Songs for Tamar

Chapter Six

Chapter 6

(Amnon Takes Tamar)

Jerusalem was in a sad state of mourning for Bathsheba, who was quite ill for months before her time to deliver. Nathan the Prophet had not enjoyed the things he had to say to the king.

Tamar, Farah, and Rizpah were often at Bathsehba's side in the weeks as her time approached. They dipped cloths in cool water and wrung them out to cool her frequent fevers. They placed them not only on her head but also on her body. Then King David managed to bring in ice packed in straw from Mount Hermon. This brought Bathsheba's fever down, and she seemed to be feeling better.

As David prayed and offered sacrifices, Nathan himself also offered prayers for the child, hoping that David's contrition was enough to turn God's anger from him.

Nathan believed David's heart had become right ever since he repented of the evil he did and had asked forgiveness. If God would not protect the child from death, he reasoned something was wrong with how the child developed in Bathsheba's womb. He himself had seen malformed children who could not survive out of the womb. Nathan concluded that God had His own reasons for not reaching into Bathsheba's womb and saving her child from death.

Tamar then joined David at the Tent of Meeting in Gibeon and prayed hard with him. His beard had grown out in the custom of one mourning. She herself put on sackcloth, remaining by her father's side. She had long forgiven him and Bathsheba in her heart. She knew that their hearts were for each other in ways far exceeding how it was with her father and Michal or her own mother.

As Tamar and her father paused during their prayers, a servant from the palace approached.

"Oh, King, live forever!" he greeted him. "The midwives say the time is near. Bathsheba lives still."

After they reached Jerusalem, Tamar hurried behind her father to Bathsheba's bedchamber where the midwives were still busy. Their looks were those of despair.

"How is my wife?" David asked with eagerness and concern.

"She will recover from her hard labors."

"And the child?"

"He has gone down to Sheol, Oh, king, to join your father Jesse."

Tamar and Farah joined the other women in the palace hall wailing over the death of David's son. Joining Bathsheba's grief at her bedside, he kissed her and raised a loud cry unto heaven.

"Would that I had died in his place, oh Lord. I cannot ransom him from Sheol but would with my own life if I could!"

All Jerusalem could hear wailing from the palace. For hours people came out into the streets to see a parade of mourners wailing to heaven for the death of David's son. Yet they didn't follow them into the streets after them or join in the sadness. They had a reason.

The people of Jerusalem were not sad. King David had abandoned justice to reach down from his pinnacle of power and harm the least of his faithful servants. Such a crime had not been done in Israel before. David was still the king, but he forgotten to look after the hearts of his people. They had not gone out into the streets as they once did when David returned with King Saul of old. To them, their hero looked to God now only when tragedy had struck him for his sins.

Had King David before that evening remembered his people always, there would be mourning heard from Dan to Beersheba. No traveler would have escaped the cries of anguish, even if he should hide in the darkest wilderness cave. But the throng in the streets paled against what it might have been if death had struck the house of a caring king.

It was a sad sight. The mourners were not friends of the king. They were those skilled in lamentation, paid to show the grief that the people could not feel themselves.