Bible Strands
2 Samuel 4:7
They had entered the house while Ish-bosheth was lying on his bed, and having stabbed and killed him, they beheaded him, took his head, and traveled all night by way of the Arabah.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Rechab and Baanah carry out a premeditated killing inside Ish-bosheth’s sleeping chamber, then travel through the night to Hebron to present the severed head to David.
The words — שֹׁכֵב (sho.Khev) describes the king’s defenseless posture of lying down, and מִטּתוֹ (mi.ta.T/o) fixes the location as his bed, emphasizing the violation of domestic safety.
The thread — The courier motif of delivering a royal head appears when David brings Goliath’s head to Jerusalem (1 Samuel 17:54) and when messengers report Saul’s death (1 Samuel 31:9), while the nocturnal route echoes Abner’s march through the Arabah (2 Samuel 2:29).
Why it lands — The passage records the physical sequence of an assassination and a midnight journey without commentary, requiring the reader to measure the assassins’ claimed divine mandate against the text’s own account of their violent method.
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
For when they came into the house, he lay on his bed in his bedchamber, and they smote him, and slew him, and beheaded him, and took his head, and gat them away through the plain all night.
Cross-references
- 1 Samuel 17:54 David took the head of the Philistine and brought it to Jerusalem, and he put Goliath’s weapons in his own tent.
- 1 Samuel 31:9 They cut off Saul’s head, stripped off his armor, and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to proclaim the news in the temples of their idols and among their people.
- 2 Samuel 2:29 And all that night Abner and his men marched through the Arabah. They crossed the Jordan, marched all morning, and arrived at Mahanaim.
- 2 Kings 10:6 Then Jehu wrote them a second letter and said: “If you are on my side, and if you will obey me, then bring the heads of your master’s sons to me at Jezreel by this time tomorrow.” Now the sons of the king, seventy in all, were being brought up by the leading men of the city.
- Matthew 14:11 John’s head was brought in on a platter and presented to the girl, who carried it to her mother.
- Mark 6:28 The man brought John’s head on a platter and presented it to the girl, who gave it to her mother.