Joab the son of Zeruiah perceived that the king's heart was toward Absalom (v. 1) — the heart of 13:39, read by the man who reads David best. Tekoah is a village south of Bethlehem, Amos's town (Amos 1:1); a wise woman there, like the wise woman of Abel in 20:16, is a known figure, someone whose speech carries weight. Joab dresses her as a mourner of long standing and put the words in her mouth (v. 3). He has learned Nathan's method: a king who could not see his own case may judge it in a story (12:1-7). The study notes that the method is the prophet's; the motive is Joab's.

Why Joab? The text does not say. Readers have supposed statecraft — the heir in exile is a danger, the king's grief a weakness — or loyalty to a master whose heart he could see breaking. The study keeps both open and notes what the book will show: the man who brings Absalom home will put three darts through him (18:14) and then rebuke the king for mourning him (19:5-7). Joab serves the throne as he understands it, and nothing in this chapter asks whether Absalom has repented. That silence is the chapter's weakness, and the next three chapters are its cost.

The story (vv. 5-7): a widow, two sons, who strove together in the field, and there was none to part them, but the one smote the other, and slew him. Readers will hear Cain and Abel in the field (Genesis 4:8). Now the whole family demands the survivor for the avenger of blood — the Law's own provision (Numbers 35:19; Deuteronomy 19:12) — and the widow pleads that justice done will quench my coal which is left and leave her husband neither name nor remainder. It is a real dilemma, built to make a king choose mercy over the letter, and David does (v. 8, v. 10).

The study notes where the parable fits Absalom and where it does not. It fits in the shape: a brother slain, a survivor, a demand for his life, a line at stake. It does not fit in the heart: the sons strove together with none to part them, a fight in a field, where Absalom planned his brother's death for two years and gave the order at a feast (13:28). Joab's story softens the crime to win the pardon, and David — who in chapter 12 was walked into the truth — is here walked past it. Readers should see both parables together and notice that only one was sent by the LORD.

She presses him to an oath, and she gets it: As the LORD liveth, there shall not one hair of thy son fall to the earth. The formula is the one the people used to save Jonathan from Saul's rash vow (1 Samuel 14:45), and Solomon will use it to Adonijah (1 Kings 1:52). The king has now sworn protection to a brother-slayer in the name of the LORD, before he knows whose son is meant; as in 12:5, David's judgment on a story becomes his judgment on himself. Verse 9, the iniquity be on me, is Abigail's word (1 Samuel 25:24) — the woman takes the blame of the plea on herself to leave the king free.

Then the turn (vv. 12-13): Wherefore then hast thou thought such a thing against the people of God? for the king doth speak this thing as one which is faulty, in that the king doth not fetch home again his banished. The banished is Absalom. What against the people of God means is not spelled out — readers have taken it as the people's loss of their heir, or the harm of a king at odds with his own ruling — and the study leaves it open. The move is Nathan's Thou art the man in a gentler key: the king has spared a stranger's son and left his own in Geshur.

The chapter's great verse, and a hard one. We must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again — Amnon cannot be brought back, as David said of the child (12:23); nothing is gained by leaving the living son in exile. Then: neither doth God respect any person: yet doth he devise means, that his banished be not expelled from him. The Hebrew of the middle clause is difficult; it reads literally God does not take away life, and many render the whole: God will not take away a life, but devises means so that the banished one is not cast out from him. The KJV reads the idiom as showing no partiality. The study gives both; the last clause is the same.

What is she saying? On the plainest level, that God Himself does not leave His outcasts outcast, and the king should imitate Him with Absalom. The church has heard far more in it — the whole gospel of a God who devises means to bring the banished home — and the study offers that as the church's reading, with one caution. The words were put in her mouth by Joab to win a pardon for an unrepentant murderer, and chapters 15-18 show what that pardon cost. God's means for His banished were not a parable and a kiss; they were a cross. The verse is true of God; it was used here for something less.

As an angel of God, so is my lord the king to discern good and bad — the court flattery of the day, said of David by Achish (1 Samuel 29:9) and later by Mephibosheth (19:27), and said again here in verse 20 with a wider sweep: to know all things that are in the earth. The woman says it twice, and the second time it is almost a smile, because the king has just seen through her: Is not the hand of Joab with thee in all this? (v. 19). She admits it at once — he put all these words in the mouth of thine handmaid — and the king, who has seen the device, yields to it anyway.

Behold now, I have done this thing: go therefore, bring the young man Absalom again (v. 21). Joab falls on his face and thanks him (v. 22). The study asks the question the text leaves open: was it right? Absalom is a murderer under the Law, unjudged and unrepentant; the king has been argued, not convinced, and the verdict is mercy without justice. Scripture does not say David erred, and the study does not; it notes that the next chapter begins after this, Absalom prepared him chariots, and lets the reader weigh what a pardon that asks nothing of the pardoned may breed.

Let him turn to his own house, and let him not see my face. Joab brings Absalom from Geshur to Jerusalem (v. 23), and the king stops halfway: the son is recalled and not received, neither judged nor forgiven. To see the king's face was to have standing at court (cf. Esther 1:14), and Joseph used the same language to his brothers — ye shall not see my face, except your brother be with you (Genesis 43:3). David withholds it for two full years (v. 28). Readers have called this the worst of both choices, and the study thinks the book bears them out.

A pardon that is not completed turns to grievance in the one pardoned. Absalom's words in verse 32 show it: Wherefore am I come from Geshur? it had been good for me to have been there still... and if there be any iniquity in me, let him kill me. That is not confession; it is a challenge, the voice of a man who thinks himself wronged. The study does not know what David meant by the half-measure — a father's anger, a king's caution — and the text does not say. What it shows is that the two years of silence in Jerusalem did what the three years in Geshur had not: they made the son an enemy.

The narrator breaks off to describe Absalom (vv. 25-27), and it is all surface: none to be so much praised... for his beauty: from the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him, and hair cut yearly because it was heavy on him, weighing two hundred shekels after the king's weight — a royal standard of weight, and by the usual estimates something over two kilograms, though ancient weights are uncertain and the study holds the figure loosely. Readers have remembered Saul, higher than any of the people (1 Samuel 9:2), and the LORD's word that man looketh on the outward appearance (1 Samuel 16:7).

The hair will matter in the church's memory more than in the text: when Absalom hangs by his head in the oak (18:9), readers from Josephus onward have supposed the hair, and the study will note there that the Hebrew says head. Verse 27 gives him three sons, and one daughter, whose name was Tamar — named for the sister of chapter 13 — and sits uneasily beside 18:18, where he raises a pillar because I have no son. Many suppose the sons died young; the text does not say, and the study leaves the two verses side by side as the book does.

Absalom sends for Joab twice and twice he would not come (v. 29) — the man who brought him home will not be used to finish the work. So Absalom burns his barley. Readers who know Samson's foxes (Judges 15:4-5) will recognise the tactic; what is new is the target, the king's own commander. It works: Then Joab arose, and came (v. 31). The study notes the pattern of the chapter — Joab moved David by a parable, Absalom moves Joab by fire — and that Absalom has learned which lever to pull on whom. He will pull the same lever on all Israel in 15:1-6.

Now therefore let me see the king's face; and if there be any iniquity in me, let him kill me (v. 32). The words have the form of submission and the content of defiance: a man who had planned and ordered his brother's death dares the king to call it iniquity. Nothing in the chapter records sorrow for Amnon or for Tamar; the daughter named Tamar (v. 27) is the nearest thing to it. Readers should weigh verse 32 before they read verse 33, so that the kiss is seen for what the text shows it to be.

He came to the king, and bowed himself on his face to the ground before the king: and the king kissed Absalom. Not a word is recorded from either of them. Five years after Amnon's death — three in Geshur, two in Jerusalem — the father and the son meet, the son bows, the father kisses, and the chapter ends. Readers have set the kiss beside the father who ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him in Luke 15:20, and the likeness is real; the difference is that the son in the parable came home saying I have sinned, and this son came saying if there be any iniquity in me.

The study reads the verse as the text gives it: a reconciliation without repentance on one side or justice on the other, sealed by a kiss. It will not say the kiss was wrong — a father's heart is not a court — but it notes that the next verse of the book is 15:1, and that in 15:5 Absalom will put forth his hand, and take him, and kiss him to every man of Israel who comes to the gate. He has learned the kiss as he learned the fire. Grace that asks nothing can be received as weakness; that is the lesson the church has drawn from this ending, and chapters 15-18 bear it out.