Absalom had taken matters into his own hands in the case of Amnon’s crime because David had failed to act decisively. As I said yesterday, David’s inaction was due to his inability to judge a sin in his son that resembled his own failure. Absalom clearly loses respect for his father given his failure to mete out justice in this case. This is what led Absalom to challenge his father’s right to the throne. It is yet another ripple flowing from the sin of David, just in case we didn’t get the message already. As a result of this ripple effect with Absalom’s rebellion, David would be forced to flee Jerusalem. In other words, he became an exile. David’s exile foreshadows what would later happen to Israel and Judah as a result of the sins that would flow down through the generations of his offspring. It is no coincidence, in fact, that the very sin that would topple David’s son, Solomon (whose mother was Bathsheba), was the same sin that had toppled David. The writer of Samuel and Kings, who writes to explain why Israel and Judah had gone into exile, tells us that Solomon loved many foreign women and that they led him astray (1 Kings 11:1-2). Like father like son. On the whole David’s legacy was a positive one. This is the dominant note in how David is remembered in Scripture but his great failing leaves us with a sobering warning about the multi-generational effects of sin.
Commit yourself to obey God with every desire, thought, word and deed.
Read 2 Samuel 14 and 15
