The Pulpit Commentary — 2 Samuel — Section 483

thie construction showe that the woman This is a conection of the Massorites to speaks in the name of the city, and conse- make the passage agree with eh. viii. 18. quently the Authorized Version, while pre- The K'tib has cari, a word which occurs in serving the grammar, loses the sense. It 2 Kings xi. 4, 19, where in the Authorized should be translated, we are peaceable, faith- Version !t is tranaJated "captains," but in ful people in Israel. A city and a mother; the Revised Vers1on Caritu which here that is, a mother-city, o. metropJ!is, the appeord only in the margin. 'But there is chief town of that district. no reason wby the place of the Cherethites Ver. 21.-The matter ie not 10. It eeeme should not have been taken by Carian mer- from thie veree that the citizene did not cenaries later on in_ David's reign, thnugh quite understand why Joab attacked them. really we know too little about such matters Sheba had thrown himself into the city. to be able to form a. judgment. Some com- and Joab, in hot pursuit, finding the gate mentators translate cari "digger," and closed-a measure of ordinary precaution sup_Pose that it mea.ne executioner; but why upon the approach .of a body of men-at a digger should have such a mea.nin"' is in- once blockaded the town, and began to ea.et explicable. It may be interesting to add :UP the mount. At all events, they were that the Caria.ns were famous in old times ready to come to terme now, and would as mercenaries. During the reign of Manns- probably have given up Sheba e.t first, if eeb, Psammetichus won the throne of all Joo.b had demanded his surrender. A man Egypt by the a.id of Ca.ria.ns, and from that of Mount Ephraim. Sheba was n Benje.mite, period they took a lea.ding part in all but the hills of Ephraim extended into the Egyptian wars. The age of David is much territory of Benjamin, and retained their more antique, but as t4ere was constant name (see 1 Sam. i. I). Over the wall; communication between Phrenicia and Asia Hebrew, through the wall, being the word Minor and Greece, there is nothing impro- rendered " at" a window in Gen. xxvi. 8. bable in David ta.king Carie.us into his service It prob&bly me&ns through one o( the in place of the Philietine Cherethites. His apertures made for the .e.rchere. connection with them would soon cease after Ver. 22.-In her wisdom; that is, with he left Ziklag. her wise counsel. The story in Eccles. ix. Ver. 24.-Adoram was over the tribute. 13-15 probably refers to this no.native. This was a new officer, and a new thing. ~hey retired; Hebrew, they dispersed them- For the Hebrew word mas does not mean selves each to his tent; that is, hie home. "tribute," but "forced labour." This wa.e oue Thie refers to Amasa'e levies, who were glad of the most oppressive exactions of old time, to depart, and whom Joab did not want at and it continued to be practised in Europe Jerusalem. He, took thither with him all throughout the Middle Ages until it was those mentioned in ver. 7. Incensed as abolished at the end of the eighteenth cen- David must have been at the murder of tury by the French Revolution, except in .Amo.ea following so quickly upon that of Russia, where the serfs were freed from it by Absalom, yet that very act proved Joe.b's the late emperor Alexander II. N everthe- determination, and left the king powerless, less, it was probably made almost necessary He ml)st have felt, too, that Joab was indie- at first by the absence of money. As there peneable for the maintenance of peace and was no money for the payment of taxes, the order in his dominions, and that he was at dues of the king or lord could only be the least faithful to himself. rendered by persona.I service. Yet even so Ver. 23.-Now Joab, etc. With this liet it was exceedingly liable to be abused, and of his chief officers, the nanator closes the the people might be taken from their own history of David's reign; for the remaining homee and fields just when their presence four chapters form a kind of appendix. .A thertJ was most needed. One most painful similar list closes eh. viii., where, too, there result was that the women had to endure, ie a break in the history, the previous ne.lT6- upon the farm and among the cattle, a tive having been a summary of the rapid drudgery to which they were unsuited. We rise of David's empire. In this section, eh. gather from this pa!i58.ge that it was Davicl ix.-xx., we have a more full 11nd cletailed who began this practice in Israel, exacting account of David's wars, leading on to his probably only from the descendants of the crime and its punishment. The rest of Uanaanites (who, nevertheless, formecl a. con- David's life we may trust w11s calm and siderable portion of the inhabita.nts of Pales- uneventful, but it was the life of a sonow- tine) forced labour employed in preparing strioken man ; and the sworcl again woke up for the building of the temple, and in the aaa.inst his family when his end was ap- fortifications of his fenced cities. Under p~oaching, ancl filled his dying hours with Solomon it seems to have been extended to grief and trouble. This list is much later other classes (1 Kings v. 13, 14; but see l in do.to than that previously given, though Kings ix. 20-22), and reduced to a. system, mos~ of ihe officers are the ea.me. Cherethitus, which pressed so heavily upon the people 4-96 THE SECOND BOOK OF SAMUEL. [cu. n. 1-26,