2 Samuel 15–20

Chapters 2 Sam 15-20 deal with a time of crisis in David's reign. The disaster begins in the royal family, but affects the whole country. David is temporarily chased from the throne, and in the end the personal union between Judah and Israel threatens to break up. David survives it all: partly unconvincingly, partly admirably. In the end he is no longer the always happy one, but a badly marked ruler and man, probably also a tyrant. The literary tradition of it begins early. The basis is an Amnon-Abshalom novella, which may have been written by a character named in the text. It was, together with some pieces from the "Narratives of the Rise and Fall of the Saulides", the tradition of the Sheba ben Bichris rebellion and a list of ministers from the court archives are part of the "Courtly Narrative Works of the First Kings of Israel", which originated in the Middle Ages. The presentation is of extraordinary literary quality, anthropological wisdom and theological depth.