1-2 Samuel Week Forty-Two: 2 Samuel 13:23-39

²³ Now it came about after two full years that Absalom had sheepshearers in Baal-hazor, which is near Ephraim, and Absalom invited all the king’s sons.

²⁴ Absalom came to the king and said, “Behold now, your servant has sheepshearers; please let the king and his servants go with your servant.” ²⁵ But the king said to Absalom, “No, my son, we should not all go, for we will be burdensome to you.” Although he urged him, he would not go, but blessed him. ²⁶ Then Absalom said, “If not, please let my brother Amnon go with us.” And the king said to him, “Why should he go with you?” ²⁷ But when Absalom urged him, he let Amnon and all the king’s sons go with him.

²⁸ Absalom commanded his servants, saying, “See now, when Amnon’s heart is merry with wine, and when I say to you, ‘Strike Amnon,’ then put him to death. Do not fear; have not I myself commanded you? Be courageous and be valiant.” ²⁹ The servants of Absalom did to Amnon just as Absalom had commanded. Then all the king’s sons arose and each mounted his mule and fled.

³⁰ Now it was while they were on the way that the report came to David, saying, “Absalom has struck down all the king’s sons, and not one of them is left.” ³¹ Then the king arose, tore his clothes and lay on the ground; and all his servants were standing by with clothes torn. ³² Jonadab, the son of Shimeah, David’s brother, responded, “Do not let my lord suppose they have put to death all the young men, the king’s sons, for Amnon alone is dead; because by the intent of Absalom this has been determined since the day that he violated his sister Tamar. ³³ Now therefore, do not let my lord the king take the report to heart, namely, ‘all the king’s sons are dead,’ for only Amnon is dead.”

³⁴ Now Absalom had fled. And the young man who was the watchman raised his eyes and looked, and behold, many people were coming from the road behind him by the side of the mountain. ³⁵ Jonadab said to the king, “Behold, the king’s sons have come; according to your servant’s word, so it happened.” ³⁶ As soon as he had finished speaking, behold, the king’s sons came and lifted their voices and wept; and also the king and all his servants wept very bitterly.

³⁷ Now Absalom fled and went to Talmai the son of Ammihud, the king of Geshur. And David mourned for his son every day. ³⁸ So Absalom had fled and gone to Geshur, and was there three years. ³⁹ The heart of King David longed to go out to Absalom; for he was comforted concerning Amnon, since he was dead.

—2 Samuel 13:23-39

Sermon Outline

1. First Missed Opportunity of Fatherhood: Lack of

2. Second Missed Opportunity of Fatherhood: Failure to Create a Safe Environment to

3. Third Missed Opportunity of Fatherhood: Was Missing! Was Far!

References

Weekly Study Guide

In any good drama, there is always a plot twist. When things seem to be flowing along swimmingly, an unexpected complication presents itself. Good stories always present surprise barriers that need to be overcome: a question that has no answer, a problem with no solution, or an obstacle that is impossible to traverse. Out of the blue, when the stakes are the highest, the hero comes across a watershed moment that changes everything. In observing Israel’s journey of watching and waiting for God’s promises to Abraham and David to be fulfilled, we also encounter such a challenge—one that seems insurmountable. But before we see what that plot twist is, let’s set the stage with a little background.

In a sense, we could argue that the Davidic Covenant is the high point of 1^st & 2^nd Samuel—and really, one of the high points of the entire Old Testament. In this covenant, the picture of the coming Messiah and the Kingdom He will establish really begins to come into focus. The Davidic Covenant previews the establishment of God’s reign on earth and foreshadows what the promised Kingdom will look like. In our quest to better understand the big picture, we’ve discussed how the entire scope of salvation history can be seen as a recovery of what was lost in the Fall. In simple terms, history can rightly be described as “the coming of God’s Kingdom.” That really is the story arc of all of history.

We see that in the beginning, God had established His Kingdom on earth in the Garden of Eden. This was step one. God was ruling Adam and Eve, and, as theocratic administrators, Adam and Eve were ruling all of creation on God’s behalf. However, this Kingdom imploded at the Fall and was temporarily lost to the world. The journey from the Fall, all the way until the Second Coming of Christ, is simply the journey of restoring that Kingdom. God gave previews of what the coming Kingdom would look like through the good kings of Israel. The prophets also foretold of a coming Messiah who would establish this Kingdom ruling on David’s throne. The theme of “Kingdom” is the most prominent theme throughout scripture.

When the people of Israel thought of “Messiah”, they thought of “Kingdom”. The two ideas were inseparable. That was the foundation of their hope; that their Messiah would bring a time of blessedness, peace, and rest that God had intended for them all along. So, when Jesus arrived, the promise of the Kingdom arrived as well. What did Jesus say in Mark 1:15: “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”? Jesus was saying that it was available to them if they would only repent. But this offer of the Kingdom was rejected as Israel rejected her Messiah. So, the long-awaited Kingdom was now postponed until the Second Coming—when Israel will, indeed, repent and accept Jesus as Messiah.

One way we can get a sense of the importance of this Davidic Covenant is by looking at how the New Testament begins. After hundreds and hundreds of years when there were no prophets sent by God—when the people of God might surely have felt abandoned—God finally speaks again. And how does God choose to begin this new and long-awaited season of revelation? He does it by rehearsing a genealogy—a very important genealogy that links Messiah Jesus back to David and back to Abraham. The New Testament actually begins by highlighting the promises of the Davidic Covenant. This use of genealogies is the Bible’s way of saying “Jesus is the Davidic King you’ve been waiting for.” He is the Messiah.

Why is it so noteworthy that the New Testament begins with a genealogy? It’s because this is the mechanism that ties Jesus, as the promised Messiah, back to that original promise God made to Abraham. This is the proof the people would have needed for them to understand that Jesus had the credentials to support His messianic claims. God had told Abraham that from his “seed” would come a very special seed. This particular seed would be the one through whom blessings would be poured out on the world (Gal 3:16). As we fast-forward from Abraham to the time of David, God clarifies which particular descendant of Abraham would carry on this line. It will be through David’s lineage. So, from then on, God’s people were looking for a descendant of David to be their promised Messiah. Thus, both Matthew and Luke begin with genealogies—both tying Jesus back to David. The very first requirement of anyone claiming to be the Messiah is to have the lineage connecting them to David and to Abraham. This is why these genealogies are so crucial.

An interesting twist comes in, though, when we discover that these two genealogies are not the same. As a side note, whenever we come across something peculiar like this in scripture, we should rejoice. It is an opportunity for us to do some digging, to uncover some truth that the Holy Spirit can reveal to us, if we’re willing to put in the work.

How many of us just skip over the genealogies when reading through the Bible? Who would have thought that these seemingly innocuous lists of names contain a riddle that, when deciphered, give us a glimpse into the sovereignty of God that is fairly astounding? When comparing the genealogies in Matthew and Luke, we notice that, after David, the lineage clearly diverges and takes different paths. These are both supposedly genealogies of the line of Messiah—how is it possible that they are different? What is going on here? The answer to those questions, and the key to deciphering this mystery, points us back to the time of the deportation and exile of Israel when Jeconiah—a king of Judah who only reigned for three months—was declared to be so wicked that God cursed his entire family tree.

In the Davidic Covenant, God had promised that David’s line would be the royal line, and that the throne of David would last forever. When we are reading in scripture about the split of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah after Solomon’s death, we notice that it is the Southern Kingdom that carries on David’s line. Thus, the kings up north in the Northern Kingdom are all illegitimate. It’s the kingly line in the south that really matters. Consequently, the story of Israel’s history focuses on the kings of the Southern Kingdom. The history of the Northern Kingdom is included only as it touches on the true kingly line in the south.

So, the line of Davidic kings flows through David’s son Solomon, and down to his son Rehoboam. We follow this line all the way down to the time of the deportation of the Jews to Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar, where the Davidic line temporarily stops. There were 19 kings in the Southern Kingdom—some good and others bad. But regardless of whether or not they honored God in their reigns, they were in the line of Davidic kings. Thus, they were in the line of the coming Messiah. That is, until we come to a king that was so evil that God cursed all of his descendants. This king was Jeconiah, also called Coniah or Jehoichin. We see his actual bloodline cursed in Jeremiah 22 where God says, “Count this man childless … No man of his descendants shall prosper sitting on the throne of Judah” (Jer 22:24-30). This occurred right at the end of the history of the Southern Kingdom. The wicked Northern Kingdom had already been judged and scattered in 722 B.C. But the Southern Kingdom had been going downhill for a long while and, in 605 B.C., the time for judgment had come for them as well.

On the surface, this curse on Jeconiah’s line posed an insurmountable problem for God; this was the shocking plot twist mentioned earlier. The problem was that this was the royal line descending from David and according to God’s promise to David, the Messiah had to come from this line. You could imagine that there was rejoicing in the councils of Satan upon hearing of this curse. Satan would have thought he had finally won. God had just cursed the line from which He promised Messiah must come. The question then was: how would God get around His own blood curse and provide a Messiah through the line of David? Not surprisingly, it actually took a miracle.

In 2 Sam 7:13, God had promised David that his throne would never end. With this blood curse though, God’s promise seemed to be in jeopardy. The Messiah, after all, could not come from a cursed line. So what was God to do? The answer is revealed to us in these genealogies. In the genealogy Matthew includes in chapter one, he traces the royal line down from Abraham, through David and his son Solomon, all the way through Jeconiah and his descendants, finishing up the genealogy with Joseph, the husband of Mary. This genealogy ties Jesus (through legal adoption by Joseph) to the royal line of David. Jesus is thus the legal descendant of David, but He does not carry the bloodline (or curse) of Jeconiah. Even though there was a blood curse on the descendants of Jeconiah, the legal right to the throne still belonged to them. The key thing to notice is that through this genealogy it is clear that no blood descendant of Jeconiah ever sat on the throne, since Jesus is not Joseph’s actual son—only his adopted son. Thus, through this particular genealogy, we see that Jesus is the legal heir to David’s throne.

But what of the bloodline? If Jesus did not share the bloodline of David, would He still be the legitimate heir to the throne? The Messiah, after all, had to have the legal right to the throne, and had to be a blood descendant of David. To address this, what does God do? He gives us another genealogy in the book of Luke. In this genealogy, the line of Jesus is traced back to David, but not through David’s son Solomon as Matthew’s genealogy does—rather, through another of David’s sons, Nathan. Instead of starting with the ancient ancestor and working forward, Luke begins with Jesus and traces backward, following not Joseph’s line, but Mary’s line, and he follows it back to David, then through Abraham, going all the way back to the beginning with Adam. God demonstrates through this genealogy in Luke that Jesus does, in fact, share the bloodline of David—but he shares it through his mother, Mary, who does share a blood relation with Jesus and who was under no curse. This miraculous, divine solution to this seemingly insurmountable problem bypasses, while still honoring, the blood curse He placed on Jeconiah. And it is the virgin birth that makes this possible.

The genealogies in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 reveal that Jesus Christ is a physical descendant of David. This was the fulfillment of the seed aspect of the Abrahamic Covenant and is the initial fulfillment of the Davidic Covenant. At the fullness of time, and in fulfillment of prophecy, the angel Gabriel announced Christ’s birth, declaring that God would give Jesus the throne of His ancestor, David; that He would reign over the house of Jacob forever; and that His kingdom would never end (Luke 1:31–33). This language cannot be mistaken. It points directly back to the Davidic Covenant. In Acts 2:30, Peter declared that God had sworn with an oath to David, that from the fruit of his loins, God would raise up a Messiah to sit on his throne. In Isaiah 9:7, we see a prophecy of the coming Messiah:

For a Child will be born to us, a Son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace. On the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of armies will accomplish this.

Scripture points us time and time again to this connection between Jesus and David. Jesus is the fulfillment of the seed promise to Abraham and is the promised Davidic King that will rule and reign over the world forever.

So, we see that, in two different ways, Jesus is related to David and thus qualified to sit on David’s throne. He is entitled to the throne both by blood and by legal title. This could only have been accomplished by the miraculous virgin birth—where the Messiah had no earthly father to pass the bloodline (or blood curse) through. These surprising genealogies reveal a God who is unquestionably sovereign. If you’re looking, you can see the fingerprint of the Holy Spirit in the most unlikely of places.

Discussion Questions

1. Where have you seen the truism play out: “You reap what you sow”?

2. Sheep shearing was a festive time when families would celebrate together how God provided for them. So it is natural that Absalom would invite David and Amnon. What various elements of Absalom’s scheme do you see revealed here? How is David partially responsible here, as he was with the defilement of Tamar? What direct parallels do you see in this chapter with David’s interaction with Uriah? How is God’s promise in 2 Samuel 12:10 being fulfilled?

3. What does this passage reveal about David’s relationship with Absalom? Why do you think David did not react with disbelief upon hearing the news that Absalom had killed all his siblings? Do you think he thought Absalom capable of such a thing? Why or why not? What was Jonadab’s role in the episode with Amnon, and in the episode here with David? What kind of man do you think Jonadab was? Allusions to God are conspicuously absent from this chapter. What can we learn about God from this story—perhaps in contrast to how David handled things?

4. Why do you think some people outside the church might see Absalom’s actions as justified? How would you explain to someone who did not know God the reasons why taking vengeance ourselves is wrong? How can we explain trusting a God who is sovereign to someone who does not believe in God? What kinds of conversations have you had with non-believers regarding standards of right and wrong?

5. How can you relate to this story? Are you alienated from your children or parents? Are you having trouble forgiving someone? Are you holding grudges that you can’t seem to let go of? Do you feel responsible for the mistakes your children are making? Are you having trouble dealing with the path your children are choosing? Take some time to think through what your spirit is longing for. What is one thing you would like to turn over to God and trust Him to take care of?

Going Deeper

1. How do you think things would have played out differently if David had dealt with Amnon’s offense properly? What should David have done differently, and what biblical options were available to him? What could Absalom have done differently in this situation? How would you characterize David’s weaknesses, when it came to dealing with his children?

2. Take some time to read through some of the passages in scripture that touch on the issues of this chapter and discuss how they reveal God’s heart (Ex 20:3; Lev 18:9; Deut 27:22; Ex 22:16-17; Col 3:5; Gal 5:16; Matt 5:28).

Transformational Activity

Bible Study

One aspect of our Bible Study that can be really enriching is to do a deep dive into significant topics. One theme that comes up quite often in scripture is the idea of vengeance, holding grudges, and forgiveness. What does the bible actually teach about forgiveness? We can sometimes assume that we have a good handle on such things. Perhaps take some time this week and do a simple search on “what does the Bible say about forgiveness” and see what you discover. Come back next week and share what you learned, and whether there were any surprises.