Chapter 14: A plan is devised to return Avshalom to the palace

1.      Yoav hires a woman to connivingly convince Dovid to return Avshalom to the palace:

• Yoav the son of Tzruya was aware that the heart of the king was on his son Avshalom [i.e. that he began feeling feelings of closeness and love towards him and therefore decided to devise a plan to reinstate Avshalom to the palace.[1]].
• So Yoav sent a messenger to [the city of] Takoa [which had an abundance of olives, and therefore its inhabitants were incredibly wise due to their consumption of olive oil[2]] and he took a wise woman from there.
• Yoav told the woman as follows: “Please enter yourself into a state of mourning and wear garments of mourning and do not anoint yourself with oil and act like a mourning woman for several days, as if you are mourning over a dead relative. You shall then travel to meet the king and tell him the following words that I will tell you.” Yoav then told her precisely the words that she should tell the king.

2.      The woman tells Dovid a fake story of the death of her husband and murder of her son by his brother:

• The Tekoite woman [then traveled to the king and in an audience with him] spoke to the king [the common words of greeting that one says when first meeting the king such as “long the king”[3]]. She fell on her face to the ground and prostrated herself and exclaimed, “May the king save me.”
• The king then asked her as to what she wants, and she said to him, “I am a widow, as my husband has died, and your maidservant has two sons which entered into a fight while in the field and there was no one present to save them from each other, and so it was that one of them hit the other one and killed him. Now, my entire family has risen upon your maidservant and they have told me that I should hand them my son who killed his brother, and they will put him to death [under the law of Goel Hadam which allows and instructs the relatives to avenge the death of the relative by killing his murder, and thereby they will also inherit all my husband property.[4]], in vengeance for the soul of his brother which he killed. Now, they are in essence asking me to annihilate my only heir, and they will extinguish my only remaining coal and my husband will be left with no name and continuity on the face of the earth.” [They do not have the status of Goal Hadam which allows them to seek vengeance from the murderer being that there were no witnesses to the murder and therefore it is up to the hands of heaven to take vengeance.[5]]

[1] Metzudos Dovid 14:1-2

[2] Rashi 14:2; Metzudos Dovid 14:2; Menachos 85b

[3] Metzudos Dovid 14:4

[4] See Radak 14:7

[5] Radak 14:7