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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 319. The Character of Absalom
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The Character of Absalom
1. Absalom's was a life rooted and grounded in self. The all-engrossing egotism of the man comes out at every step. He has no love for man, woman, or child; no thought or feeling of pity for any one in the world except himself. His fellow-men are simply the tools which he uses in building up his own fortunes. He smiles on them, and flatters them, or shoves them out of the way, and tramples on them, according as they are useful to him or otherwise. His one thought is to exalt or gratify himself at their expense or by their aid. Every idea of duty is absent. No throb of generous sentiment ever seems to move him. He has no affection for his kindred, no respect for his father. Filial love has been burned up on the altar of his ambition! He does not care how much suffering he causes if he can gain his ends. He does not care what wrong he does if he can come out top. An enormous egotism devours everything else. He set up a pillar and called it after his own name. That pillar represented his life. It was a building with his own name written upon it, and no other. There was no thought in it of responsibility, of using his gifts for generous and noble ends, of serving the world or of serving God. It was all to make the world serve him, to get for himself a great position and glory, and to win a sounding name. Ambition goaded him from crime to crime till the land was wrapped in the horrors of civil war-of all wars the most prolific in misery-and nerved him to assail a father's life that he might, over his dead body, step up into the throne.
The Hazaels of our world who are pushed on quickly against their preconceived confidence in themselves to do doglike actions by the sudden suggestions of a wicked ambition, are much fewer than those who are led on through the years by the gradual demands of a selfishness which has spread its fibres far and wide through the intricate vanities and sordid cares of an everyday existence.1 [Note: George Eliot, Felix Holt.]
In some people, self is not so much a vice of the heart as of the mind. They are not selfish, but self-absorbed. They would not do a dishonest or dishonourable thing to gain an individual profit, perhaps the reverse; but they are so constituted that they cannot take interest in anything beyond their own immediate circumstances and plans, and how they may levy contributions for these. It is a sad defect when the centripetal force of the mind overbalances the centrifugal and makes it, like a whirlpool, draw all to the point of self. It is Divine wisdom that urges the habit of “looking not on our own things, but also on the things of others.” Herein Christianity and true courtesy are one.2 [Note: John Ker, Thoughts for Heart and Life, 9.]
2. At the bottom of Absalom's egotism was his irreligion-what the Scriptures call “ungodliness.” He was one of those who say continually in their heart, “There is no God.” All the other men who moved about the person and house of David, even the rudest and fiercest of them, had some genuine religious faith working under their rough exterior, and giving some restraint and principle to their conduct. They felt that they were working under the eye of God, and must order their ways accordingly. The polished Absalom had none of this feeling. He had no thought of a present judge or of a future judgment. He was his own master, because he did not recognize the hand of the greater Master. His own will was his only law. He had no humility, because he had no reverence; no principle, because he had no faith; no affection for man, because he had no love of God; no tenderness and pity, because, when there is no belief in a heavenly Father, the sentiments of human brotherhood are not awakened. This man went to his ruin because he made himself his own guide.
What he [Napoleon] thought of religion we do not know. He grasped, no doubt, its political force. He would have understood the military value of the loyal piety of the Tyrolese, or the stern fanaticism of the Covenanters. That he deemed religion essential to a nation he proved by his bold achievement of the Concordat. It is clear, too, that he thought the same of morality, of the sanctity of the family, of public and even private virtue. He was never weary of inculcating them. But it never even occurred to him that these rules were applicable to himself, for he soon regarded himself as something apart from ordinary men. He did not scruple to avow his conviction. “I am not a man like other men,” he would say; “the laws of morality and decorum could not be intended to apply to me.”1 [Note: Lord Rosebery, Napoleon: The Last Phase, 248.]
If thou could'st empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf,
And say-“This is not dead,”-
And fill thee with Himself instead.
But thou art all replete with very thou,
And hast such shrewd activity,
That, when He comes, He says-“This is enow
Unto itself-'Twere better let it be:
It is so small and full, there is no room for Me.”2 [Note: T. E. Brown, Old John and other Poems, 151.]