'And It came to pass after this, that Absalom prepared him chariots and
horses, and fifty men to run before him. 2. And Absalom rose up early,
and stood beside the way of the gate: and it was so, that when any man
that had a controversy came to the king for judgment, then Absalom
called unto him, and said, Of what city art thou? And he said, Thy
servant is of one of the tribes of Israel. 3. And Absalom said unto
him. See, thy matters are good and right; but there is no man deputed
of the king to hear thee. 4. Absalom said moreover, Oh that I were made
judge in the land, that every man which hath any suit or cause might
come unto me, and I would do him justice! 5. And it was so, that when
any man came nigh to him to do him obeisance, he put forth his hand,
and took him, and kissed him. 6. And on this manner did Absalom to all
Israel that came to the king for judgment: so Absalom stole the hearts
of the men of Israel. 7. And it came to pass after forty years, that
Absalom said unto the king, I pray thee, let me go and pay my vow,
which I have vowed unto the Lord, in Hebron. 8. For thy servant vowed a
vow while I abode at Geshur in Syria, saying, If the Lord shall bring
me again indeed to Jerusalem, then I will serve the Lord. 9. And the
king said unto him, Go in peace. So he arose, and went to Hebron. 10.
But Absalom sent spies throughout all the tribes of Israel, saying, As
soon as ye hear the sound of the trumpet, then ye shall say, Absalom
reigneth in Hebron. 11. And with Absalom went two hundred men out of
Jerusalem, that were called; and they went in their simplicity, and
they knew not any thing. 12. And Absalom sent for Ahithophel the
Gilonite, David's counsellor, from his city, even from Giloh, while he
offered sacrifices. And the conspiracy was strong; for the people
increased continually with Absalom.'--2 SAMUEL xv. 1-12.
There was little brightness in David's life after his great sin. Nathan
had told him, even while announcing his forgiveness, that the sword
should never depart from his house; and this revolt of Absalom's may be
directly traced to his father's disgraceful crime. The solemn lesson
that pardoned sin works out its consequences, so that 'whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap,' is taught by it. The portion of the
story with which we are concerned has two stages,--the slow hatching of
the plot, and its final outburst.
I. Verses 1 to 6 give us the preparation of the mine. It takes four
years, during which Absalom plays all the tricks usual to aspirants for
the most sweet voices of the multitude. He seems to have been but a
poor creature; but it does not take much brain to do a great deal of
mischief. He was vain, headstrong, with a dash of craft and a large
amount of ambition. He had no love for his father, and no ballast of
high principle, to say nothing of religion. He was a spoiled child
grown to be a man, with a child's petulance and unreason, but a man's
passions. He loved his unfortunate sister, but it was as much wounded
honour as love which led him to the murder of his elder brother Amnon.
That crime cleared his way to the throne; and David's half-and-half
treatment of him after it, neither sternly punishing nor freely
pardoning, set the son against the father, and left a sense of injury.
So he became a rebel.
The story tells very vividly how he adopted the familiar tactics of
pretenders. How old, and yet how modern, it reads! We who live in a
country where everybody is an 'elector' of some sort, and candidates
are plentiful, see the same things going on, in a little different
dress, before our eyes. Absalom begins operations by dazzling people
with ostentatious splendour. In better days Samuel had trudged on foot,
driving a heifer before him, to anoint his father; and royalty had
retained a noble simplicity in the hands of Saul and David. But 'plain
living and high thinking' did not suit Absalom; and he had gauged the
popular taste accurately enough in setting up his chariot with its
fifty runners. That was a show something like a king, and, no doubt,
much more approved than David's simplicity. But it was an evil omen to
any one who looked below the surface. When luxury grows, devotion
languishes. The senseless ostentation which creeps into the families of
good men, and is sustained by their weak compliance with their spoiled
children's wishes, does a world of harm. We in Lancashire have a
proverb, 'Clogs, carriage, clogs,' which puts into three words the
history of three generations, and is verified over and over again.
How well Absalom has learned the arts of the office-seeker! Along with
his handsome equipage he shows admirable devotion to the interests of
his 'constituents.' He is early at the gate, so great is his appetite
for work; he is accessible to everybody; he flatters each with the
assurance that his case is clear; he gently drops hints of sad
negligence in high quarters, which he could so soon set right, if only
he were in power; and he will not have the respectful salutation of
inferiors, but grasps every hard hand, and kisses each tanned cheek,
with an affectation of equality very soothing to the dupes.
'Electioneering' is much the same all the world over; and Absalom has a
good many imitators nearer home.
There was, no doubt, truth in the charge he made against David of
negligence in his judicial and other duties. Ever since his great sin,
the king seems to have been stunned into inaction. The heavy sense of
demerit had taken the buoyancy out of him, and, though forgiven, he
could never regain the elastic energy of purer days. The psalms which
possibly belong to this period show a singular passivity. If we suppose
that he was much in the seclusion of his palace, a heavily-burdened and
spirit-broken man, we can understand how his condition tempted his
heartless, dashing son to grasp at the reins which seemed to be
dropping from his slack hands, and how his passivity gave opportunity
for Absalom's carrying on his schemes undisturbed, and a colour of
reasonableness to his charges. For four years this went on unchecked,
and apparently unsuspected by the king, who must have been much
withdrawn from public life not to have taken alarm. Nothing takes the
spring out of a man like the humiliating sense of sin. The whole tone
of David's conduct throughout the revolt is, 'I deserve it all. Let
them smite, for God hath bidden them.' To this resourceless,
unresisting submission to his enemies, sin had brought the daring
soldier. It is not old age that has broken his courage and spirit, but
the consciousness of his foul guilt, which weighs on him all the more
heavily because he knows that it is pardoned.
II. The second part of our subject tells of the explosion of the
long-prepared mine. It was necessary to hoist the flag of revolt
elsewhere than in Jerusalem, and some skill is shown in choosing
Hebron, which had been the capital before the capture of the Jebusite
city, and in which there would be natural jealousy of the new
metropolis. The pretext of the sacrifice at Hebron, in pursuance of a
vow made by Absalom in his exile, was meant to touch David's heart in
two ways,--by appealing to his devotional feelings, and by presenting a
pathetic picture of his suffering and devout son vowing in the land
where his father's wrath had driven him. It is not the first time that
religion has been made the stalking-horse for criminal ambition, nor is
it the last. Politicians are but too apt to use it as a cloak for their
personal ends. Absalom talking about his vow is a spectacle that might
have made the most unsuspecting sure that there was something in the
wind. Such a use of religious observances shows more than anything else
could do, the utter irreligion of the man who can make it. A son
rebelling against his father is an ugly sight, but rebellion disguised
as religion adds to the ugliness. David suspects nothing; or, if he
does, is too broken to resist, and, perhaps glad at any sign of grace
in his son, or pleased to gratify any of his wishes, sends him away
with a benediction. What a parting,--the last, though neither knew it!
The plot had spread widely in four years, and messengers had been sent
through all Israel to summon its adherents to Hebron. If David had been
as popular as in his early days, it would have been impossible for such
a widely spread conspiracy to have come so near a head without some
faithful soul having been found to tell him of it. But obviously there
was much smouldering discontent, arising, no doubt, from such causes as
the pressure of taxation, the gloom that hung over the king, the
partial paralysis of justice, the transference of the capital, the
weight of wars, and, at lowest, the craving for something new. Few
reigns or lives set in unclouded brightness. The western horizon is
often filled with a bank of blackness. Strangely enough, Absalom
invited two hundred men to accompany him, who were ignorant of the
plot. That looks as if its strength was outside Jerusalem, as was
natural. These innocents were sufficiently associated with Absalom to
be asked to accompany him, and, no doubt, he expected to secure their
complicity when he got them away. Unsuspecting people are the best
tools of knaves. It is better not to be on friendly terms with Absalom,
if we would be true to David. The last piece of preparation recorded is
the summoning of Abithophel to come and be the brain of the plot. He
had been David's wisest counsellor, and is probably the 'familiar
friend, in whom I trusted,' whose defection the Psalmist mourns so
bitterly, and whose treachery was a marvellous foreshadowing of the
traitor who dipped in the dish with David's Lord. Note that he had
already withdrawn from Jerusalem to his own city, from which he came at
once to Hebron. Absalom could flatter and play the well-worn tricks of
a pretender, but a subtler, cooler head was wanted now, and the
treacherous son was backed up by the traitor friend. 'And the
conspiracy was strong; for the people increased continually with
Absalom.' What a tragical issue to the joyous loyalty of early days!
What a strange madness must have laid hold on the nation to have led
them to prefer such a piece of petulance and vanity to their
hero-poet-king! What did it mean?
The answer is not far to seek, and it is the great lesson of this
story. David's sin was truly repented and freely forgiven, but not left
unpunished. God is too loving to shield men from the natural
consequences, in the physical and social world, of their sins. The
penitent drunkard's hand shakes, and his constitution is not renewed,
though his spirit is. Only, punishment is changed into discipline, when
the heart rests in the assurance of pardon, and is accepted as a token
of a Father's love. In every way God made of the vice the whip to
scourge the sinner, and David, like us all, had to drink as he had
brewed, though he was forgiven the sin.