Commentary - 2 Samuel 14:1-20

Bird's-eye view

In this chapter, we see the consequences of a leadership vacuum. David, the king, is paralyzed by his own grief and internal conflict. He is a father who loves his son, but he is also a king who has failed to execute justice for the murder of his other son. This inaction creates a problem for the realm, and Joab, ever the pragmatist, decides to solve it. His method is pure political theater, a shrewd manipulation designed to give the king permission to do what his heart already wants to do, which is to bring Absalom home. The entire episode is a master class in worldly wisdom, and it sets the stage for a reconciliation that is built on sentiment, not on righteousness. This is the kind of peace that is no peace at all, and it will inevitably lead to civil war. This is what happens when mercy is divorced from justice.

Outline

Commentary

1 Now Joab the son of Zeruiah knew that the king’s heart was inclined toward Absalom.

Joab is a shrewd operator. He is not a prophet, nor is he a priest. He is a general, and he thinks in terms of political stability and military readiness. He looks at David and sees a king who is compromised, moping around the palace, stuck between his affection for his murderous son and his duty to the law of God. This is a weakness, and a weak king is a danger to the kingdom. Joab doesn't see a spiritual problem requiring repentance; he sees a political problem requiring a solution. He correctly reads the king's heart. David wants Absalom back. He just needs a plausible excuse to override his conscience and the law. Joab is about to provide him with one.

2-3 So Joab sent to Tekoa and brought a wise woman from there and said to her, “Please pretend to be a mourner, and put on mourning garments now, and do not anoint yourself with oil, but be like a woman who has been mourning for the dead many days; then you shall go to the king and speak to him in this manner.” So Joab put the words in her mouth.

This is a calculated deception from start to finish. Joab doesn't seek counsel from the Lord. He hires an actress. He finds a "wise woman," which means she is clever, articulate, and persuasive. He gives her a costume, a backstory, and a script. The entire encounter is manufactured. Notice the detail: "Joab put the words in her mouth." This is not the Spirit giving utterance; this is a political handler prepping his mouthpiece. The goal is not to reveal truth, but to manipulate emotion in order to achieve a desired political outcome.

4-7 So the woman of Tekoa spoke to the king, and she fell on her face to the ground and prostrated herself and said, “Save, O king.” And the king said to her, “What is your trouble?” And she answered, “Truly I am a widow; my husband has died. And your servant-woman had two sons, but the two of them struggled together in the field, and there was no one to deliver between them, so one struck the other and put him to death. And behold, the whole family has risen against your servant-woman, and they say, ‘Hand over the one who struck his brother, that we may put him to death for the life of his brother whom he killed, and destroy the heir also.’ Thus they will extinguish my coal which remains, so as to leave my husband neither name nor remnant on the face of the earth.”

The performance begins. She presents a case that is engineered to press every one of David's buttons. She is a widow, so she is vulnerable. She had two sons, just as David in this conflict has two sons at the center, Amnon and Absalom. One has killed the other. And now, the family, the clan, is demanding justice according to the law of the blood avenger. But she frames their demand for justice as a threat. They want to "destroy the heir also." Her final plea is pure poetry and emotional dynamite: "Thus they will extinguish my coal which remains." She is asking David to see this not as a matter of law, but as a matter of preserving a family line from extinction. It is a brilliant story, and every word is a lie.

8-11 Then the king said to the woman, “Go to your house, and I will give a command concerning you.” And the woman of Tekoa said to the king, “O my lord, the king, the iniquity is on me and my father’s house, but the king and his throne are guiltless.” So the king said, “Whoever speaks to you, bring him to me, and he will not touch you anymore.” Then she said, “Please let the king remember Yahweh your God, so that the avenger of blood will not continue to bring about ruin, so that they would not destroy my son.” And he said, “As Yahweh lives, not one hair of your son shall fall to the ground.”

David takes the bait completely. He immediately offers to intervene and issue a royal pardon, setting aside the law of God concerning murder. The woman, following Joab's script, is not satisfied. She presses him. She makes a show of taking any potential guilt upon herself, which only makes David more resolute. She then shrewdly invokes the name of "Yahweh your God," forcing David to make his decree an oath. And he does. "As Yahweh lives..." David has now made a solemn, unbreakable oath to protect a fictional murderer from a just punishment, all because his sentimental heart was masterfully played.

12-14 Then the woman said, “Please let your servant-woman speak a word to my lord the king.” And he said, “Speak.” Then the woman said, “Why then have you thought up such a thing against the people of God? For in speaking this word the king is as one who is guilty, in that the king does not bring back his banished one. 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 thinks up ways so that the banished one will not be cast out from him.”

Here is the spring of the trap. The application. She takes David's own words, his own judgment, and turns it back on him. If he is willing to show such mercy to her son, why is he withholding it from his own? She accuses him of being "as one who is guilty" for his inaction. And then she delivers the theological punchline, a beautiful truth used in service of a lie. It is true that God "thinks up ways so that the banished one will not be cast out from him." This is the heart of the gospel. God in His mercy devises the plan of redemption to bring His exiled people home. But how does He do it? He does it by satisfying justice completely through the substitutionary death of His Son. God does not simply say, "Let's forget the whole thing." He pours out His wrath on a substitute. What Joab and the woman are proposing is a reconciliation where justice is ignored. They are offering a gospel without a cross, which is no gospel at all.

15-17 So now, the reason I have come to speak this word to my lord the king is that the people have made me afraid; so your servant-woman said, ‘Let me now speak to the king, perhaps the king will perform the word of his maidservant. For the king will listen and deliver his maidservant from the hand of the man who would destroy both me and my son from the inheritance of God.’ Then your servant-woman said, ‘Please let the word of my lord the king be a resting place, for as the angel of God, so is my lord the king to listen with discernment through the good and evil. And may Yahweh your God be with you.’

Having made her point, she immediately pivots to flattery. This is how you manage a king you have just cornered. You praise his wisdom and discernment. "as the angel of God, so is my lord the king." It is an appeal to his ego, designed to soothe any sting from her rebuke and make him feel that acquiescing to her request is the wise and magnanimous thing to do. She is giving him a golden bridge to retreat across.

18-20 Then the king answered and said to the woman, “Please do not hide anything from me that I am about to ask you.” And the woman said, “Let my lord the king please speak.” So the king said, “Is the hand of Joab with you in all this?” And the woman answered and said, “As your soul lives, my lord the king, no one can turn to the right or to the left from anything that my lord the king has spoken. Indeed, it was your servant Joab who commanded me, and it was he who put all these words in the mouth of your servant-woman; in order to change the appearance of things your servant Joab has done this thing. But my lord is wise, like the wisdom of the angel of God, to know all that is in the earth.”

David is not a fool. The performance was good, but the application was a little too perfect, a little too tailored to his specific situation. He smells a rat, and the rat's name is Joab. When confronted, the woman confesses immediately. And notice how she confesses, with more flattery. She praises the king's inescapable wisdom. She admits the whole thing was a setup by Joab "in order to change the appearance of things." This is the language of spin, of public relations. They were not seeking to change the reality of the situation, Absalom was still an unrepentant murderer, but rather to change the optics so that David could bring him home without losing face. And David, tragically, goes along with it.

Application

This entire narrative is a warning against the tyranny of sentimentality. David's heart was in the right place in one sense; he loved his son. But a father's love, or a king's love, when it is not governed by the law of God, becomes a destructive force. David wanted peace with his son, but he was unwilling to pursue it through the difficult path of justice and repentance.

Joab offered him a shortcut, a way to get the feeling of reconciliation without the substance of it. This is a temptation we all face. We want to smooth things over in our families, in our churches, and in our nation without dealing with the underlying sin. We are offered counterfeit gospels that promise mercy without repentance, and forgiveness without the satisfaction of justice. This is the gospel of cheap grace.

The true gospel is that God, in His infinite wisdom, devised a way to bring His banished ones home. That way was the cross of Jesus Christ, where His perfect justice was fully satisfied and His boundless mercy was fully released. Any attempt at reconciliation that tries to bypass the cross, that tries to sweep sin under the rug, is a worldly scheme like Joab's. It may change the appearance of things for a short time, but it will end in ruin, just as David's sentimental decision here led directly to the bloody rebellion of Absalom.