Those servants surrounding King David devised a plan to solve the problem mentioned in 1 Kings 1:1. The word translated “servants” can refer to slaves, but here it probably refers to David’s advisors. In ancient times in the Near East, everyone in the nation was a servant of the king. This circumstance was so, regardless of how high an office the person might have held in the eyes of others.
The plan that these servants presented to David was to search the kingdom for a young virgin, because “virgin” is the literal translation of the Hebrew word that is used (“ḇə·ṯū·lāh”). This young woman would lie in the bed beside the king to keep him warm.
It may seem strange that the servants are said to have presented their advice directly to the king, but some (but not all) of the language quoted speaks of him in the third person. This fact may be explained by belief that addressing the king in the second person, that is, you,
were considered too familiar for servants speaking to royalty. The exception to the third person address is found in the words “lie in your arms.” Did the servants forget protocol in their anxiety to get their message across to the king, or does this represent an error on the part of a copyist? The ancient Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, places the statement in the third person.
The search that David’s advisors suggested may remind us of a similar search in the book of Esther to find a replacement for the Persian queen, Vashti, who was demoted because of her failure to appear at the king’s banquet. This similarity may raise in our minds the question of the status of the young woman once she was found. Is she considered nothing more than a maid servant in the household of the king, or would she have the status of a concubine (a woman legally bound to a man but not formally his wife) or even a wife?
We will not answer this question now because its answer waits until we are given more information in the later verses of this and the next chapter.
2 Therefore his servants said to him, “Let a young woman be sought for my lord the king, and let her wait on the king and be in his service. Let her lie in your arms, that my lord the king may be warm.”