And he said to him, Why dost thou, the king's son, get thinner from morning to morning? Wilt thou not tell me? And Amnon said to him, I love Tamar, my brother Absalom's sister.
Amnon, David's firstborn, is wasting away. It is not illness. It is desire for his half-sister Tamar. The first person to notice is his cousin Jonadab, who asks why the king's son looks thinner each morning. The answer he gives, and the man he gives it to, decide everything that follows.
This scene does not stand alone. Nathan the prophet had told David what was coming, and here it begins.
David's soul is restored, his conscience is purified, and his heart is humbled. Despite this, the ways of God's government toward him must run their course. What Nathan had foretold must all be fulfilled without fail: "the sword shall never depart from your house … I will raise up evil against you out of your own house … I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun." David will go through this necessary discipline with a broken heart.
A son can see his father's sin and never see his father's repentance. One writer traces Amnon's ruin to that gap.
No doubt his father's sin worked on a man like Amnon, and worked without the check that his father's repentance might have put on it. Sin gathers its arguments at will, and refuses whatever does not serve its purpose. The natural man has no ability to weigh spiritual things, such as faith or repentance. Amnon would only see that his father had sinned and had not suffered. He could not know that his own vices were to be the scourge upon his father's sins. All this had worked together to make Amnon the coarse, sensual, cruel despot that he was — a figure that might well terrify the father of such a son, a father who had done so much to make him what he was.
Jonadab's question in this verse sounds like concern. What he does with the answer shows what he is.
When his friend Jonadab asked why he was unwell, Amnon confided in him about his lustful thoughts. Jonadab had no sense of moral decency. He was crafty enough to suggest a deceitful way for Amnon to get his sister alone in his bedroom and force her. Amnon foolishly followed his advice, without thinking of the likely consequences. The deceit he used reminds us of the deceit of David in trying to cover his own sin.
Why does the Bible record such an ugly story at all? One writer answers that, and follows Jonadab to the end of the chapter.
The incident recorded in this chapter is disgusting. God's Word relates it because it is "the truth" and shows man as he is in all his ugliness, so that we may hate his corruption. A friend named Jonadab, a cousin and a counselor, is there on the scene, urging Amnon on down his filthy path (vv. 4-5). This same man later knows of Absalom's plot and does nothing to oppose it (v. 32).
Even the names in this chapter say the opposite of what the people are.
Amnon, too, has his "crafty" adviser, Jonadab, with his beautiful name, "Jehovah freely gives," and his satanic spirit. Here the names stand against the facts everywhere. The godliness in David, stained, sadly, by the flesh, seems to have worked toward the loss of godliness in others.
Amnon calls it love. The chapter measures it by what came the moment he got what he wanted.
How short-lived and empty are the pleasures of sin! Your lips have barely touched the rim of the cup, and already you are tasting unbearable bitterness. "Then Amnon hated [Tamar] with very great hatred, so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her" (v. 15). At once he loathes this poor unwilling victim of his shameful act. He judges everything except himself.
Older translations read "lean from day to day" where the ESV says "haggard." One writer turns Jonadab's question on believers today:
We are children of God, sons and heirs of glory. God has given us all the wealth of heaven, and blessing that it will take us all eternity to explore. Is it not possible, even so, that something is sapping the root of our spiritual health and making us lean?
- Harvest. Amnon's wasting is the first of the harvest Nathan foretold. The sword would not depart from David's house, and evil would rise out of it.
- Inheritance. Amnon saw his father's sin but never his father's repentance. A son can copy the fall and miss the sorrow that followed it.
- Counsel. A caring-sounding question turns the whole tragedy. Amnon told his desire to a crafty friend, and the friend supplied the plan.
- Names. Jonadab's name means "Jehovah freely gives," yet his spirit was satanic. In this chapter names say one thing and lives say another.
- Payment. What Amnon called love turned to hatred greater than the love had been. The cup of sin is bitter before the lips are dry.
And Jonadab said to him, Lay thee down on thy bed and feign thyself sick; and when thy father comes to see thee, say to him, I pray thee, let my sister Tamar come, and give me food, and dress the food in my sight, that I may see it, and eat it from her hand.
Jonadab turns Amnon's private lust into a plan: fake an illness, wait for the king's visit, then ask for Tamar. The verse shows how bad advice grips a willing heart, and how a family's kindness becomes the tool of a crime.
This chapter follows a warning. Commentators see the scene as the start of what God had already announced against David's house:
"Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house." This was the Lord's sentence, and it is now carried out. The evil which he had nourished in his heart, the passion which he had fed, now breaks out in his own family. His oldest sons and Tamar — a daughter of David and half sister to Amnon — are the chief actors in this first tragedy. Amnon means "faithful." That is what he should have been, but he is the very opposite. He was raised among scenes of loose living, as life in David's household of wives must have been. So the lust of the flesh gets the upper hand, and he commits the terrible deed — an outright breaking of the law (Lev. 20:17).
Amnon did not invent this scheme. A friend handed it to him — a friend whose name and whose spirit did not match:
Amnon, too, has his "crafty" adviser, Jonadab — a man with a beautiful name, "the Lord freely gives," and a satanic spirit. Here the names everywhere contradict the facts. David had piety, stained, sadly, by the flesh, and it seems to have led to a loss of piety in others.
Amnon confided in a friend. What came back was not sympathy but a method:
When a friend of his, Jonadab, asked about the cause of his illness, he confided in him about his lustful thoughts. Jonadab had no sense of moral decency. He was crafty enough to suggest a deceitful way for Amnon to get his sister alone into his bedroom and force her. Amnon foolishly followed his advice, not thinking of the probable consequences. The deceit he used reminds us of the deceit of David in trying to cover his own sin.
Jonadab appears again at the end of the chapter. What he fails to do there shows what his friendship was worth:
A friend named Jonadab, a cousin and a counselor, is there on the scene urging Amnon onward in his filthy path (vv. 4–5). This same man later knows of Absalom's plot but does nothing to oppose it (v. 32).
Amnon was ready for such advice. He had watched his father sin, and his father's repentance never put a check on him:
No one can doubt it: his father's sin worked on a man like Amnon, and his father's repentance put no check on it. Sin gathers its arguments as it pleases, and refuses whatever does not serve its purpose... Amnon would only see that his father had sinned and had not suffered. He could not know that his own vices would be the punishment on his father's sins.
The scheme depends on David. He must come, hear what Amnon asks, and agree to it. Two verses later he does:
Here in 2 Samuel 13 everything turns against David — his good intentions, and his wish for harmony among his children. Without knowing it he acts in a way contrary to what he should have done. So it is David in verse 7 who sends Tamar to Amnon's house... All this probably does not show a very clear spiritual judgment.
The plot succeeded, and what it produced was not satisfaction but revulsion:
How short-lived and empty are the pleasures of sin! Your lips have hardly touched the rim of the cup, and already you taste unbearable bitterness! "Then Amnon hated her with very great hatred, so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her" (v. 15). At once he loathes this poor unwilling victim of his shameful act. He judges everything except himself.
- Sentence. The scene is the opening of what God foretold over David's house — evil raised up from within his own family.
- Seedbed. Amnon saw his father's sin but never his repentance. He concluded that sin costs nothing.
- Scheme. Jonadab's name speaks of God's free giving. He gave no decency at all — only a crafty way to get Tamar alone.
- Snare. The plan needed David's kindness to work. It turned his wish for family harmony against him, and he never saw it.
- Sequel. The pleasure turned bitter at the first taste. Love collapsed into greater hatred, and the adviser who began it lifted no finger when the next crime came.