Ahithophel's plan is, by every military measure, excellent. Twelve thousand men, a single night, one exhausted target struck before he can recover, and the war is over before it properly begins (verses 1-3). The narrator does not pretend otherwise, calling this counsel good. This is a story about good advice losing anyway, for reasons that have nothing to do with its quality.
Hushai's counter-proposal is strategically weaker. It is longer and built on flattering images: a bear robbed of her cubs, dew falling on the ground so that nothing escapes it, and an invitation for Absalom himself to lead the glorious final campaign (verses 8-13). None of it improves on Ahithophel's plan militarily. It delays everything, and delay is what David needs. Hushai wins because his flattery lands where Absalom's vanity is softest. Then comes the sentence that explains the chapter: 14"the LORD had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the LORD might bring harm upon Absalom."
This answers a prayer prayed days earlier on a weeping hillside above the Kidron (2 Samuel 15:31). Nothing about the prayer looked at the time like it accomplished anything. David asked and kept walking. Now, in a council chamber David never entered, an oracle-level advisor's sound plan is set aside for a weaker one because a proud young man liked the sound of leading his own campaign. God did not need David present. He needed one man's vanity left slightly open, and vanity in Absalom was never in short supply.
The escape nearly fails at the last moment. Jonathan and Ahimaaz are spotted, and a woman at Bahurim hides them in a well, covering it with a cloth and scattered grain, and lies calmly to Absalom's search party while two men crouch beneath her feet (verses 17-20). It is a small, unnamed act of courage that carries David's warning across the Jordan in time. God's answer to prayer moves in this chapter through flattery skillfully aimed and a well cleverly disguised, ordinary and morally mixed means carrying an extraordinary rescue.
Ahithophel understands what has happened faster than anyone. He does not wait to see whether Absalom's cause might recover. He saddles his donkey, goes home, sets his house in order, and hangs himself (verse 23). Centuries later another trusted companion who ate at his master's table would betray him and take his own life the same way (Matthew 27:3-5), and the psalmist had written the pattern of the betrayal long before (Psalm 41:9). Ahithophel's story becomes, without his intending it, a shadow cast forward onto a betrayal far worse than his own.
David arrives at Mahanaim hungry, weary, and thirsty, and finds a table prepared. Shobi, Machir, and Barzillai bring beds, basins, wheat, barley, honey, curds, and cheese for a fugitive king (verses 27-29). A psalm describes this scene: a table spread in the presence of enemies, a cup running over (Psalm 23:5). God's answer to David's prayer against Ahithophel and God's provision at Mahanaim are the same hand, working in the same season, visible in a council chamber's flattery and in three strangers' generosity both at once.
Prayer
Father, thank you for the way you answered David's brief prayer through means he never saw coming: flattery, a hidden well, three men bringing food to a fugitive. Teach us to trust that our prayers, however small, reach exactly where they need to go. And thank you for preparing a table for your people in the wilderness, even when we cannot yet see how the story ends. In Jesus' name, amen.