A Complex King - Reflections on 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
by Dr. John Holbert on Monday, August 5, 2024
A Complex King
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
The Peripatetic Hebrew Bible Preacher
The figure of David is among the finest literary portrayals in the ancient world, as I have tried to prove in the preceding weeks of our too brief look at the man. Today is no exception, as our fabulous narrator offers us a David rather more complex than we may have imagined him to be. Wily and clever and duplicitous David we have witnessed in abundance, but last week we saw what may have been a repentant David in the face of the withering attack by Nathan against the king’s shenanigans with Bathsheba and her husband. Today we will see a rather different David, a shattered father, a man wishing that he had died instead of his traitorous and ambitious child, Absalom. The political David earlier in his life could easily recognize the need to eliminate any who would dare challenge him for the throne of Israel, but when Absalom makes such an attempt, it is only the amoral Joab who sees that all traitors, no matter who they are, must die, even if commanded directly not to take that life.
In chapters the lectionary has passed over, Absalom wins the hearts of the people of Jerusalem by promising them speedy adjudication for their legal problems, a task that David should be doing, but for reasons unnamed is not performing at all. David, as we saw at the beginning of chapter 11, is often found “sitting” in Jerusalem. The powerful victor over Goliath, the heroic leader in battle after battle, has been replaced by a man seemingly uninterested in such things as he ages; he attends to Bathsheba and their son, Solomon, while Absalom schemes against him. And the plot works: Absalom captures Jerusalem and tosses his father and his retainers out of the city to scramble for their lives. And though Absalom, the usurper, is warned to attack the king and his forces while they are disillusioned and scattered, the would-be new king dallies in the city, allowing David to regroup and to prepare to take the forces of Absalom to task.
And they do. Too late, Absalom gathers his army and marches out of the city to confront the smaller forces of David in the northern forests of the land. David first claims he will lead the army himself against his son, but his men dissuade him from the battle, claiming (if the text be read in this way—it is difficult) that “you are like ten thousand of us,” (2 Sam.18:3), consigning their aging lord behind the walls of the fortress. Before the troops head out for battle, David clearly admonishes them, “Deal gently for me with the lad Absalom” (2 Sam.18:5). This is the famous translation of the KJV, though it may mean something like “cover him.” Nevertheless, Joab will take a very different approach when the chance to kill Absalom comes up.
And soon it does. Absalom’s army is routed in the face of the hardened and professional forces of Joab. Absalom himself, fleeing from the slaughter, rushes into the trees astride his mule, and trapped by his glorious mane of hair, that signature of great pride that was indicative of his prowess to many, in the tangled branches of a huge terebinth. He helplessly “dangles between heaven and earth,” while his mule rides on without him. A soldier reports to Joab that he has seen this pathetic and darkly humorous sight, and is asked by the grizzled general why he did not simply kill the man while he was stranded (2 Sam.18:11); “I would have given you ten pieces of silver and a belt” for the murder, cries Joab. The unnamed soldier replies that he would not have touched the boy for a thousand silver pieces; he heard the king say to all, and yes to Joab, that the boy must be protected (2 Sam.18:11-12). The soldier imagined that if he had murdered Absalom, Joab would have stood by and watched the king unload his fury on the sole killer.
“Not so will I wait for you,” shouts Joab, who grabs three sticks (not “darts” as the word is sometimes translated) and “thrusts them into Absalom’s heart, he still alive in the heart of the terebinth” (2 Sam.18:14-15). Immediately, ten other soldiers appear and finish the boy off. Certainly, Joab did not intend to kill Absalom, but merely to stun him, so that others might finish the deed, thus spreading responsibility around. Joab is no fool; he hardly desires to absorb the full fury of the aggrieved king, but at the same time he knows all too well that the traitor must not be allowed to live.
And now the news of Absalom’s death must be reported to the king. Of course, many know how David has reacted when news of royal deaths has been brought to him; he has invariably killed those who brought such news. So when Ahimaaz, son of Zadok, David’s high priest, volunteers to bring the news to David, Joab refuses to accept him as the messenger, sending instead an unnamed Cushite, a Nubian or Ethiopian foreigner, to carry the painful news of the death of Absalom. Joab does not wish to risk the life of a faithful Israelite, so he sends a foreigner instead to take the blame. The Cushite heads for the city, but Ahimaaz will not be deterred and runs after him. Ahimaaz overtakes the Cushite, but instead of telling David clearly of the death of Absalom, he utters what can only be called gibberish when he was asked about the well-being of Absalom: “I saw a great crowd to send the king’s servant, Joab, and your servant, and I know not what…” that is a near literal translation, but in this case it is not a poorly transmitted text, but the nonsense of a man who cannot say directly what he knows to his anguished king.
The Cushite is far less subtle, and tells David without subterfuge: “May the enemies of my lord the king be like that lad, and all who have risen against you for evil” (2 Sam.18:32). But rather than strike the messenger dead or even threaten either of them for their terrible news, “The king was shaken. And he went up to the upper room over the gate, and he wept, and cried as he went, ‘My son, Absalom! My son, my son, Absalom! Would that I had died in your place! Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Sam.18:33—19:1 in Hebrew). When earlier deaths have occurred, David has reacted quite differently: when Jonathan and Saul died, David composed an eloquent elegy, which was both moving and intensely politically necessary; when Abner was murdered by Joab, again he wrote a poem, designed both to proclaim his sorrow at the death and to announce he had no part in it; when the first child Bathsheba birthed died, he spoke of his own mortality and the unchanging necessity of death. But now, in the light of Absalom’s death, that weasley, obnoxious, ambitious traitor, David is now only father, repeating again and again only two Hebrew words, beni ‘Avshalom, “my son, Absalom.” David is the sort of character that cannot be easily contained by only a few descriptors; he is heroic and deceptive, political and personal, clever and overtly chastened. In short, David is one of us, a genuine human being in all of our strengths and weaknesses, all of our faults and greatness. David is a person who never can be forgotten, for good or ill.