2 Samuel 23:20

Benaiah the son of Jehoiada. He was a very important person throughout David's reign, being the commander of the body guard' ( 2 Samuel 8:18 ), and general of the third brigade of twenty-four thousand men ( 1 Chronicles 27:5 ). The meaning of the description given of him there is disputed; but probably it should be translated, "Benaiah the son of Jehoiada the priest, as head," that is, of the brigade. He was thus the son of the Jehoiada who was leader of the house of Aaron, and whose coming to Hebron with three thousand seven hundred martial priests did so much to make David king of all Israel ( 1 Chronicles 12:27 ). Subsequently he took the side of Solomon against Adonijah, and was rewarded by being made commander-in-chief, in place of Joab ( 1 Kings 2:35 ). Kabzeel . An unidentified place in the south of Judah, on the Edomite border ( Joshua 15:21 ), called Jekabzeel in Nehemiah 11:25 . Two lionlike men of Moab. The Septuagint reads, "the two sons of Ariel of Moab." which the Revised Version adopts. "Ariel" means "lion of God," and is a name given to Jerusalem in Isaiah 29:1 , Isaiah 29:2 . The Syriac supports the Authorized Version in understanding by the term "heroes," or "champions;" but the use of poetical language in a prosaic catalogue is so strange that the Septuagint is probably right. If so, Ariel is the proper name of the King of Moab and the achievement took place in the war recorded in 2 Samuel 8:2 . A lion. This achievement would be as gratefully remembered as the killing of a man eating tiger by the natives in India. A lion, driven by the cold from the forests, had made its lair in a dry tank near some town, and thence preyed upon the inhabitants as they went in and out of the city. And Benaiah had pity upon them, and came to the rescue, and went down into the pit, and, at the risk of his life, slew the lion.