Who was Amnon in the Bible?

Eldest son of David by Ahinoam: he was slain by Absalom for the violence done to his sister Tamar. 2 Sam. 3:2; 2 Sam. 13:1-29; 1 Chr. 3:1.

David's wife a woman of Jezreel: she accompanied David in his flight from Saul; and, while residing at Ziklag, was taken captive when the city was burned by the Amalekites; but was recovered. 1 Sam. 25:43; 1 Sam. 27:3; 1 Sam. 30:5, 18. She was with David when he came to the kingdom, and while at Hebron bare to David, Amnon his first-born. 2 Sam. 2:2; 2 Sam. 3:2.;1 Chr. 3:1.

Amnon is David's first-born; and his name, "constant," or "faithful," is simply enough applicable in this manner, and in harmony with the first place he takes. He is the son of Ahinoam, the "kin of pleasure," — not exactly "pleasure," for that might seem at least to be in opposition to the underlying principle of constancy which is indicated in the expression, "he that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not." One may suppose that "congruity," what is according to its own nature, is that of which this "constancy" is born, and that this is what is looked for, yea, of prime necessity, in that which "God soweth," or Jezreel. Israel was once, as Isaiah tells us (Isa. 5:2), planted as "the choicest vine," but proved wholly untrue to that beginning. When the Lord looked for it to bring forth grapes, it brought forth wild grapes. Thus there was no seed yet to sow upon the earth (Hosea 2:23); but He shall have it: Israel in the latter days shall be true to its new beginning; and shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit." (Isa. 27:6.)

But such sowing must bring a harvest, and we see it in wave after wave of trouble that swept over the king in his later years. The little babe, given through this wicked act, dies; and David bows to this stroke of discipline. But there is more. What David had done to Bathsheba, Uriah's wife; now his eldest son, Amnon, does to Tamar, David's fair daughter. Sad, sad record. Little wonder when king David heard of all these things he was very wroth (2 Sam 13:25). But did David realize that it was he, himself, who had set the wicked example before his eldest son of the sin that now so angered and humiliated him?

Nor was this all. Tamar was full sister to Absalom, and Amnon's evil deed so filled his heart with hatred of his brother, that he does not rest until he has murdered him. And then follows more sad reaping of bad seed sown years before. Absalom flees the country to find refuge, instead of punishment, with his heathen, maternal grandfather, Talmai king of Geshur. There he feels himself safe from the vengeance that should, according to the law of God, have fallen on him.

"Behold I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house." This was Jehovah'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, half sister to Amnon, are the chief actors in the first tragedy. Amnon means "faithful." Thus he should have been, but he is the very opposite. Brought up in the midst of scenes of license, as it must have been in David's harem, the lust of the flesh gets the upper hand and the awful deed, a positive transgression of the law (Lev. 20:17) is committed. The deed had been precipitated by a satanic adviser, Jonadab, a subtle man, and when it was done violent hate gave way to the violent passion of Amnon. Unhappy Tamar, outraged, insulted and hated, appears with her virgin-princess gown torn, ashes on her head, her hand on top of her head (the oriental way of expressing a heavy burden) and crying, and her brother Absalom discovers the reason of her sorrow. He then hated his brother Amnon. David heard of it also and was very wroth, but he made no attempt to deal with his son. We do not read a word that he even rebuked him. "The gloss of the Septuagint is likely to be correct, that David left unpunished the incest of Amnon with Tamar, although committed under peculiarly aggravating circumstances, on account of his partiality to him as being his first born son. This indulgence on the part of his father may also account for the daring recklessness which marked Amnon's crime. But a doting father, smitten with moral weakness, might find in the remembrance of his own past sin an excuse for delay, if not a barrier to action; for it is difficult to wield a heavy sword with a maimed arm" (History of Judah and Israel).

After two years the reckoning day comes. Absalom (the father of peace) becomes the murderer of his brother. It was an awful deed. In the midst of merrymaking, Amnon filled with wine, with no chance to repent, is cruelly slain. The sword is unsheathed and fell upon David's house. The harvest is on. What a man soweth that he will reap-murder for murder. It was an awful blow to David, for Amnon, his beloved first-born, the son of Ahinoam, was dead. Exaggerated tidings reach the court of David. "Absalom hath slain all the King's sons and there is not one of them left." And wicked Jonadab, the instigator of Amnon's crime, appears again and acts as comforter of the king. Jonadab is one of the most abominable characters in Bible history. We do not read of him again. Absalom, the fratricide, fled to Talmai, his maternal grandfather. He remained there three years; so this chapter covers a period of five years. Alas! who was responsible for it all? The scenes of lust and murder, outrage and bloodshed, revolt and rebellion, sorrow upon sorrow, grief upon grief, start with David's great sin. Pardoned he was, restored in every sense of the word, yet God maintains His holiness and chastised His servant.

David did not have to wait long to see the sad governmental results of his sin begin to be manifest in his own family His son Ammon was so attracted by the beauty of his half sister Tamar that he became sick in entertaining thoughts of her, though he knew well that his lust was improper.

When a friend of his, Jonadab, enquired about the cause of his indisposition, he confided in him about his lustful thoughts. Jonadab had no sense of moral decency, and was so crafty as to suggest a deceitful means of Ammon's getting his sister alone into his bedroom and forcing her. Ammon 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. in spite of the earnest pleading of Tamar not to force her, her warning him that this would bring disgrace upon his own head as well as covering with shame the one he thought he loved, he went through with his evil intentions. This too reminds us of David's virtually forcing Bathsheba, for he brought her to his own house and since he was king she no doubt thought she could not withstand him.

Ammon having been guilty of the cruel rape of Tamar, his professed love for her was proven utterly false, for he turned against her with vicious hatred. This is what will often occur when one is led by infatuation. He knew he had done evil, and the one he had wronged is the one who becomes the object of his worst hatred. From then on, every time he saw her, his conscience would burn. For this reason he wanted her out of his sight, just as some men are hateful enough to murder a woman after they have raped her.

But who can tell when the effect of one sin ceases? Adam's, like David's, was one sin, — in outward seeming not so evil; — its effect is only multiplied today, by all the seed that it has ripened, sown again, and reaped, and again sown! As men have of late discovered disease and pestilence to be living germs that subsist upon corruption, and mature and multiply on the decay they bring, so is sin vital and prolific with the germs of bitter harvest. Blessed be God that He has provided a remedy for sin!

(1) It will not be expected that there should be much comment upon Amnon's sin. The first-born of a despotic king, this had doubtless helped to nurture in him the growth of unrestrained will; while the atmosphere of a polygamous household, loosening family ties, could not but at the same time encourage the rambling inclinations of a luxurious temper. The very fence not such but that it might be leaped — around the object of his pursuit might encourage it: prohibition broken through has its own charm with it, — "the pleasures of sin, for a season": "stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant; but he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell."

Nor can it be doubted that the influence of his father's sin had, with one like Amnon, been without the check upon it of his father's repentance. Sin gathers its arguments at its will, and refuses what makes not for its purpose. The highest unreason, it finds in will its reason. Its subtlety is that of a maniac, with large gaps for self-deception. Nor has the natural man ability to estimate spiritual values, as of faith, or of 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. There is a necessary blindness that must be theirs who reject divine wisdom, and which therefore excuses none. All this had worked together to make Amnon the coarse, sensual, cruel despot that he was, — a spectre that might well terrify the father of such a son, and who had done so much to make him what he was.

Amnon, too, has his "subtle" adviser, Jonadab, with his beautiful name, "Jehovah freely gives," and his satanic spirit. Everywhere here names are in opposition to things; the piety in David, spotted, alas, with the flesh, seems to have worked for the loss of piety in others.

The public vindication of the divine throne now follows. It had, as we know, been already declared to David that evil should rise up to him out of his own house, and the sword never depart from it; the grace to himself personally did not alter this. The throne at Jerusalem was, as none other, responsible to be the expression of that higher one which belonged to Him who, while heaven and earth could not contain Him, was pleased to be known as dwelling between the cherubim. God's righteousness would be compromised indeed, if He went on with David without adequate vindication of His character against the sin of His representative. The prophetic word would therefore be carried out.

Chastening arises for David from his own house. The uncontrolled evil in his own character reflects itself in the passions of his sons, in whom the power of heredity unmistakably shows itself. Heredity, one of the cant words of the day, expresses nevertheless a truth of which the word of God is full, and human history, from Adam downward. "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" was a question of Job's day, the statement of impossibility being only made the stronger by its form as a question. There is thus evil in our natures, but we are responsible to govern our natures, and grace and the power of God are stronger than these. Apart from the grace of God, therefore, or His restraining hand, nature will manifest itself, and here was the hound in leash ready to pursue David. We are now to see with what fatal effect.

With David himself the outbreak of lust, permitted in clear violation of the law of God, had led to murder. The king, the pattern of righteousness as he should have been, became thus the oppressor. In the recompense following here, as when a stone disturbs calm water the circle loses height as it widens, so now the lust and the murder are on different sides, but both within the ordained sphere of his own house. Two of his sons are reciprocally the injured and the injurer, and David is made to feel the pain on each side, his sympathy now with this and now with that. He is distracted, torn asunder, on both sides dishonored. The mockery of their names gives meaning to the whole, and proclaims it to all: Amnon, the "faithful," violating all fidelity; Absalom, the "father of peace," the slaughterer of his brother! With what other hopes had these names long since been given!

David now married, and had two wives, both of them, probably, of the tribe of Judah, for there was a town, named Jezreel, in Judah, not far from Maon and Carmel (Joshua 15:55-56), from which it is likely Abinoam came. By her he had Amnon, whose history is connected with the sorrows of his house. By Abigail he had Daniel, or Chillab, of whom we read nothing. He probably died young, for, on Amnon's death, Absalom, the third son, looked forward to the throne. After Absalom's wretched end, Adonijah, the fourth son, regarded the throne as his right by birth. The Lord did build David a sure house, but Abigail had no share in the building of it.

Just as its head, for David was the lastborn of his father's house, so the family of David bears the evident mark of election according to grace (1 Chron. 3: 9). Amnon, the son according to the flesh, the shame of his father's house, comes first, only to be repudiated like all that springs forth from nature. In fact, all David's sons, without exception, are included between those two names Amnon and Tamar (vv. 1-9). Moreover, all the sons born before the kingdom's full establishment, at least all those whose history is recorded, undergo a common condemnation: Amnon, Absalom, Adonijah-corruption, rebellion, and pride which pretends to the throne and would supplant Solomon-all come under judgment. One must reach the kingdom definitely established at Jerusalem, the place of free election according to grace (Ps. 132: 13), before being introduced to Solomon, after his father David the man of God's counsels. Once again, nature's order is of no value. Shimea, Shobab, and Nathan, mentioned first as sons of Bathsheba, disappear before Solomon, the youngest son. Likewise, all the other sons that come after him have no right to the kingship.