And it came to pass after two full years, that Absalom had sheepshearers in Baalhazor, which is beside Ephraim: and Absalom invited all the king's sons.
Absalom had sheep-shearers in Baal-hazor, which is beside Ephraim. A sheep-shearing feast is a grand occasion in the East. Absalom, proposing to give such an entertainment at his estate in Baal-hazor, about eight miles northeast of Jerusalem, near a town called Ephraim (Joshua 11:10), he first invited the king and his court, but the king declining, on account of the heavy expense to which the reception of royalty would subject his son, Absalom then limited the invitation to the king's sons, which David the more readily agreed to, in the hope that it might tend to the promotion of brotherly harmony and union.