As a priest of God (2 Sam. 8:18), Amnon was keenly aware of the consequences of his choice. The lovely, young Tamar was not available to Amnon! She was a virgin daughter of the king and David’s household should have been a place of safety and protection for her.

Amnon “became sick” as his every thought was con­sumed with how to have her. “I’m in love with Tamar,” he told his friend. Yet everything about his scheme to get her alone was anything but love. In his father’s footsteps, Amnon used position and power to fulfill his own desire, with no thought of the tragic consequences for Tamar.

Amnon did not suddenly fall to an unexpected tempta­tion. He clearly planned to have Tamar summoned to his side, setting the stage to have sex with her. Pleading with him to consider that his actions would ruin her life and her very existence, Tamar wisely perceived the long-term consequences of his act. Foolishly, Amnon’s only concern was to satisfy his immediate need.

Amnon was about to commit both incest and rape, an act mirrored in the church every time a pastor or church leader takes advantage of his role of authority and power by sexually and/or emotionally using any woman within the household of faith. He abuses his fiduciary responsibility and distorts his fatherly role so that his actions do in fact mimic Amnon’s obsession, rape and incest. Not only is a woman’s body violated, her trust is ravished, and her personhood is potentially fatally compromised by the rape of her very spirit. Like Tamar, her existence and future feels fatally wounded. Where could she ever take this shame?

Amnon’s first act was compounded by his resulting hatred for Tamar. He despised her and ordered her to get out, because what Amnon felt initially for Tamar was not about love, but selfishness; love does not demand its own way (1 Cor. 13:5); Amnon’s actions towards Tamar were not consensual but overpowering.

Tamar pleaded once again with him. He had already ruined her future; no man would ever take her as his wife; she would bear no children; she had no future, no hope. Because he violated her, Amnon was required by law to marry her and never divorce her as long as he lived (Deut. 22:29). She begged him not to cast her out, for this would be an even greater crime than the one already committed.

Yet Tamar’s cries fell on Amnon’s ears like the seed Jesus described falling onto the thorns (Luke 8:14). Amnon had his assistant cast Tamar out, barring the gate so that she would be unable to return.

How many times has the church reenacted this event when a woman already consumed by the shame of what has taken place with her pastor, has the courage to speak? When the act is no longer secret, too often the woman, violated and shamed, is cast out of the church with the doors slamming vehemently behind her.

To compound her shame even further, Tamar’s one hope, her brother Absalom, hides her and urges her into silence in the effort to protect the family name. “Don’t let it upset you so much. He is your half-brother, so don’t tell anyone about it” (2 Sam. 13:20). Aren’t these words echoed over and over again as the church silences her victims for the sake of “the good name of the church” and the protection of the pastor and his family?