(8) Organization of Royal Forces. The king soon raised a large force, which he prop erly organized and separated into three divi sions, commanded severally by Joab, Abishai, and Ittai of Gath (2 Sam. xviii :2). The king himself intended to take the chief command; but the people refused to allow him to risk his valued life, and the command then devolved upon Joab. The battle took place in the borders of the forest of Ephraim; and the tactics of Joab, in drawing the enemy into the wood, and there hemming them in, so that they were destroyed with ease, eventually, under the providence of God, decided the action against Absalom (2 Sam. xviii:3-6). Twenty thousand of his troops were slain, and the rest fled to their homes.
(9) Death. Absalom himself fled on a swift mule; but as he went, the boughs of a terebinth tree caught the long hair in which he gloried, and he was left suspended there. The charge which David had given to the troops to respect the life of Absalom prevented anyone from slay ing him; but when Joab heard of it, he hastened to the spot, and pierced him through with three darts. His body was then taken down and cast into a pit there in the forest, and a heap of stones was raised upon it (2 Sam. xviii :7-17), B. C. 967.
David's fondness for Absalom was unextin guished by all that had passed; and as he sat, awaiting tidings of the battle, at the gate of Mahanaim, he was probably more anxious to learn that Absalom lived, than that the battle was gained ; and no sooner did he hear that Absalom was dead, than he retired to the cham ber above the gate, to give vent to his paternal anguish (2 Sam. xviii :24-33). The victors, as
they returned, slunk into the town like criminals, when they heard the bitter wailings of the king :—`0 my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, 0 Absalom, my son, my son !' The consequence of this weakness—not in his feeling, but in the inability to control it—might have been most dan gerous, had not Joab gone up to him, and, after sharply rebuking him for thus discouraging those who had risked their lives in his cause, induced him to go down and cheer the returning warriors by his presence (2 Sam. xix:r-8). (Comp. Ps. lii. title.) Absalom is elsewhere mentioned only in 2 Sam. xx :6; r Kings ii :7, 28 ; xv :2, ICI; 2 Chron. :IO, 21. From the last two of these passages he appears to have left only a daughter, (having lost three sons; 2 Sam. xiv:27; comp. xviii:18), who was the grandmother of Abijah. (See AniJAH.) Tamar is with much probability identified with Itlaacah oft Kings xv:2, the wife of Rehoboam. (Comp. 2 Sam. iii:2; 2 Cliron. xi:2o sq.) The sons must have predeceased their father, or else a different tradition is followed in 2 Sam. xviii:18, where we are told that Absalom had no son.