His very name (in Hebrew, Avshalom, “father of peace”) seems singularly inapt for this son of King David who revolted against his father and met an ignoble death.1 Yet David never gave up on him, and many of his contemporaries also saw something special in him.

The following tells the story of Absalom, as recorded in Scripture and elaborated in Talmud, Midrash, and other rabbinic commentaries and traditions.

Background and Family Life

In the first years after Saul’s death, only the tribe of Judah accepted David as their king, with his capital in Hebron. There Absalom was born as David’s third son, to Maachah, whom David had taken as a war bride;2 Maachah’s father was Talmai, king of Geshur, in the present-day Golan Heights.

Absalom was extremely handsome, but his most unique feature was his hair, which had something supernatural about it.3 He was conceited about this;4 perhaps in an attempt to curb this tendency5 he dedicated his hair to G‑d, taking on a lifelong vow (nazir olam, “a permanent Nazirite”6) whereby at certain fixed intervals (one year,7 or possibly more often8) he would cut it and offer sacrifices to G‑d. At that time he would also weigh the shorn hair, and might then have donated an equivalent weight of gold or silver to the Temple or to the poor, though he might have also intended just to show off how luxuriantly it had grown.9

Sadly, David failed to discipline Absalom properly during his childhood and youth.10 One factor, perhaps, was that David realized that his older sons would not be worthy to succeed him even with proper discipline.11 He may also have been misled by his son’s seeming piety.

Absalom eventually married and fathered three sons and a daughter. His sons (whose names are not given) either predeceased him or proved to be unworthy;12 of his daughter we know only that her name was Tamar, and that she was a beautiful woman.

Fratricide

Absalom had an older full sister, also named Tamar.13 Their half-brother Amnon (David’s oldest son) became infatuated with her, lured her to his apartments on a pretext, and assaulted her. Absalom’s response, after doing what he could to soothe her feelings, was to bide his time and silently plot revenge.14 Two years later he found his opportunity and had his men assassinate Amnon. (He may have rationalized his deed by comparing himself to Simeon and Levi, who centuries earlier had likewise taken matters into their own hands and massacred a city to avenge their sister’s honor.15)

Fearing his father’s wrath, Absalom fled to his grandfather in Geshur, where he remained for three years, during which David was torn by conflicting emotions and thoughts. Aside from guilt over his own role in the entire chain of events,16 and grief over Amnon’s death, David was worried about Absalom’s spiritual future in that faraway pagan environment. At the same time David was still angry with him, and knew that duty would demand that he execute Absalom for his crime. At times David even considered having his army invade Geshur in reprisal for their sheltering Absalom. Maachah added her own pleas to David to let her son come home peaceably.17

Eventually Joab, David’s long-serving general and confidant, maneuvered David into consenting to Absalom’s return. Absalom, however, still showed no remorse for his actions,18 so for two years David refused to see him (even though that meant also not getting to know his grandchildren19); as our sages put it, “it is forbidden to look at the face of a wicked person.”20 Finally Absalom lost his patience and forced Joab to schedule an audience with the king, though even then he received a cool welcome.21 It was clear to Absalom that despite his now being David’s eldest living son,22 his father had no intention of naming him as his successor; indeed around this time David swore an oath to Bathsheba that their son Solomon (then a boy of seven) would inherit the crown.23

Ambition and Rebellion

Headstrong Absalom was convinced that he was the rightful heir to the monarchy, and was going to try to get it at any cost. In his mind, this would not require ousting David entirely, just coercing him to accept Absalom as his successor and crown him during his lifetime, as indeed David was to later do with Solomon,24 although he would not rule out killing his father, if it came to that.25

His first step was to build a power base. Absalom started appearing in public in a coach with footmen, to accustom people to seeing him in royal style.26 Meanwhile, as demagogues throughout history have done, he began to put himself forward as the champion of the “little guy” against a sclerotic and corrupt establishment. He also tapped into lingering resentment of David (from Saul’s partisans, or from the aftereffects of the Bathsheba incident).27 So, over time he “stole the hearts of the people of Israel.”28

Absalom was now in the prime of life,29 and decided the time was ripe. He used an excuse to go to Hebron, where he could pray to G‑d that he be successful there as his father had been,30 and which as the former capital would be a natural rallying point.31 He was accompanied by 200 men of the Sanhedrin (the nation’s leaders), unaware of his true intentions; once they realized they had been tricked, they felt constrained to remain with Absalom, but secretly prayed for David’s victory.32

At a signal, the revolt broke out all over the country, so suddenly that David was caught by surprise and could not be sure who was still on his side. A particularly heavy blow was when he heard that Achitophel had defected to Absalom: Achitophel until now had been his trusted advisor, whose counsel was known to be as reliable as asking of G‑d. (Little did David know that Achitophel had in fact nursed enmity against him for years.33) All David could do was pray to G‑d to frustrate Achitophel’s plans against him.

David decided to leave Jerusalem immediately, so that Absalom would assume that all of David’s supporters had left with him and would not attack the citizens who stayed,34 and so that Absalom would lose the opportunity to stage a false-flag attack and blame it on David.35 He left ten of his concubines to guard the palace (presumably assuming that Absalom would not molest them). But when Absalom entered Jerusalem, Achitophel advised him to violate these concubines and to publicize this action,36 which Absalom proceeded to do.

Ostensibly this was to demonstrate that he had irreparably broken with his father, so that anyone who was still uncertain about supporting Absalom (out of fear that he might reconcile with David and they would then be branded as rebels) would now be forced to choose a side;37 Achitophel even presented this action to Absalom as a mitzvah38—as the fulfillment of an earlier prophecy to David.39 In reality Achitophel intended that Absalom would later be brought to trial for this sin and executed, at which point he, Achitophel, could seize the kingship for himself.38

Having manipulated Absalom into this heinous deed, Achitophel was now more comfortable suggesting a way to dispose of David quickly—that he would lead a small strike force to kill him before he could regroup his strength. Absalom was hesitant to do this, though,40 and turned to Chushai, another sage advisor (who, unbeknownst to him, had been planted in his inner circle by David); his advice was to wait until the entire army could be assembled, and then overwhelm David by sheer manpower. As unwieldy as this plan was, G‑d caused Absalom—seemingly inexplicably—to accept it, thanks to David’s prayers.

Downfall

Just as Absalom still retained some vestige of filial respect, so did David still love his wayward son41—and also, realizing that this entire episode traced back to his own misdeed with Bathsheba, felt that Absalom was in reality just G‑d’s agent and did not deserve to be killed.42 (In fact David was happy that the perpetrator of the predicted “evil” against him39 was his own son—who would be more likely to have compassion for him—rather than a servant who might not have done so.43) So before the climactic battle that would decide the success or failure of the revolt, David gave strict instructions to his troops to spare Absalom’s life if they captured him.

But now things began to come apart for Absalom. His army was badly beaten by their opponents, but even more so by the forest terrain44 and the wild animals that infested it.45 Absalom himself, while riding under a tree, got his head stuck between its branches,46 and even worse, his hair got tangled there. Apparently he was too high off the ground to cut himself loose without risking his death in the fall.46 But he also saw Gehinnom (hell) open beneath him,47 and finally—shatteringly—realized that he would be better off falling into the hands of David’s men: either they would kill him and his death would be his atonement, or they might bring him alive to David.48 Eventually Joab, David’s general, found Absalom, and (in flagrant violation of David’s orders) stabbed him in the heart with three darts. Ten of Joab’s men then finished him off, tossed his corpse into a pit, and ignominiously covered it with a pile of stones (in place of the grand monument that Absalom had previously built as his intended mausoleum).

David anxiously awaited news of the outcome of the battle and of Absalom’s fate, with the latter uppermost in his mind. As soon as the first report came of his side’s victory, David’s first question was “Is it well with the young man Absalom?” When told of Absalom’s death he was distraught, crying again and again “My son! Absalom, my son!”—so much so that Joab had to sternly tell him to pull himself together and greet his victorious soldiers. Yet this was more than just the natural grief of a father for his child; with his repeated cries of “my son” David mitigated Absalom’s punishment in this world and in the next, causing his severed head to miraculously reattach to his body, and extricating him from Gehinnom into Gan Eden (Paradise).49

Aftermath and Life Lessons

Absalom’s soul was not only rehabilitated by his loving father David, but we later find a “Maachah daughter of Absalom”50 marrying David’s grandson Rehoboam and being the mother of his successor,51 so that Absalom’s bloodline may after all have become an inseparable part of the future Jewish monarchy.

The story of Absalom is a cautionary tale of being careful in one’s choice of spouse,52 of taking care to educate one’s children properly, of the dangers of overweening ambition, and much else. Each detail of Absalom’s fate also serves as an object lesson in how G‑d punishes “measure for measure”: he had prided himself on his hair, and it was the cause of his being caught and killed; he misled—or as the verse puts it, “stole the hearts of”—three groups (the people at large, his father David, and the members of the Sanhedrin), and his own heart was pierced with three darts; he ravished his father’s ten concubines, and was killed by ten men.53 A Talmudic sage, Rabbi Yonatan, records that he saw Absalom’s grave and “sat on it”—i.e., reflected on how much better things might have been had his downward spiral been arrested at an earlier point in his life, a sobering thought for parents and educators to consider.54

In a sense, though, the name “father of peace” was after all suited to Absalom. In his Psalms, King David praises G‑d for having “redeemed my soul in peace, for the many were with me,”55 these “many” being the followers of Absalom who, as above, were actually praying on behalf of David.32 This is a paradigm for the many instances throughout Jewish history, and in our individual lives, where we seem to be beset by hostile forces, but where those themselves turn out to be the vehicle for true peace in our lives and our service of G‑d56—or as Absalom’s half-brother, David’s successor Solomon, was to put it, “When G‑d favors a person’s ways, even his enemies make peace with him.”57