And Joab sent to Tekoah, and fetched thence a wise woman, and said unto her, I pray thee, feign thyself to be a mourner, and put on now mourning apparel, and anoint not thyself with oil, but be as a woman that had a long time mourned for the dead:
Joab sent to Tekoah, and fetched thence a wise woman. The king was strongly attached to Absalom; and having now gotten over his sorrow for the violent death of Amnon, was desirous of again enjoying the society of his favourite son, wine had now been three long years absent. But a dread of public opinion, and a regard to the public interests, made him hesitate about recalling or pardoning his guilty son; and Joab, whose discerning mind perceived this struggle between parental affection and royal duty, devised a plan for relieving the scruples, and at the same time gratifying the wishes, of his master.
Having procured a country-woman of superior intelligence and address, he directed her to seek an audience of the king, and by soliciting his royal interposition in the settlement of a domestic grievance, convince him that the life of a murderer might in some cases be saved. Tekoah was about twelve miles south of Jerusalem and six south of Bethlehem; and the design of bringing a woman from such a distance was to prevent either the petitioner being known or the truth of her story easily investigated. But the whole spirit of knowledge and refinement in the kingdom at that time dwelt in the south (cf. 1 Kings 5:10; 1 Chronicles 2:6; Jeremiah 49:7; Obadiah 1:8). Her speech was in the form of a parable: the circumstances, the language, the manner well suited to the occasion, represented a case as like David's as it was policy to make it, so as not to be prematurely discovered. Having gotten the king pledged, she avowed it to be her design to satisfy the royal conscience that, in pardoning Absalom, he was doing nothing more than he would have done in the case of a stranger, where there could be no imputation of partiality. The device succeeded. David traced its origin to Joab; and, secretly pleased at obtaining the judgment of that rough but generally sound-thinking soldier, commissioned him to repair to Geshur, and bring home his exiled son.