How very painful it must have been for King David to engage his son Absalom in a battle for the throne of Israel. I would imagine that he would be very conflicted as the king loved his son and had full knowledge that he, King David, had caused the dysfunctionality in his family by his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah.
2 Samuel 12:9-10, "9 Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. 10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife."
And the sword never departed from King David’s house. Incest, murder, power struggle, fratricide and more. Earlier there was a strained relationship between King David and his son Abalone due to the seemingly indifference of King David to the rape and rejection of Abalone's sister Tamar by her half-brother Amnon. It was two years before Abalone avenged his sister by orchestrating the murder of Amnon. Abalone fled only to return to court later. Abalone plotted with the grandfather of Bathsheba to capture the throne from his father. A dysfunctional family, absolutely.
Just as King David had to flee from King Saul, he felt the need to flee his son Absalom rather than exposing Jerusalem to a Siege as well as he was not certain how firmly entrenched were the loyalties of his people. That said, all the time that King Saul sought to kill David, David would not touch the anointed of God. Absalom felt no such restriction.
Abalone even took his father's concubines in a very public manner to give credence to his claim to the throne. Given all the outrageous actions of Abalone King David still mourned for his son. David's extreme bereavement for Abalone had a decremental effect on his men and the Israeli.
King David finally took back the personae of King. He had to win back nation’s tribal leadership and fend off other challenges to his throne such as from Saul’s descendants
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