2 Samuel 16:10
2 Samuel 16:1010But the king replied, “What have I to do with you, O sons of Zeruiah? If he curses me because the LORD told him, ‘Curse David,’ who can ask, ‘Why did you do this?’”
JWs do not cite as a distinct proof-text. David's rebuke to the sons of Zeruiah — "What have I to do with you, O sons of Zeruiah?" — surfaces only incidentally in Watchtower treatment. The rs book's flat-English reading of ("Woman, what have I to do with thee?") as Jesus's rejection of Mary does not notice that David's identical phrasing in 2 Samuel 16 is neither hostile nor dismissive — it is a refusal to align agendas with Abishai and Joab.
is one of five Old Testament occurrences of the Hebrew idiom mah-li va-lak ("what to me and to you") that stands behind the Greek phrase "ti emoi kai soi" in . The other four are (Jephthah to Ammonites), (widow of Zarephath to Elijah), (Elisha to the king of Israel), and (Neco to Josiah). In each case the idiom signals distance of intent or non-alignment of agenda — never contempt or personal rejection.
David is not rejecting Abishai and Joab as persons; he is declining to align his response to Shimei's cursing with their preferred violent solution. That is the governing sense of the phrase whenever it appears. When Jesus uses the same idiom to Mary at Cana, he is telling her that his messianic timing is not set by her social cue — his hour has not yet come. Mary responds calmly in verse 5, Jesus performs the miracle in verse 7, and the whole scene makes sense only if 2:4 is not a rebuke. The Watchtower's reading imports a hostility into the phrase that the Hebrew idiom simply does not carry.