[65] Ecclus. xvi. 1-3. He must have had at least twenty sons, and at least one daughter (2 Sam. iii. 1-5, v. 14-16; 1 Chron. iii. 1-9, xiv. 3-7). Josephus again (Antt., VII. iii. 3) has a different list.
[66] Kohanim.
[67] From the fact that his son Eliada (2 Sam. v. 16) is called Beeliada (i.e., "Baal knows") in 1 Chron. xiv. 7, it is surely a precarious inference that "now and then he paid his homage to some Baal, perhaps to please one of his foreign wives" (Van Oort, Bible for Young People, iii. 84). The true explanation seems to be that at one time Baal, "Lord," was not regarded as an unauthorised title for Jehovah. The fact that David once had teraphim in his house (1 Sam. xix. 13, 16) shows that his advance in knowledge was gradual.
[68] Chileab was either dead, or was of no significance.
[69] 2 Sam. xiii. 39. "The soul of king David longed to go forth unto Absalom."
[70] Max. Tyr., Dissert., 9 (Keil, ad loc.).
[71] In 2 Sam. xv. 7 we should certainly alter "forty" into four.
[72] Rephaim seems a more probable reading than Ephraim in 2 Sam. xviii. 6; see Josh. xvii. 15, 18. Yet the name "Ephraim" may have been given to this transjordanic wood. The notion that he hung by his hair is only a conjecture, and not a probable one.
[73] His three sons had pre-deceased him; his beautiful daughter Tamar (2 Sam. xiv. 27) became the wife of Rehoboam. She is called Maachah in 1 Kings xv. 2, and the LXX. addition to 2 Sam. xiv. 27 says that she bore both names. The so-called tomb of Absalom in the Valley of Hebron is of Asmonæan and Herodian origin.
[74] Morier tells us that in Persia "runners" before the king's horses are an indispensable adjunct of his state.