When a palace coup takes place, any influential person is going to have walk very carefully. It may, in fact, be impossible to sit this one out. You may wish you could retreat into the wilderness and come back when the battle is over, but everyone knows who you are and what your loyalties have been. You are forced to choose sides no matter how much you would rather not. Sometimes the side is chosen for you in spite of all your protestations to the contrary. This can happen even in a large church organization, but they usually don’t kill you over it.

When Absalom engineered a palace coup and ousted his father David, It threw all kinds of people into crisis. Some went with David, some with Absalom, some ended up being spies in the enemy camp, and nearly everyone had their lives on the line. Such a man was Hushai the Archite, a man whose name is likely not familiar even to a lot of Bible readers. He started to go with David into the desert, but David sent him back with a view of defeating the counsel of another important player who had stayed with Absalom, figuring he was backing a winner. His name was Ahithophel, and you probably have not heard of him either. But he had been a key advisor to David and was now to Absalom; a man of singular wisdom and insight. And when David heard he was with Absalom, it was worrisome.

And the counsel of Ahithophel, which he counseled in those days, was as if a man had inquired at the oracle of God: so was all the counsel of Ahithophel both with David and with Absalom.

So when the coup had apparently succeeded, and everyone was standing there wondering what to do next, Ahithophel realized there was a very important piece of unfinished business. He said to Absalom:

[…] Let me now choose out twelve thousand men, and I will arise and pursue after David this night: And I will come upon him while he is weary and weak handed, and will make him afraid: and all the people that are with him shall flee; and I will strike the king only: And I will bring back all the people unto you: only the man whom you seek will be struck: so all the people shall be in peace.

The objective of Ahithophel was to remove David from the picture without a lot of bloodshed and reunite the kingdom under Absalom. It might well have worked, and history written differently, if the plan had been followed. But David had prayed that God would defeat the counsel of Ahithophel. He feared the wisdom of that man in the wrong place. We’ll find out how that prayer was answered, and what that would mean for both Absalom and David, as we continue in the Second Book of Samuel.

Sometimes, there is no explaining love. It just is. The love of God for King David of Israel knew no bounds, and that love persisted through some terrible times and some terrible acts on David’s part. Maybe, in a vague sort of way, it can be explained by the fact that David himself was a man of great emotion; he was himself a man of love. I think that may explain his bonding with Jonathan, son of Saul. It may explain David’s love for King Saul that transcended every evil thing Saul tried to do to him. And it may explain, in some small way, his love for his son Absalom. Oh yes, I know that Fathers love their sons, but the love of David for Absalom is a little harder to explain. And it is a good example of what I said: Sometimes there is no explaining love. It just is.

Absalom was an altogether beautiful man. To call him handsome wouldn’t quite reach it. He was a determined man as well. When his step-brother raped his sister, it took two years, but finally Absalom took his revenge by killing Amnon. It was some three years after that he had to live in exile because of it. And even when Joab convinced David to bring him home, he was not allowed to come into David’s presence. After all, he had killed another of David’s sons. But finally, Absalom had enough and demanded reconciliation. So Joab, the king’s chief of staff, came to Absalom’s house and said to him:

[…] Why have your servants set my field on fire? [Absalom had ordered a field of Joab’s set on fire to encourage Joab’s coming.] And Absalom answered Joab, Behold, I sent unto you, saying, Come here, that I may send you to the king, to say, Why am I come from Geshur? it had been good for me to have been there still: now therefore let me see the king’s face; and if there be any iniquity in me, let him kill me. So Joab came to the king, and told him: and when he had called for Absalom, he came to the king, and bowed himself on his face to the ground before the king: and the king kissed Absalom.

Reconciliation is a good thing, and it warms the heart. At least, it would if I didn’t know the rest of the story. Absalom is now free to act like the prince he is…and he plots revolution against David. I can only think that the years of exile had taken a toll on Absalom. He had killed his brother. Now he was prepared to dispose of his father as well. We’ll continue this sad story in 2 Samuel, chapter 15.

It is hard to think of a family situation worse than one created by a man named Amnon, the son of David. It was event of sexual violence, ultimately leading to bloodshed. But considering what David had done with Bathsheba, and the wretched example it set, it is just as hard to think this event was not connected, somehow. But there is a lesson or two to be learned here.

The first is that the biblical account says that Amnon loved Tamar—his half-sister. I’m afraid the Bible here uses the word love in broadest possible sense. Because his behavior in this case was nothing at all like true love. He was a completely self-centered, self-indulgent, weak young man—spoiled rotten, no doubt, as is too often the case with royalty—and he had the presumption of royalty, perverted by his father’s own example. I can’t help pondering what young people can learn from this incident.

Under a pretext, Amnon managed to get the girl alone. The ensuing dialogue showed that she did not consider him repulsive. She was willing to be his wife. But he didn’t want her as a wife. He just wanted her.

However he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her. Then Amnon hated her exceedingly; so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said unto her, Arise, be gone.

Is there a lesson here for young men and women? It’s important to understand that there is a yawning chasm between the sexual desire and true love. A lot of young men think they are in love when they are only in heat. That, in itself, is nothing special. What makes it dangerous is that young women can’t tell the difference at that early stage. So how does one tell the difference? I’m no expert, but is seems plain enough: with time and distance.

Love is open and honest. Love perseveres. Love does not harm or hurt. Love is patient, kind, considerate. Love is well-behaved. Love is not self-indulgent. Love is not hot-tempered. Love is optimistic. Love does not go away. Now, how on earth can a young woman know these things about a man who claims to love her? Well, you can’t learn it in a week, or a month—not even a year. It takes time and distance. (By distance, I mean a space between you that is not violated while you get to know one another.) There is a line which must not be crossed.

So, when all was said and done, how did this encounter turn out? Well, when he had simply used her, he simply told her to get out. The purpose of Amnon’s plan had been accomplished. What he did not plan on, however, was how his actions would affect another one of Tamar’s brothers—Absalom. We’ll find the story in 2 Samuel, chapter 13.

It is always painful to see a good man fall. And in the affair of David and Bathsheba, that is pretty much what happened. It happened to a good woman at the same time. Who knows, maybe this was somewhere in the back of King Solomon’s mind when he wrote:

Dead flies cause the ointment of the perfumer to send forth a foul odor: so does a little folly to him that is respected for wisdom and honor.

And he had a classic example in his own mother and father. This affair is loaded with lessons to be learned and questions to be answered. Someone said, Power corrupts. At the time this happened, David was at the peak of his power, his influence, and his popularity. There seems to be a sense of invincibility that comes over powerful men at times. They come to think they are above the law—that they can get away with things ordinary men can’t. After all, they are not ordinary.

But in David’s case, this is singularly stupid. He had a covey of wives. And if they had not been enough, there was the entire flower of Judean womanhood before him. He didn’t have to take another man’s woman. Girls would have lined up to be David’s concubines, and he could have taken his pick. So why did he take another man’s wife? What on earth was he thinking? The answer is easy: He wasn’t thinking. He saw, he wanted, he took. And if it hadn’t been for one small problem, he might have gotten away with it.

And it came to pass after this, that the king of the children of Ammon died, and Hanun his son reigned in his stead. Then said David, I will show kindness unto Hanun the son of Nahash, as his father showed kindness unto me. And David sent to comfort him by the hand of his servants for his father. And David’s servants came into the land of the children of Ammon.

Here is the picture: the king of Ammon dies and David sends mourners on a state visit, for a state funeral. Unfortunately, the king’s son was an idiot. Israel had good relations with Ammon up to this point, but this young man and his companions decided to exert themselves. Normally, the servants of David would have diplomatic immunity (just as in the modern world). But when they arrived:

3 [T]he princes of the children of Ammon said unto Hanun their lord, Think you that David does honor your father, that he has sent comforters unto you? Has not David rather sent his servants unto you, to search the city, and to spy it out, and to overthrow it?
4 Therefore Hanun took David’s servants, and shaved off one half of their beards, and cut off their garments in the middle, even to their buttocks, and sent them away.
5 When they told it unto David, he sent to meet them, because the men were greatly ashamed: and the king said, Tarry at Jericho until your beards are grown, and then return.
6 And when the children of Ammon saw that they had become repulsive before David, the children of Ammon sent and hired the Syrians of Beth-rehob, and the Syrians of Zoba, twenty thousand footmen, and of king Maacah a thousand men, and of Ish-tob twelve thousand men.

Now mind you, David was at peace with Ammon; he had made a peaceful gesture; he had sent diplomats to a funeral. In return, he gets an insult from these people and now they are putting together an army for war. The resulting battle, with so much loss of life, was totally unnecessary. It grew up around a young upstart king who didn’t know when he was well off. Had he himself treated David’s emissaries peacefully, none of this need have happened. The arrogance of youth would cost the lives of thousands of men—and oddly, it indirectly led to one of the more disgraceful episodes in David’s life. We’ll find it in 2 Samuel, chapter 11.

It isn’t always easy to understand why God does some of the things he does. It isn’t always certain, even, that God does everything attributed to him. In our generation, for example, we use the expression, an act of God, for all kinds of things I really don’t think God is directly involved in. An earthquake, for example—insurance people would call that an act of God. And in the broad sense that God is creator of all things, and therefore everything that happens in nature is an act of God, even when God is not the proximate cause of the event, I guess we could call it that. In other words, a great tsunami is a result of the properties of matter. Since God created the matter, I guess we could say that the tsunami is an act of God…but it’s not a deliberate attack on some group of people. So an act of God can be an idiom, not a literal attribution.

There was an incident early in the reign of David where I can’t help wondering exactly what it was that went wrong. I’m sure you know what the Ark of the Covenant was. It was the absolute ground zero of Israelite worship—the heart, the core. It was a wooden box, covered in gold, in which the Ten Commandments were kept. Whatever you may have heard about the wonders of the Temple, it was built to house this little box.

It had been captured by the Philistines, but there was a power about the box that led them to send it home—urgently. It seemed that when people treated the Ark with all due respect, all went well. When the didn’t, things went very badly, indeed. The Ark had been kept in a man’s house for some time, and King David, in one of his first acts as king over all of Israel, determined to bring it home. We’ll find this story in 2 Samuel, chapter 6.

When I study the prophets, I am looking for God. I’m not looking for an outline of what’s going to happen tomorrow or the events of the next few years. What I want to know is: What does God have to say, what does it mean, and how might it affect my life? Because God doesn’t change, if God came down on an ancient people because they behaved a certain way, I figure if I behave the same way that same God is liable to come down on me.

God doesn’t often speak to man, and when he does it pays to listen very carefully. And just because events were long ago doesn’t mean you and I can afford to ignore them. Now, I can throw out all the old clichés about history repeating itself, but in truth it comes down to this one simple fact: human nature doesn’t change and neither does God. If God has responded to human actions in the past, he is likely to respond the same way in the future. Which is why he said this to Isaiah:

Produce your case, says the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, says the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth, and show us what shall happen: let them show the former things, what they were, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare to us things to come.

It is fascinating, when you’re reading history, to see how much people are the same—in every age and every time. Cultures change, standards change, technology changes, but human nature—at its base—changes very little, if at all. Petty politics, palace intrigue, deal making, trivial and great jealousies: They make us feel right at home even in strange times and places. It is one of the reasons Shakespeare remains so relevant. His plots have been stolen over and over again by playwrights and movie-makers. (When Solomon said, There is nothing new under the sun, he could have been talking about Hollywood.) For all I know, Shakespeare stole some of his stuff from the Bible.

But when you read along in the history of Israel, you feel right at home, even in these days of modern, political assassination. When Saul died in battle against the Philistines, anyone reading the story, or even remotely familiar with subsequent history, would have assumed that David would have assumed the throne over all of Israel. After all, Samuel himself had anointed David king at God’s own command and choice. But if that were your assumption, you would have been wrong. The men of Judah accepted him immediately, because David was one of them. But Saul’s chief of the military, a man named Abner, installed Saul’s son as king over the rest of Israel.

Now there was long war between the house of Saul and the house of David: but David grew stronger and stronger, and the house of Saul grew weaker and weaker.

None of this could possibly have been lost on a man like Abner. He was a military man, a fighter—tough as nails—and he was very aware. He had his attitudes toward David who had, on one occasion, really showed him up and then rubbed it in front of everyone, as Saul was chasing David from cave to cave. But Abner was no fool, and he well understood the levers of power in his own time. So we can’t be surprised at the outcome of a confrontation between Abner and the new king, Saul’s son Ishbosheth. We’ll find this turning point in 2 Samuel, chapter 3.