Tamar put ashes on her head and tore the ornate robe she was wearing. She put her hands on her head and went away, weeping aloud as she went...And Tamar lived in her brother Absalom’s house, a desolate woman. -2 Samuel 13:20, NIV
Every time she heard a whisper, something in her body felt the cold chills in a hot and sweaty summer morning. When she saw the working hands of attractive men, Tamar wanted to slap them, murder them...kill them. She couldn't hear color commentary from faraway lands, to whom somebody (maybe was her brother?) leaked all the (wrong!) information about the event. Her eyes, once the most piercing and burning in the kingdom, were doused by indifference. Her cheeks, the most pearly and blossom, were marked with spines and bruises. She couldn't even bear listen the royal list of suitors who canceled meeting her, one after the other. This was the beginning of Hell.
Tamar's beauty was lost in her tears. No one in the royal courts recognized her. Hurt and broken and helpless and horribly confused. She knew what society expected of her: a barren life, alone, without the company of her brothers. Only by this Absalom took his spear out and raced to his father's house. But Tamar walked through the halls of her new home, devouring hearts of palm as its only fruit. And there she was, sitting on the outer courts, crying, pleading, kneeling beside a delicate palm tree.
And even someone put beside her the fresh clothes of a queen...