Abigail Was the Wise One. So Why Wasn't Her Son King Instead of Solomon?

Scripture talks about David moving through several wives in his lifetime – Michal, Abigail, Bathsheba, and more. We questioned what would happen to them in an earlier post about what happens to marriages in heaven. But two of them are worth a much closer look, because between them sits one of the clearest examples in Scripture of God not choosing the person the story sets you up to expect.

Abigail: The Wife Scripture Calls Wise

Abigail gets an introduction most women in the Old Testament don’t. Scripture calls her wise and discerning before it says anything else about her. Her husband Nabal was a fool in the most literal sense — his own name means “fool.” David’s men had protected Nabal’s shepherds and flocks in the wilderness, and when David later asked for provisions, Nabal responded with an insult instead of gratitude.

David rode out intending to kill every man in Nabal’s household. But a servant told Abigail what happened, and she rode out first, met him on the road with an enormous amount of food and wine as supplies and a carefully reasoned plea.

Abigail reminds David that the Lord had kept him from bloodshed, and that Abba was the one who took vengeance on David’s enemies, so that he didn’t have to (Just like he did with King Saul). David was saved from committing sin, and afterwards credited Abigail with keeping him from a sin he would have carried for the rest of his life. If any woman in this story earns the title “wife of wisdom,” it’s her.

The Son Who Disappears

After Nabal’s death, David married Abigail. She became his third wife, and she had a son with him called Chileab, and also called Daniel. Chileab was David’s second son, born right after Amnon. But Amnon was murdered partway through the story by his own brother Absalom, which should have put Chileab next in line.

But Chileab/Daniel isn’t mentioned again. Not in Absalom’s rebellion, not later in Adonijah’s grabs for the throne, not anywhere. Scripture doesn’t explain why, it just stops naming him, and many scholars have landed on the same conclusion: he most probably died young. It’s an absence, not an answer, but the wise wife’s son simply isn’t in the room by the time the succession to King David’s throne is actually decided.

The Son Who Wasn’t Supposed to Have a Chance

The throne goes to Solomon instead. It’s the same pattern Ruth’s story shows, just from a different direction. Solomon is the son of Bathsheba, whose entire story with David starts about as far from wisdom as it’s possible to get. Adultery, a cover-up, and a murder to hide it. Their first child together dies as an infant, a direct consequence named in the text itself.

And then, right in the wreckage of that, something shifts. Bathsheba conceives again, and this time God sends Nathan the prophet; the very same prophet who’d just confronted David over the whole affair, to give the child a name: Jedidiah, meaning beloved of the Lord. Not a name David chose for sentiment. This name was specifically assigned by Abba, right in the middle of the worst chapter of David’s life, to the one child who’d go on to be Solomon.

Solomon Was Not Just Chosen, But he was Fought For

King David reigned for forty years. Abba, does love this number forty, doesn’t he? You see it with Moses in the wilderness, and you see it in wandering, and you see it more throughout scripture. Anyways, during those forty years , David had many sons through his wives and concubines. Nineteen sons are named in 1 Chronicles 3:1–9, plus there are additional sons born to his concubines whose names aren’t recorded.

So when David’s almost ready to go home, the succession actually comes down to a fight. And Bathsheba herself becomes one of the people who makes sure God’s choice is not pushed aside.

Amnon, the first born was killed by Absalom for raping his half-sister Tamar. Chileab disappears. Absalom tries to take the throne from David, and ends his life running away from battle on a mule and getting his long hair stuck in a tree, the same pride that undid Uzziah, just with higher stakes. Joab, then proceeds to stab him and kill him. Adonijah, David’s fourth son, has already started acting like king while David is old and dying, because the three before him are gone.

So Bathsheba goes to David and reminds him of an earlier promise about Solomon (1 Kings 1:13-30; 1 Chronicles 28:5–7), and works with the prophet Nathan to make sure it happens before Adonijah can finish what he started. The wife whose story began in scandal is the one who shows up, years later, doing the work to secure God’s choice.

Have You Heard About King Lemuel?

There’s an old Jewish belief about King Lemuel that makes this story even more intriguing. Rabbinic tradition identifies that “King Lemuel” in Proverbs 31 is actually King Solomon, and Lemuel’s mother, the one instructing him in that chapter, is really Bathsheba. The Bible itself never says that Lemuel was Solomon, so we can’t know for certain. But if the tradition is true, it means that in the closing picture of Proverbs, the description of a woman of noble character in Chapter 31 that so many people know by heart, may have come from the woman David chose the wrong way, and it’s her version of teaching her son what she wanted him to become. One day when we reach heaven, we will find out who was who, but the possibility makes you think, doesn’t it?

But till then, what we see is how Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus treats her. Of the four women named alongside Mary in that list, Bathsheba is the only one not given her own name at all. Matthew simply writes that David was the father of Solomon by “her who had been the wife of Uriah.” The scandal isn’t smoothed over or left out, but placed deliberately, right inside the line that leads to the Messiah.

When God’s Choices Don’t Make Sense to Us

Maybe this is the part of Abigail’s story that troubles me the most. Wisdom matters, and so do character and obedience. But God’s purposes are not a reward system where the person who appears most deserving gets the position we think they should have.

Abigail was wise, and Chileab was her son. Yet Solomon was chosen. And Scripture never gives us an explanation for why Chileab disappeared from the story.

Perhaps sometimes faith simply means accepting that we won’t understand every choice Abba makes. But we can only keep reaching for Him, and keep loving Him. Keep wanting what He wants for us. And trust Him to order the steps we cannot see.

Don’t you wish that you were that one that could show Abba and Jesus how much more you loved Him? But don’t we all trip on the way to becoming who he called us to be? Is there something we can learn from Abigail and Solomon? Is it that Abba won’t always choose the person I think should be chosen, but that I can keep reaching for Him anyway? Or is it that our duty is simply to love Him and want what He wants for us, and Abba will order our steps?

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