Well, I guess no one told the people who choose our readings that I just got married, because these are not the sort of texts you should have to think about on the second half of your honeymoon. I’m talking, of course, especially about our Old Testament passage, where David’s son Absalom gets caught by his hair in a tree and is left there dangling between earth and heaven. Andrew suggested I use it as a metaphor for marriage, but I didn’t think that would be a good idea - at least not yet.
At any rate, whether or not it fits the occasion - and I’d like to think not - this is too good a story to pass over.
The Old Testament story of David and Absalom is one of those stories you probably know about even if you haven’t read it in the Bible: a classic story about the conflicts between fathers, sons, and brothers, it has made its way into literature, poetry, even pop music over the centuries since it was written. Absalom, whose name means “Father of Peace” (an ironic name, as we’ll soon see), was King David’s third son, and third in line for succession to the throne - or actually, the second, since at some point in the narrative the second son mysteriously disappears. The oldest son Amnon soon jeopardizes his claim to the throne when he rapes their sister Tamar - in fact, loses that claim, because the angry Absalom invites all his brothers over for a lavish banquet at his home where, in a perversion of hospitality, he slaughters Amnon.
As (now) next in line to David’s throne, Absalom may well have become king had he just had the patience to wait. But he doesn’t. After a brief banishment from Jerusalem, he returns, fakes a reconciliation with his father David (and I’ll say more about David’s role in this in a minute), and then tries to usurp his father’s throne by seizing the nearby town of Hebron in exact imitation of his father (and a fascinating story in its own right).
So it’s not hard to see why his name “Father of Peace” is such a misnomer. In fact, he’s very much at the center of the downward spiral of David’s family into violence and bloodshed.
Aside from being violent, Absalom’s other downfall is his vanity. His Father David, as you might recall from previous weeks, was ruddy and handsome, traits that get passed on to Absalom, for better or worse. The Bible says of him: “In all Israel there is none to be praised as Absalom for his beauty: from the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him.” I rather like how the poet Dryden described him many centuries later: “And paradise was opened in his face.”
His vanity not only stems from his physical beauty, but his imposing stature, as well. According to an old rabbinic tradition, Absalom was so large you could fit a full-grown man in the cavity of his nose (don’t ask me who came up with that one!). His beauty and heft probably inspire Absalom at one point to erect a cairn-like monument to himself to honor his greatness.
All of which gives some helpful background on today’s passage, and particularly his strange manner of death. Today’s story lands us right in the final battle between David and Absalom, the Battle of the Ephraim Woods. As Absalom rides along on his mule through the Forest of Ephraim, he is ensnared in an oak tree by his long thick tresses, turning his beauty, of which he’s so proud, into the thing that destroys him. As he’s hanging there, the story describes him as being “caught between heaven and earth,” a fitting punishment for someone who strove after too much and couldn’t be content with what he had.
Further, his donkey, which in the Bible was a symbol of his kingship and rank (think of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on the donkey), moves right on from beneath him, just like the kingdom itself. (I heard this described more mundanely as a lesson in the way the world moves without us, even as we thought ourselves so important in and in control of it.) And finally - though they discreetly removed this part from our reading today - David’s general Joab and all his men kill Absalom as he’s hanging there, throw him in a pit and bury him beneath a heap of rocks, mocking the monument of rocks he had built for himself so many years earlier.
This story and manner of death is clearly meant as a cautionary tale about the consequences of vanity and wanting too much. It’s also a lesson in respecting those who come before, and, with that, recognizing that the wheel of generations turns at its own pace, not ours.
But the most powerful part of this story to me lies not so much in Absalom’s actions, but in King David’s response to them. We didn’t see this so much because we haven’t read the whole story, but David was enamored of Absalom, and even as Absalom causes him so much grief, he demands that the boy Absalom not be hurt (“Deal gently for my sake with the boy Absalom,” he says several times). Then, when he learns Absalom has been killed, David responds not by composing a Psalm, like he did when his friend Jonathan and Saul dies; not by performing a prescribed ritual in the temple, like he does when one of his infant sons dies; this time, he just breaks down and talks gibberish - an unmistakably genuine, unscripted expression of grief.
David was a proto-Christ to the early Christians - in fact, Jesus came from the line of David - and here we really see why they understood him in that way. This David calls to mind the Jesus who told stories about prodigal sons and lost sheep, or who himself loved his wayward disciples even after they turned on him; who loved the masses even as they cried out for his death.
This grace we see in the older King David becomes the backbone of the Christian tradition, reminding us not only of the kind of love God has for us, but of the self-giving, even irrational love we ought to show others, as well - starting with our own sons, brothers, fathers, daughters. Even (very well) our spouses.
