October 28, 2019: Day 44 – II Samuel 13

Absalom becomes a protagonist and Amnon becomes a villain.  We find the latter absolutely smitten by his sister and will not rest until he is able to rape her.  He does.  I’m sorry, but there is a lot of this in David’s family.  Do you notice that it just might be a genetic thing where David’s family thinks that they are somehow entitled to do anything that they want to whomever they want, including the women who say no, this is not what I want.  

I remain encouraged that we live in a time where more  and more it is not normal for women to be treated in this way.   We still do not see complementarity and there is still a double standard which does not affect the man as much as the women, but the awareness of this injustice and the ability for many people in society now to see it as such, is a huge change from where we were even 10 years ago.  But as we read this chapter we see that  women continued to be treated as property who were not able to express their own desires and wishes.  

Good for Absalom in sticking up for his sister, even if it did cause him to go into exile for 3 years.  Notice that David is more upset with the absence of Absalom than he is with the action of Absalom in killing his brother.  David was distraught because he got fake news that all of his sons were dead.  Not sure if that was done to kind of soften the news that only one of his sons were dead.  In any case we find ourselves at the end of this chapter with all of the sons intact except for Amnon.  Notice that the other kings are weeping.  I think the reason for this is that they are terrified of Absalom and want to make sure that they are protected by their father from Absalom.  No one really put together that this was a single concentrated action against one brother who had done another family member wrong.