The statement of the date is not altogether inappropriately
dragged in, indeed, yet it is easy to see that it is dragged in.
In 2Samuel ii. 8-13 we read:
"Abner, the captain of Saul's host, took Ishbaal the son of Saul,
and brought him over the Jordan to Mahanaim, and made him king
over Gilead and Geshur, and Jezreel, and Ephraim, and Benjamin,
and all Israel. _Ishbaal was forty years old when he began to
reign over lsrael, and he reigned two years_. But the house of
Judah followed David. And the time that David was king in
Hebron was seven years and six months. And Abner and the servants
of Ishbaal went out from Mahanaim to Gibeon, and Joab with the
servants of David went out to meet him."
The words in italics <_..._> manifestly interrupt the connection;
and with regard to Ishbaal's dates we have also to remark that from
what we learn of him elsewhere he was, in the first place, still
in the years of pupilage, and in the next must have reigned as long
in Mahanaim as Oavid in Hebron. The number two connected with his
reign is to be explained as in the case of Saul (1Samuel xiii. 1):
_Saul was.
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