Outraged

Thursday 7^th November

Read 2 Samuel 13:15-22

“Then Amnon hated her with intense hatred. In fact, he hated her more than he had loved her. Amnon said to her, ‘Get up and get out!’

¹⁶ ‘No!’ she said to him. ‘Sending me away would be a greater wrong than what you have already done to me.’

But he refused to listen to her. ¹⁷ He called his personal servant and said, ‘Get this woman out of my sight and bolt the door after her.’ ¹⁸ So his servant put her out and bolted the door after her. She was wearing an ornate robe, for this was the kind of garment the virgin daughters of the king wore. ¹⁹ Tamar put ashes on her head and tore the ornate robe she was wearing. She put her hands on her head and went away, weeping aloud as she went.

²⁰ Her brother Absalom said to her, ‘Has that Amnon, your brother, been with you? Be quiet for now, my sister; he is your brother. Don’t take this thing to heart.’ And Tamar lived in her brother Absalom’s house, a desolate woman.

²¹ When King David heard all this, he was furious. ²² And Absalom never said a word to Amnon, either good or bad; he hated Amnon because he had disgraced his sister Tamar.” (NIVUK)

Emotions run high. As much as Amnon ‘loved’ Tamar before, he now hated her. David is furious, but impotent. He has lost all moral authority and no-one in the story cares what he thinks. This is a tragedy amongst siblings, like most of the tragedies recorded for us in Scripture, beginning with Cain and Abel.

Today we would be outraged at Tamar’s loss of agency. Raped by Amnon, exiled with her identity erased (‘this woman’ (v17)). Silenced by Absalom we never hear of her again (v20). She is as good as dead (v19), murdered by Amnon’s actions. Like Joseph before her, her torn robe testifies to betrayal by brothers.

Are you outraged by this story? It would be easy to conclude that the opposite of love is hate from this passage. In fact, the opposite of love is apathy – a lack of passion one way or the other. If the injustice delivered to Tamar does not affect you at all that is perhaps the most concerning thing to learn.