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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 2 Samuel 8:17 - 8:17
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Zadok the son of Ahitub, of the line of Eleazar (1Ch 6:8; 1Ch 6:11-12), and Ahimelech the son of Abiathar, were cohanim, i.e., officiating high priests; the former at the tabernacle at Gibeon (1Ch 16:39), the latter probably at the ark of the covenant upon Mount Zion. Instead of Ahimelech, the Chronicles have Abimelech, evidently through a copyist's error, as the name is written Ahimelech in 1Ch 24:3, 1Ch 24:6. But the expression “Ahimelech the son of Abiathar” is apparently a very strange one, as Abiathar was a son of Ahimelech according to 1Sa 22:20, and in other passages Zadok and Abiathar are mentioned as the two high priests in the time of David (2Sa 15:24, 2Sa 15:35; 2Sa 17:15; 2Sa 19:12; 2Sa 20:25). This difference cannot be set aside, as Movers, Thenius, Ewald, and other suppose, by transposing the names, so as to read Abiathar the son of Ahimelech; for such a solution is precluded by the fact that, in 1Ch 24:3, 1Ch 24:6, 1Ch 24:31, Ahimelech is mentioned along with Zadok as head of the priests of the line of Ithamar, and according to 1Ch 24:6 he was the son of Abiathar. It would therefore be necessary to change the name Ahimelech into Abiathar in this instance also, both in 1Ch 24:3 and 1Ch 24:6, and in the latter to transpose the two names. But there is not the slightest probability in the supposition that the names have been changed in so many passaGes. We are therefore disposed to adopt the view held by Bertheau and Oehler, viz., that Abiathar the high priest, the son of Ahimelech, had also a son named Ahimelech, as it is by no means a rare occurrence for grandfather and grandson to have the same names (vid., 1Ch 6:4-15), and also that this (the younger) Ahimelech performed the duties of high priest in connection with his father, who was still living at the commencement of Solomon's reign (1Ki 2:27), and is mentioned in this capacity, along with Zadok, both here and in the book of Chronicles, possibly because Abiathar was ill, or for some other reason that we cannot discover. As Abiathar was thirty or thirty-five years old at the time when his father was put to death by Saul, according to what has already been observed at 1Sa 14:3, and forty years old at the death of Saul, he was at least forty-eight years old at the time when David removed his residence to Mount Zion, and might have had a son of twenty-five years of age, namely the Ahimelech mentioned here, who could have taken his father's place in the performance of the functions of high priest when he was prevented by illness or other causes. The appearance of a son of Abiathar named Jonathan in 2Sa 15:27; 2Sa 17:17, 2Sa 17:20, is no valid argument against this solution of the apparent discrepancy; for, according to these passages, he was still very young, and may therefore have been a younger brother of Ahimelech. The omission of any allusion to Ahimelech in connection with Abiathar's conspiracy with Adonijah against Solomon (1Ki 1:42-43), and the reference to his son Jonathan alone, might be explained on the supposition that Ahimelech had already died. But as there is no reference to Jonathan at the time when his father was deposed, no stress is to be laid upon the omission of any reference to Ahimelech. Moreover, when Abiathar was deposed after Solomon had ascended the throne, he must have been about eighty years of age. Seraiah was a scribe. Instead of Seraiah, we have Shavsha in the corresponding text of the Chronicles, and Sheva in the parallel passage 2Sa 20:25. Whether the last name is merely a mistake for Shavsha, occasioned by the dropping of שׁ, or an abbreviated form of Shisha and Shavsha, cannot be decided. Shavsha is not a copyist's error, for in 1Ki 4:3 the same man is unquestionably mentioned again under the name of Shisha, who is called Shavsha in the Chronicles, Sheva (שְׁיָא) in the text of 2Sa 20:25, and here Seraiah. Seraiah also is hardly a copyist's error, but another form for Shavsha or Shisha. The scribe was a secretary of state; not a military officer, whose duty it was to raise and muster the troops, for the technical expression for mustering the people was not סָפַר, but פָּקַד (cf. 2Sa 24:2, 2Sa 24:4,2Sa 24:9; 1Ch 21:5-6, etc.).