the MT of 2.5 for the killing of Joab, how can we explain the connection he makes there between what Joab has done ‭יל‬ and ‭אשמעלו‬ … ‭רנבאל‬? When, as is always done, we read the lamed in ‭יל‬ as a lamed of disadvantage—translate it as ‘to’, in other words—then we face the difficulty of explaining how Joab's killings of Abner and Amasa have harmed David. Shimon Bar-Efrat and J. P. Fokkelman resolve this problem by arguing that David is not really angry about what Joab did to Abner and Amasa, or else he would have executed him after the first of these killings; what Joab has actually done to disadvantage David is to kill Absalom. ¹⁶ This is a possibility, but it is not one with any support from 1 Kings 2 itself. To explain why David advises Solomon to kill Joab by referring to two acts of Joab that benefitted David directly, we will have to examine the stories of the killings and the context of David's warning.

The stories of the deaths of Abner and Amasa are told in 2 Sam. 3.22–39 and 20.1–13. In 2 Samuel 3, Joab kills Abner after Abner withdraws his support from Ishbosheth and concludes an agreement with David to hand over control of the Northern tribes to him (3.6–21). In that story, Joab puts Abner off his guard, lulling Abner into a false sense of security by making him think that they are going to have a conversation in a public place, and kills him (3.27). ¹⁷ The narrative in 3.27 links this death to Abner's killing of Asahel, Joab's brother. In 2 Samuel 20, David appoints Amasa, who had been Absalom's general (17.25), to meet the threat of Sheba's rebellion, but while Amasa goes to summon the troops of Judah as ordered, he does not bring them to meet David at the arranged time (20.5). ¹⁸ Joab goes to Amasa at Gibeon, greets him by saying, ‘Is it peace with you, my brother?’ (20.9), and kills him with a sword that he had hidden under his garment (20.10). In both cases, as David tells Solomon in 1 Kgs 2.5, Joab has ‘shed blood of war in peace’: he kills the two men when they believe they have nothing to fear from him.

In both cases what Joab has done ‘to’ Abner and Amasa benefits himself. 2 Samuel 3.27 points out that Abner had killed Joab's brother; moreover, Abner, as general of the armies of the North, was a potential rival to Joab for the control of David's army. And the death of Amasa returns to Joab the full control of the army (20.23) that David had given to Amasa (19.14 [13]). While David does not order either killing, both of them benefit David as well as Joab; that is, Joab has done these things ‘for’ his king rather than ‘to’ him. When Joab kills Amasa, the latter had not brought his troops to meet David, and his tardiness suggests incompetence at best and a conspiracy with Sheba at worst. Amasa, after all, had been Absalom's general when Absalom launched his coup against his father, and so it is hardly out of the question that he may be conspiring with Sheba to remove the king from the throne. At the very least, his delay threatens David's hold on the kingdom, as David himself says (20.6). ¹⁹ Joab follows his killing of Amasa by defeating Sheba and securing the kingdom for David (2 Sam. 20.14–22). And Abner's death also benefits David as well as Joab. As James VanderKam points out, Abner is Saul's cousin (1 Sam. 14.50), the commander of his army (17.55) and of Ishbosheth's (2 Sam. 2.12–32), the one responsible for making Ishbosheth king (2.8–9), and a man who can do what he likes in Ishbosheth's house, regardless of the desires or prerogatives of the king (3.6–11). ²⁰ The way that he ignores the royal authority of Ishbosheth in 3.6–11 reveals a lack of respect for the authority of kings, ²¹ and suggests that he would likely be difficult to control. ²² He is the real power in the North, something he demonstrates when he orders the elders of Israel to recognize David as king (3.17–18), and Joab does David a favor by killing him. What Joab has done ‘to’ Abner and Amasa he has, at least in part, done ‘for’ David, even if these killings also benefit himself.

David refers to two stories in which Joab acted to benefit David, acts that benefitted Joab as well, in order to warn Solomon about him. Only once we are clear what pattern in Joab's behavior to which David is pointing—namely, that Joab is willing to kill without the king's command to benefit the king and himself—can we be clear as to what David is trying to warn Solomon about. Since David advises Solomon in 2.6 to kill Joab, his intent is clearly not to use the stories of Abner's and Amasa's killings as positive recommendations for his old general, even if they are acts that benefitted David, Joab's old master. Joab has just supported Adonijah, Solomon's half-brother, in his unsuccessful bid for the throne (1 Kgs 1.7, 25), and, David suggests, Adonijah is still Joab's master; after all, Joab was one of Adonijah's earliest (1.7) and most powerful supporters, and he is still with Adonijah when Solomon is anointed (1.41). While Solomon and not Adonijah succeeds David, David is warning Solomon of all Joab has done ‘for me’; specifically, he has killed for David when David has not ordered him to do so, thereby benefitting both his master and himself. There are two different sides to Joab's character, as Bar-Efrat points out: he is tenaciously loyal to the king; and he is not above cold-blooded killings. ²³ And if, in his killings of both Abner and Amasa, he removes men who are potential dangers to David, he also removes, in both cases, men who are his rivals for the generalship of Israel's army, something to which David alludes in 2.5 when he specifically refers to them as ‘commanders of the armies of Israel’. He has done so by trickery, surprising Abner and Amasa in the guises of peaceful approaches, only to put swords into both—‘shedding blood of war in peace’, in other words. Just as Joab has craftily killed both Abner and Amasa without direct command, he could do the same to Solomon for Adonijah. The killing would benefit his master Adonijah, just as the assassinations of Abner and Amasa benefitted David, and they would also benefit Joab, since Benaiah, Solomon's supporter (1 Kgs 1.38) and one of David's men (2 Sam. 8.18; 23.20–23), to whom David has entrusted Solomon's protection (1 Kgs 1.32–37), ²⁴ would be the obvious choice to lead Solomon's army, as Joab's association with Adonijah has disqualified him from the post. Killing Solomon would benefit his master and himself, just as was the case in his assassinations of Abner and Amasa. It would provide Adonijah with the throne, and it would put Joab back in charge of the army, and if Joab acts as he did in the cases of Abner and Amasa, Solomon would never see it coming.

Alternatively, David may be telling Solomon that Joab might kill Benaiah, Solomon's military protector, and the man Solomon appoints to head the army in 2.35. Perhaps this is why David specifies that Joab killed two ‘commanders of the armies of Israel’. With Benaiah out of the way, Joab would the logical head of the army, ²⁵ and he could turn the kingdom over to Adonijah, his master. But in this case as well, Solomon could hardly expect to live.

4. Conclusion: Joab's Death and Solomon's Wisdom

It makes most sense, then, to see the first lamed in the MT of 2.5 as a lamed of advantage, and to translate the verse as, ‘Moreover, you know what Joab son of Zeruiah did for me, what he did to the two commanders of the armies of Israel, to Abner son of Ner and to Amasa son of Jether’. The lamed occurs as a lamed of (dis)advantage here four times, but in its first occurrence it functions to indicate the benefit that Joab has done for David, and in its last three occurrences the harm that he did to Abner and Amasa. Only once we see that the emphasis that David lays here on how Joab has acted to benefit him can we grasp the full impact of the warning that he has provided to Solomon. He is pointing his son to a dangerous pattern of behavior that he has observed in Joab's actions: in the cases of Abner and Amasa, he has carried out assassinations that David did not order but that worked to benefit his master as well as himself; and he has done so through trickery, approaching his victims in peaceful guises. In a worst case scenario for Solomon, Joab will not wait for a command from Adonijah to kill Solomon or Benaiah, and thus to put Adonijah on the throne, just as he acted without David's command in his killings of Abner and Amasa. Nor could Solomon know when Joab would act against him, since he would likely approach Solomon in peace, as he did to Abner and Amasa. Joab is loyal to whoever his master is, and will kill without orders, especially when such an act could benefit him as well as his king. Given his support of Adonijah, he is simply too dangerous to be left alive. ²⁶ The fact that in 2.31–33 Solomon interprets David's rationale in 2.5 as referring to the removal of bloodguilt—or at least provides this justification to the wavering Benaiah when he is trying to assuage his fears about killing Joab at the altar—does not mean that David meant it this way, as we have seen. The very fact that the Lucianic recension echoes Solomon's logic for Joab's death in 2.5 is a reason to consider its text there as secondary. It has extended the logic of the LXX's alteration of the text in order to improve the presentation of David and Solomon. Following the LXX's lead, the lxx^l is far more concerned with a positive portrayal of David and Solomon than the MT is.

And here at the transition from David's reign to Solomon's, as the previously passive Solomon begins to act as king, ²⁷ the new king acts to fulfill his father's command in regard to Joab—‘Act according to your wisdom and do not let his gray head go down to Sheol in peace’ (2.6)—and readers begin to learn how Solomon will employ his wisdom. As we saw above, when Benaiah hesitates in carrying out Solomon's order to kill Joab it is because Joab has grasped the horns of the altar at the tent of Yhwh (2.28–30), and Benaiah is presumably thinking of a law like Exod. 21.12–14, which allows for the removal from the altar only of someone guilty of premeditated murder. Because Benaiah does not at first remove Joab, he must not consider Joab a murderer. Solomon now employs his wisdom in 2.31–33 and takes David's earlier words in 2.5 and embellishes them so as to reassure Benaiah that Joab shed ‘innocent blood’. Picking up on David's earlier reference to Abner and Amasa, Solomon now claims that these killings have contaminated the Davidides (the explanation that the Lucianic recension reads back into 2.5) and must be removed and killed if God is to grant peace to David's house. It is an ingenious explanation, but not one that David offered, for he alluded to the ways in which Joab's killing of these men benefitted rather than harmed him. Given that the narrative of Samuel and Kings presents Benaiah as one of David's most important officers (2 Sam. 8.18; 23.23), the man to whom he entrusts the safety of his heir, readers can reasonably assume that Benaiah knows as much about Joab's actions as anyone in the Israelite army. The fact that he does not consider himself to have any reason to remove Joab from the altar suggests that Solomon's religious rationale for the assassination of Joab is not a common interpretation, but rather the result of the use of his ‘wisdom’ in order to fulfill David's political command.

Solomon employs his wisdom here, in short, to shape political events to his advantage. His wisdom allows him to alter David's rationale for a killing based on political expediency and justify it to Benaiah on religious grounds. In a similar manner, Solomon uses his wisdom in 2.36–46 to kill Shimei (David's instructions in this regard in 2.9 also emphasizes his son's wisdom) by claiming that Shimei had sworn not to leave Jerusalem at all (2.42–43), although the narrative reports only that Solomon commanded him not to cross the Wadi Kidron (2.37). ²⁸ By misrepresenting his earlier command to Shimei, Solomon is able to eliminate another potential opponent to his rule, for when Shimei goes to Gath, a trip that does not take him across the Kidron, Solomon can execute him for violating an oath that he never actually swore. ²⁹ The first clear execution of Solomon's wisdom allows for the elimination of Joab, a political rival, and sends readers an initially negative message as to his wisdom and character in general. While scholarship has recently realized that there is an implicit critique of Solomon that appears earlier in the narrative than 1 Kings 11, ³⁰ where we find the explicit condemnation of the king for his construction of foreign high places, we should really see this critique extending even as far back as to Solomon's actions here in 1 Kings 2, where his wisdom functions to twist words and invent religious rationales that justify the killings of political enemies.