2 Samuel13:1–22

i. The seam that is really a sentence — 1-2

The unit opens with וַיְהִ֣י אַֽחֲרֵי־כֵ֗ן — “and it came to pass after so.” Ellicott warns that the formula “applies to the narrative which follows as a whole,” and Pulpit agrees it “has little chronological force”: it is a seam, not a date. But Benson and Gill both read the seam theologically. Benson: “Now began another part of Nathan's prophecy, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house.” Gill is blunter still — after the sin, the repentance, the pardon and Solomon's birth, “yet after all this the divine threatenings must take place.” K&D, working from the marriage to Maacah at Hebron, places the events no earlier than the twentieth year of David's reign. So: a chapter that begins with a vague connective is in fact the second instalment of a named judgment. ✦ The two commentators who see prophecy here are not reading it into the text; 2 Samuel 12:11 is the text they are reading it from.

Verse 2 gives the interior. וַיֵּ֨צֶר — “it was narrow to Amnon” — is, as Pulpit observes, the Hebrew idiom in which distress is confinement and joy is space. K&D renders it “he quite pined away,” and insists (against Luther) that this sickness is real; the pretence only begins at v. 5. And the one barrier is named with the verb וַיִּפָּלֵא֙ (pâlâʼ, H6381), “it was too wonderful” — the verb of what lies beyond human reach. K&D: “The maidenly modesty of Tamar evidently raised an insuperable barrier to the gratification of his lusts.”

ii. Wisdom without fear — 3-5

Jonadab is introduced with two neutral words that the translators must gamble on. He is a רֵ֗עַ — Strong's “an associate (more or less close)” — and he is חָכָ֖ם מְאֹֽד, “very wise.” Barnes takes the gamble: “Subtil - literally, wise. The word is generally used in a good sense, but here, and in Job 5:13, it means crafty.” Cambridge refuses it: the word “pronounces no judgment on the way in which Jonadab misused his sagacity.” Benson will not even let the first word stand: “Amnon had a friend — Say rather an enemy.”

⚙ The narrator's restraint is the art here. He gives Jonadab the vocabulary of Proverbs and then lets us watch what that vocabulary does when the fear of the LORD is subtracted from it. The plan is a small masterpiece of applied psychology: it uses a real symptom (v. 2's wasting) as the raw material of a lie, it exploits a father's habit of visiting his sons, and it hands Amnon the one word he had refused to say. In v. 4 Amnon says “Tamar, sister of Absalom my brother” — Gill notices exactly why: “he does not call her his sister, but Absalom's sister, to lessen his sin.” In v. 5 Jonadab scripts him: “my sister Tamar.” Gill again: “the more to cover his ill design upon her.” Geneva draws the standing lesson: “there is no enterprise so wicked that it cannot be encouraged to further wickedness.”

iii. The king who sent her — 6-10

Amnon performs the illness and makes his request to “the king” — the narrator's title, not “his father.” JFB catches the calculation in the wording: to the king Amnon spoke of Tamar as “his sister,” “a term artfully designed to hoodwink his father.” The request itself is built on a triple repetition English cannot keep: לְעֵינַי, before my eyes (v. 5, v. 6, and executed in v. 8), and מִיָּדָהּ, from her hand (vv. 5, 6, 10). And the food is לְבִבוֹת, heart-cakes — K&D, “a heart-strengthening kind of pastry”; Barnes, a word that “occur[s] nowhere else”; Gill, named “either from the form of them… or from the effect of them, comforting and refreshing the heart.”

Then David sends. וַיִּשְׁלַ֥ח (shâlach, H7971) is the verb, and it will return in Piel at v. 16 for the sending-away Tamar calls the greater evil. Poole finds David's blindness so implausible that he attributes it to providence — God “blinded David's mind, that he might bring upon him the designed and threatened judgments.” ✦ Poole's explanation is theological inference; the text gives the king no motive at all, which may be the harsher reading. Verse 8 then lists four feminine verbs in a row — took, kneaded, hearted, boiled — and Gill's note on her state of mind is the right one: she came “with an innocent breast, having no suspicion of any design upon her chastity.”

iv. “Do not do this folly in Israel” — 11-14

When the room is empty Amnon seizes her: וַיַּֽחֲזֶק־בָּהּ, Hifil of châzaq (H2388) — the verb of a strong grip. K&D: “when she handed him the food, he laid hold of her.” Gill registers the obscenity of the vocative: “one would think the relation he observes she stood in to him would have checked him.”

Tamar's answer is the theological centre of the unit, and it is argued, not merely felt. She names the act נְבָלָה (nebalah, H5039). Barnes: “Tamar's words are a verbal quotation from Genesis 34:7. The natural inference is that Tamar knew the passage in Genesis.” K&D concurs: the words “recall Genesis 34:7, where the expression ‘folly’ (nebalah) is first used to denote a want of chastity.” Her premise is national and covenantal — Cambridge: “Israel was a holy nation… therefore all acts of unchastity were an offence against the true character and calling of the nation.” Pulpit adds the Hebrew force BSB hides: “Do not force me; literally, do not humble me… it bears testimony to the nobleness of the Hebrew women, who regarded their chastity as their crown of honour.”

Her last argument — “speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from thee” — is the one the commentators unanimously refuse to take at face value. Ellicott: “she made any and every suggestion to gain time.” Cambridge: “hoping to escape immediate violence.” K&D quotes Clericus, “that she might escape from his hands by any means in her power,” and Josephus to the same effect. Poole allows one further possibility — that she thought “her royal father could or would dispense with it.” ⚙ Whichever is true, the Levitical prohibition (Lev 18:9, 11; 20:17) stands, and the narrator does not need to cite it; he lets Tamar's own phrase “such a thing is not done in Israel” carry the law. Then v. 14, and the narrative goes as flat as a police report: he would not listen, he was stronger, he humbled her, he lay with her. K&D's whole comment is one sentence long. The restraint is the judgment.

v. The hatred greater than the love — 15-19

Verse 15 is the verse that redefines verse 1. The Hebrew piles the roots up: שִׂנְאָה … שְׂנֵאָהּ … הַשִּׂנְאָה (sinʼâh / sânêʼ, H8135/H8130) against אַהֲבָה … אֲהֵבָהּ (ʼahăbâh / ʼâhab, H160/H157) — hatred, hated, the hatred, greater than the love, he loved her. Ellicott quotes Tacitus by way of Kirkpatrick: “It is characteristic of human nature to hate one whom you have injured,” and concludes that “Amnon was governed, not by love, but by mere animal passion.” K&D says it most exactly: the reversal “furnishes a striking proof that lust is not love, but simply the gratification of the animal passions.” Benson locates the mechanism in conscience: “he hated his sister when he should have hated himself.”

Tamar protests, and here the text itself fails. Cambridge: “The Heb. text cannot be so translated, and is certainly corrupt”; Barnes: “The Hebrew text is probably corrupt”; Pulpit canvasses Philippsohn and Cahen and concedes “Flat as this is, no better rendering is possible”; K&D salvages a sense by supplying a verb. What survives every reconstruction is her claim: the expulsion is a greater evil than the rape. Poole explains why — being thrown out made it look “as if she had been an impudent strumpet, and had either enticed him to the sin, or at least consented to it.” K&D adds the legal point that seals it: she could not cry for help as Deuteronomy 22:27 requires, because Amnon had removed the witnesses himself.

Then the robe. כְּתֹ֣נֶת פַּסִּ֔ים — the phrase used elsewhere only of Joseph (Gen 37:3, 23, 32), as Ellicott, Barnes, Cambridge, Pulpit and K&D all note. K&D draws the conclusion: “Notwithstanding this dress, by which a king's daughter could at once be recognised, Amnon's servant treated Tamar like a common woman.” And Tamar, torn robe, ashes, hand on head, “went, going and crying” — Cambridge: “Went away shrieking as she went; not lamenting with silent tears, but with loud passionate shrieks and wailing.” ⚙ She is the only person in this chapter who tells the truth out loud.

vi. Three silences — 20-22

The unit ends by recording what three men did with what they knew. Absalom says הַחֲרִ֙ישִׁי֙ (Hifil of chârash, H2790) — be silent — and Cambridge reads his calculation: he urged her “to bear the outrage patiently, and avoid a public scandal; feeling sure that David would not be persuaded to inflict an adequate punishment on Amnon, and intending to watch his own opportunity for revenge.” Tamar sits שֹׁמֵמָה (shâmêm, H8076) — K&D: “as one laid waste, with the joy of her life hopelessly destroyed,” and he adds that the word cannot simply mean “solitary.” Poole: “none now seeking her in marriage.” Gill notes the silence that follows her: “no mention is made of her afterwards.”

David hears and is וַיִּ֥חַר לוֹ מְאֹד — it burned to him exceedingly — and does nothing. Barnes and Cambridge both record that the Septuagint supplies the reason here (“he did not vex the spirit of Amnon his son, because he loved him, because he was his firstborn”); K&D, with more caution, calls that addition “nothing but a subjective conjecture of the translators,” which “does not warrant us in altering the text.” ✦ The honest position is K&D's: the LXX plus is an ancient explanation, not the Hebrew. Pulpit supplies the standard from within the book itself — Eli was punished for exactly this failure (1 Sam 2:34) — and Barnes supplies the consequence: David's want of justice “probably rankled in Absalom's heart, and was the first seed of his after rebellion.” Then the last silence, and the one that kills: Absalom spoke to Amnon neither good nor bad. Poole reads the Hebrew particle as adversative — “though Absalom hated him” — and Pulpit puts the family in one line: “It is strange how unlike the son was to the father.”