STUDIES IN SAMUEL No. 58

2 Samuel 18:1-19:15

February 17, 2002

Text Comment

The commentary I have found, far and away, most valuable in my study of Samuel has been that by the Cambridge scholar, the evangelical Robert Gordon. It is a work of superior scholarship and of spiritual insight. One of the elders of Trinity PC in Rochester, MN, where Max Rogland is now the pastor, a man by the name of Randy Massot, another Covenant Seminary grad, by the way, took a PhD in OT under Gordon at Cambridge. He told me last weekend that after struggling for some time to settle on a topic for his dissertation, Prof. Gordon took him aside, made a suggestion for his topic, and then told him that he wanted him to pray about that suggestion through the weekend and then come and talk to him again. There are not many OT professors in the world who would ask such a thing of one of their students. Insofar as I mention Dr. Gordon's name from time to time, I thought you might like to hear that anecdote.

v.3 This advice made good sense. Remember, Ahithophel's advice, which Absalom did not take, was to make every effort to remove David on the principle that once David was eliminated his forces would have nothing to fight for. Contrarily, Hushai's advice, on David's behalf, would succeed in bringing Absalom himself directly into the battle and once he was killed the rebellion immediately collapsed.

v.5 David's characterization of Absalom as a young man suggests that in David's mind his was an error of youth and youthful rebellion. Absalom, of course, by this time is fully an adult man, and the things he has done, including sleeping with his father's wives, could not possibly be overlooked. David, once again, is revealed to us as an ineffective father, more sentimental than wise, and as an ineffective king who cannot seem to appreciate the gravity of the situation Absalom has created by his coup d'etat.

A point is made about everyone hearing David's instructions regarding Absalom's treatment, because that will become materially important as we go on.

v.8 The battle is described in short strokes. It was a decisive victory for David's army. The terrain apparently included large pits, as we read later in v. 17, and these may have accounted for many deaths. In any case, you have here the result that typically ensues when you have a conscript army facing professional soldiers under experienced command, even if the conscripts far outnumber the professionals.

v.9 It has often been supposed, especially in Sunday School literature, that Absalom's long hair got caught in the tree, but that is not what was said and we probably could safely expect it would have been said had it been true. Absalom, we have already learned was vain about his hair, and it would be a fact important to note if his hair had been his undoing. His head got caught. That is all we are told. Perhaps we are to imagine branches held apart by other branches being set lose by Absalom's weight and grabbing his head.

Dr. Waltke points out that the phrase "left hanging in midair" may suggest that Absalom obtained neither the glories of earth that he sought nor the entrance into heaven.

v.11 The offer of a reward is perhaps designed to tempt the man to go back and kill Absalom.

v.13 He is both a good man and a wise man, wise enough to know that Joab was the kind of man who would both execute Absalom himself and hide behind righteous indignation while sacrificing the man who actually did the killing.

v.15 This is not the first time that Joab ignored instructions from his king and, though it might well be the case that Absalom needed killing, Joab's peremptory violation of orders is typical of him. However, it was David's half-measures with Absalom that got him into this mess. Joab is no doubt correct in his assessment of what had to be done.

v.16 There is no need to continue a civil war when the casus belli has been removed. Joab had the good sense to think about what was best for the state. David did not.

v.18 The story of Absalom concludes with a reminder of his personal vanity and overweening pride - erecting a monument to himself while he was still alive! - and the Lord's judgment of him and his family. In ignominious contrast to Absalom's monument is the heap of rocks thrown on his body. To be flung into a hole and covered with rocks is a shameful burial. [Alter, Com., 306] In 14:27 we read that he had three sons, but all three have predeceased him, or, perhaps less likely were killed in battle before Absalom fled the field. The fact that his three sons are unnamed in 14:27 suggests that his sons predeceased him before the battle.

v.21 Ahimaaz, if you remember, was the son of Zadok the priest, and had been used to ferry information between Jerusalem and David. Apparently Joab worried that David would do to the man who brought him news of Absalom's death the same thing he did to the men who brought him news of Saul's death and, later, the death of Ish-bosheth. A Cushite, a foreigner, was expendable so he was sent instead. No great loss if David orders him executed for being the bearer of bad news.

v.23 Ahimaaz finally prevails and takes a longer but less difficult route - goes by the interstate instead of over the mountains to Yakima - and gets there first.

v.25 A runner alone was more likely a messenger than a fugitive.

v.27 One view is that there is logic to David's conclusion. As Robert Gordon writes, "David correctly surmises that Joab would not have chosen Ahimaaz to be the bearer of bad news, but he does not realize that Ahimaaz is virtually a self-appointed herald." [Com., 286] Another view is that David's non sequitur reveals his desperation; he's grasping at straws, wanting so much to believe that there will be good news. A good man does not necessarily bring good news! [Alter, Com., 309]

v.30 Ahimaaz concentrates on the good news. Verse 29 is a clear evasion. In fact, in Hebrew, Ahimaaz' answer is virtually gibberish. He is babbling and talking nervously precisely because he does not want to answer David's question. Very much what you see politicians do all the time at news conferences. [Alter, Com., 309]

v.32 He is not being indirect, he is just saying it the way it would be said. No evasion here.

v.33 The personal tragedy is emphasized with the five-fold repetition of "my son." David's failure as a father and as a king with respect to his sons does not diminish the impressiveness of his desolation at their loss. A good lesson for us all: a man can have strong feelings and tender affection for his children and still raise them very poorly! Only obedience to God in the matter of their nurture is the real measure of one's faithfulness as a parent.

19:4 The elation that would have ordinarily followed a smashing victory in battle is turned to embarrassed silence. David, caught up in his own personal grief, has forgotten all about the soldiers who went at risk to their lives in defense of his throne.

v.5 Notice that all through this section David, the grieving father, is referred to by the narrator as "the king." The narrator is viewing him in his role as the king while David is viewing himself entirely as a father who has lost a son.

v.6 Joab is wise enough to know that Absalom would not have treated David in the compassionate way David had planned to treat him!

v.7 Commentators usually see this as a veiled threat on Joab's part to lead his own rebellion if David won't act.

v.8 David sitting in the gate is a sign of a return to normalcy. But, notice that he does not do nearly as much as Joab told him to do. Instead of going out and speaking to the troops he simply sits in the gate. No speech is said to have been given. In the view of the brilliant Dutch scholar of this narrative [Fokkelman], the gap between Joab's command and David's act "calls up the image of a man beaten to a pulp, who can barely stand, and does only the minimum requested or expected of him." [In Alter, Com., 313]

v.10 As we learn in v. 11, here Israel means the northern tribes as opposed to Judah. Here we learn for the first time that these northern tribes had gone so far as actually to anoint Absalom their king.

v.12 Remember, Hebron had been the seat of the rebellion, and Hebron was a Judean town. But David is asking them if they are going to be slower to acknowledge him as their rightful king than the northern tribes.

v.13 This is both retaliation against Joab for his killing Absalom and a sop to the defeated rebels. Amasa had led their army against David and, far from punishing him for it, he rewards him with command of the army. This is probably all that David dared to do in punishment of Joab. Joab will, however, soon find a way of getting rid of Amasa.

There are certain major themes in this large section of Samuel narrating the sad decline of David that are reiterated in the material we have before us this evening.

1. Clearly, we see David at sea and performing ineffectively as the king that God had made him to be. Even here, at the very end, he    seems more interested in tribal rivalries than the larger national interest. He wants Judah to retake its rightful place at the top of the heap of Israel's tribes. At the end of chapter 19 this tribal rivalry will rear its ugly head and portend more troubles to come. That tribalism would be the undoing of the kingdom of Israel after the death of Solomon. David here is not equal to the task of being the king of the people of God.

And the same thing was true, as we saw, in the aftermath of the battle, as David seemed unable to assert himself as the king and could only mourn as a father. He forgot the needs of the army that had brought him victory and restored his throne, he forgot the necessities of rule and the impossibility of Absalom's remaining alive, and, in self-torment laments the loss of his son, no doubt made so much more painful by David's awareness of his own failure as a father. When David says, in 18:33, "…if only I had died instead of you," he seems to be accepting the fact that all that had occurred was his fault. [Fokkelman in Waltke, Notes, 26] But, right as that spirit may be in some respects, it takes on a selfish character as David, in his grief, refuses to meet his responsibilities on behalf of others.

The spiraling cascade of consequences from his sin with Bathsheba has now buried this good man and rendered him a pale shadow of his former self. We have observed the shift in David's psyche from a man of faith looking outward toward the kingdom of God to a man looking inward, consumed with his private worries and sorrows, and now mostly forgetful of his calling and little practicing his faith.

You and I, brothers and sisters, stumble in this same way time and time again and need to be often reminded that the Christian life must be lived with our faces turned outward toward the world and the kingdom of God in the world. We can become so wrapped up, even so overwhelmed in our private worries, our fears, our disappointments and frustrations, in respect to ourselves or our marriage or family or work, that we largely check out of a very large part of the Christian life to which our Savior has summoned us.

This is, if you remember, the criticism that is sometimes made against both Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The knock on both is that the concentration is exclusively inward, The person is thinking about himself and his own heart and his own salvation the entire time. Now, that is not entirely a fair criticism, in my view. For these are books about the pilgrimage of the soul and the personal experience of the grace of God. What is more, the books are not wholly without the outward look or the Christian concentration of the welfare of others. Pilgrim himself has fellowship with others, tries to win various unbelievers to the truth and encourages and consoles his Christian friends and, in the second volume there is even more of this. Mr. Greatheart, for example, rescues Mr. Despondency and his daughter, Much Afraid, from Doubting Castle. But, you see the point. People have looked at these books and have wondered why this other-centered, this kingdom-centered element does not seem to be prominent. And, no wonder. Every thoughtful Christian recognizes that there is a danger here to which we are all subject.

Man in sin, Augustine said, is homo incurvatus in se, man curved in on himself. Well, in the world of grace, when sin reasserts itself, its effect is often precisely the same: to curve us in upon ourselves. Even in matters touching our Christian life we can be taken up with what is happening or not happening to us and for us and be largely forgetful of the greater summons which has been issued to us by our Lord and Savior. Is it not so? When you look at your lives, do you not see them defective in this very way, in David's very way: consumed with ourselves - and to be consumed with one's family is often another way of being consumed with oneself! - and not equally consumed with our neighbor, as the Scripture teaches us to be.

This is not the great point of this portion of material we have read tonight, but this entire section of Samuel teaches us that David's internal life would have been so much happier and stronger and more fruitful and his family would have been holier and suffered less spiritual and physical catastrophe if only David had been as kingdom centered a man and a husband and a father as he had been at the outset of his reign!

We do not easily draw the lesson that is staring us in the face as we watch David, a broken man, grieving inconsolably over the death of his rebel son. But the narrator is unrelenting in holding that lesson up before us: David was a king and not just a father, and had he been more a king, he would have been a better father, and Absalom a better son. And, in the same way, you will be a better husband or wife, a better father or mother, a better Christian in the secret places of your heart, the better you become a servant of God and of his church and of his gospel.

Think about that, all of you, and remember, your blessings come directly from the Lord. His smile means more to the solving of your problems than anything you might ever do. Be sure that you are serving him, not just attending to yourself - even in the midst of real troubles and problems - and, I guarantee you, in the Lord's name, you will do more for yourself than you ever did when you concentrated on yourself. The principle with which Samuel began and which David now illustrates in the negative, is the very principle the Lord told Eli - another ineffective father - "those who honor me, I will honor!"

2. A second theme reiterated in this material is that no one can escape the judgment of the Lord. David has certainly not escaped it, though he is a man of faith. And Absalom did not escape it, and he was a man without faith. The Lord does not always judge so swiftly or make his verdicts so easy for us to read, but we are reminded in this exemplary way that no one should expect to sin with impunity. The Lord may forgive his own children, but the Scripture itself reminds us that even when he forgives he punishes the misdeeds of his children.

Absalom, the charismatic pretender, ends up dead in a pit with stones being tossed on his lifeless body. David ends up sitting, devastated, in a chair, his personal world in ruins about his feet, being lectured by a godless man who sees more clearly than David does what must be done.

We've had this lesson dinned into us over these past weeks of Lord's Day evenings in Samuel, and no doubt the painful, unwelcome lesson goes on like it does because we are so averse to learning it!

I heard this week about an affair conducted by a man that I know and about a devastated marriage as a result. These are not people you know. They live elsewhere. I shudder to think of what may happen in the life of that man and in the life of that family because of his sin. Perhaps not. Perhaps the Lord will cover it all and mend all through a furious repentance on his part. But, it is often not so. Oh, brethren, we believe in the grace and the forgiveness of God. We believe that the mercies of the Lord are new every morning. We believe that he does not treat us as our sins deserve. Praise God that he does not. It is our only hope in life and in death, that our faithful Savior has carried our great guilt away.

But, don't think that this wonderful grace and kindness and forbearance in God, this redemption which we have in Christ, this deliverance from the consequences of our sins means that we do not, in this world, have to answer for our disobedience. The Bible is too emphatic and too repetitive on this point to leave us in any doubt. Take heed to this poignant and powerful warning in the life of David. See the Lord bringing home, even to this man he loved, the consequence - not the full consequence by any means, of course, for David was forgiven and saved forever - but the real consequence of his sins. Remember how we read it in Psalm 130: "there is forgiveness with God that he may be feared!" Absalom got his comeuppance, surely; but to a sad degree, so did David! See him sitting in the gate, his family in ruins, see him, every time you are tempted to think that you can sin and the Lord will forgive you!

3. I finish, this evening, with this one further thought. David was the Lord's anointed. He was the king and by reason of God's covenant with him and his house, he became in himself a prophecy, a type, an image of the promised king who would someday come to rule forever on David's throne. He is the Bible's great Christ-figure before the appearance of Christ himself.

Absalom took up arms against the Christ-figure and see what became of him. We live in a world run by rebels against God and enemies of Christ's kingdom. See in Absalom, see in his lifeless body lying in a pit being covered by stones thrown overtop him, the end of all the enemies of the King of Kings. "Until all his enemies are made a footstool for his feet." That is how the Bible describes the end of those who rise up against the Lord and his anointed.

In our day, in our world, with the kingdom of God in so many ways on the defensive and beset on all sides by powerful enemies, when it can so often seem that we have been booted out of the capital and as we trudge our lonely way someone is throwing dirt on our heads, it is so important for us all to remember that in due time, at just the right time, the Lord Jesus will put his foot on the neck of every single Absalom who has ever sought to dethrone him. The rebels' monuments to themselves may look impressive for a time, but the pile of stones thrown atop their dead bodies is a more accurate picture of what is to come.