"When they were by the great stone at Gibeon, and Amasa came to meet them (there), Joab was girded with his armour-coat as his clothing, and the girdle of the sword was bound over it upon his loins in its sheath, which came out, and it fell (i.e., the sheath came out of the sword-belt in which it was fastened, and the sword fell to the ground), Joab said to Amasa," etc. The eighth verse contains only circumstantial clauses, the latter of which (from ויואב onwards) are subordinate to the earlier ones, so that ויּאמר (2 Samuel 20:9) is attached to the first clause, which describes the meeting between the advancing army and Amasa.

There is something striking, however, in the fact that Joab appears among them, and indeed, as we see from what follows, as the commander of the forces; for according to 2 Samuel 20:6, David had commissioned Abishai, Joab's brother, to pursue Sheba, and even in 2 Samuel 20:7 Joab's men only are mentioned. This difficulty can hardly be solved in any other manner than by the simple assumption that David had told Abishai to go out with Joab, and that this circumstance is passed over in the brief account in 2 Samuel 20:6, in which the principal facts alone are given, and consequently the name of Joab does not occur there. Clericus adopts the following explanation. "Mention," he says, "has hitherto been made simply of the command given to Abishai, but this included an order to Joab to go as well; and there is nothing to preclude the supposition that Joab's name was mentioned by the king, although this is not distinctly stated in the brief account before us."

(Note: This difficulty cannot be removed by emendations of the text, inasmuch as all the early translators, with the exception of the Syriac, had our Hebrew text before them. Thenius does indeed propose to alter Abishai into Joab in 2 Samuel 20:6, after the example of Josephus and the Syriac; but, as Bttcher observes, if Joab had originally formed part of the text, it could not have been altered into Abishai either accidentally or intentionally, and the Syriac translators and Josephus have inserted Joab merely from conjecture, because they inferred from what follows that Joab's name ought to be found here. But whilst this is perfectly true, there is no ground for Bttcher's own conjecture, that in the original text 2 Samuel 20:6 read as follows: "Then David said to Joab, Behold, the three days are gone: shall we wait for Amasa?" and through the copyist's carelessness a whole line was left out. For this conjecture has no tenable support in the senseless reading of the Cod. Vat., πρὸς Ἀμεσσαΐ́ for Ἀβισαΐ́.)

2 Samuel 20:14 Parallel Commentaries

Abel Or rather, probably, {Abel of Beth-Maachah}, as in the next verse. It appears, from Joab having marched `through all the tribes of Israel,' to have been situated in the northern confines of the land of Israel, and in the half tribe of Manasseh, east of Jordan, as that was the situation of Maachah, to which it belonged. This agrees with the situation of the {Abela} which Eusebius and Jerome place between Paneas, or Caesarea Philippi, and Damascus. Josephus says it was a fortified city, and a metropolis of the Israelites; and also that it belonged to the ten tribes, having been taken from the king of Damascus.

1 Kings 15:20 So Benhadad listened to king Asa, and sent the captains of the hosts which he had against the cities of Israel, and smote Ijon, and Dan...

2 Kings 15:29 In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglathpileser king of Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abelbethmaachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh...

2 Chronicles 16:4 And Benhadad listened to king Asa, and sent the captains of his armies against the cities of Israel; and they smote Ijon, and Dan...

Berites

Joshua 18:25 Gibeon, and Ramah, and Beeroth,

Beeroth