Bible Characters: Ahithophel to Nehemiah

Am not going to whitewash and rehabilitate Ahithophel. I am neither to extenuate nor am I to denounce Ahithophel. I shall put myself back into AhithophePs place, and I shall speak of Ahithophel as I see and feel Ahithophel to have been, I shall do my best to put myself first into AhithophePs place, and then into David’s place, and then I shall tell you exactly and honestly what I see and what I feel, first as to Ahithophel, and then as to David. But, to begin with, who was Ahithophel, and what were the facts?

Well, Ahithophel was far and away the ablest and the most famous politician, as we would say, in that day. The counsel of Ahithophel was a proverb in Israel in David’s day. There was no one fit to hold the candle to Ahithophel in that day, unless it was Hushai the Archite, another of David’s astutest counsellors. ‘For the counsel of Ahithophel,’ says the sacred writer, ’ which he counselled in those days, was as if a man had inquired at the oracle of God: so was all the counsel of Ahithophel both with David and with Absalom.”’

Of those the false Ahithophel was first: For close designs and crooked counsels fit. Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit. Restless, unfixed in principles and place. In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace; A fiery soul, which, working out its way, Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o’er-informed the tenement of clay.

So Dryden describes Lord Chancellor Shaftesbury in his Absalom and Ahithophel, that very able but still more truculent and time-serving piece. Matthew Henry is always worth consulting. ‘Ahithophel was a politic, thinking man, and one that had a clear head, and a great compass of thought,’ and so on. If the traditional interpretation of the fifty-fifth and some other Ahithophel psalms is true and is to be taken, David and Ahithophel had been bosom friends from their boyhood up. Ahithophel may not have been exactly a Jonathan, and yet he may have been a very dear and well-deserving friend for all that. David and Ahithophel were such close companions, indeed, that had it not been for Jonathan, the proverb might have run thus — David and Ahithophel: so was the soul of David knit to the soul of Ahithophel, Jonathan strengthened David’s hand in God, it is true; but this out of David and about Ahithophel is almost as good. ‘A man, mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and v.alked unto the house of God in company,’’ Till, when David’s time came to be lifted up of God into the throne of Israel, Ahithophel was proud to lay all his magnificent gifts of sound advice and incomparable counsel at David’s feet. And Ahithophel continued to do that for all the best and most shining years of David’s kingdom. David never made a law, nor gave a judgment, nor proclaimed a war, nor negotiated a truce, nor signed a peace, till Ahithophel had been heard, and till his advice had been taken. But the sacred writer has already given you all that, and far more than all that, in one of his incomparably strong and satisfying sentences; it was, he says, as if a man had inquired at the oracle of God,

All that Ahithophel was to David in the council-chamber, all that Eliam, Ahithophers only son, was in the array. The father’s splendid talents for counsel came out in the shape of soldierly service in the son; and the son was as devoted to David in the field as his father was in the chamber. Now, Eliam had a daughter at home, a beautiful woman-child, who was the one ewe-lamb of her father Eliam and her grandfather Ahithophel, And it so happened that Eliam had a very trusty under-officer among the captains of the mighty men, whose famous name was Uriah, This Uriah was not an Israelite — he was a Hittite; but he was as brave and as loyal to David as if he had been an Hebrew of the Hebrews, And his high talents and his great services had carried him to the very top of the six hundred, where he stood clothed with worth and with honour beside Eliam the son of Ahithophel. With his whole soul Uriah loved Eliam’s daughter, and both Eliam and Ahithophel gave to young Uriah the desire of his heart. David’s devoted bodyguard had their quarters built for them in the city of David, and just under the walls of David’s palace; and when Uriah came home on furlough, he was the happiest man in all Jerusalem with such a wife, and with Eliam and with Ahithophel. As time went on, and as Ahithophel counselled for David, and as Eliam and Uriah fought for David, David’s power increased till the King of Israel denied himself nothing on which he had once set his heart. And in an evil hour he set his heart on Uriah’s wife, who was also Ahithophel’s one grandchild. And it does not need an oracle of God to tell us how Ahithophel took the ruin of his grandchild and the murder of her husband. Ahithophel would have been Jesus Christ Himself to have continued after all that to take sweet counsel with David, and to walk with David unto the house of God in company. I do not like to listen to all the names you would have called Ahithophel and Eliam had they still remained in David’s service, and had they still eaten David’s bread, with Bathsheba in David’s bed and with her husband in his grave. I do not know what all you would have called Eliam and Ahithophel had they winked in that way at David’s adultery and blood-guiltiness.

It was all that Ahithophel could do: he shook the dust off his feet, and Ahithophel returned home out of the city of David to his own city of Giloh. And no sooner had Ahithophel left David than the Lord sent Nathan to David. And Nathan said to David, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul. And I gave thee thy master’s house, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things. Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in His sight? Thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the edge of the sword, and hast taken his wife, Ahithophel’s granddaughter, to be thy wife, and hast slain Uriah with the sword of the children of Ammon. Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from thy house. For thus saith the Lord, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house. For thou didst it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun. And, after that, our hearts stand still as we watch how the vengeance of God came down on David’s head, and how the vengeance of God travelled, as it always does, on stepping-stones which David laid for it with his own hands. As thus: And Amnon loved Absalom”’s sister.... But David did not trouble the spirit of Amnon, because he was his first-born.... And Absalom’s servants did to Amnon as Absalom had commanded. And Absalom fled and went to Geshur, and was there three years.... And David said. Let him return to Jerusalem, but let him not see my face.... And

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