(16) And Joab blew the trumpet, and the people returned from pursuing after Israel: for Joab held back the people. (17) And they took Absalom, and cast him into a great pit in the wood, and laid a very great heap of stones upon him: and all Israel fled everyone to his tent. (18) Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and reared up for himself a pillar, which is in the king's dale: for he said, I have no son to keep my name in remembrance: and he called the pillar after his own name: and it is called unto this day, Absalom's place.
As Absalom's death was awful, so his burying was ignominious. The prophet Ezekiel gives a dreadful representation of the funeral of such men, such as this of Absalom; 2 Samuel 24:25 to the end. Observe, Reader! in what is here said of Absalom's pillar, the folly of monumental pillars to the ungodly. Alas! what an awful thing it is, for a lying stone to speak well of a man where he is not; and the man himself to be in torments where he is.