David prophesies the punishment that will fall upon him, stating "the sword shall never depart from your house." When David acknowledges that he has sinned, Nathan advises him that his sin is forgiven and he will not die, but the child will. In fulfillment of Nathan's words, David's son Absalom, fueled by vengeance and lust for power, rebels. Absalom's forces are routed at the battle of the Wood of Ephraim, and he is caught by his long hair in the branches of a tree where, contrary to David's order, he is killed by Joab, the commander of David's army. David laments
David A. King (historian) David A. King (historian) David A. King (born 1941) is a British-born orientalist and historian of astronomy. At an early age he decided not to follow in the footsteps of his father, Henry C. King (1915 - 2005), author of "The History of the Telescope" (1956) and the first director of the London Planetarium and later of the McClaughlin Planetarium in Toronto. Instead he learned Arabic and went off to the Near East and then to the U.S to immerse himself in Medieval Islamic Studies. However, after one year of graduate school he found himself, not unwillingly, deeply entrenched in