Adonijah's request for a wife cost him his life. Why?
Adonijah's "request to have the beautiful Abishag, David's nurse and concubine, as his wife appeared on the surface to be an innocent if presumptuous one. She would be a kind of consolation prize for the man who came in second in the race for kingship. Abishag is described as young and lovely (1 Kings 1:4) and Adonijah as very good-looking (1 Kings 1:6). They would have made a handsome couple, and perhaps Bathsheba's "match-making" instinct led her to assume his request was nothing more than a harmless, romantic affair of the heart, certainly not another conniving plot to take over the throne.
By ancient custom, however, claiming the widow or the harem of a deceased king was an indirect way of claiming the right to the vacated throne (2 Samuel 16:20-22; 12:8; 3:6-7). So Adonijah's request may have been tantamount to another coup d'etat and was, therefore, treason. Some believe Adonijah was simply driven by lust for the beautiful woman, reflecting the same weakness that infected Ammon and even his father David, but it seems clear from the suspicious manner in which he approached Bathsheba that Adonijah knew very well what he was doing."
Dilday
Copyright © 1994-96 by Philip P. Kapusta