Barefoot Up the Mount of Olives
13 A messenger came to David, saying, “The hearts of the men of Israel are after Absalom.” 14 David said to all his servants who were with him at Jerusalem, “Arise! Let’s flee, or else none of us will escape from Absalom. Hurry to depart, lest he overtake us quickly and bring down evil on us, and strike the city with the edge of the sword.” 15 The king’s servants said to the king, “Behold, your servants are ready to do whatever my lord the king chooses.” 16 The king went out, and all his household after him. The king left ten women, who were concubines, to keep the house. 17 The king went out, and all the people after him; and they stayed in Beth Merhak. 18 All his servants passed on beside him; and all the Cherethites, and all the Pelethites, and all the Gittites, six hundred men who came after him from Gath, passed on before the king. 19 Then the king said to Ittai the Gittite, “Why do you also go with us? Return, and stay with the king; for you are a foreigner and also an exile. Return to your own place. 20 Whereas you came but yesterday, should I today make you go up and down with us, since I go where I may? Return, and take back your brothers. Mercy and truth be with you.” 21 Ittai answered the king and said, “As Yahweh lives, and as my lord the king lives, surely in what place my lord the king is, whether for death or for life, your servant will be there also.” 22 David said to Ittai, “Go and pass over.” Ittai the Gittite passed over, and all his men, and all the little ones who were with him. 23 All the country wept with a loud voice, and all the people passed over. The king also himself passed over the brook Kidron, and all the people passed over toward the way of the wilderness. 24 Behold, Zadok also came, and all the Levites with him, bearing the ark of the covenant of God; and they set down God’s ark; and Abiathar went up until all the people finished passing out of the city. 25 The king said to Zadok, “Carry God’s ark back into the city. If I find favor in Yahweh’s eyes, he will bring me again, and show me both it and his habitation; 26 but if he says, ‘I have no delight in you,’ behold, here I am. Let him do to me as seems good to him.” 27 The king said also to Zadok the priest, “Aren’t you a seer? Return into the city in peace, and your two sons with you, Ahimaaz your son and Jonathan the son of Abiathar. 28 Behold, I will stay at the fords of the wilderness until word comes from you to inform me.” 29 Zadok therefore and Abiathar carried God’s ark to Jerusalem again; and they stayed there. 30 David went up by the ascent of the Mount of Olives, and wept as he went up; and he had his head covered and went barefoot. All the people who were with him each covered his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up. 31 Someone told David, saying, “Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom.” David said, “Yahweh, please turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness.” 32 When David had come to the top, where God was worshiped, behold, Hushai the Archite came to meet him with his tunic torn and earth on his head. 33 David said to him, “If you pass on with me, then you will be a burden to me; 34 but if you return to the city, and tell Absalom, ‘I will be your servant, O king. As I have been your father’s servant in time past, so I will now be your servant; then you will defeat for me the counsel of Ahithophel.’ 35 Don’t you have Zadok and Abiathar the priests there with you? Therefore whatever you hear out of the king’s house, tell it to Zadok and Abiathar the priests. 36 Behold, they have there with them their two sons, Ahimaaz, Zadok’s son, and Jonathan, Abiathar’s son. Send to me everything that you shall hear by them.” 37 So Hushai, David’s friend, came into the city; and Absalom came into Jerusalem.
The king abandons his city to spare it, refuses to take the ark with him, and climbs the hill weeping — the most spiritually impressive hour of his life.
David said to all his servants who were with him at Jerusalem, “Arise! Let’s flee, or else none of us will escape from Absalom. Hurry to depart, lest he overtake us quickly and bring down evil on us, and strike the city with the edge of the sword.”
The decision to abandon a fortified capital is military judgment and something more: the reason given is the city's safety. A man who took Jerusalem by force will not have it stormed on his account, and the reign that began with a shrewd conquest is set aside to avoid a siege.
Then the king said to Ittai the Gittite, “Why do you also go with us? Return, and stay with the king; for you are a foreigner and also an exile. Return to your own place.
The exchange with Ittai is the chapter's first grace note. A Philistine from Gath, in Israel a matter of days, is released from any obligation — and answers with a loyalty oath worth setting beside Ruth's: in what place my lord the king is, whether for death or for life, your servant will be there also 2 Samuel 15:21. Israel's men are streaming to Absalom while a foreigner and his little ones cross the Kidron with the losing king.
25 The king said to Zadok, “Carry God’s ark back into the city. If I find favor in Yahweh’s eyes, he will bring me again, and show me both it and his habitation; 26 but if he says, ‘I have no delight in you,’ behold, here I am. Let him do to me as seems good to him.”
Here is the summit of David's life. The priests bring the ark out to travel with him, and he sends it back — refusing to do what Israel did at Aphek, where the ark was carried into a battle as insurance and lost 1 Samuel 4:3–11. He will not use the symbol of God's presence as a talisman for his own restoration; if God wants him back he will bring him back, and if not, let him do to me as seems good to him. A man in flight, stripped of everything, submits his whole future to a verdict he does not control. This is what repentance looked like four chapters after Nathan.
David went up by the ascent of the Mount of Olives, and wept as he went up; and he had his head covered and went barefoot. All the people who were with him each covered his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up.
The picture is deliberate: covered head, bare feet, an entire company weeping up the hill out of the city. It is a rejected king leaving Jerusalem over the Mount of Olives, and a later Son of David will weep over the same city from the same slope Luke 19:41.
Someone told David, saying, “Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom.” David said, “Yahweh, please turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness.”
The one prayer of the flight is aimed at the one real threat. And at the top of the hill, at the place of worship, the answer walks up in torn clothes — Hushai, sent straight back down to serve as a double agent 2 Samuel 15:34 with the priests' sons as couriers. David prays and then acts; the book presents both without any sense that the second compromises the first. The prayer will be answered, and it will be answered through the man who arrived while he was praying it.
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