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For the past few months, our church pastors have been preaching a series on the Gospel as seen in the life of David. We’re nearing the end of the series. The sermons have focused on some of the highlights of David’s life, including his anointing by the prophet Samuel, the confrontation with Goliath, the growing animosity of King Saul, the friendship with Saul’s son Jonathan, David becoming king, and Bathsheba. 

Last Sunday, the sermon centered on the end of the rebellion by David’s son Absalom (2 Samuel 18). The army gathered by Absalom has been defeated and scattered; Absalom himself, trying to escape, is caught by his trademark flowing hair in the branches of a tree. He’s dangling there when found by David’s general, who wastes no time in ignoring David’s earlier command to spare Absolom’s life and putting the young man to the sword. 

I’m familiar with the account. I’ve read it many times, my attention caught by the image of Absalom dangling from the tree limb. It is a truism that you can read a book of the Bible, a passage, a chapter, and even a verse scores of times and not see something that will suddenly catch your attention during an additional reading.

This is what I had overlooked: “The battle spread over the face of all the country, and the forest devoured more people that day than the sword” (2 Samuel 18:8, English Standard Version; italics added for emphasis). The penultimate example of this was Absalom himself, but I wondered what had happened to everyone else.

My mind strayed 2,800 years forward to the American Civil War, the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864 near Richmond, Virginia. No rain had fallen for weeks, and the dense brush of the woods was tinder-dry. When the Union army began firing its artillery, the resulting explosions ignited the woods. Soldiers on both sides found themselves not only fighting the enemy but also and even worse foe – a quickly spreading forest fire. (It’s said that the Union artillery killed more of its own men than anything the Confederates did.) 

For my novel Brookhaven, I read extensively about this battle. It’s the setting for the second of three encounters between Captain John Haygood and the young teenager Samuel McClure. Haygood has been wounded and can’t walk unassisted. Not recognizing Sam at first, at gunpoint he orders Sam to take him back to the Union line, dodging animals like snakes fleeing the fire, dying soldiers, and the sounds of single gunshots as the dying and wounded killed themselves rather than be knowingly consumed by the raging fire. It was a fictional scene based entirely on what really happened.

From all accounts, the Wilderness was a horrific battle. If there was a “winner,” it was General Lee’s Confederates. But Ulysses Grant, now in command of the Union army attacking Lee, had something Lee did not – an almost endless supply of recruits – and he was not shy about using them. The Battle of the Wilderness extended for weeks, and it grew to include the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse.

It’s a crucial scene in the novel. A year after Grierson’s Raid came to Sam’s hometown of Brookhaven, Mississippi, he again meets the man who had a huge impact on his mother’s life and, indirectly, his own. They will meet once more during the final Battle of Petersburg in 1865.

Absolom’s army was fleeing woods burning from artillery fire, but one can sense the desperation of men who will be judged traitors to King David. They would have met obstacles  like lack of paths, ditches and ravines, wild animals, sudden drop-offs, and, like their leader, unexpected low-hanging branches. 

Researching and writing that scene in Brookhaven gave me a better understanding of that Bible verse. Even when it’s me, I’m fascinated in the way a writer’s mind can work.

Related:

Bear in the Wilderness by Donald Waldemar.

The Battle of the Wilderness by Gordon Rhea.

Diary of a Confederate Tarheel Soldier by Louis Leon.

Hell Itself: The Battle of the Wilderness May 5-7, 1864 by Chris Mackowski.

Photograph by Filip Zrnzevic via Unsplash. Used with permission.