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2 Samuel 14:1-3  Now Joab the son of Zeruiah knew that the king’s heart went out to Absalom.  And Joab sent to Tekoa and brought from there a wise woman and said to her, “Pretend to be a mourner and put on mourning garments.  Do not anoint yourself with oil, but behave like a woman who has been mourning many days for the dead.  Go to the king and speak thus to him.” So Joab put the words in her mouth.

David was in a very tricky political/covenantal/theological situation, and Joab knew it!  Joab was David’s nephew, the son of his sister, Zeruiah, so he understood exactly the spot his uncle was in

On the one hand, the Mosiac Law and the King’s obligation to uphold the Law and to maintain justice in the Kingdom, would have required David to exact the death penalty on Absalom who had killed his half-brother Amnon for raping his sister Tamar.  Like Nathan the Prophet (see 2 Samuel 12), Joab knew that David did not cope well with direct confrontation concerning sensitive matters of the heart, so, again like Nathan, he devised a scheme involving a fictitious, neutral, objective scenario to draw a decision from the King that could then be applied to the personal dilemna – of doing what justice and the Law demanded while at the same time opening the door for meaningful reconciliation!

Joab also knew that in David’s heart there was a very soft spot for his son, Absalom, and, at least at this stage, Absalom, politically, would be the best successor to the throne.  (This later changed when the ungrateful, spoilt, self-serving Absalom tried to usurp the throne, and Joab had him killed because of this threat – 2 Samuel 18).  One of the reasons it is good to have this story, with all its complex intrigue, recorded in Salvation History, is the way it anticipates how God himself would finally act in a way that openly maintained his justice while at the same time displaying his heartfelt mercy for sinners – the sacrificial death of his own dear Son in the place of, as a substitute for, unworthy sinners like me!

“Beneath the cross of Jesus I gladly take my stand, the shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land; a home within a wilderness, a rest upon the way from the burning of the noonday heat, and the burden of the day.  O safe and happy shelter!  O refuge, tried and sweet!  O sacred place where heaven’s love and heaven’s justice meet;… … Upon that cross of Jesus my eyes at times can see the very dying form of One who suffered there for me; and from my stricken heart, with tears, two wonders I confess: the wonder of redeeming love, and my own worthlessness. … … content to let the world go by, to know no gain or loss, my sinful self my only shame, my glory all – the Cross!” (Elizabeth Cecilia Clephane)

– Bruce Christian