14 The king, and all the people who were with him, came weary; and he refreshed himself there.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
And the king, and all the people that [were] with him, came weary, and refreshed themselves (h) there.
(h) That is, at Bahurim.
And the king, and all the people that were with him, came weary,.... With their journey, and through grief and trouble at what they met with:
and refreshed themselves there: that is, at Bahurim, with food and rest; which revived their spirits, and put as it were new life and soul into them, as the word used signifies. Josephus (y) says, when David came to Jordan, he refreshed his weary men.
(y) Antiqu. l. 7. c. 9. sect. 4.
refreshed themselves there--that is, in the city of Bahurim.
The king came with his train, pursued in this manner, to Ayephim, and refreshed himself there. The context requires that Ayephim should be taken as the name of a place. If it were an appellative, signifying weary, there would be no information as to the place to which David came, and to which the word שׁם (there) distinctly refers. Bahurim cannot be the place alluded to, for the simple reason that, according to 2-Samuel 17:18, the place where David rested was a considerable distance beyond Bahurim, towards the Jordan, as we may see from the fact that it is stated there that the priests' sons, who were sent to carry information to David of what was occurring in Jerusalem, hid themselves in a well at Bahurim from the officers who were following them, and consequently had to go still further in order to convey the news to David; so that it is out of the question to supply this name from 2-Samuel 16:5. It is true that we never meet with the name Ayephim again; but this applies to many other places whose existence is not called in question.
(Note: The meaning of the word, wearied or weariness, does not warrant any conjectures, even though they should be more felicitous than that of Bttcher, who proposes to alter Ayephim into Ephraim, and assumes that there was a place of this name near Mahanaim, though without reflecting that the place where David rested was on this side of the Jordan, and somewhere near to Gilgal or Jericho (2-Samuel 17:16. and 2-Samuel 17:22).)
Came - To the city of Bahurim.
*More commentary available at chapter level.