* It is to be noted that Tamar asked Amnon to marry her, and that the sole reproach directed against the king’s eldest son was that, after forcing her, he was unwilling to make her his wife.  Unions of brother and sister were probably as legitimate among the Hebrews at this time as among the Egyptians.

His anger was now turned against the king for not having taken up the cause of his sister, and he began to meditate his dethronement.  Having been recalled to Jerusalem at the instigation of Joab, “Absalom prepared him chariots and horses, and fifty men to run before him,” thus affecting the outward forms of royalty.  Judah, dissatisfied at the favour shown by David to the other tribes, soon came to recognise Absalom as their chief, and some of the most intimate counsellors of the aged king began secretly to take his part.  When Absalom deemed things safe for action, he betook himself to Hebron, under the pretence of a vow which he had made daring his sojourn at Geshur.  All Judah rallied around him, and the excitement at Jerusalem was so great that David judged it prudent to retire, with his Philistine and Cherethite guards, to the other side of the Jordan.  Absalom, in the mean while, took up his abode in Jerusalem, where, having received the tacit adherence of the family of Saul and of a number of the notables, he made himself king.  To show that the rupture between him and David was complete, he had tents erected on the top of the house, and there, in view of the people, took possession of his father’s harem.  Success would have been assured to him if he had promptly sent troops after the fugitives, but while he was spending his time in inactivity and feasting, David collected together those who were faithful to him, and put them under the command of Joab and Abishai.  The king’s veterans were more than a match for the undisciplined rabble which opposed them, and in the action which followed at Mahanaim Absalom was defeated:  in his flight through the forest of Ephraim he was caught in a tree, and before he could disentangle himself was pierced through the heart by Joab.

David, we read, wished his people to have mercy on his son, and he wept bitterly.  He spared on this occasion the family of Saul, pardoned the tribe of Judah, and went back triumphantly into Jerusalem, which a few days before had taken part in his humiliation.  The tribes of the house of Joseph had taken no side in the quarrel.  They were ignorant alike of the motives which set the tribe of Judah against their own hero, and of their reasons for the zeal with which they again established him on the throne.  They sent delegates to inquire about this, who reproached Judah for acting without their cognisance:  “We have ten parts in the king, and we have also more right in David than ye:  why then did ye despise us, that our advice should not be first had in bringing back our king?” Judah answered with yet fiercer words; then Sheba, a chief of the Benjamites, losing