King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (32 page)

Absalom sought refuge in the kingdom of Geshur on the far side of the Jordan River. The choice was a natural one: Absalom and Tamar were the children of one of David's wives, a woman named Maacah, who was the daughter of the Geshurite king. (2 Sam. 3:3) Although “David's heart went out to him with longing” (2 Sam. 13:39) (NEB), the still-embittered king refused to allow him to return to Jerusalem. Three years passed as Absalom lingered in exile in the court of the king of Geshur.

The scene is rich with irony. David had sent Amnon into the
fatal trap set by Absalom just as he had once sent Tamar into the sexual ambush laid by Amnon, perhaps unwittingly but perhaps not. Now Absalom, just like his father before him, was a fugitive from royal justice. Indeed, the Court Historian suggests a fateful symmetry in the lives (and deaths) of the men and women whose stories are told in the vast biblical saga. “I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house,” Nathan had prophesied, and so it was that the intimate sins of David now afflicted the royal household in equally intimate ways. When it comes to a king, the Bible confirms, even a family crisis is a matter of politics, too.

“We sense the seemingly
crowded
nature of the royal house, its casual mingling of public and private life, the steady access of court and household to one another,” observes Joel Rosenberg, who points out that David's “almost promiscuous accumulation of wives and children” has turned out to be “a time-bomb in the midst of the supposedly peaceable kingdom he labors to create.”
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Only one man in the court of King David saw that the integrity of the state and not merely the repair of a family was at stake, and he alone sought to defuse the ticking time bomb.

Joab, the nephew of David who served not only as commander of his army but also as a henchman and political fixer, took it upon himself to bring Absalom back to Jerusalem. And the politico Joab, not unlike the prophet Nathan, resorted to a bit of theater to prick the conscience of the king. Just as Nathan had once made up a tale about a rich man who stole a poor man's lamb, Joab now arranged for David to hear the tale of an old woman who was supposedly grieving over her two sons, one of whom had been murdered by the other. Joab recruited a woman from the village of Tekoa to play the role of the mourning mother, told her exactly what to say, and sent her to David on the pretense of asking for advice from the wise king of Israel. Indeed, the “wise woman” of
Tekoa, as she is called in the Bible (2 Sam. 14:2), may have been a kind of professional actress, “specially skilled in speech” and trained to deliver her lines with the calculated moral impact that Joab now sought.
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“Thy handmaid had two sons,” the old woman began, “but one struck the other and killed him.” The rest of the family was pressing the old woman to surrender her surviving son “that we can put him to death for taking his brother's life.” But if she did so, she would be left with no sons at all and, more to the point, no heir: “They will stamp out my last ember.” And she begged the king to intervene: “Let your majesty call on the Lord your God to prevent his kinsmen bound to vengeance from doing their worst and destroying my son.” (2 Sam. 14:6–7, 11)
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“As the Lord lives,” declared King David, duped once again, “there shall not one hair of thy son fall to the earth.” (2 Sam. 14:11)

But the old woman persisted. “May I add one more word, your majesty?” she asked, and then continued with the script that Joab had given her. “How then could it enter your head to do this same wrong to God's people? Out of your own mouth, your majesty, you condemn yourself—you have refused to bring back the man you have banished.” (2 Sam. 14:13)
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This pointed reminder of the king's hypocrisy was an audacious act, even coming from a woman who was supposedly beside herself with grief, and David now recognized its real author.

“Is the hand of Joab behind you in all this?” David demanded, and the woman promptly confessed that Joab “put the whole story into my mouth.” (2 Sam. 14:19) (NEB)

David confronted Joab over the deception—but, fatefully, he agreed to allow Absalom to return from the land of Geshur and dispatched Joab to bring him back. Still, even after Absalom was back in Jerusalem, David refused to receive his errant son at court. “Let him return to his own house,” David commanded, “but let him not see my face.” Two more years passed while Absalom lived in the City of David but did not see his father. (2 Sam. 14:24)
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At last Absalom sent an invitation to Joab to call on him, hoping the king's closest counselor would intervene once again on his behalf, but Joab did not show up at Absalom's house. Twice he was called, and twice he refused to come, although the Bible does not specify why. So Absalom resorted to a gesture he knew that Joab, “that toughest of Near Eastern mafiosi,”
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would understand and appreciate.

“See, Joab's field is near mine, and he has barley growing there,” Absalom told his servants. “Go and set it on fire.” (2 Sam. 14:30)
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Sure enough, the arson was enough to rouse Joab, and soon he appeared at Absalom's house to confront Absalom—but Absalom ignored Joab's complaint.

“Why did I come from Geshur?” he demanded. “It would be better for me to be there still—let me now see the king's face, and if there be any guilt in me, let him kill me.” (2 Sam. 14:32)
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Seven years had passed since Tamar disappeared into Absalom's house, an exile by reason of her rape, and five years had passed since Amnon was made to pay for his crime with his life— time enough, it seems, for David to relent at last. And so, when Joab appealed to David to receive his beloved son, the king consented.

But the tenderness of the father-and-child reunion was shortlived. Absalom regarded the king as a man in decline, a man who was governed by his heart rather than his head, and he saw no reason to wait until his father's death to wear a crown of his own. The time bomb that had begun to tick when David allowed Am-non's crime to remain unpunished was now ready to explode.

The biblical author, as we have seen, makes much of David's good looks, and now he gushes even more enthusiastically over David's son. “Now in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty,” the Bible reports. “From the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him.” Absalom's greatest glory was his full head of hair, so luxuriant that it weighed out at two hundred shekels—two or three pounds— when he submitted to his annual haircut. (2 Sam. 14:25) Absalom looked like a man who was destined to be a king, the Bible suggests, and he was already playing the role.

Absalom had procured for himself “a chariot and horses and fifty men to run before him,” and he ventured out into the streets of Jerusalem with an entourage worthy of a king. Rising early each morning and placing himself near the city gate—not unlike the modern congressional candidate greeting voters on their way to work—Absalom boldly addressed any man who approached the palace to seek King David's judgment on a matter in dispute.

“I can see that you have a very good case, but you will get no hearing from the king,” Absalom would say. “If only I were appointed judge in the land, it would be my business to see that everyone who brought a suit or a claim got justice from me.” (2 Sam. 15:3–4) (NEB)

Such words might be characterized as an act of lese majesty and maybe even open treason, but the aging David, passive and aloof, did nothing to stop his son's politicking, and Absalom soon began to build a constituency. When those whom Absalom intercepted on the way to the palace began to prostrate themselves before him, the king's son acknowledged their obeisance by extending his hand so that they might kiss it. With David lingering inside the palace and young Absalom working the crowds outside, the son of the king began to seem more kingly than the king himself.

“So Absalom,” the Bible confirms, “stole the hearts of the men of Israel.” (2 Sam. 15:6)

Indeed, the prophecy of Nathan was approaching its fulfillment.
The earliest sign of David's decline had been his refusal to lead his army to war against Ammon. Then came his scandalous affair with Bathsheba, a sexual adventure that might be seen as the impulsive act of a man in a midlife crisis. Next came his softhearted refusal to punish Amnon for the rape of Tamar. And now David's passivity in the face of Absalom's open play for power suggests fatigue and a certain lassitude—the years of struggle, the hard-fought campaigns and conspiracies, and the burdens of high office had taken a toll on King David.

When Absalom turned forty, he took steps to turn his campaign for the throne into a coup d'état. He decided to take up residence in Hebron, the capital of the tribal homeland of Judah, where David himself first reigned as king. And he offered David a feeble excuse for his sudden desire to relocate: while in exile in Geshur, Absalom insisted, he had vowed to “serve Yahweh” at Hebron if he were permitted to come home. But David either failed to mark, or failed to protect himself against, the predations of his ambitious son. (2 Sam. 14:7)
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“I pray thee, let me go and pay my vow in Hebron,” said Absalom.

“Go in peace,” said the king—and his words crackle with irony in light of what is about to happen. (2 Sam 14:7, 9)

Now Absalom followed his father's example by arranging to wear the crown of Judah in a kind of dry run for his claim on the crown of all Israel. He recruited one of David's most trusted counselors, a man named Ahitophel, to join his conspiracy. He took a sizable entourage with him to Hebron—some two hundred unsuspecting men whom he would later call upon to serve as his bodyguard and courtiers—and he sent spies throughout the land of Israel with instructions to rally the people in support of his kingship when he launched his coup d'état. The signal for the coup would be the piercing blast of the shofar.

“As soon as you hear the sound of the horn,” Absalom briefed his agents, “then you shall say: ‘Absalom is king in Hebron.’ ” (2 Sam. 15:10)

When at last a messenger revealed to David that Absalom had risen up against him and captured the loyalty of the people— “The hearts of the men of Israel are after Absalom” (2 Sam. 15:13)—David reverted to the same impulse that had seized him when he was dodging spears in the court of King Saul.

“Arise and let us flee,” David ordered his courtiers at the first news of Absalom's uprising. “Make speed to depart, lest he overtake us quickly, and bring down evil upon us, and smite the city with the edge of the sword.” (2 Sam. 15:14)

Some of David's courtiers, the comrades in arms who remembered his old brass and derring-do, declared themselves willing to stand and fight if only the king asked them to do so. “As your majesty thinks best,” they told him. “We are ready.” But David's only thought was to break and run. “And the king went forth,” the Bible reports, “and all his household after him.” David had already learned that Ahitophel had joined his renegade son in rebellion, and he no longer knew whom he could trust among his fellow Israelites. For that reason, he refused to rely on the tribal militia to defend him against Absalom, and he brought along only the foreign mercenaries who had long served as his private army, the Cherethites and the Pelethites and the men of Gath, a spare force of six hundred men in all (2 Sam. 15:15, 18).
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In his haste to escape from the royal palace, however, David abandoned the ten concubines who had once attended to his famous sexual appetites. The women were left behind “to keep the house,” according to an apologetic passage in the Bible, but the relinquishment of the royal harem can be seen as yet another measure of the defeatism that had seized David. And, as we shall
see, it would have calamitous results both for the women themselves and for the integrity of David's kingship. (2 Sam. 15:16)

Clambering after the king and his court came a small crowd of clergymen—the two men who shared the office of high priest in Jerusalem, Zadok and Abiathar, and the Levites who attended the tent-shrine of Yahweh and assisted in rituals of sacrifice. They carried with them the Ark of the Covenant, surely believing that David would prevail against Absalom if the Ark was in his arsenal. But once again David showed himself to be in the grip of a crippling fatalism.

“Carry back the ark of God to the city,” he ordered, assigning the task to Zadok and Abiathar. “If I shall find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me back, but if he say thus: ‘I have no delight in thee,’ behold, here I am, let him do to me as seems good unto him.” (2 Sam. 15:25–26)

David's flight from Jerusalem was the nadir of his reign and marked the near destruction of a man who had once inspired adulation among the Israelites. From the heights of imperial power and glory, he was once again a fugitive, commanding an army no larger than the guerrilla band he had led in his youth. We may imagine that David was showing signs of age, his hair turning silver and thinning on the crown of his head, his once-taut belly now sagging just a bit, his skin turning leathery. And the biblical author confirms that the sight of the fugitive king in desperate flight from the City of David was heartbreaking even to those who might be ready to hail Absalom as their new king.

David crossed the brook of Kidron, which marked the traditional boundary of Jerusalem (1 Kings 2:37), and headed up the
slope to the very peak of the Mount of Olives, “where God was wont to be worshipped.” (2 Sam. 15:32) The phrase itself is odd and provocative—the only sacred site on the Mount of Olives was the so-called Mount of Corruption, where King Solomon would later erect a series of shrines for the pagan gods and goddesses who were worshipped by his hundreds of foreign wives, “for Ashtoreth the detestation of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh the detestation of Moab, and for Milcom, the abomination of the children of Ammon,” as the biblical author, full of contempt and disgust, puts it. (2 Kings 23:13) Perhaps the nightmare landscape that David now crossed was a place of pagan worship rather than a sacred site of Yahwism, and the passing reference to the God of Israel represents the effort of one biblical source to overwrite the older tradition.