British Weekly Pulpit, ii. 319.
Churchman's Pulpit : Sixth Sunday after Trinity, x. 370 (Clark).
Homiletic Review, xxxi. 479.
An Exceeding Bitter Cry.
And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept : and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom I would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son 1—2 Sam. xviii. 33.
1. The story of Absalom's rebellion is one of the most exciting dramas in the Bible, and one of the guiltiest and saddest tragedies in human history. It is given to us in some of the most powerful word-pictures that have ever been painted. Clear, strong, and lifelike do the leading figures stand out. Absalom, with his stately form and flowing hair, his pride and courage, his sleek beauty and the cruel, tiger heart beneath it ; Joab, the grim soldier, the man of blood and iron, to whom tears are weakness and pity unknown, who crushes his enemies with as little mercy and compunction as he would trample on a snake; and David, seen here at his best, recoiling from the unfeeling instrument which he is compelled to use, hardly caring for the throne which he must win back at such a price of blood, weary of life's ambitions and awful agonies, willing to resign even life itself if he might win back an erring child, and falling down broken- hearted in his lonely chamber while all Jerusalem is ringing with wild rejoicings over his victory. Is there a scene in human story more pathetic ? Throne and people, rebel and traitor, battle and trumpet, all are forgotten in the father's pity for his boy. " O Absalom, my son, my son ! "
2. So David mourned for Absalom, and somehow none of us
wish to find fault with him. Is that because it happened so very
long ago and matters nothing to us ? For men found fault with
David at the time ; at least Joab did, and very sensibly too, for
the people were as dejected as if they were a beaten army
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350 AN EXCEEDING BITTER CRY
stealing home after battle, and yet this Absalom for whom the king made such a lamentation was one (says Joab) who, had he won, would now have been massacring the king's sons and daughters and wives and loyal servants. And what a life, too, he had led all along! First he had murdered his own brother under the pledge of hospitality (no doubt in vengeance for a bitter wrong) ; he had turned traitor to his own father, and that by advantage of that father's forgiveness. Now he was dead, and the world well rid of him, and honest folk might have their own again and sleep in peace. What folly to bemoan such an one; what weak, and, in a king, what culpable indulgence in the luxury of idle grief ! But somehow we to-day forgive David for it, or if we think Joab's remonstrance sensible, we forgive at any rate that first outburst in the chamber over the gate. Yet what was Absalom to deserve it ? For in truth there is only one good thing we can discover to say of Absalom : and that one good thing we learn from David's outburst. It is that once he had had David's love, and such a love as could cry, " Would God I had died for thee."
3. The dead son's faults are all forgotten and obliterated by death's "effacing fingers." The headstrong, thankless rebel is, in David's mind, a child again, and the happy old days of his innocence and love are all that remain in memory. The prodigal is still a son. The father's love is immortal and cannot be turned away by any faults. The father is willing to die for the dis- obedient child. Such purity and depth of affection lives in human hearts. So self-forgetting and incapable of being provoked is an earthly father's love. May we not see in this disclosure of David's paternal love, stripping it of its faults and excesses, some dim shadow of the greater love of God for His prodigals — a love which cannot be dammed back or turned away by any sin, and which has found a way to fulfil David's impossible wish, in that it has given Jesus Christ to die for His rebellious children, and so made them sharers of His own Kingdom ?
Is it so far from thee Thou canst no longer see, In the Chamber over the Gate, That old man desolate.
2 SAMUEL xvm. 33 351
Weeping and wailing sore, For his son, who is no more? 0 Absalom, my son!
Is it so long ago That cry of human woe From the walled city came Calling on his dear name. That it has died away In the distance of to-day? 0 Absalom, my son!
There is no far or near, There is neither there nor here, There is neither soon nor late, In that Chamber over the Gate, Nor any long ago To that cry of human woe, 0 Absalom, my son!
For the ages that are past The voice sounds like a blast Over seas that wreck and drown. Over tumult of traffic and town; And from ages yet to be Come the echoes back to me, 0 Absalom, my son!