by
Damien F. Mackey
Now, similarly as the girl was ‘sister’ to prince Absalom, so, too, was she ‘sister’
to Solomon (Song of Solomon 4:9): ‘You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride’
(cf. Song of Solomon 4:12). The common denominator in biblical descriptions of the girl, now as Abishag, now as Tamar, now as “the Shunammite”, is her incomparable beauty.
Nor should we underestimate the philosophical strength of mind of “the Queen of Sheba”, testing Solomon, the wisest of the wise (I Kings 4:30), “with hard questions”.
She was, I believe, the same as Abishag, of “uncertain” name (perhaps = Hatshepsut?), the same as Tamar (her given Hebrew name), hailing from Shunem, hence “the Shunammite” of the Song of Solomon.
Ethnically, she may have been Egypto-Canaanite, which thought will lead to the consideration that she was also Velikovsky’s Hatshepsut = “Queen of Sheba”.
She, in such a revised context, shows some striking comparisons with Joseph of Egypt:
A parent’s favourite, given a special cloak, sold out by brothers, mocked, sexually harrassed, emerging from the desert on a spices-laden camel train, imprisoned, though much admired, capable of good management, ruling in Egypt as second only to Pharaoh.
These are just some of the similarities that Tamar at the time of King David shared with Joseph:
Joseph and Tamar comparisons
(4) Joseph and Tamar comparisons | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
TAMAR IN SOLOMON’S SONG
She is the beautiful “Shunammite” of the Song of Songs (6:13):
Come back, come back, O Shunammite;
Come back, come back, that we may gaze at you!
Why should you gaze at the Shunammite,
as upon the dance of Mahanaim?
Her town of Shunem was in northern Israel in the Jezreel Valley.
It is the town where the prophet Elisha will be hospitably accommodated by one described as a ‘Great Woman’, whose son Elisha would revive after the son had died (2 Kings 4:8-37).
A tradition has it that this rich woman of Shunem was a sister of Abishag - but at least a century separates them.
2 Samuel 13:1 apprises us of the further detail that young Tamar was prince Absalom’s sister: “… Tamar, the beautiful sister of Absalom son of David”.
Now prince Absalom was, for his part, descended from kings both paternally and maternally. For, while King David of Israel was his father, he was born of David’s wife, Maakah (Maacah), who was the daughter of a (Canaanite?) king (I Chronicles 3:3): “[David’s] third [son], Absalom the son of Maakah daughter of Talmai [var. Tolmai] king of Geshur …”.
However, when Hebrew uses relational words like “son”, ben (בֶּן), and “daughter”, bat (בַּת) – which we generally take in a literal sense – it may be that, in some cases at least, there is intended a less obvious meaning (e.g., in the first case, it could mean “grandson”, “official”). {Sir Alan Gardiner will lament, in Egypt of the Pharaohs (1960), the difficulty Egyptologists experience in trying to determine whether “son” literally means that, or something broader}. So, while we would immediately think to connect Tamar to Absalom as his blood sister, according to what we read in 2 Samuel 13:1, it may turn out to be not quite as simple as that.
Some Jewish legends, in fact, will outright claim that Tamar was not Absalom’s sister – e.g., she may have been a foreign captive girl adopted into the family. Moses Maimonides, for his part (in Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim), will write: “… Tamar was Absalom’s sister only from his mother [but she was not related to David or his son Amnon] …”.
Or perhaps her mother, Maakah, was a concubine (Song of Songs 6:7-9):
Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate
behind your veil.
There are sixty queens and eighty concubines,
and maidens without number.
My dove, my perfect one, is only one,
the darling of her mother,
flawless to her that bore her. (Song 6:7-9 RSV)
Now, similarly as the girl was ‘sister’ to prince Absalom, so, too, was she ‘sister’ to Solomon (Song of Solomon 4:9): ‘You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride’ (cf. Song of Solomon 4:12). The common denominator in biblical descriptions of the girl, now as Abishag, now as Tamar, now as “the Shunammite”, is her incomparable beauty.
When King David’s attendants “searched throughout Israel for a beautiful young woman and found Abishag”, it should not be expected that they had bothered to check out every single girl in the land of Israel, but probably only the noble ones. Likely the chosen girl was then living with her mother, Maakah, and with Absalom, in their family house (or palace) at Shunem.
Her epithet would become from now on (Song of Songs 1:8): ‘O fairest among women’.
Now, this is similar in meaning to the Egyptian, Hatshepsut (“Foremost of Noble Women”), whose throne name in Egypt would be, in turn, very like the name, Maakah (Maa[t]-ka-[re]), without the inclusion of the pagan theophoric, re (the sun god, Ra): thus Maakah = Maa[t]ka-.
Were these two women, Abishag and her ‘mother’, Maakah, ethnically (in part) Egyptians?
And was the name of “uncertain” meaning, “Abishag”, a Hebraïsed attempt at “Ha[tshe]psut? (Gardiner calls her “Ḥashepsowe”)? Or, perhaps it was a combination of the Hebrew words, yapheh-ishshah (“beautiful” – “woman”)? Abishag = Yaph-isha?
“A desolate woman”
King David had determined, following Divine prompting (I Chronicles 28:6), for his son, Solomon, to succeed him afterwards on the throne of Jerusalem. This despite the fact that Solomon was by no means David’s oldest son. Before Solomon there were born at Hebron, for instance, those first six sons of David (each one by a different wife) (3:1-3): Amnon; Daniel; Absalom; Adonijah; Shephatiah and Ithream.
Three of these first four, as well as Solomon himself, will be involved with the Shunammite, one way or the other. And two of these will die because of her.
On this, see e.g. my article:
King David’s troublesome sons
(4) King David's troublesome sons | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
She will even emerge, as consort of King David, as the key to the kingdom (I Kings 2:22).
The young Solomon was, for his part, madly in love with the Shunammite.
No doubt, King David had promised her to Solomon along with the throne.
The idyllic love between Solomon and the Shunammite is reflected in the Song of Songs (Solomon). But there is also much tension there, the pair having to endure a wait, opposition from hot-headed “brothers” (Song of Solomon 1:6): “My mother’s sons [brothers] were angry with me …”.
Then, into this halçyon pastoral scene of sun, vineyards, flocks, goats, shepherds, lillies, valleys and fruit trees – a veritable Garden of Eden – there will emerge a bitter and cunning “adviser”.
Like the serpent of old.
This dark character will bring down Amnon. And he will leave the Shunammite “desolate”.
He will foment Absalom’s rebellion, forcing King David to leave his city of Jerusalem in tears. And he will finally, like Judas, commit suicide.
We first meet him in the person of Jonadab-Achitophel, who, I believe, was the prototype of that fiendish and most machiavellian of characters, Machiavelli:
Sad decline of the sage Achitophel
(4) Sad decline of the sage Achitophel | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
Achitophel and Machiavelli
(4) Achitophel and Machiavelli | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
In part, the most unsympathetic reactions towards the female victim might be accounted for according to the ethics of the day, due to her lowly status (e.g., as a foreigner or a commoner).
One has only to consider the off-handed response by Jesus Christ himself, initially – and of his disciples – to the pleas of the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:23, 24, 26, 28):
Jesus did not answer her a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, ‘Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us’.”
Then: ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel’.
Then: ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs’.
But finally: “‘Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted’. And her daughter was healed at that moment”.
Tamar fully anticipated what would be the result of Amnon’s assault, both for her and for him: ‘What about me? Where could I get rid of my disgrace? And what about you? You would be like one of the wicked fools in Israel’. And so, when he ordered her to: ‘Get up and get out!’, she answered emphatically: ‘No!’ (2 Samuel 13:16-19):
‘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. He called his personal servant and said, ‘Get this woman out of my sight and bolt the door after her’. 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. 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.
Cf. Song of Solomon 5:7:
‘The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city.
They beat me, they bruised me;
they took away my cloak, those watchmen of the walls!’
There apparently was no question of Tamar, now a damaged woman, returning to the palace of King David. He would be “furious” when he heard about the incident, but “furious” at whom? Heir Amnon would continue on for another “two years”. And so would his brother, Absalom. Their éminence grise adviser would insinuate himself into being the power behind the throne. Tamar’s only place to go would be back to Shunem, to her adoring mother, but also to Absalom (2 Samuel 13:20): “And Tamar lived in her brother Absalom’s house, a desolate woman”.
Young Solomon, who loved her so ardently, would be constrained to peeping in at her from the outside (Song of Solomon 2:9): “… behold, he is behind our wall, looking through the windows, peeping through the lattices”.
Tamar, multi-identified in my revision as the Shunammite, Abishag, and, possibly, as Hatshepsut, can also be “the Queen of Sheba” (“Queen of the South”).
Presuming that she also becomes “the Queen of Sheba” (of I Kings 10), who is the same as the one to whom Jesus Christ will refer as “the Queen of the South” (Matthew 12:42; Luke 11:31), then the ‘trick’ now must be to get her all the way from Shunem, in northern Israel, to the location of “Sheba” – as “Queen” there.
King Talmai of Geshur will be the facilitator for this.
“THE QUEEN OF SHEBA”
So, where exactly was this “Sheba”?
Does it refer to Arabia, or to Nubia, or perhaps to Ethiopia? Emmet Sweeney, who has accepted that the biblical “Queen” was Hatshepsut who ruled Egypt, will use some linguistic sleight-of-hand: “A normal linguistic (mutation) lisping …”, to turn the “th” of Thebes (from where Hatshepsut ruled in Egypt) into “sh”, to make Thebes, “Sheba” (Empire of Thebes, Or, Ages in Chaos Revisited, p. 32).
Dr. I. Velikovsky, for his part, believed that “Sheba” was a name rather than a location. ‘Sheba’, he had suggested, ‘was probably a nickname for Hatshepsut in the close relationships that existed between the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty and the House of David’ (Ages in Chaos, I, 1952). Apart from the superficial similarity between the elements Sheba and Hat-shepsu-t, Velikovsky, a Russian Jew, may have been influenced in this suggestion of his by those Jewish traditions that understood “Sheba” as the proper name of the queen, and not her land of origin.
Creationist Patrick Clarke, who appears to have a good grasp of Egyptian hieroglyphics, has explained (in “Why Pharaoh Hatshepsut is not to be equated to the Queen of Sheba”, p. 65), that: https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j24_2/j24_2_62-68.pdf
“The last part of Hatshepsut’s name is represented by the Egyptian šps … (which may be pronounced shepsu or shepsi …). …. It is impossible to squeeze either shwa or shba [sheba] from the Egyptian šps”.
Far more promising for Velikovsky’s (and Sweeney’s) identification of “the Queen of Sheba” with Hatshepsut of Egypt is this testimony of Flavius Josephus (Antiquities, Bk. VIII, Ch. 6): “… There was then a woman queen of Egypt and Ethiopia; she was inquisitive into philosophy, and one that on other accounts also was to be admired. When this queen heard of the virtue and prudence of Solomon, she had a great mind to see him …”.
That, coupled with the Ethiopian tradition (in Kebra Nagast) that King Solomon’s visitor was named Makeda, a name almost identical to Makera, (or Maat-ka-re), which we found to have been the throne name of Hatshepsut.
Did Solomon have the Shunammite’s Egyptian-ness well in mind when he chose this simile (Song of Solomon 1:9): ‘I liken you, my darling, to a mare among Pharaoh’s chariot horses’?
Dr. John Bimson had, in a devastating critique of Velikovsky’s popular identification of the biblical “Queen of Sheba” with Hatshepsut (in “Hatshepsut and the Queen of Sheba”, Chronology and Catastrophism REVIEW, Vol. VIII, 1986), demonstrated that Hatshepsut’s famous expedition to the land of Punt, which Dr. Velikovsky had hoped to connect with the Queen’s visit to King Solomon’s Jerusalem, could not possibly have been the biblical incident.
For one, Hatshepsut did not personally accompany the Punt expedition.
Bimson further argued that the biblical description had an Arabian, not Egyptian, flavor to it, with camels, gold, spices and precious stones.
But, as I wrote in “Solomon and Sheba” (Chronology and Catastrophism REVIEW, 1997:1): “… all the monarchs who came to hear Solomon’s wisdom brought ‘silver and gold … myrrh, spices …’ (cf. I Kings 10:25 and II Chronicles 10:24). Ever since the time of Joseph, an Arabian camel train had operated between Egypt and northern Palestine, carrying similar types of gifts (Genesis 37:25)”.
And, militating against Dr. Bimson’s suggestion that the biblical queen was from Yemen in Arabia (Patrick Clarke, too, has her from “somewhere around modern-day Yemen”) is the testimony of G. van Beek, who has described the geographical isolation of Yemen and the severe hazards of a journey from there to Palestine (Solomon and Sheba, ch. 1, “The Land of Sheba”, p. 41). Moreover, none of the numerous inscriptions from this southern part of Arabia refers to the famous queen. Civilisation in southern Arabia may not really have begun to flourish until some two to three centuries after Solomon’s era, as Bimson himself had noted – and no 10th century BC Arabian queen has ever been named or proposed as the Queen of Sheba.
If she had hailed from Yemen, who was she?
Whilst scholarly critiques, such as Bimson and Clarke’s, are to be encouraged, these two have succeeded in creating a vacuum – no appropriate “Queen”. SIS editor in 1997, Alasdair Beal, commenting on the effect that Bimson’s 1986 critique had had on readers, wrote:
Probably few articles caused more disappointment in SIS circles than John Bimson’s 1986 ‘Hatshepsut and the Queen of Sheba’, which presented strong evidence and argument against Velikovsky’s proposal that the … queen who visited King Solomon was none other than the famous Egyptian female pharaoh. This removed one of the key identifications in Velikovsky’s Ages in Chaos historical reconstruction and was a key factor in the rejection of his proposed chronology by Bimson and others in favour of the more moderate ‘New Chronology’.
It also took away what had seemed a romantic and satisfactory solution to the mystery of the identity and origins of Solomon’s visitor, leaving her once more as an historical enigma. ….
So, can “Sheba” yet be identified with any part of Egypt and/or Ethiopia, where Josephus said that the biblical woman had ruled as queen?
No, as I think.
Egypt/Ethiopia will be figuring only at a later stage in our story.
I believe that we can actually give a definitive answer to the question of the location of “Sheba”, based on the highest authority: JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF.
In what might initially seem like a very vague statement (Luke 11:31): ‘The Queen of the South … came from the ends of the earth …’, Jesus is here providing the most precise co-ordinates. This text offers us an excellent example of why the Bible needs to be read in its proper context, and not superficially, in a literal Western manner. Creationists are wont to read phrases like “the earth” (Greek tes ges, της γης) in a global sense. Though Patrick Clarke, himself a Creationist, will limit his horizons geographically, in this case, by suggesting that the biblical queen may have been from Yemen. (Logically, should he have located “Sheba” somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere?).
However, for the Israelite audience which Jesus was then addressing, “the earth” was “the land”, the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel).
Now, the “ends” (or borders) of the land of Israel were Dan (North) and Beersheba (South). For example I Samuel 3:20: “And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the LORD”.
The “end” to which Jesus is referring, “the South”, is obviously, then, Beersheba. “The south” is a common biblical term for the Negev (desert).
So, we are here being directed unerringly by Jesus Christ to the chief town, Beersheba, that stands at the southern border of Israel, in the Negev – and known as “the Capital of the Negev”.
The Old Testament fully supports this geography, giving the name of the Queen’s realm as “Sheba”, which is just another name for Beersheba (Joshua 19:2): “… Beersheba (or Sheba) …”. And, given the ancient city’s strategic location of intersecting trade routes, we ought not be surprised to read that the Queen of (Beer)sheba travelled to Jerusalem with so richly-laden a camel train as she did (I Kings 10:2, 10), and that: “Never again were so many spices brought in as those the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon”.
This famous journey to Jerusalem, though, is also yet some time in the future.
For now, we must return to the scene at Shunem in northern Israel.
“Two years later”, during which time Tamar was presumably still languishing at home, Absalom will organise for his men to kill Amnon, at a sheep-shearing occasion in Baal Hazor, with all of King David’s sons present (2 Samuel 13:23-33).
During that period of time, the girl had been consigned to working outside in the fields.
Some think that her description of herself as “dark”, or ‘black”, would suggest that she was, say, a Negroid (Nubian or Ethiopian) woman, although she herself will specifically attribute her dark skin to her being “darkened by the sun” (Song of Solomon 1:5-6):
‘Dark am I, yet lovely,
daughters of Jerusalem,
dark like the tents of Kedar,
like the tent curtains of Solomon.
Do not stare at me because I am dark,
because I am darkened by the sun’.
As Professor Claude F. Mariottini has well explained:
https://claudemariottini.com/2010/02/16/%E2%80%9Cblack-and-beautiful%E2%80%9D-or-
The text does not say that her dark complexion was due to her racial background, that is, that she was an African woman. Her dark skin pigmentation was not a reference to a racial feature. What the Shulammite [sic] was trying to say to the women of Jerusalem was that the exposure to the sun on her body made her to be darker than the women who lived in Jerusalem. She was dark because she did not protect her body from the intense heat of the sun.
The Shulammite’s words reflect the fact that peasant women who worked in the fields had dark skin because of the constant exposure to the sun, while the women who lived in luxurious houses of Jerusalem and those who lived in the palace were less dark and more white.
The woman explained her blackness by comparing it with the tents of Kedar and the curtains of Solomon. The tents of Kedar were bedouin tents made of black goat hair. Although the text does not clarify what was intended by “the curtains of Solomon,” they were probably curtains or wall hangings found in Solomon’s palace known by its beauty and artistic designs.
The skin contrast (dark and white) is perfectly exemplified in an Egyptian Old Kingdom statue of the official Rahotep and his wife, Nofret (meaning “beautiful”). “Rahotep’s skin”, we read there, “is darker than his wife’s to show all of the time men spend outside – and women inside”.
This all has mystical connotations as well, as wonderfully explored by St. John of the Cross (Dark Night of the Soul and The Living Flame of Love), the black darkness of the Active and Passive nights. Dr. D. W. Ekstrand makes the following comment on the Divine flame’s effect: http://www.thetransformedsoul.com/additional-studies/spiritual-life-studies/saint-john-of-the-
“… ‘The Living Flame of Love.’ The stanzas sing of an elevated union within the intimate depths of the spirit. The image of “flame,” working on the wood, dispelling the moisture, turning it black, then giving it the qualities of “fire,” appeared first in the Dark Night. It also turned up again in the Spiritual Canticle in the serene night toward the end of the poem, a flame that is painless, comforting, and conformed to God. John tells us there that this flame is the love of the Holy Spirit. Now, having grown hotter and sometimes flaring up, it impels John to write more verses about the sublime communion taking place in his deepest center. At this depth he lives in both stable serenity and exalted activity. St. John composed these stanzas burning in love’s flame, with the intimate and delicate sweetness of love”.
‘… his banner over me is love’. (Song of Solomon 2:4)
Why were her ‘brothers … angry with’ her? (Song of Solomon 1:6) Because, as she continues: ‘my own vineyard I had to neglect’. Professor Mariottini concurs with others that this is a reference to her virginity, though he wrongly adds “that she gave herself sexually” to her lover (op. cit.): “The reason for the punishment her brothers inflicted on her was because she did not keep her own vineyard … probably a reference to her virginity, that is, that she gave herself sexually to her shepherd lover and as a result her brothers punished her for her indiscretion”.
We know, though, that she was entirely guiltless in this – she having firstly obeyed the order of King David to attend the ailing Amnon, and then having been taken against her will by Amnon.
But, as we find in some cultures even today, the female victim in such cases can sometimes be burdened with all of the blame.
Solomon had, as we are told, a vineyard at nearby Baal Hamon (Song of Solomon 8:11):
Solomon had a vineyard in Baal Hamon;
he let out his vineyard to tenants.
Each was to bring for its fruit
a thousand shekels of silver.
“Oettli, following Rosenmüller, thinks this [Baal Hamon] … is identical with Belamon, or Balamon, in Judith viii. 3, which, he says, was not far from Shunem …”
(The Song of Solomon with Introductions and Notes, p. 61. Emphasis added).
Solomon and the Shunammite would have had occasion to meet “outside” in the fields (8:1-2):
‘If only you were to me like a brother,
who was nursed at my mother’s breasts!
Then, if I found you outside,
I would kiss you,
and no one would despise me.
I would lead you
and bring you to my mother’s house—
she who has taught me’.
And what had her mother taught her?
Perhaps her beauty was not the only quality for which King David’s officials had chosen the Shunammite above all the others. She may also have acquired medicinal knowledge from her mother. One explanation is that she was like an Akkadian baritu priestess, with healing powers: http://www.icanbreathe.com/Habbirya.html
What are the nature and purpose of Tamar’s activity? What follows is a necessarily brief summary of my research so far.
The first possibility is raised by the term biryâ. In 2 Sam 13, the root brh … is used to designate preparation of the food (tabrenî) and the ceremony involved in making the food (habbiryâ) which Amnon expects to eat (‘ebreh). Words arising from brh in the Bible have to do with eating, but are specific for breaking a fast in a time of grieving or illness. Forms of brh appear only in 2 Sam 3:35; 12:17; 13:5, 6, 10; and in Lam 4:10. Another form, barût is found in Ps 69:22 as food for a mourner. …. David for example refuses to break his fast, lehabrôt, during mourning for Abner (3:35) and he will not eat, brh, bread during his seven day fast and prayer vigil for the ailing infant of Bathsheba (12:17). In Lam 4:10, children become the food (perhaps divination-offering), lebarôt, prepared by their desperate mothers during the siege of Jerusalem. These uses suggest that the word chosen to express eating in 2 Sam 13 includes a connotation beyond an ordinary meal.
The root has sacred connotations in Hebrew. Beriyt means covenant, perhaps arising from “binding” in Assyrian barû. In the Bible beriyt commonly refers to being bound by the covenant with YHWH, but also by a covenant between humans (Gen 14:13; I Sam 18:3) and with death (Isa 28: IS, 18; 57:8). …. In later Jewish parlance there is a meal of comfort, called seûdat habra’â … given to a mourner after the funeral. Biryâ may be related to beriyt, covenant.
Conceivably this later custom was a restoration of some familial/tribal bond with the dead, a covenant meal prepared ritually by a woman. ….
Though the divinatory meaning of brh is not common in Hebrew, it is among ancient Israel’s neighbors. In Akkadian, barû priests are diviners who inspect livers, and the related term biru, “divination” … is conducted also by women who interpret dreams. …. We may not assume that other people’s customs are identical to Israel’s; however, by exploring ancient approaches to healing we may apply to 2 Sam 13 a range of activities reflecting a frame of reference common to peoples of the ancient Near East. ….
In Mesopotamia, besides priestly diviners, there are references to two types of women diviners who in particular are “approached in cases of sickness,” …. as is the case with Amnon. One passage reads, “We shall ask here the šã’litu-priestesses, the baritu-priestesses and the spirits of the dead ….
It reads a bit like Joseph of Egypt (Imhotep), who “commanded the physicians” – {he becoming an Egyptian god of medicine}.
Joseph could divine (Genesis 44:15) and could interpret dreams.
Solomon, too, in fact, “lovesick” as Amnon had been, will plead for the Shunammite’s attention (Song of Solomon 2:5): ‘Sustain me with raisin cakes, refresh me with apples, because I am lovesick’.
When the Shunammite was at home, a veritable prisoner of Absalom and her other brothers, young Solomon was constrained to creep around the place surreptitiously, “behind the wall”, “gazing”, “peering through the lattice” (Song of Solomon 2:8-9):
‘Listen! My beloved!
Look! Here he comes,
leaping across the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.
Look! There he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattice’.
Then everything changes. Amnon is killed, this sending a shudder through the royal palace. David is told (2 Samuel 13:30): ‘Absalom has struck down all the king’s sons; not one of them is left’. But, while David is in the process of doing one of the things that he does best, grieving (v. 31): “The king stood up, tore his clothes and lay down on the ground; and all his attendants … with their clothes torn”, Jonadab-Achitophel will (with his insider’s knowledge) reassure the king (v. 32): ‘My lord should not think that they killed all the princes; only Amnon is dead. This has been Absalom’s express intention ever since the day Amnon raped his sister Tamar’.
“Meanwhile, Absalom had fled” (v. 34).
Now, did Absalom on this occasion take with him his ‘sister’ Tamar, as well as “his men” who had slain the unsuspecting Amnon (vv. 28-29)? “Absalom fled and went to Talmai son of Ammihud, the king of Geshur. But King David mourned many days for his son. After Absalom fled and went to Geshur, he stayed there three years” (vv. 37-38).
All we know for sure is that, more than five years later – after the collapse of Absalom’s revolt – the girl was back in the service of King David. For, during the play for the throne by yet another son of King David’s, Adonijah, we read (I Kings 1:15): “Now the king was very old, and Abishag the Shunammite was serving the king”.
Absalom may, or may not, have ‘dragged’ his ‘sister’ along with him to his place of refuge with King Talmai in Geshur.
If he had, then her departure from Israel may have prompted Solomon’s anguished cry: ‘Come back, come back, O Shunammite; come back, come back, that we may gaze on you!’ (Song of Solomon 6:13)
Whatever be the case, the kingdom of Geshur, and its King Talmai, are the elements (so I think) that will enable me to make the necessary connections, firstly, with “Sheba”, and then, with Egypt.
I have already suggested elsewhere, following Diana Edelman, that this “Geshur” was a southern kingdom (“Tel Masos, Geshur, and David”, JNES, Vol. 47, No. 4, Oct., 1988, p. 256): http://www.jstor.org/stable/544878
David, while in residence in his new capital of Judah at Hebron fathered Absalom with Maacah, daughter of Talmai, King of Geshur.
His first two sons were mothered by his wives Ahinoam and Abigail, whom he had married while living in the wilderness, prior to his service to Achish of Gath. His marriage to Maacah must therefore have taken place in the opening years of his kingship at Hebron. The political nature of his marriage to Maacah has been recognized in the past …. It has always been assumed, however, that Talmai was king of the northern kingdom of Geshur in the Golan.
It seems more reasonable to conclude, however, that Talmai was king of the southern Geshur. Whether or not he remained a Philistine vassal after setting up his own state at Hebron, it would have been a politically expedient move for David to ally himself with one or more of the groups he had formerly been raiding as a Philistine mercenary. Peaceful relations with groups living just to the south of his new state would have allowed the king to concentrate his limited resources on other endeavors. His ability to enter a treaty with southern Geshur, had he remained a Philistine vassal himself, would have been conditioned on the lack of formal declaration of war between the Philistines and Geshur. No vassal was allowed to enter a treaty with a declared enemy of its overlord. The postulated alliance with Talmai, king of Geshur, would have provided David with military aid when he needed it. At the same time, it could have provided him with a market for his goods and … additional economic opportunities.
“David … a Philistine vassal himself”, we have just read!
Utterly amazing to think that David, the Lord’s “anointed” one, the hero of Israel – thanks to his defeating the Philistine giant, Goliath, and earning himself a reputation amongst the Israelites greater than King Saul’s (I Samuel 18:6-7): “… the women came out from all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul with singing and dancing, with joyful songs and with timbrels and lyres. As they danced, they sang:
‘Saul has slain his thousands,
and David his tens of thousands’” –
would be forced to flee to the enemy Philistines, the only place where he knew Saul would not go in pursuit of him. The trigger-happy King Saul was wont to attempt to impale on his spear, David, and even Saul’s own son and heir, Jonathan.
Perhaps no one better fits Paul’s description of the much-tried people of faith than does David (Hebrews 11:32-33, 34, 37-38):
And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions … escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. ….
They went about … destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.
Meanwhile, back in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 13:39): “… King David longed to go to Absalom, for he was consoled concerning Amnon’s death”.
Did the king also pine for the absent ‘sister’ of Absalom? ‘Come back … O Shunammite …’. Or was she already back in the service of the king?
Another matter to be considered with regard to the Shunammite is whether she had conceived a baby from the rape incident. For, who was the mysterious “little sister” (Song of Songs 8:8)?: “We have a little sister, and she has no breasts. What shall we do for our sister on the day when she is spoken for?”
Tradition has Joseph of Egypt’s wife, Asenath, as the daughter of Joseph’s sister Dinah, conceived in her rape by Shechem the Hivite (Genesis 34:2).
We cannot say for sure where the Shunammite was situated during Absalom’s subsequent revolt against his father, King David – though, a few years later, she was back serving David, as previously noted.
Meanwhile, Jonadab-Achitophel was steering Absalom in a similarly lustful direction as he had in the case of Amnon (2 Samuel 16:20-22):
Absalom said to Achitophel, ‘Give us your advice. What should we do?’ Achitophel answered, ‘Sleep with your father’s concubines whom he left to take care of the palace. Then all Israel will hear that you have made yourself obnoxious to your father, and the hands of everyone with you will be more resolute’. So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof, and he slept with his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel.
Was the Shunammite amongst these “concubines … [David] … left to take care of the palace”?
FROM SHEBA TO EGYPTIAN THEBES
The Shunammite had by now unwittingly been the cause of the deaths of two of David’s sons, Amnon and Adonijah. How did “the Shunammite” (who was Tamar = Abishag) manage to find her way to becoming “Queen” of Beersheba, in the Negev desert?
Whether or not she had gone (or been taken) with Absalom when he fled the presence of David after having organised the death of the king’s oldest son, Amnon, staying away from Israel for “three years” – during which time she could have become well acquainted with the southern kingdom of Geshur – she would at least have been free to go there after the death of King David whom she had been nursing.
King Talmai of Geshur may (as Diana Edelman has suggested), or may not, have been an ally of King David’s. (Would Talmai have received the rebellious Absalom had he been an ally?)
How, then, after all of this did the Shunammite find her way to Egypt?
The following scenario has to be speculative at this stage:
Just prior to the death of King David (according to this revised model), Thutmose I succeeded Amenhotep I as the pharaoh of Egypt.
Thutmose I – considered to have been a mature and experienced military leader when he came to the throne – is thought not to have been of royal Egyptian blood.
“… he may have strengthened his claim to the throne by marrying Ahmose, perhaps a relative of his predecessor, probably some time before his accession”.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thutmose-I
Chronologically, Thutmose I would have assumed the throne of Egypt right on the eve of Solomon’s own kingship, thereby being our candidate for the biblical “Pharaoh king of Egypt” with whom King Solomon made an alliance (I Kings 3:1).
I think that Thutmose I (or Thotmes I) may be the biblical Talmai, or Tolmai (= Thotmes), formerly King of Geshur – which, we learned, was “the land extending to Shur and Egypt”.
Though not of royal Egyptian blood, Thutmose I had married pharaoh Amenhotep I’s sister, according to some views.
Thutmose I is generally considered to have become the father of Hatshepsut. “Yet”, according to Gay Robins” (“The Enigma of Hatshepsut”), “none of Thutmose I’s monuments even mentions his daughter”: https://www.baslibrary.org/archaeology-odyssey/2/1/11
Hatshepsut was, however, extremely devoted to Thutmose I.
Talmai (Tolmai), the former king of Geshur, fronting Egypt, having married into the pharaonic family, became “Pharaoh king of Egypt” (I Kings 1:3) just prior to the death of King David, and he then, shortly afterwards, made an alliance with King Solomon.
The Pharaoh’s ‘daughter’, Hatshepsut (formerly of Shunem), was promised to King Solomon as his bride (I Kings 9:16): “Pharaoh king of Egypt had attacked and captured Gezer. He had set it on fire. He killed its Canaanite inhabitants and then gave it as a wedding gift to his daughter, Solomon’s wife”.
Were one to use an ‘Occam’s Razor’ method, to limit complexity, it would be very tempting in my revised context to identify this “Gezer” with Beersheba (whether or not it might be the archaeological site of Tel Masos).
Gezer could have been the capital of the “Gezrites” next to the “Geshurites”.
Dr. John Bimson, though, may have detected archaeological evidence for the relevance of Gezer at this time (“Can There be a Revised Chronology Without a Revised Stratigraphy?”):
The Bible adds extra detail concerning Gezer: namely, that Solomon rebuilt it after it had been captured and burnt by the Pharaoh, who had given the site to his daughter, Solomon’s wife, as a dowry (I Kings 9:16-17). In Velikovsky’s chronology, this pharaoh is identified as Thutmose I …. In the revised stratigraphy considered here, we would expect to find evidence for this destruction of Gezer at some point during LB I, and sure enough we do, including dramatic evidence of burning …. The “latest possible date” for this destruction is said to be the reign of Thutmose III, with some archaeologists preferring an earlier date …. We may readily identify this destruction as the work of Solomon’s father-in-law. ….
The Pharaoh conquers this city and gives it to his daughter, the “Queen of Sheba [Beersheba]” as a wedding present, she biding her time there in the Negev until King Solomon, in Jerusalem, has completed much of the heavy building work there.
Only then does the “Queen” make the camel trip to Jerusalem to see it all (I Kings 10:1-7):
When the Queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon and his relationship to the Lord, she came to test Solomon with hard questions.
Arriving at Jerusalem with a very great caravan—with camels carrying spices, large quantities of gold, and precious stones—she came to Solomon and talked with him about all that she had on her mind. Solomon answered all her questions; nothing was too hard for the king to explain to her.
When the queen of Sheba saw all the wisdom of Solomon and the palace he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their robes, his cupbearers, and the burnt offerings he made at the Temple of the Lord, she was overwhelmed.
She said to the king, ‘The report I heard in my own country about your achievements and your wisdom is true. But I did not believe these things until I came and saw with my own eyes. Indeed, not even half was told me; in wisdom and wealth you have far exceeded the report I heard’.
It is apparent from I Kings 3:1, though, that Pharaoh’s daughter actually arrived there even while work on the Temple was going on: “[Solomon] brought her to the City of David until he finished building his palace and the Temple of the Lord, and the wall around Jerusalem”.
They would have dwelt together in the city of Jerusalem for several years, until pharaoh Thutmose I died.
The Queen, who had been solemnly crowned by Thutmose I in a tri-partite ceremony that was patterned on that of King Solomon’s coronation, as we read, then (10:13):
“… left and returned with her retinue to her own country”.
Some (e.g. Dr Ewald Metzler) consider this ‘return’ to have been a ‘divorce’, politically motivated.
She, as Hatshepsut, thereupon went to Egypt to marry the new pharaoh, Thutmose II.
Then, after he died, about mid-way through the reign of King Solomon, she invited the latter to Egypt where he became whom some consider to have been ‘the true power behind the throne’, the famous Senenmut (or Senmut).
Hatshepsut, first a Queen of Egypt, later became Pharaoh of what is called Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty (New Kingdom).
There is enormous archaeologico-historical evidence for King Solomon and for the exotic Queen of Sheba, despite leading Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein’s mock-apologetic: “Now Solomon. I think I destroyed Solomon, so to speak. Sorry for that!”
For more on all this, see e.g. my article:
Archaeology for King Solomon ‘all in pieces, all coherence gone’
(5) Archaeology for King Solomon 'all in pieces, all coherence gone' | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
