The Bible records a brother responding to his sister’s rape with three words of counsel: “hold now thy peace” (2 Samuel 13:20). Many survivors have heard some version of that sentence in church. This guide reads the chapter where those words appear, 2 Samuel 13, slowly enough that the text can correct a congregation’s instincts before anyone drafts a policy. The aim is practical: by the end, a group should be able to say what Scripture shows about receiving a survivor and take one concrete step toward being ready.
You can use it alone in about an hour, or with a group over one long session or two shorter ones. Bring a KJV Bible, paper and a pen. After the close reading and a related passage from Israel’s law, the guide brings in counsel from Dr. Sarita Lyons, a clinician in private practice and women’s ministry leader at Epiphany Fellowship Church, from her conversation with Lisa Fields on the Jude 3 Project podcast about how churches respond to sexual trauma.
Before anyone opens the text
If you are leading, say plainly that some people in the room may have lived something close to this chapter, whether or not anyone knows it. No one has to share anything. Anyone may step out without explaining. Read aloud the help lines at the end of this guide before you begin. Anyone reading alone may stop at any point; telling one trusted person or one trained counselor is a faithful step.
Read the scene, then map it in pairs
Read 2 Samuel 13:1-22 aloud in one sitting without comment. Let the room be quiet for a moment when you finish.
Then split into pairs. One person in each pair lists every character who has contact with Tamar before the assault (verses 1-14). The other lists everyone who has contact with her afterward (verses 15-22). Beside each name, write what that person does with her or about her. Take five minutes, then put the two lists together. You should find at least Jonadab, David, Amnon, Amnon’s servant and Absalom. Keep the combined list; you will return to it.
This is narrative, and biblical narrative usually describes rather than commands. The writer seldom stops to tell us how to judge each person. That restraint is not neutrality. The narrator judges through what is recorded, whose words are preserved and what is named. Your lists are a record of those choices.
What the narrator refuses to hide
Start with Tamar’s own voice. Before the assault she reasons with Amnon: “Nay, my brother, do not force me; for no such thing ought to be done in Israel: do not thou this folly” (2 Samuel 13:12). She appeals to God’s law for Israel, names the act as shameful folly and proposes a way out. Whatever comes next, the text has established that she said no, clearly.
Then the narrator names the act without softening it: “Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her” (2 Samuel 13:14). The writer locates the cause in Amnon’s strength and his refusal to listen. Nothing in the verse suggests Tamar invited it or carries any share of the blame. Verse 22 repeats the verdict: Absalom hated Amnon “because he had forced his sister Tamar.”
Notice also how the danger was arranged. Jonadab designs the plan. David sends Tamar to Amnon’s house (verse 7). The text does not say David knew what Amnon intended, and a careful reader should not claim it. But it does show harm reaching Tamar through trusted channels inside her own family.
The second wound in verses 15-20
Amnon’s desire turns to hatred, and he orders her out. Tamar answers: “There is no cause: this evil in sending me away is greater than the other that thou didst unto me” (2 Samuel 13:16). She does not say the rape was small. She says being discarded afterward is a further evil heaped on the first. Amnon then tells his servant, “Put now this woman out from me, and bolt the door after her” (2 Samuel 13:17). He will not use her name.
Verse 18 explains what she was wearing: “And she had a garment of divers colours upon her: for with such robes were the king’s daughters that were virgins apparelled” (2 Samuel 13:18). The narrator ties the robe to her standing as a king’s unmarried daughter, and verse 19 says she tore it, put ashes on her head and went on crying. Many interpreters read the torn robe as mourning the loss of that standing as well as grief over the assault. The text gives the robe’s meaning; the fuller symbolism is a reasonable inference. Either way, her mourning is public, and her family sees it.
Now read verse 20 slowly: “And Absalom her brother said unto her, Hath Amnon thy brother been with thee? but hold now thy peace, my sister: he is thy brother; regard not this thing. So Tamar remained desolate in her brother Absalom’s house” (2 Samuel 13:20).
“Hold now thy peace” means be quiet. “Regard not this thing” means do not take it to heart. Absalom gives two instructions, silence and minimizing, and one reason: family. He also takes her into his home. The text records both. It also records the result: she “remained desolate,” and the narrative never shows her speaking again.
Verse 21 adds the father: “But when king David heard of all these things, he was very wroth” (2 Samuel 13:21). “Wroth” means angry. Anger is the whole of David’s recorded response; the text reports no justice. (Some ancient copies, including the Greek translation, add a line saying David would not trouble Amnon because he loved him as his firstborn. The Hebrew text the KJV follows leaves the silence unexplained.) The book also frames this chapter as the start of the violence Nathan announced over David’s house in chapter 12. That reading is sound, but the narrator still slows down for Tamar’s words and grief, and a church should too.
Was Absalom protecting her?
The strongest case for Absalom deserves a hearing. He is the only person in the chapter who gives Tamar a home. Accusing the king’s firstborn son in public could have put her in further danger, and the king had already shown he would not act. Read in light of what follows, “hold now thy peace” may have been strategy: verse 22 says Absalom spoke to Amnon “neither good nor bad,” and two years later he has Amnon killed (verses 23-29). Jonadab later says this had been Absalom’s intent from the day Tamar was forced (verse 32).
The text settles less than either side would like. It does not tell us Absalom’s motive in verse 20. It does tell us what came of his counsel. Tamar is absent from the account of the revenge. No one in the story is shown giving her a hearing, restoring her or asking what she wanted. Absalom’s response, whatever its motive, ran through his own hatred and his own plans, and the narrator’s last word on Tamar is still “desolate.” Protection that requires the victim’s silence and leaves her desolate is, at best, partial protection.
Pause here as a group. Which details in verses 20-32 most shape your judgment of Absalom, and which questions does the text leave open?
What Israel’s law assumed about the victim
Tamar appeals to what “ought to be done in Israel,” so read one law about sexual violence: Deuteronomy 22:25-27, a betrothed young woman assaulted in open country. “But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter” (Deuteronomy 22:26). The reason follows: “For he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her” (Deuteronomy 22:27).
This is case law for ancient Israel, set among laws shaped by that society’s marriage customs, and Christians hold different views about how Old Testament law applies to believers today. The point here is narrow. In this case the law treats the woman as innocent, compares the assault to a killing and assumes she cried out with no one to save her. It does not demand she prove her resistance. Tamar did cry out. The tragedy of 2 Samuel 13 is that, even in the king’s house, there was none to save her, and afterward none to speak for her.
Testing a clinician’s counsel against the text
Dr. Sarita Lyons does not discuss Tamar. Her counsel comes from clinical practice and church ministry, and any resemblance between her words and this chapter is a connection we are drawing, not one she made. A royal household in ancient Israel is also not a modern congregation. So treat what follows as application to be tested, not as exegesis.
On the first response to a survivor, Lyons says the “number one thing to believe them,” and explains: “we harm more people by questioning their experience or making them feel as if it wasn’t that bad.” Absalom’s “regard not this thing” is close to exactly what she warns against. She also names incest among the trauma survivors carry, which is Tamar’s situation: the abuser is family, and the family wants its peace kept.
Describing sexual sin by church leaders more broadly, Lyons says: “Then the women are the ones often told to leave the church. The women are the ones that are made to seem like they are the problem.” The echo of verse 17, where the woman is put out and the door bolted, is hard to miss.
She also argues that silence teaches. On how churches handle sex generally, she says “the greatest Miseducation is no education, just not acknowledging.” She wants sexual trauma addressed in preaching and teaching because “this is an important issue to God. And if it’s an important issue to God, it’s an important issue to us.” This chapter is in Scripture. A church that never reads it aloud has decided something about what can be said in its hearing.
Her counsel also guards against overcorrection. Lyons says “not everyone should be touching this issue of sexual trauma with people in the church,” and urges churches to build relationships with godly clinicians and to train those who respond. That fits the gap the text leaves open. Absalom offered a roof and, later, revenge. What the narrative never shows anyone offering Tamar is a hearing, justice on her behalf or care aimed at her recovery.
A practice: answer verse 20 differently
Return to the combined list from your pairs. For each person, write one sentence describing a faithful response at that moment, drawing only on what 2 Samuel 13 and Deuteronomy 22 suggest. Be specific. What should David have done when he heard? What could Absalom have said instead of “hold now thy peace”?
Then move to your church. This week, find out and write down:
- What your church actually does when someone discloses abuse, and who is responsible for it.
- The name and contact information of at least one trained Christian counselor your leaders would refer to.
- What your state requires of adults who suspect a child is being abused, since Lyons stresses how many victims are children.
If an answer is missing, write down who could supply it and take that to a pastor or elder, as a church getting ready before the next person speaks.
Questions for discussion
Leaders, let silence stand when it comes. If someone discloses something personal, thank them, do not press for details, and follow up privately afterward. A disclosure is not the group’s business to discuss.
- Tamar speaks clearly in verses 12-13 and again in verse 16. Why might the narrator preserve her words so fully, and what changes when you notice them?
- Tamar calls being sent away a greater evil than the assault. What does she understand about harm after abuse that a church might overlook?
- Absalom shelters Tamar and also silences her. Which of those does your church find easier to practice, and why?
- David’s anger produced no justice. Where can strong feelings in a church stand in for action that never happens?
- Deuteronomy 22:27 assumes the woman cried and “there was none to save her.” Who in your congregation might be crying in ways that are not being heard?
- Lyons says belief comes first, and also that not everyone should handle sexual trauma. How do those convictions work together, and where could a church get one right while failing the other?
Carrying it out of the room
The chapter leaves Tamar with one word: desolate. Scripture does not hurry past it. The question it leaves a church is whether the next survivor will be heard when she speaks, hear what was done to her named for what it is, and never be told to keep quiet for the family’s sake.
If you are not safe right now, contact local emergency services. If someone in your home or relationship is hurting you, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. If you are thinking about ending your life, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. If a child is in danger, report it to the authorities.