David’s Final Hours —

The king was definitely on the decline and then, only a few years later (and a few chapters later) we find David “old and well advanced in years” (1 Kings 1:1). He was now 70 and his health was really failing him. Bedridden and unable to keep warm, his servants arrange for a beautiful young Shunammite woman named Abishag to take care of him and to lie in his arms, though he does not engage intimately with her (perhaps because he is unable to). Some scholars suggest that “David’s servants may have been testing his virility.”[1] In that day and culture impotence was a sign of fragility and weakness. For example, in a Sumerian lament from the third millennium BC it is said: “My youthful vigor has fled my thighs like a runaway donkey.”[2] David’s weakness may very well have been exactly what spurred on his son Adonijah to make an illegitimate attempt at the throne. Fortunately, David’s long-time friend and prophet Nathan discovered this conspiracy and when he and Bathsheba brought it to David’s attention, the king immediately appointed Solomon as the rightful monarch of Israel firmly securing the kingdom.

After David gives important instructions to Solomon the Bible records his death at the age of 70[3]: “Then David slept with his fathers and was buried in [Jerusalem] the city of David. And the time that David reigned over Israel was forty years.” (1 Kings 2:10-11). As the nineteenth century reverend James Freeman pointed out, “This was a departure from the ordinary custom, as the dead were usually buried outside the cities. It was therefore a mark of high honor to the remains of the departed king that he was buried within the city [of Jerusalem].”[4] As a matter of fact, “The royal tombs of David and his progeny were the only burials to be located within the confines of Jerusalem…The tomb was known as late as the first century AD (cf. Ac 2:29), but the modern-day [tomb attributed to David] is a much later construction on a nearby hill erroneously ascribed to [him] by Crusader pilgrims.”[5]