2 Samuel 13

Capture of Rabbah. Amnon and Tamar. Murder of Amnon and Flight of Absalom. Absalom’s Recall, and Subsequent Restoration to David’s Favor. 2 Sam. 12:26-31; 13:1-39; 14:1-33. 1 Chron. 20:1-3.

12 1 AND the LORD sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him, 2 There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds: but the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own morsel, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him, 5 but took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him. And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the LORD liveth, the 6 man that hath done this is worthy to die: and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.

7. And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel, I 8 anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul; and I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added unto thee such and such 9 things. Wherefore hast thou despised the word of the LORD, to do that which is evil in his sight? thou hast smitten Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy 10 wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken 11 the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife. Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give 12 them unto thy neighbor, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun. For thou 13 didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun. And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the LORD. And Nathan said unto David, the LORD 14 also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die. Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto 15 thee shall surely die. And Nathan departed unto his house.

And the LORD struck the child that Uriah’s wife bare unto David, and it was very sick. 16 David therefore besought God for the child; and David fasted, and went in, and lay all 17 night upon the earth. And the elders of his house arose, and stood beside him, to raise 18 him up from the earth: but he would not, neither did he eat bread with them. And it came to pass on the seventh day, that the child died. And the servants of David feared to tell him that the child was dead: for they said, Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spake unto him, and he hearkened not unto our voice: how will he then vex himself, if we tell him that 19 the child is dead? But when David saw that his servants whispered together, David per- ceived that the child was dead: and David said unto his servants, Is the child dead? And 20 they said, He is dead. Then David arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his apparel; and he came into the house of the LORD, and worshipped: then he came to his own house; and when he required they set bread before him, and he did eat. 21 Then said his servants unto him, What thing is this that thou hast done? thou didst fast and weep for the child, while it was alive; but when the child was dead, thou didst rise and eat 22 bread. And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who know- 23 eth whether the LORD will not be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall 24 not return to me. And David comforted Bath-sheba his wife, and went in unto her, and lay 25 with her: and she bare a son, and he called his name Solomon. And the LORD loved him; and he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet, and he called his name Jedidiah, for the LORD’s sake.

In the very culmination of David’s prosperity, at the very crowning point of his great work for Israel, and when he had sung his brightest, sweetest, most trustful songs, came that fierce outbreak of his passionate nature, for the time —and a long time—overriding and benumbing all that was spiritual and devout in him. Like Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and Peter, David sin- ned at the very point of his peculiar excellence. As it was the faith of Abraham, the meekness of Moses, the intrepidity of Elijah, and the cour- age of Peter, so it was David’s purity and kind- liness of heart that failed. At length he “sor- rowed toward God,” and was forgiven; but troubles and afflictions in his family, and sore judgments among his people, were the tokens of God’s rebuke, and kept his “sin ever before” him. His harp was strung to new measures of sadness, in which grief for transgression is blended with fervent aspiration after the purity and peace of God. And in these later Psalms, by showing that there is forgiveness, and that in God is our strength, he has helped many a sin- ning soul, while warning the faithful and pure against the force of sudden temptation in an unguarded hour. B.

A year had passed since David’s fall. The child of sin had been born. And all this time God was silent! Yet all the time there hung over him this Divine sentence: “But the thing that David had done was evil in the eyes of Je- hovah.” A. E.—It was about a year that David lay under the guilt of that sin, and for aught that appears, unrepented of. And then David did not send for Nathan (though he had never had so much occasion as he had now for his confessor), but God sent Nathan to David. H.—Alas, what long and dead sleeps may the holiest soul take in fearful sins! Were it not for thy mercy, O God, the best of us should end our spiritual lethargy in sleep of death. Bp. H.

1-7. Detestable as was the double guilt of this dark story, we must still remember that David was not an Alfred or a Saint Louis. He was an Eastern king, exposed to all the temptations of a king of Ammon or Damascus then, of a Sultan of Bagdad or Constantinople in modern times. What follows, however, could have been found nowhere in the ancient world but in the Jewish monarchy. A year had passed; the child of guilt was born in the royal house, and loved with all the passionate tenderness of David’s paternal heart. Suddenly the prophet Nathan appears before him. He comes as if to claim redress for a wrong in humble life. It was the true prophetic spirit that spoke through Nathan’s mouth. The apologue of the rich man and the ewe lamb has, besides its own intrinsic tenderness, a supernatural elevation, which is the best sign of true Revelation. It ventures to disregard all particulars, and is content to aim at awakening the general sense of outraged justice. It fastens on the essential guilt of David’s sin,—not its sensuality, or its impurity, so much as its meanness and selfishness. It rouses the king’s conscience by that teaching described as specially characteristic of prophecy, making manifest his own sin in the indignation which he has expressed at the sin of another. Thou art the man is, or ought to be, the conclusion, expressed or unexpressed, of every practical sermon. Stanley.

He puts his parable in such life-like form that the king has no suspicion of its real character. The rich robber that spared his own flocks and herds to feed the traveller, and stole the poor man’s ewe lamb, is a real flesh-and-blood criminal to him. And the deed is so dastardly, its heartlessness is so atrocious, that it is not enough to enforce against such a wretch the ordinary law of fourfold restitution; in the exercise of his high prerogative the king pronounces a sentence of death upon the ruffian, and confirms it with the solemnity of an oath—“The man that hath done this thing shall surely die.” The flash of indignation is yet in his eye, the flush of resentment is still on his brow, when the prophet, with calm voice and piercing eye, utters the solemn words, “Thou art the man!” Thou, great king of Israel, art the robber, the ruffian, condemned by thine own voice to the death of the worst malefactor! W. G. B.

7-9. The answer of Nathan is a perfect example of the Divine way of convincing of sin. There is first the plain charge pressed home on the individual conscience, “Thou art the man.” Then follows, not reproach or further deepening of the blackness of the deed, but a tender enumeration of God’s great benefits, whereon is built the solemn question, “Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in His sight?” The contemplation of God’s faithful love, and of the all-sufficient gifts which it bestows, makes every transgression irrational as well as ungrateful, and turns remorse, which consumes like the hot wind of the wilderness, into tearful repentance which refreshes the soul. A. M.

9. Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord. Great as was David’s sin against Uriah and Bathsheba, his sin against God was greater in thus breaking two express commandments of the Decalogue.

And hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. This is not a mere repetition of the clause “thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword.” The verb is stronger, “thou hast murdered;” and the offence is shown to have been aggravated by the employment of the Ammonites, the enemies of God’s people, as the instruments for its commission. A. F. K.—He charges him with a high contempt of the Divine authority, in the sins he had been guilty of. Wherefore hast thou (presuming upon thy royal dignity and power) despised the commandment of the Lord? This is the spring, and this the malignity of sin, that it is making light of the Divine law and the Lawmaker; as if the obligation of it were weak, the precepts of it trifling, and the threats not at all formidable. David despised the word of the Lord, so it is in the Hebrew, the particular word of promise, which God had, by Nathan, sent to him some time before, that he would build him a house: which sacred promise, if he had had a due value and veneration for, he would not thus have polluted his house with lust and blood. H.

10,11. Here we find a great principle in the moral government of God,—correspondence between an offence and its retribution. Of this many instances occur in the Old Testament, Jacob deceived his father; he was deceived by his own sons. Lot made a worldly choice; in the world’s ruin he was overwhelmed. So David having slain Uriah with his sword, the sword was never to depart from him. He had robbed Uriah of his wife; his neighbors would in like manner rob and dishonor him. He had disturbed the purity of the family relation; his own house was to become a den of pollution. He had mingled deceit and treachery with his actions; deceit and treachery would be practised toward him. What a sad and ominous prospect! For him there was to be no calm in the evening of his life. His trial was to fall on the tenderest part of his nature. He had a strong affection for his children; in that very feeling he was to be wounded, and that, too, all his life long. W. G. B.—The sentence pronounced upon him—“Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house,” furnishes the key to David’s future history and career, which was as unprosperous and troubled, as the earlier part of his reign had been happy and successful. There was in all things a great change—even in the man himself. Broken in spirit by the consciousness of how deeply he had sinned against God and against man; humbled in the eyes of his subjects, and his influence with them weakened by the knowledge of his crimes; and even his authority in his own household, and his claim to the reverence of his sons, relaxed by his loss of character—David appears henceforth as a much altered man. Kit.

12. The sin was secret and industriously concealed, but the punishment should be open and industriously proclaimed, to the shame of David, whose sin in the matter of Uriah would then be called to mind and commonly talked of. As face answers to face in a glass, so does the punishment often answer to the sin; here is blood for blood, and uncleanness for uncleanness. And thus God would show how much he hates sin, even in his own people, and that wherever he finds it he will not let it go unpunished. H.

13. David cannot have the heart or the face to stand out against the message of God; but now, as a man confounded and condemned in himself, he cries out, in the bitterness of a wounded soul, I have sinned against the Lord. It was a short word, but passionate; and such as came from the bottom of a contrite heart. Bp H.

The prophet Nathan came to tell him in clear words that which he had been hearing in muttered accents within his heart for months before. He came to tell him that the God of righteousness and mercy, who cared for Uriah, the poor man with the single ewe-lamb, was calling him, the king, to account for an act of unrighteousness and unmercifulness. Nathan brought him to face steadily the light at which he had been winking, and to own that the light was good and the darkness only was horrible and hateful; so that he might turn to the light, and crave that it should once more penetrate into the depths of his being and take possession of him. And this was his confession and prayer. He makes out no case for himself; he pleads no extenuating circumstances. Maurice.—“I have sinned against the Lord.” Two words (in the Hebrew) make the transition from sullen misery to real though shaded peace. No lengthened outpouring, no accumulation of self reproach; he is too deeply moved for many words, which he knows God does not need. More would have been less. All is contained in that one sob, in which the whole frostwork of these weary months breaks up and rolls away, swept before the strong flood. A. M.

The instant recognition of his guilt breaks up the illusion of months. “I have sinned against the Lord.” The sense of his injustice to man waxes faint before his sense of sin against God. “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.” Stanley.—“The strength of David’s confession lay in the three words “against the Lord.” Any one can say, “I have sinned,” but one must have known God, must have realized what sin is to God, and must have felt something of what God is to the soul before one can say, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Vaughan.—“Who has not read that fifty-first Psalm, in which David does solemn penance in presence of all the people, and in which he utters, on account of his sin, a cry of anguish which still re-echoes throughout all ages? Ah! far from veiling itself in this transaction, the holiness of God shines forth brilliantly, so brilliantly that David himself humbly acknowledges it in the very hour when it strikes him most rigorously, by exclaiming, “That Thou mightest be justified when Thou speakest;” that is, when Thou reproachest me; “and be clear when Thou judgest.” Godet.

In Ps. 51 we hear David crying out for mercy in the bitterness of his pangs. He seems to lose sight of everything else but God. His sins are seen as if committed against God only. Oh, can he ever be forgiven? And if forgiven, can he hope to be so washed and cleansed and lifted above temptation’s power that he shall never fall again? These are the words of his prayer. Never were fitter words poured forth from a penitent soul. H. C.—In these words the humiliation of the Psalmist before God is very profound, very thorough. His case is one for simple mercy; he has not the shadow of a plea in self-defence. His sin is in every aspect atrocious. It is the product of one so vile that he may be said to have been shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin. The aspect of it as sin against God is so overwhelming that it absorbs the other aspect—the sin against man. Not but that he has sinned against man, too; but it is the sin against God that is so awful, so overwhelming. Yet, if his sin abounds, the Psalmist feels that God’s grace abounds much more. He has the highest sense of the excellence and the multitude of God’s loving-kindnesses. Man can never make himself so odious as to be beyond the Divine compassion. He can never become so guilty as to be beyond the Divine forgiveness. “Blot out my transgressions,” sobs David, knowing that it can be done. “Purge me with hyssop,” he cries, “and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me.” But this is not all; it is far from all. He pleads most plaintively for the restoration of God’s friendship. “Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me,"—for that would be hell; “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and uphold me with Thy free Spirit,"—for that is heaven. And, with the renewed sense of God’s love and grace, there would come a renewed power to serve God and be useful to men. “Then will I teach transgressors Thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto Thee. O Lord, open Thou my lips; and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise.” Deprive me not forever of Thy friendship, for then life would be but darkness and anguish; depose me not forever from Thy ministry, continue to me yet the honor and the privilege of converting sinners unto Thee. Of the sacrifices of the law it was needless to think, as if they were adequate to purge away so overwhelming a sin. “Thou desirest not sacrifice, else I would give it: Thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.” With all his consciousness of sin, David has yet a profound faith in God’s mercy, and he is forgiven. W. G. B.

And as brief and simple as the confession, is the response, And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin. How full and unconditional the blessing bestowed in these few words; how swift and sufficient the answer! So the long estrangement is ended. Thus simple and divine is the manner of pardon. In such short compass may the turning-point of a life lie! But while confession and forgiveness heal the breach between God and David, pardon is not impunity, and the same sentence which bestows the remission of sin announces the exaction of a penalty. A. M.—We learn from the case of

David, that God can punish, and that he can forgive, at the same time. Punishment from him, when it falls upon good men, is not the punishment of wrath and vengeance, but that of love and correction; it is therefore a sign that he forgives, and it ought to be so understood. When Nathan said to David, “The sword shall never depart from thy house;” he said at the same time, “The Lord hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.” God, therefore, forgives while he punishes, and punishes because he forgives. Jones of N.—Pardon may well stand with temporal afflictions. Where God hath forgiven, though he doth not punish, yet he may chastise, and that unto blood; neither doth he always forbear correction, where he remits revenge. So long as he smites us not as an angry judge, we may endure to smart from him as a loving father. Bp. H.

There is yet another Psalm which manifestly pertains to David’s experience in this great sin, viz., Ps. 32. It seems to have been written a little later than Ps. 51, and yet to record in part his earlier experience. H. C.—What untold agonies he suffered while he covered up his sin, he himself has told us in the thirty-second Psalm. In general, we have in this respect also in the Psalter a faithful record for the guidance of penitents in all ages—to preserve them from despair, to lead them to true repentance, and to bring them at last into the sunlight of forgiveness and peace. Throughout one element appears very prominently, and is itself an indication of “godly sorrow.” Besides his own guilt the penitent also feels most keenly the dishonor which he has brought on God’s name, and the consequent triumph of God’s enemies. Placing these Psalms, so to speak, in the chronological order of David’s experience, we would arrange them as follows: Ps. 38, 6, 51, and 32—when at last it is felt that all “transgression is forgiven,” all “sin covered.” A. E.

14. Howbeit.** While he who has fully confessed is fully forgiven, there is still, as concerns this present life, a sad “howbeit” behind. God had taken from him the eternal penalty of his sin; but He had never said, Thy sin shall not be bitter to thee. God may forgive His children their sin, and yet He may make their sin most bitter to them here, teaching them in this way its evil, which they might else have been in danger of forgetting, the aggravation which there is in the sins of a child, in sins against light, against knowledge, against love. Trench.—Because thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. This is an aggravation.

tion of guilt which only God’s children can commit. And it is an aggravation of a most distressing kind, enough surely to warn off every Christian from vile self-indulgence. The blasphemy to which David had given occasion was that which denies the reality of God’s work in the souls of His people. It denies that they are better than others. They only make more pretence, but that pretence is hollow, if not hypocritical. There is no such thing as a special work of the Holy Ghost in them, and therefore there is no reason why any one should seek to be converted, or why he should implore the special grace of the Spirit of God. Alas, how true it is that when any one who occupies a conspicuous place in the Church of God breaks down, such sneers are sure to be discharged on every side! W. G. B.

That the man after God’s own heart should have so fallen from his high estate as to become the adulterer and the assassin, has been ever urged with great effect by unbelievers; and this very consequence of David’s sin was foreseen and foretold by Nathan the prophet, when he approached the king, bearing with him the rebuke of God on his tongue, and saying, “By this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of God to blaspheme.” Such has indeed been its effect from the day when it was first done unto this day, and such probably will its effect continue to be unto the end of time. That the sin of David was great and grievous, the Almighty proclaimed even more loudly perhaps by suffering David to live, than if in the sudden burst of his instant displeasure he had slain him. For with this sin the sorrow of his life began, and the curse which the prophet denounced against him sat heavy on his spirit to the last; a curse which has a peculiar reference to the nature of his crime; as though upon this offence all his future miseries and misfortunes were to turn; as though he was only spared from the avenger’s violent hand to be made a spectacle of righteous suffering to the world. He had committed murder by the edge of the sword, and therefore the sword was never to depart from his house. He had despised the commandment of the Lord (so Nathan expressly says), and taken the wife of another to be his wife; therefore were his own wives to be taken from him, and given to his neighbor in turn. The complexion, therefore, of his remaining years was set by this one fatal deed of darkness (let none think or say that it was lightly regarded by the Almighty), and having become the man of blood, of blood he was to drink deep; and having become the man of lust, by that same baneful passion in others was he himself to be scourged forever. Now the manner in which these tremendous threats are fulfilled is very remarkable; for it is done by way of natural consequence of the sin itself. And now can any say that God winked at this wickedness of his servant? That the man after his own heart, for such in the main he was, frail as he proved himself, sinned grievously, and sinned with impunity! On the contrary, this deed was the pivot upon which David’s fortunes turned; that done, and he was undone; then did God raise up enemies against him for it out of his own house, for “the thing,” as we are expressly told, “displeased the Lord;” thenceforward the days of his years became full of evil. Blunt.

22. 23. The death of the child showed that it was not God’s will to grant his petition, notwithstanding his deep repentance and earnest prayer and fasting. All suspense was now at an end, and, therefore, all reason for continuing to fast and pray. For David to abandon himself to the wailings of aggravated grief at this moment would have been to quarrel with the will of God. It would have been to challenge God’s right to view the child as one with its father, and treat it accordingly. And there was yet another reason. If his heart still yearned on the child, the reunion was not impossible, though it could not take place in this life. “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.” The glimpse of the future expressed in these words is touching and beautiful. The relation between David and that little child is not ended. Though the mortal remains shall soon crumble, father and child are not yet done with one another. But their meeting is not to be in this world. Meet again they certainly shall, for “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.” And this glimpse of the future relation of parent and child, separated here by the hand of death, has ever proved most comforting to bereaved Christian hearts. Very touching and very comforting it is to light on this bright view of the future at so early a period of Old Testament history. Words cannot express the desolation of heart which such bereavements cause. When Rachel is weeping for her children she cannot be comforted if she thinks they are not. But a new light breaks on her desolate heart when she is assured that she may go to them, though they shall not return to her. W. G. B.
23. 25. And once more there came peace to David’s soul. Bathsheba was now truly and before God his wife. Another child gladdened their hearts. David named him, symbolically and prophetically, Solomon, “the peaceful;” the seal, the pledge, and the promise of peace. But God called him, and he was “Jedidiah,” the Jehovah-loved. Once more, then, the sunshine of God’s favor had fallen upon David’s household—yet was it, now and ever afterward, the sunlight of autumn rather than that of summer; a sunlight, not of undimmed brightness, but amid clouds and storm. A. E.

The story is told without palliation or reserve, without comment or heightening, in that stern judicial fashion so characteristic of the Bible records of its greatest characters. Every step is narrated without a trace of softening, and without a word of emotion. Not a single ugly detail is spared. The portraiture is as vivid as ever. It is told because it teaches us, as no other page in the history of God’s church does, how the alchemy of Divine love can extract sweet perfumes of penitence and praise out of the filth of sin; and, therefore, though we turn with loathing from David’s sin, we have to bless God for the record of it, and for the lessons of hope that come from David’s pardon. To many a sin-tortured soul since then, the two psalms (51 and 32), all blotted with tears, in which he has sobbed out his penitence, have been as footsteps in a great and terrible wilderness. A. M.

It is one object of Holy Scripture to paint sin in its true colors. No friendly flattery, no false modesty, draws a veil over this dark scene in David’s life. It is recorded as a warning, that even holy men may yield to temptation and fall into gross sin; that one sin almost inevitably leads to others; that sin, even when repented of, brings punishment in its train. With stern simplicity the inspired prophet-historian describes how “the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is fullgrown, bringeth forth death” (James 1: 15). The king, who but a few years before had sung of “clean hands and a pure heart” (Ps. 24: 4), and vowed to exclude from his palace all workers of deceit (Ps. 101: 7), is dragged by his passion into meanness, ingratitude, dissimulation, treachery, murder. “These things were written for our admonition. . . . Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” But if the history is a stern record of the enthralling power and the inevitable consequences of sin, it is no less a testimony to the liberating power of repentance. In the words of Bishop Hall: “How can we presume of not sinning, or despair for sinning, when we find so great a saint thus fallen, true risen.” It is the necessary key to the history of the rest of David’s reign. It explains the sudden overclouding of his life; the change from triumph and prosperity to sorrow and failure. A. F. K.

Jewish tradition declares that the sin of Israel in making the golden calf and the fall of David were only recorded—it might almost seem, that they were only allowed—for the sake of their lessons about repentance. The former showed that, even if the whole congregation had erred and strayed, the door of mercy was still open to them; the latter, that not only for Israel as a whole, but for each individual sinner, however low his fall, there was assurance of forgiveness, if with true penitence he turned to God. The one case proved that nothing was too great for God to pardon; the other that there was not any one beneath His gracious notice. Be they many, or only one solitary individual, the ear of God was equally open to the cry of the repentant. The other point to which the Rabbis call attention is, that all the trials of David’s later life, and all the judgments which overtook him and his house, might be traced up to his great sin, which, though personally pardoned, made itself felt in its consequences throughout the whole of his after-history. It cannot be doubted that there is deep truth in this view. For, although David was graciously forgiven, and again received into God’s favor, neither he nor his government ever wholly recovered from the moral shock of his fall. It is not merely that his further history was attended by an almost continuous succession of troubles, but that these troubles, while allowed of God in judgment, were all connected with a felt and perceptible weakness on his part, which was the consequence of his sin. If the figure may be allowed: henceforth David’s hand shook, and his voice trembled; and both what he did and what he said, alike in his own household and in the land, bore evidence of it. A. E.

The fall of David is one of the most instructive and alarming recorded in that most faithful and impartial of all histories, the Holy Bible. The transgression of one idle and unguarded moment pierced him through with many sorrows, and embittered the rest of his life. The remainder of his days was as disastrous as the beginning had been prosperous. Rape, incest, murder, and rebellion, raged among his children; he was deserted by his friends, reviled by his enemies, banished from his capital, plunged into the deepest affliction by the ingratitude and death of his favorite and rebellious son Absalom; and, to fill up the measure of his calamities, had a dreadful plague brought upon his subjects by his last offence; so that he died, exhausted, at seventy years of age, still older in constitution than in years. Dr. Hales.—The death of Uriah marks the change in David’s personal fortune. The avenger of blood pursues him relentlessly. Deeply does he repent of his sin, and Nathan assures him of the Divine forgiveness; but the natural consequences of the sin are not thereby cancelled, nor is chastisement suspended. It is an awful and salutary lesson, that sin compels us to eat the bread of bitterness even though our pardon be sealed by the Word of God. The great contrast between Saul and David is to be observed in the profound and constant respect with which the latter heard and heeded the admonition of the prophets of God. The prophets were preachers of righteousness. Saul heard Samuel, and then did as he pleased. He was restless under admonition, and disobedient. David bowed his heart, and repented in dust and ashes. Here is the moral grandeur of the man which makes him a model for all time, a true servant of God, because always and promptly submissive to the Divine reproof. It is a splendid tribute which that severest and sourest of all critics, Thomas Carlyle, pays to the character of the great Hebrew king:

“David, the Hebrew king, had fallen into sins enough,—blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon unbelievers sneer, and ask, ‘Is this your man according to God’s heart?’ The sneer seems to me but a shallow one. David’s life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man’s moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul toward what is good and best,—struggle often baffled, sore baffled down into entire wreck, yet a struggle never ended; ever with tears, repentance, true, unconquerable purpose begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man’s walking in truth always that—‘a succession of falls?’ Man can do no other. In this wild element of a life he has to struggle upward, now fallen, now abased; and ever with tears, repentance, and a bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again, still onward. That his struggle be a faithful, unconquerable one, that is the question of questions.”

Ah, the man who sneers at David does not know his own heart, nor does he dream how a fierce, hot breath might consume to ashes his own boastful superiority! The true man will profit by David’s example, and double the guard over his own conduct; while he will be profoundly grateful that even for David was there forgiveness with God. It is the parable of the prodigal in real life. It will send no man into the slums, but it will encourage many a man to come back or to call a halt in his course. There are scars upon your soul, perhaps; there are secrets that haunt and curse you; there are memories that torment you; but, my brother, the gate of return is open, and He who pardoned David has mercy for thousands, and will make you whiter than snow, if you come to Him with a broken heart. Behrends.

David, in his two characters, is not one man, but two. There is no concord between David fighting for God, in the confidence of God’s righteousness, and David violating the plainest laws of society for his own selfish lusts. They are not to be reconciled. It is just in this circumstance that David’s righteous and evil acts are not to be harmonized, that the wholesomeness of his written story lies. We do not feel the inconsistency which unbelievers point to in David, with the sneering question, “Is this the man after God’s own heart?” We feel rather that were it not for these inconsistencies David would be unlike us, and his story no pattern of ours. Ainger.

We are obliged to admit that characters full of open faults, and even stained by manifest sins, are often more estimable than those in which the fault never comes to the surface. Peter, who denied his Master and yet really loved Him, would have been less worthy of regard if he had loved less although he never had denied. His sin was a revelation of what sin is, but not of the comparative worth of his character. So, too, the great crimes of David show that sin in the form of strong desire leads to enormous wickedness, even to so heinous a crime as murder; while yet in the judgment of God and of man many a person would stand far below David in character, who had lived an outwardly unspotted life. Woolsey.—Many have sinned even more deeply than David sinned; few, very few, have repented as deeply as did he. It is easy to sin with his passion, but how difficult to repent with his grief! M. J.

Though the sins and backsliding of a believer cannot destroy his interest in Christ, yet they may so far destroy his comfort (especially if long persisted in against light and love, and of a foul nature) that, even after he is delivered from the power of them, he may for a long time go bleeding under the wounds he has received from the commission of them. The promise indeed is sure, that God will not UTTERLY “take away his loving-kindness” from one individual of the seed of grace; yet the threat is no less certain, that “He will visit their iniquity with a rod, and their sin with scourges;” not in a way of vindictive wrath, but in a way of mercy and fatherly chastisement.

As it is in temporals, so in spirituals: a strong Christian, by venturing too much on the slippery borders of temptation, may get a fearful tumble into the mire, and complain of broken bones, as David did; but by grace he will rise again and walk more warily; whereas spiritual declensions (at the root of which the cankerworm of worldly-mindedness usually lies concealed) eat up the very vitals of religion; and are the more dangerous, as they advance more imperceptibly. Hill.

One other fact we must notice ere passing from the record of David’s confession and chastisement,—the moral courage which he showed in delivering the fifty-first Psalm to the chief musician, and thus helping to keep alive in his own generation and for all time coming the memory of his trespass. Most men would have thought how the ugly transaction might most effectually be buried, and would have tried to put their best face on it before their people.

Not so David. He was willing that his people and all posterity should see him the atrocious transgressor he was—let them think of him as they pleased. He saw that this everlasting exposure of his vileness was essential toward extracting from the miserable transaction such salutary lessons as it might be capable of yielding. And the first public record of the transaction came from his own pen, and was delivered to the chief musician, for public use. Infidels may scoff, but this narrative will be a standing proof that the foolishness of God is wiser than men. The view given to God’s servants of the weakness and deceitfulness of their hearts; the warning against dallying with the first movements of sin; the sight of the misery which follows in its wake; the encouragement which the convicted sinner has to humble himself before God; the impulse given to penitential feeling; the hope of mercy awakened in the breasts of the despairing; the softer, humbler, holier walk when pardon has been got and peace restored,—such lessons as these, afforded in every age by this narrative, will render it to thoughtful hearts a constant ground for magnifying God. W. G. B.

CAPTURE OF RABBAH. AMNON AND TAMAR. MURDER OF AMNON AND FLIGHT OF ABSALOM. JOAB’S STRATAGEM TO SECURE ABSALOM’S RECALL. ABSALOM’S RETURN TO JERUSALEM, AND SUBSEQUENT RESTORATION TO DAVID’S FAVOR.

1. S. 12: 26 Now Joab fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and took the royal city. And Joab sent messengers to David, and said, I have fought against Rabbah, yea, I have taken the city of waters. Now therefore gather the rest of the people together, and encamp against the city, and take it: lest I take the city, and it be called after my name. And David gathered all the people together, and went to Rabbah, and fought against it, and took it. And he took the crown of their king from off his head; and the weight thereof was a talent of gold, and in it were precious stones; and it was set on David’s head. And he brought forth the spoil of the city, exceeding much. And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under (or to) saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through (or labor at) the brickkiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon. And David and all the people returned unto Jerusalem.

Ch. 13: 1-39. The cruel crime of Ammon, and his assassination by Absalom’s order. Absalom flees to the Syrian King Talmai, and remains in Geshur three years.

14 1 Now Joab the son of Zeruiah perceived that the king’s heart was toward Absalom. 2 And Joab sent to Tekoa, and fetched thence a wise woman, and said unto her, I pray thee, feign thyself to be a mourner, and put on mourning apparel, I pray thee, and anoint not thyself with oil, but be as a woman that had a long time mourned for the dead: and go in to the king, 3 and speak on this manner unto him. So Joab put the words in her mouth. And when the woman of Tekoa spake to the king, she fell on her face to the ground, and did obeisance, and said, Help, O king. And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, Of a truth I am a widow woman, and mine husband is dead. And thy handmaid had two sons, and they two strove together in the field, and there was none to part them, but the one smote the other, and killed him. And, behold, the whole family is risen against thine handmaid, and they said, Deliver him that smote his brother, that we may kill him for the life of his brother whom he slew, and so destroy the heir also: thus shall they quench my coal which is left, and shall leave to my husband neither name nor remainder upon the face of the earth. And the king said unto the woman, Go to thine house, and I will give charge concerning thee. And the woman of Tekoa said unto the king, My lord, O king, the iniquity be on me, and on my father’s house: and the king and his throne be guiltless. And the king said, Whosoever saith aught unto thee, bring him to me, and he shall not touch thee any more. Then said she, I pray thee, let the king remember the LORD thy God, that the avenger of blood destroy not any more, lest they destroy my son. And he said, As the LORD liveth, there shall not one hair of thy son fall to the earth. Then the woman said, Let thine handmaid, I pray thee, speak a word unto my lord the king. And he said, Say on. And the woman said, Wherefore then hast thou devised such a thing against the people of God? for in speaking this word the king is as one which is guilty, in that the king doth not fetch home again his banished one. For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again; neither doth God take away life, but deviseth means, that he that is banished be not an outcast from him. Now therefore seeing that I am come to speak this word unto my lord the king, it is because the people have made me afraid: and thy handmaid said, I will now speak unto the king; it may be that the king will perform the request of his servant. For the king will hear, to deliver his servant out of the hand of the man that would destroy me and my son together out of the inheritance of God. Then thine handmaid said, Let, I pray thee, the word of my lord the king be comfortable: for as an angel of God, so is my lord the king to discern good and bad: and the LORD thy God be with thee. Then the king answered and said unto the woman, Hide not from me, I pray thee, aught that I shall ask thee. And the woman said, Let my lord the king now speak. And the king said, Is the hand of Joab with thee in all this? And the woman answered and said, As thy soul liveth, my lord the king, none can turn to the right hand or to the left from aught that my lord the king hath spoken: for thy servant Joab, he bade me, and he put all these words in the mouth of thine handmaid: to change the face of the matter hath thy servant Joab done this thing: and my lord is wise, according to the wisdom of an angel of God, to know all things that are in the earth. And the king said unto Joab, Behold now, I have done this thing: go therefore, bring the young man Absalom again. And Joab fell to the ground on his face, and did obeisance, and blessed the king: and Joab said, To-day thy servant knoweth that I have found grace in thy sight, my lord, O king, in that the king hath performed the request of his servant. So Joab arose and went to Geshur, and brought Absalom to Jerusalem. And the king said, Let him turn to his own house, but let him not see my face. So Absalom turned to his own house, and saw not the king’s face. Now in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty: from the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him. And when he polled his head, (now it was at every year’s end that he polled it: because the hair was heavy on him, therefore he polled it:) he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels, after the king’s weight. And unto Absalom there were born three sons, and one daughter, whose name was Tamar: she was a woman of a fair countenance. And Absalom dwelt two full years in Jerusalem; and he saw not the king’s face. Then Absalom sent for Joab, to send him to the king; but he would not come to him: and he sent again a second time, but he would not come. Therefore he said unto his servants, See, Joab’s field is near mine, and he hath barley there; go and set it on fire. And Absalom’s servants set the field on fire. Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom unto his house, and said unto him, Wherefore have thy servants set my field on fire? And Absalom answered Joab, Behold, I sent unto thee, saying, Come hither, that I may send thee to the king, to say, Wherefore am I come from Geshur? it were better for me to be there still: now therefore let me see the king’s face; and if there be iniquity in me, let him kill me. So Joab came to the king, and told him: and when he had called for Absalom, he came to the king, and bowed himself on his face to the ground before the king: and the king kissed Absalom.

12 : 26-31. It is often the method of the writers of Scripture, when the stream of public history has been broken by a private or personal incident, to complete at once the incident, and then go back to the principal history, resuming it at the point at which it was interrupted. In this way it sometimes happens that earlier events are recorded at a later part of the narrative than the natural order would imply. In the course of the narrative of David’s war with Ammon, the incident of his sin with Bathsheba presents itself. In accordance with the method referred to, that incident is recorded straight on to its very close, including the birth of Bathsheba’s second son (verses 24, 25—see previous section), which must have occurred at least two years later. That being concluded, the history of the war with Ammon is resumed at the point at which it was broken off. We are not to suppose, as many have done, that the events recorded in these concluding verses of this chapter happened later than those recorded immediately before. This would imply that the siege of Rabbah lasted for two or three years—a supposition hardly to be entertained.

The order of events is probably as follows: After the death of Uriah, Joab prepares for an assault on Rabbah. Meanwhile, at Jerusalem, Bathsheba goes through the form of mourning for her husband, and when the usual days of mourning are over David hastily sends for her and makes her his wife. Next comes a message from Joab that he has succeeded in taking the city of waters, and that only the citadel remains to be taken, for which purpose he urges David to come himself with additional forces, and thereby gain the honor of conquering the place. It rather surprises one to find Joab declining an honor for himself, as it also surprises us to find David going to reap what another had sowed. David, however, goes with “all the people,” and is successful, and after disposing of the Ammonites he returns to Jerusalem. Soon after Bathsheba’s child is born; then Nathan goes to David and gives him the message that lays him in the dust. This is not only the most natural order for the events, but it agrees best with the spirit of the narrative. W. G. B.

26. And Joab fought against Rabbah.** The narrative returns to the point at which it was left in ch. 11 : 1. But how long a time was occupied in the siege does not appear. It is possible that it lasted more than one year, and did not come to an end till after the birth of Bathsheba’s first child. But, on the other hand, it would be quite natural for the historian, having once commenced his account of Bath-

Bathsheba, to complete it before narrating the capture of Rabbah, so that this may have been effected within a year. Rabbah (the great city), or more fully Rabbah of the children of Ammon, the capital of the Ammonites, was situated in a strong position about twenty-two miles east of the Jordan, on a branch of the valley of the Jabok. It consisted of the lower town, called “the city of waters” (verse 27), from the perennial stream which has its source in it; and the citadel, a place of great strength, built on a hill rising abruptly on the north side of the lower town. We are not told whether the city was destroyed on its capture. If so, it was afterward rebuilt, and was a place of importance at the time of Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion. A. F. K.

27. City of Waters.** This expression of Joab, and the fact of the citadel requiring a separate siege, are at once understood on the spot. Ammon stands on the confluence of two little streams, which unite in the centre of the place, the two valleys converging into one, and enclosing between them a bold, flat triangle of rock, the ancient citadel. This is of itself a large city of several acres. H. B. T.—“The royal city” seems to be equivalent to “the city of waters”—that is, the lower city on the river, as distinguished from “the city” (verse 28)—i.e., the citadel. The capture of this probably deprived the citadel of its water-supply, and so rendered it untenable for any length of time.

31. These cruel punishments must be judged according to the standard of the age in which they were inflicted, not by the light of Christian civilization. The Ammonites were evidently a savage and brutal nation, and in all probability they were treated no worse than they were accustomed to treat others. It was the age of retaliation, when the law of like for like—the lex talionis—prevailed. They had foully insulted David, and it is not to be wondered at if he was provoked into making a signal example of them by this severity. In this respect he did not rise above the level of his own age. A. F. K.—Although the fact is not stated (as it is only incidentally done in the case of Adonizedek) that the present severity was retributive, the certainty that it was so is sufficiently indicated by sundry dispersed facts, which bring out the peculiarly savage character of this people. Look, for instance, at their refusal of any other terms than the loss of their right eyes, to the men of Jabesh Gilead, who were inclined to surrender without resistance. This is quite of a piece with their treatment of David’s ambassadors; and the character thus manifested they still show in a later age, when they are reproached by the prophet for deliberate and excessive cruelty (Amos 1 : 13). To an enemy of this description, it could not have appeared unjust to treat them according to their dealings with others. Severe that treatment was, no doubt, and was meant to be; but to call it more than this is to confound the modern with the ancient law of nations, or with the law of nature itself. Kit.

While some think the surviving citizens were sent into the royal forests as hewers of timber or cutters in the saw-pits, or became brickmakers for the king, others believe they were cruelly torn with saws or axes, and even burned to death. But the history of the following years does not square with this alleged cruelty. Many of the people appear to have been left in the town under the rule of Shobi, a son of Nahash, and a friend of David. That prince had held aloof from the court of Ammon when it encouraged Hanun to insult David’s men. He and his adherents were rewarded for this friendship when the rest of their countrymen had been punished for the crime. Among the Ammonite captives was an infant girl named “Naamah,” or “Delight.” She may have belonged to the royal family and been received into David’s palace on the overthrow of her kindred. Many years afterward she became the wife of Solomon. Sime.

In the whole transaction at Rabbah David shows poorly. It is not like him to be roused to an enterprise by an appeal to his love of fame. It is not like him to go through the ceremony of being crowned with the crown of the king of Ammon, as if it were a great thing to have so precious a diadem on his head. Above all, it is not like him to show so harsh a spirit in disposing of his prisoners of war. But all this is quite likely to have happened if he had not yet come to repentance for his sin. When a man’s conscience is ill at ease, he is in the temper that most easily becomes savage when provoked. No one can imagine that David’s conscience was at rest. W. G. B.

Amnon and Tamar.

Before his marriage with Bathsheba, David had sixteen sons, who lived as princes among the people, each in his own house. Only three of them are of any note in history: the eldest, Amnon, son of Ahinoam of Jezreel; the third, Absalom, son of Maacah of Geshur; and the fourth, Adonijah, son of Haggith. For the precedence due to Amnon as the first-born he was likely to have a formidable rival in Absalom, whose mother was a king’s daughter, and who was himself unequalled for beauty among the people. But we do not hear of any jealousy or dissension among the king’s sons till the event here narrated led to fatal results. P. S.

We do not find that David’s children imitated him in his devotion; but his false steps they trod in, and in those did much worse, and repented not. Parents know not how fatal the consequences may be, if, in any instance, they give their children bad examples. H.—Where the father of the family brings sin home to the house, it is not easily swept out. Unlawful lust propagates itself by example. How justly is David scourged by the sins of his sons whom his act taught to offend! Bp. H.

1. Beauty is a snare to many; it was so to Tamar; she was fair, and therefore Amnon coveted her. They that are peculiarly handsome have no reason on that account to be proud, but great reason to stand upon their watch. H.—3. Perhaps this unkindly flame might in time have gone out alone, had there not been a Jon-adab to blow these coals with ill counsel. Had he been a true friend, he had bent all the forces of his dissuasion against the wicked motions of that sinful lust, and had showed the prince of Israel how much those desires provoked God and blemished himself, and had lent his hand to strangle them in their first conception. Bp. H.

12. No such thing ought to be done in Israel. Israel was a holy nation, sanctified by the peculiar presence of Jehovah among them; and therefore all acts of unchastity were an offence against the true character and calling of the nation. Such acts might be common among heathen nations, but to Israel they were forbidden by the Law, which placed them on a loftier level of morality.

13. As one of the fools in Israel. “Fool” denotes not merely one who is stupid and ignorant, but one who has abandoned the fear of God, and cast off the restraints of decency and morality (cp. ch. 3 : 33; Ps. 14 : 1). “Folly” is a term specially applied to unchastity. A. F. K.

15-17. Amnon appears with no redeeming features in his character. That his love of Tamar turned so suddenly and so meanly to hate—what shall we say of it less than to call it unutterable vileness! But ungoverned lust will naturally dislodge and expel from human souls all that is noble, and leave scope only for what is ineffably base and mean. This hatred in Amnon’s soul suggests that worst law of sinning natures, which in a sort compels the sinner to hate whom he harms, and to hate most those he has most cruelly wronged. Incidentally these events were among the fruits of polygamy—the children of envious and rival mothers having the same father were not wont to waste much love upon each other. H. C.—It is among the many curses of polygamy that the children of the different wives grow up from the first in an atmosphere of sensual indulgence; secondly, that there is sure to be rivalry between them, and intriguing among their mothers, with a view to their father’s favor and the succession to his property. All this is abundantly illustrated in the history of David’s children, especially of Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah. Plummer.

21. In spite of his anger David did not punish or even rebuke the offence, though the legal penalty of his crime was death. David’s indulgent treatment of his sons was a fruitful source of mischief, and led in this case to the murder of Amnon, and ultimately to Absalom’s rebellion. The consciousness of his own guilt moreover weakened his hands for dealing with Amnon’s offence. A. F. K.—How could he who had himself sinned so deeply, call his son to account for his misconduct? and with what an awful retort, drawn from the example he had set to his children, might not his rebuke be met?

22. “He spoke not a word to Amnon, neither good nor bad.” Absalom “hated” him for the wrong he had done to his sister; but he was too proud to “speak good” to one who had brought this dishonor to him, and too wary to put Amnon on his guard by expressing the hatred he nourished in his heart. He intended to make his revenge effectual, and to use it for clearing his way to the throne. We cannot but think that he had already taken up the design upon the kingdom which he eventually carried out, and that as Amnon was his elder brother, and the heir-apparent, he meant to use his private wrong as the excuse for removing so serious an obstacle from his path. But to this end it was necessary that the king, as well as Amnon, should be lulled into the conviction that he had no thoughts of revenge, and that the matter had gone from his mind. Kit.—David is now doomed to see his children following his own evil example, only with added circumstances of atrocity. Adultery and murder had been introduced by him into the palace; when he is done with them they remain to be handled by his sons.

Amnon Murdered by Absalom.

Verses 23-29.

It is not easy to paint the blackness of the crime of Absalom. We have nothing to say for

Amnon, who seems to have been a man singularly vile; but there is something very appalling in his being murdered by the order of his brother, something very cold-blooded in Absalom’s appeal to the assassins not to flunch from their task, something very revolting in the flagrant violation of the laws of hospitality, and something not less daring in the deed being done in the midst of the feast, and in the presence of the guests.

And now the first part of the retribution denounced by Nathan begins to be fulfilled, and fulfilled very fearfully,—“the sword shall never depart from thy house.” Ancient history abounds in frightful stories, stories of murder, incest, and revenge, the materials, real or fabulous, from which were formed the tragedies of the great Greek dramatists. But nothing in their dramas is more tragic than the crime of Amnon, the incest of Tamar, and the revenge of Absalom. What David’s feelings must have been we can hardly conceive. What must he have felt as he thought of the death of Amnon, slain by his brother’s command, in his brother’s house, at his brother’s table, and hurried to God’s judgment while his brain was reeling with intoxication! What a pang must have been shot by the recollection how David had once tried, for his own base ends, to intoxicate Uriah as Absalom had intoxicated Amnon! How could he but be filled with anguish when he thought of his son, hurried, while drunk, by his brother’s act, into the presence of God, to answer for the worse than murder of his sister, and for all the crimes and sins of an ill-spent life! W. G. B.

32,33. Jonadab, David’s nephew, could tell him, Amnon only is dead, and not all the king’s sons, and could tell him, too, that it was done by the appointment of Absalom, and designed from the day he forced his sister Tamar. What a wicked man was he, if he knew all this or had any cause to suspect it, that he did not make David acquainted with it sooner, that means might have been used to make up the quarrel. Had he acted as an honest man, David might not have thrown Amnon into the mouth of danger by letting him go to Absalom’s house. If we do not our utmost to prevent mischief we make ourselves accessory to it. If we say, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart, consider whether we did or no? See Prov. 24: 11, 12. Jonadab was possibly as guilty of Amnon’s death as he was of his sin; he that would not prevent Amnon’s sin, neither would he prevent his ruin, when he might have done both. H.

37. As a wilful murderer, Absalom could have no city of refuge in his own country; therefore he fled out of the kingdom to his mother’s father. Thus did God, by leaving Amnon a prey to his own passions, “raise up evil to David out of his own house:” a daughter ravished by her own brother; that brother murdered by another brother; and that other in exile on this very account, and destined soon to perish by a fate which would have been more deplorable if it had been less deserved. Del meq.

39. David mourned for Amnon a good while, but he being past recall, time wore off that grief; he was comforted concerning Amnon: it also wore off too much his detestation of Absalom’s sin; instead of loathing him, as a murderer, he longs to go forth to him. At first, he could not find in his heart to do justice on him, now he can almost find in his heart to take him into his favor again. This was David’s infirmity; something God saw in his heart that made a difference, else we should have thought that he, as much as Eli, honored his sons more than God. H.

Joab’s Stratagem to Procure Absalom’s Recall.

1. The words may be rendered: “And Joab knew that the king’s heart was against Absalom.” In favor of this rendering it may be urged that the preposition generally means against not toward: that in the only other passage where the phrase occurs (Dan. 11 : 28), it unquestionably expresses hostility: that this meaning agrees better with the whole course of the narrative, which leaves the impression that Absalom’s recall was a concession extorted from David by Joab’s cunning. Although David had abandoned the ideas of vengeance which he at first entertained, his heart remained set against Absalom, and he showed no disposition to recall him from exile. This view of the state of David’s feelings toward Absalom at once accounts for Joab’s subtle scheme to convince the king of the hardship of prolonging Absalom’s exile, and for the king’s refusal to see Absalom when he had been persuaded to allow him to return. It may seem inconsistent with the passionate affection which he afterward displayed for his rebellious son, but it is not really so. A violent revulsion of feeling, when Absalom’s life was in danger, and still more when he had perished by a miserable death, would be quite in accordance with David’s impulsive character. A. F. K.

2. Herein does Joab’s cunning appear not a little, that he made choice of a woman, rather than a man, as being likely sooner to gain pity in her miseries; a widow, which was a condition of life more proper for raising compassion; a grace woman (as Josephus calls her), which made her better fitted for addressing the king; and a woman, dwelling in some distant part, and not known in Jerusalem; for the case, which she was to represent, might not admit of being too readily investigated. Slackhouse.

Joab employed a “wise woman” of Tekoah (afterward the birthplace of the prophet Amos), who appeared before the king in mourning, with a fictitious tale similar to the case of his own family. One of her two sons, she said, had slain the other in a quarrel, and all the family demanded the death of the homicide, which would leave her childless, and cut off her husband’s name. When the king promised her protection, she applied the parable to him. P. S.—His contrivance of laying somewhat of a parallel case before the king was done so dexterously by the person he employed that the king took it for a real case, and gave judgment upon it as he had done upon Nathan’s parable; the judgment being in favor of the criminal, the manager might venture upon the application of it, and show that it was the case of his own family. H.—But there was a world-wide difference between the purpose of the parable of Nathan and that of the wise woman of Tekoah. Nathan’s parable was designed to rouse the king’s conscience as against his feelings; the woman of Tekoah’s, as prompted by Joab, to rouse his feelings as against his conscience. W. G. B.

13. She supposes Absalom’s case to be, in effect, the same with that which she had put as her son’s; and therefore, if the king would protect her son, though he had slain his brother, much more ought he to protect his own, and to fetch home his banished. She names not Absalom, nor needed she to name him. And in those two words were two arguments which the king’s tender spirit felt the force of: “He is banished, and has, for three years, undergone the disgrace and terror, and all the inconveniences, of banishment: sufficient to such a one is this punishment: but he is thy banished, thy son whom thou lovest.” It is true Absalom’s case differed very much from that which she had put. Absalom did not slay his brother upon a hasty passion, but maliciously, and upon an old grudge. H.

14. We must needs die, and are as water spilt upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. What could be better calculated to gain the attention of a poet like David than the beautiful images which she employs, and which are fully equal to any that he himself ever uttered. There is scarcely anything in all literature finer than this simple figure; and if we are impressed at once by the exquisite beauty and pathos of this expression, how keenly must it have been appreciated by him—the great master of solemn thought and poetical expression? She had previously used another image, fine, indeed, and striking, but eclipsed by this. She had compared the prospective death of her only surviving son to the quenching of her last live coal—“They shall quench my coal that is left, and shall not leave to my husband neither name nor remainder upon the earth;” and now, again, death is compared to water, which being once lost upon the ground can be gathered up no more. The idea is, that there is no recovery of the life once lost, no return from the cold desolations of the grave. This idea is common in the Old Testament, though nowhere else expressed by the same image. It occurs, however, less frequently in the Psalms than might be expected, whereas, the instances in the Book of Job are numerous, and some of them very striking. Kit.

A very wise woman was the wise woman of Tekoah. One sentence of hers has lived through thirty centuries; it still lingers on the lips and in the hearts of men. Amnon was dead; but for David to treat Absalom as one who, though alive, was dead to him, would not restore Amnon to life. Grief for the dead could not absolve the living from their duties—their duties to the living. Men and women, who have grave imperative work to do in the world, must not waste the time and energy they need for the discharge of duty in crying over spilt water. Let them rather accept the facts of life as they find them, spilt water and all; let them accept even those sorrowful losses and changes which seem to obscure all the joys of life and to take away the very heart for duty, and under their new sorrowful conditions do the best they can for God and man. As applied to David her words carried this lesson:—“Death is the common event, too common to be an evil. Get good out of it then, what good you may and can. Do not let it weaken, but rather strengthen, you for the duties which remain to you. Do not let it alienate you from the living, but rather bind them to you in closer and more tender ties.” Their larger and more general application, the principle of the words, I take to be:—“Don’t fret over the inevitable, the irreparable. The past is past, and cannot be recalled: therefore be the more intent on a wise use of the present.” Cox.

Further, she pleads God’s mercy and his clemency toward poor guilty sinners. “God does not take away the soul, or life, but devises means that his banished, his children that have offended him, and are obnoxious to his justice, as Absalom is to thine, be not forever expelled from him.” Here are two great instances of the mercy of God to sinners, properly urged as reasons for showing mercy. First, The patience he exercises toward them. His law is broken, yet he does not immediately take away the life of those that break it; does not strike sinners dead, as justly he might, in the act of sin, but bears with them, and waits to be gracious. God’s vengeance had suffered Absalom to live; why then should not David’s justice suffer him? Secondly, The provision he had made for their restoration to his favor, that though by sin they have banished themselves from him, yet they might not be expelled, or cast off, forever. H.

19-23. The king has a surmise that the hand of Joab is in the whole transaction, and the woman acknowledges that it is so. After the interview with the woman, David sends for Joab, and gives him leave to fetch back Absalom. Joab goes to Geshur and brings Absalom to Jerusalem. W. G. B.

24. Let him not see my face.** To recall Absalom without giving him a full pardon was a most dangerous policy. It could not fail to irritate him. It may be inferred from verses 29 and 31 that he was confined to his house by David’s order, for otherwise he would not have had to wait until Joab came. A. F. K.

25. If “beauty is a gift,” “beauty is also a snare.” To few has the gift been so largely accorded as to Absalom; to few has it proved a snare so deadly. In him the personal comeliness and vigor of Jesse’s line seems to have culminated. “In all Israel there was none like him for beauty; from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him;” so says the ancient chronicler. Cox.—A poor commendation for a man that had nothing else in him valuable. Handsome are they that handsome do. Many a polluted deformed soul dwells in a fair and comely body; witness Absalom’s, that was polluted with blood, and deformed with unnatural disaffection to his father and prince. In his body there was no blemish, but in his mind nothing but wounds and bruises. Those have reason to fear affliction in their children, who are better pleased with their beauty than with their excellence of character. H.

Absalom Readmitted to David’s Presence through Joab’s Mediation.

Verses 28-33.

The king refuses to see his son, and for two years Absalom lives in his own house, without enjoying any of the privileges of the king’s son. Then the patience of Absalom was exhausted. He sent for Joab to negotiate for a change of arrangements. But Joab would not see him. A second time he sent, and a second time Joab declined. But Absalom was not to be outdone in this way. He fell on a rude stratagem for bringing Joab to his presence. Their fields being adjacent to each other, Absalom sent his servants to set Joab’s barley on fire. The irritation of such an unprovoked injury overcame Joab’s unwillingness to meet Absalom; he went to him in a rage and demanded why this had been done. The matter of the barley would be easy to arrange; but now that he had met Joab he showed him that there were just two modes of treatment open to David,—either really to pardon, or really to punish him. This probably was just what Joab felt. There was no good, but much harm in the half-and-half policy which the king was pursuing. If Absalom was pardoned, let him be on friendly terms with the king. If he was not pardoned, let him be put to death for the crime he had committed. Joab was unable to refute Absalom’s reasoning. And when he went to the king he would press that view on him likewise. And now, after two years of a half-and-half measure, the king sees no alternative but to yield. “When he had called for Absalom, he came to the king, and bowed himself to his face on the ground before the king; and the king kissed Absalom.” This was the token of reconciliation and friendship. But it would not be with a clear conscience or an easy mind that David saw the murderer of his brother in full possession of the honors of the king’s son. W. G. B.

Three years Absalom had been an exile with his father-in-law, and now, two years a prisoner at large in his own house, and, in both, better dealt with than he deserved; yet his spirit was still unhumbled, his pride unmortified, and, instead of being thankful that his life is spared, he thinks himself sorely wronged that he is not restored to all his places at court. H.—In this whole account there is nothing but insult and injury to Joab, and the most formal obeisance before David. Not a word of proffered excuse or repentance, because his heart was already hardened, and his determination to dethrone his father fully formed and matured. With all his personal beauty and probable vanity, Absalom had a positive character of his own. His two years’ reticent waiting for revenge against Amnon, followed by his cool deliberation in planning for and committing the deed of murder, show this. And not less is it manifest in this command to his servants, “Go, set Joab’s field on fire.” He certainly accomplished his object here. And all his subsequent conduct evinces like positiveness of character. His whole career has no single element of weakness or indecision. Had he possessed a heart like David’s, he might have proved a worthy successor to David’s throne—at least we see enough in him to explain the peculiar strength of David’s attachment to this able though wayward and wicked son.

Absalom’s character, conduct, and end may well be regarded as representative and typical, and point a convincing moral worth the study of the youth of our own times. Beauty was his curse, because it was that for which alone he was “praised in all Israel.” Outwardly possessed of most attractive form, feature, and manner, he was inwardly deformed and corrupt. And beauty of person, without an inward beauty of soul, without moral worth, without truth and purity of heart, without strength and sway of principle, ever has been, ever will be, a “fatal dower.” Its only necessary effect is the rule of vanity and pride and over-weening self conceit, whose only ultimate ending is abasement, degradation, and ruin of the soul. And where means of lavish self-indulgence are added to personal beauty, the peril of such ruin is made well-nigh sure. Nothing but God’s grace can deliver from either of these perils, much less from both combined. Let those that are exposed on either hand take counsel and warning from this sad history! And let parents, too, heed this signal lesson, preserved alike for them by Inspiration! B.