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‘The king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept.’
2Sa_18:33
I. The father is more than the king.—‘The victory that day was turned into mourning.’ Not even Absalom’s rebellion, and the deep sense that his own fondness wakened no response in the son’s heart, could crush that love out.
II. Still more affecting is it to notice how natural, when love is thus deeply stirred, is the desire to take the dead man’s place.—So Moses pleaded for Israel: ‘If Thou wilt forgive their sin blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book. So Paul was willing to be cut off from Christ if only his brethren might be saved. This is no mere outburst of passion. It is the deep-seated longing for substitution, and only Christ, the Sinless One, can satisfy it. To die the just for the unjust is not unreasonable, but in the Holy Son of God alone has it been possible. For David, alas! the lament over the winning and beautiful creature whose charm outlived the shock even of ungrateful, ungenerous, and unsuccessful rebellion, was accompanied by the terrible remembrance that to his own sin was due all the family misery of which the revolt of Absalom was only one illustration. Remorse and anguish were busy at the heart-strings of the poor father weeping all the way up to the chamber over the gate, and there, in that lonely room, giving way to a sorrow for which it was hard to find one alleviating touch. The sobs of a broken heart cannot be analysed; and this wail of almost inarticulate grief, with its infinite pathetic reiteration, is too sacred for many words. Grief, even if passionate, is not forbidden by religion; and David’s sensitive poet-nature felt all emotions keenly. We are meant to weep; else wherefore is there calamity?
III. But there were elements in David’s agony which were not good.—It blinded him to blessings and to duties. His son was dead; but his rebellion was dead with him, and that should have been more present to his mind. His soldiers had fought well, and his first task should have been to honour and to thank them. He had no right to sink the king in the father, and Joab’s unfeeling remonstrance which followed was wise and true in substance, though rough almost to brutality in tone. Sorrow which hides all the blue because of one cloud, however heavy and thunderous, is sinful. Sorrow which sits with folded hands, like the sisters of Lazarus, and lets duties drift that it may indulge in the luxury of unrestrained tears, is sinful. There is no tone of ‘It is the Lord; let Him do what seemeth Him good,’ in this passionate plaint; and so there is no soothing for the grief. The one consolation lies in submission. Submissive tears wash the heart clean; rebellious ones blister it.
Illustrations
(1) ‘ “I well remember,” says a present-day writer, “the effect produced on my mind on being told by a servant, soon after I recovered from a dangerous illness, that during the crisis of the malady my father was often seen to shed tears. He was not an emotional man.” ’
(2) ‘When Bramwell Brontë died, Charlotte wept “for the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the untimely, dreary extinction of what might have been a burning and a shining light.” Her father’s grief was still more poignant. “Much and long as he had suffered on his (Bramwell’s) account, he cried out for his loss like David for that of Absalom—‘My son! my son!’—and refused at first to be comforted.” Fondest love makes heaviest mourning. It must be every true son’s earnest desire and prayer that he may spare his father and his mother the anguish of having to say of him, lying dishonoured in death, “Would God I had died for thee, O my son, my son.” ’
3 ‘A distinguished man, speaking at the opening of a reformatory institution for boys, remarked that if only one boy was saved from ruin it would repay all the cost. Afterwards a friend asked the speaker if he had not put it a little too strongly, when he said that all the cost would be repaid if only one boy were saved. “Not if that were my boy,” was the reply.’
(4) ‘James IV. of Scotland, while yet a lad, took part with the rebels who drove his father, James III., from the throne. The rebel forces were successful; the father was killed; the son mounted the throne. But the young king was seized with sudden remorse. His reign had commenced in parricide, his throne was built over the remains of his murdered father, and the plea of youth and inexperience was insufficient to still within his soul the upbraidings of remorse. He retired to Stirling Castle, spent his nights in prayer and penance, and wore an iron belt or chain round his waist under his clothing, to which he added a certain number of links every year till the day of his death, as a self-punishment and expiation for the part he had taken as a youth in breaking his father’s heart.’
(5) ‘David had let Absalom flaunt and swagger and live in luxury, and put no curb on; and here was the end of his foolish softness. How many fathers and mothers are the destroyers of their children to-day by the very same thing? That grave in the wood might teach parents how their fatal fondness may end. Children, too, may learn from David’s grief what an unworthy son can do to stuff his father’s pillow with thorns, and to break his heart at last.’