And Absalom met the servants of David. And Absalom rode upon a mule, and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he was taken up between the heaven and the earth; and the mule that [was] under him went away.
Ver. 9. And his head caught hold of the oak.] His head was catched in a crotch or forked branch of the oak, a and so he hung by the neck between heaven and earth, as rejected of both.
“ Abslon Marte furens pensilis arbore obit. ”
By that head he hanged, which had plotted treason against so good a father; and by the hair of his head twisted and wound about the boughs, as most expositors hold. God making his hair his halter: those tresses that had formerly hanged loosely dishevelled on his shoulders, now he hangs by them. He had wont to weigh his hair, and was proud to find it so heavy: now his hair poiseth the weight of his body, and makes his burden his torment. But what meant Gretser, the Jesuit, to call this oak a cross, and a manifest figure of Christ's cross? in qua Absalom pendens Christum praefiguravit? b Was the man in his right mind?
And the mule that was under him went away.] False hopes of God's mercy will one day serve men as Absalom's mule did his master: when those that are rightly grounded, will do as Bucephalus, Alexander's great horse, of which Gellius reporteth, that though deeply wounded in both neck and sides in a battle, yet he carried his master with great speed from out the danger of his enemies, and when he had set him in safety, fell down and died.
a Henry, grandchild to William the Conqueror, while he hotly pursued the chase in New Forest, was struck by a bough into the jaws, and, as Absalom, left hanging until he died. - Speed, l45.
b Lib. i., De Cruce, cap. 6.