ManageYourEmotionsBook8.5x5.5_RevJULY.indd

lom rebelled against his father,Ahithophel saw this as an opportunity to finally demonstrate revenge. He joined the enemy and began plot- ting David’s downfall with bad advice. In his first words of faulty counsel,Ahithophel urged Absalom to disgrace the King by sleeping with his concubines (2 Samuel 16:21).Absalom took the advice and thus created a rift between father and son that would never be reconciled. Sadly, this didn’t satisfy Ahithophel’s hunger for revenge, as he soon gave instruction on how the wayward son could destroy his father, requesting: “Please let me choose 12,000 men that I may arise and pursue David tonight. I will come upon him while he is weary and exhausted and terrify him, so that all the people who are with him will flee.Then I will strike down the king alone, and I will bring back all the people to you… So the plan pleased Absalom and all the elders of Israel” (2 Samuel 17:1-4). Had this plan been carried out, there’s a good chance David would have been defeated. Fortunately, he had more than one good friend. Hushai, who infiltrated the Absalom camp as a double agent, contradicted Ahithophel’s plan and advised that they not attack Da- vid and his army.As it turned out, “Absalom and all the men of Israel said, ‘The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel.’ For the Lord had ordained to thwart the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the Lord might bring calamity on Absalom” (2 Samuel 17:14). This good counsel resulted in a sad ending for Ahithophel. Once he saw that his advice was rejected and the life of David was spared, he, like Judas centuries later, went back to his home and hung himself (2 Samuel 17:23). How could a man who had risen to such a pinnacle of power sink to the point of committing suicide?The answer lies buried in Anithophel’s past, which we’ll reveal in this final section, an in- structive life. Let’s first examine Anithophel’s pathway to bitterness, going

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