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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 2 Samuel 17:27 - 17:27
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When David came to Mahanaim, some of the wealthier citizens of the land to the east of the Jordan supplied the men who were with him with provisions. This is mentioned as the first sign that the people had not all fallen away from David, but that some of the more distinguished men were still firm in their adherence. Shobi, the son of Nahash or Rabbah, the capital of the Ammonites (see 2Sa 11:1), was possibly a son of Nahash the deceased king of the Ammonites, and brother of Hanun, who was defeated by David (2Sa 10:1-2), and one of those to whom David had shown favour and kindness when Rabbah was taken. At the same time, it is also quite possible that Shobi may have been an Israelite, who was merely living in the capital of the Ammonites, which had been incorporated into the kingdom of David, as it is evident from 2Sa 17:25 that Nahash was not an uncommon name among the Israelites. Machir the son of Ammiel of Lodebar (see at 2Sa 9:4), and Barsillai of Roglim the Gileadite. Roglim was a town in Gilead, which is only mentioned once again, viz., in 2Sa 19:32, and of which nothing further is known. They brought “bedding, basins, earthenware, and wheat, barley, meal, and parched grains, beans, lentils and parched.” The position of the verb, which is not placed between the subject and the object of the sentence, but only at the close of the whole series of objects, is certainly unusual; but this does not warrant any alteration of the text. For if we were to supply a verb before מִשְׁכָּב, as having fallen out of the text, it would be necessary, since הִגִּישׁוּ follows without a copula, to divide the things enumerated into two classes, so as to connect one portion of the objects with הִגִּישׁוּ, which is obviously unnatural. The early translators who interpolate a verb before the objects have therefore also supplied the copula w before הִגִּישׁוּ. There is still less ground for supplying the number 10, as having dropped out before מִשְׁכָּב and סַפֹּות, as the lxx have done, since none of the translators of the other ancient versions had any such reading. מִשְׁכָּב, couch or bed, is used here for bedding. סַפֹּות, basins, probably field-kettles. The repetition of וְקָלִי is very striking; nevertheless the second must not be struck out without further ground as a supposed copyist's error. As they not only ate parched ears or grains of wheat (see at Lev 2:14), but were also in the habit of drying pulse, pease, and lentils before eating them (vid., Harmar, Beobachtungen, i. pp. 255-6), the second קָלִי may be understood as referring to parched pulse. The ἁπ. λεγ. בָּקָר שְׁפֹות signifies, according to the Chaldee and the Rabbins, cheese of oxen (i.e., of cows), and according to the conjecture of Roediger (Ges. Thes. p. 1462), a peculiar kind of cheese, such as the Aeneze in the province of Nedjid still make,
(Note: According to Burckhardt's account (Die Beduinen, p. 48), “after they have taken the butter from the butter-milk, they beat the latter again till it coagulates, and then dry it till it is quite hard. It is then rubbed to pieces, and in the spring every family stores up two or three lasts of it, which they eat mixed with butter.”)
and for which the term σαφὼθ βοῶν retained by the lxx was probably the technical name. Theodotus, on the other hand, has γαλαθηνὰ μοσχάρια, milch-calves; and the Vulgate pingues vitulos, - both of them renderings which can certainly be sustained from the Arabic usage of speech, and would be more in accordance with the situation of the words, viz., after צֹאן. אָמְרוּ כִּי, “for they said (or thought) the people have become hungry and faint and thirty in the desert,” i.e., in their flight to Mahanaim.