2 Samuel Lesson 65
The Amnon incident - 2 Samuel 13:1-22
Tonight we start a new section of 1 Samuel, beginning at 2 Samuel
13. We continue our study in 2 Samuel
which is filling you in on a very critical era of Israel’s history; hopefully
you will be blessed in two ways, by the various specific details that are
brought out and then also by the on-going pattern of God’s sovereignty, that
God has a shape to history and no man changes it. God will bring His plan to pass, and we have
seen this in a number of ways in this book.
Chapters 1-12 of 2 Samuel dealt with God’s blessing on David. Now from chapter 13-20 God’s cursing on
David, the blessing and the cursing. The
dividing line is a critical point in David’s life when, by carnality that was
not taken care of properly, David blew it and as a result brought discipline
upon his home and upon his family and to a great deal upon the country.
However, we are going to see God’s never-ending plan. God has made His
covenant, the covenant is unconditional and irretrievable, it cannot be
revoked, it has only to go on. It is a statement of God’s sovereignty and what
is God’s sovereignty? That David’s seed
would be a seed that would rule an everlasting kingdom. Now no matter what sin happens, no matter how
rebellious David’s house gets, that promise has to come to pass; it is a
sovereign declaration. And so what we
are seeing now is for the first 12 chapters God blessed the entire kingdom; He
gave the basis, He gave the promises.
From this point forward we are going to see cursing but the cursing is
not going to be as extensive as the blessing.
The cursing will be limited to David and his family, and within that
limitation we’ll find even there, there will be chaos, confusion and what appears
to be everything out of control. But if
we listen to the Holy Spirit as He writes the text, as He teaches us the
meaning of the text, we’re going to see that in the middle of all the dust and
the confusion there is God’s unending plan.
God’s plan will be brought to pass.
We left the 12th chapter with Solomon born, but ahead of
Solomon there are some other competitors to the throne, three of these
competitors are going to be items of specific discourse. Amnon—Amnon was the
firstborn and Amnon is the prince; Amnon is the one who would normally have the
throne; he is his father’s oldest son, and he would be the one the royal family
would groom for that throne, that privilege.
Amnon is in the light of the public, and in the light of David, the one
who’s the promised seed of the Davidic Covenant. The seed is elect but what David and his
family are going to learn, not all the seeds are elect, only one of his seeds
is elect and the one who is the elect will be a surprise, because the name
“Solomon” drops out from the text, the name Solomon is never repeated, it’s
never talked about and is never mentioned from chapter 12 all the way to 1
Kings. Solomon disappears from sight and
is not heard of again.
So from the human perspective Solomon doesn’t have a chance to the
throne; only the leading contenders, Amnon, and then we have Absalom, after
Amnon is killed Absalom becomes the leading prince, and in the eyes of the
public surely Absalom is the fulfillment of God’s plan surely Absalom is the
man who’s in the public limelight; Absalom is the man who takes over from his
father. All the concentration is on
Absalom. But Absalom dies and so he is
replaced by Adonijah. Adonijah then becomes the third man and Adonijah is in
the public limelight, Adonijah must be the seed, but Adonijah too faces from
sight and the last place, using a racing illustration, the dark horse, is
Solomon. Solomon, whoever heard of
Solomon. Nobody heard of Solomon, the
only mention that has been made is that he’s the child that came from the union
of David and Bathsheba. That’s all we
know of Solomon. Solomon, the little boy
who stayed inside the house and was never seen while his older brothers vied
for the throne, while the “newspapers” as they were in that day, carried the
headlines of all of his older brothers, nobody even thought of Solomon, and it
was a shock, both to David and to his house, that Solomon had been solemnly
chosen by God. It was going to be His
plan, not the plans of men.
And so from chapters 13-20 we have a systematic elimination of all
competitors, apparently through just (quote) “chance,” just a happening here
and a happening there. Just a little
accident here and something else happens over there but the whole result and
sum of these little accidents, these little incidents, these little happenings,
are that everybody is eliminated except the sovereignly chosen seed,
Solomon. Solomon doesn’t get the throne
by what Solomon does. Solomon doesn’t
get the throne by what his father does.
His father dies as a senile impotent old man in 1 Kings 1, it’s a very
graphic illustration of a once proud royal king. So David is powerless to help
his son; David doesn’t do anything.
Solomon attains the throne the same way all the elect attain their
position, by grace and by grace alone.
Only as God’s sovereign grace works does this come to pass.
Let’s break chapters 13-20 into sections. There are three sections: chapters 13-14,
15-19 and chapter 20. Chapters 13-14
deal with seven years; chapters 15-19 deal with seven years; the first seven
years are devoted to the Amnon incident.
What about the first man, the leading contender, Amnon. He’s eliminated and then as a result of that
elimination various poisonous effects begin to work in the kingdom. So for seven years the nation is in turmoil
over this one prince. And then when he
drops from sight another prince rises to the limelight, and for seven years
Absalom dominates the scene. And after
David’s sons, the prominent ones, are eliminated, then we have a man by the name
of
And they are designed to teach us as believers a very important
lesson. When God says He is going to do
something He makes it clear that it cannot be done or accomplished by human
effort alone; it is not that these people are passive but the sum result of
human activity is not sufficient to bring and enduring seed to the throne. If God is going to be vindicated He must be
vindicated by an everlasting seed or the promise of 2 Samuel fails. So if God’s promises are to hold, then some
how, in some way, all these political problems have to be resolved so that it
all comes out in the end. Now how it
comes out is a miracle because as we start studying chapter 13 you begin to see
very, very quickly in the text that everything is in helter skelter, chaos and
confusion. How can possibly God’s
promises of the Davidic Covenant come to pass?
Now to understand what is happening, let’s review 2 Samuel 12 once again
to look carefully at the discipline that must fall on David’s house. In verses 7-9 Nathan announces to David the
prime sin of David. Now if Nathan were
the typical legalist he would have made a big issue out of adultery and murder
with David. But isn’t it interesting
that when he iterates God’s Word, that isn’t the issue, the issue is what led
to the adultery and what led to the murder, which was a mental attitude sin,
minus thanksgiving. I have said again
and again and you see it here, how can you tell when you are on negative
volition? Just because you’re not doing
something overtly gross does not mean that you’re on positive volition. You can be in smoldering carnality and the
only way to recognize smoldering carnality is to do a check, am I actively
thanking God for my situation. Now if
that is not true, then you are not in fellowship, period. It’s that simple. Thanksgiving is synonymous with positive
volition; it is the easiest to tell, it is the easiest litmus test you can try
for yourself, whatever, but thanksgiving is a very important perimeter of
spirituality. So in verses 7-9 Nathan
says David look, God gave this to you, He gave this to you, He gave this to
you. Now when you coveted Bathsheba you
were basically not coveting Bathsheba, you were basically saying that God
doesn’t provide for your needs adequately so you have to seek your needs somewhere
else besides the place where God provided.
See, that’s the tenth commandment.
The first commandment is you shall love the Lord your God, the tenth one
is thou shalt not covet and both commandments mean the same thing, you can’t
break one without breaking the other.
Those who covet basically don’t love God; those who love God don’t cover. Verses 7-9 David sin, the sin of lack of
thanksgiving negative volition.
Then verses 1-14 a specific sentence that David would make four-fold
restitution. That in his life the sword
would not depart from his house. Just as
he had pronounced on the person in verse 6, “he shall restore the lamb
four-fold,” now David must pay four-fold, not that he pays for his sin, Christ
does that, but that God’s justice must be revealed and must not be marred. Four-fold restitution, what were the four
things that David had to give back? He
gave his first son, the result of his union with Bathsheba, a boy unnamed, died
on the seventh day. He gives back Amnon;
Amnon is murdered, he’s assassinated, the chief contender for the throne.
Absalom dies, he dies partly because of his own fault, partly because of
assassination. And Adonijah is
executed. David pays four-fold through
his own blood through his own sons. So
David will pay four-fold.
And now in chapter 13 this is when the first payment is due. Notice how when God brings the payment to
pass many, many sub themes are in this.
And here’s where I express my frustration at trying to teach this
because you can’t teach this by carrying one theme; there are many, many themes
here. I want to point you to some of them. One of the themes, obviously, Solomon is
rising to the top; every time somebody is eliminated it puts his name higher on
the list, so that’s one theme, the overall theme of the covenant coming
through. But there’s another theme; the
theme is will David trust the covenant because the covenant said two things,
two specific things: David, I will raise the king to the throne, you don’t have
to go through all sorts of human viewpoint gimmicks to get your son on the
throne, I will bring him to the throne. That was the first promise, so David could
have trusted in that. We’re going to see
tonight that he doesn’t. A second thing
the Davidic Covenant said was that whichever child of yours that I pick for the
throne he must be an obedient child. If
he be evil I will chasten him, 2 Samuel 7 says, so there are two things that
David must remember. First, whatever the
son is—God’s choice, not his. Second, whatever the son is, he must be trained
in obedience.
Now we’re going to see it right here, right from the very first 22
verses of 2 Samuel 13, David fails both promises; not the promises fail, David
fails. He fails to trust actively in
these promises. Verse 1, “And it came to
pass after this, that Absalom, the son of David, had a fair sister, whose name
was Tamar; and Amnon, the son of David loved her.” Now this is not incest, this is common
father, different mother. This sister is
a half-sister of Amnon, both have the same daddy, both have two different
mother. So Tamar and Absalom over here,
and Tamar and Amnon over here. Both have
the genes of David, so she is his half-sister.
As I said, there are so many sub-themes here, this is just one of those
places in God’s Word where the Holy Spirit is pointing something out and we
want to pause to notice what He’s doing here.
He’s showing us the end result of polygamy; God went along with polygamy
in the Old Testament dispensation because He had bigger and better things to
deal with than monogamy; monogamy is not the end all. There were more important things to drill
into the minds of the people than monogamy.
Monogamy was low priority. So
while God was sanctification the nation He kind of let this polygamy thing go. But just because God let it go did not mean
that men weren’t paying the price for it.
Monogamy is the second divine institution, there is one right man and
one right woman, that’s before the fall.
After the fall there is a best man and best woman depending on the
situation. But the structure of divine
institution number two must always be respected. And no matter how painful that structure may
appear at times, violation of that structure sows seeds of destruction.
Now we say we don’t have polygamy but we do in a way, we have serial
divorce, that means sequential multiple divorce in our country, and that
corresponds to polygamy in the Old Testament.
Divorce, the argument is it isn’t polygamy because you only have one at
a time. Well polygamy only has one at a time
also, so the point is it doesn’t matter whether it’s serial divorce or whether
it’s polygamy, the story is the same.
And here you see one of the results.
Every once in a while you get some wise guy that gets on the grace
concept and he says well they tolerated polygamy in the Old Testament so
therefore… dot, dot, dot, you fill in the rest.
Well here is a passage that you want to remember somebody says that to
you, tell them to turn to 2 Samuel 13 and you’ll see where polygamy leads. Polygamy sets up the scene for these kinds of
problems because you have children of mixed parentage and you never have the
family unity that you could have if there wasn’t the divorce and there wasn’t
this polygamy going on. So the seeds of
this whole thing is polygamy.
The second thing to observe in verse 1 is that Tamar was a very
beautiful girl. The word “fair” is not “fair” to the Hebrew word. The word
means she was a knockout, an extremely beautiful girl. And she got her physical attractiveness,
probably from her father. David was an extremely handsome man, and so the
daughter was very, very beautiful.
Amnon, the next character in the list, is the prince. He is the acting prince, he is the firstborn
and he has all rights to the throne. And
it says he “loved her.” Now there are
many different kinds of love and 2 Samuel 13, as you find when we go further,
is the model passage parents to take your children through when they hit
adolescence because every teenager ought to read 2 Samuel 13, particularly
every girl. 2 Samuel 13 will teach you
all you need to know about basics, and it’s not a plumbing course, the kind
that you get in school. 2 Samuel 13 is
better than a plumbing course; 2 Samuel 13 deals with divine viewpoint and
deals with God’s standards, and if you’ll notice what happens, read the text,
the lessons are so obvious they jump out at you.
The word “ahav,” this is the
standard word for love but it doesn’t qualify itself, you must qualify ahav by the context, and there are many
different kinds of love and we’re going to see one phony kind of love in this
passage. And when young people start out
they’re looking at the opposite sex they have very little discernment in this
area. So 2 Samuel 13 is dedicated to
people who are naïve and who do not have discernment. Just because you hear the word “love” doesn’t
mean a thing. People give you a big long
oh I love you, and they don’t mean anything… well they mean something but you
didn’t catch it. And in this verse
you’ll see what this love was.
Verse 2, “And Amnon was so vexed [distressed] that he fell sick for his
sister, Tamar; for she was a virgin. And
Amnon thought it hard for him to do anything to her.” Amnon was so sick and the word “sick” in the
Hebrew, the way it’s constructed draws emphasis to the kind of love that he had
because it says… literally it reads “and Amnon was distressed to make himself
sick,” in the Hebrew we have the word with a
hith on it, and this word with the hith
on the front of it, you put hith on
the front of a verb when you want to tell us something very special about that
verb. When a hith is put on the front it means that the subject activates
against himself, it’s a reflexive sensation, I kill, I kill someone else; I
kill myself, reflexive, you put a hith
in front of the verb. So hith is in front of this and it means
Amnon made himself sick, it’s reflexive.
It isn’t that he fell sick, he made himself sick.
Now that’s a very important point at the beginning because this ties it
wholly to Amnon’s volition, he can go around and say oh, I can’t help it, these
emotions are all out of control toward my sister, I just can’t control
myself. Bologna, hithpael stem on the
verb knocks that excuse right out of the hat.
Amnon made himself sick by his own choice and he can’t blame it on his
emotional problem. Now if he went to a
shrink we’d have a whole different story of 2 Samuel 13, how somebody dropped
him on his head when he was a baby and he was raised in a bad environment and
all that blood and guts in David’s house, that obstructed him, it’s put trauma
in his mind and so as a result this poor little disprivileged fellow grew up
and couldn’t handle himself and therefore Amnon fell, so we should all conduct
some psychological rehabilitation and send him to group therapy and Amnon will
be all right. Now the Bible doesn’t
agree with that, and this is not just sarcasm, the Bible is very serious
here. The Bible places responsibility
where it belongs. Amnon made himself
sick.
How did he make himself sick? It
says so, he was distressed to the point he made himself sick. How was Amnon distressed? Let’s go back, let’s look at the soul of
Amnon; here’s his mind, here’s his conscience, here’s his emotions, and here’s
his body. Amnon should have been asking
the Lord for his right woman; that should have been his overriding
request. The mind should have gone to
the conscience and plugged in what is right; where is my right woman. Instead of doing this he gets his eyes on his
half-sister, who obviously is not his right woman, and then… rebellion against
his conscience, so conscience can’t reach him through the mind so conscience
begins to reach him through his emotions and through his body and by the time
we pick up the text at verse 2 conscience has already been shorted out and
later on his sister recognizes it and calls him a nabal, or an idiot, and the word nabal means crass, you remember the last guy that we meant in the
text, Abigail’s husband, he is a nabal;
a nabal was a person whose conscience
was covered over with scar tissue through negative volition habitually toward
God’s Word. So by this time conscience
is affecting his emotions and body and he does all sorts of things. This kid is sick right here; he is what we
would call mentally ill. But he’s not
mentally ill, he has made himself sick by his idiotic reaction to the
situation.
When it says he was “vexed” it means he was distressed in the sense
that… the word means to press in, you’re squeezed, and Amnon was squeezed. Now he can’t plead that circumstances
squeezed him because he had his out; God promised him a right woman, that’s the
way biblically to handle the situation.
He should have jumped on the promise of God and said thank you God
because I have enough confidence in my God and my Savior to provide for all my
needs and that includes my sex needs and that includes my right woman. Now I can relax in God’s promise and I am
going to chose by an act of volition, I choose to trust that sovereign
promise. So here you have volition
operating, you don’t become passive under sovereignty; sovereignty never
cancels out volition. He could have done
that, so Amnon is culpable, he is blamable for what happened. He had an out but instead of that he had two
things operating against him. He had
first of all, at this point he had the lust, and then in the second point he
had certain external restraints. Now if
you just read verse 2 it looks like Amnon is a very noble person, because
doesn’t it say the considered the virginity of his half-sister, and he “thought
it hard for him to do anything to her.” So that looks and appears like he was
considerate of the girl.
Not so because certain things are going to develop in the text where it
becomes very clear why Amnon is sick, he has no internal restraint, it’s just
an external restraint. All the virgin
princesses were locked in the girl’s dorm, and David only had the key. So the point was that he couldn’t get to her,
that’s why, there wasn’t anything noble about his soul. David just kept all his virgin daughters
locked up, that’s the point. And that’s
what it means when it says it was hard for him to do anything to her, because
it was hard to get in the girl’s dorm; that’s why, or get her out of the girl’s
dorm. And that’s the whole point of 2
Samuel, how to bust into the girl’s dorm.
And he gets some very expert advice on how to do it. But he’s going to illustrate a very important
principle. And you will see this time
and time again in yourself, and you’ll see it time and time again in other
people, so watch the principle.
In the soul when the mind goes against the conscience and makes scar
tissue, the soul loses its internal restraint.
In other words, something is destroyed at that point. The soul, as long as the norms and standards
of the conscience controls it has an internal restraint. Why is an internal restraint important? Because if you get yourself in a compromising
situation where there are not external supports for righteousness, and there
are no external laws and there are no witnesses and there is the kind of a
situation where all you’ve got to rely on is internal restraints, then your
soul needs the discipline. And that’s
where teenagers must concentrate, you must concentrate on building your
internal discipline so your soul has the restraints, so it doesn’t matter if
your parents don’t know of it, or during a situation where there is no
policeman around the corner, that concept.
When the policeman isn’t watching you can still operate righteously
because you have internal policemen in your conscience. But if that internal policeman in your
conscience is destroyed through habitual negative volition, when the restraints
are let down watch out for these kinds of people.
This is what happens to children raised in many Christian homes; they
have gone on negative volition to the Word of God so long that they fool
themselves. They have lived in a
Christian environment where the Word of God was honored, their parents honored
the Word of God and so they kind of coasted on their parents spiritual momentum
and so for a long time while they were growing up under the noses of their
parents everything was fine. And then they took off to college some place and
all hell breaks loose. Then the parents
say oh, look what college did to my son.
Or a favorite thing I found in the service was parents writing in saying
my airman so and so, look at him, that’s what the Air Force did to my boy. The Air Force did not do that to your boy,
the boy was a brat before he joined the Air Force, the Air Force just let it
out, that’s all. Let mommy and daddy get
away and he was in the airman’s barracks and all the parties and so on and
that’s what happened. The Air Force
didn’t touch the boy, it was the boy himself, no inner restraint.
And so Christians in Christian homes are very likely to this and this
explains why all of a sudden somebody goes bananas and does some gross thing,
how’d it ever happen. It was seething
there for years because all this time the child was just afraid to disobey in
an authority type atmosphere. This is not
knocking just Christian homes, don’t get me wrong, I’m just saying this is why
certain people who have been raised in Christian homes go out and go bananas
when they get out, because they just simply were rejecting God’s Word and
rejecting God’s Word and rejecting God’s Word and when they got out it became
obvious.
All right then, Amnon vexes himself and he is not concerned about the
virginity of Tamar, he’s just concerned the fact that all the virgins are
locked in the dormitory. Verse 3, but
Amnon is going to get into the dorm and he’s going to have a friend who’s going
to tell him how. Amnon, by the way, is a
picture of something, and it’s another application of principle, not only is
Amnon an illustration of a knocking of the internal restraint by scar tissue on
the conscience and mind but Amnon is an illustration of the fact that a family
inherited -R learned behavior patterns, certain behavior patterns run in your
family and if you are shrewd and serious about obeying God’s Word, and you may
have just become a Christian or you’re struggling in the throes of a sever problem
of sanctification at some point in your
Christian life and you wondering what is happening, I don’t understand myself,
why do I do this kind of thing, one thing you can do to help yourself is study
your parents, study your brothers and sisters.
Just sit down with the Word of God and think, where are their lives
screwed up; where are they spiritually weak, and if you do that to every member
of your home you’ll begin to see there are certain patterns in your family, and
these patterns you have brought into the Christian life and it’s these patterns
that God the Holy Spirit is working with.
So remember what we said one of David’s patterns was? He had plus plus libido, Solomon had it, he
wound up with a thousand women so you know what his problem was. Solomon had it, David had it, and all his
sons had it. So here’s a beautiful
illustration of Amnon ready to take the throne, and what had God said when He
promised that the seed would sit on the throne, that the seed would be obedient
to His Law. So guess what –R learned
behavior pattern must be purged out from David’s children. Libido.
And it’s purged out here, Amnon’s purged out. Here’s a boy who never learned to hack it,
never learned to control his family inheritance. And David’s partly to blame, David knew
this. One of the most interesting things
and embarrassing things about having children I’ve discovered, is that you can
see your own sin nature in them. And you
can pretty well tell, you can go through a family and really spot how the kids
have just picked up the mother’s behavior pattern, the father’s behavior
pattern, that one’s hers, that one’s his, and so on. Now it’s always a 50/50 deal so don’t go home
and have a big fight, but children inherit the parent’s behavior pattern.
Now here is why it’s important for Christian parents to grapple with
their own sanctification problems; if you are successful in working through and
struggling through with your own problems before God in His Word, that prepares
you to be a parent to your own children.
And you can’t be a proper parent to your own children if you don’t do
battle with your own sanctification difficulties, because if you don’t your
children cannot be taught. Who’s best to
teach your children. You are. Why?
Because they’ve got your behavior patterns and if you struggle with it
you can help them with it so they don’t have to go through the same thing
you’ve had to go through.
All right David failed so we have Amnon here with the family problem and
he has no training on how to handle it.
Instead he goes to this Jonadab character, and this again goes back to
something very interesting, verse 3, “But Amnon had a friend, whose name was
Jonadab, the son of Shim-eah, David’s brother,” now isn’t that
interesting. David came out of the house
of Jesse; David’s name… someone asked what their last names were in the Bible,
well, that’s what it is, David ben-Jesse.
And they could tell you all the way back, David ben-Jesse, ben-so and
so, ben-so and so, ben-so and so, ben-so and so, all the way back. They had to memorize their great-great
grandfathers, all the way back, that’s their last name. All right, David is David ben-Jesse, that’s
his last name.
Now, David has a son, the son is Amnon. David had a brother who is
listed here, Shim-eah, and Jonadab is his son.
So now we’ve got two men from the house of Jesse. Now you recall back in 1 Samuel, what was
the sin pattern in the Jesse family? The
old man had this and his sons had it. It
was a gimmick thing, remember Jesse, every time he was trotting down to see
Saul he had a sandwich, he had something, he had cheese, trying to work his way
in socially. And the irony was that when
his own son got out there and killed Goliath Saul had completely forgotten all
about Jesse and said, who’s son is that?
He’d forgot who he was, a deliberate insult after Jesse had so
politically and such great conniving to make the proper links, the proper links
fell apart. Jesse was a conniver, so the
family pattern of the Jesse household was that you connive, you work your way
into situations by gimmicks. So it’s no
surprise that he’s going to help Amnon get in the girl’s dorm. “…and Jonadab was a very wise man,” it’s not
subtle, this is not the normal word for wisdom.
Verse 4, “And he said unto him, Why are you, being the king’s son, lean
from day to day?” Now that’s really a brilliant translation, in other words,
why are you going around here sad sack, pouting all day, drooping around.
That’s a good word to use for it, why are you drooping all day; every day
you’re in one of your moods, what’s going on.
And notice he says “the king’s son,” see that’s a little dig, in other
words, Amnon, all you have to do is go to your father and he’ll see to it you
get what you need, now what’s the problem.
“And Amnon said unto him, I love Tamar, my brother Absalom’s
sister.” So without anything further
said, Jonadab knows what’s on his mind and he suggests a very interesting plan.
Verse 5, “And Jonadab said unto him, Lay down on your bed, and make
yourself [pretend that you are] sick;” this is to feign sickness, just pretend
he’s physically sick, “and when thy father comes to see thee, say unto him, I
pray thee, let my sister, Tamar, come, and give me food, and prepare the food
in my sight that I may see it, and eat it at her hand.” Now apparently what had happened was that
Jonadab knew they had a custom that the royal princesses would be let out on
one condition, that they could nurse the sick members of the royal family. This was the only case where these girls
would be allowed to be in a relatively unsupervised environment. So Jonadab said that’s now to get that girl
out of there, just take advantage of one of the household rules. Notice he says get your father, in other
words, David has to grant personal permission for these girls to leave wherever
they are.
Verse 6, “So Amnon lay down, and pretended that he was sick; and when
the king was come to see him, Amnon said unto the king, I pray thee, let Tamar,
my sister, come, and make me a couple of cakes in my sight that I may eat at
her hand. [7] Then David sent home to Tamar saying, God now to your brother
Amnon’s house, and prepare a meal for him. [8] So Tamar went to her brother
Amnon’s house; and he was laid down. And she took flour, and kneaded it, and
made cakes in his sight, and did bake the cakes. [9] And she took a pan, and
poured them out before him; but he refused to eat. And Amnon said, Send out all men from me. And
they went out every man from him.” And
obviously there’s a case that showing his carnality because remember the
principle, if you have a person with minus internal restraints, the only thing
that holds him in line is external restraints.
Now as a country we face this, we face this politically. We face this in every area. The only way we are going to have a military
that operates is a military that has some powerful external restraints, because
the people that are joining have no internal restraints; the only way people
can learn in a school environment is to have powerful external restraints,
because there is no internal restraints because there is such disrespect for
the authority of God’s Word. People who
have no internal restraints always try to run down external restraints, you can
see it every time. Why is there always
such a commotion about unmarked police cars.
If you’re worried about unmarked police cars what are you doing to be
worried about unmarked police cars?
Always running down the external restraints. You see it in many areas, and here he’s just
trying to get some last visages of external restraint out of the way.
Verse 10, “And Amnon said unto her, Tamar, Bring the food into the
chamber, that I may eat of your hand. And Tamar took the cakes which she had
made, and brought them into the chamber of Amnon, her brother. [11] And when
she had brought them unto him to eat, he took hold of her, and said unto her,
Come, lie with me, my sister. [12] And she answered him, Nay, my brother, do
not force me; for no such thing ought to be done in Israel. Do not do this folly.” Now in the message of Tamar in verse 12, this
girl is really sharp and she has a lot on the ball and it comes out here
because of the way she answers him. She
says, “for such a thing ought not to be done in Israel.” Now this means that Tamar has sensitivity,
she has an internal restraint conscience.
Now she could have done this and gotten away with it; so the very fact
that she’s objecting shows you that she’s sensitive, because the external
restraint is gone from her too, that’s the point of the story. Tamar doesn’t
have to worry about her reputation if she was that kind of a girl, she could
just go ahead and nobody would know because all the witnesses are gone. So we have two people without external
restraint, one acts one way, one acts the other, and what’s the
difference. One has the Word of God
operating through their conscience and one has long since tuned it out.
So Tamar, the Word of God operates in her conscience. Now, she says this is not done in Israel, the
implication is that it would be acceptable outside of Israel. And that sensitivity that Israel is somehow
different from the other nations is translated sensitivity to God’s authority
and His Word. When she said “this is not
done in Israel” it is tantamount to saying I acknowledge the authority of the
King of Israel, which is not my father, the King of Israel is Yahweh, and in
Yahweh’s kingdom this is not done.
That’s what Tamar is saying, so even though it’s a short sentence, and
doesn’t seem to say too much, it says a lot.
Tamar is under submission to the Word of God and it doesn’t matter where
the girl is, the Word of God is the Word of God, whether it’s in the back seat
of a car or somewhere else, the Word of God is the Word of God. Get the picture. Tamar adheres to the Word of God regardless
of the circumstances.
Then she adds with much insight, “Don’t do this nabal,” the folly. Now why
does she say it’s folly, nabal? This again illustrates the doctrine this girl
has. Nabal
can be an adjective and here it’s the nabal thing, but it’s the stupid thing,
but it’s not just the way we use the word stupid, we often use the word
“stupid” for someone who’s intellectually stupid and really we shouldn’t
because if a person has a low IQ that’s their problem and it’s nothing to make
fun of, nothing to laugh at. But where
the word “stupid” ought to be used is people who reject the conscience and nabal is that kind of a stupidity, not
an intellectual stupid thing, but a stupid thing in the eyes of God’s
Word. And the use of the word nabal stresses insensitivity, in other
words, Tamar is saying to Amnon, look you clod, you are so tuned out of the
standards of the Word of God your conscience stopped months ago, and you are
trying to produce something that is an evidence of total insensitivity to God’s
standards. That’s why she calls it a nabal thing to do. Don’t do this nabal thing.
And then verse 13 she continues to cope with the situation, she tries a
last ditch attempt; verse 12 is the first line of defense, that is, don’t you
recognize the authority of God. She sees
she isn’t getting anywhere that way, so verse 13 she tries another tact, and
that is don’t you recognize, this is the pragmatic approach, what’s going to happen
to me and what’s going to happen to you.
“And I, where shall I cause my shame to go?” And this we’ll get into
when we deal with what her options are, here this is the word, a defiled
princess, in other words, nobody wants to marry a used princess, they’re not in
high demand. So she realizes she has a
testimony to the house of David. See,
she’s not just any ordinary girl, she bears the name of royalty and she’s going
to be a princess, and when they have a royal marriage, these things are looked
into. So Tamar is a girl in the
spotlight, she has no place to hide this kind of thing. So she says now look, what do you think is
going to happen to my life as a princess if this thing happens. “And as for you, you shall be as one of the
idiots [fools] in Israel. [Now,
therefore, I pray thee, speak unto the king; for he will not withhold me from
thee.]”
Now this is a double blast of Amnon.
See a lot of stuff goes into these words and if you read it too quickly
you’ll not understand. When she says
“you will be as one of the fools” she says,
nabalim, one of the insensitive types.
Now why is Tamar concerned with her brother being an insensitive
type? Because he’s a prince, he’s the
one that’s carrying title at that moment to the throne, and she says of all
people, Amnon, if you are going to sit on our father’s throne, you can’t be as
one of the nabalim, you can’t be one
of these people that’s insensitive when God is going to need you to make
decisions for this country. If you’ve
tuned out your conscience to the Word of God in this area you’re going to tune
out your conscience of the Word of God in every other area. And what are we going to do with a nabalim
on the throne? So Tamar illustrates a
very, very good sensitivity.
And a footnote at this point, if you’ve paid attention to this series,
have you noticed how often in 1 and 2 Samuel that the women come to the fore at
critical moments. Remember the incident
when David is going down the road to murder Nabal, who is that wonderful woman
with doctrine that comes down to meet him?
Abigail, and with great finesse, without losing her femininity, she
dissuades David from murder. Remember
Hannah, one of the great women of the Old Testament. And so there are tremendous women, very
influential, but 1 and 2 Samuel doesn’t even just look at the influential women
for good, it looks at the influential women for bad, because one of the
influential women for bad was Michal, and another one was the witch of
Endor. So throughout this series you’ve
observed how women exercise tremendous influence on men at very critical
moments. It’s as though they’re kind of
ignored for a while and then the crisis comes and the woman is there; it’s like
in the Garden of Eden. At the critical
moment the woman was there; and at the critical moment in history the woman was
there all the way to the virgin Mary; at the critical moment that little Jewish
girl was there. So the woman has always
had her part to play in history and she always seems to appear out of nowhere,
come on the scene at the critical moment, and then disappear. Tamar, at this point, comes on the scene, and
that seems to be the case with this book, she just goes into oblivion and we
never hear of her again. But she pleads
with her brother to respect the kingdom.
Verse 14, “Howbeit, he would not hearken unto her voice; but, being
stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her.” And the word here “not listen to her voice”
is synonymous with the word “nabal,”
that’s what a nabal is, he doesn’t
listen to God’s voice and he’s not going to listen to God’s voice operating
through someone else. So this is the external empirical result of a nabal.
Verse 15, now girls, watch carefully, this ought to be memorized,
particularly by every teenage girl. If
you think the way to be popular is to hop in the sack with some guy and you
think you’re going to hold on to him this way, you are wrong, boy are you
wrong! Look at this. “Then Amnon hated her exceedingly, so that
the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had
loved her.” Now you read that again,
I’ll read it through, “so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater
than the love with which he had loved her.”
Now that’s the divine viewpoint of this kind of an affair, and that will
always happen girls. So don’t think
you’re being popular, you’re popular all right, but not the way you think, not
the way you want to be. And this kind of
behavior pattern is normal, and if you think back to doctrine it comes out, why
is this pattern like this.
All right, let’s take Amnon’s soul, here’s his conscience, here’s his
mind, and out here is Tamar. Now after
this thing, Amnon sees Tamar, obviously he sees her around the court, all the
time he sees her around the court. Now
what’s going to happen every time Amnon sees Tamar? He doesn’t love the girl in a true enduring
sense, he’s messed around and now every time he looks at he’s going, oh
brother… see what it’s going to do to Amnon.
So he’s on negative volition here and when he gets into a scrape Tamar
becomes his external conscience; Tamar now is another external restraint on his
soul. And since Amnon is on negative
volition and since Amnon always hates external restraints, now that Tamar just
in her very presence becomes an external restraint, he hates her. He hates anything that reminds him of God’s
standards, so now she’s gotten in his way.
And now look what happens. “And
Amnon said unto her, get out of here, [Arise, be gone.]”
Verse 16, “And she said unto him, There is no cause; this evil in
sending me away is greater than the other that thou did unto me. But he would not hearken unto her.” The second mark that points to the fact that
he is a nabal, he doesn’t
listen. Now what is her option at this
point; what is Tamar’s option? We’ve got
to go back to the Law and study this concept and find out what the options
were. Turn to Deuteronomy 22:28, we’ll
find out, you are Tamar’s counselor, and she comes to you and she asks you, now
what do I do? She called up for a
counseling appointment and you’re stuck, and you have to come up with an
answer. So you go back to the Law; and
Deuteronomy 22:28, here’s the pertinent area.
We’re going to find at this point we’ve got a conflict in the Law, it
gets very, very complicated but evidently from her remarks there are going to
be two parts of the Law that are going to collide. Tamar knows enough about it, apparently, that
she knows that her father will just discount one of these items in the
Law. The first one, “If a man find a
damsel who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with
her, and they be found, [29] Then the man who lay with her shall give unto the
damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he
has humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.” In other words, the right of divorce was
rescinded for that kind of a marriage.
And under no conditions could a divorce ever be granted under the law of
Israel in that situation.
The fifty shekels is given because under the concept of the Old
Testament the virgin had material value; sex rights are considered to be
property and this is the concept that comes over in the right man/right
woman. Single people, before you marry,
your body is the property of the other person.
That is taught in 1 Corinthians 7 and it’s taught by implication in the
Mosaic Law. Your body is actually owned
in potential by your future right man or your future right woman, and when that
property is misused it devalues. And to
recognize this they had a fine of fifty shekels of silver, which was a pretty
healthy amount. Now that’s one part of
the Law. What would this law say if you
were a counselor to Tamar and to Amnon in this situation. You’d have to tell them, you have to get
married, that’s what the Law says.
But there’s another part of the Law that operates against this,
Deuteronomy 27:22. Now Tamar makes
mention of one of these pieces of the Law, so it was on her mind. Liberals say that Deuteronomy was written
late, the Law wasn’t in effect at this time so they could have done what they
wanted to. “Cursed be he who lies with
his sister, the daughter of his father, or the daughter of his mother.” Tamar falls into that category and this was
one of the hygienic laws of the Old Testament, it was put in here to preserve
the problem of genetic deterioration; it’s one of the signs of inspiration of
Scripture because you see, they didn’t know about genes then. But God said if you don’t want deformities in
your home, don’t intermarry closely.
They wouldn’t have known all the science about it but God says you
didn’t have to know all the science, I just told you what’s going to happen,
now just do it.
So this law would say in this case they couldn’t marry. Well, you’ve got
two laws here in collision; from the remarks that Tamar makes she is going to,
evidently, if you turn back to 2 Samuel 13, she knows which way her father will
go because she says at the end of verse 13, “Now, therefore, I pray thee, speak
unto the king; for he will not withhold me form thee.” Couple verse 13 with what you saw in the Law.
Tamar is arguing that David would discount the incest problem of Deuteronomy in
favor of the other law. So she’s proposing a Biblical way out. Now see this girl’s got her wits. You can imagine thinking under a pressure
type situation like that, she knows enough of the Law that it just comes right
out. She knows Bible doctrine.
Now does this okay the problem of the so-called shotgun wedding? Now in the history of our country this has
gone on and the history behind the concept of the shotgun wedding was basically
built out of Old Testament law. The
principle of the shotgun wedding cannot be derived from that law because of
another law and that’s found in Deuteronomy 7:3. Under the principle of Deuteronomy 7:3, it
says that you must not make marriages with the unbeliever, “thy daughter you
will not give unto his son, nor his daughter shall you take unto your
son.” And the principle is that children
under the covenant under no circumstances ought to marry children outside of
the covenant. And there’s another
principle that operates, if they had gotten in trouble and one was a believer
and one was not in this situation, one was in the covenant and one was not,
bang, out of it. And this principle has
an ever greater application in the Christian sense because it simply recognizes
that there is a right man and a right woman.
You can have one of these instances and you can have a forced marriage
and it results in a worse mess than you had when you started. So the concept of the shotgun wedding cannot
be necessarily derived from these laws.
I say “necessarily” because there was one good thing about that; the
concept of the shotgun wedding put emphasis on the importance of virginity,
something that is lost today. And while
that was good in that respect, it was a too strict and too literal application
of the Mosaic Law.
Back to 2 Samuel 13, let’s go on and see what happens. Again, what does
he say to her; some of you young girls, look what Amnon says in verse 15, just
get out of here kid, get out of my sight.
If you’ve never had that said to you, you can’t appreciate it, but try
to appreciate it from the Word of God because the Word of God will save you a
lot of pain. She objected, and then in
verse 17, look at the harshness, the insensitivity of Amnon here, here is the nabal in him coming out, the
insensitivity, “Then he called his servant that ministered unto him, and said,
Put now this woman out of here [from me] and bolt the door after her,” lock her
out, throw her out. And he treats her at
this point like a common prostitute.
Verse 18, “And she had a garment,” and verse 18 is a parenthesis so you
can understand the girls grief in verse 19, verse 18 is to prepare you. “And she had a garment of various colors upon
her, for with such robes were the king’s daughters who were virgins
appareled. Then his servant brought her
out, and bolted the door after,” it literally means he threw her out. He threw her out into the street and he shut
the door after her. [19] And Tamar put
ashes on her head, and tore her garment of various colors that was on her, and
laid her hand on her head, and went on her way, crying.” And who does she meet? Her brother.
Verse 20, “And Absalom, her brother, said unto her,” now here is a model
piece of sarcasm. He comes up to her and
Amnon’s name is spelled this way normally, but when he goes up and asks here,
“Has Amnon, by brother, been with you?”
He knows what’s happened, it doesn’t require omniscience to figure it
out. So when he says “has Amnon been
with you,” he says “has Aminon been with you,” do you know what Aminon
means? Little boy Amnon, it’s a
diminutive use of the noun, and he says little boy Amnon has been with
you. This shows there was resentment
before between Absalom and Amnon. Now
watch what’s going to happen. We just go
from one sin in this passage to another.
Now so far nothing basically disastrous has happened; Tamar is in a fit
but it could be resolved if David would take a firm step. This isn’t an impossible situation, nothing’s
happened here that’s going to end the world; this kind of a thing can be dealt
with. Tamar hasn’t faced the last thing
in her life, she’s got a future ahead of her; so does Amnon.
Let’s see what happens though.
Absalom come up with a second big choice piece of human viewpoint of the
evening, the first one was how to get the key to the girl’s dorm, that was by
friend Jonadab. The second big brilliant
brain storm was what Absalom said, oh, Aminon has been with you. But hold thy peace, my sister.” Bad advice.
What he is telling his sister to do is keep it away from the old man,
shut up Tamar, you and I will take care of this. In other words, Absalom is usurping his
father’s authority over that girl at this point, and she lets him, that’s the
horrible thing about it. Tamar, at this
point, probably is so worked up and so on she’s not thinking clearly, and she
goes along with Absalom’s stupid advice.
What she should have done is go straight to her father and this might
have been solved, “might” because of another problem that’s coming up. But she could have and should have gone
direct, but no, Absalom says now you just keep quiet, I’ll take care of
it. “He is your brother; regard not this
thing,” it’s no big deal, just keep it quiet and I’ll take care of it. And the result of his brilliant advice is
summarized in one very poignant sentence, “So Tamar remained desolate in her
brother Absalom’s house,” and the participle is the most agonizing participle,
totally habitually “desolate” in her brother Absalom’s house. She didn’t go
back to the dorm, she stayed as a recluse in Absalom’s house, and that’s the
last we ever hear of this very beautiful girl, a princess who could still be a
princess, and for all we know, spends the rest of her life as a recluse in her
brother’s house. A tragic ending to
something that could have been avoided had they just dealt with the problem
biblically. All the suffering that Tamar
is going through could be stopped if she would just deal with the problem
physically.
Now verse 21-22, the last of this section; the section we’ve been
working with stops at verse 22, “But when King David heard of all these things,
he was very angry,” obviously he hit the roof when this happened, but the
significant point is, you don’t read of another verb after the verb
“angry.” What do you read after verse
21? Nothing.
Now there’s a problem in the manuscripts of the Bible at this point, the
Bible is made up of Hebrew manuscripts and from time to time these manuscripts
vary as they were transmitted in history; nothing big, but this is one of those
points where other manuscripts have a very interesting reading and they add to
verse 21 and tell us something. In fact,
the Septuagint, which is the Bible Jesus used, has this extra part on verse 21,
“David was angry, but he troubled Amnon’s spirit not because Amnon was his
firstborn.” Now whether that was in the
original text or not it fits the context and is true in its input. Why didn’t the father do something? Why didn’t he step in here and bring Tamar
out of her sorrow, and why didn’t he aggressively step into this whole thing
and control is as king. After all, he’s king of the nation can’t he be king of
his house?
Why does he let this thing simmer?
Because David has forgot the Davidic Covenant. What had the Davidic
Covenant said? At least two things,
number one, God said I will raise up the seed, don’t worry who is going to be
on the throne, I will raise up one of your sons to be on the throne. But David hasn’t looked at the fine print;
David thinks all the time it’s got to be Amnon; Amnon has got to be the king
that sits on the throne, so I’ve got to protect Amnon; whatever I do, Amnon has
to be protected, he’s my choice. But
David really doesn’t notice that he’s injected his will into God’s plan. It
wasn’t God’s plan that Amnon be that seed; David didn’t have to worry about it,
he could have let this marriage go on and move on and it’d been fine. But David, because he’s all in a dither about
forcing the Davidic Covenant to come true he tries to protect Amnon.
Another thing that David doesn’t recognize about the Davidic Covenant,
what was the second thing that he should have trusted in? God said the child that sits on the throne
after you, David, will be obedient. Is
Amnon obedient? No, Amnon needs
correction, authoritative correction from his father. Do you see any authoritative correction given
in verse 21? None. Do you know why? Because David never gave it. This is going to be a symptom of how David
handles all of his children from this time to the rest of the end of this
book. At no point does David exercise
his authority as father over any of his kids from this point forward. He lets those kids do whatever they want to
do. How tragic, because you remember how
1 Samuel began, with Eli and his children.
Do you know what tubed out the priesthood? Because Eli let his sons do whatever they
wanted to without exerting any authority over them. So David’s angry, the old man blows his
stack, so you just sit and wait for the volcano to stop erupting and move
on. That’s a real nice way to reconcile
a problem. Never consider poor Tamar
down there, what’s her future? Sitting
with ashes on her head in her brother’s house—big deal for a beautiful
girl. And she has to sit there because
her father won’t deal with this situation.
Now look, that’s not the only thing that happened.
Verse 22, “And Absalom spoke unto his brother, Amnon, neither good nor
bad; for Absalom hated Amnon, because he had forced his sister, Tamar.” And if you just peek at the next verse, how
long did it go on, two years. Real good
family harmony; Amnon and Absalom never speaking together, they come in and sit
down at the palace because the royal family ate together and they just sat
there and glare at each other, for two years, day after day, week after week,
never speaking to one another. Now you
can’t say that some place in the course it wouldn’t have been obvious to David
what the trouble was. But all during
this time David has it in his head that he’s got to get Amnon on the throne,
he’s got to protect Amnon. If he would
just relax in God’s promises and forget what’s going to happen to Amnon, and
just conduct his business as a father adhering to the Word of God and let the
chips fall the chips would fall where God sovereignly chose anyway, so forget
about where the chips are going to fall.
But David doesn’t do that. David abandons because he’s so panicked to
step in that he doesn’t step in at all.
So now what has been the tragedy of all of this? We wind up, David wanting one son on the
throne, what does he have, the chief prince, the number one boy, Amnon, goes
around for two years with a guilt complex, he knows he’s done wrong and
eventually he dies as a nabal,
there’s a word play by the way. Remember
how Nabal, Abigail’s husband died; he died in a drunken brawl at a sheep
shearing party. Do you know how Amnon is
going to die; in a drunken brawl at a sheep shearing party, all nabals die in very stupid ways. So the first son turns into a guilt-ridden
boy, turns into a party boy who finally drowns himself at a party. David’s daughter despairs in seclusion. His son, Absalom grows up with a constant
hate, which means he was out of fellowship for two solid years. This is dynamite, David has sticks of
dynamite under every chair in his home and Absalom has just lit the match and
it’s going to seethe and burn until the thing blows up into something very
catastrophic.
Now there are lessons for three different people out of 2 Samuel
13. There’s a lesson for the girls,
especially you single girls. Just take a
long look at 2 Samuel 13 because 2 Samuel 13 is God’s Word, no preacher wrote
it, no Christian wrote it, God the Holy Spirit wrote that and He wrote it for
an example that we might be instructed.
That is how it is girls, and that’s the real world painted the way it
is. The second lesson for the guys,
you’re going to see how Amnon never learned to control himself and when the
external restraints were removed he went bananas. And so will you if you’re not seeking to
bring your life under control now while you have the opportunity to submit
daily to the Word of God, some day God is going to test you and he’s going to
put you in a situation where all the restraints are gone and say if you want to
blow it, go ahead, and you will. And
then there’s a lesson for the parents and the lesson is this: You can’t just talk, there comes a time in
your home where you have to take decisive action.
Father, we thank you for these lessons