Shall sleep - This euphemism for death, rare in the early Scriptures - being found only once in the Pentateuch (margin reference.), and once also in the historical books before Kings 2 Samuel 7:12 - becomes in Kings and Chronicles the ordinary mode of speech (see 1 Kings 2:10; 1 Kings 11:43, etc.; 2 Chronicles 9:31; 2 Chronicles 12:16, etc.). David uses the metaphor in one psalm Psa 13:3. In the later Scriptures it is, of course, common. (Jeremiah 51:39; Daniel 12:2; Matthew 9:24; John 11:11; 1 Corinthians 11:30; 1 Corinthians 15:51; 1 Thessalonians 4:14, etc.)

Shall be counted offenders - When Adonijah and his party shall find that I and my son have had this promise from thee by oath, he will slay us both.

Otherwise it shall come to pass, when my lord the king shall sleep with his fathers,.... That is, shall die, and be buried in the sepulchre of his ancestors, where he shall lie till he awakes in the morning of the resurrection:

that I and my son Solomon shall be counted offenders; or "sinners" (g); not as if she would be reckoned an adulteress, and her son as illegitimate, as some think, and so be branded and treated as such; but as being traitors, making pretensions to the throne, she on the behalf of her son, and he for himself, when he had no right to it, being the younger son, and not declared successor by his father.

(g) "peccatores", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, &c.

Otherwise it shall come to pass, when my lord the king shall sleep with his fathers, that I and my son Solomon shall be {k} counted offenders.

(k) And so put to death as wicked transgressors.

offenders: Heb. sinners

21. I and my son . shall be counted offenders-that is, slain, according to the barbarous usage of the East towards all who are rivals to the throne.

1:11-31 Observe Nathan's address to Bathsheba. Let me give thee counsel how to save thy own life, and the life of thy son. Such as this is the counsel Christ's ministers give us in his name, to give all diligence, not only that no man take our crown, Re 3:11, but that we save our lives, even the lives of our souls. David made a solemn declaration of his firm cleaving to his former resolution, that Solomon should be his successor. Even the recollection of the distresses from which the Lord redeemed him, increased his comfort, inspired his hopes, and animated him to his duty, under the decays of nature and the approach of death.