For the following interesting elucidation of David's lament over Abner, we are indebted to a learned and highly valued K.
David's short but emphatic lament over Abner (2 Sam. iii. 33) may be rendered, with stricter adherence to the form of the original, as fol lows:— ' 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, fellest thou!' As to the syntactical structure of these lines, it is important to observe that the second and third lines are two propositions of state belonging to the last, which describe the condition in which he was when he was slain. This kind of proposition is marked by the subject being placed first, and by the verb generally becoming a 'partici/5/e. On the right knowledge of this structure the beauty and sense of many passages altogether depend; and the common ignorance of it is to be ascribed to the circumstance, that the study of Hebrew so very seldom reaches beyond the vocabulary into the deeper-seated peculi arities of its construction. (See Ewald's Hebr. Gram. 556). As to the sense of the words J. D. Michaelis (in his des Alten Test. mit
Anmerkungen fiir Ungelehrte) saw that the point of this indignant, more than sorrowful, lament, lies in the mode in which Abner was slain. Joab professed to kill him 'for the blood of Asahel his brother,' 2 Sam. iii. 27. But if a man claimed his brother's blood at the hand of his murderer, the latter (even if he fled to the altar for refuge, Exod. xxi. 14) would have been delivered up (bound, hand and foot, it is assumed) to the avenger of blood, who would then possess a legal right to slay him. Now Joab not only had no title to claim the right of the God, as Asahel was killed under justifying circumstances (2 Sam. ii. 19) ; but, while pretending to exercise the avenger's right, he took a lawless and private mode of satisfaction, and committed a murder. Hence David charged him in allusion to this conduct, `with shedding the blood of war in peace' (i Kings ii. 5) ; and hence he expresses himself in this lament, as if indignant that the noble Abner, instead of being surrendered with the formalities of the law to meet an author. ized penalty, was treacherously stabbed by the hands of an assassin.—J. N.