Chapter 14
Joab knows David wants to bring Absalom home, and hatches yet another plot, this one with a wise woman of Tekoa. She tells David a tall tale that her sons fought and one killed the other, and now the "avenger of blood" wants her to turn over the remaining son so the murder can be avenged. David tells her he will protect her, even from this avenger.
She then points out that in letting her guilty son go free, David is guilty, because he will not allow his own son to go free. David pins her down as to whether Joab put her up to this, and she rolls over.
2024 - How have I not seen this before!?
2 Samuel 14:14 NASB1995
[14] For we will surely die and are like water spilled on the ground which cannot be gathered up again. Yet God does not take away life, but plans ways so that the banished one will not be cast out from him.
The last half of this especially. God's justice stated quite plainly by the woman of Tekoa, though Joab's words. We can always come back. God makes His plans to bring us back! This is a FB post for 6/17/24 Monday
(2021 - Joab is summoned, and because the king has decided to overlook this murder of one son on the other, Joab sees himself as "honored" by the king for his suggestion. "I know I have found favor in your sight" is how he words it. Maybe Joab and Absalom are closer than we're told...but doesn't Joab end up being the one that kills Absalom later???" And why did David suspect Joab in the first place? There is a lot of royal innuendo going on here that I don't really understand.)
David calls Joab in, and sends him to get Absalom. But Absalom is required to live apart, in his own house, and not come to see David.
(2021 - While living in "local exile", Absalom has three sons and a daughter. He names the daughter Tamar, after his sister who was raped, and whom he avenged with murder. It is like he is proclaiming that he is very proud to have killed his brother, and wants the memory of the event in front of him at all times through this daughter. What a bold, in your face, statement of disobedience! Absalom is NOT a good son.)
After two years, Absalom summons Joab to him to deliver a message to the King. (2021 - Absalom sends for Joab twice without success. So the third time, Absalom has his servants set Joab's crops on fire! This Joab is an expert on power and hierarchies. He most certainly considers himself higher in the power structure than Absalom, though Absalom is the King's own son!) Joab finally comes, and Absalom says he was better off in Geshur than in exile right there in town. He wants to see David, and if there is guilt in him, David can have him put to death.
So Absalom is summoned to David, and David accepts him.
So now a murderer is living in the open with the King's sanction in the capital city of Israel. And everyone knows the whole story.