Tamar

AI summary: Tamar matters because the cross references present her as the innocent sufferer whose violation exposes the rot inside the king's household. Her humiliation, grief, and abandonment after Amnon's attack become the human center of the story that leads to Absalom's vengeance and the wider unraveling of David's family. The narrative gives her pain lasting weight rather than treating it as incidental to male rivalry. Taken together, the material presents this Tamar as a tragically important figure whose suffering reveals the destructive reach of royal sin.¹

A daughter of David (2 Sam. 13:1-32; 1 Chr. 3:9), whom Amnon shamefully outraged and afterwards “hated exceedingly,” thereby illustrating the law of human nature noticed even by the heathen, “Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris”, i.e., “It is the property of human nature to hate one whom you have injured.” ³