After this — after Nathan's word and the child's death; the narrator turns from the king to his children, and introduces them by their ties. Absalom the son of David had a fair sister, whose name was Tamar — Absalom is third-born, son of Maacah, daughter of Talmai king of Geshur (3:3), and Tamar is his full sister; Amnon the son of David, the firstborn, born at Hebron to Ahinoam (3:2), is her half-brother. The verse names Tamar by her brother, not her father, and the chapter keeps that order: it will be Absalom, not David, who acts for her. Loved her — the word will be weighed in verse 15 and found light.

Readers should set the whole chapter under 12:10-11: the sword shall never depart from thine house... I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house. Chapters 13-18 are the outworking of that word, though the narrator never says so in so many words; he tells what happened and lets the oracle be heard behind it. The study reads it that way while insisting on what the text also shows — that Amnon's act is Amnon's, and the chastening of David's house is no excuse for the men in it. Verse 2, Amnon thought it hard for him to do anything to her, for she was a virgin: the obstacle is access to a king's secluded daughter, not conscience.

Jonadab, the son of Shimeah David's brother (v. 3) — Shammah of 1 Samuel 16:9, so Amnon's cousin — is a very subtil man; the Hebrew word is the ordinary word for wise, and the narrator uses it here without a trace of praise. His counsel is a device: make thyself sick, and have thy father send my sister Tamar to dress the meat in my sight. The plan takes a king's affection for a sick son and a sister's kindness and makes them its tools. Jonadab does not say force her; he arranges the room. The study names him as the text does — a clever friend whose cleverness served a crime, and who in verse 32 shows that he understood exactly what had been done.

Then David sent home to Tamar (v. 7). The king is the unknowing instrument; the verb sent, which carried so much weight in chapter 11, now sends his daughter to his son's house. Nothing in the text says David suspected anything, and the study will not say he should have; it notes the dreadful economy of the plot, in which a father's kindness is the lever. Proverbs 13:20, a companion of fools shall be destroyed, has often been read over Jonadab and Amnon; the word fool will be Tamar's own in verse 13, and it fits both men.

Nay, my brother, do not force me; for no such thing ought to be done in Israel: do not thou this folly. Tamar's protest is the moral centre of the chapter, and the narrator lets her speak at length. Force — the Hebrew is to humble, to bring low; folly is nebalah, the word used of Shechem's act against Dinah, which thing ought not to be done (Genesis 34:7), and of the outrage at Gibeah (Judges 19:23-24). She names the act for what it is before it happens: a rape, and a crime against the whole order of Israel, not only against her. The study takes her words as the text's own verdict.

Verse 13 adds two more pleas — whither shall I cause my shame to go? and thou shalt be as one of the fools in Israel — and then speak unto the king; for he will not withhold me from thee. The Law forbade a man his sister, the daughter of his father (Leviticus 18:9, 11; 20:17), and readers have asked whether Tamar believed David would permit it or was saying anything that might get her out of the room. The text does not say; the study notes the Law and takes her words as a woman reasoning, to the last, with a man who has stopped listening. She is clear, brave and wise. None of it saves her, and that is not her failing.

Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her. The narrator states the rape in one verse, without detail, and puts the cause where it belongs: being stronger than she. The study names the act plainly and with the seriousness Scripture gives it, and refuses every softening — not a seduction, not a tragic love, but a crime done by strength against a woman who said no in every way she could. Deuteronomy 22:25-27 held the man alone guilty when a woman cried and there was none to save her; Amnon had emptied the house (v. 9) so that there would be none.

Readers should notice what the chapter has done with its verbs. In chapter 11 the king saw... sent... took; here the king's son loved... took hold... forced. The narrator draws no line between the two chapters, and the study does not say that David's sin caused Amnon's; it says what the text shows — that the pattern of the father's roof has reappeared in the son's chamber, and that the oracle of 12:11, evil against thee out of thine own house, is being kept in the most terrible way. Tamar is the victim of both men's sins and the author of neither; the study will not shift any weight on to her.

The hatred wherewith he hated her was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her. The narrator sets the two on a balance and finds the hatred heavier, and in doing so tells the reader what the love of verse 1 was. Lust that has got what it wanted turns on the one it used; readers have found in this verse the plainest anatomy of the thing in Scripture. Arise, be gone — two words, as cold as come lie with me was hot. Tamar answers (v. 16) that this evil in sending me away is greater than the other: put out, she will be seen as the guilty one, and he knows it.

He will not hear her a second time, and the thing is done by a servant: Put now this woman out from me, and bolt the door after her (v. 17) — this woman, no longer my sister. Verse 18 pauses on her garment of divers colours, the robe of the king's daughters that were virgins; the phrase is the one used of Joseph's coat (Genesis 37:3), and like that coat it is about to be torn. Verse 19: ashes on her head, the robe rent, her hand on her head — the posture of grief in Jeremiah 2:37 — and went on crying. She makes the crime public. The narrator honours her by recording it.

Hath Amnon thy brother been with thee? but hold now thy peace, my sister: he is thy brother; regard not this thing. Absalom knows at once, and his counsel is silence — the counsel of a brother who means to act in his own time, as the next verses show, not of one who means to let it go. So Tamar remained desolate in her brother Absalom's house. Desolate is a word used of a land laid waste. She is not spoken of again, except that Absalom names a daughter after her (14:27). The study will not supply a happier ending the text does not give.

Readers should hold the two brothers side by side. Amnon used Tamar; Absalom will use her wrong, keeping it for two years (v. 23) until it serves him. Neither asks what she wants. The Law gave a violated woman no remedy but marriage to the man (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), impossible here; the king gave none at all (v. 21); and the narrator, by calling her desolate, is the only voice in the chapter that speaks for her. Christian readers have found in that one word Scripture's own witness that the silence imposed on the wronged is not God's silence.

But when king David heard of all these things, he was very wroth. And there the verse stops. No summons, no judgment, no word to Tamar; the king who sentenced a rich man to death in a parable (12:5) hears of a real crime in his own house and is angry, and does nothing. Some ancient witnesses — the Septuagint, and a Hebrew scroll from Qumran — add a clause: but he would not grieve the spirit of Amnon his son, because he loved him, for he was his firstborn. The KJV follows the standard Hebrew text, which lacks it. The study notes the longer reading as a reading; on either text, the silence is the point.

Readers have asked why. The text gives no answer, and the study offers only what it shows: a father's favour for a firstborn, if the longer reading is right, and a king who, since Nathan, may have felt he had no standing to judge a son for a sin so like his own. Whatever the reason, the verse is the hinge of the chapter. Because David does nothing, Absalom does something (v. 22), and because Absalom does it his own way, the sword of 12:10 enters the house. Eli's sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not (1 Samuel 3:13); readers have long set the two fathers together.

After two full years (v. 23) — the length of Absalom's silence, and of David's — a sheepshearing at Baalhazor, a feast-day like Nabal's (1 Samuel 25:4-8). Absalom invites all the king's sons and presses the king himself, who declines lest we be chargeable unto thee; then, as if second-best, let my brother Amnon go with us, and the king, asking Why should he go with thee?, is pressed into it (vv. 24-27). The father who sent Tamar to Amnon's house now sends Amnon to Absalom's feast. The study notes the symmetry as the narrator's, not as blame on a man who could not know.

Mark ye now when Amnon's heart is merry with wine... Smite Amnon; then kill him, fear not: have not I commanded you? be courageous, and be valiant. The language of a king's battle-order, used for a murder at table. Readers will hear David's letter to Joab in it — the deed done by others, the prince's own hand clean — and in have not I commanded you? the voice of a man who has decided that his father's justice has failed and his own will serve. Verse 29: the servants obey; the king's sons rise and flee on their mules. The firstborn is dead, and the sword has begun its work in the house.

The rumour outruns the truth — Absalom hath slain all the king's sons (v. 30) — and David is on the ground with his garments torn before Jonadab, of all people, corrects it: Amnon only is dead: for by the appointment of Absalom this hath been determined from the day that he forced his sister Tamar (v. 32). The subtil man knew, and said nothing for two years; the study records that. Then the king's sons come over the hill, and all weep (v. 36). But Absalom fled is said three times (vv. 34, 37, 38) — to Talmai... king of Geshur, his mother's father (3:3), for three years.

And the soul of king David longed to go forth unto Absalom. The Hebrew of the verse is difficult; literally it runs something like and David the king was consumed to go out unto Absalom, and some, with a Qumran scroll and the Septuagint, read the spirit of the king, while others take the verb as ceased — that David gave up going out against Absalom. The KJV gives one reasonable sense, and the study does not press beyond it. Either way the chapter ends with a father whose grief for the murdered son has passed and whose heart has turned toward the murderer; Joab will read that heart in 14:1. Of Tamar there is no further word.