2 Samuel 19:1-8
3. the people gat them by stealth . . . to the city—The rumor of the king's disconsolate condition spread a universal and unseasonable gloom. His troops, instead of being welcomed back (as a victorious army always was) with music and other demonstrations of public joy, slunk secretly and silently into the city, as if ashamed after the commission of some crime.
4. the king covered his face—one of the usual signs of mourning (see on 2Sa 15:30).
5. Thou hast shamed . . . the faces of all thy servants—by withdrawing thyself to indulge in grief, as if their services were disagreeable and their devotion irksome to thee. Instead of hailing their return with joy and gratitude, thou hast refused them the small gratification of seeing thee. Joab's remonstrance was right and necessary, but it was made with harshness. He was one of those persons who spoil their important services by the insolence of their manners, and who always awaken a feeling of obligation in those to whom they render any services. He spoke to David in a tone of hauteur that ill became a subject to show towards his king.
7. Now . . . arise, go forth, and speak comfortably unto thy servants—The king felt the truth of Joab's reprimand; but the threat by which it was enforced, grounded as it was on the general's unbounded popularity with the army, showed him to be a dangerous person; and that circumstance, together with the violation of an express order to deal gently for his sake with Absalom, produced in David's mind a settled hatred, which was strongly manifested in his last directions to Solomon.
8. the king arose, and sat in the gate—He appeared daily in the usual place for the hearing of causes.
all the people came before the king—that is, the loyal natives who had been faithful to his government, and fought in his cause. Israel had fled—that is, the adherents of Absalom, who, on his defeat, had dispersed and saved themselves by flight.2Sa 19:9-43. THE ISRAELITES BRING THE KING BACK.