THE KISS OF JOAB

THIS POST CONTAINS GRATUITOUS VIOLENCE.
READ IT AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Before Judas Iscariot, there had been another kiss of death, an equally elusive one, in the Old Testament. It had been given by Joab, King David's commander-in-chief and the fellow he used not to get his hands dirty, to Amasa, a rebel general who had usurped his place:

When they were at the great stone which is in Gibeon, Amasa went before them. And Joab's garment that he had put on was girded unto him, and upon it a girdle with a sword fastened upon his loins in the sheath thereof; and as he went forth it fell out.

And Joab said to Amasa, Art thou in health, my brother? And Joab took Amasa by the beard with the right hand to kiss him.  But Amasa took no heed to the sword that was in Joab's left hand: so he smote him therewith in the fifth rib, and shed out his bowels to the ground, and struck him not again; and he died.

• Joab brings his men along with Abishai, too. When they meet up with Amasa, Joab (likely remembering how Amasa replaced him) acts like he's going to greet Amasa and kiss him. But, instead, he takes out his sword, and slices Amasa's guts open with one stroke. Amasa dies, obvi.

The kiss of Joab is less known than its New Testament counterpart, yet it has also inspired a few literary imaginations. For instance, a certain Swedish hymn by Johan Olof Wallin, written in 1819, claims that Lady Fortune is fond of giving this kind of kisses:

Joabs kyssar dig hon giver,
dräpande sin vän.

(She gives you Joab's kisses,
slaying her friend.)

In the seventeenth-century United Kingdom, Phineas Fletcher also referenced this event in Canto VII of The Purple Island:

With him Dissemblance went, his Paramour, 
Whose painted face might hardly be detected: 
Arms of offence he seld’ or never wore, 
Lest thence his close designes might be suspected; 
      But clasping close his foe, as loth to part, 
      He steals his dagger with false smiling art, 
And sheaths the trait’rous steel in his own masters heart. 
Two Jewish Captains, close themselves enlacing 
In loves sweet twines, his target broad display’d; 
One th’ others beard with his left hand embracing, 
But in his right a shining sword he sway’d, 
      Which unawares through th’ others ribs he smites; 
      There lay the wretch without all buriall rites: 
His word, He deepest wounds, that in his fawning bites.