Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

ABISHAI

(Heb. ʾăḇîšay)

One of the three sons of Zeruiah, David’s sister, who served with David when he fled Saul’s court (1 Sam. 22:1-2). Abishai held the special position of commander of David’s elite warriors — the šălîšîm (2 Sam. 23:18-19) — among whom he was also the most renowned. One vignette credits Abishai with saving David’s life during the Philistine wars (2 Sam. 21:16-17). Within David’s administration, Abishai appears as a kind of second-in-command of the army, and he is typical of David’s inner circle of advisors with his combination of loyalty to, yet independence from, the king.

Abishai is conspicuously absent from the intrigue surrounding the struggle between Solomon and Adonijah for the throne (1 Kgs. 1–2), and indeed he may have died sometime before it began. Benaiah ben Jehoiada appears here as the leader of David’s warrior elite.

Abishai and his brother Joab also provide a key foil for the text’s explication of David’s personality. The record implicates Abishai in Joab’s revenge slaying of Abner the son of Ner (2 Sam. 3:30), and it lumps him with Joab in David’s condemnation of “the sons of Zeruiah” as ruthless men of blood (3:39; 16:10). While David appears to renounce violence toward his enemies (1 Sam. 26:6-12; 2 Sam. 16:9-14), Abishai and Joab appear as the proverbial violent men, whose ruthless deeds will overtake them. At the same time the writer appreciates — and clearly reveals — the irony in David’s condemnation of the very men upon whose shoulders his kingdom’s security clearly rests.

Bibliography. D. G. Schley, “Joab and David: Ties of Blood and Power,” in History and Interpretation, ed. M. P. Graham, W. P. Brown, and J. K. Kuan (Sheffield, 1993), 90-105.

Donald G. Schley

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

ABISHAI

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)