The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
Absalom Flees to Geshur
2 Samuel 13:34–39 — Absalom Flees to Geshur. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
34Meanwhile, Absalom had fled. When the young man standing watch looked up, he saw many people coming down the road west of him, along the side of the hill. And the watchman went and reported to the king, “I see men coming from the direction of Horonaim, along the side of the hill.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’aḇ·šā·lō·wm way·yiḇ·raḥ han·na·‘ar haṣ·ṣō·p̄eh ’eṯ- way·yiś·śā ʿē·nō way·yar wə·hin·nêh raḇ ‘am- hō·lə·ḵîm mid·de·reḵ ’a·ḥă·rāw miṣ·ṣaḏ hā·hār
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-fled Absalom. And-lifted-up the-young-man the-one-watching [namely] his-eye, and-he-saw — and-behold! people many walking from-the-road behind-him, from-the-side of-the-mountain.
Where the English smooths the original
Absalom fled; he who had undertaken to defend his servants flees or his own life.Poole's printed text reads “flees or his own life”; “or” is almost certainly a compositor's slip for “for.” We quote it as printed rather than silently mending it.
Behind him — i.e., from the west, the Oriental always being supposed to face the east in speaking of the points of the compass.
This brief statement of Absalom’s escape is inserted here in anticipation of 2 Samuel 13:37-38 , in order to contrast Absalom’s flight with the return of the king’s sons to Jerusalem.Cambridge elsewhere in this same entry records the Septuagint's much longer text here (“Oronen,” i.e. Horonaim or Beth-horon) — the source of the extra clause the BSB prints.
35So Jonadab said to the king, “Look, the sons of the king have arrived! It is just as your servant said.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
yō·w·nā·ḏāḇ way·yō·mer ’el- ham·me·leḵ hin·nêh ḇə·nê- ham·me·leḵ bā·’ū kên ‘aḇ·də·ḵā hā·yāh kiḏ·ḇar
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said Jonadab unto the-king: Behold! the-sons-of the-king have-come. According-to-the-word-of thy-servant, so it-has-been.
Where the English smooths the original
as thy servant said, so it is; he seems to applaud himself, and exult at his penetration and foresight.
The watchman, as his duty was, had sent immediate notice to the king that he saw a crowd approaching (see 2 Kings 9:17-20 ). Jonadab, who was with the king, was prompt to give the explanation.
Behold, the king's sons come: as thy servant said, {o} so it is. (o) That only Amnon is dead.The Geneva note (o) is the marginal gloss keyed to “so it is”; it supplies the antecedent the Hebrew leaves implicit.
36And as he finished speaking, the sons of the king came in, wailing loudly. Then the king and all his servants also wept very bitterly.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·hî kə·ḵal·lō·ṯōw lə·ḏab·bêr wə·hin·nêh ḇə·nê- ham·me·leḵ bā·’ū way·yiḇ·kū way·yiś·’ū qō·w·lām ham·me·leḵ wə·ḵāl ‘ă·ḇā·ḏāw wə·ḡam- bā·ḵū bə·ḵî mə·’ōḏ gā·ḏō·wl
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-it-was, as-his-finishing to-speak — and-behold! the-sons-of the-king came, and-they-lifted-up their-voice and-they-wept; and-also the-king and-all his-servants wept a-weeping great, very.
Where the English smooths the original
Jonadab had hardly said this when the king's sons arrived and wept aloud, sc., as they related what had occurred; whereupon the king and all his retainers broke out in loud weeping.
And as he wept, David, we may feel sure, thought of Uriah, murdered because of his own base passions, whereas Amnon had brought death upon himself by following, alas! the example of his own father.Pulpit is candidly speculating about David's inward thoughts (“we may feel sure”); the text reports only the weeping.
not being able to tell the sorrowful news with their mouths, but declared it by gestures
37Now Absalom fled and went to Talmai son of Ammihud, the king of Geshur. But David mourned for his son every day.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·’aḇ·šā·lō·wm bā·raḥ way·yê·leḵ ’el- tal·may ben- ʿam·mī·ḥūr me·leḵ gə·šūr way·yiṯ·’ab·bêl ‘al- bə·nōw kāl- hay·yā·mîm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-Absalom had-fled, and-he-went unto Talmai son-of Ammihud king-of Geshur. And-he-mourned-himself over his-son all the-days.
Where the English smooths the original
The law as to premeditated murder (Nu 35:21) gave him no hope of remaining with impunity in his own country. The cities of refuge could afford him no sanctuary, and he was compelled to leave the kingdom, taking refuge at the court of Geshur, with his maternal grandfather, who would, doubtless, approve of his conduct.
did God, by withdrawing his restraining grace from Amnon, and leaving him a prey to his own passions, raise up evil to David out of his own house; a daughter ravished by her own brother; that brother murdered by another brother; and that other in exile on that account; and soon to perish by a fate yet more deplorable, had it not been more deserved! And now began another and more dreadful prophecy of Nathan to be fulfilled upon David, before his eyes: the sword was now first brought in upon his house, attended with this dreadful assurance of never departing from it.Benson is here quoting Patrick Delany, not writing in his own voice; the attribution “— Delaney” stands at the end of the paragraph in Benson's text.
And David mourned ] David has fallen out of the Heb. text, but is found in the Sept. and Vulg., and is clearly necessary to the sense.A text-critical judgment, not a translation: Cambridge is supplying a subject the Masoretic consonants do not carry.
38After Absalom had fled and gone to Geshur, he stayed there three years.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·’aḇ·šā·lō·wm bā·raḥ way·yê·leḵ gə·šūr way·hî- šām šā·lōš šā·nîm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-Absalom had-fled, and-he-went to-Geshur; and-he-was there three years.
Where the English smooths the original
This is the third time the flight of Absalom has been mentioned; but, after the custom of Scripture narrative, each repetition has been for the purpose of introducing some additional fact.
At each step of the narrative only the fact is brought out which is wanted, (1) the flight; (2) the place whither he fled; (3) the duration of the absence; but with each new fact the old ones on which it depends are repeated.Cambridge is quoting the Speaker's Commentary, and prefixes the whole with a real condition: “If the text of these verses is sound.”
nor is there anything in 2 Samuel 13:37 disturbed and mutilated, as Spinosa (r) intimates, but the whole is very expressive and emphatic.Gill is answering Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, which had cited these verses as evidence of a mutilated text. The dispute over this passage is older than modern criticism.
39And King David longed to go to Absalom, for he had been consoled over Amnon’s death.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ham·me·leḵ dā·wiḏ wat·tə·ḵal lā·ṣêṯ ’el- ’aḇ·šā·lō·wm kî- ni·ḥam ‘al- ’am·nō·wn kî- mêṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-she-was-spent, David the-king, to-go-out unto Absalom; for he-was-comforted over Amnon, for he-was-dead.
Where the English smooths the original
Longed to go forth - Rather, "longed after Absalom," literally, was consumed in going forth, with a sense of disappointed hope.
The other interpretation is better, which takes the verb impersonally, and gives the sense, David desisted from going forth against Absalom.
And it (this) held king David back from going out to Absalom, for he comforted himself concerning Amnon, because he was dead.This is K&D's own proposed rendering, resting on reading כלה as כלא; they concede it is a “difficult clause.”
Instead of loathing Absalom as a murderer, David, after a time, longed to go forth to him. This was David's infirmity: God saw something in his heart that made a difference, else we should have thought that he, as much as Eli, honoured his sons more than God.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
Three times in six verses the same root, בָּרַח (bârach, H1272, “to bolt”), is fired at the reader. Ellicott explains the first occurrence as placement: without it “he would seem to be included among ‘the king's sons’ of the two following verses.” Barnes says the same more briefly — the notice “is inserted here to account for the king's sons returning unmolested.” K&D turns this into a defense of the whole chapter's architecture against Bttcher and Thenius, who wanted the clause deleted as misplaced; K&D answers that “the account of Absalom's flight cannot possibly be left out, as reference is made to it again afterwards.” Cambridge, quoting the Speaker's Commentary, gives the cleanest description of the technique: “At each step of the narrative only the fact is brought out which is wanted, (1) the flight; (2) the place whither he fled; (3) the duration of the absence.” Gill, arguing directly against Spinoza's charge that these verses are “disturbed and mutilated,” insists “the whole is very expressive and emphatic.” ⚙ The three-fold repetition is not clumsiness but ledger-keeping: the book will not let the reader file Absalom away, because the flight is not an ending. It is the first move of 2 Samuel 15.
The scene is built on two verbs of nâsâʼ (H5375) and one participle of tsâphâh (H6822). The watchman leans forward and lifts his eye — singular in the Hebrew — and sees what the reader sees: a dust-cloud that could be one death or ten. Poole is alert to why the sightline is strange: “it seems they did not come in the direct road, where the watchman looked for them, but … fetched a compass.” Gill records Rabbi Isaiah's reason — fear that Absalom would send pursuers — and Kimchi's alternative, that the hill itself hid them. The direction word אַחֲרָיו is genuinely uncertain: Ellicott and Pulpit read it as “from the west,” since “the Oriental always being supposed to face the east”; K&D flatly calls it “obscure” and will only guess. ⚙ Then the interpretation arrives before the interpreters do — and it comes from Jonadab, the man who designed Amnon's crime in 13:5 and who, JFB notes, “seems to have been aware of the plan.” Gill hears self-congratulation in his line: he “seems to applaud himself, and exult at his penetration and foresight.” Henry's judgment is blunter still: “Jonadab was as guilty of Ammon's death, as of his sin; such false friends do they prove, who counsel us to do wickedly.” The court's one accurate voice is the court's guiltiest man.
K&D compresses the moment exactly: “Jonadab had hardly said this when the king's sons arrived and wept aloud … whereupon the king and all his retainers broke out in loud weeping.” Gill notices what the Hebrew implies about the princes: they were “not being able to tell the sorrowful news with their mouths, but declared it by gestures.” The Hebrew builds the grief as a cognate accusative — בָּכוּ בְּכִי גָּדוֹל מְאֹד, “they wept a weeping, great, very” — the verb bâkâh (H1058) doubled into the noun Bᵉkîy (H1065), measured with gâdôwl and mᵉʼōd. Pulpit reads the king's own tears backward into his history: “And as he wept, David, we may feel sure, thought of Uriah, murdered because of his own base passions, whereas Amnon had brought death upon himself by following, alas! the example of his own father.” That last clause is Pulpit's inference, not the text's statement, and we mark it as such — but the text does supply the frame, since Nathan's sentence in 12:10 hangs over the chapter and Benson (quoting Delany) names it: “the sword was now first brought in upon his house, attended with this dreadful assurance of never departing from it.”
The asylum is chosen with care. JFB states the legal bar: “The law as to premeditated murder (Nu 35:21) gave him no hope of remaining with impunity in his own country. The cities of refuge could afford him no sanctuary.” Benson agrees — “No part of the land of Israel could shelter him” — and adds the diplomatic stalemate: Talmai was under no obligation to extradite “unless he were demanded.” Poole and Geneva both identify Talmai from 2 Samuel 3:3 as Absalom's maternal grandfather, so that the murderer's refuge is his own foreign blood. Then the chapter ends on a word that has defeated every translator. Ellicott lists three objections to the traditional “the soul of king David longed,” chiefly that “the verb … never has elsewhere the sense given to it,” and prefers “David desisted from going forth against Absalom.” Cambridge sets out the same options and notes the AV's reading requires supplying a feminine subject for a feminine verb. Gill preserves the Jewish tradition — Aben Ezra's “wife,” Abarbanel's account of three years of attempted pursuit — alongside the Vulgate's “King David ceased to persecute Absalom” and the Syriac's “abstained from going out after Absalom.” K&D proposes reading kâlâh as kâlâʼ: “And it (this) held king David back from going out to Absalom.” Barnes alone keeps the pathos: “was consumed in going forth, with a sense of disappointed hope.” Pulpit is honest that the versions' weight is “too great for us to say that such a mode of rendering it must be wrong.” ⚙ We record that we do not know which reading is right — and we notice that both readings convict the same man. If David longed, he longed for a murderer he would then refuse to see for two more years (14:24). If David desisted, he dropped a prosecution he owed his own daughter. The Hebrew is ambiguous; the failure is not.
⚙ Under Sola Scriptura, offered to be tested: this unit is about a throne that will not act. Between v. 34 and v. 39 the king does exactly two things — he weeps, and he is comforted. Both verbs happen to him; נִחַם (nâcham, H5162) is Nifal, and the grief that ends in v. 39 ends because time wore it down, not because anything was put right. Tamar is not mentioned once in these six verses. Amnon is avenged by a murderer and mourned by a father who would not punish his rape. Absalom is neither prosecuted nor pardoned; he simply is in Geshur, three years (v. 38, way·hî šām), while the throne that owes him a verdict produces only a feeling. Scripture has already named the mechanism: “the sword shall never depart from thine house” (12:10), and Benson, quoting Delany, sees it beginning here. But we would put the diagnosis one layer deeper than Henry's “infirmity.” A king who has himself killed by proxy (11:15) cannot try a son for killing by proxy (13:28) without trying himself. Pulpit says it in one line: “He had not done so because his own sins had tied his hands.” That is the terrible symmetry of the chapter — forgiven sin can still disqualify a man from his office. David was pardoned in 12:13 and he was still, in 13:39, unable to do justice. This is why Israel's hope cannot finally be a forgiven king; it must be a righteous one, whose own hands are clean enough to hold a scale. We hold this reading loosely and submit it to the text.
A king who cannot judge himself will not judge his sons — and his silence is not mercy, it is abdication.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The narrative gives Absalom's refuge no explanation, because it has already given it. 2 Samuel 3:3 lists among David's sons born in Hebron “Absalom the son of Maacah the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur,” and 1 Chronicles 3:2 repeats the same register. The Verifier confirms the shared lexemes: אַבְשָׁלוֹם (H53), גְּשׁוּר (H1650) and תַּלְמַי (H8526) all stand in both places, and the last two are rare in the canon. Poole, Geneva, Gill, JFB, Ellicott and K&D all make this identification independently. ⚙ The political reading follows: a marriage David contracted in Hebron to secure a northern flank has now produced a son with a legal escape route out of David's jurisdiction, and a claim on a foreign court. The harem that built the kingdom is dismantling it.
2 Samuel 3:3 · 1 Chronicles 3:2
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H8526 Talmay (rare — 6 vv canon-wide), H1650 Gᵉshûwr (rare — 9 vv), H53 ʼĂbîyshâlôwm (92 vv) present in both passages. The link is a verbal identity at the level of proper names in a shared genealogical register, not a quotation of one text by the other.
Joshua 13:13 records the failure verbatim: “Nevertheless the children of Israel expelled not the Geshurites … but the Geshurites and the Maachathites dwell among the Israelites until this day.” 1 Chronicles 2:23 has Geshur seizing Israelite towns. The Verifier records גְּשׁוּר (H1650, rare — 9 verses in the whole canon) as the shared lexeme across all of these with our unit and with 2 Samuel 15:8, where Absalom's rebellion begins with a lie about a vow made “while I dwelt at Geshur in Syria.” ⚙ The pattern the Verifier's lexeme lets us see: an un-dispossessed enclave inside the promised borders becomes, generations later, the asylum from which the kingdom is attacked. We claim the motif, not a quotation — the texts share a place-name and a consequence, and the consequence is our inference from the sequence, not an assertion by any of them.
Joshua 13:13 · 1 Chronicles 2:23 · 2 Samuel 15:8
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H1650 Gᵉshûwr (rare — 9 vv). The verbal overlap is a single toponym; the claimed link is the motif of an unconquered enclave becoming a base of rebellion, which is our reading of the sequence, so we tier it structural rather than verbal.
“And he was there three years” (v. 38) is answered at 2 Samuel 14:23, where Joab “went to Geshur, and brought Absalom to Jerusalem,” and at 14:32, where Absalom protests, “Wherefore am I come from Geshur? it had been good for me to have been there still.” The Verifier records H53 and the rare H1650 shared across all three. ⚙ The link is structural: the same two nouns frame the opening and the closing of the exile, and both ends are managed by someone other than the king — Talmai receives him, Joab retrieves him, and the throne does nothing at either boundary. Ellicott presses exactly this point against the traditional reading of v. 39: if David had truly been pining, “he might have recalled him at once, whereas even when by Joab's instrumentality he had been brought back to Jerusalem, he was not admitted to the royal presence.”
2 Samuel 14:23 · 2 Samuel 14:32
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H1650 Gᵉshûwr (rare — 9 vv) and H53 ʼĂbîyshâlôwm (92 vv). Real verbal overlap within one continuous narrative; the claim made here is about narrative structure, not quotation.
The Verifier surfaces Jeremiah 35:6, 35:10 and 35:19 on the strength of יוֹנָדָב (H3122), a name that occurs in only six verses of the whole canon. ⚙ We record the lexical link and reject the theological one. Jeremiah's Jonadab is Jonadab son of Rechab, whose sons' obedience to their father's command earns the promise that he “shall not want a man to stand before me for ever” (Jer. 35:19); our Jonadab is the son of Shimeah, David's brother (13:3), the man Henry calls the guiltiest counsellor in the chapter. A shared rare lexeme here is homonymy, not connection. We flag it so that the next reader is not tempted by the Verifier's own score.
Jeremiah 35:6 · Jeremiah 35:19 · 2 Samuel 13:3
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H3122 Yôwnâdâb (rare — 6 vv), which would ordinarily justify a verbal tier. Flagged because the shared lexeme is a personal name borne by two unrelated individuals (Jonadab son of Shimeah; Jonadab son of Rechab). The lexical basis is real; the exegetical link is not. Do not upgrade.
JFB grounds Absalom's exile in statute: “The law as to premeditated murder (Nu 35:21) gave him no hope of remaining with impunity in his own country. The cities of refuge could afford him no sanctuary.” Benson concurs: “the cities of refuge afforded no protection to a wilful murderer.” ⚙ The New Testament takes up that same institution and reverses its limit — Hebrews 6:18 speaks of those “who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us,” and Hebrews 12:24 sets “the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel” against a blood that only accuses. Absalom's problem is that Israel's asylum law had a door marked not for this, and he had to leave the covenant land to find shelter; he found it in Geshur, which is shelter without absolution, and it made him worse. We state the connection as structural and typological, not verbal: this is a Greek text and a Hebrew one, so no shared Strong's lexeme can be claimed, and neither Hebrews passage cites 2 Samuel 13.
Numbers 35:21 · Hebrews 6:18 · Hebrews 12:24
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew): shared Strong's numbers are impossible by definition, so no verbal tier is available. The recorded basis is the shared institution of asylum for bloodshed — named explicitly by JFB and Benson at Numbers 35:21 for this unit, and taken up as a figure in Hebrews 6:18 — plus the shared motif of a brother's blood. No quotation is claimed in either direction.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
⚙ 2 Samuel 13:39 ends with a passive: נִחַם (nâcham, H5162, Nifal) — David “was comforted,” and the chapter shuts. Whatever the contested verb wat·tə·ḵal means, no reading yields a reconciliation. On Ellicott's and K&D's reading David merely stopped pursuing; on the Targum's reading he yearned and still, as Ellicott presses, “when he actually was brought back, through Joab's stratagem, the king refused to see him (2 Samuel 14:24).” Luke 15:20 is the deliberate inverse of this scene, sentence for sentence: a father who sees his returning son “when he was yet a great way off,” who does not wait to be lobbied by a Joab, and who runs. And Romans 5:10 makes that running a doctrine — “when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.” David was reconciled to nothing; he was consoled by a corpse. The Father reconciles by giving one — 2 Corinthians 5:19, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them,” is the precise antithesis of a throne that neither imputes nor pardons but simply stops caring. Henry's comparison of David with Eli, and his admission that “God saw something in his heart that made a difference,” points the same way: the difference in David's heart was mercy received, not mercy exercised, and Israel needed a king in whom both would meet.
Luke 15:20 · Romans 5:10 · 2 Corinthians 5:19
JFB and Benson both fix this unit against Numbers 35: the cities of refuge were built for the man who killed unawares, and closed against the man who killed by lying in wait — which is exactly what 13:28 describes Absalom doing. So the only asylum available to him was outside the covenant land, under a pagan grandfather, and it granted him safety without pardon. ⚙ That distinction is the one the New Testament seizes. Hebrews 12:24 sets Christ's “blood of sprinkling” against Abel's, the first murdered brother's blood, which cried from the ground for judgment (Genesis 4:10); Hebrews 6:18 makes the refuge-city itself the figure of the believer's flight. Amnon's blood is Abel's blood in a king's household — it cries, and no one answers it for three years and then five. The gospel's claim is that there is one death whose blood speaks the other way, and one asylum whose statutes have no clause excluding the premeditated. This reading of the cities of refuge as a figure of Christ is ancient and widely held; the specific application to Absalom's case is ours, and we mark it as inference from what JFB and Benson say about the law, not as their claim.
Numbers 35:21 · Genesis 4:10 · Hebrews 12:24 · Hebrews 6:18
Benson, quoting Delany, reads this chapter as the first installment of Nathan's sentence: “the sword was now first brought in upon his house, attended with this dreadful assurance of never departing from it.” Pulpit puts the same word in David's mouth as he weeps in v. 36. ⚙ Yet 2 Samuel 7:16 had promised this same house an everlasting throne, and 7:14 had said of the son, “if he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men.” Both are true at once here, and the tension is the point: the Davidic house is under discipline and under promise in the same generation. The New Testament resolves it not by repairing David's household but by producing from it a Son who does not need the rod — “great David's greater Son,” of whom Gabriel says “the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David” (Luke 1:32), and who in Hebrews 1:5 receives the words of 2 Samuel 7:14 without its conditional clause. ⚙ 2 Samuel 13 is what the Davidic covenant looks like when the only David available is the one who cannot judge his own sons.
2 Samuel 7:14 · 2 Samuel 12:10 · Luke 1:32 · Hebrews 1:5
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
Text. This is one of the textually roughest passages in Samuel, and the BSB's English is smoother than its source. (1) In v. 34 the BSB prints a full second sentence — “And the watchman went and reported to the king, ‘I see men coming from the direction of Horonaim, along the side of the hill’” — which the Masoretic Hebrew of our interlinear does not contain; it follows the Septuagint. Cambridge quotes that Greek text in full and identifies “Oronen” with Horonaim or Beth-horon. K&D argues the Greek addition is secondary, since if the spy had already reported, “there was no necessity for Jonadab to do it again.” We have built the literal renderings from the Hebrew words actually supplied in the brief, and flagged the divergence rather than silently following either text.
(2) In v. 37 the subject of וַיִּתְאַבֵּל is absent from the Hebrew. Cambridge holds that “David has fallen out of the Heb. text, but is found in the Sept. and Vulg.”; K&D denies any loss and supplies the subject from “the king” in v. 36. The BSB prints “David” without a note. Both are defensible; neither is certain.
(3) Verse 39 is the hardest sentence in the unit: a feminine verb (wat·tə·ḵal, H3615) with a masculine subject. At least four readings are live in our sources — supply “the soul” (Targum, Jewish commentators, AV, BSB); read impersonally, “David desisted from going out against Absalom” (Vulgate, probably LXX, Ellicott, Cambridge); read kâlâh as kâlâʼ, “it held him back” (K&D); or keep the pathos, “was consumed in going forth” (Barnes). Cambridge also notes “a very probable conjecture” emending the text to the king's wrath ceased to go forth. Gill preserves Aben Ezra's supplying of “wife” and Abarbanel's harmonizing narrative. We have not decided this. Our literal rendering keeps the feminine verb visible in English (“And-she-was-spent”) precisely so the reader can see the problem, and both the note at index 2 and the fourth movement lay out the options without choosing.
Sources. Eleven public-domain commentators are present in the brief (Ellicott, Benson, Henry, Barnes, JFB, Poole, Gill, Geneva, Cambridge, Pulpit, K&D); ten are quoted in this unit — Poole and JFB have no entry at some verses, and Henry's entry is a single block covering 13:30–39, so his words appear identically at every verse. Where a commentator is himself quoting someone else we have said so: Benson is relaying Patrick Delany, and Cambridge at v. 38 is relaying the Speaker's Commentary. Gill's remark at v. 38 is a reply to Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Pulpit's reconstruction of David's thoughts at v. 36 (“we may feel sure”) is that commentator's inference, not the narrative's statement, and is marked as such in the editorial note.
What we do not know. The compass direction of אַחֲרָיו; the location of the watchman's station, and therefore which mountain is meant (K&D: “the position of the spy is not given”); whether “his son” in v. 37 is Amnon or Absalom (Ellicott, Cambridge and Gill say Amnon; Benson allows either); and what v. 39 says. Tamar's fate after 13:20 is not mentioned in this unit at all, and we have not supplied it.
Thread bases. Every Hebrew↔Hebrew badge above cites the Verifier's computed shared lexemes with canonical frequency. The Jeremiah 35 candidate scored on a rare lexeme (H3122, 6 verses) and has been deliberately downgraded to “flagged — verify source,” because the shared name belongs to two different men. The Hebrews thread is cross-Testament and therefore cannot carry a verbal tier at all; its basis is a shared legal institution named by JFB at Numbers 35:21, not a lexical overlap.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)