“If Yahweh will bring, yes, bring me back again to Jerusalem, then I will serve Yahweh.” This is such a godly-sounding vow! “I will serve Yahweh!” But Absalom had no intention of serving Yahweh, at least not as far as keeping God’s commands was concerned. So Absalom joins the hordes of people who through the centuries have used religious-sounding statements to fool people. Jesus taught us to not be fooled by what people say, but to look to what they did—their fruit—if we wanted to know who they really were (Matt. 7:15-20). If David had paid attention to Absalom’s fruit and to what he was doing, then David would have seen the trouble ahead. Christians should not be fooled like David was; we must obey Christ and look closely at people’s fruit so that we can mostly avoid being fooled by what people say.

The phrase “bring, yes, bring” is the figure polyptoton, where the vowel “bring” is repeated twice for emphasis, with the verb “bring” being in different conjugations. Absalom’s pretend desire is emphasized by the doubling of the vowel “bring.”

[See word study on “polyptoton.”]