Joab: David's Commander and the Blood Shed Without Cause

Who Joab Was

Joab was David's compatriot, a man of the tribe of Judah who lived in the era of the united kingdom, placed at around 1095 BC to 975 BC (era placed on Ussher's chronology, 1650). He was a son of Zeruiah, whose husband is never named in the record, and brother to Abishai and Asahel (1 Chronicles 2:16). His name first appears in 1 Samuel 26:6 and runs through 120 verses in 26 passages: eighty-four verses in 2 Samuel, twenty-one in 1 Chronicles, thirteen in 1 Kings, one in 1 Samuel, and a single verse in Psalms. Few men in Scripture stand so close to a king for so long, and few leave so bloody a trail behind them.

The Man Who Argued With the King

One of the fullest pictures we have of Joab is a scene in which he says no. "David said to Joab and to the princes of the people, 'Go, count Israel from Beersheba even to Dan; and bring me word, that I may know how many there are.' Joab said, 'May Yahweh make his people a hundred times as many as they are. But, my lord the king, aren't they all my lord's servants? Why does my lord require this thing? Why will he be a cause of guilt to Israel?'" (1 Chronicles 21:2-3). The king overruled him. "Nevertheless the king's word prevailed against Joab" (1 Chronicles 21:4). Joab went, and returned with one million one hundred thousand sword-drawing men in Israel and four hundred seventy thousand in Judah, "But he didn't count Levi and Benjamin among them; for the king's word was abominable to Joab" (1 Chronicles 21:5-6). The same census is recorded again at 2 Samuel 24:2-4, and 1 Chronicles 27:24 touches it once more.

That is worth holding onto. The commander could see guilt coming, said so to the king's face, obeyed anyway, and then quietly trimmed the order he thought abominable.

Working the King Toward Absalom

Joab knew how to move David without confronting him. He set a woman before the king with a scripted speech (2 Samuel 14:1-3), and David saw through it: "Is the hand of Joab with you in all this?" She answered, "your servant Joab urged me, and he put all these words in the mouth of your servant. Your servant Joab has done this thing to change the face of the matter" (2 Samuel 14:19-20). David yielded: "Go therefore, and bring the young man Absalom back." Joab fell on his face, blessed the king, and "So Joab arose and went to Geshur, and brought Absalom to Jerusalem" (2 Samuel 14:21-23).

The man he fetched later had to burn his barley field to get his attention. Twice Absalom sent for Joab and twice he would not come, until the fire brought him running with a question: "Why have your servants set my field on fire?" (2 Samuel 14:29-31). Joab then carried the request, "and the king kissed Absalom" (2 Samuel 14:33). How that reconciliation ended is recorded at 2 Samuel 18:10-12, 18:14-16 and 18:20-22.

Amasa at the Great Stone

Pursuing Sheba the son of Bichri, Joab's men met Amasa at the great stone in Gibeon. "Joab said to Amasa, 'Is it well with you, my brother?' Joab took Amasa by the beard with his right hand to kiss him. But Amasa took no heed to the sword that was in Joab's hand. So he struck him with it in the body, and shed out his bowels to the ground, and didn't strike him again; and he died" (2 Samuel 20:9-10). He walked on from the corpse to finish the campaign (2 Samuel 20:15-17), and outside the city he bargained: "Just deliver him, and I will depart from the city." The head of Sheba came over the wall, Joab blew the trumpet, and "Joab returned to Jerusalem to the king. Now Joab was over all the army of Israel" (2 Samuel 20:20-23).

The Failures Scripture Names

The text does not soften him. He killed a man with a greeting and a kiss, and the words "my brother" were on his lips as he drew (2 Samuel 20:9-10). Other killings and other errands are on the record at 2 Samuel 3:22-24, 3:26-27 and 3:29-31, and at 2 Samuel 11:6-7 and 11:16-18, and the reader who follows those references will find the same hand at work. At the end he backed the wrong claimant: "Joab had followed Adonijah, although he didn't follow Absalom" (1 Kings 2:28; see also 1 Kings 1:7, 1:19, 1:41). He fled to Yahweh's Tent and held the horns of the altar, and refused Benaiah's summons: "No; but I will die here." Solomon's sentence names the charge exactly: "Do as he has said, and fall on him, and bury him; that you may take away the blood, which Joab shed without cause, from me and from my father's house" (1 Kings 2:29-31).

What We Are Not Told

No children of Joab are named anywhere in the record. His father appears only as the husband of Zeruiah, unnamed. Beyond the battle notices and administrative lists at 1 Chronicles 11:6, 11:8, 11:20, 11:26, 11:39, 18:15, 19:8, 19:10, 19:14-15, 20:1, 26:28, 27:7, 27:34, 2 Samuel 2:13-14, 2:26-28, 10:13-14, 12:26-27 and 1 Kings 11:15-16, Scripture gives us no inner life, no repentance, no last words but the four spoken at the altar.

The dossier carries no New Testament references for Joab, so no line is drawn beyond the Old Testament here. What stands is the record itself: a commander who warned a king about guilt, and who died under a sentence for blood shed without cause.