A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i-xix. intended him for his successor in the kingdom; that he had all along made a promise to Bathsheba, his favourite queen, which promise, though recorded later in the history, might at first come to Absalom's ear, that her son Solomon should succeed in the regal dignity; and that Absalom, both from a consciousness of his own demerits, and of the superiority of wisdom and piety that appeared in Solomon, perceiving that his father intended to postpone him, and instate the other, entered into this rebellion, in order to assert his birthright to the crown. But the fault in David was not any exclusion of right, but too blind an indulgence to his son, even while he was in arms against him, ready to kill, and resolved to depose him. Spare ye the young man,' says he, and this he might desire, partly from a consciousness of his own sin in the case of Uriah, which was the meritorious and procuring cause of the rebellion, in which his son was unhappily engaged; partly from a consideration of his youth, which is commonly foolish and giddy, and subject to evil counsels, and therefore deserves pity; and partly from a sense of piety in himself, as being unwilling that he should be cut off in a sinful rebellion, without any space or means of repentance. himself, and a man of great power and authority among the army; so that had David immediately called him to justice for this vile act against Abner, such was his interest among the soldiery, that he soon would have caused a mutiny or revolt, and found a means to shock or unhinge the government that was not as yet sufficiently established. It was a point of prudence therefore in David, to delay the punishment of so powerful and so perilous a man, until a more convenient season, and only, for the present, to express his detestation of the deed, by commending the deceased, condemning the murder, and commanding the murderer by way of penance, to attend the funeral in sackcloth, and other signs of mourning. These might be some of the reasons that made David give his army so strict a charge not to kill his son, in case they should take him. But Joab had quite different sentiments of the matter. He perceived, that there could be no safety to the king, nor peace to the kingdom, no security to himself, or other loyal subjects, as long as Absalom lived; that, notwithstanding this unnatural rebellion, the king was still inclinable to forgive him, and that there would always be some unquiet people, that would be moving fresh disturbances, in order to set him on the throne. Looking upon this charge, therefore, as an order more proper for a parent than a prince, he adventured to disobey it. For he thought with himself, that the king ought not to be observed in an affair, wherein he showed more regard to his private passion, than to the public good; that fathers should always sacrifice their paternal tenderness to the interest of the government; and that as Absalom had forfeited his life to the laws upon several accounts, it was but justice now to take this opportunity of despatching him, as an enemy to his king and country: but whether, in this act of disobedience to the royal command, Joab is perfectly to be vindicated, we shall not pretend to determine. It is certain that he was a person of a bold temper, high passions, and fiery resentments; that valued himself upon the services he had done the king, and seemed not to be much afraid of his authority. The complaint which David makes to some of his courtiers, upon this general's murdering the famous Abner, declares the true reason why he could not, at that time, put the laws in execution against him: 3. Know ye not,' says he, that there is a prince, and a great man fallen this day in Israel? And I am this day weak, though anointed king; and these men, the sons of Zeruiah, be too hard for me. The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness.' Joab was David's sister's son, or nephew, who had stuck close to him in all his adversity, an excellent soldier 6 So far is David from winking at Abner's murder, that we find him burying him with great solemnity, and making mournful lamentation over his grave; praising his valour, and other great qualities, publicly, and cursing the author of his untimely death. 1, and my kingdom,' says he, are guiltless before the Lord for ever from the blood of Abner the son of Ner. Let it rest on the head of Joab, and on all his father's house, and let there not fail from the house of Joab one that hath au issue, or that is a leper, or that leaneth on a staff, or that falleth on the sword, or that lacketh bread.' But what apology shall we make for his treating the Ammonites so inhumanly, and putting them to such exquisite torments, only for a small indignity, which a young king, at the instigation of some evil counsellors, put upon his ambassadors, since there seems to be no proportion between the affront and the revenge, between the one's having their beards and clothes cut a little shorter, and the other's being put under saws and harrows, or thrown into hot burning furnaces? Had David indeed been the inventor of such frightful punishments, we might have justly reckoned him a man of the same cruel and brutal spirit, as was Caligula, who, in after ages, as Suetonius tells us, was wont to take a great delight in inflicting them. But the truth is, that these were the punishments which the Ammonites inflicted upon the Jews, whenever they took them prisoners; and therefore David, when he conquered their country, and reduced their capital city, used them with the like cruelty: not every one of them indiscriminately, such only as appeared in arms against him, and had either advised, or approved the advice of putting such a disgrace upon his messengers. 6 but The Ammonites, it is certain, were early initiated into all the cruelties of the people of Canaan. When they invested Jabesh-Gilead, and the besieged made an offer to surrender, the easiest condition that they would grant them, was, that they might thrust out all their right eyes, and lay it for a reproach upon Israel for ever;' which one instance, as I take it, is in the room of ten thousand proofs, to demonstrate, that these Ammonites were monsters of barbarity; and that therefore king David was no more culpable for retaliating upon them the same cruelties that they used to inflict on others, than the people of Agrigentum were, for burning Phalaris in his own bull, or Theseus the hero, for stretching Procrustes beyond the dimensions of his own bed. For even the heathen casuists have determined, that no law $2 Sam. iii. 28, 29. ⚫ Chap. 27. * 1 Sam. xi. 2. A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055 ; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. ixix. can be more just and equitable, than that which decreed their good usage, and preserve their immunities; to make artists of cruelty to perish by their own arts. them immediate reparation, when any injury was done The particular punishment of passing through the them; and, in case of a personal affront or indignity, to brickkilns, an ingenious author seems fairly to account deliver up the offender, even though he were a noble or for, by making this conjecture. "It is very well known," a patrician by birth, into the hands of the nation from says he," that the Jews were slaves in Egypt, and parti- whence the ambassador came, to be treated by them as cularly employed in brickmaking. Now it is natural | they thought fit. And therefore, we need less wonder, for all people at enmity, to reproach one another with that king David, who, in all his actions, was a nice the meanness and baseness of their original. As therefore the Ammonites were a cruel and insolent enemy, and nothing could be more natural for men of their temper, when they had got any Jews in their power, than to cry out, send the slaves to the brickkilns, and so torture them to death; so nothing could be more natural than for the Jews, when they got an advantage over them, to return them the same treatment." However this be, it is certain that the siege of Rabbah began before David had any criminal commerce with Bathsheba, and if the town was not taken till after Solomon's birth, as the sequel of his history seems to imply, the siege must have lasted for about two years; in which time, upon the supposition that David continued in an obdurate state of sin and impenitence, a and was therefore deprived of that mild and merciful spirit for which he had formerly been so remarkable; there is no wonder, if, being now become cruel and hardhearted, as well as exasperated with the length of the siege, he treated the Ammonites in the same outrageous manner that they were accustomed to treat his subjects, not only to retaliate the thing upon them, but to deter all future ages likewise from violating the right of nations, by treating the persons of public ambassadors with contempt. observer of every punctilio in public honour, should resent in so high a manner an indignity, the greatest that could be offered, put upon his ministers, and from them reflecting upon his own majesty, merely for sending a kind compliment of condolence to a foolish prince, as he proved, upon the death of a very worthy father. The History of the Life of King David. a This supposition cannot be admitted. Nathan had made David sensible of his sin, and truly penitent even before Bathsheba bare Solomon's elder brother.-Bishop Gleig.-ED. A man so zealous for his own honour, as well as for the rights of nations, in his public capacity, can hardly be presumed to be an abettor of perfidy in his more private. We must therefore suppose, that, notwithstanding his war with Ishbosheth, wherein there might happen some skirmishes, he still kept his promise with his father Saul, not to destroy any of his family; and therefore in the whole compass of the war (in which, though it lasted seven years, we nowhere read of one battle fought) he acted in the defensive, not offensive, part, and kept an army by him, not to destroy Saul's posterity, but merely to maintain himself in the possession of that regal dignity wherewith Samuel, by God's order and appointment, had invested him.. ، Ishbosheth knew very well, that Samuel had anointed David, and that God had appointed him to be his father's successor in the whole kingdom of Israel. And therefore his opposing him in a hostile manner, was provocaThat the rights of ambassadors are guarded by all laws, tion enough, one would think, had not David rememboth divine and human, and that therefore a violation of bered his oath made to Saul, and thereupon overlooked these rights is not only unjust, but impious, is the general this ill treatment of his son, and pronounced him a sentiment of all the most able writers upon the laws righteous person.' The removal of an adversary, and and constitutions of civil government. So tender were dangerous competitor for a crown, might be thought a the Romans in this particular, that they appointed meritorious piece of service by some ambitious princes; twenty feciales, as they called those officers, to inspect but David was of another sentiment. His soul and his notions were the same as what inspired the great Alexander, when he took vengeance on Bassus for having killed his enemy Darius; for he did not consider Darius so much in the capacity of an enemy, as Bassus in that of a friend to the person whom he had basely murdered. And it is not improbable, that his reflection This vindication of David for his conduct towards the Am- upon the sad fate of Saul's unhappy family, and the monites, had his treatment of them been such as represented in solemn promise he had given for their preservation, as the ordinary translation followed by our author, would be by no well as the design of clearing himself from the least means satisfactory. Fortunately the heavy charge urged against David from this part of sacred history, needs no such vindication. suspicion of having any hand in this barbarous regicide, Dr A. Clarke, on 2 Sam. xii. 31, says: "I believe this inter-prevailed with David to inflict upon the authors of it, pretation was chiefly taken from the parallel place, 1 Chr. xx. 3. the exemplary punishment of hanging them upon gibbets, where it is said, he cut them with saws and with axes, &c. to be a spectacle of abhorrence; of cutting off their right Instead of vaiyasar, he sawed, we have here (in Samuel vaiyasem, he put them; and these two words differ from each hands, wherewith they might have committed this exeother only in a part of a single letter resh, for mem. And it crable deed, and of cutting off their feet, wherewith they is worthy of remark that in 1 Chr. xx. 3, six or seven MSS. had made their escape from justice. collated by Dr Kennicott, have Den vaiyasem, he put them. Nor is there found any various reading in all the MSS. yet collated for the text in this chapter, that favours the common reading in Chronicles. The meaning therefore is, he made the people slaves, and employed them in sawing, making iron harrows, or mining, (for the word means both) and in hewing of wood, and making of brick. Sawing asunder, hacking, chopping, and hewing human beings, have any place in this text, any more than they had in David's conduct towards the Ammonites. See also Boothroyd on the passage, and the supplement on the objections to the credibility of the Old Testament, p. 393 of this edition.-Ed. 8 Abner indeed acted very basely, very treacherously, in deserting Ishbosheth, the king whom he had set up, upon a very slight provocation; but David had no concern in all this. The kingdom belonged to him by divine donation; Abner knew this before he proclaimed Ishbosheth; 4 1 Sam, xxiv. 21. 2 Sam. iv. 11. For he considered that Darius was not so much the friend as the foe of that man by whom he was slain.-Justin, b. 12. c. 6. 'Le Clerc's Commentary. ® Patrick's Commentary. A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i-xix. 1 and therefore all the mischiefs of the civil war are charge- that may be formed against him, and to defeat the able upon him: nor can David be blamed for receiving resolutions that may be taken to his prejudice. But his own right, even though it was tendered to him by the whether these comparisons may come up to the case hand of a bad man. The truth is, David did not delude before us or no, it was certain, at this juncture, AbsaAbner from his master, but Abner made the first overture lom's business was to be upon his guard. The unjust of his service to him; and as this was no unfavourable war which he had declared against his father, gave his opportunity of uniting the two contending kingdoms, father a right to treat him as an open enemy, and to which providence seemed to have thrown in his way, employ either force or artifice against him; nor can this David had been perfidious, not only to his own inter- conduct of his be blamed, unless we should say, that est, but to the establishment of the general peace of when kings are engaged in war, they are forbidden to the nation, had he not fallen in with it. He, no disguise their true designs, even though it be a thing doubt, was privy to the cause of Abner's disgust: notorious, that upon this disguise the practice of stratabut, without approving either of his crime or his treason, gems in war, which were never yet accounted unlawful, he might lawfully make use of the traitor; nay, and con- is entirely founded. fer on him some tokens of his favour too, in consideration of the benefits he had received from him, and of some commendable qualities, either natural or political, that he had observed in him. The instrument is not to be regarded in all actions, and even a bad man, when he does good services, may merit a reward, and be received with some approbation. 2 3 No man indeed should engage another in a base or wicked action; because, whether he commits the thing himself, or employs another to do it, the crime is the same; but it is not so, says Grotius, if a person freely offers himself, without any solicitation or persuasion to it. In this case, it is not unlawful to use him as an instrument, in order to execute what is confessedly lawful for us to do: and, as it is not contrary to the law of arms to receive a deserter, who quits the enemy's party and embraces ours, so we cannot conceive how David could become culpable in taking the advantage of Abner's quarrel with Ishbosheth, when, without any application of his, he voluntarily sent to him, and offered him his service, and when the good providence of God seems to have employed the passion and angry resentment of that haughty general, in order to bring about his wise designs, and by the union of the two kingdoms, prevent the effusion of much blood. But what shall we say in excuse for his perfidy, when we find him putting his friend Hushai upon acting such a part as but badly became a man of honour; upon going, and offering his service to his son Absalom, on purpose to betray him, or give him bad counsel? The words of David are these:-* If thou return to the city, and say unto Absalom, I will be thy servant, O king; as I have been thy father's servant hitherto, so will I now also be thy servant; then mayest thou for me defeat the counsels of Ahithophel.' But David, by these words, say some interpreters, did not advise Hushai to betray Absalom, or, for his sake, to violate the laws of friendship, but purely to go and join himself to Absalom, who, by this time, had assumed the title of king, and could not properly be addressed without calling him so, in order to destroy the counsels of Ahithophel, just as a general sends his spies into the enemy's camp, to know what passes there; or as a king keeps, in foreign courts, his envoys, to gain intelligence of the designs 1 Calmet's Commentary on 2 Sam. iii. 12. It signifies nothing whether you yourself commit crime, or engage another person to do it on your account.-August, in moribus Manichæ, On the Law of War, b. 3. chap. 1. By the right of war we shelter a deserter. 42 Sam. xv. 34. The truth is, 'Absalom, as a traitor, a murderer, a rebel, and, as far as in him lay, a parricide, had forfeited all the rights of society, but more especially as a rebel: for a rebel, who sets himself to overturn the established government, order, and peace of any community, does, by that hostile attempt, actually divest himself of all social rights in that community. And consequently David could be no more guilty of perfidy, in forming a design to supplant Absalom, nor Hushai guilty of villany in undertaking to put it in execution, than that man can be said to be guilty of sin, who deceives a madman, and turns him away from murdering his best friends. The short of the matter is, Hushai's instructions were to negotiate David's interest among the rebels as well as he could. This he could not do without seeming to act in a contrary character; and in order to effect this, there was a necessity for his concealing himself; and conceal himself he could not, without some degree of dissimulation; and therefore the end which he proposed in what he did, namely, the prevention of that long train of mischiefs which always attends a civil war, was suthcient to justify the means which he took to accomplish it. For, though it is to be wished with Cicero, that all lying and dissimulation were utterly banished from human life; yet, as others have maintained, that a beneficial falsehood is better than a destructive truth, a case may be so circumstantiated, as to make dissimulation, which as Lord Bacon says, "is nothing else but a necessary dependant upon silence, highly necessary; and a lie, which otherwise would be blamable in a slave, will deserve commendation (says Quintilian when a wise man makes use of it, to save his country by deceiving his enemy." Now, as Hushai's whole design was to deceive an open and declared enemy, who can doubt, but that he was at full liberty, by his address and subtilty, to disconcert the measures of those, whom all agree, that had he been so minded, he had license to attack with open violence? To overcome an enemy indeed by valour, rather than art, sounds more gallant, and by some has been thought a more a reputable way 6 8 The History of the Life of King David, vol. 3. " Puffendorff's Law of Nature, b. 4. c. 1; and Grotius's Rights of Peace, b. 3. c. 1. a Thus when Perseus, the Macedonian king, was deceive. by the hopes of peace, the old senators disallowed the act, as inconsistent with Roman bravery; saying that their ancestors prosecuted their wars by valour, not craft, not like the subte Carthaginians, or cunning Grecians, among whom it was a 3 A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i—xix. and this, as is supposed, not so much out of reverence to the sacred symbol of God's presence, as out of diffidence of his providence, as unable to preserve it from overturning. of conquest, but since the laws of nature and arms have made no difference, and those of humanity and mercy seem to incline to that side wherein there is likely to be the least blood shed, Hushai may be said to have acted the worthy patriot, as well as the faithful subject, in The truth is, this ark had so long continued in obbreaking the force of an unnatural rebellion, and in scurity, that the people, in a manner, had lost all sense putting it into his royal master's mouth to say, the of a divine power residing in it, and therefore approachLord is known to execute judgment; the ungodly are ed it with irreverence. This is implied in David's extrapped in the work of their own hands. They are sunk hortation to Zadok and Abiathar, after this misfortune down in the pit that they made; in the same net, which | upon Uzzah. 6 Ye are the chief of the fathers of the they hid privily, are their own feet taken.? 16 Levites; sanctify yourselves therefore, both ye, and Thus, though we are not obliged to vindicate David your brethren, that you may bring up the ark of the in every passage of his life, and think some of the crying Lord God of Israel, unto the place that I have presins he was guilty of utterly inexcusable; yet if we ex-pared for it; for because ye did it not at the first, the cept these, we cannot but think, that although he was a Lord our God made a breach upon us, for that we very tender and indulgent parent, yet he was no en- sought him not after the due order.' What wonder, then, courager of vice in his own family, or a tame conniver if God being minded to testify his immediate presence at it in others, had he not been restrained by reasons of with the ark, to retrieve the ancient honour of that state, sometimes, from punishing it; that he was true to sacred vessel, and to curb all licentious profanations his promises, just in his distributions, and prudent, of it for the future, should single out one that was the though not crafty, in his military transactions; of a most culpable of many, one, who in three instances singular presence of mind, (as 2 Josephus speaks of was then violating his commands, to be a monument of him,) to make the best of what was before him; and of his displeasure against either a wilful ignorance or a as sharp a foresight for improving all advantages, and rude contempt of his precepts, be they ever so seemobviating all difficulties, that were like to happen;" ingly small; that by such an example of terror, he tender to all persons in distress, kind to his friends, might inspire both priests and people with a sacred forgiving to his enemies; and when at any time he was dread of his majesty, and a profound veneration for his forced to use severity, it was only in retaliation of what mysteries? other people had done to him. God indeed is left to his own pleasure, what signs he shall think fit to give to his people, upon any occasion, for their good; but the more arbitrary and uncommon any sign is, the more it seems to have proceeded from God. Though therefore the sound of people's going upon the tops of trees, be a thing not so congruous to our conceptions, yet it will not therefore follow, that it was not the real sign which God gave David, because the stranger the phenomenon was, the greater assurance it conveyed of the divine interposition in his favour. Nor can the practicableness of the thing be disputed, since it was confessedly an host of angels (who could move on the tops of trees, as well as plain ground) that made this noise of an army's marching. Happy were it for us, if we could account for the operations of God with the same facility that we can for the actions of his saints; but his counsels are a great deep, and his judgments, just though they be, are sometimes obscure, and past finding out. For what shall we say to the fate of Uzzah? Or what tolerable cause can we assign for his sudden and untimely end. It was now near seventy years since the Israelites had carried the ark from place to place, and so long a disuse had made them forget the manner of doing it. In conformity to what they had heard of the Philistines, they put it into a new cart or wagon; but this was against the express direction of the law, which ordered it to be borne upon mien's shoulders. It is commonly supposed, that Uzzah There is no reason, however, to acquiesce in this conwas a Levite, though there is no proof of it from Scrip- struction only. The word beroche, which we render ture; but supposing he was, he had no right to attend tops, in several places in Scripture, signifies the beginupon the ark; that province, by the same law, was re-ning of things likewise; and in this acceptation, the sense strained to those Levites only who were of the house of of the sign which God gave David will be this,—“ When Kohath: nay, put the case he had been a Kohathite by thou hearest a sound, as it were of many men marching birth, yet he had violated another command which pro- at the entrance of the place where the mulberry trees are hibited even these Levites, though they carried it by planted, then do thou make ready to fall upon thine staves upon their shoulders, upon pain of death, to enemy; for this noise, which is occasioned by the ministouch it with their hands: so that here was a threefold try of my angels, goes before thee, both to conduct thee transgression of the divine will in this method of pro-in thy way, and to inject terror into thine adversaries." 3 5 7 A. M. 2949. A. C. 1055; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4341. A. C. 1070. 2 SAM. i-xix. for an ornament." stroy his enemies, as he did the Philistines at Baal-Pera- us of one stone of great value in the middle of the zim, under David, and the Canaanites at Gibeon, under crown, which he calls a sardonyx ; and as we may supJoshua: what hinders then, but that Beroche Bochim may pose that there were other jewels of several kinds placed signify the mountains of Bochim? And so the sense of at their proper distances, these, in proportion as they the words will be,-"When thou hearest a noise, as of heightened the value, must lessen the weight of the crown, many people marching upon the hills, or high places of and verify what the same historian tells us of it, namely, Bochim, then thou hast nothing to do, but to fall imme-" that David wore it constantly on his head afterwards, diately upon the enemy." Either of these interpretations clears the text from any seeming absurdity; and I shall only observe farther, that from the passage of the above cited prophet, as well as some expressions in the 18th psalin, such as, He sent out his arrows, and scattered them; he cast forth lightnings, and destroyed them,' it seems very likely that a mighty storm of thunder and lightning, of hailstones, and coals of fire, as the psalmist calls it, was assistant to David in the acquisition of this victory. In the account of David's conquest of the Ammonites, the weight of their king's crown seems not a little monstrous. The weight of a talent, which, upon the lowest computation, amounts to no less than 123 pounds, is allowed to be too much for one neck to sustain; but then we should consider, that besides the crown that was usually worn it was customary, in some nations, for kings to have a vast large ones, even to a size equal to this, either hung, or supported over the throne, where, at their coronation, or upon other solemn occasions, they were wont to sit. The Jewish doctors indeed have a very odd conceit, namely, that David, when he took this crown from the king of Ammon, hung it up on high by a certain loadstone that he had, as if the power of the magnet were to attract gold as well as iron. But let that be as it will, it is but to suppose, that the crown here under debate, was of this larger kind, and that, by some means or other, it was supported over the king's head while he was sitting on his throne, and then there will be an apparent reason for taking the crown from off, or, as the Hebrew words will bear it, 'from over the king's head, and placing it, in like manner, over David's head, even to indicate the translation of his kingdom to David. It is a common thing, however, in Hebrew, as well as other learned languages, to have the same word signify both the weight and value of any thing. And that the price or worth of the crown is here the meaning of the phrase we have the more reason to think, because mention is made of an addition of precious stones, which are never estimated by the weight of gold. Josephus tells Ps. xviii. 14. Poole's Annotations, and Patrick's Commentary in locum. a The ancients make mention of several such large crowns as these, which were made for sight more than any thing else. Juvenal, exposing the pride and vanity of some of the chief magistrates at Rome, describes the pomp and splendour of their appearance in these words: "What if he had seen the prætor stand erect in his lofty chariot, and towering above the surrounding dust of the circus, magnificently dressed in an imperial coat, wearing pendant from his shoulders the purple epaulettes of his dædal-wrought gown, and on his head a golden crown so vast, that scarce can a human neck support it." (Sat. 10.) Athenæus (b. 5. c. 8.) describes a crown made of gold, that was four and twenty feet in circumference, and mentions others, that were two, some four, and some five feet deep; as Pliny (b. 33. c. 3.) in like manner, takes notice of some that were of no less than eight pounds' weight.-Calmet's Commentary in locum. There is another difficulty still behind, which relates to the weight of Absalom's hair, that in the words of the text is thus expressed :- And when he polled his head, for it was at every year's end that he polled it ; and because the hair was heavy on him, therefore he polled it, he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels after the king's weight.' In the explication of which words, the sentiments of the learned have been so many and various, that, we shall content ourselves with commenting upon some of the chief of them. Those who are of opinion that the words related only to the cuttings of Absalom's hair, make the two hundred shekels the price, and not the weight of them: and to this purpose they suppose, that though Absalom himself might not sell his hair, yet some persons about him might do it, in complaisance to the ladies of Jerusalem, who might not think themselves in the fashion, unless they wore a favourite lock of the prince's. But besides the absurdity of the king's son suffering any of his demestics to sell his hair, the very words of the text are a confutation of this notion, where they tell us, that' be weighed the hair of his head ;' whereas, had it been sold, the buyer must have weighed the money, even as Abraham did when he purchased the field of Ephron. Others again pretend, that there is a manifest mistake crept into the text, which has been occasioned by an ignorant transcriber's inserting one numerical letter for another, the resch instead of the daleth, that is, two hundred instead of four: but, besides the uncertainty, whether the former Hebrews made use of their letters instead of figures, whereof there is not the least sign or token in any ancient copies, wherein, I pray, would the great wonder be, if what was cut off from Absalom's head, to thin and shorten his hair, when it grew too weighty and troublesome to him, amounted to no more than four shekels, which is much about two ounces? And yet the whole design of this narration seems to portend something more than usual, in this prodigious increase of Absalom's hair. The text, however, does not speak of the cuttings of the hair, but of the head of hair itself, when it talks of the weight of two hundred shekels; and therefore those who take it in this larger sense, are not forgetful to remind us, that in those days, hair was accounted a very great ornament, and the longer it was, the more it was esteemed; that Absalom, to be sure, would not fail to nourish his with the utmost care, and to let it grow long enough, because it contributed so much to the gracefulness of his person; that in after ages, as perhaps they did then, men were wont to use much art with their hair, and dress it every day with fragrant ointments, in order to make it grow thick and strong; that the noble guards which attended Solomon, as Josephus informs us, bad 2 Sam. xiv. 26. |