Bible Strands
2 Samuel 13:23
Two years later, when Absalom’s sheepshearers were at Baal-hazor near Ephraim, he invited all the sons of the king.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Absalom acts two years after Amnon’s violation of Tamar, inviting all the king’s sons to a shearing festival at Baal-hazor near Ephraim. The invitation follows his silent hatred toward Amnon and precedes his direct request to King David for attendance.
The words — The Hebrew גֹּזְזִים (goz-zim) literally means “shearers” and denotes the workers conducting a sheep-shearing, a known occasion for feasting and social gathering. The phrase לִשְׁנַתַּיִם יָמִים (li-sh-na-ta-yim ya-mim) translates to “to two years,” marking the elapsed time since the preceding crime.
The thread — Shearing events function as narrative pivots elsewhere, such as Judah’s post-mourning journey in Genesis 38:12 and David’s encounter with Nabal in 1 Samuel 25:2. These parallels establish sheep-shearing as a culturally recognized setting for hospitality and sudden political or personal encounters.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition of how routine agricultural celebrations mask deliberate human agendas. It requires the reader to observe how calculated invitations serve as the mechanism for executing long-held vengeance.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And it came to pass after two full years, that Absalom had sheepshearers in Baal–hazor, which is beside Ephraim: and Absalom invited all the king’s sons.
Cross-references
- Genesis 38:12 After a long time Judah’s wife, the daughter of Shua, died. When Judah had finished mourning, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite went up to his sheepshearers at Timnah.
- 1 Samuel 25:4 While David was in the wilderness, he heard that Nabal was shearing sheep.
- 1 Samuel 25:2 Now there was a man in Maon whose business was in Carmel. He was a very wealthy man with a thousand goats and three thousand sheep, which he was shearing in Carmel.
- 1 Samuel 25:7 Now I hear that it is time for shearing. When your shepherds were with us, we did not harass them, and nothing of theirs was missing the whole time they were in Carmel.
- 1 Samuel 25:36 When Abigail returned to Nabal, there he was in the house, holding a feast fit for a king, in high spirits and very drunk. So she told him nothing until morning light.
- 1 Kings 1:9 And Adonijah sacrificed sheep, oxen, and fattened calves near the stone of Zoheleth, which is next to En-rogel. He invited all his royal brothers and all the men of Judah who were servants of the king.
- 1 Kings 1:19 And he has sacrificed an abundance of oxen, fattened calves, and sheep, and has invited all the other sons of the king, as well as Abiathar the priest and Joab the commander of the army. But he has not invited your servant Solomon.
- 1 Kings 1:25 For today he has gone down and sacrificed an abundance of oxen, fattened calves, and sheep, and has invited all the sons of the king, the commanders of the army, and Abiathar the priest. And behold, they are eating and drinking before him, saying, ‘Long live King Adonijah!’
- 2 Kings 3:4 Now Mesha king of Moab was a sheep breeder, and he would render to the king of Israel a hundred thousand lambs and the wool of a hundred thousand rams.
- 2 Chronicles 26:10 Since he had much livestock in the foothills and in the plain, he built towers in the desert and dug many cisterns. And since he was a lover of the soil, he had farmers and vinedressers in the hill country and in the fertile fields.