A Return Arranged Without a Reckoning

“Toward” translates ‘al, which can equally mean “against”. The king’s heart was on Absalom, but whether in longing or in anger the Hebrew does not decide, the same doubt left by the last verse of chapter 13. Joab reads it as longing and acts.

Tekoah was a hill village south of Bethlehem, later the home of the prophet Amos (Amos 1:1). A “wise woman” seems to have been a recognised figure, like the one at Abel (20:16). Going without oil marked unfinished mourning, the opposite of David’s washing and anointing in 12:20.

“Put the words in her mouth” is the phrase used of the LORD giving a prophet his message (Deuteronomy 18:18). Here a general writes the script. Nathan came because the LORD sent him (12:1); this woman comes because Joab sent for her.

“Help, O king” is hoshi’ah, “save”, the verb behind the later cry hosanna. A woman cries the same words to a king of Israel in a famine (2 Kings 6:26). She goes straight to the king, skipping every lesser judge, as a desperate widow might.

“I am indeed a widow woman” stacks two words for the same thing, as a petitioner might to press her claim. Widows had a special right to the king’s protection; the law warned against afflicting them (Exodus 22:22).

Two brothers, alone in a field, one kills the other: the outline of Cain and Abel, who were “in the field” when it happened (Genesis 4:8). “None to part them” makes it a quarrel that went too far, not a planned killing, which was precisely the difference from Absalom’s case.

“The whole family” is the clan, mishpachah, rising against her. She lets slip their other motive: “we will destroy the heir also”, the one who would inherit. Vengeance and property are tangled together, as they often were in blood feuds.

“I will give charge concerning thee” is a vague royal promise, the answer a busy king gives to a petitioner. She has not come for a vague answer, and she keeps him talking.

She offers to carry any guilt for mercy shown: “the iniquity be on me, and on my father’s house.” Sparing a killer could leave blood unavenged on the land (Numbers 35:33). She lifts that weight off the throne onto her own family, which makes it easier for the king to go further.

The second promise is stronger: bring the accuser to me, and he will never touch you again. The king has moved from giving orders about her case to guaranteeing her personally.

The “revengers of blood” are the go’el ha-dam, the next of kin charged with avenging a death (Numbers 35:19). “Not one hair… fall to the earth” is what the people swore to save Jonathan from Saul’s oath (1 Samuel 14:45). The oath is about hair, and Absalom’s hair is about to be described.

“One word” is the petitioner’s formula for a further request. David’s reply, “Say on”, is one word in Hebrew. The fictional case is closed; the real one opens.

“The people of God” widens the issue from one family to the nation, since a banished heir to the throne affects everyone. “As one which is faulty” means the king has condemned himself: his ruling for the widow is a ruling against his own treatment of his son.

“Neither doth God respect any person” is a doubtful rendering; the Hebrew more likely says “God does not take away life” but devises ways to bring the banished back. “Expelled” is the verb for being driven out, as Adam and Eve were driven from the garden (Genesis 3:24).

She slips back into her role, the widow afraid of her clan. The switch between the real case and the pretended one keeps David from feeling cornered: she can always say she was only talking about her son.

“The inheritance of God” is Israel as the LORD’s own land and people. David once complained that Saul’s pursuit had driven him out of “the inheritance of the LORD” (1 Samuel 26:19). He knows from experience what banishment from it means.

“Comfortable” here means giving rest, bringing the matter to a settled end. “As an angel of God… to discern good and bad” is the flattery Achish used of David (1 Samuel 29:9), with an added echo of the knowledge of good and evil from Genesis 3.

“Hide not from me” is how Eli pressed the boy Samuel to tell him the LORD’s message (1 Samuel 3:17). David has seen through her; he wants her to say so herself.

“None can turn to the right hand or to the left” means no one can dodge the king’s insight. She confirms the book’s own words from verse 3, almost verbatim: Joab “put all these words in the mouth of thine handmaid”.

“To fetch about this form of speech” is literally “to turn round the face of the matter”, to present it from another angle. Her closing praise, that the king knows “all things that are in the earth”, is more flattery than fact; David will not see Absalom’s rebellion coming.

“The young man Absalom” is how David will speak of him to the end, in the order to deal gently with him and the anxious question after the battle (18:5, 29). He does not say “my son”, and he speaks to Joab, who is standing there waiting.

Joab’s thanks give him away: “the king hath fulfilled the request of his servant.” The petition was his all along. “I have found grace in thy sight” is his real concern, the standing of the commander in the king’s favour.

Joab goes to Geshur himself, a long journey north-east across the Jordan. He brought the case and he fetches the man, and so Absalom owes his return to Joab, a debt that will be repaid under an oak (18:14).

“See my face” means be received at court; Pharaoh used the same threat on Moses, “see my face no more” (Exodus 10:28). The verse states the ban twice, in the king’s order and in its effect: Absalom is home, and the palace door is shut.

“No blemish” is mum, the word for a physical defect that barred a priest from the altar or an animal from sacrifice (Leviticus 21:17–21). Saul was praised for height (1 Samuel 9:2), David for ruddy good looks; Absalom is praised more than anyone in Israel.

Two hundred shekels by the royal standard is around two kilograms, a remarkable weight for a year’s hair, perhaps with oil and ornament included. “The king’s weight” was a standard set by the crown for official measures.

The three sons are left unnamed, and 18:18 will say Absalom had no son, which suggests they died young. The Greek adds that this Tamar married Rehoboam and bore Abijah; 1 Kings 15:2 names Abijam’s mother as Maachah, “the daughter of Abishalom”.

“Two full years” is the same phrase as 13:23, “two years of days”. The last time Absalom waited two full years, it ended with a killing.

The verb “send” returns three times in one verse. Absalom wants Joab as his go-between, the role Joab played to bring him home, and Joab, having done that once, will not be summoned twice.

Barley ripened in spring, so a burned field meant a lost harvest. Samson answered the Philistines by setting their grain on fire with foxes (Judges 15:4–5). Absalom sends a message in the only language Joab cannot ignore.

Joab, who would not come to two messages, comes at once to the third. “Arose, and came… unto his house” gives the speed and the anger together; the question he asks is the one Absalom planned for him to ask.

“If there be any iniquity in me, let him kill me” echoes Jonathan’s words to David: “if there be in me iniquity, slay me thyself” (1 Samuel 20:8). Absalom dares the king to judge him, knowing that is the one thing David has never done.

The verse says “the king” five times and never “his father”. The kiss is the sign of a restored relationship, and Absalom will soon use the same gesture at the city gate, kissing petitioners to win the hearts of Israel (15:5).