Hearts Won at the Gate, a King Driven Toward the Wilderness

Chariots, horses and men running ahead are exactly what Samuel warned a king would take Israel’s sons for: “some shall run before his chariots” (1 Samuel 8:11). Adonijah will stage the same display when he reaches for the throne (1 Kings 1:5). Absalom dresses for the part first.

The city gate was where cases were heard (Ruth 4:1). Absalom rises early to be there before the king’s officials. His question, “Of what city art thou?”, sorts the petitioners, and the answer he wants is “one of the tribes of Israel”, the north, not Judah.

“Good and right” is his verdict before the other party has spoken. “No man deputed of the king to hear thee” may point at a real gap as the kingdom grew, much as Moses once needed judges under him (Exodus 18); Absalom turns that gap into a grievance against his father.

“Oh that I were made judge” is literally “who will make me judge?” It echoes the challenge thrown at the young Moses, “Who made thee a prince and a judge over us?” (Exodus 2:14), turned inside out into a wish.

“Took him” is the verb for taking hold, used of Amnon seizing Tamar (13:11), here turned into a show of warmth. A prince lifting a man from the ground before he can bow and kissing him was unexpected, and remembered.

“Stole the hearts” is an idiom for deceiving; Jacob “stole away unawares” from Laban, literally stole Laban’s heart (Genesis 31:20). The heart in Hebrew is the seat of judgment as well as feeling, so what Absalom steals is Israel’s mind as well as its affection.

Hebron was where Absalom was born (3:2–3) and where David was first made king (2:4). A vow paid there would look like piety; a proclamation made there would look like history repeating itself.

The vow copies Jacob’s at Bethel: if God brings me back to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God (Genesis 28:20–21). “Serve the LORD” here means offer sacrifice. Absalom borrows the words of a returning exile.

“Go in peace” are the last words David speaks to Absalom in the book. The son goes with the father’s blessing, and the word shalom sits in the name Absalom, “father of peace”.

“Spies” is meraggelim, the word for the men Moses sent into Canaan (Numbers 13) and Joshua sent to Jericho (Joshua 2:1). The ram’s horn was the signal at a coronation (1 Kings 1:34). “Absalom reigneth” is the coronation shout, “Absalom is king”.

“That were called” is the word for guests invited to a sacrificial feast, like those “bidden” to Samuel’s meal at Ramah (1 Samuel 9:13). Two hundred men of Jerusalem walking out with the prince would make the court look as though it was already with him.

Giloh was a town in the hills of Judah near Hebron (Joshua 15:51). Absalom sends for the counsellor during the sacrifices, when the feast gave a gathering its cover, as Adonijah’s sacrifice would (1 Kings 1:9). “Conspiracy” is qesher, a knot, men bound together.

“The hearts of the men of Israel are after Absalom” uses the phrase of 2:10, where the house of Judah “followed” David, literally were after him. The same idiom that made David king of Judah now reports his loss of Israel.

Jerusalem was a fortress David had taken from people who thought it could not fall (5:6). He does not trust it to hold against his own people, and he chooses the open country he knew from years of flight. “Suddenly” is haste: he has no time to wait for news.

The servants answer with the courtier’s blank cheque: whatever the king chooses. “Appoint” is the verb for choosing, the same one David used of the LORD choosing him over Saul (6:21). On this day the king’s choice is to leave.

The ten concubines left to keep the house will be taken by Absalom on the palace roof (16:22), and afterwards David will shut them up “unto the day of their death” (20:3). They are named here, as the king walks out, before any of that has happened.

“A place that was far off” is probably a proper name, Beth-merhak, “the far house”, the last building on the edge of the city. The king halts there to watch his people pass.

Six hundred Gittites is the same number of men who went with David to Gath when he fled from Saul (1 Samuel 27:2). The Cherethites and Pelethites, the foreign guard, pass first. The men closest to the king in his flight are mostly not Israelites.

Ittai’s name may mean “with me”. David tells him to go back and “abide with the king”, meaning Absalom. He already uses the title for the son who has taken his throne. “Stranger” is nokhri, a foreigner, and “exile” one driven from his own home.

“Go up and down” is to wander, the verb behind Cain’s sentence, “a fugitive and a vagabond” (Genesis 4:12). David has nothing to offer but wandering. “Mercy and truth be with thee” asks God to give Ittai the reward the king can no longer pay.

Ittai’s oath echoes Ruth, another foreigner, to Naomi: where you go I will go, where you die I will die (Ruth 1:16–17). He swears by the LORD first and by the king second, and names death before life.

“Pass over” is ‘avar, to cross, and the verb comes again and again in these verses: servants cross, the Gittites cross, the people cross, the king crosses. The little ones cross too; Ittai brings his whole household into exile.

The Kidron is the valley between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives; Jesus crosses it with his disciples on the night of his arrest (John 18:1). “All the country wept” gives the land a voice. The road leads east toward the wilderness and the Jordan.

This time the ark is carried properly, by Levites, the lesson of 6:13. “Abiathar went up” may mean he offered sacrifices, since “go up” is also the verb for a burnt offering. They set it down and wait until the whole city has gone past.

“His habitation” is naveh, the word for a pasture or dwelling, the same used for the sheepcote David was taken from (7:8). David speaks of the ark’s house, not his own. His return is conditional: “if I shall find favour”.

“Delight” is chafets, the word Samuel used when he asked whether the LORD delights in sacrifices as much as in obeying (1 Samuel 15:22). “Here am I” is hinneni, the answer of Abraham and of the boy Samuel, spoken by a king leaving his city.

“Art not thou a seer?” may mean “do you see?”, do you understand what I need. A seer, ro’eh, was the old title for a prophet (1 Samuel 9:9). The two sons, Ahimaaz and Jonathan, are the runners who will carry the news.

The Hebrew consonants read “fords of the wilderness”, the crossings of the Jordan; the margin reads “plains”. Either way, David will wait at the last point before the river, where a message can still reach him.

The ark goes back and stays for the whole revolt. The two priests remain in the city as David’s men, which gives Absalom the ark and David the priests.

This is the first time the Mount of Olives is named in the Bible, “the ascent of the olives”. A covered head and bare feet were signs of mourning and humiliation (Isaiah 20:2). The procession that danced the ark up to Zion (6:15) now climbs the opposite hill weeping.

“Foolishness” is the verb Isaiah uses when the LORD “maketh their knowledge foolish” (Isaiah 44:25). David prays against the one man whose advice, the book says, was valued “as if a man had enquired at the oracle of God” (16:23).

The summit was evidently a place of worship. Hushai is an Archite, of a clan on the border of Ephraim and Benjamin (Joshua 16:2), so he is not from Judah, which makes him believable to a prince courting the north. His torn coat and dust are the mourner’s signs.

“A burden” is massa, a load to carry. Hushai may have been too old for a march through the wilderness; David has better use for him in the city.

David writes Hushai’s lines for him, word by word, as Joab wrote the woman of Tekoa’s (14:3). The formula “I have been thy father’s servant… so will I now also be thy servant” is true enough in its words to be spoken without blushing.

Hushai is to report everything he hears “out of the king’s house”, meaning Absalom’s court. The priests become the middle link: the counsellor listens, the priests pass it on.

Ahimaaz and Jonathan are the runners at the end of the chain. They will hide in a well at Bahurim with a covering spread over its mouth (17:18–19). The whole intelligence network is laid out before a single message is sent.

“David’s friend” was an official title, the king’s companion (1 Chronicles 27:33). Hushai enters the city at the same moment Absalom does, the Hebrew placing the two arrivals side by side in one line.