Two of David’s sons and one daughter get into a tense relationship. One son, Amnon, falls in love with his sister and, after some scheming to get her alone, rapes her and then kicks her out of his home. She’s devastated by what’s happened and runs away to live with the other brother, Absolom. Absolom does some scheming of his own and murders Amnon for it later.
Absolom went into exile after that, but he was tricky, and after a while he set up a series of events that got him back in David’s good graces. He had an old widow approach the king and give him this story about one of her sons killing the other and got him to feel sympathetic for her and for her hypothetical son who was in danger of being killed by the village for revenge. After David vowed by God to protect her remaining son (I really wish he would quit vowing things all the time, it’s going to come back on him eventually) someone else pointed out that this situation was just like Absolom’s. David then allowed Absolom to come back to Jerusalem, but he was not allowed to see the king.
After a couple years back in Jerusalem, Absolom hatched another plan and got invited back into David’s presence anyway.
Once he was reestablished, Absolom got immediately to work on furthering his political ambitions. Every time someone from Israel came to Jerusalem to petition the king for something or other, Absolom would meet them at the gate, listen sympathetically and say “Boy, that’s a legit case, it’s really too bad the king doesn’t have a representative you could talk to about that. If I were appointed judge, then I would totally help you out with that. It’s too bad I’m not though.”
After he’d made lots of friends, he invited a bunch of officials to come with him to Hebron, where he had all his agents celebrate and yell his name as he walked into the city. Davids officials came home and reported that the people favored Absolom and David was so shaken up he fled Jerusalem, I guess under the assumption that Absolom was about to stage a coup.
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