But the ungrateful son was no sooner thus restored, than he began to form plots against his father. First he surrounded himself with a small body-guard, with chariots and horses, and fifty men to run before him. Then, to ingratiate himself with the people, he took his stand by “the way of the gate[299],” a duty which David appears to have neglected, and conversed with suitors coming up to the city for judgment, lamented the delays they would encounter in obtaining a hearing of their causes (2 Sam. xv. 3), and insinuated how different would be the aspect of affairs if _he_ was made judge in the land. Young, handsome beyond compare in Israel (2 Sam. xiv. 25), sprung from a royal house both on his father and his mother’s side (2 Sam. iii. 3), he made a deep impression on the people, and his insinuating manners and unusual condescension stole away their hearts (2 Sam. xv. 6). Since the dark sin of which he had been guilty, the hold of the king upon the nation appears to have been weakened, and he had become less fitted for the more personal and more energetic duties of his position. And now the powerful tribe of Judah, fretting, it has been suggested, under their absorption into one great kingdom, or looking for some greater degree of power under the supremacy of a prince like Absalom, showed signs of a want of confidence in their sovereign, and in the course of two years Absalom perceived that matters were ripe for a revolt[300]. Under pretence, therefore, of a vow which he had vowed to the Lord (2 Sam. xv. 7–9), he succeeded in obtaining from David permission to go to Hebron, the old capital of the tribe of Judah, and repaired thither accompanied by 200 men from Jerusalem, probably of the chief families, who were, however, entirely ignorant of his designs. To the same place also he summoned Ahithophel the Gilonite, the _familiar friend_ and _counsellor_ of his father, whose advice was deemed to have the value of a Divine oracle[301].