David Weeps and Sings While Fleeing Absalom
On the Mount of Olives David climbs barefoot, tears on his face, a psalm in his mouth. Absalom takes the city, and measure for measure walks with the king.
Table of Contents
Click for full size
Barefoot Up the Mount
David climbed the Mount of Olives barefoot and weeping, and the strange part is that he was also singing. Behind him Absalom held Jerusalem. Ahead of him the road ran toward the wilderness and the fords. Dust stuck to the tears on his face. The ark had turned back into the city at his own command. The king who once danced before the ark now walked like a man already half exiled from his own name.
When did he say Psalm 3? The sages place it here, on the ascent, with foes multiplied and a son among them. "O Lord, how many are my foes!" If someone else had taken the kingdom, the distress would have been great. Now his own son had taken it, and the number of enemies became personal in a way no Philistine army ever managed. The harp was not in his hand. The psalm still found his mouth.
Why Weep and Sing Together
Rabbi Abba bar Kahana offers a parable. A king grows angry with his son and banishes him. He sends the son's teacher after him. The teacher finds the son weeping and singing at once. If you weep, why sing? If you sing, why weep? The son answers, I weep because I provoked my father. I sing because my punishment is not death. And not only that. He is sending me to duchies and provinces, places of authority even in exile.
David felt that doubled math. He had provoked Heaven. He was not dead. The road itself became a strange mercy. Rabbi Yudan hears him lining up with his ancestors. Jacob fled to Aram. Moses fled from Pharaoh. And I too am fleeing like them. In distress he remembered old judgments and comforted himself with them (Psalm 119:52). Flight became a membership in a holy pattern, not only a political collapse.
The Cup He Would Not Leave Dirty
When David said, "Arise, and let us flee," some heard strategy. Leave the city so we are not judged as a city led astray, dragging the innocent into collective guilt. Others heard confession. He took the cup to rinse it, and he would not move from there until he had rinsed it. God was cleansing his iniquities on the road, and the song rose because the washing had begun.
The affair with Bathsheba still walked before him. Measure for measure had been spoken. You committed one adultery? Sixteen will be committed against you. You murdered one person? Sixteen murders will answer. Shimei would later curse him on the road with an acronym of insults, and the platter of Bathsheba would walk before David in the midrash's hard image, a reminder that private sin becomes public weather. Nathan had said the Lord had taken away his sin, that he would not die. Living with the taken-away sin still meant climbing a mountain in tears while a son hunted the crown.
Three Weights on the Soul
Other nights David carried three anxieties the midrash names without softening. The future destruction of the Temple, until God showed him the place. "This is the house of the Lord God." The shame of Bathsheba, until the word came that he would not die for it. The question of succession, until Solomon was promised, Jedidiah, beloved of the Lord, born through the very house of the sin, the son through whom healing of the line would run.
Confession is the hinge. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, who has no deceit in his spirit. Some sages say do not drag last year's already-thanked sins back to the mouth like a dog to its vomit. Others say keep the sin before you always as memory, not as performance. Either way, the man on the Mount of Olives is not bargaining with flattery. He is rinsing the cup while he walks.
Bread in Mahanaim
On the far side, loyalty still found him. Hushai the Archite stayed behind to break counsel. Cherethites and Pelethites held. In Mahanaim, Shobi, Machir, and Barzillai brought beds, basins, and earthen vessels, mattresses and wine and bread for the hungry court in flight. When David saw their kindness he sang again, tasting the proverb that when a man's ways please the Lord, even his enemies can be at peace with him.
The city behind him still rang with Absalom's name. The mountain still held the memory of bare feet. Weeping and singing had shared one throat, and neither canceled the other. A king can lose a capital and keep a psalm. A father can flee a son and still call the flight a washing. The foes were many. The song did not wait for the foe count to drop to zero.
← All myths
