After this, Absalom prepared him chariots and horses, and fifty men to run before him (v. 1) — the first thing the kissed son does is to look like a king; Adonijah will do exactly the same (1 Kings 1:5), and Samuel had warned that this is what kings do (1 Samuel 8:11). Then the gate, where justice was given (Deuteronomy 16:18; Ruth 4:1), early, to every man that had a controversy: thy matters are good and right; but there is no man deputed of the king to hear thee. Every suitor is told he would win, and that the king will not hear him. Whether David's justice had in fact lapsed, the text does not say; 8:15 said he executed judgment and justice, and the study lets the two stand.

Oh that I were made judge in the land... and I would do him justice! It is the oldest promise of the man who wants power: everyone's case is good, and only the present ruler stands between you and your rights. Verse 5 adds the touch: when a man bows, Absalom put forth his hand, and took him, and kissed him — the kiss of 14:33, handed on. The narrator's verdict is in verse 6: so Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel. Stole — the word of Jacob stealing away from Laban (Genesis 31:20, where the Hebrew has stole the heart). The hearts were taken, not won.

The study pauses on the method, because it is the method of every demagogue since. Absalom does not attack his father; he sympathises with his father's subjects. He asks each man Of what city art thou? (v. 2) — a personal word, a name remembered. He never hears a case; he only says what the case deserves. He does it on this manner... to all Israel, every day, for years. And the result is stated as theft, because a people's loyalty belongs to the one the LORD anointed (5:3), and it has been lifted from him by flattery while he sat in his house.

Readers should also hear the irony the narrator has built. In chapter 14 the king gave Absalom a justice he had not earned, and in chapter 15 Absalom accuses the king of giving no justice at all. The son who was spared the Law uses the Law's language — suit or cause... justice — to unseat the one who spared him. The study notes that David, so far as the text tells, saw none of it; the first word he gets is 15:13, the hearts of the men of Israel are after Absalom, when it is finished. A heart can be stolen a little at a time, in public, from a man who is not looking.

After forty years — a well-known difficulty. Forty years from what? David reigned forty years in all (5:4), and Absalom was born at Hebron during the first seven (3:2-3); forty years cannot be the span of his plotting. The standard Hebrew text reads forty; some copies of the Septuagint, the Syriac, and Josephus read four, and many take that as original — four years of stealing hearts since the kiss. Others count from David's anointing or from some other point. The study names the problem and inclines to four as the simpler sense, without claiming certainty; the KJV faithfully gives what the Hebrew has.

Let me go and pay my vow, which I have vowed unto the LORD, in Hebron. The pretext is piety — a vow made while I abode at Geshur (v. 8), that if the LORD shall bring me again... then I will serve the LORD. Hebron is Absalom's birthplace, David's first capital, the city that may have felt slighted when the throne moved to Jerusalem — a shrewd choice. The king answers Go in peace (v. 9), and readers have found the words almost unbearable. David has been deceived by a sick son in chapter 13 and a feast in the same chapter; here, for the third time, a son's request is a trap, and the father says yes.

The trumpet, the cry Absalom reigneth in Hebron (v. 10), and two hundred men out of Jerusalem... in their simplicity — invited guests who knew not any thing (v. 11), a respectable crowd lending the coup its look. Then the name the chapter turns on: Ahithophel the Gilonite, David's counsellor, from Giloh in the hills of Judah (Joshua 15:51), sent for while he offered sacrifices — the vow is being paid as the rebellion is launched. The conspiracy was strong. Ahithophel's going over is the moment David will feel most (v. 31), and the narrator records it without explaining it.

Readers have long looked for a reason. 23:34 lists Eliam the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite among the mighty men, and 11:3 called Bathsheba the daughter of Eliam; if the two Eliams are one, Ahithophel was Bathsheba's grandfather, and Uriah's death was in his family. The text neither confirms nor denies it, and the study offers it as a possibility that has struck many. Psalm 55:12-14 — mine own familiar friend... we took sweet counsel together — has traditionally been read of Ahithophel, though the psalm names no one; the study presents that as a tradition, and notes that the wound it describes is this one.

David's decision is instant: Arise, and let us flee (v. 14) — not for his own life only but lest he... smite the city with the edge of the sword; he will not make Jerusalem a battlefield. The household goes out, ten women, which were concubines, left to keep the house (v. 16) — remember them in 16:22. His own guard passes before him: the Cherethites... the Pelethites... and all the Gittites, six hundred men (v. 18), the foreign guard of 8:18, and among them Ittai the Gittite, a Philistine of Gath who camest but yesterday. The king tells him to go back: thou art a stranger, and also an exile... mercy and truth be with thee (vv. 19-20) — hesed and emet, the LORD's own pair.

Ittai's answer is one of the great oaths of Scripture: As the LORD liveth, and as my lord the king liveth... whether in death or life, even there also will thy servant be. It is Ruth's vow to Naomi (Ruth 1:16-17) in a soldier's mouth, and like Ruth's it is a foreigner's. Readers should take the measure of the chapter: David's own counsellor has gone to Absalom and a Philistine swears by the LORD to die with him. David yields — Go and pass over — and Ittai crosses with all the little ones (v. 22); in 18:2 he will command a third of the army. Loyalty in this book is not found where blood would predict it.

All the country wept with a loud voice; the king crosses the brook Kidron toward the wilderness (v. 23). Then Zadok... and all the Levites... bearing the ark of the covenant of God (v. 24) — the priests have brought the ark out to go with the king, as Israel once carried it to battle (1 Samuel 4:3). David sends it back. Carry back the ark of God into the city: if I shall find favour in the eyes of the LORD, he will bring me again, and shew me both it, and his habitation (v. 25). He will not use the ark as a charm or hold God's presence hostage to his cause. The ark belongs in Jerusalem whoever sits there.

But if he thus say, I have no delight in thee; behold, here am I, let him do to me as seemeth good unto him. This is the chapter's heart and the key to David's whole conduct in the flight. He knows why he is on this road — Nathan said out of thine own house — and he does not plead his rights; he puts himself in God's hand with Eli's words (1 Samuel 3:18) and Joab's (10:12). The study notes the difference from Saul, who grasped at everything as it slipped. A king who can say here am I with his throne gone is nearer the LORD than he was on the roof. Verse 27, Art not thou a seer?, is obscure in Hebrew — some read See — but the sense is that Zadok will watch and send word by his sons.

The ascent of mount Olivet — the hill east of the city across the Kidron, named here for the first time in Scripture. The king climbs it weeping... his head covered... barefoot: the signs of mourning and shame (cf. Jeremiah 14:3-4; Ezekiel 24:17; Micah 1:8), the whole company climbing weeping as they went up. The study notes what kind of grief this is. It is not the grief of a man wronged; it is the grief of a man who knows the sentence of chapter 12 is being carried out, and who accepts it on his feet. Psalm 3's heading, when he fled from Absalom his son, places that psalm here; if it is followed, I laid me down and slept... for the LORD sustained me was sung on this road.

Many have seen in the scene a shadow of another who crossed the Kidron and climbed Olivet in sorrow, rejected by His own city (John 18:1; Luke 19:41; 22:39). The study offers it as the church's reading, with the obvious difference kept in view: David climbs under his own sin, and Christ under ours. What the text gives without typology is a king at his lowest who is also, in this book, at his best — no bitterness, no plan of revenge, a prayer (v. 31) and a stratagem (v. 34), and the people weeping with him rather than for him. The narrator gives him more dignity on this hill than on the throne.

Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom. The news comes on the hill, and David's answer is a prayer of one line: O LORD, I pray thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness. He does not ask for Ahithophel's death or for Absalom's defeat; he asks that the one mind he fears should be made to miss. 16:23 will say what that mind was worth — as if a man had enquired at the oracle of God — and 17:14 will record the answer: the LORD had appointed to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel. The study marks the verse as the hinge on which the whole revolt turns, and it is a prayer.

Then, at the top of the mount, where he worshipped God (v. 32), the answer begins to walk toward him: Hushai the Archite, David's friend (v. 37 — the phrase is a court title, cf. 1 Kings 4:5), with his coat rent. David sends him back (vv. 33-34): say unto Absalom, I will be thy servant, O king... then mayest thou for me defeat the counsel of Ahithophel. Prayer and stratagem in the same breath; the man who asked God to make the counsel foolish also sends a man to make it so. The study does not find a contradiction. Verses 35-36 set up the chain — Hushai to the priests, the priests' sons to David — that chapter 17 will use.

The chapter closes with two arrivals in one sentence: Hushai David's friend came into the city, and Absalom came into Jerusalem. The spy and the usurper enter together, and the narrator sets them side by side so the reader will know, before chapter 16 begins, that the king who left has left someone behind. David's friend is said deliberately; in 16:17 Absalom will throw the word back at him — Is this thy kindness to thy friend? The study notes that the deception Hushai is sent to practise is recorded without comment, as the midwives' and Rahab's were; the text approves the result and does not stop to grade the means.

Readers should step back and see the chapter whole. It began with a prince in a gate stealing hearts; it ends with a king on a hill who has given up his city, sent back the ark, refused to use God, prayed one prayer, and kept three friends — a Philistine, a priest and an Archite — none of them from his own house. Nathan's sentence is being executed before all Israel, and before the sun (12:12), and the man under it has said let him do to me as seemeth good unto him. The church has read that as the posture of repentance which God does not despise; the book will show, in 17:14, that He did not.