50 Fun Facts About 2 Samuel

Which refrain, repeated three times in David's lament for Saul and Jonathan, became a proverb for any downfall?

How the mighty have fallen opens, punctuates and closes the lament, which David ordered taught to Judah as 'the lament of the bow'. Its line 'Tell it not in Gath' is still quoted too.

With which blunt rebuke did Nathan turn his story of a rich man's stolen ewe back on King David?

'You are the man' landed seconds after David had sworn the thief deserved to die; Nathan then told the king the stolen ewe was Bathsheba and the killing of her husband was his.

What did Hanun, the new king of Ammon, do to the envoys David sent to console him on his father's death?

Hanun shaved off half their beards and cut their robes off at the buttocks, a humiliation David answered by telling the men to wait at Jericho until the beards grew back, and then by war.

What did David do, baffling his servants, the moment he learned the infant born to Bathsheba had died?

He washed, changed and ate after a week of fasting prostrate, explaining 'I will go to him, but he will not return to me', a line still read at funerals.

Why was Jonathan's son Mephibosheth lame in both feet, a condition dating from the day Saul fell?

His nurse dropped him fleeing when he was five, the day word came from Jezreel that Saul and Jonathan were dead, so the one grandson of Saul whom David later honoured never walked properly again.

What was David wearing as he danced 'with all his might' before the ark on its way up to Jerusalem?

A linen ephod was the short garment the boy Samuel had worn at Shiloh, and leaping about in one was what Michal scorned as going 'half-naked in full view of the slave girls'.

What was the sequel for Michal, Saul's daughter, after she mocked David for leaping about before the ark?

She remained childless 'to the day of her death', the text says, so the woman who once saved David by lowering him out of a window never gave Saul's line a royal heir.

How was the ark carried from Abinadab's house toward Jerusalem when Uzzah reached out to steady it and died?

On a new cart, the way the Philistines had once sent it back, the ark set off; the law in Numbers had it carried on poles by Levites, which is how David moved it three months later.

What did David insist on buying from Araunah the Jebusite, refusing to offer God anything that 'cost me nothing'?

His threshing floor and oxen cost fifty shekels of silver, and 2 Chronicles places Solomon's temple on that very floor, Mount Moriah, so the altar that ended the dying fixed where the temple would stand.

Which foreign king sent timber, carpenters and stonemasons to build David a palace in his new capital?

Hiram of Tyre, the Phoenician timber king, would later supply the same wood for Solomon's temple, and David read the palace as proof that God had established him as king over Israel.

What did the Amalekite who claimed to have finished off the dying Saul bring David at Ziklag as proof?

His crown and armband cost the messenger his life: David had him killed on the spot for touching the Lord's anointed, telling him 'Your blood be on your own head.'

What had God never asked any ruler of Israel to build for him, according to the promise delivered through Nathan?

A house of cedar was David's own new home, and God replied that he had been 'moving from place to place with a tent' and never asked why no temple stood; the job went to David's son.

What did Tamar put on her head, tearing her ornate robe, after her brother Amnon assaulted and rejected her?

Ashes on the head and the torn robe were signs of mourning, and the robe itself, the kind 'the virgin daughters of the king wore', is described with the same Hebrew word as Joseph's famous coat.

How did Absalom force Joab to visit him after two years back in Jerusalem without once seeing the king's face?

Absalom set his barley field ablaze, Joab's field lying next to his own, and the stunt worked: Joab came, then went to the king, and David at last summoned Absalom and kissed him.

In which city, David's own first capital, did Absalom have himself proclaimed king under cover of fulfilling a vow?

Hebron, where David had reigned seven years and six months before taking Jerusalem, was also Absalom's birthplace, and the trumpet call there opened a revolt the text says had been brewing for four years.

Which of David's counsellors, whose advice was 'like that of one who inquires of God', went over to Absalom's revolt?

Ahithophel was, by the book's own genealogies, Bathsheba's grandfather; when Absalom ignored his plan he went home, put his house in order and hanged himself, the Old Testament's only hanging suicide.

According to 2 Samuel 18, what claimed more of Absalom's men than the fighting in the battle that ended his revolt?

The forest of Ephraim 'swallowed up more men that day' than the fighting did, and it caught the prince too: Absalom's head lodged in an oak as his mule ran on beneath him.

What did David do with the water three warriors fetched from Bethlehem's gate, through Philistine lines, at his wish?

He poured it out on the ground as an offering, refusing to drink what was 'the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives', though the wish that sent them had been his own.

Which punishment did David pick after the census, reasoning that it was better to fall into God's hands than human ones?

Three days of plague killed seventy thousand people 'from Dan to Beersheba' before the angel was halted outside Jerusalem, at the spot David then bought for an altar.

Which chapter of the Psalter repeats, almost word for word, the song of deliverance that fills 2 Samuel 22?

Psalm 18 carries the same opening, 'The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer', and the same heading about escape from Saul; Psalm 51 is the one tradition ties to the Bathsheba affair.

What sentence did David pass on the rich man in Nathan's story before being told that the rich man was himself?

Death and fourfold restitution was the law's price for a stolen sheep in Exodus, and readers have long noted that David went on to lose four sons: the infant, Amnon, Absalom and Adonijah.

What name, meaning 'loved by the Lord', did Nathan bring from God for the second son born to David and Bathsheba?

Jedidiah was the name God sent for the boy his parents had already called Solomon, a quiet signal that the child of a marriage begun in adultery was nonetheless the chosen heir.

Who, 'a very shrewd man' and David's nephew, told the lovesick Amnon to feign illness and ask for Tamar to feed him?

Jonadab, son of David's brother Shimeah, later reappears to assure the king that only Amnon is dead and not all the princes, which suggests he knew Absalom's plan in advance.

At what kind of gathering, two years after the assault on Tamar, did Absalom's servants kill a tipsy Amnon?

A sheepshearing feast near the Ephraim border drew all the king's sons, and the signal to strike when Amnon was 'in high spirits from drinking wine' echoes Nabal's fatal shearing party in 1 Samuel.

Where did Absalom spend three years in exile after Amnon's murder, at the court of his maternal grandfather Talmai?

Geshur was a small Aramean kingdom east of Galilee whose princess Maakah David had married, so the prince who would raise Israel against him was part foreign royalty.

Why, according to 2 Samuel 18, had Absalom raised a pillar to himself in the King's Valley during his lifetime?

He had no son to carry his name, the text says, though chapter 14 had given him three; the 'Absalom's Tomb' tourists see in the Kidron Valley is a monument from around the 1st century AD.

Which man of Gath, arrived only 'yesterday', refused to leave David and led his six hundred men into exile with him?

Ittai, a foreigner, answered with the book's most Ruth-like vow, 'wherever my lord the king may be, whether it means life or death, there will your servant be', and ended up commanding a third of the army.

How were David's two runners, the sons of Zadok and Abiathar, hidden from Absalom's searchers at a house in Bahurim?

Down a well under scattered grain, the pair waited while the householder's wife lied to Absalom's men, the same trick Rahab had pulled with flax on her roof for Joshua's spies.

Which eighty-year-old Gileadite, David's supplier in exile, declined a place at court and sent Kimham in his stead?

Barzillai said he could no longer taste his food or hear the singers, and David, on his deathbed, told Solomon to keep the old man's sons at the royal table for the kindness shown during the flight from Absalom.

Whom did David make commander in place of Joab after the revolt, only for Joab to gut him with a hidden dagger?

Amasa had led Absalom's rebel army and was David's own nephew; Joab took him 'by the beard with his right hand to kiss him' and struck with the left, as he had once killed Abner.

Which Benjamite's trumpet blast and cry 'We have no share in David' launched a second revolt straight after Absalom's?

Sheba son of Bikri ended with his head thrown over the wall of Abel Beth Maakah by townsfolk a 'wise woman' had talked round, and his slogan was recycled when the northern tribes split from Rehoboam.

Which kinsman of Saul pelted the retreating David with stones and curses at Bahurim, then begged pardon at the Jordan?

Shimei was spared twice, once when David refused to let Abishai take his head and again at the river, yet the dying king told Solomon to 'bring his gray head down to the grave in blood'.

Which of Saul's widows kept vigil on a rock from harvest until the rains came, keeping birds off seven impaled bodies?

Rizpah's sackcloth vigil over her two sons and five grandsons of Saul, handed to the Gibeonites to end a famine, shamed David into finally burying the bones of Saul and Jonathan.

What happened to Eleazar son of Dodai, one of David's Three, as he stood his ground alone against the Philistines?

His hand froze to the sword after he had fought until it 'grew tired', and the men who had fled came back 'only to strip the dead'; the parallel roll in 1 Chronicles drops both details and folds his stand into the barley-field story.

Which prophet, called David's 'seer', carried the three choices of punishment to the king the morning after the census?

Gad had been with David since the outlaw years, when he told him to leave the stronghold for Judah, and Chronicles credits him with a book of records on the reign.

By what route did David tell his men to reach the 'lame and blind' Jebusites taunting him from inside Jerusalem's walls?

The water shaft is usually identified with Warren's Shaft, the rock-cut passage to the Gihon spring found in 1867, and Chronicles adds that the first man up it, Joab, became commander.

How did Abner kill Joab's brother Asahel, who would not stop chasing him after the skirmish at the pool of Gibeon?

The butt of his spear went through Asahel's stomach and out his back, a killing Joab avenged by stabbing Abner in a gateway, setting up the blood feud that ran through David's reign.

Which son of Zadok outran the Cushite to bring David news of the battle, then dodged saying whether Absalom was dead?

Ahimaaz, whose running style the watchman recognised from the wall, answered the king's only question with 'I saw great confusion', leaving the Cushite to deliver the blow.

Where did David finally lay the bones of Saul and Jonathan, recovered from the men of Jabesh Gilead?

Kish's tomb at Zela, in Benjamin, put Saul beside his father at last, the bones having hung on Beth Shan's wall and then lain under a tamarisk at Jabesh for most of David's reign.

What did Shammah son of Agee, another of David's Three, defend alone against the Philistines when everyone else fled?

A field of lentils, a crop worth no battle, was held 'in the middle of the field' while the army ran, and the parallel list in 1 Chronicles remembers the crop differently.

Whose name, pointedly, closes the roll of thirty-seven warriors that ends 2 Samuel 23, just before the census story?

Uriah the Hittite, the husband David had killed, stands last among the king's finest soldiers, a placement many readers take as the narrator's quiet verdict on the Bathsheba affair.

To which town east of the Jordan, where Abner had once crowned Ish-Bosheth, did David retreat from Absalom's advance?

Mahanaim, 'two camps', was where Jacob met God's angels on his way home in Genesis, and it served both sides of the civil war as a capital in exile within a single generation.

What did David name the spot in the Valley of Rephaim where, 'as waters break out', God broke his Philistine enemies?

Baal Perazim is the first of two wins in that valley, the one where the Philistines abandoned their idols; in the second, David was told to wait for 'the sound of marching in the tops of the poplar trees' before attacking.

Which office does the list of royal officials in 2 Samuel 8 give, surprisingly, to David's own sons?

Priests, says the Hebrew, though David's sons were not Levites; the parallel in 1 Chronicles quietly changes them to 'chief officials at the king's side', and the NIV footnote offers that same reading.

Which second husband of Michal followed her weeping as far as Bahurim when Abner took her back to David?

Paltiel had been given Michal by Saul while David was an outlaw, and Abner's curt 'Go back home!' ended the only marriage in the book described from the husband's side with tears.

In which lost work, also cited in Joshua for the sun standing still, was David's 'lament of the bow' recorded?

The Book of Jashar, 'the book of the upright', is quoted twice in the Bible and survives nowhere, though later works bearing the name have circulated since the Middle Ages.

How did David decide which defeated Moabites would live and which would die after his victory in 2 Samuel 8?

He measured them off with a cord as they lay in rows, two lengths to die and one to live, a hard turn for the people who had sheltered David's parents during his outlaw years.

How did the contest of twelve young men a side at the pool of Gibeon, staged by Abner and Joab, turn out?

All twenty-four died together, each man grabbing his opponent's head and driving a dagger into his side, so the spot was named Helkath Hazzurim, 'field of daggers', and full battle followed.

Which translation first split the single Hebrew scroll of Samuel into the two books now numbered 1 and 2 Samuel?

The Septuagint, the Greek version made around the 2nd century BC, cut the scroll in two, and Jerome's Vulgate went further by calling the halves 1 and 2 Kings.

In what state did David climb the Mount of Olives as he fled Jerusalem ahead of Absalom's coup?

Barefoot with his head covered and weeping, David went up the Mount of Olives, the slope where, a thousand years later, the Gospels have Jesus weep over the same city.