2 Samuel Figures

"Everybody Loves David""Everybody Loves David"—if they'd had sitcoms in roughly 1000 B.C., they might have had one with a title like this. God, especially, loves David—but so do a good number o...

In Your Corner, Pal In the story of David's life, God is the man in his corner—the Paulie to his Rocky, massaging his shoulders and providing encouraging tough-talk. It would be fair to say that,...

Man on a Mission Absalom is a daring figure—even though he's doomed, he deserves some admiration, despite doing some things that are pretty disturbing. He reacts intensely to his father's refusal...

We don't really get much insight into Bathsheba's thought processes or psychology. We know that she's quite a looker, which causes David to fall for her and act incredibly wickedly in the aftermath...

Nathan's a good dude. He speaks truth to power, calling out David for murdering Uriah and stealing Bathsheba from him. Really, that's his role in 2 Samuel. But it's a big one, dealing with one of t...

Joab shows up quite a bit in 2 Samuel—and he doesn't exactly come out smelling like roses. But to be fair, his actions are all pretty understandable. He's what you might call a "realist", someone...

Abner is originally the chief general of Saul's son Ishbaal's army, fighting against David. But he defects from Ishbaal's side when Ishbaal takes issue with the fact that Abner is sleeping with one...

Ahithophel is a wise counselor—though not a particularly loyal one, since he abandons David to give advice to his rebellious son, Absalom. Everyone esteems his counsel and considers it to be almo...

The women in this book endure an intense amount of suffering, and David's daughter, Tamar, is certainly no exception. She's raped by her own half-brother, Amnon, and is forced to endure her father'...

Amnon, David's first-born son, is a wholly repulsive character: he rapes his own half-sister… and that about sums him up. Aside from this horrifying event, there really isn't that much to say abo...

Ishbaal is one of Saul's four sons and David's main rival to be the undisputed king of all Israel. Ishbaal puts up a good fight, at first—with the help of his general, Abner. But ultimately, he m...

There's not too much to say about Jonadab. He's a crafty guy who tells Amnon that if he wants to seduce his sister, he should pretend to be sick and get her to make cakes for him. This is pretty sk...

Poor Uriah guy gets a really raw deal. Plenty of people wind up getting unfairly attacked, injured, or killed in 2 Samuel: Tamar, Amasa, Ishbaal, and others. But Uriah, a non-Jew and a Hittite, get...

Rizpah is another character who has nothing but suffering and a hard time. The same former concubine for Saul that Abner slept with, she loses all of her sons when David gives seven of Saul's sons...

Michal is one of David's wives and one of Saul's daughters. Although David had originally won her as his wife in 1 Samuel in exchange for "one hundred Philistine foreskins" (which he obtains by kil...

Joab hires this wise woman from Tekoa to try to get David to forgive his son Absalom and let him back into the Jerusalem. She starts by telling David a story that closely mirrors his own, saying th...

AbishaiAbishai, the brother of Joab, is one of David's most fearsome warriors. He's not quite one of the three greatest soldiers in the whole army ("The Mighty Three"), but he's still an exceptiona...