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50 free 2 Samuel trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
2 Samuel is the book where David gets everything he was promised and then watches it come apart. It opens with a lament for Saul and Jonathan, moves through a civil war, the taking of Jerusalem and the ark's bumpy arrival there, and pivots on a rooftop, a prophet's story and a rebuke. The later chapters belong to David's children: a prince's assault on his sister, a brother's revenge, a golden-haired rebellion and a father grieving in a gateway. These 50 questions run from the Amalekite messenger to the altar David bought at the end of the census: the commanders who feuded over the throne, the Philistine giants of the appendix, the loyalists and turncoats of Absalom's revolt, the three warriors and the water from Bethlehem, and the covenant that promised David's line would last. Chapter handles are given where they help. It suits a church quiz night, a Bible study working through the historical books, or anyone who knows the Bathsheba story and wants the other twenty-three chapters back. Play on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for a group.
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Q 01Which refrain, repeated three times in David's lament for Saul and Jonathan, became a proverb for any downfall?
How the mighty have fallen
How the mighty have fallen opens, punctuates and closes the lament, which David ordered taught to Judah as 'the lament of the bow'. Its line 'Tell it not in Gath' is still quoted too.
Q 02With which blunt rebuke did Nathan turn his story of a rich man's stolen ewe back on King David?
You are the man
'You are the man' landed seconds after David had sworn the thief deserved to die; Nathan then told the king the stolen ewe was Bathsheba and the killing of her husband was his.
Q 03What did Hanun, the new king of Ammon, do to the envoys David sent to console him on his father's death?
Shaved off half their beards
Hanun shaved off half their beards and cut their robes off at the buttocks, a humiliation David answered by telling the men to wait at Jericho until the beards grew back, and then by war.
Q 04What did David do, baffling his servants, the moment he learned the infant born to Bathsheba had died?
Washed, changed and ate
He washed, changed and ate after a week of fasting prostrate, explaining 'I will go to him, but he will not return to me', a line still read at funerals.
Q 05Why was Jonathan's son Mephibosheth lame in both feet, a condition dating from the day Saul fell?
His nurse dropped him fleeing
His nurse dropped him fleeing when he was five, the day word came from Jezreel that Saul and Jonathan were dead, so the one grandson of Saul whom David later honoured never walked properly again.
Q 06What was David wearing as he danced 'with all his might' before the ark on its way up to Jerusalem?
A linen ephod
A linen ephod was the short garment the boy Samuel had worn at Shiloh, and leaping about in one was what Michal scorned as going 'half-naked in full view of the slave girls'.
Q 07What was the sequel for Michal, Saul's daughter, after she mocked David for leaping about before the ark?
She remained childless
She remained childless 'to the day of her death', the text says, so the woman who once saved David by lowering him out of a window never gave Saul's line a royal heir.
Q 08How was the ark carried from Abinadab's house toward Jerusalem when Uzzah reached out to steady it and died?
On a new cart
On a new cart, the way the Philistines had once sent it back, the ark set off; the law in Numbers had it carried on poles by Levites, which is how David moved it three months later.
Q 09What did David insist on buying from Araunah the Jebusite, refusing to offer God anything that 'cost me nothing'?
His threshing floor and oxen
His threshing floor and oxen cost fifty shekels of silver, and 2 Chronicles places Solomon's temple on that very floor, Mount Moriah, so the altar that ended the dying fixed where the temple would stand.
Q 10Which foreign king sent timber, carpenters and stonemasons to build David a palace in his new capital?
Hiram of Tyre
Hiram of Tyre, the Phoenician timber king, would later supply the same wood for Solomon's temple, and David read the palace as proof that God had established him as king over Israel.
Q 11What did the Amalekite who claimed to have finished off the dying Saul bring David at Ziklag as proof?
His crown and armband
His crown and armband cost the messenger his life: David had him killed on the spot for touching the Lord's anointed, telling him 'Your blood be on your own head.'
Q 12What had God never asked any ruler of Israel to build for him, according to the promise delivered through Nathan?
A house of cedar
A house of cedar was David's own new home, and God replied that he had been 'moving from place to place with a tent' and never asked why no temple stood; the job went to David's son.
Q 13What did Tamar put on her head, tearing her ornate robe, after her brother Amnon assaulted and rejected her?
Q 21What sentence did David pass on the rich man in Nathan's story before being told that the rich man was himself?
Death and fourfold restitution
Death and fourfold restitution was the law's price for a stolen sheep in Exodus, and readers have long noted that David went on to lose four sons: the infant, Amnon, Absalom and Adonijah.
Q 22What name, meaning 'loved by the Lord', did Nathan bring from God for the second son born to David and Bathsheba?
Jedidiah
Jedidiah was the name God sent for the boy his parents had already called Solomon, a quiet signal that the child of a marriage begun in adultery was nonetheless the chosen heir.
Q 23Who, 'a very shrewd man' and David's nephew, told the lovesick Amnon to feign illness and ask for Tamar to feed him?
Ashes
Ashes on the head and the torn robe were signs of mourning, and the robe itself, the kind 'the virgin daughters of the king wore', is described with the same Hebrew word as Joseph's famous coat.
Q 14How did Absalom force Joab to visit him after two years back in Jerusalem without once seeing the king's face?
Set his barley field ablaze
Absalom set his barley field ablaze, Joab's field lying next to his own, and the stunt worked: Joab came, then went to the king, and David at last summoned Absalom and kissed him.
Q 15In which city, David's own first capital, did Absalom have himself proclaimed king under cover of fulfilling a vow?
Hebron
Hebron, where David had reigned seven years and six months before taking Jerusalem, was also Absalom's birthplace, and the trumpet call there opened a revolt the text says had been brewing for four years.
Q 16Which of David's counsellors, whose advice was 'like that of one who inquires of God', went over to Absalom's revolt?
Ahithophel
Ahithophel was, by the book's own genealogies, Bathsheba's grandfather; when Absalom ignored his plan he went home, put his house in order and hanged himself, the Old Testament's only hanging suicide.
Q 17According to 2 Samuel 18, what claimed more of Absalom's men than the fighting in the battle that ended his revolt?
The forest
The forest of Ephraim 'swallowed up more men that day' than the fighting did, and it caught the prince too: Absalom's head lodged in an oak as his mule ran on beneath him.
Q 18What did David do with the water three warriors fetched from Bethlehem's gate, through Philistine lines, at his wish?
Poured it out on the ground
He poured it out on the ground as an offering, refusing to drink what was 'the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives', though the wish that sent them had been his own.
Q 19Which punishment did David pick after the census, reasoning that it was better to fall into God's hands than human ones?
Three days of plague
Three days of plague killed seventy thousand people 'from Dan to Beersheba' before the angel was halted outside Jerusalem, at the spot David then bought for an altar.
Q 20Which chapter of the Psalter repeats, almost word for word, the song of deliverance that fills 2 Samuel 22?
Psalm 18
Psalm 18 carries the same opening, 'The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer', and the same heading about escape from Saul; Psalm 51 is the one tradition ties to the Bathsheba affair.
Jonadab
Jonadab, son of David's brother Shimeah, later reappears to assure the king that only Amnon is dead and not all the princes, which suggests he knew Absalom's plan in advance.
Q 24At what kind of gathering, two years after the assault on Tamar, did Absalom's servants kill a tipsy Amnon?
A sheepshearing feast
A sheepshearing feast near the Ephraim border drew all the king's sons, and the signal to strike when Amnon was 'in high spirits from drinking wine' echoes Nabal's fatal shearing party in 1 Samuel.
Q 25Where did Absalom spend three years in exile after Amnon's murder, at the court of his maternal grandfather Talmai?
Geshur
Geshur was a small Aramean kingdom east of Galilee whose princess Maakah David had married, so the prince who would raise Israel against him was part foreign royalty.
Q 26Why, according to 2 Samuel 18, had Absalom raised a pillar to himself in the King's Valley during his lifetime?
No son to carry his name
He had no son to carry his name, the text says, though chapter 14 had given him three; the 'Absalom's Tomb' tourists see in the Kidron Valley is a monument from around the 1st century AD.
Q 27Which man of Gath, arrived only 'yesterday', refused to leave David and led his six hundred men into exile with him?
Ittai
Ittai, a foreigner, answered with the book's most Ruth-like vow, 'wherever my lord the king may be, whether it means life or death, there will your servant be', and ended up commanding a third of the army.
Q 28How were David's two runners, the sons of Zadok and Abiathar, hidden from Absalom's searchers at a house in Bahurim?
Down a well under scattered grain
Down a well under scattered grain, the pair waited while the householder's wife lied to Absalom's men, the same trick Rahab had pulled with flax on her roof for Joshua's spies.
Q 29Which eighty-year-old Gileadite, David's supplier in exile, declined a place at court and sent Kimham in his stead?
Barzillai
Barzillai said he could no longer taste his food or hear the singers, and David, on his deathbed, told Solomon to keep the old man's sons at the royal table for the kindness shown during the flight from Absalom.
Q 30Whom did David make commander in place of Joab after the revolt, only for Joab to gut him with a hidden dagger?
Amasa
Amasa had led Absalom's rebel army and was David's own nephew; Joab took him 'by the beard with his right hand to kiss him' and struck with the left, as he had once killed Abner.