Where in the World is Tekoa?
Where in the world is Tekoa? Well head due south from Jerusalem for about 10 miles and you will drive right to it! It is basically in the Judean Hill Country and was home to a person which 2 Samuel 14:2 calls a “wise” woman.
Now the Tekoan woman wasn’t wise in the way we normally think of it. Another aspect of wisdom’s meaning is to be skilled at rhetoric. In other words, the woman could talk a blue streak! So why was she picked out by King David’s right hand man, Joab, to speak with King David? A little background will help us understand this.
By this time in David’s life, things were just a stinkin’ mess. He was reaping the fruit of the bad decision he had made to sleep with Bathsheba, kill her husband Uriah, and then disguise the murder as if Uriah had died in battle.
Had God forgiven David? Absolutely – see 2 Samuel 12:13 and Psalm 51. However, forgiveness does not cancel out the “reap what you sow” principle. At the time when Joab took this woman from Tekoa, he was trying to reconcile King David with his estranged son, Absalom. Absalom had been in hiding for 3 years because he had killed his half brother Amnon for raping their half sister Tamar. Are you confused yet? It was truly a dysfunctional family!
Joab literally gave the Tekoan woman a speech to present to King David. As the king of Israel, David was responsible for settling legal disputes. The made-up story she told was to parallel the story of David and Absalom’s situation. The Tekoan woman said she had two sons who had gotten into a fight. One killed the other and now the rest of the family wanted her to turn over her one remaining son to be killed for revenge. But, she claimed, this would leave her with no heir and would “extinguish her coal” from the face of the earth.
After a little more slick talking from this woman, David finally promised her protection from her family members. David even declared in 2 Samuel 14:11, “As the LORD lives, not one hair of your son shall fall to the ground.” Well, that was all she wrote, as we say in the south!
After this sweeping declaration of protection, the wise woman let the other shoe fall. She points out to the King that he is no better than her blood-thirsty family for keeping Absalom away from the kingdom. She declares the King guilty for not bringing home the banished one – Absalom.
King David may have been born at night – but it wasn’t last night. By this time, he realized he had been snookered into admitting his own default, very similar to when Nathan the prophet called him out concerning the sin with Bathsheba. Boy, David’s passion for righteous judgment got the better of him again!
Here is what I truly love about this whole passage. In 2 Samuel 14:14, the Tekoan woman does make a very wise statement (written by Joab most likley). “Yet God does not take away life, but plans ways so that the banished one will not be cast out from him.” Now was this woman a believer? I doubt it – but I really don’t know for sure. But here is the thing, in God’s sovereignty, He will speak truth through whomever He chooses to speak truth.
And friends, this lady from Tekoa spoke some flat-out truth. The whole Bible describes all the ways God has been in pursuit of a relationship with little old me and little old you! Romans 5 tells us that God was seeking us: while we were still helpless, while we were yet sinners, and while we were God’s enemies. Thank God he didn’t banish us from His presence forever. But rather, he planned a way for restoration through the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ!
So take heart, O Banished One, God has been seeking you before you even realized it. He has chosen you as one of His own. Will you choose Him back?
And just in case you are wondering…here is link to a map of Tekoa.