2 Samuel 18:19-19:8

Absalom, O Absalom

Big Idea: How does David’s sorrow over the death of his son Absalom cloud his judgement?

What happens when sorrow overwhelms David?

He sends the wrong message to the people who just risked everything to save him.

Because David allows sorrow to overwhelm him, he sends the wrong message to the people who just risked life and limb to save him.

If you allow sorrow to overwhelm you, it might lead you to make poor decisions.

Intro

Who of us can really be dispassionate when it comes to family? We cover for them, make excuses, allowing our natural affection to blind us from what is often obvious to everyone else. But this can cause quite a problem when you are a public figure, or your family’s sin touches the public sphere. Then you are confronted with the good of your family and the good of the broader society, and when those clash the scene is set for problems.

David’s family has been anything but tranquil. One son rapes another son’s sister and is executed on the family vacation spot some years later in retaliation. Then that same son wrested the family business from the Father and summoned the whole community to rise up against him in favor of backing him as the new leader. If this sounds like it could be a saga of a mafia crime family, you’re not wrong.

But the trouble with family is not peculiar to David alone. What brings us the most heartache also brings the greatest joy. We see in our children our strengths and our weaknesses. And if we are sober and self-reflective enough, we see their faults can be traced straight back to us, whether through the fault of nurture or the genetic dispositions we inherit from kin. Caught in the crossroads, David, a king, responsible for the direction of a nation, and a father, with natural affection for a son, allows his grief to overwhelm him, sending the wrong message to the people he was called to lead. People who just risked life and limb to rescue him from the treachery of the very son he now grieves for. If you’re not careful, sorrow can overwhelm you, and lead you to make poor decisions. So let’s see what happens when David allows his grief to overwhelm his judgment.

2 Samuel 18:19-19:8

Summary of the Text

Absalom met a tragic end when he trusted in His own glory, and was, to borrow that phrase from Shakespeare, “hoisted on his own petard.” In his haste to flee from the servants of David, he is caught (by his hair) in an oak tree to hang between heaven and earth. Joab wastes no time to heed the king’s insistent plea to deal gently with the boy Absalom, when he brings his treachery to end. The only monument to his infamy lies deep in a forest with a heap of stones. Since Israel was called out to defeat David and establish the reign of Absalom, upon his death there is no longer any reason to keep fighting. Israel returns to her homes. But someone must go and tell David.

For some reason Ahimaaz, the priest’s son responsible for bringing news to David in his exile of Absalom’s plans, insists on being the bearer of the news. Joab can’t quite see the utility of this and sends a foreigner instead. But Ahimaaz is persistent, and eventually Joab consents. Although he left after, Ahimaaz somehow outruns the Cushite and is able to deliver news to David first. Only he leaves out the bit about Joab not dealing gently with the boy Absalom. He’ll save that bit for the Cushite to deliver, who expects this news will actually cause David joy. But it doesn’t.

In fact just the opposite. David is overwhelmed with grief. “And the king was deeply moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept. And as he went, he said, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”” (2 Sa 18:33). This sudden, unexpected outcry of grief caused the people who had just won a great victory to slink into the city as if they were cowards who deserted. Joab hears of all this and comes and rebukes David.

While David has covered his face with grief, his grief has covered the people with shame. People who just went to a civil war against their brothers, to defend, protect, and restore David to his rightful place as king. These are men who risked an awful lot, with no real guarantee of success, because they loved David. But David has allowed his grief to cover his face so that he can’t see the shame his grief causes the people. Grief has overwhelmed his good judgment.

Joab is nothing if he’s not shrewd. He may be the worldly wise man, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that if David keeps up this behavior, he will further crush the morale of the people and lose their trust. And when you are a public figure such as a king, you need the people’s trust if you are to lead them. But what made Joab’s speech so convincing, causing David to change his behavior and go and sit in the gate, was a calculation that David’s grief had prohibited him from making. Joab says,

“You have today covered with shame the faces of all your servants, who have this day saved your life and the lives of your sons and your daughters and the lives of your wives and your concubines, because you love those who hate you and hate those who love you. For you have made it clear today that commanders and servants are nothing to you, for today I know that if Absalom were alive and all of us were dead today, then you would be pleased.” (2 Sa 19:5–6).

Did David intend to treat the commanders and servants as nothing? Probably not. But that is the nature of grief. It often clouds your judgment, convincing you as it did David, to love those who hate you and hate those who love you.

Nothing Absalom has done deserves such affection except that he is David’s son. And David evidently did not see treachery, he didn’t see sedition, or fratricide, he just saw a boy. Or perhaps he saw all his failures. Perhaps he saw himself, so many years earlier, sending a letter to Joab by the very hands of the man whose wife he had taken in the heat of lust. A letter which bade Joab let the sword devour the very man carrying the letter. Perhaps he saw Nathan, and the promise God gave that the sword would not depart from his house, and what he had tried to do in private would be done to him publicly. It turns out by his own son. Whatever David saw, he could not reconcile with the reality, and so he let grief capture and consume him to the dereliction of his duties.

Meanwhile, the people steal into the city ashamed even though they had just saved him. When they should have been greeted by the king with a hero’s welcome. Why is this episode here, and what are we to take from it? What should David had done.

During the exodus, in Leviticus 10, we are told that Nadab and Abihu were killed by the Lord for their attempt to offer strange fire before the Lord in the tabernacle. Then Moses told Aaron and his sons that they were not to mourn their death, lest they die themselves. For God has said, “Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.” (Le 10:3). The point being that however hard it may have been to lose his two sons, he was not to let his grief get in the way of him doing his job. Others would mourn for Nadab and Abihu, whose sin was being innovative in worship. Now, there motives could have been idolatrous, but they could have just as well been good. As we saw when David brought the Ark up from the house of Obed-edom and Uzzah steadied it and was killed. Not for his motives, but because he failed to uphold the Lord as Holy. He failed to handle the throne of God appropriately.

David is king, and his people have just secured a great victory for him, his first response should not have been sorrow, but gratitude. David should have reserved his grief for the privacy of His own home. David is struggling to balance the office of a father and that of a king. Which is why after Joab rebukes David, he goes and takes his seat in the city gate. That was the place judgment was dispensed. It showed that David had now returned to his royal office as king.

Grief is a powerful emotional response to loss and suffering that, if left unchecked, can overwhelm your judgment and lead you to make poor decisions. Think of the grief the Lord Jesus felt as he anticipated the sufferings of the cross and the prospect of enduring the wrath of God. He prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” (Mt 26:39). Jesus did not allow grief to overwhelm his judgment and keep him from doing the will of God.

Now I’m not suggesting some passionless Stoicism that views any show of grief as suspect. Grief has its place, it is a kind of cleansing system to help rid you of the pain of sorrow. The example of General Robert E. Lee may help you see what I mean.

In October 1862, Lee was grieved by a letter handed to him during an important meeting of his generals and aides. Lee glanced at the letter briefly and put it back into his pocket. It was only later that he indulged himself in dwelling on the contents, and his whimpering cries were heard by those close to his tent. “I cannot express the anguish I feel at the death of my sweet Annie,” he wrote to his wife. “To know that I shall never see her again on earth, that her place in our circle, which I always hoped one day to enjoy, is forever vacant, is agonizing in the extreme.”

Lee did not interrupt his important meeting with His generals, even over news of the death of his beloved daughter, but found an outlet for his grief later in the privacy of His tent.

Grief can be especially good when it leads you to repentance. For it could have been that David was grieving his own sin, that had caused much of the turmoil which had fallen on his home. One commentator put it this way.

David cries the cry of a man who wishes that he could go back and change the clock. If only he had not taken more than one wife! If only he had repented of that and sought to bring peace to his family! If only he had not plotted the murder of Uriah! If only he had intervened, as a parent, to deal with the horrible situation with Tamar and Amnon and to quiet the heart of Absalom. ‘If only, if only …’ These are the saddest words in the English language.

If only, might have been the reason David wished that it was His death instead of Absalom, better for him to fall into the hands of God than a son who showed no evidence of remorse. It would, however, be David’s greater son, the Lord Jesus, who would die in the place of another. Whose death would not only give us life, but reverse the curse of sin. He actually did exchange places with you, and in grief he cried from the cross, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” (Lk. 23:34). Jesus said that of you, for deep-down each one of us has an Absalom heart, dark and depraved and fully of treachery. And when he offers you his life in exchange for yours, it’s not just platitudes or grief talking. It’s the solid offer of one who was a man of sorrows and acquainted with much grief (Is. 53:3). One who has grieved as you have, yet without sin, and promises you a life where there will be no more grief or sorrow. Not least because there will be no more Absalom’s to grieve for.

Grief is a tricky thing, and if not governed, it can cloud your judgment and lead you to hate those who love you, and love those who hate you. Don’t allow your grief to overwhelm you and cloud your judgement. Cast your cares on the Lord for he cares, bring your grief to him and ask for the wisdom not to let lead astray. Amen. Let’s pray.