2 Samuel

Israel's first king, given when the people demanded one 'like the nations.' Tall and promising, Saul started well but unraveled, offering an unlawful sacrifice, sparing what God had devoted to destruction, and hunting David out of jealousy. Rejected by God through Samuel, he ended by consulting a medium and falling on his own sword at Gilboa.

The shepherd-poet who killed Goliath, outlasted Saul's jealousy, and united the tribes with Jerusalem as his capital. A man after God's own heart, yet his adultery with Bathsheba and its cover-up cost him dearly. God promised his throne would endure forever, the covenant the Messiah would fulfill.

Saul's son and heir, and David's closest friend, who protected the man who would take his own throne. He died with his father and brothers at Gilboa, and David's lament for him is one of the great elegies in Scripture.

The woman David saw from his roof, in an episode the text presents as the king's sin rather than hers, and whose husband Uriah he had killed to cover it. She later secured Solomon's succession, and Matthew lists her in the genealogy of Jesus.

The prophet who brought David both the covenant promise of an everlasting throne and, later, the parable of the poor man's lamb that trapped the king into condemning himself.

Called David's seer, he advised him during the years on the run and later brought him the three-fold choice of judgment after the census.

Saul's cousin and general, who kept the house of Saul on a throne for years after Gilboa, then quarreled with his puppet king and offered to hand the kingdom to David. Joab murdered him at the gate of Hebron, and David made a public point of grieving.

Ruthless, effective, and impossible to control. He murdered rivals, killed Absalom against direct orders, and spoke to David more bluntly than anyone else dared, including telling him he was destroying his own army with his grief. David never managed to be rid of him and left the problem to Solomon.

Handsome, aggrieved, and patient. After his sister Tamar was raped by their half-brother he waited two years and had the man killed, then spent four more years standing at the gate telling everyone their case would win if only he were judge. His revolt drove his father out of Jerusalem, and it ended with his hair caught in an oak and Joab's spears.

Dropped by his nurse as a child when the news came from Gilboa, and lame in both feet after. David hunted for anyone left of Saul's house in order to show kindness, and gave him his grandfather's land and a permanent place at the king's table.

One of David's elite soldiers, a foreigner by descent, who would not sleep in his own house while the army was in the field. His refusal, the most honorable act in the chapter, is what forced David to have him killed, and he carried the letter that arranged it.

After seven of Saul's descendants were executed and left exposed, she spread sackcloth on a rock and stayed from harvest until the rains, driving off birds by day and animals by night. When David heard, he gathered the bones and buried them properly.

Judah's widowed daughter-in-law, denied the marriage the law owed her, who disguised herself and secured a child from Judah himself. He admits she was more righteous than he was. She stands in the genealogy of Jesus. A second Tamar, David's daughter, is raped by her half-brother Amnon.

The Thirty and the Three, listed at the close of 2 Samuel and again in 1 Chronicles: the men who fought with David through the wilderness years and afterward. Most appear only here, identified by their home town, which is why the lists are thick with words like Netophathite and Hushathite.

The stewards, counselors, recorders, bodyguards, and hangers-on who fill the books of Samuel and Kings. Barzillai the Gileadite fed David's army in exile and then refused to come to the palace because at eighty he could no longer taste what he ate.

Saul's father, of Benjamin, whose lost donkeys sent his son on the errand that ended with Samuel anointing him king. Abner, Saul's cousin and army commander, held the northern kingdom together for two years after Saul's death before being murdered by Joab.

David's sister, named far more often than her husband, and mother of Joab, Abishai, and Asahel. The three of them are David's hardest soldiers and his recurring problem.

Two of David's older sons, both of whom came to ruin. Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar and was killed two years later by her brother Absalom. Adonijah declared himself king while David was dying, was spared by Solomon, and was executed after asking for David's nurse as a wife.

David's advisor, whose counsel was regarded as if a man had inquired of the word of God, and who went over to Absalom's revolt. When his advice to strike immediately was set aside for worse advice, he went home, set his house in order, and hanged himself.

David's nephew, made commander of Absalom's rebel army and then, after the revolt collapsed, offered Joab's job as a gesture of reconciliation. Joab took his beard as if to kiss him and stabbed him with a sword held in the other hand.

One of David's mighty men, remembered for killing two Moabite champions, striking down a huge Egyptian with the man's own spear, and going down into a pit on a snowy day to kill a lion. Commanded the royal bodyguard, stayed loyal at Solomon's accession, and replaced Joab as commander of the army.

David's two priests. Abiathar had escaped the massacre at Nob and joined David in the wilderness, carrying the ephod. Zadok's line came from Eleazar. At Solomon's accession Abiathar backed Adonijah and Zadok backed Solomon, and Abiathar was removed.

The priest who gave David the consecrated bread and Goliath's sword, not knowing he was a fugitive. Doeg the Edomite reported it, and Saul had eighty-five priests killed along with the whole town. Only Abiathar escaped.

The Phoenician king who supplied David and then Solomon with cedar, cypress, and skilled craftsmen for the palace and the temple, floating the timber down the coast in rafts. Paid in wheat and oil, and later given twenty Galilean towns he was not impressed by.

A Benjamite of Saul's house who walked along the ridge cursing David and throwing stones as he fled from Absalom. Abishai offered to remove his head; David said to let him curse, since the LORD might have told him to.

Manasseh's son and the clan descended from him, who took Gilead east of the Jordan. In the Song of Deborah, Machir stands in for the whole tribe. A separate Machir of Lo-debar sheltered Mephibosheth and later supplied David during Absalom's revolt.

A name borne by both men and women across the Old Testament. The best known is the queen mother, Abijah's wife and Asa's grandmother, whom Asa removed from her position because she had made an obscene image for Asherah. Another Maacah was the mother of Absalom, a foreign princess.