The short answer to this question is, we do not know. Her name appears five times in I Kings, always as Abishag the Shunammite, and then is never mentioned again.

The longer answer is speculative, but quite interesting. When King David was old and frail, he suffered from chills in the night, and even with many blankets he could not get warm. His counselors advised that a beautiful young virgin be found, who would be a servant of the king; one of her duties would be to sleep with the king at night, to keep him warm (I Kings 1:1-3). Abishag the Shunammite was the beautiful young woman chosen for this service: to be bed-warmer to the king.

King David had a notable harem. In various passages the Bible names eight women as his wives: Michal, Abigail, Ahinoam, Maakah, Haggith, Abital, Eglah, and Bathsheba. The names of his concubines are not given, and we are not told how many concubines there were. Still, we can note that when Absalom usurped the throne and David fled from Jerusalem with his household, he left ten concubines behind, to care for the palace (II Samuel 15:16). There may well have been others not named or mentioned. It seems it would have been easy enough to create a roster from among these women to assign one of them for each night of the week, to snuggle with the king and keep him warm.

The text specifies that David and Abishag did not have sexual relations (I Kings 1:4). This gave Abishag an unusual status. No one would have been offended if they had had sex; that would make her just another concubine in the king’s harem. But if they never did, then she would be a virgin — a very desirable virgin — who was a member of the royal household.

David was 30 when he became king, and he reigned for 40 years (II Samuel 5:4; I Kings 2:10-11). These are perhaps not exact numbers. If we asked David his age when he became king, he might say, “I’m 30” — but unless coronation day was also his birthday, his actual age would have been 30 years and some months. We do the same today. On our tax forms we round an entry down or up to the nearest dollar, but with age we generally round down: you could be 20 years and eleven and a half months, but you still can’t round your age up to 21 to buy beer.

Indeed, we read, “David was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned forty years” (II Samuel 5:4). This is immediately followed by, “In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and in Jerusalem he reigned over all Israel and Judah thirty-three years” (II Samuel 5:5).

This rounding factor makes it hard for us to calculate the exact year an event happened or the exact age of a person. If we add up these numbers, we calculate that David was 30 (and perhaps a fraction) when he became king, and he reigned for seven (and a half) years in Hebron, and then in Jerusalem for 33 years (and perhaps another fraction). We commonly say that David lived 70 years; but we can see he might well have been 71 when he died.

In his last days David was old, frail, cold, and more or less bedfast. Abishag might have been fifteen. How did this young teenage girl feel about becoming the bedmate to a man older than her grandfather? The Bible doesn’t tell us about that. The names, actions, and feelings of women often go unreported.

Scripture names 19 sons of David. Six of them were born during the seven and a half years when he was king of Judah in Hebron, all by different mothers: Amnon, Khiliab (I Chronicles calls him Daniel), Absalom, Adonijah, Shephatiah, Ithream (I Chronicles 3:1-4). When David became king of all Israel, he moved his capital to Jerusalem. There he had thirteen more acknowledged sons. Bathsheba bore four of them: Shammua, Shobab, Nathan, and Solomon. Another nine sons are listed, but with no notes about their mothers: Ibhar, Elishua, Eliphelet, Nogah, Nepheg, Japhia, Elishama, Eliada, Eliphelet (I Chronicles 3:5-8). We should note that II Samuel only lists seven sons, leaving out Nogah and the duplicate listing of Eliphelet (II Samuel 5:15-16).

Scripture says nothing further about Khiliab: most Bible scholars suppose he may have died young. Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar (II Samuel 13:10-14), and was slain by Absalom in retribution (13:28-29). Absalom subsequently led a rebellion (II Samuel 15:7-14), in which his army was defeated, and he himself was slain (II Samuel 18:6-15).

David’s eldest surviving son, Adonijah, assumed he would be king of Israel when his father died. He decided to proclaim himself king while David was still alive: his father wouldn’t mind, David was on his deathbed, and soon would be gone. But Bathsheba notified David of what was going on, and he decreed that Solomon be crowned as king.

This frightened Adonijah, and he fled to the tabernacle, hoping that Solomon would not have him killed there. Solomon summoned Adonijah to appear before him, and Adonijah bowed before Solomon, acknowledging that Solomon was king (I Kings 1:50-53).

Then Adonijah made request that Abishag be given to him as his wife, as sort of a consolation prize for not getting to be king. He asked Bathsheba to arrange this. When Solomon heard about this, he was furious, and immediately ordered Adonijah’s execution.

Why such a strong reaction? As part of Absalom’s rebellion, Absalom had had sex with King David’s concubines, in a tent set up on the roof of the palace where everyone could see what he was doing: this was a public demonstration that Absalom and not David was the monarch who owned the harem. Solomon knew Adonijah taking Abishag would be the same symbol: it would be a renewed claim to kingship by Adonijah.

The Bible never specifies Solomon’s age, but we can come up with a reasonably close estimate, working from the details we have, based on David’s 40-year reign, starting with his seven (and a half) years as king of Judah. Then he captured Jerusalem, moved the Ark of the Covenant, and reigned from Jerusalem (year 8).

Then comes the battle against the Arameans and Ammonites. The text gives us the time marker, “Some time afterwards” (II Samuel 10:1), which might mean ‘later that year,’ or might mean half a dozen or even ten years later. Let’s guess that interval to be two or three years, bringing us to year 11 of David’s reign. Next we read, “In the spring of the year” (II Samuel 11:1), which moves us to year 12.

Now comes the affair with Bathsheba (II Samuel 11:2-5) and the arranged death of her husband Uriah (II Samuel 11:6-22). Bathsheba bears a son, who sickens and then dies (II Samuel 12:15-19): year 13). Bathsheba bore four more sons: Shammua, Shobab, Nathan, and Solomon. If we assume an interval at twelve months between children, with no daughters in the mix — both of those assumptions are far from assured — we would estimate that Solomon was born when David had been king for 17 years, and therefore he was 23 when David’s 40-year reign came to an end.

But we should recognize that “Some time afterwards” might easily be five years instead of three, and we should recognize that a daughter or two might have been born before Solomon, we might be up to year 22 for him to be born. So, since David’s reign was 40 years, Solomon might have been as old as 23 when David died, or as young as 18. Recognizing that we have done a lot of guesswork, let’s assume he was 20 when he became king.

Why all this work to figure out how old Solomon was? Because in the year before King David died, we have something like a 15-year-old girl and a 19-year-old boy living in the palace. I assume that Abishag and Solomon noticed each other. I assume they became friends. I don’t assume they became lovers, because doing so would have been scandalous, and because they both had deep loyalty to King David.

Solomon would eventually be famous for having a harem of 300 foreign princesses and 700 concubines. I don’t know how he even remembered the names of so many, but the text insists that he loved these women, “clinging to them in love” (I Kings 11:1-3). Scripture points to his early political marriage to the daughter of Pharaoh, sealing an alliance between Israel and Egypt (I Kings 3:1). Yet it doesn’t specify that this happened immediately once Solomon was king, or that it was his first marriage.

At some point in his life, Solomon had never yet fallen in love. I speculate that his first love was Abishag the Shunammite. I speculate that she fell in love with him, too. They could not do anything about it, while David was still alive: she slept in the king’s bed, and not in Solomon’s. Solomon’s rage against Adonijah was political, crushing Adonijah and his quest to gain the throne: but I speculate that part of his fury came from a sense that “she’s my girl, and you cannot have her.” So I speculate that Solomon took Abishag to be his bride.

My speculation could well be wrong. But if it is accurate, then their love story is told, with much poetic license, in the Song of Songs. The poetry tells of two young lovers, falling head over heels and getting married, with ups and downs in their relationship. The bridegroom is identified as King Solomon (Song of Songs 3:7-11). The bride is never named.

But she is referenced twice as “Shulammite” (Song of Songs 6:13). This is the feminine form of Shlomo, which is the Hebrew name that we call Solomon: it would mean Mrs. Solomon. And it could easily be a play on Shunammite. Shunammite just means “person from Shunem.” Shunem was a village in the tribe of Issachar, north of Mount Gilboa. So Abishag the Shunammite means “Abishag, the girl from Shunem.”

The Song of Songs sometimes speaks from the bride’s point of view, and sometimes from the groom’s perspective. We hear from both of them, what they see and how they feel. Did Solomon write it all? If so, he listened to his bride and gave us her thoughts and feelings in detail. Or did Solomon and Abishag write it together, expressing their individual viewpoints and blending it into one extended poem?

So. Whatever happened to Abishag the Shunammite? We don’t know. Maybe after King David died she went home to Shunem, got married, and lived with her husband on their small farm. That’s probably the most likely scenario. But maybe when she was 15 she fell in love with Prince Solomon, didn’t get married off to Adonijah as part of his scheme to make himself king, but married her high school sweetheart, King Solomon, and wrote part of the Song of Songs.