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2Sa_3:17-39
Abner had no reason to complain of his reception by David, who entertained him and his guard of twenty men in a most princely style. The result of the conference was highly satisfactory to Abner, who took his departure with the promise of gathering deputies from Israel who should publicly acknowledge David for their king. This was certainly no more than he was able to perform. He had only to permit what be had hitherto striven to prevent, but which, as he knew well, it would not be even in his power much longer to hinder.
Joab had at this time been absent on a military expedition, and as neither David nor Abner would desire his presence, it is likely that this visit of Abner bad been timed accordingly. But Joab returned immediately that Abner had left. He was greatly moved when be heard of this visit. He feared for himself. He subscribed to the influence which his abilities, age, and long experience gave to Abner, by the dread he entertained of him. There can indeed be little doubt that Abner would have become the second man in David’s enlarged kingdom, and commander of the armies of Israel. There is also no reason to question that Joab really felt the apprehensions he expressed—that Abner was after all deceiving David, and only sought an opportunity of effecting his ruin. He hurried to the king, and with the roughness and freedom which their near relationship and their old companionship in trouble seemed in his eyes to warrant, he sharply rated him for his easiness, and affirmed that Abner could have no other object than to betray him. That such was his real belief, goes somewhat to relieve his next step of some portion of the blackness which belongs to it whet regarded merely as the effect of individual jealousy and apprehension. He sent to call Abner back, under the pretence that some important communication had been forgotten. Abner accordingly returned, and was met without the gate by Joab, who saluted him in a friendly manner, and taking him aside as if to speak privately with him, smote him suddenly with his sword under the fifth rib, so that he died.
This, he chose to allege, and his brother Abishai upheld him in that view, was done in his right of blood revenge for his brother Asahel, whom Abner had slain. The question is not whether this was the true reason, but whether the excuse was so sound and valid as to justify him in the eye of the law, so as to protect him from the legal consequences of this assassination. In short, whether public opinion would or would not bear him out in this excuse.
The law was, that when a man slew another by what we should call manslaughter or justifiable homicide, the nearest relative had a right to exact vengeance—to put him to death wherever he could find him. This was an old custom of the pastoral tribes, too deeply rooted to be abolished by the Mosaical law, but the manifest evils of which that law sought to neutralize, by providing certain cities throughout the country within whose walls the man-slayer was safe from the sword of the avenger, who was dealt with as a murderer if he slew him there, but was not called to account if he met with him and slew him anywhere beyond the verge of the asylum. The real question therefore is, whether Abner was responsible to Joab for the blood of Asahel, shed in self-defence, under the circumstances lately described, and sorely against the wish of Abner himself. It is urged that it was most unreasonable that Abner should be held accountable for this. The unreasonableness may be granted. The question is not, what was reasonable, but what was the custom. The custom was, in its very essence, unreasonable, and the law had striven as much as possible to mitigate what it could not do away with altogether. The act of Abner was justifiable homicide; but it was precisely to such cases that the rule applied, not to those of murder, against the penalties of which no sanctuary afforded protection. Besides, unless the right of avengement for blood did apply to such cases as this, whence the deep anxiety of Abner to avoid slaying Asahel? Those expressions used by him on that occasion have no meaning, unless they show his knowledge of the fact that the death of his pursuer would establish a blood feud between him and Joab. In further confirmation of this view of the case, it may be noted that the other brother, Abishai, who had no direct hand in this bloody and barbarous deed, yet adopted and maintained it on the same grounds, as an act of avengement for a brother’s blood. It may be admitted that a case of this nature may have come upon the border of a doubt as to the application of the rule to it, and very likely it was not, in such cases, often enforced. But where any room for doubt existed, Joab and Abishai might interpret it in their own favor, as their justification for an act the true motives of which durst not be alleged, and as a ground on which they might claim exemption from the punishment due to murder. That the case stood on this doubtful ground, which did not render it an imperative duty of the next of kin to exact retribution, when in his power to do so—which did not, as among the Arab tribes at this day, leave him disgraced if he neglected to avenge a brother’s blood, seems probable from the fact, that Abner went so readily aside with Joab, which be would hardly have done had he not supposed that his offence was one which might be, and had been, forgiven. It was in the assurance that public opinion, however shocked, would, upon the whole, sanction the deed when placed on this ground, that this reason was produced; and as it was highly important, even for the king, that it should appear as an act of private revenge, rather than of political jealousy (in which he might have seemed to be implicated), there was abundant reason why David should not, by subjecting Joab to punishment for murder, give to the act a different complexion. It is usually said that Joab was too powerful to be brought to justice. We do not know that his power had already become so great as this implies, and we cannot but think that David would have found means of subjecting him to disgrace or punishment, but for the considerations we have stated—that public opinion would allow the deed to stand on the ground upon which the brothers placed it, and that, in the existing state of affairs, it was as well that it should rest upon that footing, the reason alleged being well calculated to relieve the king from any suspicion of having connived at this mode of ridding himself of a powerful and dangerous rival.
In corroboration of this view—which is the one advanced by the sacred historian, and which, on that ground alone, we ought to prefer, we may look back to Gideon’s slaying the captive kings, Zebah and Zalmunna, on the express ground that they had slain his brothers at Tabor, in the course of the recent engagement. “He said, they were my brethren, the sons of my mother. As the Lord liveth, if ye had saved them alive, I would not slay you.” And as it had thus become a case of blood revenge, he slew them with his own hand, after his eldest son, Jether, had shrunk from the task. If more confirmation be needed, we may refer to the existing practice of the Arab tribes, in the frequent engagements between whom, blood revenge is exacted for every life taken, if the person who inflicted the mortal stroke is known. It is this which renders the combats between the tribes so protracted and so comparatively bloodless, as every one dreads to subject himself to the pursuing sword of the avenger. These considerations do not, of course, operate in engagements with foreigners; and in Israel, warfare between the tribes had hitherto been too infrequent to bring their results out of the common laws of blood revenge, and into the usages of general warfare. When the tribes became permanently divided into two realms, after Solomon, the right of private blood revenge could not exist as between the subjects of the two kingdoms, though it doubtless still subsisted between the tribes of which these kingdoms were severally composed.
David, who did not share Joab’s suspicions of Abner’s truth, was deeply concerned at a crime which not only marred all the expectations he had conceived from that great chief’s adhesion, but threatened to widen the breach more than ever. As well, therefore, from real concern at the untimely end of a man so illustrious, and natural horror of the deed, as from policy, he was anxious that it should appear how deeply he lamented the event. He ordered a general fast and mourning, and the body of the unhappy Abner was honored with a public funeral, at which the king himself appeared as chief mourner, and followed the corpse with loud lamentations to the grave, where, amid his own tears, and the tears of the people, he, as was natural to him under strong emotion, gave vent to his feelings in this poetical utterance—
“Should Abner die as a villain dies?
Thy hands—not bound,
Thy feet—not brought into fetters
As one falls before the sons of wickedness so didst thou fall.”
To explain this, it should be observed that Hebron was a city of refuge. If one fled to such a city, he was subjected to a sort of trial to ascertain his claim to the right of sanctuary. If found to be a murderer, he was delivered up, bound hand and foot, to the avenger, to deal with him as he pleased. Although Abner had left the city of refuge, not thus delivered up as a murderer, but free, he had no sooner left its gates than he had met a murderer’s doom from the hands of the avenger. The idea of the lamentation is founded upon Abner’s being slain as soon as he had quitted a city of refuge—a most unusual circumstance to one not found guilty of murder, seeing that those entitled to protection were not sent away.