Absalom's Beauty

The mind of Absalom in Psalm 2 agonizes the mind of his father in Psalm 3.

In the way of a mountaineer at the base of  a volcano David cannot stop thinking of Absalom.  Absalom made rebellion, as if it had just occurred to him from Psalm 2, killed his brother Amnon for raping his sister Tamar.

Why do the nations so furiously rage together, why do the peoples imagine a vain thing?

David refused to see him for two years.  Absalom, kings, rulers, nations David flees. Absalom got his neck tangled in the rebellion. He got his neck caught in an oak branch riding a mule. David's general, Joab,  killed him hanging by the hair. The "trouble" for David with rebellion is of the "many"  people drawn away by Absalom's "beauty" (II Sam 14.25).  Look at Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships. Look at Lucifer, perfect in beauty, every precious covering, whose heart was lifted up because of his beauty (Ezekiel. 28). Look at Hollywood. Chuang Tzu says it's better to be ugly. Beauty anyway is a transient state. Beauty is also for others; yourself you cannot see. Messiah had no form or comeliness and  no beauty that we should desire him (Isaiah 53). The sin bearer cannot bear beauty, but ugliness. We  hid our faces from him.

Agony

 If you're not a king or a hero  and free of their trials at least your children can make you feel some pain. Fathers like saying, at least save his life.  Just let him live. Absalom still lives. David's ultimate hopes had not yet dashed; it was yet to happen.  David fled, which he's good at, spent 15 years fleeing Saul. What is greater than the iceberg of our souls in which to immerse our trouble?  Some people verbalize their doubts. What did I do to deserve it?   If only I had been a better mother, father, husband wife, friend, teammate, worker...citizen (Pinter). Among victims and persons of conscience the only one one who escapes self doubt is the criminal. Who is an ocean to bathe in? A man of sorrows is acquainted with grief. Psalms were written for people like this, that is, after the affliction begins. Agony is a sword in the heart against hope for amity once known.

Psalm 51, out of sequence chronologically with Psalm 2, comes before it in the narrative life of David as the cause of  rebellion. David went on the roof and got Bathsheba's husband to go to the front. Uriah died on the battlefield. David's first loss from this was his child by Bathsheba. He lost three more sons because of it. Remember though that the next child he and Bathsheba had was Solomon! David got the message that "the sword shall never depart from your house (II Sam 12). Amnon, Absalom, Adonijah all departed. That's why Psalm 3 is as ironic as any taunted in the valley of death by enemies, but Psalm 3 also shows the state we are in. He has set apart the godly for himself.

 David gets a chance to pray when the petals radiate from center, covering his cares. His intercession is a field of flowers, but there's hardly a time in the Psalms when David doesn't need rescue. He's desperate when the clock strikes.  How many are his foes! They say God will not deliver him! They must be strong foes if they can dictate to God. Can they? Others made songs of it, thou O LORD art a shield for me! This is the first reference to the shield in Psalms. Hide in the shadow! Because he loves me I will rescue him! The glory and lifter of my head begs to be remembered with Psalm 34, faces never covered with shame. The poor man is always calling. It is why they who don't live in trouble are obscene.

Shall we rank the suffering?  Messiah's troubles outrank David's. Messiah is a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief. We  deny horrors to survive. Messiah looked it full in the face and knew the whole in a moment, not layered over decades by degrees so he could peep around the corner of memory and heal. He took in a moment the sins of the world alive! Completely conscious. A second, two moments, two hours!  That's what Timmerman says, you only hear the howl after chatting with this Susan, but you don't know who it is. It's you. None of this dissociation was in Messiah's suffering. That's important because despair is the cruelest act.

 David says glory is bestowed on his head when he gets answers from the holy hill. That the LORD sustains him even against ten thousands on every side. Know nothing at all. Knowing is equivocation. Faith is the only knowledge. Of course spectators, the bulls that surround him (Psalm 22), the power of the dogs, have critical objectivity. Northrop Frye says critics are not only jackals and hyenas, have some use, but aren't they aghast if somebody pulls a rod of iron and strikes them on the jaw?  David says, break their teeth, a good image because teeth will break, but a bruised reed won't (Isa. 42).  It just depends what side you're on. The observer, the torturer of Mennonites and the disappeareds, or the tortured? The list is long. He will not falter or be discouraged. We're in Isaiah in the Psalms.

It's better to be consumed by malady so nothing comes but pain. Or is it better to collapse in disaster here but over there get grace?  After sustaining a tragedy with a brave face a word of kindness breaks. The theory goes emotion is no friend. When he was disfigured, marred beyond human likeness so there was no sympathy we were just appalled. It's a good thing he said to his mother, "woman behold your son." In the throes of death who has time for life? In the midst of creation who has time to chat? Sean O'Keefe, who survived the plane crash in Alaska that killed Senator Ted Stevens, said he held out against all odds and pain to deliver his son safe, but that when he was strapped in the rescue helicopter he allowed himself to pass out, but only then. When the time comes we commend our spirit. If you want to talk about that you are human.

Absalom is like Judas in passing. Both were hung.  David wants his enemies "smitten on the cheekbone" when they break their teeth. Do you want prayers answered? Imprecations are mild unless you intend them fulfilled. Prayers as curses, praying evil down, speaking ill that good may come, you  bless. I heard it said, "I'm as liberal as anybody" right before the president, the governor, the senator, the police past and present got rocked. The religious will curse you with the irreligious who use religion when it suits. David,  driven to extremity, prays but doesn't want answers? He asked Joab to spare Absalom, but  forgot to do the same in this prayer.  Did he connect the fate of his son with his prayer. Absalom got smitten on the cheek all right, probably got teeth broke when he caught his jaw in the fork of the oak.

Poets the surface beneath with contraction, molder from eruption. Of course we only know it later when David or Jonah gets spit back up. Absalom, Absalom why kick against the pricks? The mind of Absalom in Psalm 2 agonizes the mind of his father in Psalm 3. The unspoken death of a son is so great we are not prepared for it to exist. It happens in Psalm 51  too;  a series of background events spoken only as foreground. They could be spoken, but aren't, like Abraham's poems on the sacrifice of his son Issac that he didn't write, or Issac's upon his own.

The hummingbird drinks from the hose, but how talk about a thing without talk? These icebergs of the mind are icebergs of the mouth, huge, uncomprehending. We think we don't know or talk about it  in code.  Each  nuance informs. Millenniums magnify in the background that exceeds foreground. Psalm 51 pairs Psalm 3, a world as much larger than the original as the ear of corn is greater than than seed.

"The critic as parasite and jackal." Northrop Frye. Anatomy of Criticism, 6.
"You only hear the howl." Jacobo Timerman. Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, 32.