2 Samuel 20:23

LIST OF DAVID'S CHIEF OFFICERS

"Now Joab was in command of all the army of Israel; and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was in command of the Cherethites and the Pelethites; And Adoram was in charge of the forced labor; and Jehoshaphat the son of Ahilud was the recorder; and Sheva was secretary; and Zadok and Abiathar were priests; and Ira the Jairite was also David's priest."

"With this list of David's chief officers, the narrator closes the history of David's reign. The remaining four chapters of Second Samuel form a kind of appendix."[19]

"Joab was in command of all the army of Israel" (2 Samuel 20:23). "The king did not venture to dispute Joab's right to resume his post of commander-in-chief."[20] As DeHoff said, "Joab had murdered Amasa and seized supreme command. David was not deceived as to the kind of man Joab was, but he needed him as a leader at that time."[21]

The similarity of this list and the one in 2 Samuel 8:16-18 has been made the basis of claiming the lists to be variations of the same listing; but, as Keil wrote, "This list belongs to a later period in David's reign."[22] This is certainly true, because David's use of forced labor did not take place in the first part of his reign but in the latter part of it. This use of forced labor by David was adopted by his son Solomon and greatly developed by him.[23] It was this very thing that fueled the rebellion against Solomon's son Rehoboam.

"And Ira ... was also David's priest" (2 Samuel 20:26). The word priest here is probably a reference not to a priest at all, but to one of the officials in David's government. (See a thorough discussion of this in my commentary on 2 Samuel 8, pp. 110-112.)

David never forgave Joab for the murder of Absalom, Abner and Amasa; and near the end of his life, David left orders for his son Solomon to destroy Joab. Still, evil as Joab surely was, he was the principal military architect of building and sustaining the throne of David, a fact that David never seemed to recognize.