Absalom and Achitophel advice of the double agent Hushai over the good advice of Achitophel. Achitophel, realising that the rebellion is doomed to failure, goes home and hangs himself. Absalom is killed (against David's explicit commands) after getting caught by his hair in the thick branches of a great oak tree: "His head caught fast in the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on" (NRSV 2 Sam. 18:9). The death of his son, Absalom, causes David enormous personal grief. A second allegory in the poem, beginning on line 425, is the
Nathan (son of David) twenty) legitimate sons. Nathan (son of David) Nathan () was the third of four sons born to King David and Bathsheba in Jerusalem. He was a younger brother of Shammuah (sometimes referred to as Shammua or Shimea), Shobab, and an older brother of Solomon. Although Nathan is the third son raised by David and Bathsheba, he is the fourth born to Bathsheba. The first died before he could be named. [For an alternative view of this, see under 'Other Sons of David' below.] Nathan was the first child of Bathsheba that she was given the right to name. Her first