What Does 2 Samuel 16:21 Mean in the King James?
And Ahithophel said unto Absalom, Go in unto thy father’s concubines, which he hath left to keep the house; and all Israel shall hear that thou art abhorred of thy father: then shall the hands of all that are with thee be strong.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The counsel makes sexual violation a public announcement of rupture, expecting that the break itself will strengthen Absalom’s followers.
THE MEANING
The verse shows power turning sexual violation into a public signal: the women left to keep the house become evidence that a son’s break with his father is unmistakable. Ahithophel expects the rupture to strengthen everyone aligned with Absalom. Their strength gathers around a political act imposed on women whose voices the counsel never includes.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a faction’s growing strength proves its cause is just: here, its hands are strengthened through sexual violation made publicly legible.
THE ROOT
נִבְאַשְׁתָּ
niv’ashta
GROWS FROM
באש
נִבְאַשְׁתָּ (niv’ashta) means “you have become odious” or “abhorred”; בָּאַשׁ (ba’ash) at its root means to stink or become foul.
“Abhorred” carries a sensory layer in Hebrew: the rupture is described with the language of foulness and stench. Ahithophel counts on all Israel hearing that Absalom has become odious to his father, making the break public.
ALSO GROWS
niv’ash: To stink or become foul.
נִבְאַשׁ
Exodus 7:18 uses this form for the river becoming foul, preserving the sensory layer behind “abhorred.”
hib’ashtem: To make foul or odious.
הִבְאַשְׁתֶּם
Exodus 5:21 uses this form when Moses and Aaron are told they have made their standing odious in Pharaoh’s eyes.
לִשְׁמֹר
lishmor
GROWS FROM
שמר
לִשְׁמֹר (lishmor) means “to keep” or “guard”; שָׁמַר (shamar) means to guard or watch over.
The women are left to keep the house, a phrase rooted in guarding and watchfulness. The counsel places that custodial role beside a public act that uses them to display the rupture in the household.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: A keeper or guard.
שֹׁמֵר
This branch makes the custodial sense of the house’s “keeping” plain.
mishmeret: A watch, charge, or entrusted duty.
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
It carries the same sense of watchful custody, which sharpens the contrast with the public violation described here.
אַבְשָׁלוֹם
Avshalom
GROWS FROM
שלם
The name joins אָב (av, “father”) with שָׁלוֹם (shalom, “wholeness”); שלם (shalem) carries the sense of being whole or complete. Avshalom is heard as “father of wholeness” or “father of peace.”
“Absalom” in this verse is Avshalom. The name’s wholeness stands against a strategy that makes sexual violation the public proof of family rupture. That tension is present in the name as the verse describes the act.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness; peace as wholeness.
שָׁלוֹם
This is the familiar form embedded in Avshalom’s name.
shalem: Whole or complete.
שָׁלֵם
This form carries the root sense that makes the name’s contrast with the fractured household visible.
THE PATTERN
A sexual breach inside a household becomes a public measure of power, loyalty, or communal standing.
Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun.And king Solomon answered and said unto his mother, And why dost thou ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? ask for him the kingdom also; for he is mine elder brother; even for him, and for Abiathar the priest, and for Joab the son of Zeruiah.It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife.THE THREAD
And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.Genesis says the human is placed in the garden “to keep it,” using שָׁמַר (shamar, guard or watch over), the same root as the house the women are left to keep here. The shared root makes the custodial word audible beside the verse’s reversal: a household charged to be kept becomes the setting for a public display of rupture.
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