Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Samuel · About this commentary
Deal Gently With the Young Man
2 Samuel 18:1-18
1 David counted the people who were with him, and set captains of thousands and captains of hundreds over them. · WEB
A father's order heard by the whole army, a rebel caught in an oak, and a general who kills him anyway because the war needs ending.
"Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom." All the people heard when the king commanded all the captains 2 Samuel 18:5.
The order is given publicly to three commanders before a battle against an army led by the man in question. As a father's plea it is understandable; as a royal command it is impossible — it asks twenty thousand men to fight a war whose leader must not be harmed, and it tells every soldier present that the king's heart is not fully in the cause they are about to die for. David's own troops have already refused to let him take the field 2 Samuel 18:3, and this is why.
The battle was in the forest of Ephraim... and the forest devoured more people that day than the sword devoured 2 Samuel 18:6–8.
Absalom's great host, gathered on Hushai's advice, is worse than useless in broken wooded country, where numbers cannot deploy and veterans can. The line about the forest is grim and slightly eerie: the land itself finishes what the professionals begin.
His head caught hold of the oak, and he was hanging between the sky and earth; and the mule that was under him went on 2 Samuel 18:9.
The end of the beautiful prince is an accident with a mule. The narrative does not mention the famous hair, and does not need to; the man whose appearance was Israel's marvel 2 Samuel 14:25–26 is left dangling in a tree, and his royal mount walks out from under him.
"Though I should receive a thousand pieces of silver in my hand, I still wouldn't stretch out my hand against the king's son" 2 Samuel 18:12.
The unnamed soldier is the chapter's moral center. Offered ten pieces of silver and a sash to have killed him, he refuses on the plain ground that the king said not to — and adds, shrewdly, that Joab would have disowned him afterward. An ordinary man obeys an order that the commander finds inconvenient.
He took three darts in his hand and thrust them through Absalom's heart while he was still alive in the middle of the oak 2 Samuel 18:14.
Joab's calculation is that a live Absalom means a continuing war and a king too compromised to end it, and by the cold arithmetic of the state he is probably right. He is also directly disobeying his king, killing a defenseless man, and doing it in front of ten armor bearers who finish the job so the blame is shared. He then blows the trumpet at once and stops the slaughter 2 Samuel 18:16 — the same man ending the killing he has just guaranteed. Joab is the book's study in the indispensable subordinate whose judgment is better than his master's and whose hands are never clean.
"I have no son to keep my name in memory." He called the pillar after his own name 2 Samuel 18:18.
The body goes into a pit under a heap of stones — the burial of an executed criminal Joshua 7:26 — and the narrator sets beside it the monument Absalom had built for himself. He is remembered, precisely as he wished and not at all as he intended.
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