The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
David Weeps at the Mount of Olives
2 Samuel 15:30–37 — David Weeps at the Mount of Olives. 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.
30But David continued up the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went up. His head was covered, and he was walking barefoot. And all the people with him covered their heads and went up, weeping as they went.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·ḏā·wiḏ ‘ō·leh ḇə·ma·‘ă·lêh haz·zê·ṯîm ū·ḇō·w·ḵeh ‘ō·leh wə·rōš lōw ḥā·p̄ui wə·hū hō·lêḵ yā·ḥêp̄ wə·ḵāl hā·‘ām ’ă·šer- ’it·tōw ḥā·p̄ū ’îš rō·šōw wə·‘ā·lū ū·ḇā·ḵōh ‘ā·lōh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-David [was] going-up in-the-ascent-of the-olive-trees, and-weeping, going-up; and-head to-him covered, and-he going barefoot; and-all the-people who [were] with-him covered each-man his-head, and-they-went-up, going-up and-weeping.
Where the English smooths the original
The muffled head marks the deep grief which shuts itself up from the outer world: the bare feet—still a sign of mourning in the East—betoken affliction, self-humiliation, penitence.
His head covered - See the marginal references and Jeremiah 14:3-4 ; Ezekiel 24:17 ; the sign of deep mourning.Barnes gives only the bare cross-reference note, and the same note is attached to v. 31 in our source text; we cite it here, where the phrase actually occurs.
David's sin was ever before him, Ps 51:3; but never so plain, nor ever appearing so black as now. He never wept thus when Saul hunted him, but a wounded conscience makes troubles lie heavy, Ps 38:4.
where our Lord Jesus Christ, the antitype of David, often was, in his state of humiliation, Matthew 26:30 , and from whence he ascended to heaven after his resurrectionGill states the typology flatly and early; our own Christ section below leans on this named claim rather than inventing one.
31Now someone told David: “Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom.” So David pleaded, “O LORD, please turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness!”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
hig·gîḏ lê·mōr wə·ḏā·wiḏ ’ă·ḥî·ṯō·p̄el baq·qō·šə·rîm ‘im- ’aḇ·šā·lō·wm dā·wiḏ way·yō·mer Yah·weh nā ’eṯ- ‘ă·ṣaṯ ’ă·ḥî·ṯō·p̄el sak·kel-
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-told to-David, saying: “Ahithophel [is] among-the-conspirators with Absalom.” And-David said: “Make-foolish, I-pray-thee, O-LORD, the-counsel of-Ahithophel.”
Where the English smooths the original
This is no doubt the meaning, but the preposition has dropped out of the Hebrew text, leaving it unintelligible, and reading literally, and David told.
Upon receipt of this intelligence David prayed to the Lord, that He would "turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness," make it appear as folly, i.e., frustrate it, - a prayer which God answered
The counsel of the crafty worldlings does more harm than the open force of the enemy.Geneva's marginal note is a maxim rather than an exegesis, but it states the premise on which David's prayer, and the whole Hushai stratagem, is built.
32When David came to the summit, where he used to worship God, Hushai the Archite was there to meet him with his robe torn and dust on his head.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·hî ḏā·wiḏ bā ‘aḏ- hā·rōš ’ă·šer- yiš·ta·ḥă·weh šām lê·lō·hîm ḥū·šay hā·’ar·kî wə·hin·nêh liq·rā·ṯōw kut·tā·nə·tōw qā·rū·a‘ wa·’ă·ḏā·māh ‘al- rō·šōw
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-it-was, David coming as-far-as the-head, where he-would-bow-himself-down there to-God: and-behold, to-meet-him Hushai the-Archite, his-tunic torn and-soil upon his-head.
Where the English smooths the original
Where he was wont to worship God: or, where God was wont to be worshipped. The tense indicates that an habitual practice is meant.
The summit of the Mount of Olives was one of the many bamoth, or high places, situated on the top of hills, where, in the old Canaanitish time, men had worshipped their heathenish deities. They were still regarded as consecrated places, but the worship had now been transferred to Elohim, the true God.Pulpit's reconstruction of the high place's Canaanite prehistory is inference from the general history of the bamoth, not from anything this verse states.
His coming appears as the beginning of the answer to David’s prayer in 2Samuel 15:31
Comparing the prayer against Ahithophel with the counsel to Hushai, we see how strongly a spirit of fervent piety was combined in his character with the devices of an active and far-seeing policy.
33David said to him, “If you go on with me, you will be a burden to me.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
dā·wiḏ way·yō·mer lōw ’im ‘ā·ḇar·tā ’it·tî wə·hā·yi·ṯā lə·maś·śā ‘ā·lay
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said to-him David: “If thou-passest-over with-me, then-thou-shalt-be upon-me for-a-burden.
Where the English smooths the original
Increasing my charge, and care, and sorrow for what may befall thee, and being but of little use to me: for it may seem he was an old man, and fitter for counsel than for war.
and Hushai, though famous as a counsellor in the cabinet, being unpractised in the camp, and no soldier, could not be so useful to him in the army as he might be at court.
Others, with less probability, think that it was because of his rank, which would demand special attendance.Pulpit records a minority reading he rejects; we keep it because the text itself gives no reason for the burden, and the majority reading (old age) is also inference.
Perhaps Hushai was old and somewhat infirm.Note Cambridge's own “Perhaps.” No commentator here claims the text states Hushai's age.
34But you can thwart the counsel of Ahithophel for me if you return to the city and say to Absalom: ‘I will be your servant, my king; in the past I was your father’s servant, but now I will be your servant.’
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·hê·p̄ar·tāh ’êṯ ‘ă·ṣaṯ ’ă·ḥî·ṯō·p̄el lî wə·’im- tā·šūḇ hā·‘îr wə·’ā·mar·tā lə·’aḇ·šā·lō·wm ’ă·nî ’eh·yeh ‘aḇ·də·ḵā ham·me·leḵ mê·’āz wa·’ă·nî ’ā·ḇî·ḵā ‘e·ḇeḏ wə·‘at·tāh wa·’ă·nî ‘aḇ·de·ḵā
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“But-if to-the-city thou-returnest and-thou-sayest to-Absalom, ‘Thy-servant I, O-king, will-be; servant-of thy-father I [was] from-then, and-now, and-I [am] thy-servant’: then-thou-shalt-break for-me the-counsel of-Ahithophel.
Where the English smooths the original
David here counsels fraud and treachery, and Hushai willingly accepts the part assigned to him, in order to thwart Ahithophel’s counsel and weaken Absalom’s rebellion. The narrative simply states the facts without justifying them.Ellicott goes on to excuse the pair on the ground that they “had but slender knowledge of the Divine revelation”; readers should weigh that mitigation, which is Victorian and developmental, separately from his blunt naming of the act.
It must, of necessity, be reckoned among his sins, as being a plain violation of the law of truth, and only intended to deceive.
Though Hushai was deceitful here at the king's request, we may not use this example to excuse our deceit.
Stratagems of this kind, involving deliberate falsehood and treachery, have been employed in all ages, but the morality of them cannot be approved.Cambridge reaches this after quoting Sir Samuel Morland, who cited Hushai to justify betraying Cromwell: a documented case of this very verse being used as a warrant, which is why the commentators press so hard.
35Will not Zadok and Abiathar the priests be there with you? Report to them everything you hear from the king’s palace.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wa·hă·lō·w ṣā·ḏō·wq wə·’eḇ·yā·ṯār hak·kō·hă·nîm wə·hā·yāh šām ‘im·mə·ḵā tag·gîḏ lə·ṣā·ḏō·wq ū·lə·’eḇ·yā·ṯār hak·kō·hă·nîm kāl- had·dā·ḇār ’ă·šer tiš·ma‘ ham·me·leḵ mib·bêṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And [is] not there with-thee Zadok and-Abiathar the-priests? And-it-shall-be, every the-word which thou-hearest from-house-of the-king, thou-shalt-declare to-Zadok and-to-Abiathar the-priests.
Where the English smooths the original
David then commissioned him to communicate to the priests Zadok and Abiathar all that he should hear of the king's house, and send word to him through their sons.
to whom he might have recourse without suspicion, pretending he had business with them as priests, on religious accounts, to offer sacrifices for him, &c.
But we must second our prayers with endeavours, and David did so, else we tempt God.Henry's maxim is the standard defence of vv. 34 to 36; it explains the network but does not, and Henry does not claim it does, excuse the scripted lie of v. 34.
36Indeed, their two sons, Ahimaaz son of Zadok and Jonathan son of Abiathar, are there with them. Send them to me with everything you hear.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
hin·nêh- šə·nê ḇə·nê·hem ’ă·ḥî·ma·‘aṣ lə·ṣā·ḏō·wq wî·hō·w·nā·ṯān lə·’eḇ·yā·ṯār šām ‘im·mām ū·šə·laḥ·tem bə·yā·ḏām ’ê·lay kāl- dā·ḇār ’ă·šer tiš·mā·‘ū
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“Behold, there with-them [are] their-two sons, Ahimaaz belonging-to-Zadok and-Jonathan belonging-to-Abiathar; and-ye-shall-send by-their-hand unto-me every word which ye-hear.”
Where the English smooths the original
There with them; not in Jerusalem, but in a place near to it, to which they could easily send upon occasion.
which was a good scheme to get intelligence, and easy to be put into execution.Gill assesses the plan as tradecraft and offers no moral verdict here; for that, see the voices at v. 34.
How soon do royal cries and royal palaces change their masters! But we look for a kingdom which cannot be moved.Benson's source text reads “royal cries,” almost certainly a printer's corruption of “royal cities”; we quote it as printed rather than silently mend it.
37So David’s friend Hushai arrived in Jerusalem just as Absalom was entering the city.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ḏā·wiḏ rê·‘eh ḥū·šay way·yā·ḇō yə·rū·šā·lim wə·’aḇ·šā·lōm yā·ḇō hā·‘îr
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-came Hushai the-friend of-David [to] Jerusalem; and-Absalom was-coming [into] the-city.
Where the English smooths the original
was a regular state-officer, the king’s confidential adviser.
So Hushai went into the city when Absalom came to Jerusalem. The w before the second clause, followed by the imperfect יבוא, indicates contemporaneous occurrence (vid., Ewald, 346, b.).
just at the same time; so that he knew not that Hushai had been out of it, and been with David
Absalom had evidently pushed rapidly forward from Hebron, in hopes, perhaps, of surprising David in the city.Pulpit's reconstruction of Absalom's speed is inference from the narrative sequence and from Ahithophel's proposal in ch. 17, not a statement of this verse.
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.
⚙ The whole of v. 30 is built on one root, עָלָה (ʻâlâh, H5927), sounded four times: David is going up, going up, they go up, going up. In Israel that verb belongs to pilgrimage and to the whole burnt offering, the thing that goes up to God. Here it climbs away from the ark, which David has just sent back. The grammar refuses to close: the verse ends with two infinitives absolute, ū·ḇā·ḵōh ‘ā·lōh, weeping-ly going-up-ly, with no finite verb to stop the motion.
✦ The named voices divide the signs between them. Barnes supplies the parallels for the covered head, Jeremiah 14:3-4 and Ezekiel 24:17, and calls it simply the sign of deep mourning. Cambridge goes further and says what each sign means: the muffled head is grief shutting itself off from the world, the bare feet are affliction, self-humiliation, penitence. Poole adds an edge the others do not, that going barefoot was “to take a holy revenge upon himself for his former delicacy and luxury,” which makes the march a self-imposed sentence and not only a lament. Henry supplies the reason: David never wept like this when Saul hunted him, because a wounded conscience makes troubles lie heavy. Pulpit and Gill both note that the gesture was shared across Persians, Egyptians and Romans, so the sign is cultural; what is not cultural is who is making it, and why.
⚙ The lexicon adds one thing the commentators pass over. יָחֵף (yâchêph, H3182) occurs in only five verses. Three of the other four are Isaiah 20:2-4, where a prophet walks unsandalled as a living sign that a nation is going into captivity. David, walking out of his capital, has put on the costume of exile before anyone has pronounced it.
✦ This is the one verse in the unit where the commentators agree that the received text is broken. Ellicott: “the preposition has dropped out of the Hebrew text, leaving it unintelligible, and reading literally, and David told.” Pulpit says flatly that the text is corrupt and the Authorized Version gives the right sense. K&D works the problem hardest, canvassing Thenius's Hophal and Ewald's unusual form before concluding that דּוד should be read לדוד and the verb taken impersonally, “they announced to David.” Benson and Poole alone try to keep the text as it stands, reading it as David telling his friends what he had heard in order to stir them to join his prayer.
⚙ The prayer itself is one Piel imperative: סַכֶּל (sakkel, from çâkal, H5528, “to be silly”). David does not ask for Ahithophel's death, silence or conversion. He asks God to unmake a man's intelligence. Henry catches the restraint exactly, that David prays against the counsel and not the counsellor's person, and the Hebrew supports him: the direct object marker points at עֲצַת, the counsel. Geneva's marginal note supplies the premise, that the counsel of crafty worldlings does more harm than the open force of the enemy, and Gill supplies the precedent, Job 5:12. K&D records the outcome without embellishment: “a prayer which God answered,” and names 2 Samuel 17.
⚙ The noun רֹאשׁ (rôʼsh, H7218) has been sounded twice in v. 30 for David's covered head. In v. 32 it becomes the head of the mountain, and then a third time the head of the man coming down it with earth on it. Barnes and Cambridge both observe that “the top” functions here almost as a proper name, a known place. Cambridge settles the grammar of the relative clause: the Hitpael imperfect is habitual, “Where he was wont to worship God: or, where God was wont to be worshipped.” K&D identifies the site as probably a bamah; Pulpit reconstructs its Canaanite prehistory and its transfer to Elohim; Poole and JFB add that David worshipped looking toward the Jerusalem he was leaving.
✦ That the timing is providential is not our invention but the unanimous reading of the named voices. Ellicott: Hushai's “coming appears as the beginning of the answer to David's prayer in 2 Samuel 15:31.” Cambridge: “His coming was in a manner the answer to David's prayer.” Benson: the coming “seems to have been ordered by God's peculiar providence, in answer to David's prayer.” The Hebrew stages it with וְהִנֵּה, the pointing particle: and look!
✦ And then the unit's honest scandal. Ellicott does not soften it: “David here counsels fraud and treachery.” Benson: it “must, of necessity, be reckoned among his sins, as being a plain violation of the law of truth, and only intended to deceive.” Poole calls it “great dissimulation” and “one of his errors.” Geneva forbids the precedent outright. Cambridge reports that Sir Samuel Morland cited Hushai to justify betraying Cromwell to Charles II, and then judges that “Stratagems of this kind, involving deliberate falsehood and treachery, have been employed in all ages, but the morality of them cannot be approved.” Pulpit agrees, and adds the distinction that saves Zadok and Abiathar: they used no guile, only their office. ⚙ The Hebrew makes the lie audible in a way the English does not: עֶבֶד is struck three times in one sentence, thy servant, servant of thy father, thy servant.
⚙ The reporting verb frames the unit. נָגַד in the Hiphil brought Ahithophel's name to David in v. 31; in v. 35 David commands the same root in the same stem back the other way, tag·gîḏ. Between them a channel is built out of two priests and their two sons, and at v. 36 the verb of hearing turns from singular to plural, so the circle visibly widens from Hushai alone to the whole network. K&D states the commission in one line; Gill notices the cover story, that a man may visit priests without suspicion; Poole and Gill both insist, on the evidence of 17:17, that the young men waited outside the city, not in it.
⚙ Then v. 37 closes the chapter with a single verb used twice. בּוֹא (bôwʼ, H935) brings Hushai into Jerusalem and Absalom into the city, and K&D explains that the waw before the second imperfect “indicates contemporaneous occurrence.” They pass in the gate. Gill draws the consequence that makes chapter 16 work: Absalom never knew Hushai had been out. And the last thing said of Hushai before he walks into the usurper's hall is his title, רֵעֶה (rêʻeh, H7463), a word found in only four verses in Scripture. Cambridge: “a regular state-officer, the king's confidential adviser.” The office and the danger are named in the same breath.
⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested. The unit is organised around a single question: when God has been asked to act, what is a man then permitted to do? David prays in v. 31 and schemes in v. 34, and the text sets the two side by side without a seam. Henry's rule, that we must second our prayers with endeavours or we tempt God, is true and is the traditional resolution; but read strictly, the text does not actually grant it here. What David seconds his prayer with is a scripted lie, and Scripture's own witnesses, Ellicott, Benson, Poole, Geneva, Cambridge and Pulpit alike, refuse to bless it. So we would put the accent differently. The prayer of v. 31 is answered in v. 32, before the stratagem is devised: Hushai is already climbing the hill while David is still asking. The stratagem that follows is not the mechanism of the answer but David's attempt to manage an answer he has already been given. And the chapter's own grammar quietly agrees, because when the counsel is finally broken, 2 Samuel 17:14 assigns the breaking not to Hushai's cleverness but to the LORD's ordaining. What we would not claim, and what the commentators do not claim, is that the deceit was therefore harmless; Cambridge's Morland is evidence that this verse has been used as a warrant for real betrayal. The honest reading holds two things at once: God answered the prayer, and the man who prayed it sinned in the same hour. Under Sola Scriptura the narrative records both and excuses neither, and any reading that tidies the second away has improved on the text.
The answer was already walking down the hill before the scheme was ever invented. (⚙ synthesis, not a verse.)
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
⚙ David asks that Ahithophel's עֵצָה be made foolish; 2 Samuel 17:14 records that the LORD had ordained to break the counsel of Ahithophel. The Verifier confirms the lexical overlap, and the link is not only lexical but narrative: K&D, commenting on 15:31, points forward to 2 Samuel 17 as the place where “a prayer which God answered” is recorded, and Gill writes on the same verse that “this prayer was answered, 2 Samuel 17:14.” ⚙ We note only what the Verifier records, that both verses carry ʻêtsâh and the name Ahithophel; we make no claim about the wording of 17:14 beyond that, since we have not inspected its interlinear.
2 Samuel 17:14 · 2 Samuel 17:7
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H6098 ʻêtsâh (in 85 vv) and H302 ʼĂchîythôphel (in 17 vv, rare) with 2 Samuel 17:14 and 17:7, plus H53 ʼĂbîyshâlôwm. A verbal echo within one narrative, not a quotation; the tier is earned by the rare shared lexeme H302, and no quotation is claimed.
⚙ Everything David scripts at 15:34 is performed at 16:16: Hushai the Archite comes to Absalom and says, “Long live the king.” The Verifier records a rare shared lexeme, the gentilic אַרְכִּי, which occurs in only six verses in Scripture and which this unit uses at 15:32. K&D gathers 15:37, 16:16 and 1 Chronicles 27:33 together to establish Hushai's standing as rêʻeh, and Gill uses 16:17 to prove that Absalom never suspected the absence recorded in 15:37.
2 Samuel 16:16 · 2 Samuel 16:18
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H757 ʼArkîy (in 6 vv, rare), H2365 Chûwshay (in 13 vv, rare), H53 ʼĂbîyshâlôwm (in 92 vv). The rarity of H757 carries the tier; no quotation is claimed, only verbal identity of person and title, and the two verses stand within one continuous narrative, where recurrence of names is expected.
⚙ רֵעֶה (rêʻeh, H7463) appears in only four verses in the Hebrew Bible, two of which are the Verifier's candidates here. 1 Kings 4:5 lists Zabud among Solomon's officials with the same title; 1 Chronicles 27:33 sets Ahithophel and Hushai side by side, the one the king's counsellor and the other the king's companion, which is this unit's two antagonists catalogued in a single administrative line. Cambridge states the point directly, citing both passages, and K&D cites 1 Chronicles 27:33 for the same conclusion. Proverbs 27:10 carries another of the four and is included as lexical evidence only; the proverb makes no reference to this narrative.
1 Chronicles 27:33 · 1 Kings 4:5 · Proverbs 27:10
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H7463 rêʻeh (in 4 vv, very rare) with 1 Kings 4:5 and Proverbs 27:10; and with 1 Chronicles 27:33 the shared H302 ʼĂchîythôphel (17 vv), H2365 Chûwshay (13 vv), H757 ʼArkîy (6 vv). Verbal identity of a technical title; nothing is quoted.
⚙ יָחֵף (yâchêph, H3182) occurs in five verses in all. Four of them are here and in Isaiah 20:2-4 and Jeremiah 2:25. In Isaiah the bare foot is a commanded sign that Egypt and Cush will go into captivity stripped; in Jeremiah it is a warning to a people who will not spare their own feet. The commentators reach for the same passages without knowing the count: Gill sends the reader to Isaiah 20:2 and glosses David as “like one forlorn, and going into captivity,” and Poole cites Isaiah 20:3-4 among the mourner's habits. ⚙ Our added claim is only that the rarity is real and makes the overlap significant, not that Isaiah is commenting on David.
Isaiah 20:2 · Isaiah 20:3 · Isaiah 20:4 · Jeremiah 2:25
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H3182 yâchêph (in 5 vv, rare) with Isaiah 20:2, 20:3, 20:4 and Jeremiah 2:25. A genuine verbal link across a shared motif of stripping and exile; no quotation or dependence is claimed in either direction.
⚙ 15:35 to 36 assumes an arrangement the reader was given eight verses earlier: at 15:27 David sent Zadok and Abiathar back with the ark and with their sons Ahimaaz and Jonathan. The Verifier confirms the shared names. Gill makes the dependence explicit, citing 15:27 on this verse, and both Poole and Gill appeal to 17:17 to establish that the young men waited at En-rogel outside the city. ⚙ We flag the difference in evidence: the 15:27 leg is Verifier-confirmed lexically, while the 17:17 leg rests on the named commentators' citation, not on the Verifier's candidate list.
2 Samuel 15:27 · 2 Samuel 17:17
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H6659 Tsâdôwq (in 50 vv) and H54 ʼEbyâthâr (in 28 vv) with 2 Samuel 15:27. Downgraded from verbal because the shared lexemes are common personal names within a single continuous narrative, where recurrence proves nothing beyond same-story. The 2 Samuel 17:17 reference is supplied by Poole and Gill, not by the Verifier.
⚙ This is the Old Testament's one great scene on the Mount of Olives, and the commentators know it. Cambridge: “With the exception of this touching scene, there is little of interest connected with the Mount of Olives in the O. T.,” and it adds the remaining Hebrew references, Solomon's high places at 1 Kings 11:7-8, Josiah's desecration at 2 Kings 23:13-14, the woods of Nehemiah 8:15, and the visions of Ezekiel 11:23 and Zechariah 14:4, before concluding, quoting Stanley, that “Its lasting glory belongs not to the Old Dispensation but to the New.” Gill names Matthew 26:30 and Acts 1:12 on this verse. ⚙ The link is one of place and pattern, a king leaving the city eastward over that ridge in grief. It cannot be tiered verbal: the Gospel texts are Greek and share no Strong's lexeme with this Hebrew, and the connection is topographical and thematic, not lexical.
Ezekiel 11:23 · Zechariah 14:4 · Matthew 26:30 · Luke 19:41 · Acts 1:12
basis: Shared location and motif (the Mount of Olives as the place of a king's grief and departure eastward), named on this verse by Gill and Cambridge. The Ezekiel and Zechariah refs are Cambridge's own list. Cross-Testament links to Matthew, Luke and Acts cannot use shared Strong's numbers, since Greek and Hebrew lexicons do not overlap, so no verbal tier is possible or claimed.
⚙ Christian tradition has long read Ahithophel, David's trusted counsellor turned conspirator, through Psalm 41:9, and Psalm 41:9 is quoted by Jesus at John 13:18 of Judas. Note carefully what this unit does and does not support. Benson, on 15:30, does use the language of a son who “should thus lift up the heel against him,” which is the idiom of Psalm 41:9, but he applies it to Absalom, not to Ahithophel. No voice in this brief makes the Ahithophel-to-Judas identification, and the Verifier lists no shared lexeme between this unit and Psalm 41. The psalm's own superscription and referent are disputed, and John 13:18 quotes it of Judas without naming Ahithophel. We therefore record the tradition and flag it rather than assert it.
Psalm 41:9 · John 13:18
basis: No Verifier-computed lexical basis: Psalm 41 is not among the thread candidates, and John 13:18 is Greek, so no shared Strong's lexeme is possible. The Ahithophel-to-Judas reading is a widely repeated traditional typology, but no named voice in this brief asserts it, and the referent of Psalm 41:9 is contested. Flagged pending a source that states it.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
✦ The reading is not ours. Gill states it on 15:30 in so many words, that the mount is the place “where our Lord Jesus Christ, the antitype of David, often was, in his state of humiliation, Matthew 26:30, and from whence he ascended to heaven after his resurrection, Acts 1:12.” Benson, quoting Delaney, records the older observation that Josephus places David's weeping and his view of the city at the same spot from which, the evangelist reports, our Saviour wept over it. Cambridge, quoting Stanley, concludes that the mount's lasting glory belongs to the New Dispensation.
⚙ What the Hebrew adds is the shape of the descent. David goes up away from the ark he has just refused to take with him, head covered, feet bare, betrayed by his own son and by his own counsellor, with a people weeping behind him, and he stops at the summit to worship. Centuries later a greater Son of David crosses the same Kidron to the same slope, is betrayed by his own table companion, and prays there, and it is from there that he is taken. ⚙ We add one honest caution: the pattern is a correspondence of place and posture, not a prophecy that this chapter announces.
Matthew 26:30 · Luke 19:41 · John 18:1 · Acts 1:12
✦ Henry states the contrast on this very passage, and it is the sharpest Christological note any voice here makes: “we do not find wisdom and simplicity so united in any mere man, that we can perceive nothing which needs forgiveness. Yet, when the Son of David was treated with all possible treachery and cruelty, his wisdom, meekness, candour, and patience, were perfect.”
⚙ The unit gives Henry's contrast its exact material. David prays a faultless prayer at 15:31 and scripts a lie at 15:34, and the commentators refuse to reconcile them: Ellicott calls it fraud, Benson a sin, Poole an error, Geneva a precedent not to be used, Cambridge a morality that cannot be approved. The king who is a type is, in the same hour, a man who needs the forgiveness his antitype came to give. The typology therefore runs by contrast as well as by resemblance, which is the ordinary shape of Old Testament kingship.
Matthew 26:63-64 · John 18:19-23 · 1 Peter 2:22-23
⚙ This third reading is our own and is offered as novel. Hebrews 13:12-13 says that Jesus suffered outside the gate and calls the church to go out to him there, bearing his reproach. 2 Samuel 15 is the Old Testament's most sustained picture of a rightful king put outside his own gate while a usurper walks in, and the chapter ends with the two movements in one verb: בּוֹא, Hushai coming in, Absalom coming in, while the king is outside. ⚙ We do not claim Hebrews has this chapter in view, and no voice in this brief connects them. The resemblance is structural, and we name it as a reading to be tested, not a link to be assumed.
Hebrews 13:12-13 · 2 Samuel 15:30
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. 15:31 carries the only acknowledged textual problem in the unit. The consonantal Hebrew reads wə·ḏāwiḏ higgîḏ, “and David told,” which cannot stand with the following clause. Ellicott judges the preposition to have dropped out; Pulpit calls the text “evidently corrupt”; K&D reviews Thenius's Hophal emendation and Ewald's unusual Hophal form before proposing lə·ḏāwiḏ with an impersonal verb. BSB's “Now someone told David” silently adopts a repair. Benson and Poole alone defend the unemended reading. Our literal rendering at 15:31 follows the impersonal sense and says so in the divergences rather than smoothing it.
Interlinear ordering. The word indices in this unit follow the Berean interlinear, which in several verses lists Hebrew words in the order of the English clause rather than the order of the Masoretic line (notably 15:30 i19 to i21, 15:31 i7 to i14, and 15:34). Our literal renderings restore Hebrew order; note keys still follow the interlinear indices as given.
Sources and their limits. The Benson entry on 15:30 quotes Delaney quoting Josephus on David's tears at the summit; that is a report at two removes, and Josephus is not Scripture. Gill's parallels for the covered head (Solerius, Seneca, Egyptian and Roman usage) are antiquarian and do not bear on the Hebrew. Cambridge's Morland anecdote comes from Stanley's Lectures. Benson's text at 15:36 reads “royal cries,” almost certainly a printing error for “royal cities”; we quote it as printed. Barnes contributes only two short notes to this whole unit, one of which our source repeats under six different verses; we have cited it once, at the verse where its phrase actually occurs.
What is uncertain. (1) Hushai's age. Poole, Cambridge, Pulpit and K&D all infer it from the word massâʼ; the text never states it, and Cambridge writes “Perhaps.” (2) The identity and history of the summit sanctuary. That it was a bamah is K&D's probability, and Pulpit's Canaanite prehistory for it is inference from the general history of high places. (3) Where Psalm 3 was composed. Gill places it at the summit, Pulpit reports the Jewish Midrash placing it on the Mount of Olives and then argues for the fords of the Jordan instead; we take no side. (4) The moral status of 15:34 is uniformly condemned by the named voices; Ellicott's mitigation, that David and Hushai “had but slender knowledge of the Divine revelation,” is a nineteenth-century developmental argument and is flagged as such at that verse. (5) The Ahithophel-to-Judas typology, widespread in Christian tradition, is asserted by no voice in this brief and is supported by no Verifier basis; it is carried here only as a flagged thread.
✦ = 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)