Context No. 3261 of 4322 · 2 Samuel

2 Samuel 14:1-5: in context

1Now Joab the son of Zeruiah perceived that the king’s heart was toward Absalom. 2Joab sent to Tekoa and brought a wise woman from there, and said to her, “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. 3Go in to the king and speak like this to him.” So Joab put the words in her mouth. 4When the woman of Tekoa spoke to the king, she fell on her face to the ground, showed respect, and said, “Help, O king!” 5The king said to her, “What ails you?” She answered, “Truly I am a widow, and my husband is dead.

Joab perceives that King David's heart still yearns for his exiled son Absalom. So he arranges a kind of living parable: he brings a wise woman from Tekoa, dresses her as a long-grieving widow, and puts words in her mouth, a fictional plea about her own son, designed to draw out of David the mercy he is withholding from Absalom.

It is a clever, indirect approach, using a story to open a heart that a direct request might have closed. There is something here about how truth sometimes reaches us sideways, slipping past our defenses in the guise of another's situation, as Nathan's parable of the ewe lamb once did with David himself. A well-told story can lead us to judge a matter rightly before we realize it is our own case being described. We are often readier to see clearly in someone else's story than in our own, and God can use that to bring us to the truth.

Am I open to the truth when it reaches me indirectly, through a story or another's situation that quietly holds up a mirror to my own heart?

Sources

2 Samuel 14:1: "Now Joab the son of Zeruiah perceived that the king's heart was toward Absalom."
2 Samuel 14:2: "Joab sent to Tekoa and brought a wise woman from there."
2 Samuel 12:7: "Nathan said to David, You are the man."