Bible Strands
2 Samuel 19:5
Then Joab went into the house and said to the king, “Today you have disgraced all your servants who have saved your life and the lives of your sons and daughters, of your wives, and of your concubines.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Joab enters the royal house to confront David immediately after the king’s public lament for Absalom. He addresses the monarch while the court witnesses the king’s grief over those who fought to preserve his life and dynasty.
The words — The Hebrew הֹבַשְׁתָּה (ho.Vash.ta) means “you have put to shame,” paired with הַ/יּוֹם (hai./Yom) for “this day,” marking the timing as immediate and public. These terms frame the king’s emotional display as a present act of humiliation rather than private sorrow.
The thread — The passage echoes themes of deliverance and shame found in Nehemiah 9:27 and Psalm 18:47, where God’s people cry out in distress and God acts as their avenger and protector. The contrast between human mourning and divine rescue runs through Psalm 3:8, which declares that salvation belongs to the LORD.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that public leadership requires weighing personal grief against the cost to those who served. It asks the reader to see how unchecked emotion can undermine the very people who secured survival.
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 Joab came into the house to the king, and said, Thou hast shamed this day the faces of all thy servants, which this day have saved thy life, and the lives of thy sons and of thy daughters, and the lives of thy wives, and the lives of thy concubines;
Cross-references
- Nehemiah 9:27 So You delivered them into the hands of enemies who oppressed them, and in their time of distress they cried out to You. From heaven You heard them, and in Your great compassion You gave them deliverers who saved them from the hands of their enemies.
- Psalms 3:8 Salvation belongs to the LORD; may Your blessing be on Your people. Selah
- Psalms 18:47 the God who avenges me and subdues nations beneath me,