Abstract
This article argues that David orders Solomon in 1 Kgs 2.5–6 to kill Joab because of Joab's pattern of assassinating rivals in order to benefit his master. David's point in 2.5 is that Joab killed Abner and Amasa, two potential enemies of David, without warning, and since Joab supported Solomon's brother's claim to the throne, Solomon might be his next victim. The Septuagint and the Lucianic recension have altered the more difficult text that appears in the Masoretic text in order to make it seem as if Joab and harmed David, and so provide a legal and religious basis for David and Solomon's conspiracy to kill Joab not present in the original text.
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’.
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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.
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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.
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(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
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 LXXL's text of 2.5,
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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’,
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.
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On the other hand, Julio Trebolle Barrera and Adrian Schenker, for example, argue that the LXX reflects a more original text than the MT.
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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.
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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
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
One final argument for the secondary nature of the LXXL 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
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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.
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The fact that the
3. Joab's Killings for David
Scholars who are committed to Trebolle's approach to the relationship between the MT and
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.
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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
And here at the transition from David's reign to Solomon's, as the previously passive Solomon begins to act as king,
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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 Y
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.
Footnotes
1.
The renderings of this part of the verse in the major translations are very similar; see, e.g.,
2.
See Bruce K. Waltke and M. O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), pp. 207–208, and Paul Joüon, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (trans. T. Muraoka; SubBib, 14; 2 vols.; Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblio, 1991), II, p. 488.
3.
So, e.g., Dominique Barthélemy, Critique textuelle de l'Ancien Testament. I. Josué, Juges, Ruth, Samuel, Rois, Chroniques, Esdras, Nehémie, Esther (OBO, 50/1; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), p. 333; Shimon Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible (trans. Dorothea Shefer-Vanson; JSOTSup, 70; Sheffield: Almond Press, 1989), p. 182; Robert Alter, The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999), p. 375. Others argue that this phrase points to the fact that there was no enmity between David and Abner and Amasa when Joab killed them (e.g. Mordechai Cogan, 1 Kings: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AB, 10; New York: Doubleday, 2001], p. 173; Simon J. De Vries, 1 Kings [WBC, 12; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2nd edn, 2003], pp. 35–36; Martin J. Mulder, 1 Kings. I. 1 Kings 1–11 [trans. John Vriend; HCOT; Leuven: Peeters, 1998], p. 95), but the idea is the same—he kills the two men when they had no reason to believe, especially given his approach (something that we will discuss below), that either he or David might want them dead (although Amasa, admittedly, might be worried that David is angry at his delay). The idea that the phrase refers to acts of war that Joab committed in time of peace (e.g. Martin Noth, Könige [BKAT, 9; Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1968], p. 30; Jerome T. Walsh, 1 Kings [BO; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997], p. 41) certainly does not work in the case of Amasa, since Joab killed him during a time of war.
4.
E.g. Gregory T.K. Wong, ‘Ehud and Josiah: Separated at Birth?’, VT 56 (2006), pp. 399–412 (409); De Vries, 1 Kings, pp. 23, 26, 35–36; Gwilym H. Jones, 1 and 2 Kings (2 vols.; NCBC; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984), I, p. 108; Ernst Würthwein, Das Erste Buch der Könige: Kapitel 1–16 (ATD, 11; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), pp. 5–6, 20; James A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Kings (ICC; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951), pp. 87–89, 98.
5.
The
6.
αἷμα ἀθῷον is almost certainly reading יקנ םד instead of the MT's המחלמ ימד.
7.
See, for example, Gooding's analysis in the following works: ‘The Septuagint's Version of Solomon's Misconduct’, VT 15 (1965), pp. 325–35; ‘Pedantic Timetabling in 3rd Book of Reigns’, VT 15 (1965), pp. 153–66; ‘The Septuagint's Rival Versions of Jeroboam's Rise to Power’, VT 17 (1967), pp. 173–89; ‘Problems of Text and Midrash in the Third Book of Reigns’, Textus 7 (1969), pp. 1–29; ‘Text-Sequence and Translation-Revision in 3 Reigns ix 10–x 33’, VT 19 (1969), pp. 448–63. His findings have been supported by other scholars; see, for example, Zvi Talshir, The Alternative Story of the Division of the Kingdom: 3 Kingdoms 12:24a-z (JBS, 6; Jerusalem: Simor, 1993), and Percy S.F. van Keulen, Two Versions of the Solomonic Narrative: An Inquiry into the Relationship between MT 1 Kgs. 2–11 and LXX 3 Reg. 2–11 (VTSup, 104; Leiden: Brill, 2005).
8.
For Trebolle's arguments on the superiority of the text of 3 Reigns, see especially Salomón y Jeroboan: Historia de la recensión y redacción de 1 Reyes 2–12, 14 (Bibliotheca Salmanticensis. Dissertationes, 3; Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia, 1980). See also Adrian Schenker, Septante et texte massorétique dans l'histoire la plus ancienne du texte de 1 Rois 2–14 (CRB, 48; Paris: J. Gabalda, 2000).
9.
See, e.g., A.G. Auld, ‘Solomon at Gibeon: History Glimpsed’, EI 24 (1993), pp. 1*–7*, and Frank H. Polak, ‘The Septuaginta Account of Solomon's Reign: Revision and Ancient Recension’, in Bernard A. Taylor (ed.), X Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Oslo, 1998 (SCSS, 51; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001), pp. 139–64.
10.
See, for example, his comments in Les devanciers d'Aquila: Première publication intégrale du texte des fragments du Dodécaprophéton trouvés dans le désert de Juda (VTSup, 10; Leiden: Brill, 1963), p. 127, as well as the similar conclusions of Frank Cross in ‘The Evolution of a Theory of Local Texts’, in Frank Cross and Shemaryahu Talmon (eds.), Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 306–20 (315), and of John William Wevers in ‘Proto-Septuagint Studies’, in William Stewart McCullough (ed.), The Seed of Wisdom: Essays in Honour of T.J. Meek (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), pp. 58–77 (69).
11.
The word םנח that appears in the phrase םנח ימד here is an adverb that has the sense of something done ‘without cause’; in this phrase it acts as a substantive in the genitive (see GKC, p. 418; Cogan, 1 Kings, p. 178), and so the phrase has the sense of ‘blood of innocence’ or ‘innocent blood’.
12.
Benaiah's hesitation to kill Joab at the altar is assumedly a response to a law or custom like that of Exod. 21.12–14, a law that specifies that the altar provides sanctuary only to those guilty of involuntary manslaughter (see, e.g., Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary [OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974], p. 470; William H.C. Propp, Exodus 19–40: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AB, 2A; New York: Doubleday, 2006], p. 20; Nahum M. Sarna, Exodus: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation [JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991], p. 12; Jonathan Burnside, ‘Flight of the Fugitives: Rethinking the Relationship between Biblical Law [Exodus 21:12–14] and the Davidic Succession Narrative [1 Kings 1–2]’, JBL 129 [2010], pp. 418–31).
13.
For examples and discussions of this tendency to harmonize in
14.
So John William Wevers, ‘Exegetical Principles Underlying the Septuagint Text of 1 Kings ii 12–xxi 43’, OTS 8 (1950), pp. 300–322 (310); van Keulen, Two Versions of the Solomon Narrative, pp. 34–35.
15.
I do not mean to dismiss lightly the notion that the differences between the MT and
16.
Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, p. 182; J.P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel. I. King David (II Sam. 9–20 and I Kings 1–2) (SSN, 20; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981), p. 388.
17.
In 3.27, the
18.
Because of the ketib/qere in 20.5, it is not clear in which binyan the verb רחא originally appeared; as a result, it is not clear if Amasa is simply delayed because collecting the troops of Judah is taking longer than expected (as רחא in Qal suggests) or is deliberately delaying (as רחא in Piel might suggest). See the discussions in GKC, p. 186; Anderson, 2 Samuel, p. 234; and Shimon Bar-Efrat, Das Zweite Buch Samuel: Ein narratologisch-philologischer Kommentar (trans. Johannes Klein; BWANT, 181; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008), p. 206, for various attempts to explain this verb here. While it is not clear what the original form of the verb might be, whether Amasa's delay is deliberate (which suggests that he is supporting Sheba's rebellion) or not (which suggests incompetence), it endangers David's throne, as David himself says in 20.6.
19.
Both Peter R. Ackroyd (The Second Book of Samuel: A Commentary [CBC; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977], p. 189) and John Mauchline (1 and 2 Samuel [NCB; London: Oliphants, 1971], pp. 295–96) argue that Amasa is actively rebelling against David. The text allows this as a possibility, but in 20.6 David still speaks of Sheba as the threat, and does not mention Amasa. However, he mentions the threat in 20.6 because Amasa has not acted promptly. The delay is threatening David's rule, even if it occurs only through Amasa's incompetence. Iain Provan points out that David's words in 20.6 can be read as implying that Amasa must die. See his ‘Why Barzillai of Gilead (1 Kings 2:7)? Narrative Art and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion in 1 Kings 1–2’, TynBul 46 (1990), pp. 103–16 (110).
20.
See James C. VanderKam, ‘Davidic Complicity in the Deaths of Abner and Eshbaal: A Historical and Redactional Study’, JBL 99 (1980), pp. 521–39 (529–30).
21.
George G. Nicol, ‘The Death of Joab and the Accession of Solomon: Some Observations on the Narrative of 1 Kings 1–2’, SJOT 7 (1993), pp. 134–51 (141–42); Niels P. Lemche, ‘David's Rise’, JSOT 10 (1978), pp. 2–25 (16–17).
22.
Steven L. McKenzie, KingDavid: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 120.
23.
Bar-Efrat, Das Zweite Buch Samuel, p. 204.
24.
The fact that David calls Benaiah—himself a powerful warrior (2 Sam. 23.20–23) who is in charge of the Cherethites and Pelethites (2 Sam. 8.18), groups who appear to function as David's personal bodyguard (2 Sam. 15.18)—to accompany Solomon to his anointing suggests that Benaiah and his men will function as Solomon's bodyguard also (see also Walsh, 1 Kings, p. 23).
25.
Besides Shimei and Rei, mentioned in passing in 1.8, Joab and Benaiah are the only two military figures to whom 1 Kgs 1–2 refers by name. So as far as readers are aware, Joab and Benaiah are the only two obvious possibilities to command the army.
26.
On this point, see also Jeffrey S. Rogers, ‘Narrative Stock and Deuteronomistic Elaboration in 1 Kings 2’, CBQ 50 (1988), pp. 398–413 (410); McKenzie, King David, p. 179; Eric A. Siebert, Subversive Scribes and the Solomonic Narrative: A Rereading of 1 Kings 1–11 (LHBOTS, 436; New York: Continuum, 2006), pp. 134–35.
27.
Throughout Nathan and Bathsheba's machinations in 1 Kgs 1 to have Solomon succeed David, Solomon himself does nothing except sit on the throne in 1.46, and we are not even told if he wants to do this. See Walsh, 1 Kings, p. 33; Burke O. Long, ‘A Darkness between Brothers: Solomon and Adonijah’, JSOT 19 (1981), pp. 79–94 (86); Volkmar Fritz, 1 & 2 Kings (trans. Anselm Hagedorn; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), p. 15.
28.
For Solomon's misrepresentation of his agreement with Shimei in 2.37, see the discussion in Walsh, 1 Kings, pp. 61–64; Keith Bodner, David Observed: A King in the Eyes of his Court (HBM, 5; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2005), pp. 169–71; Joel Rosenberg, King and Kin: Political Allegory in the Hebrew Bible (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986), p. 187.
29.
We can say here as well that Solomon appears to have inherited one of David's character flaws, for David misrepresents to Solomon the oath he originally made to Shimei. ‘You will not die’, David says to Shimei in 2 Sam. 19.24 (23) (and see 19.22–24 [21–23] as a whole); in 1 Kgs 2.8, however, David tells Solomon that he had told Shimei, ‘I will not kill you with the sword’. This makes it sound as if David had only originally promised Shimei that he, David himself, would not be responsible for Shimei's death, and that Solomon would be free to kill him, which is something that his original statement did not imply. See the discussions of this issue in Provan, ‘Why Barzillai of Gilead?’; Fokkelman, Narrative Art, p. 389; Walsh, 1 Kings, p. 42; Bodner, David Observed, pp. 162–66.
30.
See, e.g., Marc Brettler, ‘The Structure of 1 Kings 1–11’, JSOT 49 (1991), pp. 87–97; Amos Frisch, ‘Structure and Significance: The Narrative of Solomon's Reign (1 Kings 1–12.24)’, JSOT 51 (1991), pp. 3–14; John W. Olley, ‘Pharaoh's Daughter, Solomon's Palace, and the Temple: Another Look at the Structure of 1 Kings 1–11’, JSOT 27 (2003), pp. 355–69; Kim Parker, ‘Repetition as a Structuring Device in 1 Kings 1–11’, JSOT 42 (1988), pp. 19–27; Walsh, 1 Kings, pp. 150–56; idem, ‘The Characterization of Solomon in First Kings 1–5’, CBQ 57 (1995), pp. 471–93; David Williams, ‘Once again: The Structure of the Narrative of Solomon's Reign’, JSOT 86 (1999), pp. 49–66.
