False Guilt

False Guilt

Tamar

Read: 2 Samuel 13:15-22

Her hands trembled as she dropped the phone on the counter. She hadn’t meant to do this over the phone. For several weeks, she had been thinking about telling her mother. Then tonight, her mom had called and started drilling her again with questions about why she didn’t visit. Somehow, it all came out in a rush. She hadn’t known what reaction to expect, but why was her mom’s anger directed at her instead of at her stepfather? Did her mother really believe that it was her fault? She hung her head and wondered, How could a ten-year-old girl have “asked for it”?

As soon as Amnon finished raping Tamar, his lust turned into hatred and disgust. He ordered his servants to throw her out of his house. Tamar tore her royal robe and put ashes on her head to show her extreme grief at what had been done to her. When her full brother Absalom learned what had happened, he told her to keep quiet about it. Although Absalom harbored a desire for revenge and had Amnon killed two years later, at the time, it probably seemed to Tamar that he treated the crime lightly. Her sorrow and confusion must have intensified when King David, their father, heard about Amnon’s offense and refused to take action.

In cases of rape or molestation, women are often hurt by others’ reactions in addition to the pain of the abuse. Some people refuse to acknowledge what has happened and accuse the woman of making the story up. Or they may treat her pain lightly or accuse her of exaggeration. In some cases, the victim even becomes the target of anger instead of the perpetrator, and she feels as if she were the one at fault. Even when others try to burden us with false guilt, God knows the truth. We can trust him to punish the guilty and prove our innocence, in his time.

He has seen my innocence.

2 Samuel 22:25