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42 As he was speaking, Jonathan, son of Abiathar the priest, arrived. Adonijah said, “Come, you are a man of worth and must bring good news.” 43 Jonathan answered Adonijah, “Hardly![a] Our lord, King David, has made Solomon king. 44 The king sent with him Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, Benaiah, son of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites and Pelethites, and they mounted him upon the king’s own mule.

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Footnotes

  1. 1:43 Hardly: Jonathan’s first word, ’abal, whose meaning (such as “indeed,” “on the contrary”) must be discerned from the context, may be ironic. This irony is deepened by an untranslatable wordplay in Hebrew: a very similar word means “to mourn,” which is an appropriate comment about the death of Adonijah’s hopes for the throne.

42 And while he was still speaking, Jonathan, the son of Abiathar the priest, rushed in.

“Come in,” Adonijah said to him, “for you are a good man; you must have good news.”

43 “Our lord King David has declared Solomon as king!” Jonathan shouted. 44-45 “The king sent him to Gihon with Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet and Benaiah, protected by the king’s own bodyguard; and he rode on the king’s own mule. And Zadok and Nathan have anointed him as the new king! They have just returned, and the whole city is celebrating and rejoicing. That’s what all the noise is.

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