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2Sa_20:3 And David came to his house at Jerusalem; and the king took the ten women [his] concubines, whom he had left to keep the house, and put them in ward, and fed them, but went not in unto them. So they were shut up unto the day of their death, living in widowhood.
Ver. 3. And David came to his house at Jerusalem.] Which had been in his absence basely defiled, and was therefore by him newly dedicated. {Psa_30:1, title}
And put them in ward.] He committed them to perpetual, yet liberal imprisonment: because they had not rather died, as they ought to have done, than yielded to Absalom’s lust, in so public a manner especially. Pellican here observeth that David was to blame for not punishing such others, now in his power, as were either causers or consenters to that disgrace; such as was Amasa, a chief man, then about Absalom. Of one Ode Severus, Archbishop of Canterbury, A.D. 934, we read that he excommunicated King Edwin’s concubines; and caused one of them, whom the king doted unreasonably upon, to be fetched out of the court by violence, burnt her in the forehead with a hot iron, and banished her into Ireland. {a} Absalom had no such zealots about him; but what should David have done?
{a} Godw., Catal., 62.