Poole on 2 Samuel 16:15-23: Absalom's Incestuous Violation of David's Concubines

Verse 15:[1]  And (2 Sam. 15:37) Absalom, and all the people the men of Israel, came to Jerusalem, and Ahithophel with him.

[They entered Jerusalem]  At the same time in which David arrived at the desert plain (Sanchez).  [Therefore, it was not without cause that David hastened his flight.]

Verse 16:[2]  And it came to pass, when Hushai the Archite, (2 Sam. 15:37) David’s friend, was come unto Absalom, that Hushai said unto Absalom, God save the king (Heb. Let the king live[3]), God save the king.

[Hail, King]  Let the King live; whom he nevertheless desires to be removed.  It was pernicious flattery, and evident deceit.  He ought rather to have died, than to flatter a wicked man in his wickedness (Martyr).  He makes sport of him with ambiguous speech (Malvenda out of Junius).  He arranges his words in such a way that Absalom refers them to himself, while Hushai himself understands them of David (Malvenda).

God save the king:  To wit, Absalom, whom he pretends to own for his king and liege lord.

Verse 17:[4]  And Absalom said to Hushai, Is this thy kindness to thy friend? (2 Sam. 19:25; Prov. 17:17) why wentest thou not with thy friend?

[Is this thy kindness, etc.? (thus Vatablus), ‎חַסְדְּךָ]  Mercy (Pagnine, Martyr), goodness (Malvenda).  Dost thou recompense these things to thy friend for the benefits received from him? (Vatablus).  What sort might I hope thee to be with me, who desertest his friend? (Menochius).  Although Absalom was completely blind, he saw it to be the duty of friends not to desert their friends.  But Absalom reprehends in another, what he does not charge upon himself.  For he was deserting his father:  He does not call him father, because he hates him (Martyr).

Is this thy kindness to thy friend? doth this action answer that profession of greatest friendship which thou hast hitherto made to him?  Dost thou thus requite his favour and true friendship to thee?  He speaks thus only to try him.  And he saith, thy friend, by way of refection on David; as one who was a friend to Hushai, and to strangers, but not to his own son, whom, by his severity and design to give away his right to Solomon, he provoked to this course; and therefore he doth not vouchsafe to call him his father.

Verse 18:[5]  And Hushai said unto Absalom, Nay; but whom the LORD, and this people, and all the men of Israel, choose, his will I be, and with him will I abide.

[By no means, etc.]  He frees himself from suspicion with respect to David (Grotius).

[Whom the Lord chose…and Israel]  That is to say, The voice of the people is the voice of God:  and therefore Absalom reigns by right (Grotius).  He alleges two reasons:  1.  There is to be no opposition to God.  His will ought to be preferred to all fetters.  2.  I am a private man; I ought not to oppose the public resolutions of the common people (Martyr).

Whom the LORD and this people, etc.:  Though as a private person I owed and paid friendship to David whilst he was king; yet I must make all my obligations give place to the authority of God, who putteth down and setteth up kings at this pleasure; and to the common sense and decree of the whole body of the nation.  But Hushai expresseth himself very cautiously; for though he would be thought to understand Absalom, yet in truth this character did not agree to him, whom neither God nor all the people had chosen, but only a part, and that the worst part of them.

[His will I be (thus Jonathan, Syriac, Munster, Pagnine, Tigurinus, Piscator, similarly Castalio, Strigelius), לֹ֥א אֶהְיֶ֖ה]  לֹא/lo/not is here written in the place of לוֺ/lo,[6] to him (Munster, Piscator).  [Others read לֹא/lo/not, and translated it:]  Shall I not be? (Montanus); should I not be his, etc.? (Junius and Tremellius).

Verse 19:[7]  And again, (2 Sam. 15:34) whom should I serve? should I not serve in the presence of his son? as I have served in thy father’s presence, so will I be in thy presence.

[But so that I might bring this in too, ‎וְהַשֵּׁנִית]  And secondly (Pagnine, Junius and Tremellius, Septuagint and Jonathan in Mariana); the second (Montanus, Munster), understanding, reason moving me to adhere to thee (Munster, similarly Mariana, Vatablus).

[Should I not serve the son of the king? ‎לִפְנֵ֣י בְנ֑וֹ]  Before his son.  To some that before is superfluous; but not to others, because it is a construction of the verb עָבַד, to serve; thus in the very next place, ‎כַּאֲשֶׁ֤ר עָבַ֙דְתִּי֙ לִפְנֵ֣י אָבִ֔יךָ, as I served before thy father (Vatablus).

[So will I be subject to thee]  Hebrew:  I will be before thee,[8] understanding, a servant, that is, I will serve thee (Vatablus).  That is to say, He in no way sins against a King, who instructs the son of the King with good counsel (Grotius).  I do not see the kingdom being transferred from one family to another:  it is not a great change.  Absalom here suffers punishment in kind.  He had circumvented his father with deceits; so now he himself is taken with deceits:  desperate times call for desperate measures (Martyr). 

Should I not serve in the presence of his son, etc.?:  Thou art his son, and heir, and successor, and now in his place and stead; whereby my friendship which was due to him is devolved upon thee by right of inheritance; and I reckon that my friendship is not wholly alienated from him, when it is transferred upon one that came out of his bowels.

Verse 20:[9]  Then said Absalom to Ahithophel, Give counsel among you what we shall do.

Verse 21:[10]  And Ahithophel said unto Absalom, Go in unto thy father’s (2 Sam. 15:16; 20:3) concubines, which he hath left to keep the house; and all Israel shall hear that thou (Gen. 34:30; 1 Sam. 13:4) art abhorred of thy father:  then shall (2 Sam. 2:7; Zech. 8:13) the hands of all that are with thee be strong.

[Go in to the concubines]  Question:  What is the reason for this counsel?  Response 1:  So that he might inflict so grievous an injury on his father, that absolutely all will convince themselves that no hope of reconciliation between them remains (Menochius, similarly Junius, Piscator, Malvenda, Lyra, Sanchez, Martyr, Munster).  Some were following Absalom apprehensively, fearing that they, with father and son reconciled, would suffer punishment (Menochius).  The cunning man knows that those that follow princes of royal blood in faction fear nothing more than those Princes reconciling with the King; and so the King, put in possession of the kingdom again, seeks occasions for avenging himself.  And so those that are in such a party are wont to do this, so that affairs might be brought into conditions beyond compromise, and receptive of no healing.  Thus Artabanes Persarmenius killed many of the Persians, so that he, passing over to the Romans, might find trust among them,[11] as Procopius relates in Gothic Wars 4.  Whoever violates his father’s bed, he is believed to leave no retreat for himself to his favor.  Hence the greatness of Jacob’s sorrow is able to be understood from his censure of Reuben:[12]  no less from the narration of Phœnix concerning his own sin in the Iliad 9 concerning their sin, Οἷον ὅτε πρῶτον λίπον Ἕλλαδα, etc., just as at my first leaving of Hellas, etc.[13] (Grotius).  There was no more grievous crime, nor one that would pierce the King with more shame and sorrow.  From this, therefore, he was concluding, that, although youthful fury is readily assuaged, and David was easy to be entreated; yet, with this done, it was never going to happen, that the youth either through shame, or through the fear of his violated parent, might languish in the plan undertaken.  Response 2:  We know that anything pertaining to the royal person usurped was a harbinger, or the beginning, of the kingdom.  Hence it was a capital offense to put on royal vestments, as Plato testifies.  Compare 1 Kings 2:22 (Sanchez).  Response 3:  Thus Ahithophel wanted to avenge the injury of his granddaughter, Bath-sheba, which is said to be the daughter of Eliam, 2 Samuel 11:3.  But Elim is said to be the son of Ahithophel, 2 Samuel 23:34.  Therefore, she appears to have been his granddaughter by his son, as the Hebrews maintain (Martyr, similarly Munster).

Go in unto thy father’s concubines, etc.:  This counsel he gave, partly to revenge the injury done to Bath-sheba, who was the daughter of Eliam, 2 Samuel 11:3, who was the son of Ahithophel, 2 Samuel 23:34; and principally for his own and the people’s safety, that the breach between David and Absalom might be made wide and irreparable by so vile an action, which must needs provoke David in the highest degree, both for the sin and shame of it; as the like action had done Jacob, Genesis 49:3, 4; and cut off all hopes of reconciliation, which otherwise might have been expected by some treaty between Absalom and his tenderhearted father; in which case his followers, and especially Ahithophel himself, had been left to David’s mercy.  Israel shall hear that thou art abhorred of thy father; and therefore obliged by thy own interest to prosecute the war with all possible rigour, and to abandon all thoughts of peace; as knowing that his father, though he might dissemble, yet would never forgive so foul and scandalous a crime.  Then shall the hands of all that are with thee be strong; they will fight with greater courage and resolution when they are freed from the fear of thy reconciliation, which otherwise would make their hearts faint and hands slack in thy cause.  But by this we may see the character of Absalom’s party, and how abominably wicked they were, whom such a loathsome and scandalous action tied the faster to him, whom for that very reason they should have deserted and abhorred.  And we may further learn how corrupt and filthy the body of the people was, and how ripe for that severe judgment which is now hastening to them.

Verse 22:[14]  So they spread Absalom a tent upon the top of the house; and Absalom went in unto his father’s concubines (2 Sam. 12:11, 12) in the sight of all Israel.

[On the top]  Hebrew:  upon the roof,[15] namely, of the royal house (Junius, Piscator, thus Vatablus), so that the people might be able to behold the outrage (Piscator).  Roofs there were flat.  See on Deuteronomy 22:8 (Malvenda).

Upon the top of the house, to wit, of the king’s palace, the very place from whence David had spied and gazed upon Bathsheba, 2 Samuel 11:2.  So that his sin was legible in the very place of his punishment.

[And he went in, etc.]  Absalom’s incest was more grievous than that of Amnon; for God sometimes permitted a brother to marry a sister, but never allowed a son to have a step-mother.  By this incest Absalom shows that he did not will, by the killing of Amnon, to remove the crime of incest, because he abhorred it (Martyr).

Unto his father’s concubines, that is, to one or some of them; and by so doing did further make claim to the kingdom as his own; and, as it were, take possession of it; it being usual in the eastern countries to account the wives and concubines of the late king to belong of right to the successor:  see the note on 2 Samuel 12:8.  In the sight of all Israel; who saw him go into the tent, and thence concluded that he lay with them, as he had designed to do.

Verse 23:[16]  And the counsel of Ahithophel, which he counselled in those days, was as if a man had enquired at the oracle (Heb. word[17]) of God:  so was all the counsel of Ahithophel (2 Sam. 15:12) both with David and with Absalom.

[As if one were consulting God]  It is Hyperbole (Menochius).  It is a Comparison, not an Equating.  Now, it is compared with the divine oracles, not in rectitude, but rather, 1.  in the regard with which it was held at that time (Martyr), equal to the responses of God in influence (Vatablus).  2.  In the certainty of the event.  There was in him a certain natural circumspection, whereby h was able to devise apt means for whatever end, and to apply them advantageously (Menochius).  The sense:  Although the crime was of itself dreadful in the judgement of all; yet such was the authority of Ahithophel among all, that he commended the matter to Absalom and the factious Israelites (Malvenda out of Junius).  Or this is added, that he might show in how great a danger David had been (Martyr).

Was as if a man had inquired at the oracle of God; it was received by the people with equal authority and veneration, and was usually attended with as certain success; which is mentioned as the reason why a counsel which had so ill a face, should meet with such general approbation.

[Both with David and with Absalom]  Question:  How did David for so long a time will to make use of the counsel of so wicked a man?  Response:  Ahithophel accommodated himself to present circumstances, concealing his wickedness from the good King, but showing it to the depraved (Procopius in Sanchez).

With David; to whose pious disposition he accommodated himself, as policy obliged him; but being weary of it, he takes this first occasion to discover himself, and execute that wickedness which before lay in his heart.

[1] Hebrew:  ‎וְאַבְשָׁל֗וֹם וְכָל־הָעָם֙ אִ֣ישׁ יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל בָּ֖אוּ יְרוּשָׁלִָ֑ם וַאֲחִיתֹ֖פֶל אִתּֽוֹ׃

[2] Hebrew: וַיְהִ֗י כַּֽאֲשֶׁר־בָּ֞א חוּשַׁ֧י הָאַרְכִּ֛י רֵעֶ֥ה דָוִ֖ד אֶל־אַבְשָׁל֑וֹם וַיֹּ֤אמֶר חוּשַׁי֙ אֶל־אַבְשָׁלֹ֔ם יְחִ֥י הַמֶּ֖לֶךְ יְחִ֥י הַמֶּֽלֶךְ׃

[3] Hebrew:  ‎יְחִ֥י הַמֶּ֖לֶךְ.

[4] Hebrew:  ‎וַיֹּ֤אמֶר אַבְשָׁלוֹם֙ אֶל־חוּשַׁ֔י זֶ֥ה חַסְדְּךָ֖ אֶת־רֵעֶ֑ךָ לָ֥מָּה לֹֽא־הָלַ֖כְתָּ אֶת־רֵעֶֽךָ׃

[5] Hebrew: ‎וַיֹּ֣אמֶר חוּשַׁי֘ אֶל־אַבְשָׁלֹם֒ לֹ֕א כִּי֩ אֲשֶׁ֙ר בָּחַ֧ר יְהוָ֛ה וְהָעָ֥ם הַזֶּ֖ה וְכָל־אִ֣ישׁ יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל לֹ֥א אֶהְיֶ֖ה וְאִתּ֥וֹ אֵשֵֽׁב׃

[6] The Qere.

[7] Hebrew:  ‎וְהַשֵּׁנִ֗ית לְמִי֙ אֲנִ֣י אֶֽעֱבֹ֔ד הֲל֖וֹא לִפְנֵ֣י בְנ֑וֹ כַּאֲשֶׁ֤ר עָבַ֙דְתִּי֙ לִפְנֵ֣י אָבִ֔יךָ כֵּ֖ן אֶהְיֶ֥ה לְפָנֶֽיךָ׃ פ

[8] Hebrew:  ‎אֶהְיֶ֥ה לְפָנֶֽיךָ׃.

[9] Hebrew:  ‎וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אַבְשָׁל֖וֹם אֶל־אֲחִיתֹ֑פֶל הָב֥וּ לָכֶ֛ם עֵצָ֖ה מַֽה־נַּעֲשֶֽׂה׃

[10] Hebrew: ‎וַיֹּ֤אמֶר אֲחִיתֹ֙פֶל֙ אֶל־אַבְשָׁלֹ֔ם בּ֚וֹא אֶל־פִּלַגְשֵׁ֣י אָבִ֔יךָ אֲשֶׁ֥ר הִנִּ֖יחַ לִשְׁמ֣וֹר הַבָּ֑יִת וְשָׁמַ֤ע כָּל־יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ כִּֽי־נִבְאַ֣שְׁתָּ אֶת־אָבִ֔יךָ וְחָ֣זְק֔וּ יְדֵ֖י כָּל־אֲשֶׁ֥ר אִתָּֽךְ׃

[11] Artabanes (flourished 538-554) was an Armenian General of the Eastern Roman Empire.  In 538, he participated in a revolt against Byzantium, defecting to the Sasanian (Persian) Empire.  Artabanes deserted again (c. 543) , returning to his earlier allegiance to Byzantium.

[12] Genesis 49:3, 4.

[13] In Greek mythology, Phœnix, King of the Dolopians, and tutor and companion of Achilles, was in his youth forced to flee from his father, King Amyntor, after lying with his father’s concubine.

[14] Hebrew:  ‎וַיַּטּ֧וּ לְאַבְשָׁל֛וֹם הָאֹ֖הֶל עַל־הַגָּ֑ג וַיָּבֹ֤א אַבְשָׁלוֹם֙ אֶל־פִּֽלַגְשֵׁ֣י אָבִ֔יו לְעֵינֵ֖י כָּל־יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

[15] Hebrew:  ‎עַל־הַגָּג.

[16] Hebrew: וַעֲצַ֣ת אֲחִיתֹ֗פֶל אֲשֶׁ֤ר יָעַץ֙ בַּיָּמִ֣ים הָהֵ֔ם כַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר יִשְׁאַל־ בִּדְבַ֣ר הָאֱלֹהִ֑ים כֵּ֚ן כָּל־עֲצַ֣ת אֲחִיתֹ֔פֶל גַּם־לְדָוִ֖ד גַּ֥ם לְאַבְשָׁלֹֽם׃ ס

[17] Hebrew:  ‎בִּדְבַר.