“There. Over there.” David pointed to the higher hill north of them, where shadows struck strongly eastward. “On Moriah. Look: the next king should fill this ravine with stone and earth, and smooth a path from here to there, from hill to hill, so the Lord might dwell inside the City of David!” He grinned. He had just, for the first time since he had conceived it, spoken his dream out loud. “What do you think?” he said. Absalom stood up and walked to the northern side of the roof. He looked a while at the higher hill. Then he went to the western side and looked down into the streets of the city. “A king’s view,” he said.
David rose and joined him. “What did you say?”
“So this is what the king sees when he bends his gaze to the lives of his people below.”
“Yes. It causes both pity and affection. It causes me to pray.”
“Can the king also recognize loneliness from here? Can the king also pierce to the hearts of the children and discern when they suffer various kinds of isolations?”
Before David could answer, Absalom began to hum a low tune. Then he put words to it: “O God, the waters are up to my neck. Remember that?” he said. And he sang in a strong, melodious voice:
O God, the waters are up to my neck;
I sink in mire; there is no foothold.
I am tired with crying, my throat is broken,
my eyes are thick with waiting for my God—
“Remember that?” Absalom asked. “Do you remember singing that?”
Somewhat subdued, David answered, “Yes. I didn’t know anyone heard me then.”
“Heard you, sir, and memorized the smart lash of your language, too.”
Absalom continued to sing:
Those that hate me without cause
are more than the hairs on my head;
they attack me with lies, saying I’ve stolen,
saying I’ve stolen and must restore—
Absalom, looking down from the palace roof toward the western gate of the city, said, “Did it ever occur to the king that his sorrows might be suffered by others as well, even to the same degree of poetry?”
“Yes. Often.” A piece of the sun had stuck on the western horizon. The city below was sinking in shadows. Both men peered into the shadows.
“Once I waved while you leaned down and looked from the rooftop. Do you remember that I waved to you?”
David stood beside his son and said nothing.
“My sister lives as a widow,” Absalom said. “She has worn the widow’s weeds for eleven years now.”
David murmured, “Tamar.”
“Yes, sir. Tamar, the only daughter of Maacah, my mother.”
“And mine, Absalom. My daughter, too.”
Abruptly Absalom straightened and squared his shoulders and said, “Sir, I beg leave to go to Hebron. I vowed a vow to the Lord when I was in Geshur, that if the Lord would bring me back to Jerusalem, I would worship him in Hebron too.”
“Yes,” David said, “Go.”
Absalom turned to face his father. “It is my hope that I might take two hundred men with me as invited guests for the sacrifices I intend to offer.”
David kept looking down into the dark city. Softly he said, “Go in peace.”
Absalom put forth the finger of his right hand and touched the gold ring around his father’s head. Then he bowed low with a formal decorum. He turned on his heel, strode to the stone stairs, and descended.
David did not move.
Early next morning the king watched as his son rode a rich chariot out of Jerusalem, preceded by fifty men and followed by two hundred.
IN THE MONTHS that followed, rumors reached Jerusalem from many parts of the kingdom, but especially from Judah: “Absalom has been declared king in Hebron.”
“Elders of the twelve tribes are blowing the horn of war and crying, Absalom is king at Hebron!”
“Ahithophel the Gilonite, King David’s ancient counselor, has joined Absalom in Hebron.”
“Rebellion! The people with Absalom are daily increasing.”
Then this: “The hearts of the men of Israel have gone after Absalom!” Everywhere tribes were declaring their separation from David.
And finally: “O King, Amasa is leading the militia of Israel down from the north! Absalom is marching up from the south with Ahithophel!”
“Arise,” said David. He tied his clothing close to his person and sent swift messengers through the city, to every officer and counselor: “Let’s flee now, before our escape is cut off!”
So the king went out of Jerusalem with all his household and those who were loyal, with Joab, Aishai, Benaiah, and the six hundred men of his standing army. He left ten concubines behind to watch over the palace. Men and women wept as they passed through the gates of the city.
King David took a position by the brook Kidron to watch the procession of his people as they hastened toward the wilderness.
The last to come was Abiathar, David’s priest since the days when Saul pursued them. Abiathar and the Levites came bearing the Ark of the Covenant of God.
David stopped them.
“Go back,” he said. “Carry the Ark back into the city. If I find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me home and let me see it again. But if he says, I have no pleasure in David, let him do to me what seems good to him.”
David drew the priest aside and said, “You, too, my friend. Stay here with your sons. When Absalom enters Jerusalem, listen to his plans, then send word to me at the fords of the Jordan.” So Abiathar returned into Jerusalem with the Ark of God.
But David went up a high hill on the east side of the city, weeping as he went. He walked barefoot, his head covered. The name of this hill was the Mount of Olives.
When he reached the summit, a foreigner named Hushai ran to him, also with earth on his head, his coat torn for grief. “Oh, my friend,” he said to David, “let me go with you.”
David embraced him a moment, then said, “Hushai, you would do me more good in the city. Offer yourself as a counselor to Absalom. Call him king without embarrassment. Tell him you will serve him better than you served his father. Then perhaps you can defeat whatever counsel Ahithophel might give. And when you know my son’s designs, pass the word to Abiathar the priest. He’ll pass it on to me.”
HUSHAI THE ARCHITE arrived at Jerusalem just as Absalom in new purple robes was preparing to make a triumphal entrance. Of those who stood along the ridge road outside the city, Hushai alone was not weeping. He contrived delight.
“Long live the king!” he called. “Long live the king!”
Absalom recognized the man. “Hushai, you hardheaded counselor! Is this the loyalty you give your friends? Why didn’t you go with David?”
Hushai said, “Oh, no! I belong with the one whom the Lord and the men of Israel have chosen. Who else can prevail? Sir, if I served your father well, I will serve you better.”
So Absalom, inviting Hushai to follow, entered the city grandly. He rode through narrow streets to his father’s palace with a ready retinue, with bright eyes and a hard young hunger.
Absalom mounted the throne of David, attended by his counselors, Ahithophel, Amasa, Hushai.
“Friends,” he said, “You see the grief of David’s citizens. Advise me: How shall I make this city mine?”
Ahithophel lowered the bushes of his eyebrows. His eyes could not be seen. Softly he said, “My lord, go in to your father’s concubines. All Israel will hear that you have usurped absolutely the place of the king, and that you have made yourself odious to your father; then the hands of all who are with you will be strengthened.”
“Excellent!” said Absalom. “And I know the place to do it.”
While he stayed in Jerusalem, then, Absalom regularly ascended to the booth on the roof of the king’s house, where everyone could see his comings and his goings. There, one by one, the vital young man walked King David’s concubines through the gardens, then led them into the booth and lay with them.
But Ahi
thophel was daily urging another piece of advice upon Absalom, who seemed to desire the comforts of royalty more than the labors.
“You can’t delay,” he said. “Let me choose twelve thousand men and pursue David immediately. I’ll catch him weary and discouraged, and throw him into a panic. His people will flee. But I will strike the king only. Everyone else I’ll bring back to you as a bride comes home to her husband.”
Absalom ascended the throne and mused over the advice.
Ahithophel’s face was strained with anxiety.
But Absalom turned to Hushai the Archite and said, “What do you think?”
Hushai was shaking his head. “This counsel is weak, sir.” He threw his hands behind his back, and rose to the balls of his feet. “You know that your father and his men are mighty. Worse than that, now they are as enraged as a she-bear robbed of her cubs. Do you think an old warrior like David would be lingering in the open? Even now he’s gone to ground. He’s concealed himself. Moreover, Israel knows how strong he is. At the first attack, no matter who wins, the people will say there’s been a slaughter among the armies of Absalom. No, my lord, I advise you to wait: first gather all Israel to yourself, from Dan to Beersheba, as the sand by the sea for multitude, and then go into battle yourself. We shall descend on David and cover him as the dew covers the ground; and of him and all the men with him not one will be left. Then, O King, there shall be no doubt who is king in the land.”
Ahithophel had bowed his head. He held his peace through Hushai’s long speech, but his face was hidden, his deeper thinking concealed.
Absalom was wearing the slim golden ring his father sometimes wore. A smile spread across his countenance. “Hushai,” he said, “you are right. I should fight. But I should first gather the force to win that fight.”
So then Hushai bowed and went out of Absalom’s presence to pass this news to Abiathar the priest.
Ahithophel also left Absalom’s presence. But the old man saddled his donkey and left Jerusalem altogether. There seemed no urgency anymore. He rode slowly south to his own city. Once there, he set his house in order, and then he hanged himself.
IN THE MEANTIME, David arrived with his standing army in Mahanaim. He moved into the houses Abner and Ishbaal had occupied when poor Ishbaal was striving to be king in Israel. Then he began to develop strategies with which to meet his son, Absalom.
He knew the boy. However Absalom might judge him lacking in pity and insight, David knew his son as well as he knew his own soul. He knew that Absalom loved power more than he understood it. The crown would control him because he could not yet control himself. Absalom, the honey-tongued. His father would have given him so much more than the boy could, by his own hand, take.
King David reviewed his troops, then set over them commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds. He divided the entire army into three large divisions, one under Joab, one under Aishai, and one under a soldier of fortune named Ittai, a Gittite.
When scouts came saying that Absalom and Amasa had crossed the Jordan and were camping in Gilead, David gathered his commanders for a final war counsel.
“I will march with you, as I have in the past,” he said.
“No, sir,” said Joab. “It isn’t practical. They can wipe out half of us and we would go on fighting. But if they killed you alone, the war would be over.”
David gazed at his cousin, the cold self-confident mouth, hard grey eyes, a man in whom there never had been tenderness nor any sign of remorse. “Whatever seems best to you,” David said.
The king took a stand at the gate of the city. He cried the command that set his armies into motion, then saluted them as they marched out by hundreds and by thousands.
“Deal gently!” he cried. “For my sake deal gently with the young man Absalom!”
That day Joab acquitted himself as well as he ever had. Neither his intellect nor his physical force had abated with age. It was Joab who chose to engage the armies under Absalom and Amasa in the forest of Ephraim. He knew silence and speed among the trees. He knew how to separate the enemy into a thousand bands blinded by the woods, while communication among his own experienced troops was as swift as the wind. He created feints and dodges and ambushes of sudden savagery. Amasa had planned to field the hundred chariots that David stabled in Jerusalem, but none could drive through the forest of Ephraim.
So the armies of Absalom and Amasa were utterly defeated. Twenty thousand perished, the forest devouring more than the sword.
Absalom likewise was fleeing for his life on the back of a mule. He was riding at heedless speeds through the bush and the brambles, when his hair caught fast in the branches of an oak. The mule galloped away, leaving the man hanging between heaven and earth.
Absalom cried out. His sword had fallen to earth. He could not hack himself free. He eased his scalp by winding his fingers in his long hair and pulling himself up.
A young soldier stepped out of the bushes and gaped at him. “Quick!” Absalom called. “Hand me the sword!”
But as soon as he heard Absalom’s voice, the soldier dashed away like a frightened hare.
The forest fell silent. Not so much as a breeze moved. The air was still and hot. Absalom’s arms ached. His fingers slipped and were cut on thin strands of hair. He let go. His scalp was lifted from his skull.
Then he heard a swift tramping through the woods. And voices.
“But the king commanded us to save his life!”
“Ah!” A growl of disgust. “I will not waste time like this with you!”
Absalom recognized the latter voice.
Joab stepped into the clearing, glanced at Absalom, and kept walking forward, pulling three arrows from his quiver. The young man didn’t move. He didn’t kick. He saw nothing in Joab’s face except a sober attention to duty.
Absalom felt the first arrow strike with such surprising force that his body swung backward. Joab, bare-handed, thrust the second one deep between his ribs. There was no sensation of pain, just a tough tugging. Absalom was grateful for that.
The third arrow was driven up under his ribcage and into his heart.
NOW, DAVID WAS SITTING within the gates of the city. A watchman was on the roof of the gate, by the wall. When he lifted his eyes, he saw a man running alone across the fields in this direction.
The watchman called out, “A soldier is coming!”
The king said, “If he is alone, he has news of the war.”
But as that runner drew near, another man came out of the far woods, also running at a breakneck pace.
“See,” called the watchman, “here comes a second man, also running alone!”
The king said, “Then he also has news.”
The watchman called: “I think the man in front is Ahimaaz, the son of the priest! The man behind is a slave, an Ethiopian.”
David said, “Ahimaaz is a good man. He comes with good news.”
Then Ahimaaz cried out as he approached the gate, “All is well! All is well!”
David rose up to meet him, and the son of his old friend bowed his face to the earth.
“Blessed be the Lord your God,” Ahimaaz puffed, flushed and happy, “for he defeated those who raised their hands against my king.”
David said, “Is it well with the young man Absalom?”
Ahimaaz stood up. “When Joab sent me,” he said, “I saw a great tumult, but I couldn’t tell what it was.”
The king said, “Turn aside, Ahimaaz. Stand here.”
So he turned aside and stood still.
Then the Ethiopian came. Immediately he grinned at the king and clapped his hands. “Good tidings!” he cried. “For the Lord has delivered you this day from the power of all who rose up against you.”
David said to the Ethiopian, “Is it well with the young man Absalom?”
The Ethiopian said, “May all the enemies of my lord the king be as that young man is now!” He clapped his hands again with glee. “Dead!” he cried.
David did not answer.
He stumbled sideways, groaning, as if a great weight had been laid on his shoulders. Then he began step by step to climb the stairs to the chamber over the gate. As he went he wept and he said, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom! Would God that I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”
VI
THE KING NEVER was not tired after that. One year he conducted a census throughout his realm in order to develop a system for national taxation. But the Lord God said, What, will you now place confidence in your numbers and in your strength and cease trusting in me? Are you now a king like any other king among the nations?
And the Lord sent an angel into the kingdom, killing by a pestilence. The angel advanced by terrible degrees toward Jerusalem, to destroy it—but just as death was ascending Mount Moriah north of the city, the Lord repented and said to the angel, It is enough. Now stay your hand.
David looked and saw the angel on the side of the hill, at the threshing floor of Araunah, a Jebusite. “O Lord,” he cried, “I have sinned. I have done wickedly. But my sheep, my citizens, what have they done? Let thy hand, I pray thee, be against me and my father’s house—”
It was precisely there that the pestilence ceased. Not another human perished.
So David went to Araunah and said, “Sell me your threshing floor, that I might build an altar to the Lord on it.”
Araunah said, “Take whatever you wish and offer it up. Here are the oxen for a burnt offering; here are the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for wood. O King, Araunah gives them as a gift to you.”
But David said, “No, I will buy it for a price. I will not offer to my God offerings that cost me nothing.”
King David bought Araunah’s threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. He built there an altar and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.
And he returned to his palace more weary than ever.
DAVID WAS AN old man now. He could not keep muscle on his bones. The flesh of his chest folded down upon itself like leather flaps. “The grinders,” he used to say to a young woman named Abishag, “the grinders cease because they are few.” He would give her a self-deprecating smile, showing the loss of teeth. Then he would place the tips of her fingers upon his eyes and say: “Those that look through my windows are dimmed. The doors of my ears are closing, too, Abishag; so the sounds of the household are low—though I jump at the voice of a bird.” David was fond of Abishag the Shunammite. Often he placed her hand on his silvery hair and said, “The almond tree, it blossoms white. The grasshopper drags his poor body along. And not even the caper-berry can rouse the cricket’s song again. Poor Abishag. Not even the caper-berry.”
The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel Page 32
