Serving our King behind enemy lines, we need to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Mt 10:16).
“Meanwhile” (2 Sam 16:15), back at the palace in Jerusalem, Absalom is getting ready for his council of war. “When Hushai the Archite, David’s friend, came to Absalom,…Hushai said to Absalom, ‘Long live the king!’” (v 16). Brilliant! Here is the first of three wordplays. Which king is he talking about? David, of course. “Is this your loyalty to your friend?” (v 17), snarled Absalom. “No, but whom the Lord and this people and all the men of Israel choose, his I will be, and with him I will remain” (v 18), was Hushai’s cagey reply. Who had the Lord chosen? David, of course. But Hushai isn’t finished. Here is his coup de grâce: “Furthermore, whom should I serve? Should I not serve in the presence of his son? As I have served in your father’s presence, so will I be in your presence” (v 19). Whom should he serve? David, of course. Where could he best serve David? In the presence of his son, serving here as he had served David. But a man like Absalom, blinded by his own ego, filled in every blank with himself. Such would prove fatal. Absalom then turned to Ahithophel and said, “Give advice as to what we should do” (v 20). As surely as Hushai’s advice was motivated by love for David, so Ahithophel’s was blinded by hatred for him. His first counsel was to aggrandize David’s rooftop tryst with Bathsheba, a scene so corrupt one trembles to describe it. Then he asked to take a large posse to hunt down David, frighten off the others, “and,” he said, “I will strike only the king” (17:2). Absalom was “pleased” (v 4) with this plan! No, no, said Hushai, stroking Absalom’s ego. You need to be riding at the head of the whole nation, “from Dan to Beersheba” (v 11). The rebel son fell for it, and, stubborn as a mule, soon rode off to his doom.