David’s servants brought Abishag to the king. She is again described as beautiful, in fact, very beautiful. The writer tells us that she performed the service that was required of her, which was lying in his arms to give him warmth. The Bible also makes it clear that David had no sexual relations with her by using the phrase, the king knew her not.
What are we to learn from this fact? In order to answer a question, we previously left unanswered: what was Abishag’s status? we must conclude that she was considered either a concubine or a wife. David’s failure to attempt intimate relations with her was not based on a lack of the cultural right to this but on the fact that due to his age and infirmity he was physically unable for this.
We conclude this because we will see that when Adonijah asked, after David’s death, to have Abishag given as a wife for him, Solomon sees this as another attempt by Adonijah to make a claim for the throne. More detail will be given on this point when we reach that part of the narrative in the next chapter.
It is well, however, that we begin to consider it now. It helps us to understand the reason that 1 Kings 1:1–4 begins with these four verses that focus on David’s old age and physical incapacity.
David, as a king who largely had to keep to his bed, could rule only through the knowledge he received from his advisors. In addition, it appears that at this point near the end of his life, he was concerned primarily with his own health, and it is likely that the business of the kingdom was, therefore, neglected to some degree.
This circumstance created a political vacuum that awaited someone to fill it. Adonijah, David’s eldest surviving son, showed a desire to do just that. Yet, why should Abishag be mentioned by name? If the writer wanted only to emphasize David’s old age, she could have remained nameless to us. But the fact that Adonijah requests her by name as a bride for him in his last-ditch effort to gain the throne makes Abishag important for more that the service she rendered to King David.
These things show that 1 Kings 1:1–4 is not an irrelevant domestic picture of an old man and his pitiful physical condition. Instead, the writer uses them to prepare the way for the account of the unstable manner in which Israel’s monarchy passed from David to Solomon.
4 The young woman was very beautiful, and she was of service to the king and attended to him, but the king knew her not.