King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (34 page)

The incident is yet another example, too, of what J. Cheryl Exum means by the phrase “raped by the pen.” Nowhere is it reported in the Bible that the ten women of David's harem were forced to submit to Absalom—and yet neither is it suggested that they had the right or the opportunity to say no to the king's son. Just as David apparently enjoyed a kind of droit du seigneur— the right of a lord to make a sexual claim on any of his subjects— over Bathsheba, Absalom seems to have taken it for granted that
the women of the harem were sexual functionaries whose job it was to service the man who happened to wear the crown, father or son.

God is nowhere to be seen or heard in these ugly affairs, and men and women are perfectly capable of making trouble for each other and themselves without divine intervention. But as we have noted, at least one of the more pious biblical authors intends us to see the hand of God at work throughout David's long ordeal, and even in the sexual humiliation of ten innocent women on the palace roof. Long ago, when the prophet Nathan had boldly condemned King David for his dalliance with Bathsheba and pronounced a curse on the house of David in the name of Yahweh—“I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house”—he was quite specific in describing what kind of evil was to befall David: “I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun.” According to the theological overlay that can be discerned throughout the Book of Samuel, the rebellion of Absalom in all of its ugly particulars was the will of God and the fulfillment of Nathan's prophesy. (2 Sam. 12:11–12)

Still, the theological spin on the life story of David can be off-putting to some Bible readers. God may have intended to humble and humiliate David for sinning with Bathsheba—but what did the ten women in David's harem do to merit sexual humiliation at the hands of Absalom? To the modern eye, the scene suggests forcible rape of a weirdly ritualized kind—one woman after another is escorted to the rooftop of the palace for an act of intercourse with the king in front of an audience—and it is uncomfortable to imagine that a God whom we praise for justice and mercy was the author of such a lurid scene. Yet just as the bastard child of David and Bathsheba was made to die as punishment for David's sin, ten innocent women were forced to submit to public sexual humiliation for the same reason.

Among those who welcomed Absalom to Jerusalem was Hushai, once “the King's Friend” to David and now turned agent provocateur. Just as David had instructed, Hushai sought to ingratiate himself with Absalom and insinuate himself into the royal court.

“Long live the king!” cried Hushai to Absalom.

“Is this your loyalty to your friend?” Absalom asked, referring to Hushai's formal title and clearly suspicious about his sudden change of allegiance. “Why did you not go with him?”

“Because I mean to attach myself to the man chosen by the Lord, by this people, and by all the men of Israel,” Hushai replied, sounding wholly sincere. “I will serve you as I have served your father.” (2 Sam. 16:16–19) (NEB)

Absalom was persuaded by Hushai's lie and he welcomed the old man into his inner circle of counselors. Indeed, he immediately invited Hushai to participate in a council of war to decide how and when to deal with the potential threat that David, even in exile, represented to his kingship. Absalom may have succeeded in chasing his father out of Jerusalem, but David was not yet defeated.

Ahitophel proposed a decisive military operation against David: he would raise a strike force of twelve thousand picked men and lead them against David's little band of soldiers. The key to Ahitophel's plan was speed—Absalom must attack while David was still demoralized by the sudden loss of the throne and fatigued by the hasty flight from Jerusalem.

“Let me go in pursuit of David tonight,” Ahitophel implored. “I will come upon him while he is weary and weak. I'll surprise him, so that the entire army that is with him will desert, and I shall kill no one but the king.” (2 Sam. 17:2)
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Then Ahitophel waxed rhapsodic with visions of a quick and painless victory over David. “I will bring all the people over to you as a bride is brought to her husband,” he promised Absalom in a curiously tender metaphor, “and all the people will be in peace.” (2 Sam. 17:3)
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Absalom and his counselors were ready to send Ahitophel in pursuit of the old king. But then Absalom, perhaps unsettled at the prospect of ordering his father's death, or perhaps only because he was curious about what Hushai thought of Ahitophel's bold plan, consulted his newest advisor. And Hushai, whose job it was to undermine Ahitophel, denounced the plan and offered one of his own.

Instead of striking a preemptive blow against David with a hastily assembled force under Ahitophel's command, Hushai advised, Absalom ought to wait until he had raised a vast army from every corner of Israel, “from Dan even to Beersheba, countless as grains of sand on the seashore.” Then Absalom himself ought to lead the army into battle against David. (Sam. 17:11)

To make the case for his plan of operations, Hushai reminded Absalom of his father's ferocity and cunning. “You know that your father and his men are hardened warriors, and as savage as a bear in the wilds robbed of her cubs,” Hushai said. “Your father is an old campaigner, and even now he will be lying hidden in a pit.” (Sam. 17:8)
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David, like a cornered bear, would surely put up fierce resistance to Ahitophel's preemptive strike, and word of the early casualties would demoralize the rest of Absalom's men. “Anyone who hears the news will say, ‘Disaster has overtaken the followers of Absalom,’ ” Hushai warned. “The courage of the most resolute and lionhearted will melt away, for all Israel knows that your father is a man of war.” Then Hushai conjured up a vision of Absalom's ultimate victory. “We will light upon him as the dew falling on the ground,” he assured the king, “not a man of his family or his followers will be left alive.” (2 Sam. 17:8, 10, 12)
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Hushai's advice was bad, and intentionally so. The Bible confirms that Ahitophel had offered “good counsel,” while Hushai's plan was calculated to help David and hurt Absalom. A quick strike against David's small and disordered band of refugees and runaways offered the chance of an early victory, and any delay in attacking David would allow him to find a safe refuge beyond the reach of Absalom, strengthen his own fighting force, repair his political alliances within Israel, and recruit, among the
neighboring kingdoms, allies to whom he was related by blood and marriage. Indeed, David was an expert at guerrilla warfare— we might even say he invented it!—and he knew how to defeat a large conventional army of the kind that Hushai recommended with the same hit-and-run tactics he had used against Saul.

Why did Absalom reject the “good counsel” of Ahitophel and embrace the intentionally bad advice of Hushai? The biblical author himself appears to be astounded at Absalom's boneheaded decision to listen to Hushai and ignore Ahitophel, and he explains it with a characteristic theological shrug. “The Lord had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahitophel,” the Bible reports, “to the intent that the Lord might bring evil upon Absalom.” (2 Sam. 17:14) But we might wonder whether Absalom, acting out of some kind of primal fear, was reluctant to issue a death sentence on his own father.

Now Hushai sought out Zadok and Abiathar, the high priests whom David had left behind in Jerusalem as fifth columnists, and gave them an urgent intelligence report to convey to the fugitive king.

“Do not spend the night on the plains of the wilderness,” went Hushai's message, which was apparently prompted by his concern that Absalom would, in fact, do exactly what Ahitophel had proposed, “but cross the river at once, lest the king be swallowed up, and all the people that are with him.” (2 Sam. 17:16)
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The biblical author, writing several millennia before John le Carré and Len Deighton, pauses here to give his readers a tense account of the Bible-era spycraft practiced by David's espionage apparatus. The high priests in Jerusalem entrusted the message from Hushai to a maidservant, who carried it secretly to a safe house on the outskirts of Jerusalem where their sons, Jonathan and Ahimaaz, were stationed. The two young men were detailed to act as couriers and bring the message to David. But they had
been spotted by some watchful lad in service to Absalom, who had betrayed their whereabouts to the king.

The couriers reached the town of Bahurim—the place, by the way, where Shimei had denounced David as a “bloodstained fiend of hell.” Fearing that they would be tracked down and arrested before they could reach David's camp, they sought refuge at a house along the road. And to conceal themselves from the king's patrols, they lowered themselves into a well in the courtyard. The kindly woman who lived in the house placed a cover over the mouth of the well and sprinkled it with grain to suggest that the well had not been opened recently.

“Where are Ahimaaz and Jonathan?” demanded the king's guard when they arrived at the house.

“They are gone over the brook of water,” the intrepid woman lied. (2 Sam. 17:20)
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The soldiers headed off in the direction of the brook, but they found nothing and returned empty-handed to Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Jonathan and Ahimaaz clambered out of the well and hurried to David's camp, where they delivered Hushai's message: “Arise, and pass quickly over the water,” they said, “for this is how Ahitophel has given counsel against you.” Thus warned, David roused his men and marched them down to the river's edge, where they crossed to safety on the eastern bank of the Jordan. (2 Sam. 17:21)
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“By the morning light,” the Bible reports, “there was not a straggler who had not gone over the Jordan.” (2 Sam. 17:22)
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Just as Hushai had hoped and Ahitophel had feared, Absalom's delay in making war on his father allowed David both time and space to make preparations for the decisive battle to come.

Ahitophel fell into a deadly despair over Absalom's lack of faith in his advice. Perhaps he felt personally disgraced, or perhaps he was fearful of the fate that would surely befall him if
David returned to Jerusalem in triumph. Indeed, he was unwilling to wait and see whether David or Absalom would be the ultimate victor. “And when Ahitophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and got himself unto his city, and set his house in order,” the Bible discloses, “and strangled himself, and he died.” (2 Sam. 17:23)

Meanwhile, David set up a base of operations at a place called Mahanaim—ironically, it was the same place that briefly served as the seat of government for the rump kingdom of Ishbaal, the son of Saul. Unmolested by Absalom, David used the respite to strengthen and supply his army, mustering fresh recruits and “setting captains of thousands and captains of hundreds over them.” Allies, old and new, rallied to his support, and he began to collect arms and provisions from kings and comrades in arms. (2 Sam. 18:1) “Beds, and basins, and earthen vessels, and wheat, and barley, and meal, and parched corn, and beans, and lentils, and parched pulse, and honey, and curd, and sheep, and cheese of kine,” goes the redolent biblical inventory, “for David, and for the people that were with him, to eat.” (2 Sam. 17:28–29)

At last David was ready to move against Absalom, who had raised an army and was now encamped in the nearby land of Gilead on the eastern bank of the Jordan River. But the seasoned and savvy guerrilla fighter refused to engage Absalom and his much larger forces in a set-piece battle. Instead David divided his army into three units, each one under the command of a trusted captain—Joab; Abishai, his brother; and a man called Ittai, an old cohort who hailed from the Philistine city-state of Gath. David's plan was to strike at Absalom's army in the forest of Ephraim, the kind of broken country ideally suited for the hit-and-run tactics that David had used so successfully against Saul.

David, old in years but eager to lead his men into battle as he had done in his glory days, declared his intention to put himself on the front line: “I shall surely go forth with you myself.” Perhaps he recalled the moral catastrophe that had befallen him when he stayed behind in Jerusalem while Joab had campaigned against the Ammonites, or perhaps he was rejuvenated by his return to
the life of a guerrilla captain. But his comrades in arms prevailed on David to remain behind lest he fall into the hands of Absalom. “If half of us die, will they care for us?” argued his lieutenants. “But thou art worth ten thousand of us.” David yielded to their demands, and he agreed to remain behind. (2 Sam. 18:2–3)

Success in battle depended on a ruthless and decisive strike against Absalom's much larger fighting force, and David surely knew it as well as any man in either army. Still, on the very eve of battle, David experienced an upwelling of fatherly sentiment, the same love of a father for a son that had stayed his hand against Amnon after the rape of Tamar. Here again, David betrayed the tenderness that was at once one of his most endearing qualities and one of his greatest weaknesses as a leader. David gathered his commanders, Joab and Abishai and Ittai, and issued one last order as the army watched and listened.

“Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom,” said David in an order that was partly a king's command and partly a father's plea. (2 Sam. 18:5) (NEB)

Then the army rose, divided into three columns, and marched off in the direction of the forest of Ephraim. David watched from the city gate as “the entire army marched out by hundreds and thousands.” (2 Sam. 18:4) (AB) Now it was up to them, David must have realized, to decide whether father or son would wear the crown of Israel.

On that day of battle, David's little army conducted “a great slaughter” in the forest of Ephraim. The landscape favored David's guerrilla tactics, and his small units moved more easily over the terrain than the much larger army fielded by Absalom. Twenty thousand men fell in battle—and, as the biblical author confirms, “the forest devoured more people that day than the sword devoured.” (2 Sam. 18:8)