What we’re looking at today is not pretty. Incest, rape, murder, political intrigue leading to a coup d’état, David running for his life. And again we wonder what to make of it all. Why is it in here?
Well, there are a couple of reasons it’s in here. One is to show how quickly God’s judgement on David has its effect. God had predicted that trouble would arise from within David’s own house and that from now on the sword would never leave his house and so it begins. Amnon’s violation of Tamar has a direct correlation in the way David abused his power in violating Bathsheba. Soon his murder of Uriah will be reproduced in Absalom’s murder of Amnon. And after that will come political plotting and insurrection, first by Absalom, then by an Israelite named Sheba. And that’s only a foretaste of what will follow with the split of the nation in two following the death of Solomon 50 years later.
Secondly I think we’re meant to see how such a fate can befall even the house of David after it’s been given God’s blessing, after God has promised that his house will last forever.
But the other thing we discover as we read these remaining chapters in 2 Samuel is the way poor leadership leaves the way open for even worse leadership to take over. What we find as we read through this series of events is that David seems to have lost the plot as far as his leadership of the nation is concerned. In fact this poverty of leadership is something that will plague the nation of Israel and later Judah for many years to come. With just a few exceptions, the kings of Israel and Judah will show themselves to be poor leaders, either weak willed, or simply ungodly, even pagan in their rule.
Well, let’s look quickly at the events of ch13, before we think about the rest of the history of David.
Amnon is David’s firstborn son, son of Ahinoam, David’s second wife. Tamar is the sister of Absalom and they’re the children of Maacah, David’s third wife.
Amnon falls in love with his half sister. As we saw last week with David and Bathsheba, his desire for her is nurtured and dwelt upon until it becomes full blown lust. In fact it becomes an obsession. But how is he going to satisfy his lust for her? His cousin Jonadab comes up with a devious plot. In fact Jonadab appears a couple of times in this story and each time he seems to be involved in an underhand scheme of one sort or another. He’s the sort of person you come upon from time to time who are naturally clever, but who always seem to use their intelligence for improper ends. He suggests that Amnon pretend to be sick and that he works it so that Tamar is sent to look after him. And here’s where David’s leadership begins to come into question.
David unwittingly becomes the pawn in Jonadab’s plan. He doesn’t even question his son’s motivation but goes along with the request for Tamar to go and serve her brother a meal. Once David has given his approval, of course, it all seems to be above board. The social constraints that have applied to Tamar’s contacts with single men are removed. She’s left on her own in her brother’s presence. And what began as an act of innocent and affectionate care for her sick brother ends in shame and disgrace. He takes advantage of her but then, his lust having been satisfied, he realises the shame that he’s brought upon them both. Then as so often happens, his lust turns to hatred and he throws her out of the house. He’s used her and now he discards her.
What’s happened, you see, is that his lust has changed his perception of her from a person to a sex object. You see it in the way he ignores her pleas for mercy, for pity. He doesn’t care about her feelings. He can do what he wants with her because she’s just an object of desire. That, of course, is the problem with such things as prostitution and pornography. It exploits women, turning them into sex objects rather than people with feelings and emotions. And as in this case there’s no sense of satisfaction at the end of it. In fact the opposite.
What he claimed was love turns to a great loathing. Tamar is left desolate. Her life is ruined. She returns to her brother Absalom who takes her in, but does nothing at this stage about the wrong that Amnon has done.
Neither does David. He’s very angry but it’s an impotent anger. It comes to nothing. Like so many leaders after him he fails this critical test of his leadership.
It’s amazing how contemporary such an old text can be isn’t it? We continue to this day to see leaders being angry at immoral behaviour on the part of people in authority, but refusing to do anything about it. The churches in Australia and the US and Canada are in deep trouble because of sexual abuse by clergy that’s been ignored by their leaders rather than being brought out into the open and being dealt with.
Here David should have been more than angry. He should have dealt with his son. But he let’s his own personal feelings, his love for his eldest son, overrule his good judgement.
Notice how this happens. As has happened so many times in history, he uses love as his excuse for overlooking this injustice, this evil. You’ll hear people using love as their excuse so often: "I only did it out of love." "If you don’t accept them, you’re not really showing love." I even heard the barrister in the recent trial of the Washington sniper, in his summing up speech, say "What Would Jesus Do?" as though to find his client guilty wouldn’t be a Christ-like, loving response.
We need to be very careful when we hear someone using love as a justification for their actions don’t we? We need to make sure we first apply Paul’s definition of love from 1 Corinthians 13 as a test for real love. And remember that real love is never an excuse for wrongdoing or violence.
The next thing we see is what so often happens when leadership fails. David’s impotent anger leaves Amnon unpunished and his failure of leadership opens the way for worse leadership to take over. His inaction becomes the incentive for Absalom to take things into his own hands. Absalom’s desire for revenge builds and builds until at last after a wait of 2 years he finds a way to get even.
And again David is unwittingly enlisted to bring the plot to fruition. Again, he ignores the obvious danger involved in letting Amnon go to Absalom’s feast. Instead he gives in to Absalom’s pleading and in a moment of weakness sends Amnon to take his place in the celebration.
They get Amnon drunk, and the servants kill him. The other brothers naturally assume this is a plot to kill them all and run for their lives. And even in that response you get the feeling that David is losing control. His sons think that Absalom is getting ready for David to die, so that he can succeed him as king. In any case there seems to be no fear that David’s judgement might fall on him for this act of fratricide. They just get out as fast as they can. By the time the news gets to David it’s assumed that all the brothers are dead. But no, it was only Amnon who was the target.
So now the evils are multiplying. First rape, now the murder of a brother. And still David fails to act. He mourns for Amnon, but does nothing about Absalom. In fact as time goes on and his mourning and sadness dissipate, he begins to miss Absalom. And it begins to affect his behaviour. It seems like he’s moping over having lost both his oldest sons. So much so that Joab notices how down in the mouth David is and arranges to convince him to bring Absalom back. Better to have him back than to have a useless king, seems to be the way Joab is thinking.
Well, David brings Absalom back but won’t speak to him. Not even a word of rebuke. He just ignores him from a distance.
One of the things you realise as you read through this story is that David is at a loss to know what to do. Here is the greatest King of Israel in history and he’s lost the plot. His leadership has all but disappeared. And Absalom can see it. And he takes advantage of it.
Absalom is a good looking young man, the sort that people naturally look up to. He has all the natural attributes you could desire as well as the sort of worldly wisdom that people love to follow. And as time goes on he sets himself up as an alternative judge to help people resolve their legal disputes. There’s too much for David to handle, and in the absence of an appointed judiciary, people are having trouble having their cases heard. So Absalom promotes himself as an alternative court. He’s the original Judge Judy. Again, David’s poor leadership has left a wide gap for Absalom to walk through. Eventually, Absalom’s popularity rises to the point where the people of Israel are willing to make him king instead of David. David has failed to satisfy them, so they decide a change is a good idea. Forget the fact that God has appointed David as king. They’re going to revert to their old ways and find a king that they like.
And at last David acts with some sort of decisiveness. He hears that Absalom has been crowned as king and is on his way to Jerusalem so he takes his men and runs for it.
Now we don’t have time to go into everything that happens, but suffice it to say that God is still on David’s side and when the chips are down that’s what really matters. Absalom is defeated and David returns to Jerusalem.
But then his leadership again comes into question. Joab finds Absalom caught in the fork of an oak tree and kills him. David’s usurper is dead, but David isn’t happy. Instead of being pleased that the rebellion is ended, he’s heartbroken. He goes up to his room and weeps. And instead of a great celebration of their victory the troops are plunged into mourning again. The men return to Jerusalem ashamed, rather than victorious.
It takes Joab, the arch pragmatist, the only one at this point to understand the importance of strong leadership, to wake him up to what he’s done. He tells him how he’s humiliated all his men who have just saved his life and those of his wives and concubines. He’s says he’s shown them contempt rather than recognition. If he doesn’t act immediately to encourage his men they’ll all desert by morning. Joab you see, hasn’t forgotten what leadership entails. There’s a sense in which the leader isn’t permitted to indulge himself in self pity or mourning the way David has been doing. The leader needs to be the one to encourage those who follow. He needs to recognise the basic human weaknesses of people. All of us need to be encouraged if we’re to keep going in difficult times. We need to see that our leaders have a certain conviction about what they’re doing. No-one wants to follow someone who is wracked with self-doubt and even self-loathing.
Well soon after, another rebellion is started, this time by a Benjamite named Sheba. He too has seen this vacuum of leadership and thinks that maybe he can fill it. He takes the opportunity of a dispute between the men of Judah and those of the 10 northern tribes to make himself the king of the north.
Well, this time David acts quickly and sends Joab off to deal with Sheba and the rebellion is put down. Joab returns to Jerusalem and David is again king and remains so until his death a few years later.
Well, before we finish I want us to think about the errors of leadership that David made as his reign went on.
I think the first and probably most important error he made was his failure to act against those who committed significant moral sins. Perhaps he was weakened by his own moral failure, perhaps it was that he was too close to those who needed to be reprimanded and he let his emotions get in the way of good judgement. Perhaps he was just getting tired in his old age. But whatever the reason, his failure to stop the sort of moral decay we read about in ch 13 had disastrous consequences for the kingdom of Israel. I remember going to a management seminar many years ago and one of the major lessons from that day was that management’s job is to make decisions, even if sometimes they get it wrong. And that was David’s great failing in this period of his reign. He failed to make the decisions that were needed for his nation.
I hope you’ve noticed that nothing much has changed. This is a danger that we’re also subject to. It’s often difficult to act decisively particularly in a situation like this, either because you’re close to the person, or because the consequences seem worse than the original act, or even because it isn’t politically correct to censure certain sorts of behaviour. But godly leadership requires godly judgement in what to allow and what to disallow, what to ignore and what to speak out against.
The other important error David made was to allow his personal feelings to affect the way he dealt with his people. As God’s representative he had a responsibility to apply God’s standards equally to all his subjects, even his favourite sons. What he failed to see was that true love has to be godly love before anything else. We won’t always find it easy to apply godly standards where people we love are concerned. But if we don’t then it isn’t true love. At least it isn’t truly godly love.
Well, that’s where we leave David for now. He’s still the greatest of Israel and Judah’s kings. He still stands foremost in God’s regard. His descendant will become, just as God promised, the King of kings and Lord of lords. When we celebrate Christmas in a few weeks time we’ll be celebrating the birth of the son of David, the king God promised would establish his kingdom forever. Yet as great a king as David was, he was still a human king with all the flaws of any human being. It would take the coming of Jesus before we had a king who truly reflected God’s heart in all he did; whose leadership would fully reflect God’s character. Let’s pray that we might be led by God’s Holy Spirit in the way we exercise whatever leadership we have.
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