Read 2 Samuel 14:1-33
This is another chapter in which we see a lot of human manipulation and very little about God. When we have seen this before it does not usually end well, and in due course we will see that the story of David and his family continues to be a tragic one – the enduring consequences of David’s sinful act with Bathsheba. The text doesn’t help us by giving the misleading impression in v1 that David wanted his son Absalom to return from exile after killing his half-brother, another of David’s sons, Amnon, ‘The king’s heart longed for Absalom’. If he wanted him back that much, surely he could simply welcome him back like the Prodigal Son and there would be no need for the whole episode with the woman from Tekoa. In fact, the Hebrew of v1 means something along the lines of, ‘the king’s heart for Absalom was all used up’, meaning that David had stopped caring about his son Absalom – and now it makes a bit more sense.
The story is that Joab, one of David’s senior advisors and a great meddler in his affairs, arranged for this mysterious woman of Tekoa to tell King David a tale. Her two children got into a fight, one killed the other, and the survivor is under threat of his life. If he is killed then there is no-one to take over the family business and carry on the family name. Sound familiar? It is a bit like last week’s story about the two sons of David. David ruled in favour of the surviving son and vowed to protect him. ‘Aha’ said the woman, ‘you say that but that is not how you have treated your son Absalom, you must bring him back from exile’ (I paraphrase!). This is all a bit like when Nathan convicted David of his crime with Bathsheba saying, ‘you are the man!’ but the situations are different and David is being manipulated here and he rightly sees the hand of the devious Joab in this. But he has painted himself into a corner and has to accept his son Absalom back.
We are told a bit about Absalom. He seemed to be very popular amongst the people, mainly because of his good looks (v25), his long flowing hair and his attractive family. And when we think about some of Israel’s leaders, this rings alarm bells. Saul was tall and handsome, Samson was noted for his flowing locks and they were both well short of being godly leaders. Absalom was son and heir; how would he turn out? And he had a nasty streak. He murdered his brother and here we see that he destroyed the crops of Joab, who had arranged his return. And in all of this we see no sign of repentance by Absalom. David, after his sin, confessed to the Lord and repented. From Absalom we see no remorse, no acknowledgement of sin. God had no place in Absalom’s life.
And it seems that God has no place in this episode or a lot of what goes on in the soap opera that is the life of David’s dysfunctional family. God’s judgement upon sinners is sometimes to let them continue in their sin (see Romans 1:18-32) and suffer the consequences and he sometimes just sits in the background and doesn’t take a hand in the affairs of mankind.