The bitter argument between Judah and Israel at the end of the last chapter found a spark. 1"We have no portion in David, and we have no inheritance in the son of Jesse; every man to his tents, O Israel!" One worthless man, one trumpet blast, and the northern tribes peel away again, in words Israel will use again when the kingdom splits under Solomon's son (1 Kings 12:16). David sees at once that this is more dangerous than Absalom's rebellion (verse 6). Absalom threatened the king. Sheba threatens the kingdom.
Before David can respond, one quiet, devastating verse tells of the ten concubines Absalom violated on the roof. David puts them in a guarded house and provides for them but does not go in to them, so that they are shut up until the day of their death, living as if in widowhood (verse 3). Nathan's prophecy is still working itself out years later in the lives of women who did nothing but belong to a household David could no longer keep safe. Consequence does not always end where the headline event ends. Sometimes it moves quietly into a guarded house and stays for a lifetime.
Then Joab does what Joab always does. Amasa, David's new commander, meets Joab's forces on the road, and Joab greets him warmly, 9"Is it well with you, my brother?" He takes him by the beard as if to kiss him and drives a sword into his stomach with the other hand (verses 9-10). One blow, no warning. A gesture of greeting becomes the tool of its own betrayal, as Absalom's kisses at the city gate had been (2 Samuel 15:5). A kiss meant to signal safety becomes, in the wrong hands, the last thing a man feels. Centuries later another kiss in a garden will carry the reversal to its worst extreme (Luke 22:47-48).
Sheba flees to Abel of Beth-maacah, and Joab's army lays siege, building a mound against the wall, ready to batter down a whole city for one man hiding inside it. Then a voice calls from the wall, a wise woman nobody names, asking to be heard. She reasons: 19"You seek to destroy a city that is a mother in Israel. Why will you swallow up the heritage of the LORD?" She reminds Joab what Abel is, a mother city, a piece of the LORD's own inheritance, worth more than the single rebel sheltering in it. Joab, of all people, backs down: 20"Far be it from me, far be it, that I should swallow up or destroy!" The city hands over the one head that ends the siege.
Wisdom spoken from a wall accomplishes what a mound and a battering ram could not: a spared city and one rebel's death, where the siege would have cost a whole population. The chapter closes with a list of officials, ordinary administration resuming, with Joab again at the head of David's army. Nothing is fully resolved, and Joab still answers to no one. But a mother city in Israel stands, because one voice on a wall refused to let violence have the only word.
A greater peace is still to come. A Son of David would one day be greeted with a kiss meant to betray him and would not answer it with a sword, absorbing every treachery this book has rehearsed, so that the city he was building, his church, would never finally be swallowed up.
Prayer
Father, thank you for every wise voice you raise in the middle of needless violence, speaking peace where a sword was about to speak. Forgive us for the kisses we have turned into weapons, the trust we have used against the people who gave it. And thank you for the greater Son of David who took every betraying kiss this world could offer and built from it a city no siege will finally swallow. In Jesus' name, amen.