Something has gone upside down. David's army has just won a victory that ends a rebellion threatening the kingdom, and the soldiers, with no celebration at all, 3"stole into the city that day as people steal in who are ashamed when they flee in battle." Nobody fled. Everybody won. And yet the army creeps home like the defeated, because the one thing louder than their victory is their king's grief: 4"O my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, my son!" A single voice behind a covered face has turned a nation's triumph into something that feels like shame.
Joab does not soften what he says, and by any normal standard of how a subject speaks to a king he goes too far. 5"You have today covered with shame the faces of all your servants, who have this day saved your life." He names what these men risked and what David's grief has done with it. Then comes the line that cuts deepest: you love those who hate you and hate those who love you, and if Absalom were alive and all of us dead, you would be pleased (verse 6). It is brutal to say to a grieving father. On the evidence of this chapter it is also true.
Consider what David's grief has cost beyond his private sorrow. It has told an army that just bled for him that their loyalty weighs less in his heart than a rebel son. David has every right to mourn a son, however that son lived and died. What harms his men is grief that will not yield, even for a moment, to the duty waiting outside the door. His sorrow, unchecked, is hurting the very people who secured his throne.
Joab's rebuke is harsh, self-interested in places, and beyond what a commander owes a king. It is also necessary. 7"Now therefore arise, go out and speak kindly to your servants," and he swears that otherwise not a man will stay with him that night. Sometimes the truth we most need arrives from someone with no business saying it so bluntly, and the test is whether we will hear it anyway. David does. 8"the king arose and took his seat in the gate." There is no recorded speech and no defense of his grief, only obedience.
There is leadership in that quiet act of standing back up, more than in any speech David might have given. A king cannot lead from behind a covered face forever, however sincere the grief. He takes the seat where kings receive their people, and lets his presence say what his covered face refused to say. The good shepherd Christ describes lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:11), and every leader who serves under him is called to set aside what the heart wants to indulge, however legitimately, for the people still waiting at the gate.
Is there someone waiting at your gate while you sit behind a covered face? Rise today and go to them.
Prayer
Father, teach us the difference between grief that heals and grief that harms, and give us the humility to hear hard truth even from someone with no business speaking it so plainly. When our sorrow tempts us to abandon those who need us, give us David's willingness to rise, take our place again, and serve. In Jesus' name, amen.