2 Samuel 14 Bible study: Water spilled on the ground

The chapter opens with Joab, not with the woman: "Now Joab the son of Zeruiah perceived that the king’s heart was toward Absalom" (14:1). Absalom had fled to Geshur after having Amnon killed, "and was there three years" (13:38). Joab "sent to Tekoa and brought a wise woman from there" (14:2) (tap wise), and told her how to look: "Please act like a mourner, and put on mourning clothing, please, and don’t anoint yourself with oil; but be as a woman who has mourned a long time for the dead" (14:2). Then, "Go in to the king and speak like this to him" (14:3). "So Joab put the words in her mouth" (14:3). The chapter says so before she speaks, and she says it herself when the king asks: "your servant Joab urged me, and he put all these words in the mouth of your servant" (14:19). She gives his reason in one line: "Your servant Joab has done this thing to change the face of the matter" (14:20). The chapter doesn't say more about why Joab did it.

2 Samuel 14:14→leads toLuke 15:24

The woman of Tekoa told David that God "devises means, that he who is banished not be an outcast from him" (14:14), and the chapter ends, "the king kissed Absalom" (14:33). When "the tax collectors and sinners were coming close to him to hear him" (Luke 15:1), Jesus told of a son who went "into a far country" (Luke 15:13). When he came home, "while he was still far off, his father saw him and was moved with compassion, and ran, fell on his neck, and kissed him" (Luke 15:20), and said, "for this, my son, was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found" (Luke 15:24). Jesus doesn't cite 2 Samuel 14, so setting the two side by side is a reading. Some see the same thing in both: a son far away brought home to his father, and a kiss at the end. Others read each on its own terms: 14:14 is the woman's argument, and Joab "put all these words in the mouth of your servant" (14:19); Absalom came home by Joab's scheme and waited "two full years" to see the king's face (14:28); he never says he has sinned, only "if there is iniquity in me, let him kill me" (14:32), while the son says, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight" (Luke 15:21); and the father ran to his son, where Absalom "bowed himself on his face to the ground before the king" (14:33).

נָדַחnadachsay na-DAKH

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "impel, thrust, banish", and in the form used here, "be thrust out, banished". Strong's: "to push off". It comes three times in two verses. The woman says the king "does not bring home again his banished one" (14:13), and that God "devises means, that he who is banished not be an outcast from him" (14:14). He who is banished and be an outcast in 14:14 are both this verb: niddach (the one banished) and yiddach (be banished). 2 Samuel uses it once more, when David flees from Absalom, "lest he overtake us quickly and bring down evil on us" (15:14), where bring down is this verb. Moses had used it of Israel scattered: "If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of the heavens, from there the LORD your God will gather you" (Deuteronomy 30:4).