2 Samuel Lesson 66
Discipline on David’s house continues - 2
Samuel 13:23-14:33
[someone other than Charlie says] We started a two hour seminar on
Saturday; the subject matter is mostly scientific in nature; we consider
theories in biology, geology, physics, astronomy, and also deviate into social
and religious outworking of evolution.
The basic scientific facts we cover are the same as you’d find in a
textbook, although a few of them you won’t find there. For instance, human footprints in Cambrian
rock formations allegedly six hundred million years old. These exist but you won’t find them in
college textbooks, they’d blow the theories of evolution. The question was asked what difference does
philosophy, that is, one’s presupposition framework if the same facts remain
taught. The difference comes in how
these facts are interpreted.
As a way of example of what difference this interpretation makes, let’s
consider the doctrine of what is man in the light of this evolutionary
framework. First of all, the framework
of evolution presupposes as fact that all we see today, including life, is a
product of the forces of nature acting over billions of years, therefore the
road leading to man is generally thought to begin billions of years ago in
cosmic dust clouds which slowly condensed into the sun and the solar system we
see today. The newly formed earth began
to cool and erode for billions of years until finally conditions were favorable
for atoms of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, to get together in some primal
pool and form amino acids. This isn’t
too far fetched, some amino acids have been formed in perhaps similar
conditions, however in carefully controlled laboratory experiments.
Now the theory goes on that these same amino acids, which are building
blocks of living things, evolved into more and more complex molecules, built up
of many amino acids, until at last the first cell came into being. Now this is just about mathematically
impossible but since life is here, they must have evolved that way. You see that there is a lot of faith also in
evolution. They’ll fight you on this, but it has an awful lot of faith
in it. Now from these original cells
reproducing and evolving, multi-cell sea creatures, then fish appeared, and by
developing legs amphibians appeared, and some of these became land dwellers
according to theory, and some of these land dwellers called primates finally
culminated into the apex of complexity of atoms, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and
ammonia, man. With this interpretation
of the facts in mind, what significance does this theory have to the
Christian.
First of all it makes the Creator, God, unnecessary. Julius Huxley, grandson of Thomas Huxley,
often called
It’s possible to go on and demonstrate how this theory touches us in all
avenues of life but we don’t have the time.
Yet this philosophy is subtly, yet forcefully, pushed at us by such
comments as Dr. James D. Watson, Nobel Prize Winner, in his book, Molecular Biology of the Genes, and he
says, quote: “Today the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone
but a fundamentalist minority, these objections being based not on reasoning,
but on [can’t understand words] adherents to religious principles.” Notice [can’t understand word] takes it even
further in saying evolution is now an integral part of all general education
and culture. So you see the doctrine of
evolution is almost totally accepted within our academic system. Almost all of our young people in public
schools are indoctrinated very early in this philosophy. One
So you see why it’s so important for us to combat evolution, both
intellectually and on the Biblical scene.
This is a battle for people’s minds. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians
10:3-5, “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God,
to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every thought
that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ.”
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Turn to 2 Samuel 13 beginning at verse 23, continue our study on David’s
life and the principles that we can learn through it. We are in a passage, chapters 13-14 that deal
with seven years of the Amnon incident.
These two chapters cover a sum of seven years in David’s life, seven
wasted years, seven years in which we find David unable, apparently, to trust
in God’s promises. And this basically is
a review lesson that we need about three times a day. David is a person who is unable to
trust. The promise that he is unable to
trust is found in 2 Samuel 7, the Davidic Covenant, it is a promise upon his
entire family, that his seed, out of his seed rather, would come Messiah; out
of his seed would come an everlasting throne.
And the Davidic Covenant, therefore, promises that David can rest in
certain areas of his life and that he can work in certain areas of his
life.
And here’s something about faith you always want to go back to. There is such a thing as faith-resting, there
is also such a thing as faith-doing. You
rest if something is not God’s will for you to do, no matter how easy it may
look that it might be done. You rest
depending not on whether it seems easy or difficult, you rest on whether or not
it’s God’s will. Faith-doing is you do
or attempt to do whatever God tells you to do, whether it seems impossible or
not. In other words, you do not use the
criteria of the easy and the difficult to decide whether you’re going to rest
or you’re going to work. You use the
criteria of whether or not it’s God’s Word, that’s the sole criteria.
And so David, at this point, is doing and resting in a wrong way. Here’s why.
He has several children, his first-born is Amnon, Absalom, Adonijah, and
he had Solomon. He has a lot more but
we’ll just consider these four. These
four boys can all fit in under the Davidic Covenant, and God hasn’t seen fit to
add to His revelation. All He says is
that one of your sons, David, is going to inherit the throne. He hasn’t specified which one, but David has
it is his mind that it must be Amnon; it’s got to be Amnon, Amnon is the
smartest boy, the oldest boy, the best qualified boy I think, therefore that
promise has to apply to Amnon because I said so. Now that’s David’s mentality; he insists that
Amnon and only Amnon is the seed.
Now we have to be careful and not be too hard on David and his
contemporaries because we know how the book turns out. We’ve seen the last chapter and so we can
always, since we know Solomon is the king, we can always say you goof, why
didn’t you see that it was Solomon. But
you see, if we had been there we wouldn’t have noticed Solomon. Solomon isn’t even noticed by the Holy
Spirit, just his birth, and nothing more is mentioned of Solomon. Solomon is just a baby attended by the nurses
somewhere in the king’s palace, nobody knows anything about that little baby
called Solomon. So we, from a popular
view, if we were living in that day, we wouldn’t see Solomon, he’s completely
out of the picture. We probably wouldn’t
see Adonijah, he’s also a very young boy.
The people we would see would only be two, Amnon and Absalom, they’re
the older men, the men who have married, the men who are prepared
chronologically, age wise, to sit on the throne. That’s who we’d see, that’s who David
saw.
And David, being like the rest of us, gets involved in human viewpoint
and he begins to think that Amnon is the choice. Of course, David is forgetting a few things,
he’s forgetting who picks the man who sits on the throne? Do we proclaim a general election and let the
people of the twelve tribes vote? No,
that’s not the way. Do we let the king
pick his own children? No, that’s not
the way either. Do we let the priests
vote on it? No, not even the high priest
can pick it. Then who picks the man who
sits on the throne? The prophets, the
king-makers. This, by the way, is why
the Gospels in the New Testament do not start with Jesus Christ; the Gospels,
all four of them, start with John the Baptist.
Why do the four Gospels start with John the Baptist and not Jesus
Christ? Because Jesus Christ is the
Messianic King and the Messianic King can’t pick his throne, he must be chosen
by a bona fide prophet of God. Therefore John the Baptist is the first
character in all four Gospels because it’s John the Baptist who is the
king-maker.
Now David forgets that Nathan is going to be the man, the prophet, the
king-maker, who picks his children, and Nathan hasn’t said it because Nathan
doesn’t know it. Nathan hasn’t got any
message from God on which son is the one to sit on the throne and so Nathan
keeps his mouth shut and Nathan relaxes in the promises of God. But David can’t relax in the promise of
God. David always has to have some
gimmick to promote Amnon. So David does
a lot of things for Amnon that he never should have done. They were not God’s declared will; they were
easy, they looked accomplishable, well I can do that so I’ll do it. But it wasn’t God’s will for David to take
these steps with Amnon.
On the other hand, faith involves a resting and a resting regardless of
how difficult or hard a thing may be and David failed here too because David
rested when he shouldn’t have rested. We
saw that in
So for two years, verse 23, a smoldering hatred exists between two
brothers, a hatred that should have been dealt with, he should have called
these two sons together, they should have worked out a solution over Tamar
because this beautiful girl now is in disgrace, as a princess she becomes
disqualified to marry other royal family because of what has happened and she
spends her time in Absalom’s house, in a dark back room somewhere. So you’ve got a disgraced girl and you’ve got
two brothers who hate each other with a passion, and no parent deals with the
problem; David forsakes his father responsibility to step in and deal
decisively with this. No matter what
group you’re over you can’t allow this kind of stuff to go on. He doesn’t, and so for two years this goes
on.
Now it says in verse 23, “And it came to pass, after two full years,
that Absalom had sheep-shearers in Baal-hazor, which is beside Ephraim; and
Absalom invited all the king’s sons.”
Now the sheep-shearing was a time when there was festivities, it was the
time when the sheep ranchers got their money, they sold the wool and they got
their funds and it was a happy time and they’d have these big parties. So Absalom decides he’s going to throw a party
and invite all the king’s sons. These
are his half-brothers in the family and apparently there are a good many of
them.
Verse 24, “And Absalom came to the king, and said,” now the very fact
that we know what’s going to happen, we know that what he’s really plotting
here is an assassination of the crown prince; the crown prince is Amnon, his
half-brother. He’s going to kill him out
of vengeance over his sister’s rape. So
therefore we have a situation where he wants Amnon alone. But then why in verse 24 that he insist that
David come. Now we can’t be sure of
this, except judging in the passage, judging in the context, it looks to me
like the problem is that David is so disconnected from his sons, Absalom knows
ahead of time that his father won’t take the time to even show up, this is just
a mere formality he goes through because the security guard, remember last time
they had a security guard around all the princesses. Well, they have a security guard around all the
princes too, and all the males of the family as well as the girls were
protected, and this is his attempt to get at the others, they were all
separated, he wants to get them together.
And so he goes to the king to ask permission, just like Amnon went to
the king to ask permission for Tamar.
“…Behold, now, thy servant hath sheepshearers; let the king, I beseech
thee, and his servants go with thy servant,” now he’s inviting both David, but
he apparently already knows that David will not respond. [25] “And the king said to Absalom, nay, my son,
let us not all now go, lest we be weighty” literally in the Hebrew, “lest we be
a burden unto you. And he” Absalom
“pressed him; however, he would not go, but he did bless him.” So he apparently an inkling that his dad
isn’t that interested after all. And we
would guess this, for two years his father wasn’t interested enough to deal
decisively with his two sons, obviously it’s a pretty safe guess his father
isn’t interested enough to show up at his party, and the flimsy excuse David
used in verse 25, he didn’t want to be a burden, the usual polite “no.”
Verse 26, “Then said Absalom, If not, I pray thee, let my brother,
Amnon, go with us. And the king said
unto him, Why should he go with thee? [27] And Absalom pressed him, so that he
let Amnon and all the king’s sons go with him.”
Now if you’ll notice there’s a verb repeated twice and God the Holy
Spirit never repeats verbs twice without trying to emphasize a point. And the verb that is repeated twice here is
the verb to “press.” I want you to notice
that because it shows that David, in his carnal indecision, in his failure to
operate decisively on the basis of the known Word of God, leaves himself in
response to other people. In other
words, other people are calling the shots in David’s life at this point. David’s always being pressed, being pressured
and so on; he’s not decisively leading, he’s more or less very lackadaisically
following. David is responding instead of
initiating.
Now in verse 28 we have Absalom commanding his servants, and this is the
order to kill. “Now Absalom had
commanded his servants, saying, Mark ye, now, when Amnon’s heart is merry with
wine,” and by the way that does show you what kind of wine they used at the
party, it’s not grape juice, it’s literal liquor. It wasn’t as bad as American liquor so don’t
draw any unnecessary conclusions. But
nevertheless, it had fermentation, obviously, the heart was merry. “…and when I say unto you, Smite Amnon; then
kill him, fear not. Have not I commanded
you? Be courageous, and be valiant. [29]
And the servants of Absalom did unto Amnon as Absalom had commanded.” Now we have to pause here for a grammatical
point that’s going to extend down into the passage. You’ll see where it reads, “Then all the
king’s sons arose,” this is after the killing, “all the king’s sons arose, and
every man got up upon his mule, and fled.”
Now the sentence that is under consideration in verse 29 actually has a
piece of it dropped all the way down in verse 34, the first part, “And Absalom
fled.” Now that little clause in verse
34 is totally disconnected from both verse 33 and verse 34, it’s just plopped
in there, it has nothing to do with that area.
Now why? Why do we hop from verse
29 all the way down to verse 34? Because
the intervening material between verse 30 and verse 34 is a parenthesis of
time; it’s put in there to draw your attention to something that’s
happening. So mentally when you read it,
you are to consider the action of verse 29 followed immediately by the action
of verse 34, “Absalom fled.” In other
words, everyone hightailed it out of there.
Now the author interrupts the action to bring us a footnote, and this is
the only way they could, they didn’t have footnotes with numbers in the text,
so this is the way they did it, they bracketed it grammatically, so we will
study the bracket now, verse 30-33. This
is put in here, we believe by the sovereignty of God the Holy Spirit, to draw
our attention to something that’s very important to understand the story.
Verse 30, “And it came to pass, while they were in the way, that tidings
came to David, saying, Absalom has slain all the king’s sons, and there is not
one of them left. [31] Then the king arose, and tore his garments, and lay on
the earth; and all his servants stood by with their clothes torn. [32] And
Jonadab, the son of Shim-eah, David’s brother, answered and said, Let not my
lord suppose that they have slain all the young men, the king’s sons; for Amnon
only is dead; for by the appointment of Absalom has this been determined from
the day that he raped his sister, Tamar. [33] Now, therefore, let not my lord,
the king, take the thing to his heart, to think that all the king’s sons are
dead, for Amnon only is dead.”
Now why do you suppose all that parenthetical material is so important
that God the Holy Spirit moves it chronologically up to this point in between
the action of everybody leaving the party?
The reason is what is going to happen when David gets the true word. Notice the whole pitch from verse 30-34
basically has this in mind, that David, you’ve got plenty of sons, you’ve got
Absalom, Adonijah, and probably others, not don’t get too upset. Amnon is dead, but… the implication being
David, if Amnon alone is destroyed it was because of his crime and you didn’t
deal with his crime, David. For two
years you’ve been cooling your heels in the palace, neglecting your role as a
father to step in and clarify the problem and you haven’t done it. You’ve goofed off for two years and so while
for these two years pressures have been building up and building up and
building up, and there’s been an explosion.
But you don’t have to worry about it, only Amnon is dead.
Now a further thing to note in verse 32 is that this Jonadab, who is the
one who instigated the whole thing, he was the one that showed him how to get
the key to the girl’s dorm, Jonadab comes up and apparently is quite
knowledgeable of what’s going on because he says, “for by the appointment of
Absalom this has been determined from the day that he raped his sister.” Now this is interesting, because David didn’t
know that, or if David did know that he chose to ignore it. Now how come, do you suppose, Jonadab knows
this and David doesn’t? See, it shows
you how far out of it David was. Here’s
a person, not a member of his own family directly, his brother’s but it’s not
part of his children, and he knows exactly what’s been going on, he says listen
David, it’s no big surprise, and when he says “by the appointment” it’s the
Hebrew word pa, it’s the word for
mouth, and when he says “by the mouth of Absalom has this been determined” what
he’s saying is look, the day that thing happened, when Absalom met his sister
coming back, he verbally said I am going to kill my brother. And Jonadab heard him. So this was knowledge in the court, all
through the palace.
But this only serves to heighten the fact that David is more culpable,
he’s more guilty, because of this because if these people knew it you can’t
tell me David didn’t know it. He
obviously knew what was on Absalom’s mind.
And yet just as he procrastinated to do anything against Tamar, to solve
the problem, to help her, to help Amnon, to deal with the situation, so he also
did nothing to protect the crown prince that he loved. Apparently it was partially sin, partially an
oversight, because in verse 34, after the men come, “…And the young men who
kept watch lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came many people
by the way of the hillside behind him. [35] And Jonadab said unto the king,
Behold, the king’s sons come; as thy servant said, so it is. [36] And it came
to pass, as soon as he had ceased speaking, that, behold, the king’s sons
came,” these are the rest of the boys who survived, “and lifted up their voice
and wept; and the king also and all his servants wept very much [a great
deal.”
Now the interesting thing here is that David responds, oblivious to the
fact that his other sons are safe. To
him, the presence or the absence of his other sons isn’t the issue, he lost his
precious son, Amnon. Remember I said he
put all his eggs in one basket, Amnon, and somebody dropped the basket. And he had no authority to do this, but he’s
passionately concerned with this one son.
It’s true, we’d expect him to weep, but we’re going to watch how he
weeps, in a few more verses. There are
going to be things said about David’s weeping here that shows us something
abnormal about this. There’s something
wrong in David’s life, he has a fixation about this son, Amnon.
And we’ll notice something else, if you’ll look at verse 37, the Holy
Spirit puts a note, “But Absalom fled, and went to Talmai, [the son of
Ammihur], king of Geshur.” now why did he go to Talmai? Turn to 2 Samuel 3:3, you’ll notice the
mother of Absalom, [2, “And unto David were sons born in Hebron: and his
first-born was Amnon, of Ahinoam, the Jezreelitess; [3] And his second,
Chileab, of Abigail, the wife of Nabal, the Carmelite;] and the third, Absalom,
the son of Maacah, the daughter of Talmai, king of Geshur,” now we’ve got a
very serious thing. Geshur is located
over here around Damascus, it’s further away than Damascus. Absalom has fled the kingdom and gone over to
Geshur, and who is Absalom’s mother but the princess of a foreign power. Then we have the royal seed of David’s house
visiting a foreign power, and we’re going to see he visited it for three
years.
Back to 13:38 it says, “So Absalom fled, and went to Geshur, and was
there three years.” Now this is bad
news, to have one of your potential crown princes being schooled in the
diplomacy of a foreign country, being groomed by foreign enemies to act as an
agent. And later on when Absalom returns
he’s going to do some very treacherous things, which have made more than one
scholar think that this is the clue that Absalom made contact with foreign
powers who at this point plotted to overthrow David. Absalom’s rebellion, in other words, wasn’t
just Absalom’s product. We have a very,
very diplomatically serious situation.
It would be as though somebody kidnapped the son of the President or they kidnapped some person who is of
political importance and they take him to Moscow or Beijing for three
years. It’s that serious.
Now you’d think that David would do something. But just as we’ve seen David in paralysis
over the Amnon incident so far, he stays paralyzed, because there’s a note in
verse 37. See, the Holy Spirit flips
back and forth from Absalom to David.
[37] “… And David mourned for his son every day.” Now that’s not like David because already
we’ve had portions of Scripture that tells us how David responded. Remember, chapter 12:21-22, when he was
losing his infant son, David wept, but verse 22, after the child died, he
stopped, which shows that David exercised divine viewpoint.
Now people are never going to understand it when you exercise divine
viewpoint in times of great crisis.
People that have latched onto the idea of trusting completely in God’s
promises have been able to sustain themselves in time of great personal pressure,
one problem they always meet is they face a big crisis, they relax and don’t
fall apart like everybody else thinks they should, so everybody else says well,
they don’t care, they’re not personally involved, and they come up with all
this human viewpoint stuff because they insist other believers should fall
apart. We have people who insist that it
is an act of love to fall apart. The
principle is there are times when you have to think and you can’t think when
you’re emotional. And David can’t
think. In 12:21-22 you see a man facing
a crisis correctly; there you have it, and you see people misinterpreting it
and making these snide remarks. Now in
chapter 13 you see the same man facing a crisis, as it says in verse 37,
“mourning for his son every day.” That
is not David, that is abnormal, and I’m going to point out why because the Holy
Spirit keeps doing something in the text.
In verse 39 he summarizes, and the King James is wrong in the
translation, it says, “And the soul of King David longed to go forth unto
Absalom; for he was comforted concerning Amnon, seeing he was dead.” Now that makes it sound as though everything
is okay and we can move on to another chapter.
There’s only one problem; if you stick with the way the King James
translators translated verse 39, chapter 14 doesn’t make a bit of sense,
because in chapter 14 David does not forgive Absalom, he is hostile toward
Absalom, he remains hostile toward Absalom and he never forgives Absalom. Chapter 14 doesn’t make a bit of sense if
verse 39 really goes the way the King James says it does. We can be thankful that verse 39 in the
original language doesn’t go the way it’s translated in the King James.
Now to get the background of the writer’s point of verse 39 I want you
to notice a recurring phrase. Notice
verse 34, see that clause, “Absalom fled,” that was separated deliberately for
the parenthetic material. But it’s also
separated for something else, to focus your eyes in on that clause. The reason is because in verse 37 what do you
read, “But Absalom fled,” and then you read in verse 38, “So Absalom fled,” now
why do you suppose Absalom fled, Absalom fled, Absalom fled? Why is that repeated? Obvious, the Holy Spirit wants to direct our
attention, hey, Absalom is getting away, that’s the point. David is doing nothing again. See, he’s immobilized, he’s paralyzed, the
great conqueror, the hero, can’t make a decision about his own sons.
So verse 39 is not teaching that he’s forgiven Absalom at all. First we start with the verb; the verb does
not mean “longed,” that’s the first mistake of the translators, it is a verb to
end or to finish. So the verb is translated incorrectly, it means and, or
finished, or stop, or cease, any one of those verbs, that’s what the verb
means. The problem comes that the
subject of the verb is feminine, third singular. So you have a feminine third singular in the
Hebrew, and this feminine third singular has no subject, that’s the problem and
that’s what causes the hang-up in the translation. There’s not one word in verse 39 that’s
feminine that’ll go with the verb. So
when there’s no subject, no feminine noun that will fit the verb we call that
an impersonal form of the verb, it means “it ceased.” So you translate it with “it.” So now what have we got in verse 39, “it
ceased,” or “it stopped.” Now let’s see
how far we can go. “And it stopped King
David,” King David is the object of the verb, “It stopped King David to go
forth unto Absalom.” Now that makes a
little bit more sense. Something is
stopping David from going forth.
Now to clarify the meaning, “go forth” is used in such contexts as
Deuteronomy 28:7 and other passages, to refer to go out and attack your
enemies. It is a military term. So now let’s see what we’ve got. “It stopped David from going forth,” so now
we can erect something here, David was going to go out and get Absalom, do you
see the warning, Absalom fled, Absalom fled, Absalom fled. And something David stopped David from going
forth after Absalom. What stopped David
from going forth after Absalom. All
right, the next clause that begins with “for he was comforted,” that whole
clause becomes the subject, that whole clause wrapped up in one package becomes
the subject of the verb stopped.
So it reads this way: “It stopped David from going forth after Absalom, namely,”
and then this is the clause, now let’s look at the clause because that’s not
translated correctly; “he was comforted concerning Amnon, seeing he was
dead.” The clause reads: “he” not was
comforted, but “he tried to comfort himself,” it’s a reflexive thing, he was
trying to comfort himself because Amnon was dead. Now that “because he was dead” is a
deliberate jab put into the text to remind you of the last time that phrase
occurred, and the last time that phrase occurred was in chapter 12 with his
son, and the last time it occurred was when David rejoiced that his child was
dead. See, heightened contrast. So verse 39 is actually all screwed up in the
King James and yet it’s the key verse of the whole passage: “It kept King David
from going forth unto Absalom.” What
kept it, the fact that he sat there day after day after day after day trying to
comfort himself over the death of Amnon. You see what happened? David fouled up with Amnon; he fouled up in
the first place because he didn’t take care of the Tamar incident. Now he fouls up again because he doesn’t see
to it that Absalom is either forgiven or punished, one way, but he doesn’t take
any action. He doesn’t get him out of
that foreign country, that foreign country is Geshur and he’s going to be sorry
the day that Absalom returns that he ever let him stay three years in a foreign
country because this is the first revolt David is going to have to fight.
Okay, we’ve got verse 39 straightened out so we now know what the
problem is, David is abnormally connected with Amnon, he has a fixation that
Amnon, it’s going to be Amnon, it’s got to be Amnon, and when Amnon goes
everything goes. And we also know
something else from chapter 14, that David hates Absalom and is going to try to
kill him. Now why is that
important? Because really David
shouldn’t kill Absalom, he shouldn’t because after all, Absalom did what he
did, really in a way of loss of punishment, Absalom did what he did because
David didn’t step into the situation.
Now this doesn’t absolve Absalom, of course, of his individual
responsibility. But it does involve
David, so David can’t quite blame all on Absalom. But David has great vengeance in his heart
toward Absalom.
Now keep in mind the picture. If
you were there, visualizing what happened, you would have two sons in the
headlines; Absalom and Amnon. Now
because you’re Christians and you’ve read the Bible and you know all about
Solomon, you tend to load the passage from your knowledge. Forget it, pretend you never heard of Solomon,
pretend you were just somebody in the public and all you knew, there were two
princes, one Amnon’s just been killed, and the other Absalom. Now we’ll be prepared to understand why this
woman appears, seemingly out of nowhere, the wise woman of Tekoa, again one of
the great heroines of Scripture.
2 Samuel 14:1, “Now Joab, the son of Zeruiah, perceived the king’s heart
toward Absalom.” Now we know again from additional material, which I’ll show
you in a moment, that Joab was trying for years to get Absalom back. Joab realized that the next man in control,
now keep Solomon out of this or you won’t appreciate it, we always think oh its
Solomon, but Solomon wasn’t in the picture at that point. The picture is the next man rightfully
condition for the throne should be Absalom.
Absalom is the proper crown prince, so Joab is concerned that David’s
going to die or something’s going to happen and there’s no crown prince to take
his place. So Joab, as commander in
chief of the army, is trying to get Absalom back, but he knows David’s
heart. And the heart is given in verse
39, namely that he’s all choked up over Amnon still, and he can’t forgive
Absalom.
But Joab is going to pull of a little deal with a woman, her name is
never given, verse 2, “And Joab sent to Tekoa, and fetched from there a wise
woman,” the word “wise” means skill, this woman was an actress, and Joab hired
himself an actress, she had the skill to put on a big act, and she was a pretty
smart woman too, and she was going to be used by Joab to influence David. I think here, this is one of those fringe
benefits that only you who follow through a book can gather, if you’re new you
won’t appreciate this, but this is where you pick up a Biblical mentality by
kind of osmosis. If you just continually
read Scripture God’s thinking is going to become your thinking. Now what do you notice about women in the
Bible up to this point? If you think of
this for a moment you’ll see that God’s Word elevates the women; elevates her
to far higher position than any women’s libber would ever think of doing.
Consider the women in history up to this point and what the Bible says
they have done. Let’s just think of a
few? You have Eve, we can negative think
what Eve did. How did she do what she
die? She influenced her man, that’s how
she acted. Think of Sarah, and again we
have negative thoughts about Sarah because she got Abraham involved with Hagar
and the Jews to this day can’t stand the Ishmaelites. So here again Sarah deeply influenced the
cause of history. And how did she do it?
By influencing her husband. Consider
Rebekah, she had a real smooth operation, it was kind of plus and minus, she
worked out a deal with her son to deceive her husband, but she did it in such a
way because her husband was stupid at this point, she outsmarted her husband so
that Jacob got the blessing. So Rebekah
had a tremendous influence on history because if she hadn’t done what she did
Israel wouldn’t be called Israel; Israel is a man’s name, not a nation’s name,
it’s Jacob’s other name, Israel; it’s a man’s name. And Israel would never be called Israel,
Jacob would never have the twelve tribes if Rebekah hadn’t done what she did to
her husband.
This is not an excuse for every lady to try and see if you can outsmart
your husband. I’m just trying to point
out what God’s Word as far as women and their tremendous influence, and how
women have influenced history. Zipporah,
Moses’ first wife, Moses married several women, by the way, Moses was a
divorced man when he led the Exodus. Not only was he a divorced man when he was
involved in the Exodus, he married a black woman, it was an interracial
marriage, he married an Ethiopian.
Zipporah influenced Moses negatively because she couldn’t stand the
covenant, and when it came time to circumcise her son, she threw the flint
stone that she had, that she was circumcising with, right at Moses’ feet, there
you bloody husband, and that’s what’s she thought of the covenant of God, so
Moses said get out of here and that was a divorce. Then we have Ruth and a tremendously powerful
woman, had a tremendous influence on her family and on Boaz. We could go on and list Hannah, again had a
tremendous influence, largely to her son.
Michal had a negative influence on David, her husband; the witch of
Endor had a negative influence on Saul; Tamar, the girl that was raped in the
last chapter, had a tremendous amount of doctrine and she was trying to give it
to her brother to influence him and he didn’t listen. We had Abigail and how she wonderfully
influenced David.
And now we’re going to have another woman, appearing seemingly out of
nowhere at just the right moment to influence a man. Ladies, that shows you biblically how you
make your chief contribution for good or evil.
If you are to take your norm of Scripture and average it out over a
process of time and see how the Biblical women make their great influence it is
always through their husband’s or through their sons. Now that’s not to say women can’t make
contributions other ways, but I find it very interesting that in all cases of
Scripture the great women for good or evil are always doing it by this
means. That should say something about
the second and third divine institutions, and the woman’s place in them. [Verse 2, “…fetched a wise woman, and said
unto her, I pray thee, pretend to be a mourner, and put on, now, mourning
apparel, and anoint not thyself with oil, but be as a woman who had a long time
mourned for the dead.”]
Verse 3, “And come to the king, and speak on this manner unto him. So Joab put the words in her mouth.” That little footnote, “put words in the
mouth” can be seen in this passage of Scripture to refer, it’s a parallel
clause to refer to Old Testament prophets, God puts His words in the mouth of
His prophets. Now you can get a norm and
a standard for that clause by looking here, Joab tells this woman her
role. See, he’s hired an actress, and he
said now lady, this is the script, I’m giving it to you, memorize it and practice
and when you practice with this script then we’ll go to David. So that’s what it means to put words in
someone’s mouth, and therefore what does that mean when you see that phrase
used, God puts words into the mouth of His prophets? It means He gives them the literal Word. [4, “And when the woman of Tekoa spoke to the
king, she fell on her face to the ground, and did obeisance, and said, Help, O
king.”]
So she comes to the king and I could go through it verse by verse but we
don’t have time, so I’m going to try to summarize it for you. If you look at verses 5-7, “And the king said
unto her, What ails you?” This was common that they would come to the king, the
king would act as a judge. In a small
nation the king would act as, we would say, a high court judge. And they would bring difficult cases to the
king and he was supposed to be wise. So
it was normal, and he said what’s your case.
“And she answered, I am indeed a widow woman, and mine husband is dead.
[6] 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 slew him. [7]
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 we will destroy the heir also: and so they shall
quench my coal which is left, and shall not leave to my husband neither name
nor remainder upon the earth.”
Now the “quenching of the coal” means simply that her family inheritance
through the third divine institution is going to go if there’s not a male
living to hold the name of the property.
Property could only be held in the name of the man, unless in a very
special case women could own property in the Old Testament, but they had to
have special clearance to do so. So you
have the third divine institution in danger of breaking. Let’s make the analogy because she is a wise
woman and she’s going to hit David with a proverb, this is just like Nathan
did. So let’s get the parallel between
David and we’ll put the act. Now in the
act the woman has her family and she has two sons; one of these sons is killed
by the other. The pressure is on to kill
the other son, but if she kills the other son, then the heritage of her family
cannot continue. [8, “And the king said
unto the woman, Go to thine house, and I will give orders concerning thee. [9]
And the woman of Tekoa said unto the king, My Lord, o King, the iniquity be
upon me, and on my father’s house; and the king and his throne be guiltless.”]
So David considers this and so he says, in verse 10, “And the king said,
Whosoever saith anything unto you, bring him to me, and he shall not touch you
any more.” So David makes a judicial
sentence as king that this son, son number two, should legally survive, in this
case to carry the name of the property and the family heritage. So the woman sees that she’s got David going,
see David falls for it every time, he fell for it with Nathan, remember, Nathan
came to him and said now David, if there were this kind of a case what would
you do? And he jumped all over it and it
turned out that he was sentencing himself.
So the woman knows that she’s got David going. So now watch this ladies, watch the
technique, no extra charge, because she’s going to do something that Nathan
didn’t do that shows you how she worked versus how Nathan worked. Very few women really know how to maneuver a
man. All you know is how to nag, and
nagging is one of the most ineffective stupid ways of moving a man to do
anything because all you do is make our grates turn on and if you start nagging
we’re just going to go the opposite way just to show you. So it’s very foolish and ineffective to nag a
man. But if you study the Bible closely
it tells you how to handle a man. Now
men, you’d better learn to so you can be [can’t understood word/s].
She says in verse 11, this is her next little maneuver, “Then she said,
I pray thee,” this is the first thing by the way men, always notice the women
are maneuverers, the female of the species is a lot more maneuvering than men
ever thought of being, and when you have schemes and plots generally some
female is behind it; they’re always indirect, that’s been their approach from
time immemorial to be indirect. Very few
women… when they are direct they’re so obvious about it that you can see it
easily, but where women have their great skill in Scripture is using the
indirect approach. So she said I ask
you, “Let the king remember the LORD thy God,” now why did she say that to King
David? She is asking him to swear it by
oath; she’s got the judgment out of him in verse 10 but she wants to make sure
that David’s going to stick with the judgment so it’ll be irreversible, that’s
her gimmick. So to make the judgment
irreversible she’s going get it out as an oath.
She says, “king, remember the LORD thy God, that thou would not permit
the avengers of blood to destroy anymore, lest they destroy my son.” And so he
falls right into it, “And he said, As the LORD lives, there shall not one hair
of thy son fall to the earth.” He goes
right in and affirms it by an oath. Now
she’s got him, and now she drops her little bomb right in his lap.
Verse 12, “Then the woman said,” let me just speak one more word, “Let
thine handmaid, I pray thee, speak one word unto my lord, the king. And he said say on.” Notice the way she’s preserving her feminine
position, she doesn’t at this point do what Nathan did? As one man could do to another he said “You
are the man!” That was the end of the
conversation. But this is a woman so she
can’t handle David like Nathan could, so here’s how she handles him, still
maintaining her feminine position she asks permission to just ask one more
thing, so David says go ahead.
Verse 13, “And the woman said, Why, then, have you thought such a thing
against the people of God? For the king does speak this thing as one who is
guilty,” literally, now what is she saying.
Let’s compare the act and David.
See, the woman is the house of David, David has two sons, and I told you
to get Solomon out of your mind because Solomon is not a live issue at this
point. We have Amnon and Absalom; David
hates Absalom, he’s not doing anything about Absalom, he’s not handling the
situation, and she says “you have thought such a thing against the people of
God?” Why does she phrase it that
way? Because she’s saying look David, if
you don’t take care of this the whole country loses the king; she’s trying to
tell David, get your mind off your personal things and think of the good of the
country; you have to solve this monarchy problem, you have got to solve the
problem of your successor or the welfare of the country goes down. David,
you’re not thinking of the national welfare, so you’re thinking something
against the people of God.
Then she adds, “For the king does speak this thing,” now “this thing” in
verse 13 is the decree that she just tricked him into oathing in verse 11,
that’s “this thing.” “This thing” is the
decree, the sentence he’s passed. And so
she says the king makes his oath “as one who is guilty himself, [in that the
king doth not fetch home again his banished.].”
In other words, you’ve just condemned yourself David because what you
have condemned in my story is precisely what you have condemned in your real
life. Now she could have just walked
out, but being a woman she carefully builds her feminine position under David
and moves on.
Verse 14, “For we must needs die, and are as water spilled on the
ground, which cannot be gathered up again; neither does God respect any
person. Yet does he devise means, that
his banished is not expelled from him.”
These are sayings, proverbial sayings.
The whole net result of these proverbs is that God is a merciful God.
Verse 15, then she goes back to her act; see how clever she is, she
starts off her act, starts maneuvering David, gets David all excited, he makes
his pronouncement, she just gently shows, hey, you’ve just condemned yourself,
and then she quickly slips right back into her act, just like grease, and moves
on. She is a wise woman. “Now, therefore, I am come to speak of this
thing unto my lord, the king, 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 handmaid. [16
For the king will hear, to deliver his handmaid out of the hand of the man who
would destroy me and my son together out of the inheritance of God.”
And she goes back into a big long song and dance again; see, she takes
it right back to where she began, very gentle, she leaves David an out in other
words. Another thing that women very
frequently do and they never learn it, don’t corner a man; that is not the way
to get him to do what you want him to do.
We have these women [can’t understand words] now what choice have you left
the man to do? Use your smarts, always
give him a way around and you’ll see that oftentimes you can lead him
around. But to do this you’ve got to
leave him a place to move; he is not going to move your way if you’ve just
solidly confronted him. And this woman
is smart, she doesn’t.
So David catches on, verse 18, but notice how she closes in verse 17,
she really lays it on thick. “Then thine handmaid said, The word of my lord,
the king, shall now be comforting; for as an angel of God, so is my lord, the
king, to discern good and bad.
Therefore, the LORD thy God will be with thee.” Now how can you get mad at it, so David, now
he knows what’s happened, he sees right into what’s going on but he can’t get
mad at her, she’s very, very gracious.
So verse 18 he says, “Then the king answered and said unto the woman,
Hide not from me, I pray thee, the thing that I shall ask thee.” And what he says is now just a minute, I
smell a rat here, lady would you just say one thing. He asks her, see he doesn’t demand, if he had
been mad at her he would have, all right you!!!
But he doesn’t react that way; you see ladies, she pulled something off
on David, had a major confrontation with the guy and she walks out and he’s
smiling. Now how did she pull it
off? Because she had chokmah, something very few women
have. And she walked out and David says
hey, I want to ask you one question, “And the woman said, Let my lord, the
king, now speak.” See, very smooth, the
whole thing.
Verse 19, “And the king said, Is not the hand of Joab with thee in all
this?” And she admits it, “And the woman
answered and said, As thy soul lives, my lord, the king, none can turn to the
right or to the left from anything that my lord, the king, has spoken; for thy
servant Joab, he ordered me, and he put all these words in the mouth of thine
handmaid.” So she knows when the game is
up, she admits the truth, but she’s so carefully prepared the ground that she
can. She knows he’s not going to blow up
at her. [20, “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.”]
Verse 21, “And the king said unto Joab, Behold now, I have done this
thing; go, therefore, bring the young man, Absalom again,” so they bring
Absalom back. [22, “And Joab fell to the
ground on his face, and bowed himself, and thanked the king; and Joab said,
Today thy servant knows that I have found grace in thy sight, my lord, O king,
in that the king has fulfilled the request of his servant. [23] So Joab arose
and went to Geshur, and brought Absalom to Jerusalem.”] The thing we want to close on, when he does
bring Absalom back, in verse 24, “And the king said, Let him turn to his own
house,” Absalom returns to his own house, but… and here we see a very grave
situation develop, “let him now see my face.
So Absalom returned to his own house, and saw not the king’s face.”
Now let’s take a little tally of the years. How many years was it that the brothers
didn’t talk? Two. How many years was it that he was in
Geshur? Three. Do you know how many more years, two
more. Seven years it took for this
family incident to soothe down to the point where it was ready for another
rebellion. Verses 25-27 are just summary
verses put in there as a parenthesis to explain why later Absalom is going to
be considered the crown prince. He’s a
very handsome man, he had a beautiful sister, very handsome himself, he was the
first hippie, he had long hair. And how
you can explain a man with long hair looks beautiful I don’t know, apparently a
lot of women think so, and in verse 26 it says that his hair was
fantastic. He had very thick hair and he
was considered to be a very attractive man.
[25, “But 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. [26] And when he cut the hair of his head, (for it was
at every year’s end that he cut it; because the hair was heavy on him,
therefore he cut it), he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels
after the king’s weight. [27] And unto Absalom there were born three sons, and
one daughter, whose name was Tamar; she was a woman of fair countenance.”]
Verse 28, there’s your time element, “So Absalom dwelt two full years in
Jerusalem, and saw not the king’s face.”
[29, “Therefore Absalom sent for Joab, to have sent him to the king, but
he would not come to him; and when he sent again the second time, he would not
come. [30] Therefore, he said unto his servants, See, Joab’s field is near
mine, and he has barley there; go and set it on fire. And Absalom’s servants
set the field on fire. [31] Then Joab
arose, and came to Absalom unto his house, and said unto him, Why have thy
servants set my field on fire? [32] And Absalom answered Joab, Behold, I sent
unto thee, saying, Come here, that I may send thee to the king to say, Why am I
come from Geshur? It has been good for
me to have been there still. Now, therefore,
let me see the king’s face; and if there be any iniquity in me, let him kill
me. [33a, “So Joab came to the king, and told him; and when he had called for
Absalom, he came to the king, and bowed himself…]
And he finally had to engineer his way into the king’s place, and in
verse 33 we find Absalom bowing “himself on his face to the ground before the
king; and the king kissed Absalom,” that’s the sign that he’s acceptable with
the king. Now all of this because David
fails to act on God’s promises. He
hasn’t done a thing. Verse 33 looks nice
but next week we’re going to see the volcano erupts again; seven years have
gone by. For seven years God has been trying to get through to David. David, Amnon isn’t my boy, and David has been
refusing to act on what he knew of God’s will.
Shall we bow for prayer…