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
Tree of Jesse David and then on to "Adam, which was "[the son]" of God.". () Matthew's Gospel opens with the words: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." () With this beginning, Matthew shows the Abrahamic and royal descent, passing through David, but then through Solomon. See Genealogy of Jesus for more explanation of the differences, but both lineages permit the interpretation that Jesus is the "stem of Jesse" by his descent from Jesse's son, David. Pictorial representations of the "Jesse Tree" show a symbolic tree or vine with spreading branches to represent