2 Samuel 13:12-16: in context

This is a passage of great pain. Tamar pleads with her half-brother Amnon not to violate her: no, my brother, do not force me; such a thing is not done in Israel; do not do this outrage. Where would I carry my shame? she asks, and begs him to seek her honorably instead. But he will not listen; being stronger, he forces her. And then, the text says, he hates her with a hatred greater than the love with which he had loved her, and casts her out. Tamar protests that sending her away is a wrong worse than the first; but again he will not listen.

Scripture does not look away from this evil, and neither should we. It records Tamar's violation and anguish plainly, without hiding it, minimizing it, or excusing the one who did it. Her pleading is heard; her protest that a great wrong has been done is preserved; her shame and grief are named. And that unflinching honesty is itself a mercy, for it means that the suffering of the violated is not invisible to God. If you have known something of this kind of wound, the wound of being used, violated, betrayed by someone who should have protected you, this passage assures you that God does not look away, that your suffering is real and seen and named before him, that the wrong done to you is evil in his eyes, not a shame you must carry as if it were yours. Tamar was not the guilty one; the guilt was Amnon's, and Scripture places it squarely there. Notice, too, what the passage exposes about the counterfeit of love. Amnon had claimed to love Tamar; but the moment his selfish desire was satisfied, his so-called love turned to hatred, and he cast her aside. What he called love was never love at all, but appetite, a using of another for himself; and appetite, once fed, discards its object. Real love does not use and discard; it seeks the good of the other, honors and protects. Amnon's was its opposite, and the passage names it for the evil it was. There is no tidy resolution offered here, and we should not pretend one. But there is this: God sees the suffering of the abused, counts the wrong done to them as the evil it is, and is near to the brokenhearted. The violated are not alone or unseen; the God who preserved Tamar's cry in his word is near to all who have suffered as she suffered, and holds the guilt where it belongs.

If I have suffered the wound of being violated or used by one who should have protected me, can I hear in Scripture's unflinching record of Tamar's anguish that God does not look away, that my suffering is seen and named before him, that the wrong done to me is evil in his eyes and not my shame to carry, and that he is near to the brokenhearted?