What Does II Samuel 20:21 Mean?

Joab identifies his target: "The matter is not so: but a man of mount Ephraim, Sheba the son of Bichri by name, hath lifted up his hand against the king, even against David: deliver him only, and I will depart from the city." The demand is surgical: one man in exchange for the survival of the entire city. Joab transforms the siege from a military operation into a judicial proceeding, asking the city to surrender a rebel rather than endure the consequences of harboring him. The offer is the same principle that Ahithophel proposed in chapter 17: kill the one to save the many.

The wise woman accepts immediately: "And the woman said unto Joab, Behold, his head shall be thrown to thee over the wall." The promise of decapitation is the assurance of finality: Sheba's head thrown over the wall will prove beyond question that the rebel has been eliminated, and the siege can be lifted without further bloodshed. The woman undertakes to accomplish within the city what Joab was prepared to accomplish by destroying it, and her ability to deliver the head demonstrates the authority she exercises within the community.

The Lord Jesus offered Himself as the one who was delivered up so that many might be saved. "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities." But where Sheba's death was the elimination of a criminal, Christ's death was the sacrifice of the innocent for the guilty, and the head that was lifted up on the cross was not thrown over a wall in judgment but raised on a hill in redemption. The principle of one for many, which operates as cold political calculation in the Old Testament, becomes the warmth of divine love in the gospel.