Tamar Speaks, and the Royal House Fails to Answer

The first name in the chapter is Absalom, not Amnon or Tamar, and the verse defines Tamar as his sister: the chapter will end in his hands. Tamar shares her name with Judah’s daughter-in-law (Genesis 38), another woman wronged within the house of Judah. Absalom will later name his own daughter Tamar (14:27).

“Vexed” is a word for being hemmed in, distressed. “Thought it hard” is literally “it was wonderful in his eyes”, beyond his reach, because an unmarried king’s daughter lived under guard. What stands between him and Tamar is access, and access is what the next verses supply.

Shimeah is the Shammah of 1 Samuel 16:9, the third son of Jesse passed over when Samuel anointed David, so Jonadab is the cousin of both Amnon and Tamar. “Subtil” is chakham, the ordinary word for wise; here it is wisdom put to work for harm.

“Lean” is dal, thin, the same word used for the “poor” man in Nathan’s parable (12:1). Amnon calls Tamar “my brother Absalom’s sister”, not “my sister”; he speaks of her as belonging to another man’s household.

Jonadab scripts every step: lie down, feign illness, wait for the king, ask for Tamar by name, have her cook where he can watch. He even writes the words Amnon is to say. The plan uses the king’s own concern for a sick son as the key to the door.

Amnon changes Jonadab’s general “meat” to a specific request, levivot, cakes whose name is built from lev, heart, a word found only in this chapter. He asks for dainties by a name that sounds like tenderness.

“David sent” is the verb that ran all through chapter 11, where the king sent for Bath-sheba. Now he sends his daughter to a house, trusting a request he has not examined, and the order goes to her at home.

Royal sons had houses of their own; Absalom has one too (verse 20). Tamar goes to Amnon’s, where he is already lying down, and does the work in his sight as he asked, every step watched.

“Have out all men from me” is the same command Joseph gave before revealing himself to his brothers (Genesis 45:1). There the room was cleared for reconciliation; here it is cleared so that no one will see. The pan is a word found only here.

The “chamber” is the cheder, the inner room, the same word used for Ish-bosheth’s bedchamber (4:7). Tamar is drawn from the outer room into the inner one, still carrying the cakes, still doing what she was sent to do.

“Come lie with me” is the demand of Potiphar’s wife, who also “caught” Joseph as she spoke (Genesis 39:12). Amnon adds “my sister”, the one word that should have stopped him.

Tamar’s words match those used of Dinah in Genesis 34:7: “folly in Israel”, a thing that “ought not to be done”. “Force me” is ‘innah, the verb used of Shechem with Dinah (Genesis 34:2). She speaks the language of Israel’s own law and history.

“Fools” is nevalim, from the same root as nevalah, “folly”, in verse 12, and as Nabal, the fool whose name described him (1 Samuel 25:25). Tamar tells Amnon exactly what he will become in Israel’s eyes.

“Would not hearken unto her voice” is the chapter’s verdict on Amnon, and it will be repeated in verse 16. “Being stronger than she” uses chazaq, and “forced” is the same verb Tamar used in verse 12. The deed is named in her words.

“Arise, be gone” is two words in Hebrew, qumi lekhi, commands one would give a servant or an animal. He does not use her name. The verse counts his hatred against his love, and the hatred is the greater measure.

Deuteronomy 22:28–29 required a man who seized an unbetrothed virgin to marry her and never “put her away all his days”. Tamar’s protest rests on that law: sending her away doubles the wrong. The opening words in Hebrew are broken, and the Greek expands them.

The King James supplies “woman”; the Hebrew says only “put this out from me”, with no noun at all. The servant is told to bolt the door, as though she might try to come back in.

“A garment of divers colours” is ketonet passim, the same phrase as Joseph’s coat (Genesis 37:3), probably a long robe with sleeves. The verse stops to explain it as the dress of the king’s unmarried daughters, then shows the door bolted on the woman wearing it.

A hand laid on the head was a sign of grief and disgrace (Jeremiah 2:37). “Crying” is za’aq, to cry out for help, the cry Deuteronomy 22:24, 27 expects from an assaulted woman as evidence. Tamar cries out in the street, where everyone can hear.

In Hebrew Absalom calls him “Aminon”, a shortened form, perhaps contemptuous. “Regard not this thing” is literally “do not set thy heart on this matter”. “Desolate” is the word for a ruined land, and Isaiah 54:1 uses it of a woman left without husband or children.

The Greek and a Hebrew scroll from Qumran add a sentence here: David would not grieve Amnon’s spirit, “because he loved him, for he was his firstborn”. The traditional Hebrew text records the anger and nothing after it.

“Neither good nor bad” means nothing at all, the phrase used when God warned Laban not to speak to Jacob (Genesis 31:24). Absalom’s silence lasts two years, and the verse explains it for the reader: hatred, and the reason for it.

Sheepshearing was a festival with feasting, as at Nabal’s (1 Samuel 25:2, 36). It was also on the way to his sheepshearers that Judah met Tamar (Genesis 38:12–13). Baal-hazor is a high hill north of Jerusalem, a day’s journey from the city.

Absalom calls himself “thy servant” twice in one sentence, the courtier’s humility. Inviting the king first made the feast look like an honour to the whole family and made the later request for Amnon look like a second-best compromise.

“Chargeable” means burdensome: a king and his court would eat a host out of his flocks. “Blessed him” is a polite farewell with good wishes, David declining in the gracious form that left Absalom free to ask for something smaller.

“If not” is terse, and Absalom names Amnon at once. The king’s question, “Why should he go with thee?”, shows he suspects something and has not decided what. He does not ask it a second time.

“Pressed” is parats, to break through, the verb behind the breaches of 5:20 and 6:8. The Greek adds that Absalom prepared a feast like a king’s feast, a hint of the ambitions that fill the next chapters.

“Merry with wine” is “good of heart with wine”, the phrase used of Nabal drunk at his own shearing (1 Samuel 25:36). “Have not I commanded you? be courageous” echoes the LORD’s charge to Joshua (Joshua 1:9), put to the service of a murder.

Mules were the mount of royalty in David’s court; Solomon will ride David’s own mule to his anointing (1 Kings 1:33). Absalom will die hanging from a tree his mule ran under (18:9). The princes flee on them now.

The rumour travels faster than the princes and grows as it goes: every son dead, “not one of them left”. The news comes while they are still on the road, and the king has to grieve the wrong number first.

David lies on the ground again, as he did for Bath-sheba’s child (12:16). His servants stand with torn clothes, the court frozen round a king who believes he has lost all his sons in one afternoon.

“By the appointment of Absalom” is literally “on the mouth of Absalom it was set”: it had been a settled plan. Jonadab knows the plan and its motive, and says so calmly, the same cousin who designed the scheme against Tamar.

“Take the thing to his heart” is the same idiom Absalom used to Tamar in verse 20, do not set your heart on it. Twice in one chapter a man tells a grieving member of the family to put the matter out of mind.

“But Absalom fled” will be said three times (verses 34, 37, 38), a refrain that keeps the killer moving while the court waits. The watchman sees a crowd on the hillside road, and nobody yet knows whether it is mourners or survivors.

Jonadab is proved right and says so: “as thy servant said, so it is.” He had a hand in the first crime and foresight about the second, and he stands beside the king for both.

“Wept very sore” is literally “wept a great weeping”. The sons and the king weep together, the same household that says nothing about Tamar in the whole chapter.

Talmai is Absalom’s grandfather on his mother’s side (3:3), and Geshur lies beyond Israel’s reach. “David mourned for his son every day” does not say which son, the one who is dead or the one who is gone.

Three years in Geshur, on top of the two years before the shearing, makes five years since the assault on Tamar. The refrain ends here, “and was there”, with Absalom out of the king’s reach and out of the account until the next chapter.

The Hebrew is ambiguous. “Longed to go forth” may instead mean that David’s spirit ceased to go out against Absalom, that his anger wore away. “Comforted” is nicham again: the grief for Amnon settled because nothing could change it.