David's Deathbed Speech Had Two Parts and Solomon Needed Both

The Cold That Would Not Leave

No amount of covering warmed him. His servants found Abishag, a young woman from Shunem, to lie beside David and provide human warmth, but the cold had gone past what warmth could reach. He was dying, and he knew it, and he called Solomon in because a dying king who loves his son does not spare him the plainness of what is coming.

He said: I am going the way of all the earth. Be strong. Be a man. Keep the charge of your God, walk in his ways, observe his commandments and his testimonies and his judgments as written in the Torah of Moses, so that you may prosper in everything you do and everywhere you turn. He said the kingdom's permanence depended on this fidelity, that the promise God had made to him was conditional on the behavior of his descendants, and that Solomon was now the condition on which everything rested.

That was the first part of what David had to say. The second part was different in tone.

The Account of Joab

David told Solomon about Joab. Joab had been his general for decades, the man who had won his wars and made his kingdom possible and killed people David either would not or could not kill himself. He had also killed two commanders after David had made peace with them, shedding the blood of war in a time of peace, staining the girdle of David's loins and the sandals on his feet with blood that was not David's to shed. David had never moved against Joab. He was constrained: Joab was too powerful, too necessary, and David owed him too much.

He told Solomon to act according to his wisdom. Do not let Joab's gray hair go down to the grave in peace. The phrasing was precise. Solomon would know what it meant.

The Account of Shimei

Shimei son of Gera, a Benjaminite from the house of Saul, had come out and cursed David as he fled Jerusalem during Absalom's rebellion. He had thrown stones and dust and called David a man of blood and a worthless man. When David returned to Jerusalem after the rebellion was crushed, Shimei came and threw himself down and begged forgiveness. Abishai had wanted to execute him on the spot. David had said no. He swore to Shimei by God that he would not die by the sword. He kept his oath.

But the oath was David's oath, not Solomon's. David told Solomon: you are a wise man, you know what Shimei did, you know he cursed me with a curse that was severe. Do not treat him as innocent. Bring his gray head down to the grave with blood.

The Gratitude That Went With the Accounts

Not everything on David's deathbed list was a score to settle. He told Solomon to be kind to the sons of Barzillai the Gileadite, the man who had brought food and supplies to David at Mahanaim when David was fleeing Absalom and had nothing. Barzillai had served David in a moment of real humiliation, when no one was obligated to serve him. David wanted that kindness remembered in the next generation, the same way he wanted Joab's treachery and Shimei's curse remembered. The deathbed was a ledger, and not everything in it was debt.

Solomon Executed the Instructions

He moved within the first years of his reign. Joab, who had backed the wrong claimant during the succession contest, fled to the Tabernacle and took hold of the horns of the altar seeking sanctuary. Solomon sent his commander there. Joab refused to leave. He was killed at the altar. Solomon then summoned Shimei, placed him under house arrest in Jerusalem, and warned him that the day he crossed the Kidron Valley he would die. Shimei agreed. Three years later his servants ran away to Gath and he went to retrieve them. He came back and Solomon called him in and executed him the same day. Then, as the Book of Kings records, the kingdom was established in Solomon's hand.