Absalom

Absalom, also called Abishalom, is a son of King David — the third named, born at Hebron to Maacah daughter of Talmai king of Geshur (2 Samuel 3:3) — who led a widespread revolt against his father and is the central figure of the narrative running from 2 Samuel 13 to 19. The name is usually explained from the Hebrew words for "father" and "peace," though the precise sense of either form is not certain; the longer Abishalom appears in the list of David's sons born at Hebron (2 Samuel 3:3), the shorter form throughout the story.

The text presents him first as an avenger within his own family. After his sister Tamar is violated by their half-brother Amnon, Absalom waits two years and then has Amnon killed at his sheep-shearing by servants he instructs and encourages beforehand (2 Samuel 13:28). He flees, and Joab later stages an appeal through a wise woman from Tekoa, who argues that the king should not let a banished man remain an outcast, and flatters David's discernment as being "as an angel of God" (2 Samuel 14:2, 14:14, 14:17). Absalom returns, and the story turns to conspiracy: at Hebron he draws Ahithophel, David's counselor, and the conspiracy grows strong as the people increase with him (2 Samuel 15:12). David flees Jerusalem, praying that Ahithophel's counsel be turned to foolishness and planting Hushai to counter it (2 Samuel 15:31, 15:34); Shimei meets the king with the accusation that the blood of Saul's house is being repaid (2 Samuel 16:8), and Ahithophel advises Absalom to take his father's concubines publicly to bind his followers to him (2 Samuel 16:21). The narrative attributes the outcome to God: Hushai's advice is preferred because "Yahweh had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, to the intent that Yahweh might bring evil on Absalom" (2 Samuel 17:14). Absalom is killed by Joab in the battle that follows, and David's grief becomes one of Scripture's most quoted laments.

Psalm 3 is headed, in the Hebrew superscription, as David's when he fled from his son Absalom, and its opening cry — "Yahweh, how my adversaries have increased! Many are those who rise up against me" (Psalm 3:1) — has been read in light of that flight ever since. Christian traditions differ in how they take him. Patristic and later interpreters commonly treat David in this story as a type of Christ and Absalom as a figure of the rebellious creature or of the betrayer, and read Psalm 3 Christologically, so that the psalm's speaker is finally Christ in his passion and rising; others read the chapters as moral narrative about ambition and a father's failure to restrain his son, and modern critical scholarship tends to read them as a unified literary account of royal succession. Jewish tradition likewise debated his standing, with the Mishnah listing Absalom among those who have no share in the world to come while later discussion softens that verdict. These are readings of the same text rather than disagreements about what it reports.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.