1 Kings 1:21

_OTHERWISE IT SHALL COME TO PASS, WHEN MY LORD THE KING SHALL SLEEP WITH HIS FATHERS, THAT I AND MY SON SOLOMON SHALL BE COUNTED OFFENDERS._ I and my son ... shall be counted offenders - i:e., slain, according to the barbarous usage of the East toward all who are rivals to the throne....

11-31 Observe Nathan's address to Bathsheba. Let me give thee counsel how to save thy own life, and the life of thy son. Such as this is the counsel Christ's ministers give us in his name, to give all diligence, not only that no man take our crown, Revelation 3:11, but that we save our lives, even the lives of our souls. David made a solemn declaration of his firm cleaving to his former resolution, that Solomon should be his successor. Even the recollection of the distresses from which the Lord redeemed him, increased his comfort, inspired his hopes, and animated him to his duty, under the decays of nature and the approach of death....

Verse 1 Kings 1:21. _SHALL BE COUNTED OFFENDERS._] When Adonijah and his party shall find that I and my son have had this promise from thee by oath, he will slay us both....

SHALL SLEEP - This euphemism for death, rare in the early Scriptures - being found only once in the Pentateuch (margin reference.), and once also in the historical books before Kings 2 Samuel 7:12 - becomes in Kings and Chronicles the ordinary mode of speech (see 1 Kings 2:10; 1 Kings 11:43, etc.; 2Ch 9:31; 2 Chronicles 12:16, etc.). David uses the metaphor in one psalm Psalms 13:3. In the later Scriptures it is, of course, common. ...

EXPOSITION THE REVOLT OF ADONIJAH AND THE ACCESSION OF SOLOMON.—The first chapter of this book is occupied with the accession of Solomon and with the circumstances which preceded, marked, and followed that event. The author, or compiler, evidently considered that his work properly began with the reign of Israel's third king, and David's illness and death are only introduced into the narrative because they necessitated a hasty and premature coronation of Solomon, and exercised an important influence on the beginning of his reign (1 Kings 2:1). In the natural order of events, Solomon would not have succeeded until his father's death, but Adonijah's attempt to possess himself of the kingdom required the immediate elevation of Sol

OTHERWISE IT SHALL COME TO PASS, WHEN MY LORD THE KING SHALL SLEEP WITH HIS FATHERS,.... That is, shall die, and be buried in the sepulchre of his ancestors, where he shall lie till he awakes in the morning of the resurrection: THAT I AND MY SON SOLOMON SHALL BE COUNTED OFFENDERS; or "sinners" g; not as if she would be reckoned an adulteress, and her son as illegitimate, as some think, and so be branded and treated as such; but as being traitors, making pretensions to the throne, she on the behalf of her son, and he for himself, when he had no right to it, being the younger son, and not declared successor by his father. g הטאים "peccatores", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, c....

ANALYSIS AND ANNOTATIONS I. DAVID'S LAST DAYS AND THE CROWNING OF SOLOMON 1. Adonijah's Exaltation to be King CHAPTER 1:1-27 _ 1. David's decrepitude (1 Kings 1:1)_ 2. Adonijah's self-exaltation (1 Kings 1:5) 3. The plot of Nathan and Bath-sheba (1 Kings 1:10) 4. Bath-sheba and Nathan before the king (1 Kings 1:15) David was about 70 years old and extremely feeble. The strenuous life he had led, the exposures and hardships of his youth, the cares and anxieties of his reign, and the chastenings through which he passed on account of his great sin, and much else were responsible for thi

LAST DAYS OF DAVID AND ACCESSION OF SOLOMON. This chapter with the following has many analogies with the court history of David (2 Samuel 11-20). The narrative bears every sign of an authentic account of actual events, told with complete impartiality, and without any attempt to comment favourably or otherwise on the events related. David is represented as a very aged man nursed by his youngest wife, Abishag the Shunammite (1 Kings 1:3). Her beauty is especially noticed as it may have caused the death of David's son, Adonijah. Shunem, her native place, was a slope overlooking the plain of Esdraelon near Jezreel, and she is the Shulammite in the Song of Songs (Ca. 1 Kings 6:13). The pivot around which all revolves is the succession. The chief claimant was Adonijah the son of Haggith ...

SLEEP WITH HIS FATHERS. See note on Deuteronomy 31:16. OFFENDERS. See App-44....

_counted offenders_ The Heb. word is literally -sinners." Bath-sheba does not go so far as Nathan, and say that the lives of herself and her son are in peril, but leaves the king to think what the lot of those offenders would be whom Adonijah knew to have aspired to the throne....