40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Samuel 18:1-18 (Episode 281)

Episode Date: September 1, 2021

David and Absalom have their forces assembled for battle. David has three commanders and one of them isn't someone you would expect. And David's desire for Absalom to be spared isn't enough to save his son from his long hair or Joab. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. 1517 Podcast Network Regional Event in Las Vegas 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. While you're over there, make sure you click on that events page so you can come and register for the Here We Still Stand regional event in Las Vegas, Nevada. That's October 15th and 16th. If you want to hang out with me, Chad, and a whole bunch of other people, we're going to be talking about the assurance we have in Christ. If you're in the Southwest, you've got to make the drive.

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All the information is on the site. Chad, we are in 2 Samuel 18. We have seen David's friend give Absalom some advice that he has taken over other advice. And this advice has given David a little bit of time to put some distance between him and Absalom. it's given him probably time to acquire it seems as we're going to see more people to his side now we're not we're not given all the details of that but by the way it reads it seems that david has

utilized this breathing room to amass to himself more alliances because david fled with some servants but david's got legitimate forces now and it's sort of all going to come to a head here in 2 Samuel 18. Yeah, and we're not told this, but I can imagine, just kind of putting yourself in that situation, that there were you know, when word got out, the coup had taken place, and here's what was happening with Absalom, here's

what was happening with David. You can imagine that a lot of people who, you know, they like David, they've been faithful to David. As soon as they hear about it, they're like, okay, where's David at? Because I'm going to go team up with him. Because I'm on his side. So probably you had a lot of the men of Israel who went with David,

and you had, of course, a lot who went with Absalom, so it's kind of a divided force. So this would have taken some time. We're not told how long, but long enough to where both groups, both that of the usurper, Absalom, as well as King David, they had their guys. Now the question is, of course, what's going to happen? When we stopped last time at the end of chapter 17,

we have David being helped out by some new friends who are bringing him and his troops all of these provisions and whatnot now as soon as we get into chapter 18 it's jumping immediately into the conflict so and it's you know actually it's over pretty quickly there's a lot of build-up to this right we've been talking about this for a while all the the kind of the beginning of the coup and even before then when absalom was stealing the hearts of the men of israel so this this particular story has been a long time building up to this And this seems like exactly what Ahithophel was trying to avoid. Yeah, absolutely.

He wanted to, let's get this over with, right? Let's cut to the chase. Let's take him out, and it'll be done with. Take David out, you cut off the head, and the rest of the body's dead. So take out David, and we're good. That would have been, of course, good advice for Absalom to follow, but the Lord had his way, and so instead he followed the advice of Hushai. and he's going to find out very quickly that he should have listened that he listened to the wrong

advisor so 18 starts out this way david mustered the men who were with him and set over them commanders of thousands commanders of hundreds so it's kind of a typical military organization here where you have you know different kinds of ranks different kinds of of leaders over different different sizes of of warriors now this is a surprise so that part's no surprise this is a surprise. David sent out his army. Now listen to this. One-third, one-third under the command of Joab. One-third under the command of Abishai. Now that's Joab's brother. They're both the son of Zeoriah, David's sister. So one-third under Joab, one-third under his brother Abishai, and one-third under the command of Ittai, the Gittite. So this is crazy. So one-third of David's

men are under a philistine commander itai is from the city of gath of course gath being a philistine city so if you're from gath you're called a gittite so this is it's kind of if you know all of david's history that part is wild here's a guy who's known as the philistine killer i mean his claim to fame was as a kid he killed the philistine giant from gath now fast forward he's now a king he's an old guy he's in the middle of a coup and who does he get to command a third of his men a guy from gath a philistine named that's crazy but i think the part that that's especially uh noteworthy you know you know i've talked about this uh when we weren't recording is it only a third of the men are under command of joab yeah so that it does seem that david needs joab but he's

a little skeptical of joab uh after all joab is the one that convinced him that he should welcome Absalom back. So I suppose you could, if you tried to look at things from David's perspective, you could think, like, this wouldn't have happened if you hadn't, you know, tried to compel me to let my son come home. I'm sure Joab would say, well, when I said let your son come home, I didn't mean for you to also, you know, not let him ever come into your presence if you you'd treat him like he wasn't your son. So I'm sure if you asked the two of them whose fault this is, they might be pointing at each other.

Yeah, I'm sure they would. And if I was mediating it, I would say this is probably more David's fault than Joab's because I think what Joab was trying to do was probably, from a theological perspective, it was, of course, the right thing to do, and David blew it when he didn't respond the way that God would respond when his prodigal son comes home, and this is sort of the result. But either way, it does seem that Joab is probably looking over there at that Philistine commander in charge of exactly the same amount of men as he is,

being like, what is going on? Yeah, I'm sure that rubbed him the wrong way. But that's the situation. That's what David decides. And what's also interesting is David is a military guy. David was a general for Saul. commander of Saul's armies he's not in charge of these these troops so it wasn't as though David

took a third and Joab took a third and someone else took a third so David has divided his army up among other commanders and so he's not going to sort of play the role of general king here yeah yeah I mean he's I don't know if it's it's not a not a good comparison

I suppose but he's kind of like the American commander in chief you know he's not going to go out there and actually fight he's going to be like the president he's got his generals and he's delegated to them responsibility of doing what needs to be done to to stop the forces of absalom but notice what he says he does want to go out the king said to the men i myself will also go out with you and the men are like ain't happening nope they're they're there's no beating around the bush here i mean they are blunt you shall not go out yeah this is it they're not like thanks for offering but i don't we're

good yeah it's interesting right because david doesn't put himself in command of like one of the armies but he just says like i'm just going to go out there with you guys so he's just going to go play the role of warrior the men are like no that's not going to happen yeah yeah and you know of course plus it just kind of puts everything at a disadvantage for everybody else because as they go on to say if we have to retreat they're not going to care about us in fact if they take out half of the army they're not going to care about us then they say you're worth 10 000 of us by that they mean that if 10 000 or 20 000 or 30 000 of us die well the battle is going to go on that's not that's not the issue but if you die it's all over so it's better that you send us

help from the city that is the city of presumably mahanayim uh so if we need help we'll send messengers back you can send more troops so they more or less say listen you're the king be better if you stayed behind let us go and fight and then you can orchestrate events from back here at the city yeah well this is and what's interesting is this is the opposite of the advice that absalom is following which is like you kind of need to be out there man yeah yeah yeah it's sort of a weird thing that what ends up happening is that the council of a hit the fell is followed except it's david who takes that particular approach yes so i hit the bell said to absalom you stay behind or at least he implied that now david stays behind and also

i hit the fell council just take out the one guy take out david and now pretty much what's going to happen. I mean, more guys will die, of course. But the focus of their attack is going to be the one man, take out Absalom. So in a strange sort of way, Ahithophel's advice was followed. It just was followed by the opposing army. So David agrees. He says, I'll go out. The guys say, no, you stay behind. And the king really doesn't put up much of an objection. He says, whatever seems best to you, that's what I'm going to do. So kind of, you know, I almost get the impression that they didn't have to twist his arm. Like he was like, oh, okay, okay, okay, okay. I'll stay behind all the while. It's kind of what he wanted to do anyway. So what does he do? Well,

he doesn't just stay behind. We're told in verse five, the king stood at the side of the gate. Now, the reason I think this is significant is because that might sound familiar to you. It just so happens that was precisely the stance that Absalom used to take in the city of Jerusalem when people were coming to get some sort of justice from the king. He would stand at the gate. And of course, if you remember, when people would show up, he'd like, you know, shake their hand like, hey, where are you from? Why are you coming to the city?

Oh, man, sorry, you're not going to get any justice at all from the king. But if I were king, everything would be different. So, and kind of an irony here, the king has placed himself by the side of this city gate. And while that's happening, all his army is marching out by the hundreds and by the thousands. Then, verse 5, at this point, the king ordered Joab and Abishai and Ittai, so the three leaders of the three-thirds of his army, he gives them only this particular command.

So he really doesn't tell them what to do, except what not to do, or maybe how to approach this. these are the only instructions that are recorded deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom the one thing he wants them to do is going to be a very

difficult thing to do how do you deal gently with someone with whom you're at war yeah and the way to end this is to remove him so I don't know if you say I prefer you take him alive is this a nice way

of saying that seems like maybe that's what it is like that they would if it's possible i'd rather you just capture him yeah the uh the the indication is that that's exactly what was going on here because we'll see in just a minute that when one of the soldiers repeats the command of the king he changes the verb he says that we are to shamar absalom and shamar means to guard or to watch so or protect even. There's this idea that David wants them to shield, to guard, to protect, to yield gently with Absalom. Now, for me, the question is, maybe question isn't the right word, but I'm thinking to myself, why all of a sudden is there a change in David's behavior

toward Absalom? And we're going to see later in the chapter, after David is informed of the death of Absalom, that he has a complete emotional breakdown. He just loses it when he finds out that Absalom is dead. Which, given everything we know about David and Absalom's rocky relationship, at least in the past couple chapters, this is odd that David would be brought to this point. I don't know what's going on with David. I mean, is he finally kind of at the point where he realizes that this whole situation with Absalom's rebellion and the coup and everything is his fault, that he's the one who started all this, in other words. And it was everything that we covered with David and Bathsheba and Uriah that that was the event, that was the epicenter

from which all of these other events have rippled out. So it was David actually at the point where he's like you know this whole whole situation really starts with me the bucks buck stops here i don't i don't know but it just kind of me speculating here is to because this this does seem to me at least a strange a strange turn on david's part where all of a sudden now he cares about absolutely yeah it seems like as he's out in the wilderness he's got he's on the run uh Perhaps maybe he's realized, like, you know, if I had handled the rape of my daughter differently, if I would have handled Absalom coming home differently, this may not be happening. Also, you know, he's probably, he's got an army going out against Absalom.

And in all of these other situations, he might be treating Absalom harshly, but he's not sentencing him to death. And Absalom, I mean, we saw that. Absalom even knows that that's not going to happen. He says, hey, if I'm guilty, then go ahead and, you know, do what you want to do with me. And David doesn't do anything. But now he's faced with the reality that his army might just be going out there

to kill his son. And it's probably sinking in that this probably could have been avoided if I would have been a little softer. Yeah. Yeah. i think he's part of this is that regret over his decisions and just you know simple fatherly love toward toward absalom this is you know this is his son so all of that combined uh given you know what might happen to absalom all of that is changing his perspective yeah you've probably

been angry at people you love before and maybe even angry with people you love for long periods of time but if the moment they came like well now you have to kill him that changes things a little bit there's a difference between being upset with somebody even for a long period of time and then and now we have to go kill him well okay that's different yeah yeah and i mean david has already shown in the case of shemay that guy who was cursing him while he was leaving the city that uh he's you know he's not he's not out for blood he doesn't he doesn't want to take anybody out so there is this there's this sort of this this growing awareness within david of all the events that have led up to this beginning with him kind of a growing i guess maybe compassion

or even love toward enemies that we see that we see happening with him so uh that's why he says what he does he's like hey deal gently with with the young man absalom and we're told at the end verse 5 that he didn't just say this kind of privately to his three generals joab abishai but everybody heard it all the people heard when the king gave orders to all the commanders about absalom so this is a almost get the feeling that david david says this not this to his generals but to everybody so that everybody is aware okay this is where the king stands i want not just you three generals but everybody deal gently with my son Absalom no so no one is going out there unaware of what David has said now the reason this becomes important is what we'll see in in the

the next chapter yeah I almost get the impression that David is at the gate everyone's riding through and he's like shouting this out it's like yeah like it's like the last his last he's realizing what is going on right here and he is and he's probably just shouting this out over and over again as the as the as the army rides through that this is his instruction yeah this is his this is his wish you're going out to battle okay i want you to go to battle but here's the one thing i want you to keep in mind yeah there's a there's it seems like there's a there's a little bit of a desperation there yeah yeah desperation is probably the best way to to describe it well what happens uh verse six picks it up and it's it's it's a very brief uh report uh we're

We're not really given a whole lot of details. We're told the army went out into the field against Israel, and the battle was fought in the forest of Ephraim. So the forest part is significant because of what's about to happen to Absalom. This isn't up on the plain or anything like that. This is in the midst of trees and shrubs and everything else that is part of a forest. Verse 7, the men of Israel were defeated there by the servants of David, and the loss there was great on that day 20 000 men so even though absalom was really the one they

needed to take out a whole lot of a lot of other men died and and that 20 000 men were killed tells you the the the army on absalom's side was a significant significant number of soldiers but they lost they were defeated that day and we're told that the battle this is interesting verse 8, the battle spread over the face of all that country, and the forest devoured more people that day than the sword. I think a couple things could be going on here. Literally, the forest ate more people that day than the sword. This is kind of the image of the forest eating them up. Could simply be that everything was so thick, you had trees, you had shrubs, you had drop-offs, you had pitch, you had hills, you had just, you've been in a forest, you know what it's like

to try and even walk through there. Well, imagine trying to take a bunch of troops through there and horses and mules and everything that were part of this army. A forest is not a place you want to go fight. So it could simply be that, you know, in the midst of people getting hurt and knocked off the horse and everything else that they were, they were, they were defeated in that way they were eaten up as it says by the forest this could i'm not saying it is but it could be one of those instances that we've seen other times where god enlists creation itself as kind of a soldier on his side we've seen how like back in the book of judges where the stars are falling from heaven or hail falls upon people there's a lot of instances in the old testament where god

enlist the forces of nature to actually do battle usually in conjunction with his people against whoever the adversaries might be now this is a stretch admittedly but when i read that verse i had uh i had the image of like tree beard and the ants in lord of the rings but reaching down with these arms as branches and taking out the taking out troops i don't i don't think that's probably what's happening here but that was the image that left into my mind when i heard about the forest eating up all these soldiers on Absalom's side. Yeah, you wonder too if part of this

is if you have a battle being fought this way and if the battle starts to turn if you just have a lot of people that have decided they're out and they've just deserted so like you're in a forest and you just realize

like I can, like we're not fighting it over, I can desert like no one's going to know. I can slip away nobody's going to know. And if that plays into it as well. That's sort of like people sort of are disappearing into the forest, right? They're like, okay, that's it. I'm not doing this.

Oh, I'm sure there was plenty of that going on as, you know, has happened in all ancient warfare. You know, people are... If they see they've lost, it's like, why stick around? Yeah, and then when, you know, if it goes that way, then you just say, oh, I wasn't there. I wasn't

a part of that. Yeah, you've got a great place to hide and an easy way to escape. So I'm sure a lot of that was happening as well. Although we are told in verses 9 and following that what did happen was that one of the trees actually did take out one of the people, at least trapped him. Verse 9, this is, of course, a famous scene from the Old Testament. Absalom, what happened to him? Well, he happened to meet the servants of David.

He was riding on his mule, which, of course, as we've seen several times, mules were a regal transport he's not on a horse he's on a this regal animal which you can kind of picture as you kind of link his regal mount to his to his throne if you will he's about to lose his throne so absalom's riding on this symbol of regal authority his mule the mule goes under the branches under the thick branches of a great oak could also be translated terebinth whatever the tree was he goes under the branches and his head caught fast in the oak now it doesn't mention his hair but virtually all the commentators that i've looked at agree that when it says head it's not talking about his head it's talking about the hair on his head which of course is why the hair was

brought up a couple of chapters ago and how he would grow it long and then he would cut at the end of every year so putting everything together it seems what happened he's riding along probably trying to get away his donkey his mule goes under the branch of this oak something happens you know and his hair flops up and his hair gets caught in the branches of the oak and he was suspended between heaven and earth while the mule that was under him went on it it crossed over the by the way that's that same

hebrew verb that we saw with david crossing over or crossing out of Jerusalem. So this is kind of the idea of his mule is moving on and leaves him behind. So here we have the would-be king losing his mount, kind of losing his throne. He's dangling there between heaven and earth in the same way that Ahithophel would have been suspended when he hanged himself. There's some kind of overlap here between these two particular stories. and he can't do anything yeah you do almost get the picture of a of him riding in a tree just reaching out and grabbing him by the hair tree beard reaches down and grabs him by the hair yeah i mean it really does it you get that feeling and it's not given the whole the the

biblical narrative and all the stories there it's not out of the question whatsoever that god would say to that tree it's like he spoke to all other sorts of elements of creation do this and they did it god said to the fish swallow jonah god said to the hailstones fall on those guys god said to the sea of gallop i'm a sea of uh the red sea or the jordan river part i mean god's doing that all the time yeah right so would no big be no big deal to say to a tree hey grab that dude's hair and they did so there he is uh it's uh of course this is a it's an unforgettable image of absalom hanging there by this symbol of his vanity the symbol of his kind of uh narcissistic focus upon his own body and he's just lost his regal mount just like of course he's he's lost

his throne. He's all alone. Nobody's with him. So he's lost everybody that was on his side and he's helpless. There's nothing that he can do. And there's almost an indication too of him being in a kind of a cursed place because back in Deuteronomy as well as elsewhere, we're told that he who is hanged from a tree is cursed. It's talking about someone who is literally hanged executed but still that resonates here as well here we have the the cursed one who's suspended between heaven and earth so he has kind of this image of between heaven and earth is like he's he's he's lost every place he doesn't belong above he doesn't belong below he's just there so what's going to happen to him that's the question verse 10 says that somebody spotted him a certain

man saw it and he goes and reports to joab so he doesn't do anything to him just reports what he saw he says look i saw absalom hanging in an oak joab is angry he's like what you saw him well why didn't you kill him why didn't you strike him to the ground in fact i would have been glad to give you 10 pieces of silver and a belt if you'd done it you kind of get the impression that that joab I've had, let it be whispered among the troops, hey, I got a reward for anybody who takes out Absalom. I know, I know, I know what David said, but just, you know, kind of let it be known, whisper among the troops that if somebody does take out Absalom, their pocket's going to be full of silver from me. I personally will reward them. So what does the guy say back to Joab?

he said in verse 12 even if i felt in my hand the weight of a thousand pieces of silver i would not reach out my hand against the king's son for in our hearing this goes back to what we talked about earlier in our hearing we all heard this the king commanded you and your brother abishai and itai the guy from gath he commanded all of us for my sake protect the young man absalom that verb protect is the one I mentioned earlier, that Shamar, to guard, to watch over, to protect the young man Absalom. So this soldier is like, no way. You heard it. I heard it. We all heard it. David said, don't lay a hand on the young man Absalom. And so I don't care how much money you pay me. Ain't happening. You almost get the impression this guy was like Uriah, right?

Uriah's like, I'm not going to go to my house and wash my feet and eat and drink and sleep with my wife. I'm a man of military integrity. I'm not doing that. And this guy's like, I don't care if I had 10,000 pieces of silver in my hand. I am not going to stretch out my hand against the king's son. I heard what he said. And what the king says is what I'm going to do. So he goes on. On the other hand, it's a pretty smart guy. He's like, listen, I'm not going to do that. But say i had okay just for the sake of argument say that i had dealt treacherously against his life say i did kill him and you know there's nothing hidden from the king he's going to find out then what would happen you joab you yourself would have stood aloof from me he's got joab figured out

he's like first of all i ain't killing absalom david said not to i'm not doing it but just suppose i did what when all the fingers were pointed at me you would have just like vanished into the crowd you would have stood aloof you're not going to be like oh yeah well actually david i told him that i would reward him if he if he did this yeah he's thinking like i feel like this is probably one of those like old school david rewards uh where like where you get a little where david's got a little something for you like he's like dude i ain't doing that like and i don't think that you would have had my back if i did do that of course joe's gonna be like well you think wrong because joe is about to put uh his money where his mouth is right here yeah he is so this

soldier says that joe joe at verse 14 says i'm not gonna waste my time with you listen i'm not wasting any more breath talking to you i i'll take care of it myself so uh he he does he said he took well so it took the esv says he took three javelins i think the new american standard says he took three spears actually the i've read different things here so the word that's used here the noun that's used here that's translated to the javelin or spears literally means a staff for a stick. So it's not the typical word that you have for spear. It's not the typical word that you have for javelin. So it almost comes across as just a, maybe it's a sharp stick. I don't know. It's strange in a way, but he takes these three instruments, wooden objects, and

he thrusts them into the heart of Absalom while he was still alive. Now, literally it says while he was still alive in the heart of the oak so the word for heart is repeated twice although most english translations don't have that second one there so two hearts he thrust them into the heart of absalom while absalom was still alive in the heart of the oak so he's hanging there and joab either strikes him difficult strikes him hard on the heart or actually you know if it's a true javelin or spear he thrust them into his heart whatever whatever it was he didn't take him down He didn't cut his hair off and let him fall to the ground. He does this while he's still hanging there, defenseless in the oak.

And then Joab being, you know, he's a smart guy. He doesn't want to be the one who takes the entire blame for doing this. So he gets his ten fellow warriors, ten young men, his armor bearers, and they surround Absalom, and they, too, strike him and kill him. Of course, Joab is thinking ahead. He's like, okay, I know that David is going to be like, who killed Absalom? Well, I'll be able to say, man, I don't know. There were a bunch of guys that hit him all at once.

So he's spreading the blame among a whole bunch of his other troops. This is an interesting thing for Joab because, I mean, Joab was sympathetic to Absalom. We've seen that. Joab wanted Absalom to come home. It does seem that Joab is probably pretty angry with Absalom at this point, that this is how he has sort of returned the favor, right? And so, I mean, set his field on fire. And then also, I mean, look what they're having to deal with.

And if I was Joab, I would be fairly irritated with Absalom and David at this point because Joab seems like he had the right idea from the beginning and these two guys did not want to cooperate yeah i think you're i think you're right both of them both of them created this situation david by refusing to welcome absalom back as the prodigal son absalom by being angry and staging the coup and so both father and son have yeah they've angered at they've angered joab and of course he can't take out his fury on david but he does take it out on on Absalom and he you know he's saying that even like maybe Joab is it seems like maybe Joab even when trying to get Absalom to come home to David and having trying to have David welcome

him home was maybe even trying to avoid something like this like knowing that like hey it's not great when the king's sons are angry with him like we got to fix this like that's how bad things happen and it just didn't work yeah and now we have a whole heap of bad thing bad things happening And, you know, you put yourself in Joab's shoes. Okay, what if they did deal gently with Absalom or guarded him? How is that going to end well? What are you going to do? Are you going to bring him in handcuffs back to David?

And then what's going to happen? Are you going to keep him in prison? Are you going to kind of give him a royal pardon? I mean, none of that's going to end well from Joab's perspective. and so he decides that he's going to just take care of the situation right there and assume that it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission so he's going to actually take out Absalom while he's while he's there so he does he's dead verse 16 says that Joab blew the trumpet there's a uh it's a pretty kind of creative play on words here in the Hebrew which I don't think you can

ever actually bring out in english but the verb for thrust like he thrust those sticks into the heart of absalom and the verb for translator here is blew the trumpet at the exact same word it's the idea that this trumpet made kind of a piercing sound that's the connection between these these two so the spears or javelins or sticks pierced absalom's heart joab now pierces the air with the sound of this trumpet the troops come back from pursuing israel joab restrains them and what they do with absalom it says they took him and they threw him into a great pit in the forest and raised over him a very great heap of stones so an ignominious end for for absalom when i read that phrase raised over him a great very great heap of stones i was like man

that sounds familiar too so i went back and i i checked to see how the burial of aiken way back in joshua 7 was described and the hebrew is not exact but it's very close what they do with aiken remember aiken was the one who stole the forbidden materials from the city of jericho as a result israel lost their next battle at the city of i and then they cast lots finally figured out that Achan was the one who was to blame because he had taken the forbidden goods and they stoned him and they raised over him a great heap of stones. So not exactly the same in the Hebrew, but extremely close as to what happened with Absalom

and now what happens with Achan, both of whom, of course, had betrayed Israel, had rebelled against God, and thus both met the same sort of end. And then all Israel, that is the people who were on Absalom's side, they take off. Everybody flees back to his own home. Then we have a contrast here. So this is the way Absalom was buried, just thrown into a pit,

a great heap of stones put over his body. But verse 18, I think that's the reason this is inserted here. It is a contrast. Absalom, in his lifetime, had taken and set up for himself the pillar that's in the king's valley. For he said, I have no son to keep my name in remembrance. he called the pillar after his own name and it is called absalom's monument to this day i mentioned two or three episodes ago that absalom was said to have three sons and now here it says he has no son most commentators simply explain this that at this point in absalom's life he's

actually lost all three of the sons have died and so he doesn't say i've never had a son he just says i have no son so no living son to keep my name in remembrance and because of that he erects this monument and as i say i think the reason this is inserted here into the narrative is to contrast this monument that he set up in his own honor and the way that he was memorialized in a very negative sort of way by having all these stones heaped over his his body yeah it It seems that there's a little bit of body hiding going on here, first of all. Probably Joab doesn't think it's any good to bring the body of Absalom back to David and be like, man, here, your son was stabbed 30 times or whatever.

That seems like a bad idea. Yeah, this is not like hauling Goliath's head back to Saul. No. This would be a bad idea. So you have that. And then, you know, Absalom is, I mean, he ends up being a bad dude. But if you now that he's dead, if you look back, you know, on his life and if you if you do think like, oh, this is a guy that like has had three sons and they all died. This is a guy who whose sister whom he loved enough to name his daughter after was raped and his father didn't do anything about it.

And so then he took matters into his own hands and got revenge for that and then was mistreated by his father and cast out and never really welcomed back. Even when he was welcome to come home, he was not allowed to be in his father's presence and that sort of stuff. And when you take all of that into consideration, you realize kind of what a tragic figure Absalom is and that his life was marked by quite a bit of suffering.

Yeah, yeah. that's a great way to put it. I mean, it, it is a tragedy. Now this guy, it wasn't like we're dealing here with a, with just a terribly horrible evil person who spent his whole life just wreaking havoc. This is like, like so many stories, this story could have been extremely different. And he, uh, yeah, he suffered a lot. I mean, I can't imagine losing one child. I certainly can't imagine losing three children,

not to mention all the other tragedies that befell him in his life. So you can see why and how Absalom ended up the place that he did, and you can also see how he is a tragic figure. And this whole story, in fact, is part of this kind of ripple effect, this ripple tragic effect that goes all the way back to those earlier chapters. And at the same time, you can also, as you see it in the bigger context, you can see these various theological themes that are emerging as well where God is still behind the scenes. He's not front and center, but he's always behind the scenes, and he is working the history toward the direction that he wants it to go

because it won't be Absalom, but it will be Solomon who will eventually be David's successor. And we'll get there, but as with all these Old Testament stories, we'll get there through a whole bunch of ups and downs and twists and turns and going kind of through a maze. What looks to us like a maze, anyway, is actually how God is directing all these events. Yeah, God still has a promise that he intends on keeping. All right, well, next week we will hear about David's response to the news that Absalom has died.

That response is going to be quite emotional. We'll tackle that next week. I'll see you then. All right. See you then.