“The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.” Mary Catherine Bateson, author and sociologist, helps us understand why and how stories help us live more wisely.
She is echoing another wise woman, an ancient storyteller whose name we don’t know, who leaves her mark on our story in today’s chapter, which continues the Absalom saga.
Prince Absalom is exiled in his grandparent’s kingdom, in fear of blood revenge for killing his half brother Amnon. Tamer, his sister, the raped princess whose tragic fate was the cause of this mess, is sequestered and silenced in Jerusalem, while their father King David still does nothing about this crisis but misses his exiled son. But if he brings back Absalom he’d have to avenge the killing of Amnon - by having Absalom killed. Blood revenge is how it’s done in those days. So it’s better for Absalom to stay away. But for how long?
It’s been three years, and this messed up family constellation needs some intervention.
That’s when Yoav, David’s trusted general, steps in with the aid of a wise woman, perhaps a local healer, who will trick the king into bringing the bad boy home.
They put on a play - for one audience member:
וַיִּשְׁלַ֤ח יוֹאָב֙ תְּק֔וֹעָה וַיִּקַּ֥ח מִשָּׁ֖ם אִשָּׁ֣ה חֲכָמָ֑ה וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֵ֠לֶ֠יהָ הִֽתְאַבְּלִי־נָ֞א וְלִבְשִׁי־נָ֣א בִגְדֵי־אֵ֗בֶל וְאַל־תָּס֙וּכִי֙ שֶׁ֔מֶן וְהָיִ֕ית כְּאִשָּׁ֗ה זֶ֚ה יָמִ֣ים רַבִּ֔ים מִתְאַבֶּ֖לֶת עַל־מֵֽת׃
“Yoav sent messengers to Tekoa and brought a wise woman from there. He said to her, “Pretend you are in mourning; put on mourning clothes and don’t anoint yourself with oil; and act like a woman who has grieved a long time over a departed one.”
We don’t know her name but once she puts on the disguise of a widow, this wise woman becomes David’s drama therapist, using a made-up story about her two sons, one of whom killed the other as the family demands the killer’s blood, per law. The tale echoes Cain and Abel’s bloody saga but the purpose is to hit closer to home - to the palace. Will David realize that what the story really is about is his son Absalom, with blood on his hands, who nevertheless might be forgiven and brought back home?
Unlike Nathan the Prophet’s parable which is short and successful in getting the king to change his mind and deal with the trauma that he can help heal, this story/play is more complex and the conversation between this therapist/actress and her client is long and complex - they go back and forth fifteen times - one of the longest conversations in the bible!
She is not just acting out a script but improvising and leading him to admit that there is room for forgiveness, opening the path for Absalom’s return. Even when David realizes the ruse and figures out that it’s Yoav’s plot, he is fully engaged in the process.
Maybe that’s the power of plays and storytelling - it gets us, when working well, to move beyond familiar fears, conventions and convictions. What’s at stake here is not just Absalom’s life but David’s stand on who will be the heir - and can the king go beyond the legal code to activate his leadership.
Halbertal and Holmes unpack this dynamic that David is asked to take on:
“Restraining blood revenge is one of the central functions or marks of political sovereignty. The escalating spiral of mimetic violence, fueled by attacks and counterattacks, has to be tamed before it spreads like a plague. And the only force that can cauterize devastating revenge cycles is a supreme ruler exercising such irresistible power that he does not risk becoming part of the cycle himself. This is the sense in which kingship derives its legitimacy from its ability to rise above kinship.”
David does as Yoav hopes he would. Guided by the wise woman’s words, he gets Absalom back back to Jerusalem but the king and his son will not meet or talk for yet another two years.
When they finally reunite, quite formally, Absalom is the father of four children, one of them, a daughter, is, a bit bizarrely, named Tamar. (Did her aunt, silenced rape victim, die?) The sons’ names are oddly not named. In a later tradition the sons will not be mentioned at all.
The fate of the woman from Tekoa is also unknown. We assume she took off her costume, went back home with a rich reward and story about storytelling so rich and complex that it lives on till today, reminding us that the world’s oldest tools for treating trauma with truth, hope and healing - are the stories, like this one, we spin with patience and wisdom, again and again. Sometimes, with the right people to guide us through this process, enough of a veil is lifted to let us enter the heart of compassion.
But while fiction and storytelling can help us deal and heal - deception and lies do quite the opposite - and it’s with deceit that Absalom disrupts his return to Jerusalem as he attempts to grab his father’s throne. More advisors and courtiers will come in and out of this complex saga where kingship and kinship conflate loyalties, with victims left behind and lots of love lost.
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