2 Samuel 5:15

The growth of David’s family showed his increasing success and authority as king of Israel. Solomon was the most important of David’s sons who were born in Jerusalem (see 2 Samuel 12:24–25).

After the murder of Abner and Ish-bosheth, the elders of the northern tribes accepted David as their king. So, David gained:

• an extended empire (2 Samuel 5:1–5),

• a new capital city (2 Samuel 5:6–10),

• a new palace (2 Samuel 5:11),

• a new family (2 Samuel 5:13–16), and

• renewed confidence (2 Samuel 5:17–25).

ELEVEN SONS BORN TO HIM. (Sa2 5:13-16)

David took him more concubines and wives--In this conduct David transgressed an express law, which forbade the king of Israel to multiply wives unto himself (Deu 17:17).

Here is, I. David's house built, a royal palace, fit for the reception of the court he kept and the homage that was paid to him, Sa2 5:11. The Jews were husbandmen and shepherds, and did not much addict themselves either to merchandise or manufactures; and therefore Hiram, king of Tyre, a wealthy prince, when he sent to congratulate David on his accession to the throne, offered him workmen to build him a house. David thankfully accepted the offer, and Hiram's workmen built David a house to his mind. Many have excelled in arts and sciences who were strangers to the covenants of promise. Yet David's house was never the worse, nor the less fit to be dedicated to God, for being built by the sons of the stranger. It is prophesied of the gospel church, The sons of the strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee, Isa 60:10.
II. David's government settled and built up, Sa2 5:12. 1. His kingdom was established, there was nothing to shake it, none to disturb his possession or question his title. He that made him king established him, because he was to be a type of Christ, with whom God's hand should be established, and his covenant stand fast, Psa 89:21-28. Saul was made king, but not established; so Adam in innocency. David was established king, so is the Son of David, with all who through him are made to our God kings and priests. 2. It was exalted in the eyes both of its friends and enemies. Never had the nation of Israel looked so great or made such a figure as it began now to do. Thus it is promised of Christ that he shall be higher than the kings of the earth, Psa 89:27. God has highly exalted him, Phi 2:9. 3. David perceived, by the wonderful concurrence of providences to his establishment and advancement, that God was with him. By this I know that thou favourest me, Psa 41:11. Many have the favour of God and do not perceive it, and so want the comfort of it: but to be exalted to that and established in it, and to perceive it, is happiness enough. 4. He owned that it was for his people Israel's sake that God had done great things for him, that he might be a blessing to them and they might be happy under his administration. God did not make Israel his subjects for his sake, that he might be great, and rich, and absolute: but he made him their king for their sake, that he might lead, and guide, and protect them. Kings are ministers of God to their people for good, Rom 13:4.
III. David's family multiplied and increased. All the sons that were born to him after he came to Jerusalem are here mentioned together, eleven in all, besides the six that were born to him before in Hebron, Sa2 3:2, Sa2 3:5. There the mothers are mentioned, not here; only, in general, it is said that he took more concubines and wives, Sa2 5:13. Shall we praise him for this? We praise him not; we justify him not; nor can we scarcely excuse him. The bad example of the patriarchs might make him think there was no harm in it, and he might hope it would strengthen his interest, by multiplying his alliances, and increasing the royal family. Happy is the man that has his quiver full of these arrows. But one vine by the side of the house, with the blessing of God, may send boughs to the sea and branches to the rivers. Adam, by one wife, peopled the world, and Noah re-peopled it. David had many wives, and yet that did not keep him from coveting his neighbour's wife and defiling her; for men that have once broken the fence will wander endlessly. Of David's concubines, see Sa2 15:16; Sa2 16:22; Sa2 19:5. Of his sons, see Ch1 3:1-9.

These be the names - Eleven children are here enumerated in the Hebrew text; but the Septuagint has no less than twenty-four. I shall insert their names, and the reader if he please may collate them with the text: Sammus, Sobab, Nathan, Solomon, Ebear, Elisue, Naphek, Jephies, Elisama, Elidae, Eliphalath, Samae, Jessibath, Nathan, Galimaan, Jebaar, Theesus, Eliphalat, Naged, Naphek, Jonathan, Leasamus, Baalimath, and Eliphaath. There is no doubt some corruption in these names; there are two of the name of Nathan, two of Eliphalath, and two of Naphek; and probably Sammus and Samae are the same.

Ibhar also, and Elishua, and Nepheg, and Japhia. Elishua is called Elishama, 1 Chronicles 3:6.

David's Palace, Wives and Children (comp. Ch1 14:1-7). - King Hiram of Tyre sent messengers to David, and afterwards, by the express desire of the latter, cedar-wood and builders, carpenters and stone-masons, who built him a house, i.e., a palace. Hiram (Hirom in Kg1 5:2; Huram in the Chronicles; lxx Χειράμ; Josephus, Εἴραμος and Εἴρωμος), king of Tyre, was not only an ally of David, but of his son Solomon also. He sent to the latter cedar-wood and builders for the erection of the temple and of his own palace (Kg1 5:8.; Ch2 2:2.), and fitted out a mercantile fleet in conjunction with him (Kg1 9:27-28; Ch2 9:10); in return for which, Solomon not only sent him an annual supply of corn, oil, and wine (Kg1 5:11; Ch2 2:9), but when all the buildings were finished, twenty years after the erection of the temple, he made over to him twenty of the towns of Galilee (Kg1 9:10.). It is evident from these facts that Hiram was still reigning in the twenty-fourth, or at any rate the twentieth, year of Solomon's reign, and consequently, as he had assisted David with contributions of wood for the erection of his palace, that he must have reigned at least forty-five or fifty years; and therefore that, even in the latter case, he cannot have begun to reign earlier than the eighth year of David's reign over all Israel, or from six to ten years after the conquest of the Jebusite citadel upon Mount Zion. This is quite in harmony with the account given here; for it by no means follows, that because the arrival of an embassy from Hiram, and the erection of David's palace, are mentioned immediately after the conquest of the citadel of Zion, they must have occurred directly afterwards. The arrangement of the different events in the chapter before us is topical rather than strictly chronological. Of the two battles fought by David with the Philistines (Sa2 5:17-25), the first at any rate took place before the erection of David's palace, as it is distinctly stated in Sa2 5:17 that the Philistines made war upon David when they heard that he had been anointed king over Israel, and therefore in all probability even before the conquest of the fortress of the Jebusites, or at any rate immediately afterwards, and before David had commenced the fortification of Jerusalem and the erection of a palace. The historian, on the contrary, has not only followed up the account of the capture of the fortress of Zion, and the selection of it as David's palace, by a description of what David gradually did to fortify and adorn the new capital, but has also added a notice as to David's wives and the children that were born to him in Jerusalem. Now, if this be correct, the object of Hiram's embassy cannot have been "to congratulate David upon his ascent of the throne," as Thenius maintains; but after he had ascended the throne, Hiram sent ambassadors to form an alliance with this powerful monarch; and David availed himself of the opportunity to establish an intimate friendship with Hiram, and ask him for cedar-wood and builders for his palace.
(Note: The statements of Menander of Ephesus in Josephus (c. Ap. i. 18), that after the death of Abibal his son Hirom (Εἴρωμος) succeeded him in the government, and reigned thirty-four years, and died at the age of fifty-three, are at variance with the biblical history. For, according to these statements, as Hiram was still reigning "at the end of twenty years" (according to Kg1 9:10-11), when Solomon had built his palaces and the house of the Lord, i.e., twenty-four years after Solomon began to reign, he cannot have ascended the throne before the sixty-first year of David's life, and the thirty-first of his reign. But in that case the erection of David's palace would fall somewhere within the last eight years of his life. And to this we have to add the repeated statements made by Josephus (l.c. and Ant. viii. 3, 1), to the effect that Solomon commenced the building of the temple in Hiram's twelfth year, or after he had reigned eleven years; so that Hiram could only have begun to reign seven years before the death of David (in the sixty-third year of his life), and the erection of the palace by David must have fallen later still, and his determination to build the temple, which he did not form till he had taken possession of his house of cedar, i.e., the newly erected palace (Sa2 7:2), would fall in the very last years of his life, but a very short time before his death. As this seems hardly credible, it has been assumed by some that Hiram's father, Abibal, also bore the name of Hiram, or that Hiram is confounded with Abibal in the account before us (Thenius), or that Abibal's father was named Hiram, and it was he who formed the alliance with David (Ewald, Gesch. iv. 287). But all these assumptions are overthrown by the fact that the identity of the Hiram who was Solomon's friend with the contemporary and friend of David is expressly affirmed not only in Ch2 2:2 (as Ewald supposes), but also in Kg1 5:15. For whilst Solomon writes to Hiram in Ch2 2:3, "as thou didst deal with David my father, and didst send him cedars to build him an house to dwell therein," it is also stated Kg1 5:1 that "Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants unto Solomon; for he had heard that they had anointed him king in the room of his father: for Hiram was a lover of David all days (all his life)." Movers (Phnizier ii. 1, p. 147ff.) has therefore attempted to remove the discrepancy between the statements made in Josephus and the biblical account of Hiram's friendship with David and Solomon, by assuming that in the narrative contained in the books of Samuel we have a topical and not a chronological arrangement, and that according to this arrangement the conquest of Jerusalem by David is followed immediately by the building of the city and palace, and this again by the removal of the holy ark to Jerusalem, and lastly by David's resolution to build a temple, which really belonged to the close of his reign, and indeed, according to Sa2 7:2, to the period directly following the completion of the cedar palace. There is a certain amount of truth at the foundation of this, but it does not remove the discrepancy; for even if David's resolution to build a temple did not fall within the earlier years of his reign at Jerusalem, as some have inferred from the position in which it stands in the account given in this book, it cannot be pushed forward to the very last years of his life and reign. This is decidedly precluded by the fact, that in the promise given to David by God, his son and successor upon the throne is spoken of in such terms as to necessitate the conclusion that he was not yet born. This difficulty cannot be removed by the solution suggested by Movers (p. 149), "that the historian necessarily adhered to the topical arrangement which he had adopted for this section, because he had not said anything yet about Solomon and his mother Bathsheba:" for the expression "which shall proceed out of thy bowels" (Sa2 7:12) is not the only one of the kind; but in Ch1 22:9, David says to his son Solomon, "The word of the Lord came to me, saying, A son shall be born to thee - Solomon - he shall build an house for my name;" from which it is very obvious, that Solomon was not born at the time when David determined to build the temple and received this promise from God in consequence of his intention.
To this we have also to add Sa2 11:2, where David sees Bathsheba, who gave birth to Solomon a few years later, from the roof of his palace. Now, even though the palace is simply called "the king's house" in this passage, and not the "house of cedar," as in Sa2 7:2, and therefore the house intended might possibly be the house in which David lived before the house of cedar was built, this is a very improbable supposition, and there cannot be much doubt that the "king's house" is the palace (Sa2 5:11; Sa2 7:1) which he had erected for himself. Lastly, not only is there not the slightest intimation in the whole of the account given in 2 Samuel 7 that David was an old man when he resolved to build the temple, but, on the contrary, the impression which it makes throughout is, that it was the culminating point of his reign, and that he was at an age when he might hope not only to commence this magnificent building, but in all human probability to live to complete it. The only other solution left, is the assumption that there are errors in the chronological date of Josephus, and that Hiram lived longer than Menander affirms. The assertion that Solomon commenced the erection of the temple in the eleventh or twelfth year of Hiram's reign was not derived by Josephus from Phoenician sources; for the fragments which he gives from the works of Menander and Dius in the Antiquities (viii. 5, 3) and c. Apion (i. 17, 18), contain nothing at all about the building of the temple (vid., Movers, p. 141), but he has made it as the result of certain chronological combinations of his own, just as in Ant. viii. 3, 1, he calculates the year of the building of the temple in relation both to the exodus and also to the departure of Abraham out of Haran, but miscalculates, inasmuch as he places it in the 592nd year after the exodus instead of the 480th, and the 1020th year from Abraham's emigration to Canaan instead of the 1125th. And in the present instance his calculation of the exact position of the same event in relation to Hiram's reign was no doubt taken from Menander; but even in this the numbers may be faulty, since the statements respecting Balezorus and Myttonus in the very same extract from Menander, as to the length of the reigns of the succeeding kings of Tyre, can be proved to be erroneous, and have been corrected by Movers from Eusebius and Syncellus; and, moreover, the seven years of Hiram's successor, Baleazar, do not tally with Eusebius and Syncellus, who both give seventeen years. Thus the proof which Movers adduces from the synchronism of the Tyrian chronology with the biblical, the Egyptian, and the Assyrian, to establish the correctness of Menander's statements concerning Hiram's reign, is rendered very uncertain, to say nothing of the fact that Movers has only succeeded in bringing out the synchronism with the biblical chronology by a very arbitrary and demonstrably false calculation of the years that the kings of Judah and Israel reigned.)
Sa2 5:12-14
"And David perceived (sc., from the success of his enterprises) that Jehovah had firmly established him king over Israel, and that He had exalted his kingdom for His people Israel's sake," i.e., because He had chosen Israel as His people, and had promised to make it great and glorious.
To the building of David's palace, there is appended in Sa2 5:13-15 the account of the increase of his house by the multiplication of his wives and concubines, and of the sons who were born to him at Jerusalem (as in Ch1 14:3.). Taking many wives was indeed prohibited in the law of the king in Deu 17:17; but as a large harem was considered from time immemorial as part of the court of an oriental monarch, David suffered himself to be seduced by that custom to disregard this prohibition, and suffered many a heartburn afterwards in consequence, not to mention his fearful fall in consequence of his passion for Bathsheba. The concubines are mentioned before the wives, probably because David had taken many of them to Jerusalem, and earlier than the wives. In the Chronicles the concubines and omitted, though not "intentionally," as they are mentioned in Ch1 3:9; but as being of no essential importance in relation to the list of sons which follows, because no difference was made between those born of concubines and those born of wives. "Out of Jerusalem," i.e., away from Jerusalem: not that the wives were all born in Jerusalem, as the words which follow, "after he was come from Hebron," clearly show. In the Chronicles, therefore, it is explained as meaning "in Jerusalem." The sons are mentioned again both in Ch1 14:5-7 and in the genealogy in Ch1 3:5-8. Shammua is called Shimea in Ch1 3:5, according to a different pronunciation. Shammua, Shobab, Nathan, and Solomon were sons of Bathsheba according to Ch1 3:5.
Sa2 5:15-16
Elishua is written incorrectly in Ch1 3:6 as Elishama, because Elishama follows afterwards. There are two names after Elishua in Ch1 3:6-7, and Ch1 14:6-7, viz., Eliphalet and Nogah, which have not crept into the text from oversight or from a wrong spelling of other names, because the number of the names is given as nine in Ch1 3:8, and the two names must be included in order to bring out that number. And, on the other hand, it is not by the mistake of a copyist that they have been omitted from the text before us, but it has evidently been done deliberately on account of their having died in infancy, or at a very early age. This also furnishes a very simple explanation of the fact, that the name Eliphalet occurs again at the end of the list, namely, because a son who was born later received the name of his brother who had died young. Eliada, the last but one, is called Beeliada in Ch1 14:7, another form of the name, compounded with Baal instead of El. David had therefore nineteen sons, six of whom were born in Hebron (Sa2 3:2.), and thirteen at Jerusalem. Daughters are not mentioned in the genealogical accounts, because as a rule only heiresses or women who acquired renown from special causes were included in them. There is a daughter named Thamar mentioned afterwards in Sa2 13:1.