2 Samuel 20:3

DAVID PUTS HIS TEN CONCUBINES IN JAIL FOR LIFE

"And David came to his house at Jerusalem; and the king took the ten concubines whom he had left to care for the house, and put them in a house under guard, and provided for them, but did not go in to them. So they were shut up till the day of their death, living as if in widowhood."

This writer finds no way to justify this tragic treatment of ten faithful concubines who had committed no crime, who were guilty of no unfaithfulness, and who presumably had taken good care of things during David's absence. Not the least of David's sins was his polygamous marriages, which were not only wrong in his case but provided the royal example for the wholesale debauchery of his son Solomon.

"David ... put them in a house under guard ... so they were shut up till the day of their death" (2 Samuel 20:3). Oh yes, the text says that the king "provided for them," but it was still the provision that any jailor gives his prisoners. We feel disappointment at the tenderness with which many scholars have written about this contemptible act of King David.