When Adonijah had nowhere else to go, he ran to the altar and took hold of its corners. That might sound strange to us. But once you know what the altar was, you can see why it was the one place left for him to go.
The altar was built with horns on it. God’s instructions for the bronze altar say: “You shall make its horns on its four corners; its horns shall be of one piece with it” (Exodus 27:2). There were four horns, one at each corner, made as part of the altar itself.
The horns were where the blood went. When an Israelite brought a sin offering, the priest did something special with it: “The priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger, put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering” (Leviticus 4:25). So the horns were the very spot that showed a life given in place of a guilty person. That is what Adonijah had his hands on.
And the law said a person could run there. Exodus 21 talks about a man who has killed someone. If it was not planned — “if he did not lie in wait, but God delivered him into his hand” — then “I will appoint for you a place where he may flee” (21:13). The altar was that place before the cities of refuge were set up. Grabbing the horns was not superstition. It was a man saying in front of everyone, I am not running from justice; I am asking for mercy.
But the very next verse sets a limit. “If a man acts with premeditation against his neighbor, to kill him by treachery, you shall take him from My altar, that he may die” (21:14). The same law that gave the refuge also gave the exception. The altar was not a magic shield. It was the right place to go and ask for mercy, but the judge still had to decide.
Adonijah is not the only man in 1 Kings who grabs the horns of the altar. One chapter later, someone else does exactly the same thing, and it ends very differently.
Joab. He had backed Adonijah’s attempt at the throne. When David’s last instructions came out, “news came to Joab… so Joab fled to the tabernacle of the Lord and took hold of the horns of the altar” (1 Kings 2:28). It was the same altar and the same grip, but this time Solomon did not spare him.
Why not? Because of the second half of the law in Exodus 21. Solomon gave the reason out loud: it was “the innocent blood which Joab shed” (2:31). Joab “struck down two men more righteous and better than he” (2:32), Abner and Amasa, both killed by a trick while they thought they were safe. That is exactly the case of Exodus 21:14: planned murder by treachery, and God said, “you shall take him from My altar.” Solomon was not being harsher than God. He was obeying God’s law.
Adonijah wanted a throne he had no right to, and he was sent home alive. Joab killed men who trusted him, and the altar did not protect him. The horns themselves never saved anybody. They brought a person before the one who would decide.
The good news. The New Testament uses this same picture for us. Hebrews says we “have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us” (Hebrews 6:18). That is a person running and grabbing hold, just as Adonijah did at the altar. But the hope we hold is far better than an altar: “an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus” (6:19-20).
Adonijah held on to the altar and then had to wait to hear what the king would say. We do not have to wait. “We have an altar” (Hebrews 13:10), and the One we hold on to is the same One who “suffered outside the gate” to “sanctify the people with His own blood” (13:12). The blood put on those horns was pointing ahead to His. So the word for everyone who holds on to Jesus is not “if he proves himself a worthy man” but “there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).
Complete all sections to finish!
Read each section and answer the questions correctly.