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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 312. Joab and Absalom
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Joab and Absalom
Joab prepared, in Oriental fashion, a trap for the king, to shame him into a reconciliation. “A wise woman” from Tekoa was introduced into the king's presence with a made-up story, that she was a widow with two sons. One had slain the other, and now the relations wished to kill the murderer, and so leave the mother desolate. She won from the king the promise that the life of her surviving son should be spared; and then, turning on the king, accused him of being more cruel to his own family than he had shown himself to hers. The pathetic plea of this woman made David feel that there are times when mercy has a better claim than justice, and that even God Himself did not exact vengeance to the full from His own frail creatures: “For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again; neither doth God take away life, but deviseth means, that he that is banished be not an outcast from him” (2Sa_14:14). The king recognized, and made the woman confess, that she was but speaking at the instigation of Joab, but he relented sufficiently to send Joab to Geshur with the message that Absalom might return, but not see his father.
2. For two years father and son lived together in Jerusalem without any intercourse. This was very disagreeable to the young man. He felt that he might just as well have stayed three hundred miles away. So as he had well served his turn before, Absalom resolved to bring Joab to his help again, and get him to intercede with the king for a full and immediate reconciliation. Joab may have been doing his best for Absalom, or he may not. In any case he did not move fast enough for the imperious young prince. He sent for Joab therefore; but Joab, having no good tidings to give him, would not come. He sent a second time, and still Joab would not come. Whereupon he sent servants into Joab's farm to fire his standing barley, and so compel the old captain to wait on him and to act again as mediator. Joab did so, and succeeded in bringing the king and his son together-Absalom “bowed himself on his face to the ground before the king: and the king kissed Absalom.”
It is difficult, at first sight, to account for the conduct of Joab here; for, after he had earnestly exerted himself to procure Absalom's recall, it appears strange that he should have been so indifferent to the position which the young man was made by his father to occupy. But we find the explanation in the fact that in this, as in all other things, the crafty and unscrupulous warrior was seeking only to promote his own interests. He had obtained a great ascendancy over David by his complicity in the murder of Uriah, and by making the monarch believe that he was indispensable to him. Now he desired to gain a similar power over Absalom. This, however, could be done only by laying him under some great obligation. Hence he probably kept away from the young man, with the view of getting him to come humbly to him as a suppliant, asking the favour of his intercession with the king. But the burning of his field let him see that Absalom was made of sterner stuff; and so, in order that he might not provoke his vengeance, he was led to do for him, by a sort of compulsion, that which he had intended to do only when he was urgently entreated for it as for a great kindness.1 [Note: W. M. Taylor, David, King of Israel, 236.]
3. At the critical moment when Absalom's rebellion broke out, Joab saved the situation by siding with David and refusing to swerve from his chief. He remained true to the aged monarch, but he had his price. David had given express command to Joab that Absalom was to be spared: “Deal gently for my sake with the young man, even with Absalom.” But Joab cared little for David's injunction. When, after the battle, the proud young prince was found hanging by his head in an oak, Joab, on learning the news, hastened not to take him prisoner but to thrust three darts into Absalom's body, leaving his armour-bearers to finish the work.
I was very much beaten and overtired yesterday, chiefly owing to a week of black fog, spent in looking over a work of days and people long since dead; and my “text” this morning was “Deal courageously, and the Lord do that which seemeth him good.” It sounds a very saintly, submissive, and useful piece of advice; but I was not quite sure who gave it; and it was evidently desirable to ascertain that. For, indeed, it chances to be given, not by a saint at all, but by quite one of the most self-filled people on record in any history-about the last in the world to let the Lord do that which seemed Him good, if he could help it, unless it seemed just as good to himself also-Joab, the son of Zeruiah. The son, to wit, of David's elder sister; who, finding that it seemed good to the Lord to advance the son of David's younger sister to a place of equal power with himself, unhesitatingly smites his thriving young cousin under the fifth rib, while pretending to kiss him, and leaves him wallowing in blood in the midst of the highway. But we have no record of the pious or resigned expressions he made use of on that occasion.1 [Note: Ruskin, Fors Clavigera, Letter 40 (Works, xxviii. 70).]
4. The passionate grief of David over Absalom changed the glory of victory into gloom, and so affected his troops as they returned to Mahanaim that “they gat them by stealth that day into the city, as people being ashamed steal away when they flee in battle.” Joab roughly aroused his master from his despondency in words which reveal both the sound policy and the unsympathetic nature of this great captain: “Now therefore arise, go forth, and speak comfortably unto thy servants: for I swear by the Lord, if thou go not forth, there will not tarry a man with thee this night: and that will be worse unto thee than all the evil that hath befallen thee from thy youth until now.” Something like this needed to be said; but perhaps Joab was not the man to say it in the most tender and considerate manner. For Joab could touch nothing with a velvet hand. Rough, violent, and callous himself, he could not understand the sensitiveness of another; hence, while doing a very proper thing, he did it in so harsh and dictatorial a manner that the king, even while yielding to his entreaty, chafed more than ever under the yoke of Zeruiah's sons, and registered a resolution to free himself from their domination as soon as it might be practicable. He could not forgive Joab for the murder of Absalom; he proceeded to depose him from his office of “captain of the host,” and actually appointed Amasa, his nephew, Absalom's own commander, to take Joab's place.