Anointed at Hebron in chapter 2, then king of all Israel in chapter 5. Takes Jerusalem from the Jebusites and makes it his capital. Brings the ark up with dancing and is mocked by his wife Michal for it. Receives the unconditional dynastic promise from Nathan in chapter 7. Wins every war he fights. Then, in chapter 11, stays home from the Ammonite campaign, sees Bathsheba from the roof, and sets the second half of the book in motion. Mourns the child that dies. Mourns Amnon. Mourns Absalom, who has driven him from his throne and is pursuing him across the Jordan. Returns to Jerusalem after Joab's rebuke. Closes the book with a plague, a psalm, and the purchase of a threshing floor that will become the site of the temple. The most fully realised individual in the Hebrew Bible — at the height of his power and in the depths of his failure, consistently and without flattery.
2 Samuel — who's who
David's court — the household of a king who has everything and gives most of it away.
2 Samuel has a relatively contained cast built around David's family and his military entourage. The central figures are David himself, his prophet Nathan, his general Joab, his wife Bathsheba, and his son Absalom. Almost every named figure in the cast is there because of their relationship to David — either serving his power or suffering its consequences.
The king and his prophet
The court prophet of David's reign — not a wilderness figure but a man with direct access to the king. He delivers the dynastic promise in chapter 7, immediately after telling David he can build the temple: God reverses Nathan's own initial answer in the same night. He returns in chapter 12 with the parable of the ewe lamb and the three-syllable indictment that has echoed through every later literature. He appears again at the end of David's life in 1 Kings to engineer Solomon's succession against Adonijah's bid. Throughout, he is the figure who proves that the prophetic office in Israel is not subordinate to the throne.
The general and the soldiers
Son of David's sister Zeruiah, commander of the army from the early Hebron years to the end. He kills Abner, David's rival's general, in revenge for his brother Asahel — over the king's objections. He carries out the military order that exposes Uriah to death at the wall. He kills Absalom in the oak at the wood of Ephraim against David's explicit command. He drags the king back into the gate at Mahanaim with a speech of devastating political clarity: you are shaming the army that saved you; get up and speak to them or they will all be gone tonight. He is the book's great study of the man of action serving a man of feeling, and the text is scrupulously honest about what such service costs both of them.
A Hittite — a foreigner who has joined David's army and David's God. Listed by name in the roll call of the mighty men at the end of the book. Summoned home from the front by the king, he refuses to sleep at home while the ark and the army are in the field: As thou livest, and as thy soul liveth, I will not do this thing. The line is one of the most uncomfortable in the book; it shows the soldier behaving by the code David himself would have honoured a few years earlier. He carries, unknowing, the letter that orders his death. He is killed at the wall of Rabbah. His shadow in the book is longer than the chapter that contains him.
The women of the court
Introduced in chapter 11 as the woman David sees from the roof. The Hebrew gives her almost no interior life in the chapter that bears her body — she appears, conceives, sends word to the king, mourns Uriah, is gathered into David's house, and bears a son who dies. The narrative will not let the reader settle the question of her consent; the verbs are all David's, and the gap is part of what the chapter forces the reader to feel. She reappears in 1 Kings to secure Solomon's succession. Her name appears in the genealogy that opens the New Testament, where Matthew calls her not Bathsheba but her that had been the wife of Urias — as if the gospel writer too could not let the name stand without the wound attached.
David's daughter by Maacah, full sister of Absalom and half-sister of Amnon. The subject of chapter 13's opening catastrophe. Amnon lures her into his chamber under pretext of illness, rapes her, and then — in the phrase the narrator gives without softening — hates her with a hatred greater than his love. He throws her out. She goes to live as a desolate woman in Absalom's house. David hears and does nothing. Her desolation is the seed of Absalom's revenge and the first outworking of Nathan's sentence that the sword shall not depart from David's house.
The sons
David's third son, by Maacah daughter of the king of Geshur. Beautiful in a way the narrative pauses to describe — from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him — and famous for his hair, which he weighed annually. Avenges the rape of his sister Tamar by having Amnon killed at a sheep-shearing feast. Flees to Geshur for three years, is brought back to Jerusalem by Joab's stratagem, reconciled formally to the king in chapter 14, and spends four years building a political faction. Proclaimed king at Hebron; drives David from Jerusalem barefoot and weeping; sleeps with David's concubines on the roof in deliberate public humiliation; pursues David's army across the Jordan. Caught by his hair in the branches of a great oak in the wood of Ephraim and run through by Joab against the king's orders. David's lament for him — O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! — is the book's emotional climax.
David's eldest son, by Ahinoam of Jezreel. Falls obsessively in love with his half-sister Tamar, engineers her into his chamber with a false sickness, rapes her, and then hates her with a hatred greater than his love and throws her out. David is furious but does nothing — possibly because Amnon is his firstborn and beloved. Two years later Absalom has him killed at a sheep-shearing feast. His death is the first outworking of Nathan's sentence and the hinge on which Absalom's story turns.