Widowed Israel

After David sins with Bathsheba, the prophet Nathan comes to him with a “case” involving a rich man preying on his poor neighbor. It’s David’s own life, but he doesn’t recognize it, and his words of condemnation get turned against him: “You are the man” (2 Samuel 12).

When Absalom murders his half-brother Amnon, Absalom spends several years in exile. Joab conspired to bring Absalom back, and sends a “wise woman of Tekoa” to present a case before David (2 Samuel 14). Like Nathan, she captures David in his own words: David offers protection for the woman’s fictional son, and then has to admit that he can’t keep Absalom in exile any longer.

The woman’s story, like Nathan’s, is an allegory of David’s life. She flatters David by saying he is like an “angel of God” who knows everything that is on the earth. He doesn’t; he doesn’t even recognize his own life when someone tells him a story.

He also doesn’t recognize the strange twist on the woman’s allegory. She claims to be a widow with two sons; one son kills the other; the murderous son is the only male she has left in the world, and she asks David to protect him (a mark of Cain) so that her husband’s legacy isn’t utterly erased. 

The allegory is pretty exact: The murderous son represents Absalom; the victim is Amnon. And as the woman tells the story there is also a “widow” who is in danger of losing her only hope – the people of Israel, who will die and spread out like water that cannot be gathered if Absalom isn’t brought home (2 Samuel 14:14).

Israel isn’t a widow, though. King David is still on the throne, the human “husband” of the nation. To say that Israel’s only hope is in Absalom is to imply that the throne of David is already empty.

In effect, it is. David’s sin with Bathsheba is forgiven, but he’s never the same man after. Passive, morally blind, beleaguered, he is a cipher with a crown. 

When Absalom returns, he acts on the implied premise of the wise woman’s parable: He manipulates popular opinion to seize David’s throne and make himself king. If David were as discerning as the woman indicates, he would have seen it coming.

It’s a sobering tale of power vacuums and those who take advantage of them.