Chapter 24
David & Friendship
Beyond Jonathan — Hushai who saved the kingdom, Ittai the loyal foreigner, Barzillai the old provider, the mighty men who broke through enemy lines for a cup of water, and the shadow side of friendship in Joab
Why This Chapter Exists Separately
Chapter 4 walks through David and Jonathan as the defining friendship of David's young life — the covenant in 1 Samuel 18 and 20, the warning at the field of arrows, the parting in the wilderness of Ziph where Jonathan "strengthened David's hand in God" (1 Sam 23:16), the funeral lament in 2 Samuel 1. That chapter covers what is arguably the most studied friendship in the Old Testament.
But David's life was full of other friendships. Some of them saved his throne. Some of them carried him in exile. Some of them died with broken bodies and a cup of water in their hands. And some — most famously Joab — were friendships in form but not in spirit, loyalty without love, the dark side of covenant attachment. To study David and miss these other friendships is to miss most of his relational life. Jonathan was the foundation; this chapter is what was built on it.
Hushai the Archite: The Friend Who Saved the Kingdom
When Absalom's revolt drove David from Jerusalem (2 Samuel 15:13–37), David's most catastrophic moment came when he heard that his own counselor Ahithophel had defected to Absalom. Ahithophel was the most respected political mind in the kingdom — the text says his counsel was "as if one inquired of the word of God" (2 Sam 16:23). With Ahithophel directing Absalom, David's chances of recovering the throne dropped sharply.
And then, as David climbed weeping up the Mount of Olives with his head covered and his feet bare, Hushai the Archite came to meet him — "his coat torn and dust on his head" (2 Sam 15:32). The signs of mourning. Hushai had come prepared to share David's exile.
David did something with Hushai that he could not have done with Jonathan, who was decades dead. He asked Hushai to not share his exile. He asked Hushai to do something harder. Go back to Jerusalem. Present yourself to Absalom. Say you will serve the new king. Become the counter to Ahithophel inside Absalom's own war room. "Then you can thwart the counsel of Ahithophel for me."
Hushai is identified throughout this passage as "David's friend" — re'eh ha-melek, "the king's companion." It is not merely a description; it is a court title (also held by Zabud son of Nathan under Solomon, 1 Kings 4:5). To be "the king's friend" was an office. But this office is tested when David asks Hushai to wear a deception, to live a daily lie inside Absalom's court, to play the role of a defector when in reality he was the king's deepest plant.
Hushai went. He presented himself to Absalom with the words "Long live the king! Long live the king!" Absalom, baffled, asked why Hushai had not gone with his master. Hushai answered: "No! For whom the LORD, this people, and all the men of Israel have chosen, his I will be, and with him I will remain. Besides, whom should I serve? Should I not serve in the presence of his son?" Every word a double meaning. The king Hushai is naming is David, not Absalom. The hearer hears one thing; the speaker means another.
When Ahithophel gave his strategic counsel — pursue David tonight with twelve thousand men, while David is weary and weak-handed, and crush him before the kingdom consolidates around the rebellion — the counsel was militarily perfect. Absalom called Hushai in. 2 Samuel 17:5–14 records Hushai's counter-counsel: no, gather all Israel from Dan to Beersheba, then go yourself in person, with overwhelming force, and grind David to powder. The flattery to Absalom's vanity is perfect. The delay it would cause is perfect. The counsel sounds aggressive but is in fact catastrophic — it gives David the time he needs to organize.
And then the verse that contains everything: "For the LORD had ordained to thwart the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the LORD might bring calamity on Absalom" (2 Sam 17:14). Hushai's counsel was accepted not because it was actually better but because God moved Absalom's heart to choose the worse option. Hushai's friendship was the human instrument; God's sovereignty was the deeper cause.
Ahithophel, the brilliant strategist, understood what had just happened. He went home, set his house in order, and hanged himself (2 Sam 17:23). He knew Absalom's revolt was finished the moment Hushai's counsel prevailed. The friend in the room had outweighed the genius in the room. The friend saved the throne.
And then Hushai did one more thing. He immediately sent word through Zadok and Abiathar's sons to David: cross the Jordan tonight; don't lodge at the fords; cross now. Even after the counsel had been accepted, Hushai did not trust Absalom to follow through; he gave David the safety margin he needed. The friend in the enemy's camp was operating two channels at once — the deception and the intelligence pipeline.
Ittai the Gittite: The Foreigner Who Chose Exile
The same chapter — 2 Samuel 15 — contains a second friendship vignette that is, in its own way, even more striking than Hushai. As David was leading the procession of refugees out of Jerusalem, he saw Ittai the Gittite marching with six hundred men from Gath — Philistines who had attached themselves to David's service. David turned to Ittai and said:
David is releasing Ittai from any obligation. Ittai is a Philistine — a foreigner. He has no covenant tie to Israel's God. He has been with David only a short time. He owes David nothing. And David is going into exile with no guarantee of return. Every reason to leave is on the table.
Ittai's answer, in 2 Sam 15:21, is one of the great loyalty oaths of the Old Testament — and it comes from a Gentile: "As the LORD lives, and as my lord the king lives, surely wherever my lord the king may be, whether for death or for life, there also your servant will be."
The form of the oath is striking. Ittai swears by "the LORD" — Yahweh, the God of Israel. He has either converted, or at minimum acknowledged Yahweh as the supreme authority over his life. He swears by the life of the king David — the human authority. And then his commitment, with no caveats: "wherever ... for death or for life ... there also your servant will be." This is Ruth's oath (Ruth 1:16–17) in a male and military register. The Gentile pledging unconditional covenant loyalty to Israel's anointed.
The text says David accepted it. He told Ittai to march on. And by 2 Samuel 18:2, when David organized his army for the decisive battle against Absalom, Ittai is given command of one-third of the entire force — alongside Joab and Abishai, two of David's lifelong commanders. The new foreigner is given command equal to David's blood family. That is the trust Ittai's oath had earned.
What we never hear about Ittai is what happened after the battle. He drops out of the narrative once Absalom is defeated. Some friendships make their entire mark in one season and then quietly fade. Ittai's appearance in Scripture is short. The impression is large.
Barzillai the Gileadite: The Old Man Who Fed an Army
When David, fleeing Absalom, finally crossed the Jordan and reached Mahanaim in the territory east of the river, his army was hungry, exhausted, and in danger. Three men came out to meet him: Shobi the son of Nahash from Rabbah of the Ammonites, Machir the son of Ammiel from Lo-debar, and Barzillai the Gileadite from Rogelim. They brought "beds, basins, pottery, wheat, barley, flour, parched grain, beans, lentils ... honey, curds, sheep, and cheese of the herd, for David and for the people who were with him, to eat; for they said, 'The people are hungry and weary and thirsty in the wilderness.'" (2 Sam 17:27–29).
Three men. The narrative singles out Barzillai for the developed friendship. He was, the text says, "a very great man" — meaning wealthy and prominent — and "a very old man, eighty years old."
The provisioning of David's army in Mahanaim was not a token gift. It was a logistical operation that may well have prevented David's force from collapsing before the battle. Barzillai used his wealth to keep David's exiles alive when no other ally was reachable. The old man's barns kept the king's throne.
After the battle, when David was returning to Jerusalem in triumph, he tried to repay Barzillai. 2 Samuel 19:31–40 records the exchange. David invited Barzillai to come to Jerusalem with him: "Come over with me and I will sustain you with me in Jerusalem."
Barzillai's reply is one of the most beautiful refusals in Scripture, and one of the most clear-eyed self-assessments of old age the Bible records. "How many years have I yet to live, that I should go up with the king to Jerusalem? I am now eighty years old. Can I distinguish between good and bad? Or can your servant taste what I eat or what I drink? Or can I hear anymore the voice of singing men and women? Why then should your servant be an added burden to my lord the king? ... Please let your servant return, that I may die in my own city near the grave of my father and my mother" (2 Sam 19:34–37).
The old man has accomplished his service. He has fed the king's army. He has carried David to the border of his return. And he knows the season of his usefulness in royal company is past. There is a kind of friendship that does not over-stay. Barzillai sees clearly that what he can give David next is not his presence in Jerusalem but his prayers from Rogelim. He asks instead that his servant Chimham go in his place — perhaps a son, perhaps a younger relative, the text does not specify.
And then comes a detail most readers miss. David never forgot Barzillai. On his deathbed, when he was charging Solomon with the things to be done after his death, David said: "But show kindness to the sons of Barzillai the Gileadite, and let them be among those who eat at your table; for they assisted me when I fled from Absalom your brother" (1 Kings 2:7).
Forty years later, on his deathbed, David remembered the wheat and lentils and cheese delivered to a starving army at Mahanaim. A friendship cemented in one operation became a generational pension. The sons of Barzillai ate at Solomon's table for as long as that table stood.
The Mighty Men: Friendship Forged in Combat
2 Samuel 23 and 1 Chronicles 11 catalog David's "mighty men" — three tiers of warriors who attached themselves to David first in the wilderness, then in the kingdom, and who are remembered by name in the canonical text. 2 Samuel 23:8–39 lists thirty-seven of them. 1 Chronicles 11:10–47 expands the list, and 1 Chronicles 12 adds whole units of fighting men who joined David at Ziklag and at Hebron.
The full warrior treatment is for a different chapter (Ch 11). But within the present chapter on friendship, one episode stands out as the densest theological treatment of warrior-comrade loyalty anywhere in Scripture.
2 Samuel 23:13–17: During one of the campaigns against the Philistines, David and his men were holed up in the cave of Adullam, with a Philistine garrison occupying Bethlehem — David's hometown. In a moment of nostalgia (and weariness), David said within hearing of his men, "Oh that someone would give me water to drink from the well of Bethlehem which is by the gate!"
It was a wish, not an order. The well was behind enemy lines. There was no tactical reason to take it. David spoke a homesick longing, the way a tired soldier might at the end of a hard day.
"So the three mighty men broke through the camp of the Philistines, and drew water from the well of Bethlehem which was by the gate, and took it and brought it to David" (2 Sam 23:16). They risked their lives — not for an order, not for strategy, not for any reward — to fulfill a sentence David spoke without thinking. The cup of water reached the cave of Adullam by way of broken Philistine lines.
And then David did something his men did not expect. He refused to drink it. He poured it out on the ground as a drink offering to the LORD, saying: "Be it far from me, O LORD, that I should do this. Shall I drink the blood of the men who went in jeopardy of their lives?" (2 Sam 23:17). The water that had cost so much was too costly to consume. It was poured out to the One who alone could fittingly receive such a sacrifice.
This is the densest passage on warrior-friendship in the Old Testament. The men risked their lives for the king's offhand wish. The king refused to absorb their sacrifice for his own enjoyment and converted it into worship. The exchange is utterly mutual: they would die for him; he would not let their near-death be consumed by his ordinary thirst. Both sides held the other in honor higher than the cup.
The same chapter ends with the list of mighty men — and the final name, after all the foreign fighters and faithful allies, is "Uriah the Hittite." The last man on the list is the man David killed (2 Sam 11). The Chronicler does not let the reader forget. The story of David's friendships is also the story of one friend that David betrayed. The mighty men's list is a roll of honor and a memorial in the same breath.
Abiathar the Priest: A Friendship That Almost Ended Well
The priest Abiathar enters David's life under traumatic circumstances. Saul had massacred the priests of Nob — eighty-five men of the household of Ahimelech — for unwittingly helping David when David was a fugitive. Only Abiathar escaped, fled to David, and was given sanctuary (1 Sam 22:20–23). David said to him then, "Stay with me, do not be afraid, for he who seeks my life seeks your life, for you are safe with me."
That promise held for the next forty years. Abiathar was David's priest in the cave years (1 Sam 23), the man who brought the ephod that allowed David to inquire of the LORD before action. He stayed with David through the wilderness, through the kingdom of Hebron, through the consolidated kingdom in Jerusalem. He was the priest at David's right hand for the whole reign.
And his loyalty was tested at the Absalom rebellion. When David fled Jerusalem, Zadok and Abiathar both came out carrying the ark, intending to share David's exile. David sent them back: "Return the ark of God to the city ... If I find favor in the sight of the LORD, then He will bring me back and show me both it and His habitation." The priests went back into Jerusalem with the ark, and their sons became the intelligence runners who carried Hushai's messages out to David. The priesthood was woven into the network of friends that saved the throne.
Abiathar's friendship with David was a forty-year covenant — and then it broke at the end. When David was on his deathbed and Adonijah made his bid for the throne, Abiathar sided with Adonijah (1 Kings 1:7) — possibly out of an old grievance, possibly out of misreading David's wishes, possibly out of a sincere conviction that Adonijah was the rightful heir. Whatever the reason, when Solomon took the throne, Solomon banished Abiathar from the priesthood: "Go to Anathoth, to your own field, for you deserve to die; but I will not put you to death at this time, because you carried the ark of the Lord GOD before my father David, and because you were afflicted in everything with which my father was afflicted." The forty years of friendship saved Abiathar's life but cost him his office.
It is the saddest friendship in this chapter. Abiathar was, by any honest accounting, one of the most loyal companions David ever had. He shared the cave, shared the throne, shared the rebellion, carried the ark. And he died in his own field, banished from the priesthood, because of a misjudgment at the very end. The lesson is not about Abiathar's character; the lesson is that friendship has to be renewed in every season, and forty years of faithful service do not guarantee a fortieth-and-first.
Joab: The Dark Side of Covenant Friendship
And then there is Joab. The son of David's sister Zeruiah. David's commander of the army from the wilderness through the entire reign. The man who killed for David what David asked to be killed (Uriah, 2 Sam 11). The man who killed for David what David asked not to be killed (Absalom, 2 Sam 18). The man who killed for himself (Abner in 2 Sam 3:27, Amasa in 2 Sam 20:10). The man who finally died at the horns of the altar after siding with Adonijah, executed on Solomon's orders per David's deathbed instructions (1 Kings 2:28–34).
Joab is the negative space of this chapter. He was utterly loyal to David personally — he never once betrayed him, never once sided with an enemy outside the family, never failed to win a battle David sent him into. By the criteria of military loyalty, no friend served David better.
And yet David's relationship with Joab was the most fraught in his life. After Abner's murder, David said in front of the court, "these men the sons of Zeruiah are too difficult for me" (2 Sam 3:39). After Absalom's death — Joab having defied David's explicit order to "deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom" (2 Sam 18:5) — David's grief at the gate is so overwhelming that Joab has to rebuke him publicly to keep the army from defecting. The friendship between king and general was always tense. The loyalty was real; the love was always strained.
And David's final word about Joab is on his deathbed. He instructs Solomon: "You also know what Joab the son of Zeruiah did to me, what he did to the two commanders of the armies of Israel, to Abner the son of Ner, and to Amasa the son of Jether, whom he killed; he also shed the blood of war in peace ... So act according to your wisdom, and do not let his gray hair go down to Sheol in peace" (1 Kings 2:5–6). Forty years of military service, and David's last instruction is to have Joab killed.
Why is Joab in this chapter on friendship? Because Joab's case is the warning every other friendship in this chapter is set against. Loyalty without love is not friendship; it is alliance. Joab was loyal. He was not a friend. He served David's interests, and not infrequently he served David's interests by violating David's express commands — Absalom is the clearest case. He thought he knew better than David what David needed. That is the line where loyalty becomes condescension, and condescension is incompatible with friendship.
The contrast with Hushai illuminates Joab. Hushai operated in deception — but it was deception toward Absalom on behalf of David, executing exactly what David asked. Joab operated in obedience to his own judgment — soldierly competence executing what Joab thought best, even when David had asked for something different. Hushai is friendship in disguise. Joab is alliance pretending to be friendship.
The Four-Beat Pattern of David's Friendships
The four-beat patterns that have run through repentance (Ch 20), worship (Ch 21), and prayer (Ch 23) show up here too, in a different shape:
| Beat | What It Looks Like | Davidic Example | NT Echo |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Covenant | A binding commitment articulated and witnessed — not just felt | Jonathan's covenant with David (1 Sam 18:3, 20:16, 23:18); Ittai's oath (2 Sam 15:21) | "No one has greater love than this, that one lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13) |
| 2. Cost | The friendship requires sacrifice — time, risk, reputation, sometimes life | The three mighty men breaking through enemy lines for water; Hushai living a daily deception; Barzillai underwriting an army's food | "Greater love has no one than this" — the cost is the proof |
| 3. Continuance | Carried across seasons, not seasonal — endures through the friend's failures | David and Mephibosheth (2 Sam 9 — Jonathan's covenant honored 20+ years later); David's deathbed remembrance of Barzillai (1 Kings 2:7) | "A friend loves at all times" (Prov 17:17); "Do not forsake your own friend or your father's friend" (Prov 27:10) |
| 4. Confession of Common Allegiance | The friendship is anchored in something larger than the two friends — a shared confession of God | "As the LORD lives, and as my lord the king lives" (Ittai); Jonathan strengthening David's hand in God; Barzillai's piety implied throughout | "I have called you friends" (John 15:15) — friendship with Christ as the basis of friendship with one another |
Joab fails beat 1 (no covenant, only kinship); fails beat 4 (no shared confession articulated anywhere in the text); and his loyalty repeatedly substitutes his own judgment for David's expressed will. The form of friendship without the substance of friendship is what Joab represents.
The Theology of Friendship in David's Life
Stepping back: what does the Bible's most extensive friendship portrait teach about friendship itself?
First, friendship is a covenant category. The Hebrew word chesed — usually translated "lovingkindness" or "covenant love" — is repeatedly applied to David's friendships. The same word that describes God's covenant loyalty to His people describes the loyalty David received from and gave to his friends. Friendship in the Old Testament is not casual affinity. It is a form of chesed.
Second, friendship operates across asymmetry. Hushai was a courtier; David was a king. Ittai was a Gentile mercenary; David was the LORD's anointed. Barzillai was a wealthy old man; David was the leader of a fugitive army. The friends in David's life were not his peers. They served him, or he protected them, or both — but the relationships worked across difference. The Bible's friendship theology does not assume equality. It assumes mutual giving across whatever the actual roles happen to be.
Third, friendship has shape — it can be misused. Psalm 55:12–14 is David's lament over a friend who betrayed him: "For it is not an enemy who reproaches me, then I could bear it ... but it is you, a man my equal, my companion and my familiar friend; we who had sweet fellowship together walked in the house of God in the throng." The friendship of Ahithophel turned to betrayal cost David more than any enemy ever did. Psalm 41:9 — "Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me" — is the verse Jesus quotes about Judas (John 13:18). David's experience of betrayal by Ahithophel became the prophetic frame for Christ's betrayal by Judas.
Fourth, friendship requires confession of God. Jonathan's defining act was to strengthen David's hand in God. Ittai's oath was sworn by the LORD. The cup of water at the cave of Adullam was poured out as an offering to the LORD. The friendships that endure in David's story are friendships anchored vertically before they relate horizontally. The friendships that fail — Ahithophel's betrayal, Joab's overruling of David's commands, Abiathar's final misjudgment — are friendships in which the vertical anchor has weakened or been displaced by competing loyalty.
Shadow of Christ
The Old Testament friendships of David point forward to a deeper friendship in the New Testament.
| Aspect | David's Friendships | Christ's Friendship with His Own |
|---|---|---|
| Initiated by | Mutual covenant — Jonathan and David swore together; Ittai chose | "You did not choose Me but I chose you" (John 15:16) — sovereign initiation |
| Costly in | The friend's life sometimes laid down for the king (the mighty men's risks) | The King's life laid down for the friends — "greater love has no one than this" |
| Asymmetry | Across status, ethnicity, age — but always within human limits | Across the infinite gap of Creator-creature — and yet "I have called you friends" |
| Knowledge shared | Strategic knowledge (Hushai), priestly inquiry (Abiathar) | "All things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you" (John 15:15) |
| Continuity | Forty years of David's friendships — most ended at death or the throne change | "I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you" (Heb 13:5) — friendship that does not end |
| Betrayal endured | Ahithophel turned, and David wept Psalm 55 | Judas turned, and Christ prayed Psalm 41 forward into the gospel — the betrayed Friend who still washed the betrayer's feet |
| Friendship with God | David called "a man after God's own heart" but not directly named "friend of God" | Believers in Christ are called friends of God (James 2:23 of Abraham, but extended to all in John 15:15 by Jesus) |
The line Jesus drew at John 15:15 is the line David could not draw. David had friends; he was a friend; he received covenant loyalty and gave it. But "no longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you" — that is the friendship the New Covenant offers, and it is greater than anything David offered any of his men. The Davidic friendships are the rough sketch. The friendship Christ offers is the finished portrait.
Application
- Friendship is built, not stumbled into. Jonathan and David made a covenant. Ittai swore an oath. Barzillai underwrote an army. The friendships in David's life have a deliberate, contractual character. Modern friendship has lost most of this language. Recover it. Name the people in your life whose loyalty to you you would die for, and tell them — aloud — that this is what they are to you.
- Some friends are public; some are hidden. Jonathan stood at David's right hand in court. Hushai pretended to defect to David's enemy. Both were essential. There are seasons where friendship is exercised by being visibly with someone and seasons where friendship is exercised by being visibly elsewhere on their behalf. Discern which season you are in.
- Old people can be friends to younger people in indispensable ways. Barzillai was eighty. David was a refugee king in his sixties. The young men of the army would have starved without the old man's provisioning. Do not write off the friendships of those a generation older than you. They have wheat and lentils and cheese — and prayers — that you will not survive without.
- Friendship that pours out the cup of water. The deepest friendship is unwilling to consume what the friend has paid a great cost to provide. Receive the cup. Honor the cost. But sometimes the right answer is to pour it out before God in worship rather than consume it for your own enjoyment. The friends you treasure are not commodities; they are gifts whose costliness should drive you upward in praise.
- Beware of Joab. Loyalty without love substitutes its own judgment for the friend's expressed will. The Joab in your life is the one who will do anything for you except what you actually asked. The Joab in you is the part of you that thinks you know better than your friend or your spouse or your boss or your God what they actually need. Crucify the Joab. Become the Hushai.
- Anchor friendships vertically. Every friendship in David's life that lasted was anchored in shared submission to God. Friendships that lacked the vertical anchor — even highly competent ones, like Joab's — became unstable across decades. If you want a friendship to last, find God together. If you cannot find God together, the friendship is on a foundation that the years will test.
- Friendship with Christ first. "I have called you friends" is the foundation of all other friendship. The friend you most need is the Friend who laid down His life for you and who shares with you what He has heard from the Father. Until that friendship is the central one, every other friendship will carry a weight it was never meant to bear.
Cross-References
- Chapter 4 — David & Jonathan: the foundational friendship; this chapter assumes that one
- Chapter 5 — The Fugitive Years: the cave-of-Adullam community in which most of the mighty men first attached themselves to David
- Chapter 9 — The Davidic Covenant: the larger covenantal framework into which David's personal covenant friendships fit
- Chapter 11 — The Mighty Men: the full military treatment of the warrior-comrades; this chapter focuses on the relational dimension
- Chapter 13 — Family Collapse: Absalom's rebellion, in which Hushai, Ittai, and Barzillai's friendships are tested
- Chapter 15 — David's Last Words: the deathbed instructions to Solomon — kindness to Barzillai's sons, judgment on Joab
- Chapter 20 — David & Repentance: Psalm 41 and Psalm 55 as the lament Psalms of betrayed friendship
- Chapter 23 — David & Prayer: the imprecatory Psalms (109, 35) as the prayer-language of betrayed friendship handed over to God
- Psalm 133: "How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity!" — David's short Psalm on the corporate dimension of covenant friendship
- Proverbs 27:6, 27:17, 18:24: the friendship Proverbs of David's son Solomon — drawing on his father's pattern
- Ecclesiastes 4:9–12: "Two are better than one ... a cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart" — the wisdom-literature theology of friendship
- John 15:13–15: Christ's New Covenant articulation of friendship between God and His people