2 Samuel 4:1

ISBOSHETH WAS MURDERED;

HIS MURDERERS WERE EXECUTED;

ABNER'S DEATH WAS A DISASTER FOR ISHBOSHETH

"When Ishbosheth, Saul's son, heard that Abner had died at Hebron, his courage failed, and all Israel was dismayed. Now Saul's son had two men who were captains of raiding bands; the name of the one was Baanah, and the name of the other Rechab, sons of Rimmon a man of Benjamin from Beeroth (for Beeroth is also reckoned to Benjamin; the Beerothites fled to Gittaim, and have been sojourners there to this day)."

"Abner died at Hebron ... (Ishbosheth's) courage failed ... all Israel was dismayed" (2 Samuel 4:1). This brings us very near to the end of the kingdom of Ishbosheth.

"Baanah ... Rechab, sons of Rimmon" (2 Samuel 4:2). "These were not Israelites, but Amorites or Canaanites, whose father was from a Gibeonite city; they were mercenaries in Ishbosheth's army."[1] The story of the Gibeonites is found in Joshua 9. They deceived Israel into making a covenant with them by a clever device of pretending to be from a far distant country.

The Gibeonites were savagely persecuted by Saul (2 Samuel 21:1ff) who put many of them to death; and that could possibly account for the basic hatred of Saul's house which might have entered into the motivation for these two brothers to murder Ishbosheth. As a result of that persecution, the Gibeonites fled to Gittaim, and the town of Beeroth was reckoned to Saul's tribe, Benjamin.

"The Beerothites fled to Gittaim" (2 Samuel 4:3). It is amazing that Adam Clarke identified this place with "Gath"' basing his opinion upon the form of the name itself.[2] The Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia (1975) gives the same identification, suggesting that, "Some of the references to Gath are actually concerned with Gittaim."[3] Anson F. Rainey identified the location of Gittaim with a forty-acre site southeast of the present town of Ras Abu Amid, where there was once a well-fortified town, at the same time preferring that location for the Philistine city of Gath much farther north than its traditional location in the extreme south of Philistia.[4]

"The Beerothites have been sojourners there to this day" (2 Samuel 4:3). All this means is that the Gibeonites from Beeroth were still at Gittaim when some copyist later transcribed this page, or when the author of the Books of Samuel wrote this passage. There is no excuse whatever in this and similar passages for postulating the composition of these books centuries later than the events recorded. There is also the possibility that such passages are interpolations by later copyists.