Two armies sit down on opposite sides of the pool at Gibeon, and Abner makes a proposal: 14"Let the young men arise and compete before us." Twelve men from each side step forward. In one terrible moment 16"each caught his opponent by the head and thrust his sword in his opponent's side, so they fell down together." Twenty-four men are dead, and the contest settles nothing. The place gets a name, Helkath-hazzurim, and the fierce battle follows anyway.
In the chase that follows, Asahel, Joab's brother, is 18"as swift of foot as a wild gazelle." He runs after Abner and will not turn. Abner tries twice to talk him out of it. He tells the young man to take an easier prize, and then asks 22"How then could I lift up my face to your brother Joab?" Abner can already see the cost of the feud this boy is forcing on him. Asahel 23"refused to turn aside," and Abner kills him with the butt of his spear. The narrator stays on the one detail: everyone who came to the spot where Asahel fell 23"stood still."
At sunset Abner calls up to Joab from the hilltop with the question the day should have opened with: 26"Shall the sword devour forever? Do you not know that the end will be bitter?" He then names the other side as 26"their brothers." Israel is killing Israel over which house will rule. Joab admits, in his own way, that the fighting could have ended earlier, and he blows the trumpet. The men stop. Nothing has been made right, because the sun simply went down.
The count is nineteen of David's men and Asahel, and three hundred sixty of Abner's. Asahel is buried in his father's tomb at Bethlehem. Joab now carries a grief that has to go somewhere, and the reader can feel it waiting for Abner in chapter 3.
Then the chapter closes: 1"There was a long war between the house of Saul and the house of David." The word long is honest. This is years of it. And the closing sentence delivers a verdict without answering Abner's question: 1"David grew stronger and stronger, while the house of Saul became weaker and weaker." David is not winning by any one stroke. His strength grows across a long stretch while both sides bleed.
The tragedy of the chapter is how much of the killing served nothing. Samuel had already anointed David, and Saul's house was already losing its hold. The pool, the hillside, and the hilltop would each have gone differently for men who could wait for what God had promised. Abner's question outlives its speaker, and it is still asked wherever God's people reach for the sword to force what waiting on the LORD would have delivered.
Jesus was handed every reason to draw the sword in his own defense. When Peter drew one, Jesus told him to put it away (Matthew 26:52). The Son of David won his kingdom by dying, and he needs no sword to keep it.
Prayer
Father, forgive us for forcing by our own strength what your promise was already carrying toward us. Give us the honesty of Abner's question, asked before the blood is spilled, and the patience David learned in a long war. Thank you that the Prince of Peace did not need the sword to establish his kingdom, and that we do not need it to trust yours. In Jesus' name, amen.