Summary

Adonijah believed that he needed help to accomplish his goal of becoming king. Therefore, he sought the help of Joab, the commander of the army and Abiathar, a high-ranking priest. The translation he conferred with in Hebrew is literally his words were with. The result of his speaking to them was that they committed themselves to his cause.

These were important men to have on his side. It is easy to see that the head of the army would lend its might to Adonijah’s cause. And an influential priest gave to the cause, at least the appearance of, the divine blessing of the Lord.

The question then arises: why should these two men, who had been with David from before the beginning of his reign, join with Adonijah in a conspiracy to seize the throne? The Bible does not answer the question in so many words, but it gives us information about them that may help to answer this question.

David briefly replaced Joab as commander with Amasa, the leader of Absalom’s forces in that rebellion. The act was a political one as a means of regaining the loyalty of the northern tribes of Israel apart from the tribe of Judah. Joab’s response to David’s action was to wait for an opportunity and then murder Amasa. This restored him to the position as the head of the army. We find the account in 2 Samuel 19:11–15; 2 Samuel 20:1–12. Possibly, Joab turned to Adonijah because he believed that his former loyalty to the king was no longer appreciated and that this was a way in which he could secure his position as commander for the rest of his life.

The case of Abiathar is somewhat harder to state with any certainty. He was the last surviving priest in the line of Eli, who was the high priest when Samuel was a boy. Samuel prophesied that, because of the sins of the house of Eli, his line would be removed from the priesthood. Abiathar was an important priest, but Scripture never calls him the high priest. He may have thought that supporting Adonijah was the way in which to regain the high priesthood for himself and his family.

Before we move on, there is an important observation to make concerning the view of Adonijah that we are given up to this point. He appears quite impressive both physically and based on the persons and things with which he chose to surround himself. All these are outward matters. He trusted in the flesh and in the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life, as John describes in 1 John 2:16. As that apostle reminds us, all those matters will pass away with the world. Too many people think of the blessings of God as essentially material. This is the danger of the prosperity gospel, but you do not have to be seduced by one of those preachers in order to fall into this trap.

As we continue to look at Adonijah in his brief episode in the first two chapters, we will see that his trust in the flesh will get him nowhere but to an early grave. May we take counsel from his sad example! Indeed, we will see in the study of 1 Kings (and 2 Kings as well) that this kind of outward trust spelled disaster for many of the kings that followed him.