שמואל ב, פרק ד׳, פסוק ו׳

Infiltrating a royal residence, even one belonging to a lesser king like Ish-bosheth, naturally requires bypassing armed guards. To explain how the assassins managed to breach the fortress, the account details a calculated act of deception and diversion [ביאור שטיינזלץ].

The primary approach among commentators is that the brothers used the local wheat trade as a cover to gain entry into the house. Opinions differ slightly on how they executed this plan. One perspective suggests the brothers simply disguised themselves as wheat merchants, allowing them to walk in undisturbed [מצודת דוד, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. Another view proposes that they used a crowd to their advantage, blending in with a group of genuine merchants arriving to purchase grain [רש״י, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. Alternatively, some suggest that the actual wheat buyers created a distraction by striking the guard at the entrance, which gave the two brothers the perfect opportunity to slip quietly inside [ביאור שטיינזלץ].

Once they successfully penetrated the house, they carried out their deadly mission. They stabbed Ish-bosheth in the lower abdomen, specifically targeting the area of the fifth rib opposite the liver and gallbladder [מצודת דוד, ביאור שטיינזלץ], before quickly escaping the scene.

A completely different interpretation reads this entire event as a flashback rather than the story of Ish-bosheth's assassination. According to this view, the narrative pauses to describe an earlier, unrelated crime. The brothers had previously murdered a different man—a homeowner who dealt with wheat merchants—by stabbing him in the stomach. It was this past offense that originally forced the brothers to flee to the city of Gath [מלבי״ם].