What is the context?
Adonijah approaches Bathsheba, saying that the kingdom had been expected to be his but has come to Solomon from the LORD. He asks her to request Abishag as his wife.
Bathsheba agrees to speak for him. Solomon receives his mother with honor, but reacts strongly to the request. He links it with the kingdom itself and names Adonijah’s earlier supporters, Abiathar and Joab.
Solomon declares that Adonijah has made the request at the cost of his life. He orders Benaiah to kill him. The marriage request is thus treated by the king as a renewed threat to his rule.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Henry reads the request as another attempt to gain the throne and considers Adonijah a continuing danger. Solomon’s own response in verse 22 explicitly links Abishag with the claim to the kingdom.
Wesley is less certain: he questions whether Adonijah intended wrongdoing and whether Solomon’s execution of him was right. Clarke is more directly critical, emphasizing that Adonijah is killed on suspicion without a recorded hearing.
The difference concerns how confidently to infer Adonijah’s purpose and how to judge Solomon’s response. His earlier ambition is part of the context, but this scene gives no separate speech in which he explains a secret plan to seize power.
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.