Then the woman said, “Please let your servant speak a word to my lord the king.” He said, “Speak.” And the woman said, “Why then have you planned such a thing against the people of God? For in giving this decision the king convicts himself, inasmuch as the king does not bring his banished one home again. We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God will not take away life, and he devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast. Now I have come to say this to my lord the king because the people have made me afraid, and your servant thought, ‘I will speak to the king; it may be that the king will perform the request of his servant. For the king will hear and deliver his servant from the hand of the man who would destroy me and my son together from the heritage of God.’ And your servant thought, ‘The word of my lord the king will set me at rest,’ for my lord the king is like the angel of God to discern good and evil. The LORD your God be with you!”
Comment: The woman having told her made-up story and having obtained the King’s ear speaks plainly and potentially dangerously! Using words suitable to the time and place she gently accuses the King of wasting Absalom’s life and deriving the people of his being one with them, i.e. part of the ‘Heritage of God’. When she calls David an ‘angel of God’ remember that the words for angel and messenger are one in Hebrew.
Prayer: Help me to graciously speak the truth in love, which I don’t always find easy, my Lord.
As I read it! 