2 Samuel 14:16 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

For the king will hear Clemency and kindness are the properties of a good king, and such a king, she insinuates, she knew David to be, who, she was persuaded, would grant her audience and acceptance. To deliver his handmaid, &c. By granting her request concerning her son, in whose life, she intimates, her own was bound up, so that she could not outlive his death; supposing that David's case might be similar, and therefore that this might touch him in a tender part, though it was not proper to say so expressly; and thereby suggesting, that the safety and comfort of the people of Israel depended on Absalom's restoration. Out of the inheritance of God That is, out of that land which God gave to his people, to be their inheritance, and in which alone he hath fixed the place of his presence and worship. Thus she artfully reminds the king how dangerous it was to let Absalom (unto whom she had ventured to apply her case) continue among idolaters, in a state of separation from God, his house, and people.