Commentary - 2 Samuel 20:3

Bird's-eye view

Upon his return to Jerusalem after the crushing rebellions of Absalom and Sheba, King David is immediately confronted with the lingering and tragic consequences of sin. This verse details his handling of the ten concubines whom Absalom had publicly violated on the palace roof. David's solution is a grim necessity of statecraft in a fallen world. He provides for the women but sequesters them for life, effectively making them widows while their husband, the king, still lived. This action is not rooted in personal spite but in the public and ceremonial reality of their defilement. They had become a living monument to Absalom's usurpation and the nation's shame. David's difficult decision illustrates the principle that sin, especially public sin, creates lasting wreckage that cannot simply be ignored or wished away. It is a sorrowful postscript to the rebellion, highlighting the inadequacy of earthly kingship to fully cleanse and restore what sin has broken, pointing us toward the perfect King who can.

Outline

Context In 2 Samuel

This verse occurs immediately after David has consolidated his return to power. The rebellion of Absalom has been quashed, though with the tragic death of David's son. A subsequent rebellion by Sheba, a Benjamite, has also been swiftly put down by Joab. David is now back in his palace in Jerusalem, re-establishing order. One of his first acts is to deal with the domestic and political fallout of Absalom's coup. The most visible and shameful element of that coup was Absalom's public appropriation of his father's concubines on the rooftop, an act advised by Ahithophel to make the breach with David irreparable (2 Sam 16:20-22). This was not an act of private lust but a calculated political statement of regime change. David's handling of these women is therefore not a private family matter but a public act of restoring integrity and holiness to the throne.

Key Issues

The Living Widows

When a king returns to his throne after a bloody civil war, there is much to be done. Armies must be settled, loyalties rewarded, traitors punished, and the machinery of government restored. But here, one of David's first actions is intensely personal, yet profoundly public. He must deal with the women who were made into a public spectacle, a living symbol of his humiliation. What Absalom did on the roof was not primarily about sex; it was about the throne. By lying with his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel, he was declaring, in the most visceral terms possible, that he was the new king. The house, the harem, and the kingdom were now his. David's return means this public statement must be publicly answered. The solution is tragic, but in the logic of that covenantal world, it was unavoidable. Sin leaves ghosts, and David's palace was now full of them.

Verse by Verse Commentary

3 Then David came to his house at Jerusalem, and the king took the ten women, the concubines whom he had left to keep the house, and placed them under guard and provided them with sustenance, but did not go in to them. So they were shut up until the day of their death, living as widows.

The verse is a single, dense sentence that unfolds a sorrowful story. David is home. The word house here means both his physical palace and his royal household, his dynasty. But the house is not as he left it. It has been defiled.

He immediately turns his attention to the ten concubines. They were left "to keep the house," which was a sign of David's continuing claim to the throne even in his exile. They were his representatives. Absalom's public violation of them was therefore a violation of the king himself. The sin was against them, to be sure, but it was aimed at David and the office he held. Now, these women are an objective, public symbol of another man's claim on the throne. For David to resume relations with them would be, in a sense, to symbolically take what Absalom had made his own. It would be to bring the defilement of the rebel king into his own bed. This could not be done.

David's solution is twofold. First, he shows mercy and responsibility: he places them "under guard" and "provided them with sustenance." He does not cast them out to starve. He does not execute them as though they were complicit. He recognizes their status as part of his household and provides for their material needs for the rest of their lives. The guard is likely for their protection as much as for their sequestration. But second, he establishes a separation. He "did not go in to them." The marital relationship is permanently severed.

The result is a haunting phrase: "they were shut up until the day of their death, living as widows." They were widows with a living husband. Their lives were effectively over. They were preserved in a state of living death, a perpetual, quiet testimony to the horror of Absalom's rebellion. They were innocent, yet their lives were forfeit to the political and ceremonial necessities of the kingdom. It is a stark reminder that sin is a wrecking ball, and the innocent are often left to live in the rubble.

Application

This is a hard passage. Our modern sensibilities recoil at the fate of these women. They were victims, first of Absalom's ambition and then of David's statecraft. But we must see the principle at work. Public sin has public consequences, and they are often messy and tragic. David did what he had to do as a king responsible for the holiness and integrity of his throne. His solution was imperfect, a kind of tragic quarantine, but it was an attempt to deal seriously with a public defilement.

And in this imperfect, tragic solution, we see the profound need for a better King. When we, the bride of Christ, were defiled by our sin, when we committed spiritual adultery against our true King, what did He do? He did not shut us up in a house of widowhood. He did not provide for us from a distance while keeping us separate. In an act of unfathomable grace, He came to us. He took our defilement, our shame, our public disgrace upon Himself on the cross. He absorbed the stain. He washed us clean with His own blood so that He might bring us into His house, not as sequestered reminders of a past rebellion, but as a pure and spotless bride. David could only wall off the effects of sin; Christ conquers sin itself. Where David's solution led to a living death, Christ's solution leads to a resurrection life. This sad verse in Samuel shows us the limits of the best of earthly kings and makes us long for the King whose mercy is perfect and whose restoration is complete.