Text -- 2 Samuel 3:29-39 (NET)

3:29 May his blood whirl over the head of Joab and the entire house of his father! May the males of Joab’s house never cease to have someone with a running sore or a skin disease or one who works at the spindle or one who falls by the sword or one who lacks food!” 3:30 So Joab and his brother Abishai killed Abner, because he had killed their brother Asahel in Gibeon during the battle. 3:31 David instructed Joab and all the people who were with him, “Tear your clothes! Put on sackcloth! Lament before Abner!” Now King David followed behind the funeral bier. 3:32 So they buried Abner in Hebron. The king cried loudly over Abner’s grave and all the people wept too. 3:33 The king chanted the following lament for Abner: “Should Abner have died like a fool? 3:34 Your hands were not bound, and your feet were not put into irons. You fell the way one falls before criminals.” All the people wept over him again. 3:35 Then all the people came and encouraged David to eat food while it was still day. But David took an oath saying, “God will punish me severely if I taste bread or anything whatsoever before the sun sets!” 3:36 All the people noticed this and it pleased them. In fact, everything the king did pleased all the people. 3:37 All the people and all Israel realized on that day that the killing of Abner son of Ner was not done at the king’s instigation. 3:38 Then the king said to his servants, “Do you not realize that a great leader has fallen this day in Israel? 3:39 Today I am weak, even though I am anointed as king. These men, the sons of Zeruiah, are too much for me to bear! May the Lord punish appropriately the one who has done this evil thing!”

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: 2Sa 3:29

¹ tn Heb “and may they whirl over.” In the Hebrew text the subject of the plural verb is unexpressed. The most likely subject is Abner’s “shed blood” (v. 28), which is a masculine plural form in Hebrew. The verb חוּל (khul, “whirl”) is used with the preposition עַל (’al) only here and in Jer 23:19; 30:23.

² tc 4QSam^a has “of Joab” rather than “of his father” read by the MT.

³ tn Heb “the house of Joab.” However, it is necessary to specify that David’s curse is aimed at Joab’s male descendants; otherwise it would not be clear that “one who works at the spindle” refers to a man doing woman’s work rather than a woman.

⁴ tn Heb “and may there not be cut off from the house of Joab.”

⁵ tn The expression used here is difficult. The translation “one who works at the spindle” follows a suggestion of S. R. Driver that the expression pejoratively describes an effeminate man who, rather than being a mighty warrior, is occupied with tasks that are normally fulfilled by women (S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel, 250-51; cf. NAB “one unmanly”; TEV “fit only to do a woman’s work”; CEV “cowards”). But P. K. McCarter, following an alleged Phoenician usage of the noun to refer to “crutches,” adopts a different view. He translates the phrase “clings to a crutch,” seeing here a further description of physical lameness (II Samuel [AB], 118). Such an idea fits the present context well and is followed by NIV, NCV, and NLT, although the evidence for this meaning is questionable. According to DNWSI 2:915-16, the noun consistently refers to a spindle in Phoenician, as it does in Ugaritic (see UT 468).

NET Notes: 2Sa 3:31

¹ tn Heb “was walking.”

NET Notes: 2Sa 3:32

¹ tn Heb “lifted up his voice and wept.” The expression is a verbal hendiadys.

NET Notes: 2Sa 3:34

¹ tc The translation follows many medieval Hebrew manuscripts and several ancient versions in reading “your hands,” rather than “your hand.”

² tc 4QSam^a lacks the words “all the people.”

NET Notes: 2Sa 3:35

¹ tn Heb “Thus God will do to me and thus he will add.”

NET Notes: 2Sa 3:36

¹ tn Heb “it was good in their eyes.”

NET Notes: 2Sa 3:37

¹ tn Heb “from the king.”

NET Notes: 2Sa 3:38

¹ tn Heb “a leader and a great one.” The expression is a hendiadys.

NET Notes: 2Sa 3:39

¹ tn Heb “are hard from me.”

² tn Heb “May the Lord repay the doer of the evil according to his evil” (NASB similar).