A prolonged conflict follows between Ish-Bosheth's forces under Abner and David's forces under Joab, weakening steadily until Abner defects to David and is then murdered by Joab in revenge for his brother, and Ish-Bosheth is finally assassinated by his own officers.
Further context
2 min readThe war opens with something that reads like a contest and turns into a massacre. Abner and Joab, the two army commanders, meet at the pool of Gibeon and sit down on opposite sides of it. Abner proposes that some of the young men fight hand to hand in front of them. Twelve are chosen from each side, and every one of the twenty-four grabs his opponent by the head and drives a dagger into his side, and they all fall down together. The place is named the field of daggers.
The general engagement that follows goes badly for Abner.
What decides the war is a chase. Asahel, Joab's youngest brother, is as fleet-footed as a wild gazelle and goes after Abner without turning aside. Abner twice tells him to turn away and take somebody else's equipment, and asks how he could look Joab in the face if he killed him. Asahel refuses, and Abner thrusts the butt of his spear backwards into his stomach so that it comes out through his back. That killing produces a blood feud between Abner and Joab that outlives the war.
Two years is the figure given for Ish-Bosheth's reign, against David's seven and a half at Hebron, and the gap between those numbers is unexplained. Most reconstructions posit a period after Gilboa in which the north had no functioning king at all before Abner installed one.
The house of Saul then destroys itself from inside. Ish-Bosheth accuses Abner of sleeping with one of Saul's concubines, which in that world is a claim on the throne, and Abner's reaction is fury and a threat to hand the whole kingdom over to David. Ish-Bosheth is too afraid of him to answer, which tells you exactly who was running the north.
Abner opens negotiations, comes to Hebron, is received at a feast and leaves in peace. Joab, who was away, comes back, tells David he has been deceived, and sends messengers to bring Abner back without the king knowing. He takes him aside at the gateway as though to speak privately and stabs him in the stomach, for the blood of Asahel.
David curses Joab's house publicly, walks behind the bier and weeps at the grave, and fasts all day, and the whole nation notices that the king had no part in it.
Ish-Bosheth is murdered shortly afterwards by two of his own officers while he is asleep at noon, and they bring his head to Hebron expecting a reward. David has them executed, their hands and feet cut off and their bodies hung by the pool.
One woman holds the northern position together for as long as it lasts. Rizpah, Saul's concubine, is the subject of the quarrel that breaks Abner and Ish-Bosheth apart, and she appears again years later guarding the bodies of seven of Saul's descendants on a hillside through an entire harvest season, keeping the birds off by day and the animals off by night, until David is shamed into burying them properly.
Every rival is dead and he has killed none of them.