Original Meaning
Diplomacy with the Ammonites Breaks Down (10:1–5)
THE OPENING EXPRESSION (“in the course of time”) is an idiomatic transition marker for the book, which seems to mark thematic arrangement of materials rather than strict chronology (see 2:1; 8:1; 13:1; 15:1; 21:18).5 Since it is used both here and in 13:1, this expression complements the literary frame created by the narration of the Ammonite wars at the beginning and end of the narrative to tie off chapters 10–12 as a distinct literary unit.6
The Lord blessed David with good success against all Israel’s near neighbors (see “The LORD gave David victory wherever he went” in ch. 8). The children of Ammon inhabited the territory just across the Jordan River from Jerusalem (their capital Rabbah, mentioned in 12:26, is modern Amman, capital of Jordan). This account of continued armed conflict between the Israelites and Ammonites is interesting for the light it sheds on how David conducted warfare. But the narration of these events is no doubt included simply as background for the historian’s main point of interest, that is, the story of David and Bathsheba.7
David apparently does not expect war with the Ammonites. Most likely Nahash, the Ammonite king who has died here (10:1) and an old adversary of Saul (1 Sam. 11), was David’s ally during the difficult days of Saul’s reign. It had been in Nahash’s best interest to neutralize Saul by supporting a rival.8 David logically seeks to maintain friendly relations with the Ammonites after Nahash’s death. The specific terminology used to reveal David’s intentions (2 Sam. 10:2, “I will show kindness,” i.e., ḥesed) is reminiscent of David’s kindness to Mephibosheth in the immediately preceding chapter (9:1, 3, 7) and may mean David has an actual covenant or treaty with Nahash. Just as David was faithful to his covenant with Jonathan by showing kindness to Mephibosheth, now he seeks to be faithful in his relationship with Nahash. The delegation David sends is clearly not military in nature, but was sent “to express sympathy” (lenaḥamo; lit., “comfort, console”).
Details on why the shaved beard and cut garments represented the ultimate insult are not entirely clear (10:4).9 The beard was apparently the pride and joy of an Israelite male, which was cut only for periods of mourning or as an act of humiliation (see Isa. 15:2; Jer. 41:5; 48:37). Since garments in the biblical world often reflected status, power, or identity, the added insult of cutting their garments at their hips exposes David’s men to further humiliation.
It is important to note that verse 2 introduces an important theme word (or Leitwort) for our unit. The verb “send” (šlḥ) is used twenty-three times in these three chapters, an amount striking even for a word as common as this.10 Its use in this chapter prepares for what follows in chapters 11–12 by illustrating the premeditated and deliberate maneuvering for power. After David sends the delegation to comfort Hanun, the Ammonite king humiliates them and sends them back. David then sends messengers to meet the beleaguered men in order to minimize their humiliation. To prepare for war, the Ammonites send and hire mercenaries, whereupon David sends Joab and the Israelite army to prepare for war.
These two kings are busy “sending” to and against each other in the strategic play for power. Their “sending” is all about human power structures and about who has access to the most strength in order to dominate the other. David’s decisive victory over the Arameans brings the power motif into focus and characterizes him as the legitimate king of Israel, who has the God-given power and authority to “send.” David does indeed have royal power, and as we will see, this motif returns in frightening ways in chapters 11 and 12.11
Ammonite Wars (10:6–19)
Bridging Contexts
THIS UNIT’S LITERARY POWER and classic themes give it a universal appeal, which explains why it has inspired artists and authors for centuries. One of my personal favorites is the way in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used the story of David, Bathsheba, and Uriah as a clue for solving one of his wonderful Sherlock Holmes mysteries.69 However, as Christian readers we recognize this text has more to offer than remarkable literary qualities. With captivating poignancy, the text traces through the actions and responses of one of Israel’s great heroes of the faith three of the most salient components of that faith: sin, repentance, and forgiveness.
Sin and its consequences. This is one of Israel’s classic passages on the nature of sin and its consequences. It powerfully and subtly strips David of his luster and turns the focus on us as readers. It is “more than we want to know about David and more than we can bear to understand about ourselves.”70 The text painfully recounts David’s premeditated and methodical disobedience of three of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,” “You shall not commit adultery,” and “You shall not murder.”71
It may be useful when building a bridge from this text to current readers to associate it with other important Old Testament texts that deal with sin and then to connect these to pertinent New Testament texts. Thus, David’s actions in 11:2–5 illustrate and complement the origin and progression of temptation and sin (from perception and deception to covetousness, transgression, and death) as we learn them from Genesis 3:1–7 and James 1:14–15.72 This alone is enough to give this unit immediate pertinence for today’s readers. It teems with forceful lessons on sin and death; as we all know, our day needs to hear these lessons again and again. It would be tempting to stop here, because this is an easy way to apply this text to our times.
However, it would be a mistake to interpret the passage as a single-dimensional example of what happens when we break the commandments. There are at least two indications in the text that the unit has more in view. (1) This passage plays an important role in the overall structure of 1-2 Samuel. As we have seen, the books are answering questions urgent for that ancient day: What is the acceptable nature of the new Israelite monarchy? Who may serve suitably as Yahweh’s anointed one? The monarchy has been carefully circumscribed by Samuel as a vassalage of Yahweh; that is, the Israelite king is not really king but only a coregent for Yahweh.
Furthermore, Saul is presented as a negative example of who may serve in the new institution. In 2 Samuel, David has been established thus far as a positive example, as God-ordained and God-blessed in his role as king of Israel. This text takes us to the next level by demonstrating that no Israelite king, not even David, is permitted to behave like other ancient Near Eastern kings. If and when Israel’s kings do so behave, they will not be free of guilt and responsibility. A prophet of Yahweh will hold them accountable.
(2) In addition, the unit’s theme word (šlḥ) makes it clear that David has a problem with power. In fact, his abuse of power lies at the root of his sin. He has overstepped his boundaries as the vassal of Yahweh, chosen and anointed to represent Yahweh before Israel and the world. David exercises his royal power by sending and taking, and such abuse of power lies at the foundation of his sin. He sends instead of going in battle, and he abuses instead of serving.
In other words, this text is more than a moral lesson against breaking the Ten Commandments. It is that, but to stop there is to miss its grandest themes. It contributes to the books’ overall concerns by teaching that manipulative abuses of power will destroy us or those around us. Whenever we are seduced by the misappropriation of human power structures, we incur guilt and deserve to die (12:5). Regardless of whether our attitudes come to fruition in external transgressions against the Ten Commandments, as with David, we cannot escape the implications: The way we use power reflects either our faithfulness to God or our treason.
The account of David’s adultery with Bathsheba and his subsequent murder of Uriah confronts us as readers with our own manipulative and abusive ways. We may rigidly obey the Ten Commandments, but if we abuse the people around us, our hypocrisy will eventually be exposed, as Nathan’s parable exposed David’s hypocrisy. The way we impose our will on people around us, the way we “send” in order to “take,” certainly displeases the Lord, just as David’s displeased the Lord (11:27). Our actions are tantamount to despising “the word of the LORD” (12:9). Moreover, the book structure reveals that there are no exceptions. No matter how much power we wield, or how little, we are still responsible for the way we use it.
One further point might be necessary on the Old Testament’s understanding of sin. In certain respects, today’s readers find it easy to bridge the cultural contexts on this issue. Wherever we share similar ethical or legal assumptions with ancient Israel, we transfer the concepts into today’s context without difficulty, as for example happens when the Bible refers to disobedience, rebellion, or crime.
The Old Testament, however, has one important aspect relating to its understanding of sin that is foreign to today’s Western reader, one that may cause problems when interpreting texts like this one when it says that “the LORD has taken away your sin” (12:13). I refer here to the Pentateuch’s priestly understanding of ritual impurity from unatoned guilt as an aerial contaminant, mystically settling down over the community and attaching itself to the tabernacle (and later to the temple), resulting in pollution.73 The book of Leviticus, where this concept is established, does not always express its theology explicitly. But through prescriptions for ritual and sacrifice, it becomes clear that human sin resulted in impurity that polluted the sanctuary (Lev. 15:31; 20:3; cf. Num. 19:13, 20). Such pollution was perceived as a physical substance, an airborne contaminant magnetically attracted to and attached to the realm of the sacred, or in this case, the sanctuary.
This background is only vaguely apparent in our current text, though it has several important implications that affect our interpretation. (1) Personal sin in the Old Testament resulted in corporate guilt. When an individual Israelite sinned, the guilt contributed to the contamination of the sanctuary, for which the entire community was responsible. Because of our extreme individualism in North America, you and I may think we alone bear the guilt and punishment for our own sins. But we are wrong. The Old Testament has a healthy understanding of the suffering caused to the whole community when one of its members sinned.
(2) When left unatoned, sin was cumulative. The need for an annual decontamination of the sanctuary (the Day of Atonement, Lev. 16) illustrates that the guilt of sin accumulated whenever it was not expiated. Wherever it was ignored or suppressed, guilt eventually returned to the sinner (national or individual) later in life to exact punishment. Sin set a series of consequences in motion, and if unchecked it led inevitably to death.
(3) God provided an effective cure for sin. I will discuss this further below when we consider God’s forgiveness of David’s sin, but it is important to note at this point that the Old Testament devotes a great deal of attention to atonement (Ex. 25–31; 35–40; the book of Leviticus; Num. 1–10). Decontamination was possible, thanks to God’s sacrificial system. Many of the Old Testament’s images for the act of decontamination have to do with separating or removing the presence of the accumulated pollutant (Lev. 16:22). Sin may be cumulative and result in corporate guilt—but the good news is, there is a cure.
Repentance. The second component of Israel’s faith illustrated in this text is repentance. David’s words alone, “I have sinned against the LORD,” might be construed to denote mere confession.74 But in the context of the whole unit, David exemplifies the repentance Nathan required. As a result, Yahweh takes away David’s sin and suspends the death penalty (12:13).
Furthermore, David’s immediate and genuine penitence stands in stark contrast with that of Saul, who serves as the stubborn and recalcitrant counterpoint to repentance (1 Sam. 15:24, 30). The historian seems to be inviting us to make these contrasts ourselves. Saul’s confession (1 Sam. 15:24, 30) and David’s (2 Sam. 12:13) appear to be facing each other, stretching across the pages of the books of Samuel to present contrasting lessons on repentance. In David, we have an example of the correct attitude of repentance; in Saul, we have an example of equivocal and self-serving repentance (see comments on 12:13–25, above).
As we have seen many times, historical narratives such as these often illustrate implicitly the truths taught explicitly elsewhere in Scripture. The books of Samuel have been characterized from the beginning by prophetic interests, and primary among these is the definition and nature of repentance. The opening chapters of 1 Samuel condemned the Elide priesthood at Shiloh as perverse (1 Sam. 1–3). In addition, the nation Israel tried to manipulate God for personal gain and was generally plagued with sin and failure (chs. 4–6). At a critical juncture in Israel’s history, the prophet Samuel seized a moment of tragedy and suffering in order to call the nation to repentance. Using terminology characteristic of later prophetic preaching, Samuel called for a “return” (šwb) to Yahweh.75 To restore a right relationship with Yahweh implies at once both a turning away from the sins that have caused the separation and a returning unto God.
This return to God must be “wholehearted,” implying there can be no divided loyalties or opinions when one returns to Yahweh. In the specific case of Israel in 1 Samuel 7, repentance involved a repudiation of their allegiance to Canaanite gods and a renewed commitment to serve Yahweh exclusively. Samuel’s message synopsizes the Old Testament prophetic concern for repentance and stands like a watchtower over the rest of 1-2 Samuel. Though the specific terminology for repentance is not used in 2 Samuel 12, David’s “I have sinned” in response to Nathan’s “You are the man” is a powerful lesson in Samuel’s message of repentance. This text serves as a historical illustration for the sermon Samuel preached so many years before.
Forgiveness. The third prominent feature of Old Testament faith illustrated by our text is forgiveness. As we noted above on 12:14, Nathan’s words of forgiveness raise questions. Why did Yahweh suspend the just penalty for David’s sin? Why did Yahweh choose not to deal with David as prescribed by the Sinai covenant? If David were in charge of the universe, we know what he would have done! His verdict on the rich man in Nathan’s parable makes it clear (12:5): “The man who did this deserves to die!” Yet Nathan is quick to reassure: “You are not going to die.” Why not? We have seen that forgiveness in this text proves David’s repentance was genuine, and so it does. But more importantly, forgiveness in this text proves Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God.76 God loves and forgives because that is his nature.
Two dramatic statements are held closely together in our text (12:13): “I have sinned,” and “The LORD has taken away your sin.” They are separated only by the barest minimum narration (“Nathan replied”). Their very proximity begs us to understand this forgiving nature of God. Yet we, like the prophet Jonah, sometimes cannot quite get over the fact that God forgives, and sometimes we, again like Jonah, do not like it when he does! But this text is a powerful example of God’s forgiving nature. As such it takes its place among many in the Old Testament that emphasize the separation and removal of guilt from the confessing and penitent sinner.
In fact, the Old Testament is awash with metaphors for forgiveness, and this rich assortment often emphasizes the separation or removal of guilt. Sin may be healed like a disease, forgotten like a fleeting thought, stomped underfoot, thrown behind the back or thrown into the depths of the sea, cleansed, washed, wiped away, blotted out, or erased. Sin can be separated as far as east is from the west, borne away, or covered over. Several verbs are associated with forgiving, but the authors of the Old Testament found them inadequate to express fully the joy and celebration associated with forgiveness.77
There are few other obstacles to interpretation of this text because its themes are so powerfully and memorably narrated and, more importantly, because they are so universal. All of us know the truth of David’s failure because we have all lived it to one degree or another. All of us know David’s hypocrisy because we have all been hypocritical. Those of us who have faced our own sin and have cried in the night, “I have sinned,” need to hear afresh the profound truth contained in Nathan’s beautiful words, “The LORD has taken away your sin.”
Finally, we all need to understand again the message of 1-2 Samuel, that the anointed one who is worthy of God’s anointing must be willing to confess and repent of sin quickly in order to maintain the unique relationship he has with God. In this manner, the books of Samuel prepare us in a way we could never have anticipated for David’s greater Son, who needed no confession or repentance but who carried forgiveness in his blood (2 Cor. 5:21; Eph. 1:7; 1 John 3:5).
Contemporary Significance
Contemporary Significance
SATURATION WITH SEX. The contemporary application of this passage is multifaceted. On a basic level, it speaks to the need in our society to address sexual sin and the guilt and alienation caused by its infatuation with sexual pleasure. Over the decades, American culture has fallen prey to the lie that our highest human fulfillment is partially attainable through self-indulgent, unrestrained erotic expression rather than through faithful, enduring, monogamous love.
But this falsehood is as old as human civilization itself, and this text reveals the ancient lie for what it is. David surrenders impulsively to his most basic instincts, which lead him down a path that grows darker with each step. Rather than reaching his highest level of personal fulfillment, David discovers the darkness of his own soul. Likewise, instead of enabling us to reach our highest human fulfillment, reckless and illicit eroticism ensnares us in animalistic self-destruction. It is a hopeless cycle that ends only and always in death (Prov. 7:21–23, 27).
Yet our culture becomes more and more enamored with each passing decade. As the pornography industry grows with each new advance in technology and as the homosexual subculture expands, our culture falls deeper into the clutches of the ancient lie. All the while, the Bible’s emphasis on the surpassing value of a loving and lasting monogamous relationship is pushed farther back into the recesses of our national memory. The message of 2 Samuel 10–12 is as pertinent and necessary today as ever.
Abuse of power. However, the truths revealed in this text far transcend this basic understanding of human sexuality and fulfillment. On a larger scale, the passage addresses the tendency in all of us to abuse power in our interpersonal relationships. Whether considering one’s relationship with God or with mortals, our greedy attempts to control and manipulate lead only to pain and loss. One should always remember to read this unit in the larger literary context of the books of Samuel, which will add depth perception to an already vivid portrayal of lust, deception, betrayal, and murder. Such a holistic reading prevents an application limited to warnings about lust and sexual sin.
The full characterization of King David in the books of Samuel to this point makes his actions here more disturbing. He has towered over the literary landscape, looming ever larger in our sight and growing ever more central to our hopes for godly leadership in Israel. Because we gloried in his rise, we recoil at his fall. And we learn that no matter how close we live to God, no matter how much responsibility we are given in God’s kingdom, no matter how much power we hold, we too can fall. We must learn from David to guard our relationships carefully and to use power in ways that are never tyrannical and despotic.78
So these multifaceted applications make our text important when considering the use and abuse of power, sexual sins in our society, or the nature and consequence of sin in general. As we have seen in the Bridging Contexts section, this text has much to say also about repentance and forgiveness. Today’s audience is undoubtedly in need of the truth about sin, but we should also consider what this text teaches by way of illustration on the nature of repentance and forgiveness as well. In what follows, I offer a few reflections on the application of these themes.
Sin. To begin, I think it fair to say that the topic of sin has all but disappeared from the mainline denominations and even in many of our evangelical contexts. Well I remember a book I was required to read during my college days. Its title summarized the author’s thesis beautifully: Whatever Became of Sin?79 Its author, Karl Menninger, was a renowned psychiatrist who described the malaise of Western society and noted that one misses any mention of “sin.”
It was a word once in everyone’s mind, but now rarely if ever heard. Does that mean that no sin is involved in all our troubles … ? Is no one any longer guilty of anything? Guilty perhaps of a sin that could be repented and repaired or atoned for? Is it only that someone may be stupid or sick or criminal—or asleep? Wrong things are being done, we know…. But is no one responsible, no one answerable for these acts? Anxiety and depression we all acknowledge, and even vague guilt feelings; but has no one committed any sin? Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it?80
Exploring the causes of sin’s disappearance, Menninger concluded that many former sins have become crimes, so that responsibility for dealing with them has passed from church to state, from priest to policeman. Others have dissipated into illness, or at least into symptoms of illness, so that in their case punishment has been replaced with treatment.81 But these are changes of definition and societal mores, and sin, as Menninger argues, has not really gone away no matter how much we humans attempt to suppress it or redefine it. He proposes reviving public discourse on sin and enlisting the physician, the psychiatrist, the lawyer, the teacher—and above all, the clergy—to recognize the reality of sin in an effort to offer a needy world more than the hope of belated treatment, but of prevention.
Though we might bicker today over the details of Menninger’s argument, there is no question that he put his finger on a societal change that is profound and has continued during the last decades of the twentieth century. In fact, the collapse of modernism and the emergence of a more pluralistic society has left us in a situation far more severe than Menninger predicted. The church has not only lost its voice on issues related to sin and its consequences, but the church itself is guilty of raising a new voice in order to justify sin in different garb. Not only has sin taken up residence in our hearts; we have redefined it and given expression to it as a justifiable good!
For example, in 1988, a prominent bishop of a mainline denomination advocated reviving an old concept—betrothal.82 He argued that the church today should confirm those young people who feel led to determine their own standards of morality. Since they believe sex before marriage is acceptable as long as it is confined to a meaningful relationship, the church should support and bless betrothal as a legalized period before marriage when couples can live together. The bishop argued that such a relationship would carry the possibility of life-giving “holiness.” It would help to order and make holy the world of sexual testing that marks the lives of so many single young adults.
Of course for decades mainline denominations have struggled with questions of human sexuality, including the appropriate Christian response to homosexuals who feel called to ministry or who simply want to find acceptance in a local church. These are legitimate questions, which should always be approached in humility and respect. Unfortunately, some Christians would rather beat the questioners over the head with an oversized Bible than actually discuss the questions sanely and reasonably. Just as unfortunately, others in the church would address the questions without ever once raising the issue of biblical authority and the possibility of God’s preventing and life-changing grace. Once “sin” is no longer in the church’s theological vocabulary, there is no longer a need for words such as “forgiveness” or “grace.” Sin really has taken up residence in our hearts and found expression in less offensive ways.
I discovered through an article published in U.S. News & World Report in 1997 the logical extremes to which such reasoning may take us.83 The author spoke of a problem in today’s American universities, which he defined as “absolutophobia,” or an unwillingness to say anything is wrong. The point of the article is that our pop culture has pushed nonjudgmentalism to the limit so that now some students have difficulty condemning large moral horrors, such as human sacrifice, ethnic cleansing, and slavery. We have raised a generation of children so “dogmatically committed to moral relativism” that some of them are reluctant to say anything negative about mass slaughter! They argue that no one has the right to criticize the moral views of another group or culture.
The article told of classes studying human sacrifice in which many of the students had trouble expressing any moral reservations or objections to it. In another example, one professor asserted that in twenty years of teaching, he had never met a student who denied that the Holocaust happened. What he has encountered, however, may be worse. Approximately 10 to 20 percent of his students acknowledge the fact of the Holocaust but cannot bring themselves to say that killing millions of people is wrong! Students may deplore what the Nazis did, but their disapproval is expressed as a matter of taste or personal preference, not moral judgment. The professor quoted one student as saying, “Of course I dislike the Nazis, but who is to say they are morally wrong?”
The application of this passage’s assumptions about sin and its consequences are complicated by such fuzzy thinking in our day. One can no longer simply call a congregation to repentance. It will not do to merely exhort one’s hearers to lay aside all sinful impulses, sexual tendencies, and abuses of power. Instead, the ideological foundation needs to be carefully established and the moral compass explained. People now need to hear not only what sin is but why it is wrong. In this text we might emphasize the point that David understood his actions as sin “against the LORD” (12:13). In other words, David’s relationship with Yahweh provided a moral standard for his actions, a standard external to himself and superior in every respect. Yahweh’s character and self-revelation determined for David what was right and wrong for David’s behavior (see Contemporary Significance section for 1 Sam. 13:23–14:52). Such basic teaching, even remedial theology, is now necessary for the life of the church.
In exposing the falsehood of David’s sin, Nathan used logic and reason to persuade David of his guilt. I have also mentioned at various points the hypocrisy inherent in David’s actions. Hypocrisy is implied in his “killing time” at home while his army was away (11:1), but it becomes explicit in his sanctimonious concern for Uriah (11:7) and his indifference to Uriah’s death (11:25). Irony in biblical literature (as in history) is often used to expose the hypocrite. So here Uriah is ironically more devout and faithful than David (11:9, 11), putting David in a bad light. Further, David unwittingly condemns himself when he condemns the rich man in Nathan’s parable (12:5), providing Nathan with the ironic punch line for his sermon (12:7): “You are the man!” More generally, it is ironic that the king as Israel’s “covenant administrator” has become the covenant breaker.84
I was reminded of the role of irony and hypocrisy recently when I read what one leading historian of American history had to say about the combatants of World War II in the European Theater of Operations: “The world’s greatest democracy fought the world’s greatest racist with a segregated army.”85 He was referring, of course, to the incongruity of the U.S. Army’s struggle against the racist forces of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, all while segregating African American soldiers into isolated units.
He relates one ironic incident from the home front during the war that highlights the hypocrisy of the situation. In April, 1944, Corporal Rupert Timmingham, an African American soldier, was traveling with eight other African American soldiers through the South on their way to a new assignment. Timmingham reported having difficulty finding places to eat or buying a cup of coffee. Finally, the lunchroom manager at a Texas railroad depot said the GIs could go around back to the kitchen for a sandwich and coffee. As they were making their way around to the back of the depot, approximately two dozen German prisoners of war from a nearby prisoner camp, along with two American guards came to the station. Timmingham later wrote in Yank magazine, “They entered the lunchroom, sat at the tables, had their meals served, talked, smoked, in fact had quite a swell time. I stood on the outside looking on, and I could not help but ask myself why are they treated better than we are?”86
The magazine that published Timmingham’s letter received thousands of letters outraged by his treatment, mostly from GIs. The hypocrisy of the army’s segregation policy was further exposed by the efficiency of the African American soldiers during the war. Within a decade of the war’s end, the army had changed from one of the most segregated organizations in the United States to the most successfully integrated.87 Unfortunately, it would take our nation as a whole much longer to see the hypocrisy of it all.
The point of Nathan’s parable (12:1–6) is something akin to Jesus’ warning not to look for a speck in our neighbor’s eye at the same time we miss the log in our own (Matt. 7:3–5). David was quick to see the cruelty and inconsiderate nature of the rich man’s actions but missed the fact that his own cruel and inconsiderate actions came to fruition in adultery and murder. It is certainly appropriate when applying this text to warn our society against the dangers of unrestrained sexual promiscuity. But today’s Christian church also needs to hear this passage’s teaching on the use and abuse of power.
My own experience has taught me that many believers today fall into one of two extreme categories. They are either uncomfortable with authority and hesitant to take the reins of power because they are unsure of how to deal with it, or they are greedy when it comes to power. Believers I have met in the first category tend to shrink from responsibility in the church, while those of the latter category tend to squash those who disagree with them as “enemies” in the church’s political power structure. These believers presumably consider David’s adultery and murder deplorable, but they miss the significance of his abuse of power as a negative object lesson for their own lives. We need to be reminded of the dictum of Immanuel Kant: “Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.”88
Repentance. On the issue of repentance, we have seen how this text illustrates a larger theme in the books of Samuel (cf., e.g., comments on 1 Sam. 7:2–4). It is entirely appropriate to follow the long-standing tradition of reading Psalm 51 as an early Israelite commentary on David’s words, “I have sinned against the LORD”:
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge. (Ps. 51:3–4)
Our society’s loss of any sensibilities about the nature of sin has equally impacted our understanding of biblical repentance. How can we repent adequately if we fail to understand the depths to which sin has affected our lives? A full appreciation of the self-destructive nature of our own actions should lead us emphatically, even drive us relentlessly, to genuine repentance:
Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Surely you desire truth in the inner parts;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. (Ps. 51:5–6)
In the following quote from perhaps the greatest theologian of the early church, Augustine of Hippo (354–430) describes the self-realization that occurs when he was being convicted and convinced of his sin:
But you, Lord … were turning me around so that I could see myself; you took me from behind my own back, which was where I had put myself during the time when I did not want to be observed by myself, and you set me in front of my own face so that I could see how foul a sight I was…. If I tried to look away from myself … you were setting me in front of myself, forcing me to look into my own face, so that I might see myself and hate it. I did know it, but I pretended that I did not. I had been pushing the whole idea away from me and forgetting it.89
Forgiveness. Finally this text teaches that such genuine penitence results in forgiveness. But this may be the hardest part for today’s readers to accept. Indeed, retribution and vengeance seem to rule in our day. The Sunflower, a book written by Simon Wiesenthal, makes the point forcefully.90 By 1944, eighty-nine of his Jewish relatives had been killed by the Nazis. He had witnessed the execution of his grandmother in her home and his mother being forced into a freight car crammed with elderly Jewish women.
One day, while himself a prisoner of the Nazis, he was taken by a nurse into the room where a young soldier lay dying. The young man, whose name was Karl, summarized for Wiesenthal his Catholic upbringing and his childhood faith, which he had abandoned in the Hitler Youth Corps. Karl had volunteered for the SS and became an officer. But now, having been badly wounded on the Russian front, he had summoned a Jew to hear his deathbed confession. “I must tell you of this horrible deed—tell you because you are a Jew.” As the soldier began to describe horrible atrocities against the Jews in the Ukraine, Wiesenthal pulled away three times in order to leave the room. But the soldier grabbed his arm and desperately pleaded for him to stay and hear him out. Karl had participated in the ruthless execution of three hundred Jewish men, women, and children, in the town of Dnyepropetrovsk. The memory haunted him. He complained of suffering from miserable grief and despair, and he longed for forgiveness.
In the last hours of my life you are with me. I do not know who you are, I know only that you are a Jew and that is enough. I know that what I have told you is terrible. In the long nights while I have been waiting for death, time and time again I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him. Only I didn’t know whether there were any Jews left…. I know what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace.91
After a long period of reflection, Wiesenthal eventually decided what to do. Without a word, he turned from the room and walked away.
Decades later, still haunted by his decision that fateful day, Wiesenthal wrote down the story and mailed it to thirty-two of the brightest ethical minds he knew and asked this question: What would you have done in my place? Only six said that Wiesenthal erred in not forgiving the dying SS officer. Several concluded the enormity of Nazi atrocities precluded the possibility of forgiveness. Most of the non-Jewish respondents were reticent to speak to the heirs of the Holocaust about forgiveness at all, and justifiably so. But as Philip Yancey explains in his summary of this ethical dilemma, “Forgiveness may be unfair—it is, by definition—but at least it provides a way to halt the juggernaut of retribution.”92 His main point is that unforgiveness is an unending cycle that creates a monstrous past, awaking in unexpected places and times from hibernation to devour the present. The only thing that breaks the cycle is the blessed word from the cross (Luke 23:34): “Father, forgive them….”
Though human forgiveness is always wise, it is often fickle and at times nearly impossible to grant. The immense burden placed on the shoulders of the young Simon Wiesenthal that day in 1944 was too much for any mere human to bear. Who among us could claim they would have done differently? But that is just the beauty of the biblical message, especially as illustrated by David’s forgiveness in 2 Samuel 12:13: Forgiveness is not based on human sentiment, it is not placed on the shoulders of mortals.
It was unfair of the SS officer to place such a burden on Wiesenthal, who could not bear to represent his race at that terrible moment in history. But note the words of Nathan, “The LORD has taken away your sin.” Our hope is not in the hands of fragile humans, who are incapable of fathoming the depths of our sin and granting us restoration and peace. But David’s forgiveness was authentic because it was granted by Yahweh.
That experience of forgiveness, shared by all who name the name, is graphically captured in the immortal words of John Bunyan:
Now I saw in my dream that the highway which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called Salvation, Isa. 26:1. Up this road therefore did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came to a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulcher. So I saw in my dream that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulcher, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.93
Original Meaning
Diplomacy with the Ammonites Breaks Down (10:1–5)
THE OPENING EXPRESSION (“in the course of time”) is an idiomatic transition marker for the book, which seems to mark thematic arrangement of materials rather than strict chronology (see 2:1; 8:1; 13:1; 15:1; 21:18).5 Since it is used both here and in 13:1, this expression complements the literary frame created by the narration of the Ammonite wars at the beginning and end of the narrative to tie off chapters 10–12 as a distinct literary unit.6
The Lord blessed David with good success against all Israel’s near neighbors (see “The LORD gave David victory wherever he went” in ch. 8). The children of Ammon inhabited the territory just across the Jordan River from Jerusalem (their capital Rabbah, mentioned in 12:26, is modern Amman, capital of Jordan). This account of continued armed conflict between the Israelites and Ammonites is interesting for the light it sheds on how David conducted warfare. But the narration of these events is no doubt included simply as background for the historian’s main point of interest, that is, the story of David and Bathsheba.7
David apparently does not expect war with the Ammonites. Most likely Nahash, the Ammonite king who has died here (10:1) and an old adversary of Saul (1 Sam. 11), was David’s ally during the difficult days of Saul’s reign. It had been in Nahash’s best interest to neutralize Saul by supporting a rival.8 David logically seeks to maintain friendly relations with the Ammonites after Nahash’s death. The specific terminology used to reveal David’s intentions (2 Sam. 10:2, “I will show kindness,” i.e., ḥesed) is reminiscent of David’s kindness to Mephibosheth in the immediately preceding chapter (9:1, 3, 7) and may mean David has an actual covenant or treaty with Nahash. Just as David was faithful to his covenant with Jonathan by showing kindness to Mephibosheth, now he seeks to be faithful in his relationship with Nahash. The delegation David sends is clearly not military in nature, but was sent “to express sympathy” (lenaḥamo; lit., “comfort, console”).
Details on why the shaved beard and cut garments represented the ultimate insult are not entirely clear (10:4).9 The beard was apparently the pride and joy of an Israelite male, which was cut only for periods of mourning or as an act of humiliation (see Isa. 15:2; Jer. 41:5; 48:37). Since garments in the biblical world often reflected status, power, or identity, the added insult of cutting their garments at their hips exposes David’s men to further humiliation.
It is important to note that verse 2 introduces an important theme word (or Leitwort) for our unit. The verb “send” (šlḥ) is used twenty-three times in these three chapters, an amount striking even for a word as common as this.10 Its use in this chapter prepares for what follows in chapters 11–12 by illustrating the premeditated and deliberate maneuvering for power. After David sends the delegation to comfort Hanun, the Ammonite king humiliates them and sends them back. David then sends messengers to meet the beleaguered men in order to minimize their humiliation. To prepare for war, the Ammonites send and hire mercenaries, whereupon David sends Joab and the Israelite army to prepare for war.
These two kings are busy “sending” to and against each other in the strategic play for power. Their “sending” is all about human power structures and about who has access to the most strength in order to dominate the other. David’s decisive victory over the Arameans brings the power motif into focus and characterizes him as the legitimate king of Israel, who has the God-given power and authority to “send.” David does indeed have royal power, and as we will see, this motif returns in frightening ways in chapters 11 and 12.11
Ammonite Wars (10:6–19)
Bridging Contexts
THIS UNIT’S LITERARY POWER and classic themes give it a universal appeal, which explains why it has inspired artists and authors for centuries. One of my personal favorites is the way in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used the story of David, Bathsheba, and Uriah as a clue for solving one of his wonderful Sherlock Holmes mysteries.69 However, as Christian readers we recognize this text has more to offer than remarkable literary qualities. With captivating poignancy, the text traces through the actions and responses of one of Israel’s great heroes of the faith three of the most salient components of that faith: sin, repentance, and forgiveness.
Sin and its consequences. This is one of Israel’s classic passages on the nature of sin and its consequences. It powerfully and subtly strips David of his luster and turns the focus on us as readers. It is “more than we want to know about David and more than we can bear to understand about ourselves.”70 The text painfully recounts David’s premeditated and methodical disobedience of three of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,” “You shall not commit adultery,” and “You shall not murder.”71
It may be useful when building a bridge from this text to current readers to associate it with other important Old Testament texts that deal with sin and then to connect these to pertinent New Testament texts. Thus, David’s actions in 11:2–5 illustrate and complement the origin and progression of temptation and sin (from perception and deception to covetousness, transgression, and death) as we learn them from Genesis 3:1–7 and James 1:14–15.72 This alone is enough to give this unit immediate pertinence for today’s readers. It teems with forceful lessons on sin and death; as we all know, our day needs to hear these lessons again and again. It would be tempting to stop here, because this is an easy way to apply this text to our times.
However, it would be a mistake to interpret the passage as a single-dimensional example of what happens when we break the commandments. There are at least two indications in the text that the unit has more in view. (1) This passage plays an important role in the overall structure of 1-2 Samuel. As we have seen, the books are answering questions urgent for that ancient day: What is the acceptable nature of the new Israelite monarchy? Who may serve suitably as Yahweh’s anointed one? The monarchy has been carefully circumscribed by Samuel as a vassalage of Yahweh; that is, the Israelite king is not really king but only a coregent for Yahweh.
Furthermore, Saul is presented as a negative example of who may serve in the new institution. In 2 Samuel, David has been established thus far as a positive example, as God-ordained and God-blessed in his role as king of Israel. This text takes us to the next level by demonstrating that no Israelite king, not even David, is permitted to behave like other ancient Near Eastern kings. If and when Israel’s kings do so behave, they will not be free of guilt and responsibility. A prophet of Yahweh will hold them accountable.
(2) In addition, the unit’s theme word (šlḥ) makes it clear that David has a problem with power. In fact, his abuse of power lies at the root of his sin. He has overstepped his boundaries as the vassal of Yahweh, chosen and anointed to represent Yahweh before Israel and the world. David exercises his royal power by sending and taking, and such abuse of power lies at the foundation of his sin. He sends instead of going in battle, and he abuses instead of serving.
In other words, this text is more than a moral lesson against breaking the Ten Commandments. It is that, but to stop there is to miss its grandest themes. It contributes to the books’ overall concerns by teaching that manipulative abuses of power will destroy us or those around us. Whenever we are seduced by the misappropriation of human power structures, we incur guilt and deserve to die (12:5). Regardless of whether our attitudes come to fruition in external transgressions against the Ten Commandments, as with David, we cannot escape the implications: The way we use power reflects either our faithfulness to God or our treason.
The account of David’s adultery with Bathsheba and his subsequent murder of Uriah confronts us as readers with our own manipulative and abusive ways. We may rigidly obey the Ten Commandments, but if we abuse the people around us, our hypocrisy will eventually be exposed, as Nathan’s parable exposed David’s hypocrisy. The way we impose our will on people around us, the way we “send” in order to “take,” certainly displeases the Lord, just as David’s displeased the Lord (11:27). Our actions are tantamount to despising “the word of the LORD” (12:9). Moreover, the book structure reveals that there are no exceptions. No matter how much power we wield, or how little, we are still responsible for the way we use it.
One further point might be necessary on the Old Testament’s understanding of sin. In certain respects, today’s readers find it easy to bridge the cultural contexts on this issue. Wherever we share similar ethical or legal assumptions with ancient Israel, we transfer the concepts into today’s context without difficulty, as for example happens when the Bible refers to disobedience, rebellion, or crime.
The Old Testament, however, has one important aspect relating to its understanding of sin that is foreign to today’s Western reader, one that may cause problems when interpreting texts like this one when it says that “the LORD has taken away your sin” (12:13). I refer here to the Pentateuch’s priestly understanding of ritual impurity from unatoned guilt as an aerial contaminant, mystically settling down over the community and attaching itself to the tabernacle (and later to the temple), resulting in pollution.73 The book of Leviticus, where this concept is established, does not always express its theology explicitly. But through prescriptions for ritual and sacrifice, it becomes clear that human sin resulted in impurity that polluted the sanctuary (Lev. 15:31; 20:3; cf. Num. 19:13, 20). Such pollution was perceived as a physical substance, an airborne contaminant magnetically attracted to and attached to the realm of the sacred, or in this case, the sanctuary.
This background is only vaguely apparent in our current text, though it has several important implications that affect our interpretation. (1) Personal sin in the Old Testament resulted in corporate guilt. When an individual Israelite sinned, the guilt contributed to the contamination of the sanctuary, for which the entire community was responsible. Because of our extreme individualism in North America, you and I may think we alone bear the guilt and punishment for our own sins. But we are wrong. The Old Testament has a healthy understanding of the suffering caused to the whole community when one of its members sinned.
(2) When left unatoned, sin was cumulative. The need for an annual decontamination of the sanctuary (the Day of Atonement, Lev. 16) illustrates that the guilt of sin accumulated whenever it was not expiated. Wherever it was ignored or suppressed, guilt eventually returned to the sinner (national or individual) later in life to exact punishment. Sin set a series of consequences in motion, and if unchecked it led inevitably to death.
(3) God provided an effective cure for sin. I will discuss this further below when we consider God’s forgiveness of David’s sin, but it is important to note at this point that the Old Testament devotes a great deal of attention to atonement (Ex. 25–31; 35–40; the book of Leviticus; Num. 1–10). Decontamination was possible, thanks to God’s sacrificial system. Many of the Old Testament’s images for the act of decontamination have to do with separating or removing the presence of the accumulated pollutant (Lev. 16:22). Sin may be cumulative and result in corporate guilt—but the good news is, there is a cure.
Repentance. The second component of Israel’s faith illustrated in this text is repentance. David’s words alone, “I have sinned against the LORD,” might be construed to denote mere confession.74 But in the context of the whole unit, David exemplifies the repentance Nathan required. As a result, Yahweh takes away David’s sin and suspends the death penalty (12:13).
Furthermore, David’s immediate and genuine penitence stands in stark contrast with that of Saul, who serves as the stubborn and recalcitrant counterpoint to repentance (1 Sam. 15:24, 30). The historian seems to be inviting us to make these contrasts ourselves. Saul’s confession (1 Sam. 15:24, 30) and David’s (2 Sam. 12:13) appear to be facing each other, stretching across the pages of the books of Samuel to present contrasting lessons on repentance. In David, we have an example of the correct attitude of repentance; in Saul, we have an example of equivocal and self-serving repentance (see comments on 12:13–25, above).
As we have seen many times, historical narratives such as these often illustrate implicitly the truths taught explicitly elsewhere in Scripture. The books of Samuel have been characterized from the beginning by prophetic interests, and primary among these is the definition and nature of repentance. The opening chapters of 1 Samuel condemned the Elide priesthood at Shiloh as perverse (1 Sam. 1–3). In addition, the nation Israel tried to manipulate God for personal gain and was generally plagued with sin and failure (chs. 4–6). At a critical juncture in Israel’s history, the prophet Samuel seized a moment of tragedy and suffering in order to call the nation to repentance. Using terminology characteristic of later prophetic preaching, Samuel called for a “return” (šwb) to Yahweh.75 To restore a right relationship with Yahweh implies at once both a turning away from the sins that have caused the separation and a returning unto God.
This return to God must be “wholehearted,” implying there can be no divided loyalties or opinions when one returns to Yahweh. In the specific case of Israel in 1 Samuel 7, repentance involved a repudiation of their allegiance to Canaanite gods and a renewed commitment to serve Yahweh exclusively. Samuel’s message synopsizes the Old Testament prophetic concern for repentance and stands like a watchtower over the rest of 1-2 Samuel. Though the specific terminology for repentance is not used in 2 Samuel 12, David’s “I have sinned” in response to Nathan’s “You are the man” is a powerful lesson in Samuel’s message of repentance. This text serves as a historical illustration for the sermon Samuel preached so many years before.
Forgiveness. The third prominent feature of Old Testament faith illustrated by our text is forgiveness. As we noted above on 12:14, Nathan’s words of forgiveness raise questions. Why did Yahweh suspend the just penalty for David’s sin? Why did Yahweh choose not to deal with David as prescribed by the Sinai covenant? If David were in charge of the universe, we know what he would have done! His verdict on the rich man in Nathan’s parable makes it clear (12:5): “The man who did this deserves to die!” Yet Nathan is quick to reassure: “You are not going to die.” Why not? We have seen that forgiveness in this text proves David’s repentance was genuine, and so it does. But more importantly, forgiveness in this text proves Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God.76 God loves and forgives because that is his nature.
Two dramatic statements are held closely together in our text (12:13): “I have sinned,” and “The LORD has taken away your sin.” They are separated only by the barest minimum narration (“Nathan replied”). Their very proximity begs us to understand this forgiving nature of God. Yet we, like the prophet Jonah, sometimes cannot quite get over the fact that God forgives, and sometimes we, again like Jonah, do not like it when he does! But this text is a powerful example of God’s forgiving nature. As such it takes its place among many in the Old Testament that emphasize the separation and removal of guilt from the confessing and penitent sinner.
In fact, the Old Testament is awash with metaphors for forgiveness, and this rich assortment often emphasizes the separation or removal of guilt. Sin may be healed like a disease, forgotten like a fleeting thought, stomped underfoot, thrown behind the back or thrown into the depths of the sea, cleansed, washed, wiped away, blotted out, or erased. Sin can be separated as far as east is from the west, borne away, or covered over. Several verbs are associated with forgiving, but the authors of the Old Testament found them inadequate to express fully the joy and celebration associated with forgiveness.77
There are few other obstacles to interpretation of this text because its themes are so powerfully and memorably narrated and, more importantly, because they are so universal. All of us know the truth of David’s failure because we have all lived it to one degree or another. All of us know David’s hypocrisy because we have all been hypocritical. Those of us who have faced our own sin and have cried in the night, “I have sinned,” need to hear afresh the profound truth contained in Nathan’s beautiful words, “The LORD has taken away your sin.”
Finally, we all need to understand again the message of 1-2 Samuel, that the anointed one who is worthy of God’s anointing must be willing to confess and repent of sin quickly in order to maintain the unique relationship he has with God. In this manner, the books of Samuel prepare us in a way we could never have anticipated for David’s greater Son, who needed no confession or repentance but who carried forgiveness in his blood (2 Cor. 5:21; Eph. 1:7; 1 John 3:5).
Contemporary Significance
Contemporary Significance
SATURATION WITH SEX. The contemporary application of this passage is multifaceted. On a basic level, it speaks to the need in our society to address sexual sin and the guilt and alienation caused by its infatuation with sexual pleasure. Over the decades, American culture has fallen prey to the lie that our highest human fulfillment is partially attainable through self-indulgent, unrestrained erotic expression rather than through faithful, enduring, monogamous love.
But this falsehood is as old as human civilization itself, and this text reveals the ancient lie for what it is. David surrenders impulsively to his most basic instincts, which lead him down a path that grows darker with each step. Rather than reaching his highest level of personal fulfillment, David discovers the darkness of his own soul. Likewise, instead of enabling us to reach our highest human fulfillment, reckless and illicit eroticism ensnares us in animalistic self-destruction. It is a hopeless cycle that ends only and always in death (Prov. 7:21–23, 27).
Yet our culture becomes more and more enamored with each passing decade. As the pornography industry grows with each new advance in technology and as the homosexual subculture expands, our culture falls deeper into the clutches of the ancient lie. All the while, the Bible’s emphasis on the surpassing value of a loving and lasting monogamous relationship is pushed farther back into the recesses of our national memory. The message of 2 Samuel 10–12 is as pertinent and necessary today as ever.
Abuse of power. However, the truths revealed in this text far transcend this basic understanding of human sexuality and fulfillment. On a larger scale, the passage addresses the tendency in all of us to abuse power in our interpersonal relationships. Whether considering one’s relationship with God or with mortals, our greedy attempts to control and manipulate lead only to pain and loss. One should always remember to read this unit in the larger literary context of the books of Samuel, which will add depth perception to an already vivid portrayal of lust, deception, betrayal, and murder. Such a holistic reading prevents an application limited to warnings about lust and sexual sin.
The full characterization of King David in the books of Samuel to this point makes his actions here more disturbing. He has towered over the literary landscape, looming ever larger in our sight and growing ever more central to our hopes for godly leadership in Israel. Because we gloried in his rise, we recoil at his fall. And we learn that no matter how close we live to God, no matter how much responsibility we are given in God’s kingdom, no matter how much power we hold, we too can fall. We must learn from David to guard our relationships carefully and to use power in ways that are never tyrannical and despotic.78
So these multifaceted applications make our text important when considering the use and abuse of power, sexual sins in our society, or the nature and consequence of sin in general. As we have seen in the Bridging Contexts section, this text has much to say also about repentance and forgiveness. Today’s audience is undoubtedly in need of the truth about sin, but we should also consider what this text teaches by way of illustration on the nature of repentance and forgiveness as well. In what follows, I offer a few reflections on the application of these themes.
Sin. To begin, I think it fair to say that the topic of sin has all but disappeared from the mainline denominations and even in many of our evangelical contexts. Well I remember a book I was required to read during my college days. Its title summarized the author’s thesis beautifully: Whatever Became of Sin?79 Its author, Karl Menninger, was a renowned psychiatrist who described the malaise of Western society and noted that one misses any mention of “sin.”
It was a word once in everyone’s mind, but now rarely if ever heard. Does that mean that no sin is involved in all our troubles … ? Is no one any longer guilty of anything? Guilty perhaps of a sin that could be repented and repaired or atoned for? Is it only that someone may be stupid or sick or criminal—or asleep? Wrong things are being done, we know…. But is no one responsible, no one answerable for these acts? Anxiety and depression we all acknowledge, and even vague guilt feelings; but has no one committed any sin? Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it?80
Exploring the causes of sin’s disappearance, Menninger concluded that many former sins have become crimes, so that responsibility for dealing with them has passed from church to state, from priest to policeman. Others have dissipated into illness, or at least into symptoms of illness, so that in their case punishment has been replaced with treatment.81 But these are changes of definition and societal mores, and sin, as Menninger argues, has not really gone away no matter how much we humans attempt to suppress it or redefine it. He proposes reviving public discourse on sin and enlisting the physician, the psychiatrist, the lawyer, the teacher—and above all, the clergy—to recognize the reality of sin in an effort to offer a needy world more than the hope of belated treatment, but of prevention.
Though we might bicker today over the details of Menninger’s argument, there is no question that he put his finger on a societal change that is profound and has continued during the last decades of the twentieth century. In fact, the collapse of modernism and the emergence of a more pluralistic society has left us in a situation far more severe than Menninger predicted. The church has not only lost its voice on issues related to sin and its consequences, but the church itself is guilty of raising a new voice in order to justify sin in different garb. Not only has sin taken up residence in our hearts; we have redefined it and given expression to it as a justifiable good!
For example, in 1988, a prominent bishop of a mainline denomination advocated reviving an old concept—betrothal.82 He argued that the church today should confirm those young people who feel led to determine their own standards of morality. Since they believe sex before marriage is acceptable as long as it is confined to a meaningful relationship, the church should support and bless betrothal as a legalized period before marriage when couples can live together. The bishop argued that such a relationship would carry the possibility of life-giving “holiness.” It would help to order and make holy the world of sexual testing that marks the lives of so many single young adults.
Of course for decades mainline denominations have struggled with questions of human sexuality, including the appropriate Christian response to homosexuals who feel called to ministry or who simply want to find acceptance in a local church. These are legitimate questions, which should always be approached in humility and respect. Unfortunately, some Christians would rather beat the questioners over the head with an oversized Bible than actually discuss the questions sanely and reasonably. Just as unfortunately, others in the church would address the questions without ever once raising the issue of biblical authority and the possibility of God’s preventing and life-changing grace. Once “sin” is no longer in the church’s theological vocabulary, there is no longer a need for words such as “forgiveness” or “grace.” Sin really has taken up residence in our hearts and found expression in less offensive ways.
I discovered through an article published in U.S. News & World Report in 1997 the logical extremes to which such reasoning may take us.83 The author spoke of a problem in today’s American universities, which he defined as “absolutophobia,” or an unwillingness to say anything is wrong. The point of the article is that our pop culture has pushed nonjudgmentalism to the limit so that now some students have difficulty condemning large moral horrors, such as human sacrifice, ethnic cleansing, and slavery. We have raised a generation of children so “dogmatically committed to moral relativism” that some of them are reluctant to say anything negative about mass slaughter! They argue that no one has the right to criticize the moral views of another group or culture.
The article told of classes studying human sacrifice in which many of the students had trouble expressing any moral reservations or objections to it. In another example, one professor asserted that in twenty years of teaching, he had never met a student who denied that the Holocaust happened. What he has encountered, however, may be worse. Approximately 10 to 20 percent of his students acknowledge the fact of the Holocaust but cannot bring themselves to say that killing millions of people is wrong! Students may deplore what the Nazis did, but their disapproval is expressed as a matter of taste or personal preference, not moral judgment. The professor quoted one student as saying, “Of course I dislike the Nazis, but who is to say they are morally wrong?”
The application of this passage’s assumptions about sin and its consequences are complicated by such fuzzy thinking in our day. One can no longer simply call a congregation to repentance. It will not do to merely exhort one’s hearers to lay aside all sinful impulses, sexual tendencies, and abuses of power. Instead, the ideological foundation needs to be carefully established and the moral compass explained. People now need to hear not only what sin is but why it is wrong. In this text we might emphasize the point that David understood his actions as sin “against the LORD” (12:13). In other words, David’s relationship with Yahweh provided a moral standard for his actions, a standard external to himself and superior in every respect. Yahweh’s character and self-revelation determined for David what was right and wrong for David’s behavior (see Contemporary Significance section for 1 Sam. 13:23–14:52). Such basic teaching, even remedial theology, is now necessary for the life of the church.
In exposing the falsehood of David’s sin, Nathan used logic and reason to persuade David of his guilt. I have also mentioned at various points the hypocrisy inherent in David’s actions. Hypocrisy is implied in his “killing time” at home while his army was away (11:1), but it becomes explicit in his sanctimonious concern for Uriah (11:7) and his indifference to Uriah’s death (11:25). Irony in biblical literature (as in history) is often used to expose the hypocrite. So here Uriah is ironically more devout and faithful than David (11:9, 11), putting David in a bad light. Further, David unwittingly condemns himself when he condemns the rich man in Nathan’s parable (12:5), providing Nathan with the ironic punch line for his sermon (12:7): “You are the man!” More generally, it is ironic that the king as Israel’s “covenant administrator” has become the covenant breaker.84
I was reminded of the role of irony and hypocrisy recently when I read what one leading historian of American history had to say about the combatants of World War II in the European Theater of Operations: “The world’s greatest democracy fought the world’s greatest racist with a segregated army.”85 He was referring, of course, to the incongruity of the U.S. Army’s struggle against the racist forces of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, all while segregating African American soldiers into isolated units.
He relates one ironic incident from the home front during the war that highlights the hypocrisy of the situation. In April, 1944, Corporal Rupert Timmingham, an African American soldier, was traveling with eight other African American soldiers through the South on their way to a new assignment. Timmingham reported having difficulty finding places to eat or buying a cup of coffee. Finally, the lunchroom manager at a Texas railroad depot said the GIs could go around back to the kitchen for a sandwich and coffee. As they were making their way around to the back of the depot, approximately two dozen German prisoners of war from a nearby prisoner camp, along with two American guards came to the station. Timmingham later wrote in Yank magazine, “They entered the lunchroom, sat at the tables, had their meals served, talked, smoked, in fact had quite a swell time. I stood on the outside looking on, and I could not help but ask myself why are they treated better than we are?”86
The magazine that published Timmingham’s letter received thousands of letters outraged by his treatment, mostly from GIs. The hypocrisy of the army’s segregation policy was further exposed by the efficiency of the African American soldiers during the war. Within a decade of the war’s end, the army had changed from one of the most segregated organizations in the United States to the most successfully integrated.87 Unfortunately, it would take our nation as a whole much longer to see the hypocrisy of it all.
The point of Nathan’s parable (12:1–6) is something akin to Jesus’ warning not to look for a speck in our neighbor’s eye at the same time we miss the log in our own (Matt. 7:3–5). David was quick to see the cruelty and inconsiderate nature of the rich man’s actions but missed the fact that his own cruel and inconsiderate actions came to fruition in adultery and murder. It is certainly appropriate when applying this text to warn our society against the dangers of unrestrained sexual promiscuity. But today’s Christian church also needs to hear this passage’s teaching on the use and abuse of power.
My own experience has taught me that many believers today fall into one of two extreme categories. They are either uncomfortable with authority and hesitant to take the reins of power because they are unsure of how to deal with it, or they are greedy when it comes to power. Believers I have met in the first category tend to shrink from responsibility in the church, while those of the latter category tend to squash those who disagree with them as “enemies” in the church’s political power structure. These believers presumably consider David’s adultery and murder deplorable, but they miss the significance of his abuse of power as a negative object lesson for their own lives. We need to be reminded of the dictum of Immanuel Kant: “Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.”88
Repentance. On the issue of repentance, we have seen how this text illustrates a larger theme in the books of Samuel (cf., e.g., comments on 1 Sam. 7:2–4). It is entirely appropriate to follow the long-standing tradition of reading Psalm 51 as an early Israelite commentary on David’s words, “I have sinned against the LORD”:
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge. (Ps. 51:3–4)
Our society’s loss of any sensibilities about the nature of sin has equally impacted our understanding of biblical repentance. How can we repent adequately if we fail to understand the depths to which sin has affected our lives? A full appreciation of the self-destructive nature of our own actions should lead us emphatically, even drive us relentlessly, to genuine repentance:
Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Surely you desire truth in the inner parts;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. (Ps. 51:5–6)
In the following quote from perhaps the greatest theologian of the early church, Augustine of Hippo (354–430) describes the self-realization that occurs when he was being convicted and convinced of his sin:
But you, Lord … were turning me around so that I could see myself; you took me from behind my own back, which was where I had put myself during the time when I did not want to be observed by myself, and you set me in front of my own face so that I could see how foul a sight I was…. If I tried to look away from myself … you were setting me in front of myself, forcing me to look into my own face, so that I might see myself and hate it. I did know it, but I pretended that I did not. I had been pushing the whole idea away from me and forgetting it.89
Forgiveness. Finally this text teaches that such genuine penitence results in forgiveness. But this may be the hardest part for today’s readers to accept. Indeed, retribution and vengeance seem to rule in our day. The Sunflower, a book written by Simon Wiesenthal, makes the point forcefully.90 By 1944, eighty-nine of his Jewish relatives had been killed by the Nazis. He had witnessed the execution of his grandmother in her home and his mother being forced into a freight car crammed with elderly Jewish women.
One day, while himself a prisoner of the Nazis, he was taken by a nurse into the room where a young soldier lay dying. The young man, whose name was Karl, summarized for Wiesenthal his Catholic upbringing and his childhood faith, which he had abandoned in the Hitler Youth Corps. Karl had volunteered for the SS and became an officer. But now, having been badly wounded on the Russian front, he had summoned a Jew to hear his deathbed confession. “I must tell you of this horrible deed—tell you because you are a Jew.” As the soldier began to describe horrible atrocities against the Jews in the Ukraine, Wiesenthal pulled away three times in order to leave the room. But the soldier grabbed his arm and desperately pleaded for him to stay and hear him out. Karl had participated in the ruthless execution of three hundred Jewish men, women, and children, in the town of Dnyepropetrovsk. The memory haunted him. He complained of suffering from miserable grief and despair, and he longed for forgiveness.
In the last hours of my life you are with me. I do not know who you are, I know only that you are a Jew and that is enough. I know that what I have told you is terrible. In the long nights while I have been waiting for death, time and time again I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him. Only I didn’t know whether there were any Jews left…. I know what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace.91
After a long period of reflection, Wiesenthal eventually decided what to do. Without a word, he turned from the room and walked away.
Decades later, still haunted by his decision that fateful day, Wiesenthal wrote down the story and mailed it to thirty-two of the brightest ethical minds he knew and asked this question: What would you have done in my place? Only six said that Wiesenthal erred in not forgiving the dying SS officer. Several concluded the enormity of Nazi atrocities precluded the possibility of forgiveness. Most of the non-Jewish respondents were reticent to speak to the heirs of the Holocaust about forgiveness at all, and justifiably so. But as Philip Yancey explains in his summary of this ethical dilemma, “Forgiveness may be unfair—it is, by definition—but at least it provides a way to halt the juggernaut of retribution.”92 His main point is that unforgiveness is an unending cycle that creates a monstrous past, awaking in unexpected places and times from hibernation to devour the present. The only thing that breaks the cycle is the blessed word from the cross (Luke 23:34): “Father, forgive them….”
Though human forgiveness is always wise, it is often fickle and at times nearly impossible to grant. The immense burden placed on the shoulders of the young Simon Wiesenthal that day in 1944 was too much for any mere human to bear. Who among us could claim they would have done differently? But that is just the beauty of the biblical message, especially as illustrated by David’s forgiveness in 2 Samuel 12:13: Forgiveness is not based on human sentiment, it is not placed on the shoulders of mortals.
It was unfair of the SS officer to place such a burden on Wiesenthal, who could not bear to represent his race at that terrible moment in history. But note the words of Nathan, “The LORD has taken away your sin.” Our hope is not in the hands of fragile humans, who are incapable of fathoming the depths of our sin and granting us restoration and peace. But David’s forgiveness was authentic because it was granted by Yahweh.
That experience of forgiveness, shared by all who name the name, is graphically captured in the immortal words of John Bunyan:
Now I saw in my dream that the highway which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called Salvation, Isa. 26:1. Up this road therefore did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came to a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulcher. So I saw in my dream that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulcher, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.93
Original Meaning
Ammonite Wars (10:6–19)
HANUN’S HUMILIATION OF DAVID’S MEN is in effect a declaration of war. His next step is to form alliances that will enable him to limit David’s power in Syria-Palestine, just as his father Nahash formed an alliance with David in order to limit Saul’s power. The battle accounts recorded here (and at 12:26–31) have an official and authentic ring to them, and many scholars assume they have been taken directly from contemporary royal archives or annals.12
It seems clear from these battle accounts that the real power is not the Ammonites but their allies to the north, the Arameans.13 Especially powerful is the kingdom of Zobah (also known as Aram-Zobah), which is the dominant political power of southern Syria during this time. Located to the extreme north of the Promised Land, Zobah probably extended from the northern Beqa Valley in what is modern Lebanon east of the Anti-Lebanon range to the north of Damascus.14 During the eleventh century B.C., Zobah was the center of a small empire that encompassed most of the Aramean states surrounding it. The power of this empire under its king Hadadezer was growing as quickly as David’s power in the south. Armed conflict between the two seems unavoidable, with political supremacy of Syria-Palestine at stake.15
The first battle described here takes place near the city of Rabbah itself (10:6–14). Once the Arameans arrived in the Transjordan, they successfully out-maneuver Joab so that he is forced to fight on two separate fronts (10:9–12). Joab divides his troops and encourages them to be strong and fight bravely, adding that Yahweh will do whatever seems best in his sight (10:12). The irascible general is seldom a paragon of virtue, but here Joab’s quote illustrates the healthy balance between effort and faith. Effective servants in God’s kingdom will exhaust their resources and energies doing whatever they can, while acknowledging that the fruit of their labors is ultimately in God’s hands. Or, as someone has said, saints pray as though the outcome depends solely on God and work as though it depends on them.
To the disappointment of the Ammonites, their Aramean allies flee before Joab. The Israelite victory is probably tempered by losses, so that Joab is unable to continue his siege on the city itself and has no alternative but to return to Jerusalem (10:14).
The next battle is between Israel and the Arameans themselves and will determine the fate of all of Syria-Palestine (10:15–19). After acquiring reinforcements from beyond the Euphrates, Hadadezer moves into Helam. The exact location of Helam is uncertain, though presumably it is a city or region in northern Gilead, an area frequently contested by the Arameans of Damascus in subsequent centuries.16 David leads the troops himself this time in what becomes a decisive victory.17 From this time forward, Aram-Zobah loses its political influence and is replaced in the tenth century by Damascus as the most powerful Aramean state.
Our account concludes with the concise, “So the Arameans were afraid to help the Ammonites anymore.” With the Aramean allies effectively neutralized, all that remains for David to control the Transjordan area is conquest of Ammon itself (which is recorded in 12:26–31). In the meantime, the account of these Ammonite wars is suspended in order to narrate the sad events in the royal palace back in Jerusalem, which are of paramount interest to our historian.
David Remains in Jerusalem (11:1)
Bridging Contexts
THIS UNIT’S LITERARY POWER and classic themes give it a universal appeal, which explains why it has inspired artists and authors for centuries. One of my personal favorites is the way in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used the story of David, Bathsheba, and Uriah as a clue for solving one of his wonderful Sherlock Holmes mysteries.69 However, as Christian readers we recognize this text has more to offer than remarkable literary qualities. With captivating poignancy, the text traces through the actions and responses of one of Israel’s great heroes of the faith three of the most salient components of that faith: sin, repentance, and forgiveness.
Sin and its consequences. This is one of Israel’s classic passages on the nature of sin and its consequences. It powerfully and subtly strips David of his luster and turns the focus on us as readers. It is “more than we want to know about David and more than we can bear to understand about ourselves.”70 The text painfully recounts David’s premeditated and methodical disobedience of three of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,” “You shall not commit adultery,” and “You shall not murder.”71
It may be useful when building a bridge from this text to current readers to associate it with other important Old Testament texts that deal with sin and then to connect these to pertinent New Testament texts. Thus, David’s actions in 11:2–5 illustrate and complement the origin and progression of temptation and sin (from perception and deception to covetousness, transgression, and death) as we learn them from Genesis 3:1–7 and James 1:14–15.72 This alone is enough to give this unit immediate pertinence for today’s readers. It teems with forceful lessons on sin and death; as we all know, our day needs to hear these lessons again and again. It would be tempting to stop here, because this is an easy way to apply this text to our times.
However, it would be a mistake to interpret the passage as a single-dimensional example of what happens when we break the commandments. There are at least two indications in the text that the unit has more in view. (1) This passage plays an important role in the overall structure of 1-2 Samuel. As we have seen, the books are answering questions urgent for that ancient day: What is the acceptable nature of the new Israelite monarchy? Who may serve suitably as Yahweh’s anointed one? The monarchy has been carefully circumscribed by Samuel as a vassalage of Yahweh; that is, the Israelite king is not really king but only a coregent for Yahweh.
Furthermore, Saul is presented as a negative example of who may serve in the new institution. In 2 Samuel, David has been established thus far as a positive example, as God-ordained and God-blessed in his role as king of Israel. This text takes us to the next level by demonstrating that no Israelite king, not even David, is permitted to behave like other ancient Near Eastern kings. If and when Israel’s kings do so behave, they will not be free of guilt and responsibility. A prophet of Yahweh will hold them accountable.
(2) In addition, the unit’s theme word (šlḥ) makes it clear that David has a problem with power. In fact, his abuse of power lies at the root of his sin. He has overstepped his boundaries as the vassal of Yahweh, chosen and anointed to represent Yahweh before Israel and the world. David exercises his royal power by sending and taking, and such abuse of power lies at the foundation of his sin. He sends instead of going in battle, and he abuses instead of serving.
In other words, this text is more than a moral lesson against breaking the Ten Commandments. It is that, but to stop there is to miss its grandest themes. It contributes to the books’ overall concerns by teaching that manipulative abuses of power will destroy us or those around us. Whenever we are seduced by the misappropriation of human power structures, we incur guilt and deserve to die (12:5). Regardless of whether our attitudes come to fruition in external transgressions against the Ten Commandments, as with David, we cannot escape the implications: The way we use power reflects either our faithfulness to God or our treason.
The account of David’s adultery with Bathsheba and his subsequent murder of Uriah confronts us as readers with our own manipulative and abusive ways. We may rigidly obey the Ten Commandments, but if we abuse the people around us, our hypocrisy will eventually be exposed, as Nathan’s parable exposed David’s hypocrisy. The way we impose our will on people around us, the way we “send” in order to “take,” certainly displeases the Lord, just as David’s displeased the Lord (11:27). Our actions are tantamount to despising “the word of the LORD” (12:9). Moreover, the book structure reveals that there are no exceptions. No matter how much power we wield, or how little, we are still responsible for the way we use it.
One further point might be necessary on the Old Testament’s understanding of sin. In certain respects, today’s readers find it easy to bridge the cultural contexts on this issue. Wherever we share similar ethical or legal assumptions with ancient Israel, we transfer the concepts into today’s context without difficulty, as for example happens when the Bible refers to disobedience, rebellion, or crime.
The Old Testament, however, has one important aspect relating to its understanding of sin that is foreign to today’s Western reader, one that may cause problems when interpreting texts like this one when it says that “the LORD has taken away your sin” (12:13). I refer here to the Pentateuch’s priestly understanding of ritual impurity from unatoned guilt as an aerial contaminant, mystically settling down over the community and attaching itself to the tabernacle (and later to the temple), resulting in pollution.73 The book of Leviticus, where this concept is established, does not always express its theology explicitly. But through prescriptions for ritual and sacrifice, it becomes clear that human sin resulted in impurity that polluted the sanctuary (Lev. 15:31; 20:3; cf. Num. 19:13, 20). Such pollution was perceived as a physical substance, an airborne contaminant magnetically attracted to and attached to the realm of the sacred, or in this case, the sanctuary.
This background is only vaguely apparent in our current text, though it has several important implications that affect our interpretation. (1) Personal sin in the Old Testament resulted in corporate guilt. When an individual Israelite sinned, the guilt contributed to the contamination of the sanctuary, for which the entire community was responsible. Because of our extreme individualism in North America, you and I may think we alone bear the guilt and punishment for our own sins. But we are wrong. The Old Testament has a healthy understanding of the suffering caused to the whole community when one of its members sinned.
(2) When left unatoned, sin was cumulative. The need for an annual decontamination of the sanctuary (the Day of Atonement, Lev. 16) illustrates that the guilt of sin accumulated whenever it was not expiated. Wherever it was ignored or suppressed, guilt eventually returned to the sinner (national or individual) later in life to exact punishment. Sin set a series of consequences in motion, and if unchecked it led inevitably to death.
(3) God provided an effective cure for sin. I will discuss this further below when we consider God’s forgiveness of David’s sin, but it is important to note at this point that the Old Testament devotes a great deal of attention to atonement (Ex. 25–31; 35–40; the book of Leviticus; Num. 1–10). Decontamination was possible, thanks to God’s sacrificial system. Many of the Old Testament’s images for the act of decontamination have to do with separating or removing the presence of the accumulated pollutant (Lev. 16:22). Sin may be cumulative and result in corporate guilt—but the good news is, there is a cure.
Repentance. The second component of Israel’s faith illustrated in this text is repentance. David’s words alone, “I have sinned against the LORD,” might be construed to denote mere confession.74 But in the context of the whole unit, David exemplifies the repentance Nathan required. As a result, Yahweh takes away David’s sin and suspends the death penalty (12:13).
Furthermore, David’s immediate and genuine penitence stands in stark contrast with that of Saul, who serves as the stubborn and recalcitrant counterpoint to repentance (1 Sam. 15:24, 30). The historian seems to be inviting us to make these contrasts ourselves. Saul’s confession (1 Sam. 15:24, 30) and David’s (2 Sam. 12:13) appear to be facing each other, stretching across the pages of the books of Samuel to present contrasting lessons on repentance. In David, we have an example of the correct attitude of repentance; in Saul, we have an example of equivocal and self-serving repentance (see comments on 12:13–25, above).
As we have seen many times, historical narratives such as these often illustrate implicitly the truths taught explicitly elsewhere in Scripture. The books of Samuel have been characterized from the beginning by prophetic interests, and primary among these is the definition and nature of repentance. The opening chapters of 1 Samuel condemned the Elide priesthood at Shiloh as perverse (1 Sam. 1–3). In addition, the nation Israel tried to manipulate God for personal gain and was generally plagued with sin and failure (chs. 4–6). At a critical juncture in Israel’s history, the prophet Samuel seized a moment of tragedy and suffering in order to call the nation to repentance. Using terminology characteristic of later prophetic preaching, Samuel called for a “return” (šwb) to Yahweh.75 To restore a right relationship with Yahweh implies at once both a turning away from the sins that have caused the separation and a returning unto God.
This return to God must be “wholehearted,” implying there can be no divided loyalties or opinions when one returns to Yahweh. In the specific case of Israel in 1 Samuel 7, repentance involved a repudiation of their allegiance to Canaanite gods and a renewed commitment to serve Yahweh exclusively. Samuel’s message synopsizes the Old Testament prophetic concern for repentance and stands like a watchtower over the rest of 1-2 Samuel. Though the specific terminology for repentance is not used in 2 Samuel 12, David’s “I have sinned” in response to Nathan’s “You are the man” is a powerful lesson in Samuel’s message of repentance. This text serves as a historical illustration for the sermon Samuel preached so many years before.
Forgiveness. The third prominent feature of Old Testament faith illustrated by our text is forgiveness. As we noted above on 12:14, Nathan’s words of forgiveness raise questions. Why did Yahweh suspend the just penalty for David’s sin? Why did Yahweh choose not to deal with David as prescribed by the Sinai covenant? If David were in charge of the universe, we know what he would have done! His verdict on the rich man in Nathan’s parable makes it clear (12:5): “The man who did this deserves to die!” Yet Nathan is quick to reassure: “You are not going to die.” Why not? We have seen that forgiveness in this text proves David’s repentance was genuine, and so it does. But more importantly, forgiveness in this text proves Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God.76 God loves and forgives because that is his nature.
Two dramatic statements are held closely together in our text (12:13): “I have sinned,” and “The LORD has taken away your sin.” They are separated only by the barest minimum narration (“Nathan replied”). Their very proximity begs us to understand this forgiving nature of God. Yet we, like the prophet Jonah, sometimes cannot quite get over the fact that God forgives, and sometimes we, again like Jonah, do not like it when he does! But this text is a powerful example of God’s forgiving nature. As such it takes its place among many in the Old Testament that emphasize the separation and removal of guilt from the confessing and penitent sinner.
In fact, the Old Testament is awash with metaphors for forgiveness, and this rich assortment often emphasizes the separation or removal of guilt. Sin may be healed like a disease, forgotten like a fleeting thought, stomped underfoot, thrown behind the back or thrown into the depths of the sea, cleansed, washed, wiped away, blotted out, or erased. Sin can be separated as far as east is from the west, borne away, or covered over. Several verbs are associated with forgiving, but the authors of the Old Testament found them inadequate to express fully the joy and celebration associated with forgiveness.77
There are few other obstacles to interpretation of this text because its themes are so powerfully and memorably narrated and, more importantly, because they are so universal. All of us know the truth of David’s failure because we have all lived it to one degree or another. All of us know David’s hypocrisy because we have all been hypocritical. Those of us who have faced our own sin and have cried in the night, “I have sinned,” need to hear afresh the profound truth contained in Nathan’s beautiful words, “The LORD has taken away your sin.”
Finally, we all need to understand again the message of 1-2 Samuel, that the anointed one who is worthy of God’s anointing must be willing to confess and repent of sin quickly in order to maintain the unique relationship he has with God. In this manner, the books of Samuel prepare us in a way we could never have anticipated for David’s greater Son, who needed no confession or repentance but who carried forgiveness in his blood (2 Cor. 5:21; Eph. 1:7; 1 John 3:5).
Contemporary Significance
Contemporary Significance
SATURATION WITH SEX. The contemporary application of this passage is multifaceted. On a basic level, it speaks to the need in our society to address sexual sin and the guilt and alienation caused by its infatuation with sexual pleasure. Over the decades, American culture has fallen prey to the lie that our highest human fulfillment is partially attainable through self-indulgent, unrestrained erotic expression rather than through faithful, enduring, monogamous love.
But this falsehood is as old as human civilization itself, and this text reveals the ancient lie for what it is. David surrenders impulsively to his most basic instincts, which lead him down a path that grows darker with each step. Rather than reaching his highest level of personal fulfillment, David discovers the darkness of his own soul. Likewise, instead of enabling us to reach our highest human fulfillment, reckless and illicit eroticism ensnares us in animalistic self-destruction. It is a hopeless cycle that ends only and always in death (Prov. 7:21–23, 27).
Yet our culture becomes more and more enamored with each passing decade. As the pornography industry grows with each new advance in technology and as the homosexual subculture expands, our culture falls deeper into the clutches of the ancient lie. All the while, the Bible’s emphasis on the surpassing value of a loving and lasting monogamous relationship is pushed farther back into the recesses of our national memory. The message of 2 Samuel 10–12 is as pertinent and necessary today as ever.
Abuse of power. However, the truths revealed in this text far transcend this basic understanding of human sexuality and fulfillment. On a larger scale, the passage addresses the tendency in all of us to abuse power in our interpersonal relationships. Whether considering one’s relationship with God or with mortals, our greedy attempts to control and manipulate lead only to pain and loss. One should always remember to read this unit in the larger literary context of the books of Samuel, which will add depth perception to an already vivid portrayal of lust, deception, betrayal, and murder. Such a holistic reading prevents an application limited to warnings about lust and sexual sin.
The full characterization of King David in the books of Samuel to this point makes his actions here more disturbing. He has towered over the literary landscape, looming ever larger in our sight and growing ever more central to our hopes for godly leadership in Israel. Because we gloried in his rise, we recoil at his fall. And we learn that no matter how close we live to God, no matter how much responsibility we are given in God’s kingdom, no matter how much power we hold, we too can fall. We must learn from David to guard our relationships carefully and to use power in ways that are never tyrannical and despotic.78
So these multifaceted applications make our text important when considering the use and abuse of power, sexual sins in our society, or the nature and consequence of sin in general. As we have seen in the Bridging Contexts section, this text has much to say also about repentance and forgiveness. Today’s audience is undoubtedly in need of the truth about sin, but we should also consider what this text teaches by way of illustration on the nature of repentance and forgiveness as well. In what follows, I offer a few reflections on the application of these themes.
Sin. To begin, I think it fair to say that the topic of sin has all but disappeared from the mainline denominations and even in many of our evangelical contexts. Well I remember a book I was required to read during my college days. Its title summarized the author’s thesis beautifully: Whatever Became of Sin?79 Its author, Karl Menninger, was a renowned psychiatrist who described the malaise of Western society and noted that one misses any mention of “sin.”
It was a word once in everyone’s mind, but now rarely if ever heard. Does that mean that no sin is involved in all our troubles … ? Is no one any longer guilty of anything? Guilty perhaps of a sin that could be repented and repaired or atoned for? Is it only that someone may be stupid or sick or criminal—or asleep? Wrong things are being done, we know…. But is no one responsible, no one answerable for these acts? Anxiety and depression we all acknowledge, and even vague guilt feelings; but has no one committed any sin? Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it?80
Exploring the causes of sin’s disappearance, Menninger concluded that many former sins have become crimes, so that responsibility for dealing with them has passed from church to state, from priest to policeman. Others have dissipated into illness, or at least into symptoms of illness, so that in their case punishment has been replaced with treatment.81 But these are changes of definition and societal mores, and sin, as Menninger argues, has not really gone away no matter how much we humans attempt to suppress it or redefine it. He proposes reviving public discourse on sin and enlisting the physician, the psychiatrist, the lawyer, the teacher—and above all, the clergy—to recognize the reality of sin in an effort to offer a needy world more than the hope of belated treatment, but of prevention.
Though we might bicker today over the details of Menninger’s argument, there is no question that he put his finger on a societal change that is profound and has continued during the last decades of the twentieth century. In fact, the collapse of modernism and the emergence of a more pluralistic society has left us in a situation far more severe than Menninger predicted. The church has not only lost its voice on issues related to sin and its consequences, but the church itself is guilty of raising a new voice in order to justify sin in different garb. Not only has sin taken up residence in our hearts; we have redefined it and given expression to it as a justifiable good!
For example, in 1988, a prominent bishop of a mainline denomination advocated reviving an old concept—betrothal.82 He argued that the church today should confirm those young people who feel led to determine their own standards of morality. Since they believe sex before marriage is acceptable as long as it is confined to a meaningful relationship, the church should support and bless betrothal as a legalized period before marriage when couples can live together. The bishop argued that such a relationship would carry the possibility of life-giving “holiness.” It would help to order and make holy the world of sexual testing that marks the lives of so many single young adults.
Of course for decades mainline denominations have struggled with questions of human sexuality, including the appropriate Christian response to homosexuals who feel called to ministry or who simply want to find acceptance in a local church. These are legitimate questions, which should always be approached in humility and respect. Unfortunately, some Christians would rather beat the questioners over the head with an oversized Bible than actually discuss the questions sanely and reasonably. Just as unfortunately, others in the church would address the questions without ever once raising the issue of biblical authority and the possibility of God’s preventing and life-changing grace. Once “sin” is no longer in the church’s theological vocabulary, there is no longer a need for words such as “forgiveness” or “grace.” Sin really has taken up residence in our hearts and found expression in less offensive ways.
I discovered through an article published in U.S. News & World Report in 1997 the logical extremes to which such reasoning may take us.83 The author spoke of a problem in today’s American universities, which he defined as “absolutophobia,” or an unwillingness to say anything is wrong. The point of the article is that our pop culture has pushed nonjudgmentalism to the limit so that now some students have difficulty condemning large moral horrors, such as human sacrifice, ethnic cleansing, and slavery. We have raised a generation of children so “dogmatically committed to moral relativism” that some of them are reluctant to say anything negative about mass slaughter! They argue that no one has the right to criticize the moral views of another group or culture.
The article told of classes studying human sacrifice in which many of the students had trouble expressing any moral reservations or objections to it. In another example, one professor asserted that in twenty years of teaching, he had never met a student who denied that the Holocaust happened. What he has encountered, however, may be worse. Approximately 10 to 20 percent of his students acknowledge the fact of the Holocaust but cannot bring themselves to say that killing millions of people is wrong! Students may deplore what the Nazis did, but their disapproval is expressed as a matter of taste or personal preference, not moral judgment. The professor quoted one student as saying, “Of course I dislike the Nazis, but who is to say they are morally wrong?”
The application of this passage’s assumptions about sin and its consequences are complicated by such fuzzy thinking in our day. One can no longer simply call a congregation to repentance. It will not do to merely exhort one’s hearers to lay aside all sinful impulses, sexual tendencies, and abuses of power. Instead, the ideological foundation needs to be carefully established and the moral compass explained. People now need to hear not only what sin is but why it is wrong. In this text we might emphasize the point that David understood his actions as sin “against the LORD” (12:13). In other words, David’s relationship with Yahweh provided a moral standard for his actions, a standard external to himself and superior in every respect. Yahweh’s character and self-revelation determined for David what was right and wrong for David’s behavior (see Contemporary Significance section for 1 Sam. 13:23–14:52). Such basic teaching, even remedial theology, is now necessary for the life of the church.
In exposing the falsehood of David’s sin, Nathan used logic and reason to persuade David of his guilt. I have also mentioned at various points the hypocrisy inherent in David’s actions. Hypocrisy is implied in his “killing time” at home while his army was away (11:1), but it becomes explicit in his sanctimonious concern for Uriah (11:7) and his indifference to Uriah’s death (11:25). Irony in biblical literature (as in history) is often used to expose the hypocrite. So here Uriah is ironically more devout and faithful than David (11:9, 11), putting David in a bad light. Further, David unwittingly condemns himself when he condemns the rich man in Nathan’s parable (12:5), providing Nathan with the ironic punch line for his sermon (12:7): “You are the man!” More generally, it is ironic that the king as Israel’s “covenant administrator” has become the covenant breaker.84
I was reminded of the role of irony and hypocrisy recently when I read what one leading historian of American history had to say about the combatants of World War II in the European Theater of Operations: “The world’s greatest democracy fought the world’s greatest racist with a segregated army.”85 He was referring, of course, to the incongruity of the U.S. Army’s struggle against the racist forces of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, all while segregating African American soldiers into isolated units.
He relates one ironic incident from the home front during the war that highlights the hypocrisy of the situation. In April, 1944, Corporal Rupert Timmingham, an African American soldier, was traveling with eight other African American soldiers through the South on their way to a new assignment. Timmingham reported having difficulty finding places to eat or buying a cup of coffee. Finally, the lunchroom manager at a Texas railroad depot said the GIs could go around back to the kitchen for a sandwich and coffee. As they were making their way around to the back of the depot, approximately two dozen German prisoners of war from a nearby prisoner camp, along with two American guards came to the station. Timmingham later wrote in Yank magazine, “They entered the lunchroom, sat at the tables, had their meals served, talked, smoked, in fact had quite a swell time. I stood on the outside looking on, and I could not help but ask myself why are they treated better than we are?”86
The magazine that published Timmingham’s letter received thousands of letters outraged by his treatment, mostly from GIs. The hypocrisy of the army’s segregation policy was further exposed by the efficiency of the African American soldiers during the war. Within a decade of the war’s end, the army had changed from one of the most segregated organizations in the United States to the most successfully integrated.87 Unfortunately, it would take our nation as a whole much longer to see the hypocrisy of it all.
The point of Nathan’s parable (12:1–6) is something akin to Jesus’ warning not to look for a speck in our neighbor’s eye at the same time we miss the log in our own (Matt. 7:3–5). David was quick to see the cruelty and inconsiderate nature of the rich man’s actions but missed the fact that his own cruel and inconsiderate actions came to fruition in adultery and murder. It is certainly appropriate when applying this text to warn our society against the dangers of unrestrained sexual promiscuity. But today’s Christian church also needs to hear this passage’s teaching on the use and abuse of power.
My own experience has taught me that many believers today fall into one of two extreme categories. They are either uncomfortable with authority and hesitant to take the reins of power because they are unsure of how to deal with it, or they are greedy when it comes to power. Believers I have met in the first category tend to shrink from responsibility in the church, while those of the latter category tend to squash those who disagree with them as “enemies” in the church’s political power structure. These believers presumably consider David’s adultery and murder deplorable, but they miss the significance of his abuse of power as a negative object lesson for their own lives. We need to be reminded of the dictum of Immanuel Kant: “Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.”88
Repentance. On the issue of repentance, we have seen how this text illustrates a larger theme in the books of Samuel (cf., e.g., comments on 1 Sam. 7:2–4). It is entirely appropriate to follow the long-standing tradition of reading Psalm 51 as an early Israelite commentary on David’s words, “I have sinned against the LORD”:
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge. (Ps. 51:3–4)
Our society’s loss of any sensibilities about the nature of sin has equally impacted our understanding of biblical repentance. How can we repent adequately if we fail to understand the depths to which sin has affected our lives? A full appreciation of the self-destructive nature of our own actions should lead us emphatically, even drive us relentlessly, to genuine repentance:
Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Surely you desire truth in the inner parts;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. (Ps. 51:5–6)
In the following quote from perhaps the greatest theologian of the early church, Augustine of Hippo (354–430) describes the self-realization that occurs when he was being convicted and convinced of his sin:
But you, Lord … were turning me around so that I could see myself; you took me from behind my own back, which was where I had put myself during the time when I did not want to be observed by myself, and you set me in front of my own face so that I could see how foul a sight I was…. If I tried to look away from myself … you were setting me in front of myself, forcing me to look into my own face, so that I might see myself and hate it. I did know it, but I pretended that I did not. I had been pushing the whole idea away from me and forgetting it.89
Forgiveness. Finally this text teaches that such genuine penitence results in forgiveness. But this may be the hardest part for today’s readers to accept. Indeed, retribution and vengeance seem to rule in our day. The Sunflower, a book written by Simon Wiesenthal, makes the point forcefully.90 By 1944, eighty-nine of his Jewish relatives had been killed by the Nazis. He had witnessed the execution of his grandmother in her home and his mother being forced into a freight car crammed with elderly Jewish women.
One day, while himself a prisoner of the Nazis, he was taken by a nurse into the room where a young soldier lay dying. The young man, whose name was Karl, summarized for Wiesenthal his Catholic upbringing and his childhood faith, which he had abandoned in the Hitler Youth Corps. Karl had volunteered for the SS and became an officer. But now, having been badly wounded on the Russian front, he had summoned a Jew to hear his deathbed confession. “I must tell you of this horrible deed—tell you because you are a Jew.” As the soldier began to describe horrible atrocities against the Jews in the Ukraine, Wiesenthal pulled away three times in order to leave the room. But the soldier grabbed his arm and desperately pleaded for him to stay and hear him out. Karl had participated in the ruthless execution of three hundred Jewish men, women, and children, in the town of Dnyepropetrovsk. The memory haunted him. He complained of suffering from miserable grief and despair, and he longed for forgiveness.
In the last hours of my life you are with me. I do not know who you are, I know only that you are a Jew and that is enough. I know that what I have told you is terrible. In the long nights while I have been waiting for death, time and time again I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him. Only I didn’t know whether there were any Jews left…. I know what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace.91
After a long period of reflection, Wiesenthal eventually decided what to do. Without a word, he turned from the room and walked away.
Decades later, still haunted by his decision that fateful day, Wiesenthal wrote down the story and mailed it to thirty-two of the brightest ethical minds he knew and asked this question: What would you have done in my place? Only six said that Wiesenthal erred in not forgiving the dying SS officer. Several concluded the enormity of Nazi atrocities precluded the possibility of forgiveness. Most of the non-Jewish respondents were reticent to speak to the heirs of the Holocaust about forgiveness at all, and justifiably so. But as Philip Yancey explains in his summary of this ethical dilemma, “Forgiveness may be unfair—it is, by definition—but at least it provides a way to halt the juggernaut of retribution.”92 His main point is that unforgiveness is an unending cycle that creates a monstrous past, awaking in unexpected places and times from hibernation to devour the present. The only thing that breaks the cycle is the blessed word from the cross (Luke 23:34): “Father, forgive them….”
Though human forgiveness is always wise, it is often fickle and at times nearly impossible to grant. The immense burden placed on the shoulders of the young Simon Wiesenthal that day in 1944 was too much for any mere human to bear. Who among us could claim they would have done differently? But that is just the beauty of the biblical message, especially as illustrated by David’s forgiveness in 2 Samuel 12:13: Forgiveness is not based on human sentiment, it is not placed on the shoulders of mortals.
It was unfair of the SS officer to place such a burden on Wiesenthal, who could not bear to represent his race at that terrible moment in history. But note the words of Nathan, “The LORD has taken away your sin.” Our hope is not in the hands of fragile humans, who are incapable of fathoming the depths of our sin and granting us restoration and peace. But David’s forgiveness was authentic because it was granted by Yahweh.
That experience of forgiveness, shared by all who name the name, is graphically captured in the immortal words of John Bunyan:
Now I saw in my dream that the highway which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called Salvation, Isa. 26:1. Up this road therefore did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came to a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulcher. So I saw in my dream that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulcher, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.93
Original Meaning
Ammonite Wars (10:6–19)
HANUN’S HUMILIATION OF DAVID’S MEN is in effect a declaration of war. His next step is to form alliances that will enable him to limit David’s power in Syria-Palestine, just as his father Nahash formed an alliance with David in order to limit Saul’s power. The battle accounts recorded here (and at 12:26–31) have an official and authentic ring to them, and many scholars assume they have been taken directly from contemporary royal archives or annals.12
It seems clear from these battle accounts that the real power is not the Ammonites but their allies to the north, the Arameans.13 Especially powerful is the kingdom of Zobah (also known as Aram-Zobah), which is the dominant political power of southern Syria during this time. Located to the extreme north of the Promised Land, Zobah probably extended from the northern Beqa Valley in what is modern Lebanon east of the Anti-Lebanon range to the north of Damascus.14 During the eleventh century B.C., Zobah was the center of a small empire that encompassed most of the Aramean states surrounding it. The power of this empire under its king Hadadezer was growing as quickly as David’s power in the south. Armed conflict between the two seems unavoidable, with political supremacy of Syria-Palestine at stake.15
The first battle described here takes place near the city of Rabbah itself (10:6–14). Once the Arameans arrived in the Transjordan, they successfully out-maneuver Joab so that he is forced to fight on two separate fronts (10:9–12). Joab divides his troops and encourages them to be strong and fight bravely, adding that Yahweh will do whatever seems best in his sight (10:12). The irascible general is seldom a paragon of virtue, but here Joab’s quote illustrates the healthy balance between effort and faith. Effective servants in God’s kingdom will exhaust their resources and energies doing whatever they can, while acknowledging that the fruit of their labors is ultimately in God’s hands. Or, as someone has said, saints pray as though the outcome depends solely on God and work as though it depends on them.
To the disappointment of the Ammonites, their Aramean allies flee before Joab. The Israelite victory is probably tempered by losses, so that Joab is unable to continue his siege on the city itself and has no alternative but to return to Jerusalem (10:14).
The next battle is between Israel and the Arameans themselves and will determine the fate of all of Syria-Palestine (10:15–19). After acquiring reinforcements from beyond the Euphrates, Hadadezer moves into Helam. The exact location of Helam is uncertain, though presumably it is a city or region in northern Gilead, an area frequently contested by the Arameans of Damascus in subsequent centuries.16 David leads the troops himself this time in what becomes a decisive victory.17 From this time forward, Aram-Zobah loses its political influence and is replaced in the tenth century by Damascus as the most powerful Aramean state.
Our account concludes with the concise, “So the Arameans were afraid to help the Ammonites anymore.” With the Aramean allies effectively neutralized, all that remains for David to control the Transjordan area is conquest of Ammon itself (which is recorded in 12:26–31). In the meantime, the account of these Ammonite wars is suspended in order to narrate the sad events in the royal palace back in Jerusalem, which are of paramount interest to our historian.
David Remains in Jerusalem (11:1)
Bridging Contexts
THIS UNIT’S LITERARY POWER and classic themes give it a universal appeal, which explains why it has inspired artists and authors for centuries. One of my personal favorites is the way in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used the story of David, Bathsheba, and Uriah as a clue for solving one of his wonderful Sherlock Holmes mysteries.69 However, as Christian readers we recognize this text has more to offer than remarkable literary qualities. With captivating poignancy, the text traces through the actions and responses of one of Israel’s great heroes of the faith three of the most salient components of that faith: sin, repentance, and forgiveness.
Sin and its consequences. This is one of Israel’s classic passages on the nature of sin and its consequences. It powerfully and subtly strips David of his luster and turns the focus on us as readers. It is “more than we want to know about David and more than we can bear to understand about ourselves.”70 The text painfully recounts David’s premeditated and methodical disobedience of three of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,” “You shall not commit adultery,” and “You shall not murder.”71
It may be useful when building a bridge from this text to current readers to associate it with other important Old Testament texts that deal with sin and then to connect these to pertinent New Testament texts. Thus, David’s actions in 11:2–5 illustrate and complement the origin and progression of temptation and sin (from perception and deception to covetousness, transgression, and death) as we learn them from Genesis 3:1–7 and James 1:14–15.72 This alone is enough to give this unit immediate pertinence for today’s readers. It teems with forceful lessons on sin and death; as we all know, our day needs to hear these lessons again and again. It would be tempting to stop here, because this is an easy way to apply this text to our times.
However, it would be a mistake to interpret the passage as a single-dimensional example of what happens when we break the commandments. There are at least two indications in the text that the unit has more in view. (1) This passage plays an important role in the overall structure of 1-2 Samuel. As we have seen, the books are answering questions urgent for that ancient day: What is the acceptable nature of the new Israelite monarchy? Who may serve suitably as Yahweh’s anointed one? The monarchy has been carefully circumscribed by Samuel as a vassalage of Yahweh; that is, the Israelite king is not really king but only a coregent for Yahweh.
Furthermore, Saul is presented as a negative example of who may serve in the new institution. In 2 Samuel, David has been established thus far as a positive example, as God-ordained and God-blessed in his role as king of Israel. This text takes us to the next level by demonstrating that no Israelite king, not even David, is permitted to behave like other ancient Near Eastern kings. If and when Israel’s kings do so behave, they will not be free of guilt and responsibility. A prophet of Yahweh will hold them accountable.
(2) In addition, the unit’s theme word (šlḥ) makes it clear that David has a problem with power. In fact, his abuse of power lies at the root of his sin. He has overstepped his boundaries as the vassal of Yahweh, chosen and anointed to represent Yahweh before Israel and the world. David exercises his royal power by sending and taking, and such abuse of power lies at the foundation of his sin. He sends instead of going in battle, and he abuses instead of serving.
In other words, this text is more than a moral lesson against breaking the Ten Commandments. It is that, but to stop there is to miss its grandest themes. It contributes to the books’ overall concerns by teaching that manipulative abuses of power will destroy us or those around us. Whenever we are seduced by the misappropriation of human power structures, we incur guilt and deserve to die (12:5). Regardless of whether our attitudes come to fruition in external transgressions against the Ten Commandments, as with David, we cannot escape the implications: The way we use power reflects either our faithfulness to God or our treason.
The account of David’s adultery with Bathsheba and his subsequent murder of Uriah confronts us as readers with our own manipulative and abusive ways. We may rigidly obey the Ten Commandments, but if we abuse the people around us, our hypocrisy will eventually be exposed, as Nathan’s parable exposed David’s hypocrisy. The way we impose our will on people around us, the way we “send” in order to “take,” certainly displeases the Lord, just as David’s displeased the Lord (11:27). Our actions are tantamount to despising “the word of the LORD” (12:9). Moreover, the book structure reveals that there are no exceptions. No matter how much power we wield, or how little, we are still responsible for the way we use it.
One further point might be necessary on the Old Testament’s understanding of sin. In certain respects, today’s readers find it easy to bridge the cultural contexts on this issue. Wherever we share similar ethical or legal assumptions with ancient Israel, we transfer the concepts into today’s context without difficulty, as for example happens when the Bible refers to disobedience, rebellion, or crime.
The Old Testament, however, has one important aspect relating to its understanding of sin that is foreign to today’s Western reader, one that may cause problems when interpreting texts like this one when it says that “the LORD has taken away your sin” (12:13). I refer here to the Pentateuch’s priestly understanding of ritual impurity from unatoned guilt as an aerial contaminant, mystically settling down over the community and attaching itself to the tabernacle (and later to the temple), resulting in pollution.73 The book of Leviticus, where this concept is established, does not always express its theology explicitly. But through prescriptions for ritual and sacrifice, it becomes clear that human sin resulted in impurity that polluted the sanctuary (Lev. 15:31; 20:3; cf. Num. 19:13, 20). Such pollution was perceived as a physical substance, an airborne contaminant magnetically attracted to and attached to the realm of the sacred, or in this case, the sanctuary.
This background is only vaguely apparent in our current text, though it has several important implications that affect our interpretation. (1) Personal sin in the Old Testament resulted in corporate guilt. When an individual Israelite sinned, the guilt contributed to the contamination of the sanctuary, for which the entire community was responsible. Because of our extreme individualism in North America, you and I may think we alone bear the guilt and punishment for our own sins. But we are wrong. The Old Testament has a healthy understanding of the suffering caused to the whole community when one of its members sinned.
(2) When left unatoned, sin was cumulative. The need for an annual decontamination of the sanctuary (the Day of Atonement, Lev. 16) illustrates that the guilt of sin accumulated whenever it was not expiated. Wherever it was ignored or suppressed, guilt eventually returned to the sinner (national or individual) later in life to exact punishment. Sin set a series of consequences in motion, and if unchecked it led inevitably to death.
(3) God provided an effective cure for sin. I will discuss this further below when we consider God’s forgiveness of David’s sin, but it is important to note at this point that the Old Testament devotes a great deal of attention to atonement (Ex. 25–31; 35–40; the book of Leviticus; Num. 1–10). Decontamination was possible, thanks to God’s sacrificial system. Many of the Old Testament’s images for the act of decontamination have to do with separating or removing the presence of the accumulated pollutant (Lev. 16:22). Sin may be cumulative and result in corporate guilt—but the good news is, there is a cure.
Repentance. The second component of Israel’s faith illustrated in this text is repentance. David’s words alone, “I have sinned against the LORD,” might be construed to denote mere confession.74 But in the context of the whole unit, David exemplifies the repentance Nathan required. As a result, Yahweh takes away David’s sin and suspends the death penalty (12:13).
Furthermore, David’s immediate and genuine penitence stands in stark contrast with that of Saul, who serves as the stubborn and recalcitrant counterpoint to repentance (1 Sam. 15:24, 30). The historian seems to be inviting us to make these contrasts ourselves. Saul’s confession (1 Sam. 15:24, 30) and David’s (2 Sam. 12:13) appear to be facing each other, stretching across the pages of the books of Samuel to present contrasting lessons on repentance. In David, we have an example of the correct attitude of repentance; in Saul, we have an example of equivocal and self-serving repentance (see comments on 12:13–25, above).
As we have seen many times, historical narratives such as these often illustrate implicitly the truths taught explicitly elsewhere in Scripture. The books of Samuel have been characterized from the beginning by prophetic interests, and primary among these is the definition and nature of repentance. The opening chapters of 1 Samuel condemned the Elide priesthood at Shiloh as perverse (1 Sam. 1–3). In addition, the nation Israel tried to manipulate God for personal gain and was generally plagued with sin and failure (chs. 4–6). At a critical juncture in Israel’s history, the prophet Samuel seized a moment of tragedy and suffering in order to call the nation to repentance. Using terminology characteristic of later prophetic preaching, Samuel called for a “return” (šwb) to Yahweh.75 To restore a right relationship with Yahweh implies at once both a turning away from the sins that have caused the separation and a returning unto God.
This return to God must be “wholehearted,” implying there can be no divided loyalties or opinions when one returns to Yahweh. In the specific case of Israel in 1 Samuel 7, repentance involved a repudiation of their allegiance to Canaanite gods and a renewed commitment to serve Yahweh exclusively. Samuel’s message synopsizes the Old Testament prophetic concern for repentance and stands like a watchtower over the rest of 1-2 Samuel. Though the specific terminology for repentance is not used in 2 Samuel 12, David’s “I have sinned” in response to Nathan’s “You are the man” is a powerful lesson in Samuel’s message of repentance. This text serves as a historical illustration for the sermon Samuel preached so many years before.
Forgiveness. The third prominent feature of Old Testament faith illustrated by our text is forgiveness. As we noted above on 12:14, Nathan’s words of forgiveness raise questions. Why did Yahweh suspend the just penalty for David’s sin? Why did Yahweh choose not to deal with David as prescribed by the Sinai covenant? If David were in charge of the universe, we know what he would have done! His verdict on the rich man in Nathan’s parable makes it clear (12:5): “The man who did this deserves to die!” Yet Nathan is quick to reassure: “You are not going to die.” Why not? We have seen that forgiveness in this text proves David’s repentance was genuine, and so it does. But more importantly, forgiveness in this text proves Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God.76 God loves and forgives because that is his nature.
Two dramatic statements are held closely together in our text (12:13): “I have sinned,” and “The LORD has taken away your sin.” They are separated only by the barest minimum narration (“Nathan replied”). Their very proximity begs us to understand this forgiving nature of God. Yet we, like the prophet Jonah, sometimes cannot quite get over the fact that God forgives, and sometimes we, again like Jonah, do not like it when he does! But this text is a powerful example of God’s forgiving nature. As such it takes its place among many in the Old Testament that emphasize the separation and removal of guilt from the confessing and penitent sinner.
In fact, the Old Testament is awash with metaphors for forgiveness, and this rich assortment often emphasizes the separation or removal of guilt. Sin may be healed like a disease, forgotten like a fleeting thought, stomped underfoot, thrown behind the back or thrown into the depths of the sea, cleansed, washed, wiped away, blotted out, or erased. Sin can be separated as far as east is from the west, borne away, or covered over. Several verbs are associated with forgiving, but the authors of the Old Testament found them inadequate to express fully the joy and celebration associated with forgiveness.77
There are few other obstacles to interpretation of this text because its themes are so powerfully and memorably narrated and, more importantly, because they are so universal. All of us know the truth of David’s failure because we have all lived it to one degree or another. All of us know David’s hypocrisy because we have all been hypocritical. Those of us who have faced our own sin and have cried in the night, “I have sinned,” need to hear afresh the profound truth contained in Nathan’s beautiful words, “The LORD has taken away your sin.”
Finally, we all need to understand again the message of 1-2 Samuel, that the anointed one who is worthy of God’s anointing must be willing to confess and repent of sin quickly in order to maintain the unique relationship he has with God. In this manner, the books of Samuel prepare us in a way we could never have anticipated for David’s greater Son, who needed no confession or repentance but who carried forgiveness in his blood (2 Cor. 5:21; Eph. 1:7; 1 John 3:5).
Contemporary Significance
Contemporary Significance
SATURATION WITH SEX. The contemporary application of this passage is multifaceted. On a basic level, it speaks to the need in our society to address sexual sin and the guilt and alienation caused by its infatuation with sexual pleasure. Over the decades, American culture has fallen prey to the lie that our highest human fulfillment is partially attainable through self-indulgent, unrestrained erotic expression rather than through faithful, enduring, monogamous love.
But this falsehood is as old as human civilization itself, and this text reveals the ancient lie for what it is. David surrenders impulsively to his most basic instincts, which lead him down a path that grows darker with each step. Rather than reaching his highest level of personal fulfillment, David discovers the darkness of his own soul. Likewise, instead of enabling us to reach our highest human fulfillment, reckless and illicit eroticism ensnares us in animalistic self-destruction. It is a hopeless cycle that ends only and always in death (Prov. 7:21–23, 27).
Yet our culture becomes more and more enamored with each passing decade. As the pornography industry grows with each new advance in technology and as the homosexual subculture expands, our culture falls deeper into the clutches of the ancient lie. All the while, the Bible’s emphasis on the surpassing value of a loving and lasting monogamous relationship is pushed farther back into the recesses of our national memory. The message of 2 Samuel 10–12 is as pertinent and necessary today as ever.
Abuse of power. However, the truths revealed in this text far transcend this basic understanding of human sexuality and fulfillment. On a larger scale, the passage addresses the tendency in all of us to abuse power in our interpersonal relationships. Whether considering one’s relationship with God or with mortals, our greedy attempts to control and manipulate lead only to pain and loss. One should always remember to read this unit in the larger literary context of the books of Samuel, which will add depth perception to an already vivid portrayal of lust, deception, betrayal, and murder. Such a holistic reading prevents an application limited to warnings about lust and sexual sin.
The full characterization of King David in the books of Samuel to this point makes his actions here more disturbing. He has towered over the literary landscape, looming ever larger in our sight and growing ever more central to our hopes for godly leadership in Israel. Because we gloried in his rise, we recoil at his fall. And we learn that no matter how close we live to God, no matter how much responsibility we are given in God’s kingdom, no matter how much power we hold, we too can fall. We must learn from David to guard our relationships carefully and to use power in ways that are never tyrannical and despotic.78
So these multifaceted applications make our text important when considering the use and abuse of power, sexual sins in our society, or the nature and consequence of sin in general. As we have seen in the Bridging Contexts section, this text has much to say also about repentance and forgiveness. Today’s audience is undoubtedly in need of the truth about sin, but we should also consider what this text teaches by way of illustration on the nature of repentance and forgiveness as well. In what follows, I offer a few reflections on the application of these themes.
Sin. To begin, I think it fair to say that the topic of sin has all but disappeared from the mainline denominations and even in many of our evangelical contexts. Well I remember a book I was required to read during my college days. Its title summarized the author’s thesis beautifully: Whatever Became of Sin?79 Its author, Karl Menninger, was a renowned psychiatrist who described the malaise of Western society and noted that one misses any mention of “sin.”
It was a word once in everyone’s mind, but now rarely if ever heard. Does that mean that no sin is involved in all our troubles … ? Is no one any longer guilty of anything? Guilty perhaps of a sin that could be repented and repaired or atoned for? Is it only that someone may be stupid or sick or criminal—or asleep? Wrong things are being done, we know…. But is no one responsible, no one answerable for these acts? Anxiety and depression we all acknowledge, and even vague guilt feelings; but has no one committed any sin? Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it?80
Exploring the causes of sin’s disappearance, Menninger concluded that many former sins have become crimes, so that responsibility for dealing with them has passed from church to state, from priest to policeman. Others have dissipated into illness, or at least into symptoms of illness, so that in their case punishment has been replaced with treatment.81 But these are changes of definition and societal mores, and sin, as Menninger argues, has not really gone away no matter how much we humans attempt to suppress it or redefine it. He proposes reviving public discourse on sin and enlisting the physician, the psychiatrist, the lawyer, the teacher—and above all, the clergy—to recognize the reality of sin in an effort to offer a needy world more than the hope of belated treatment, but of prevention.
Though we might bicker today over the details of Menninger’s argument, there is no question that he put his finger on a societal change that is profound and has continued during the last decades of the twentieth century. In fact, the collapse of modernism and the emergence of a more pluralistic society has left us in a situation far more severe than Menninger predicted. The church has not only lost its voice on issues related to sin and its consequences, but the church itself is guilty of raising a new voice in order to justify sin in different garb. Not only has sin taken up residence in our hearts; we have redefined it and given expression to it as a justifiable good!
For example, in 1988, a prominent bishop of a mainline denomination advocated reviving an old concept—betrothal.82 He argued that the church today should confirm those young people who feel led to determine their own standards of morality. Since they believe sex before marriage is acceptable as long as it is confined to a meaningful relationship, the church should support and bless betrothal as a legalized period before marriage when couples can live together. The bishop argued that such a relationship would carry the possibility of life-giving “holiness.” It would help to order and make holy the world of sexual testing that marks the lives of so many single young adults.
Of course for decades mainline denominations have struggled with questions of human sexuality, including the appropriate Christian response to homosexuals who feel called to ministry or who simply want to find acceptance in a local church. These are legitimate questions, which should always be approached in humility and respect. Unfortunately, some Christians would rather beat the questioners over the head with an oversized Bible than actually discuss the questions sanely and reasonably. Just as unfortunately, others in the church would address the questions without ever once raising the issue of biblical authority and the possibility of God’s preventing and life-changing grace. Once “sin” is no longer in the church’s theological vocabulary, there is no longer a need for words such as “forgiveness” or “grace.” Sin really has taken up residence in our hearts and found expression in less offensive ways.
I discovered through an article published in U.S. News & World Report in 1997 the logical extremes to which such reasoning may take us.83 The author spoke of a problem in today’s American universities, which he defined as “absolutophobia,” or an unwillingness to say anything is wrong. The point of the article is that our pop culture has pushed nonjudgmentalism to the limit so that now some students have difficulty condemning large moral horrors, such as human sacrifice, ethnic cleansing, and slavery. We have raised a generation of children so “dogmatically committed to moral relativism” that some of them are reluctant to say anything negative about mass slaughter! They argue that no one has the right to criticize the moral views of another group or culture.
The article told of classes studying human sacrifice in which many of the students had trouble expressing any moral reservations or objections to it. In another example, one professor asserted that in twenty years of teaching, he had never met a student who denied that the Holocaust happened. What he has encountered, however, may be worse. Approximately 10 to 20 percent of his students acknowledge the fact of the Holocaust but cannot bring themselves to say that killing millions of people is wrong! Students may deplore what the Nazis did, but their disapproval is expressed as a matter of taste or personal preference, not moral judgment. The professor quoted one student as saying, “Of course I dislike the Nazis, but who is to say they are morally wrong?”
The application of this passage’s assumptions about sin and its consequences are complicated by such fuzzy thinking in our day. One can no longer simply call a congregation to repentance. It will not do to merely exhort one’s hearers to lay aside all sinful impulses, sexual tendencies, and abuses of power. Instead, the ideological foundation needs to be carefully established and the moral compass explained. People now need to hear not only what sin is but why it is wrong. In this text we might emphasize the point that David understood his actions as sin “against the LORD” (12:13). In other words, David’s relationship with Yahweh provided a moral standard for his actions, a standard external to himself and superior in every respect. Yahweh’s character and self-revelation determined for David what was right and wrong for David’s behavior (see Contemporary Significance section for 1 Sam. 13:23–14:52). Such basic teaching, even remedial theology, is now necessary for the life of the church.
In exposing the falsehood of David’s sin, Nathan used logic and reason to persuade David of his guilt. I have also mentioned at various points the hypocrisy inherent in David’s actions. Hypocrisy is implied in his “killing time” at home while his army was away (11:1), but it becomes explicit in his sanctimonious concern for Uriah (11:7) and his indifference to Uriah’s death (11:25). Irony in biblical literature (as in history) is often used to expose the hypocrite. So here Uriah is ironically more devout and faithful than David (11:9, 11), putting David in a bad light. Further, David unwittingly condemns himself when he condemns the rich man in Nathan’s parable (12:5), providing Nathan with the ironic punch line for his sermon (12:7): “You are the man!” More generally, it is ironic that the king as Israel’s “covenant administrator” has become the covenant breaker.84
I was reminded of the role of irony and hypocrisy recently when I read what one leading historian of American history had to say about the combatants of World War II in the European Theater of Operations: “The world’s greatest democracy fought the world’s greatest racist with a segregated army.”85 He was referring, of course, to the incongruity of the U.S. Army’s struggle against the racist forces of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, all while segregating African American soldiers into isolated units.
He relates one ironic incident from the home front during the war that highlights the hypocrisy of the situation. In April, 1944, Corporal Rupert Timmingham, an African American soldier, was traveling with eight other African American soldiers through the South on their way to a new assignment. Timmingham reported having difficulty finding places to eat or buying a cup of coffee. Finally, the lunchroom manager at a Texas railroad depot said the GIs could go around back to the kitchen for a sandwich and coffee. As they were making their way around to the back of the depot, approximately two dozen German prisoners of war from a nearby prisoner camp, along with two American guards came to the station. Timmingham later wrote in Yank magazine, “They entered the lunchroom, sat at the tables, had their meals served, talked, smoked, in fact had quite a swell time. I stood on the outside looking on, and I could not help but ask myself why are they treated better than we are?”86
The magazine that published Timmingham’s letter received thousands of letters outraged by his treatment, mostly from GIs. The hypocrisy of the army’s segregation policy was further exposed by the efficiency of the African American soldiers during the war. Within a decade of the war’s end, the army had changed from one of the most segregated organizations in the United States to the most successfully integrated.87 Unfortunately, it would take our nation as a whole much longer to see the hypocrisy of it all.
The point of Nathan’s parable (12:1–6) is something akin to Jesus’ warning not to look for a speck in our neighbor’s eye at the same time we miss the log in our own (Matt. 7:3–5). David was quick to see the cruelty and inconsiderate nature of the rich man’s actions but missed the fact that his own cruel and inconsiderate actions came to fruition in adultery and murder. It is certainly appropriate when applying this text to warn our society against the dangers of unrestrained sexual promiscuity. But today’s Christian church also needs to hear this passage’s teaching on the use and abuse of power.
My own experience has taught me that many believers today fall into one of two extreme categories. They are either uncomfortable with authority and hesitant to take the reins of power because they are unsure of how to deal with it, or they are greedy when it comes to power. Believers I have met in the first category tend to shrink from responsibility in the church, while those of the latter category tend to squash those who disagree with them as “enemies” in the church’s political power structure. These believers presumably consider David’s adultery and murder deplorable, but they miss the significance of his abuse of power as a negative object lesson for their own lives. We need to be reminded of the dictum of Immanuel Kant: “Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.”88
Repentance. On the issue of repentance, we have seen how this text illustrates a larger theme in the books of Samuel (cf., e.g., comments on 1 Sam. 7:2–4). It is entirely appropriate to follow the long-standing tradition of reading Psalm 51 as an early Israelite commentary on David’s words, “I have sinned against the LORD”:
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge. (Ps. 51:3–4)
Our society’s loss of any sensibilities about the nature of sin has equally impacted our understanding of biblical repentance. How can we repent adequately if we fail to understand the depths to which sin has affected our lives? A full appreciation of the self-destructive nature of our own actions should lead us emphatically, even drive us relentlessly, to genuine repentance:
Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Surely you desire truth in the inner parts;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. (Ps. 51:5–6)
In the following quote from perhaps the greatest theologian of the early church, Augustine of Hippo (354–430) describes the self-realization that occurs when he was being convicted and convinced of his sin:
But you, Lord … were turning me around so that I could see myself; you took me from behind my own back, which was where I had put myself during the time when I did not want to be observed by myself, and you set me in front of my own face so that I could see how foul a sight I was…. If I tried to look away from myself … you were setting me in front of myself, forcing me to look into my own face, so that I might see myself and hate it. I did know it, but I pretended that I did not. I had been pushing the whole idea away from me and forgetting it.89
Forgiveness. Finally this text teaches that such genuine penitence results in forgiveness. But this may be the hardest part for today’s readers to accept. Indeed, retribution and vengeance seem to rule in our day. The Sunflower, a book written by Simon Wiesenthal, makes the point forcefully.90 By 1944, eighty-nine of his Jewish relatives had been killed by the Nazis. He had witnessed the execution of his grandmother in her home and his mother being forced into a freight car crammed with elderly Jewish women.
One day, while himself a prisoner of the Nazis, he was taken by a nurse into the room where a young soldier lay dying. The young man, whose name was Karl, summarized for Wiesenthal his Catholic upbringing and his childhood faith, which he had abandoned in the Hitler Youth Corps. Karl had volunteered for the SS and became an officer. But now, having been badly wounded on the Russian front, he had summoned a Jew to hear his deathbed confession. “I must tell you of this horrible deed—tell you because you are a Jew.” As the soldier began to describe horrible atrocities against the Jews in the Ukraine, Wiesenthal pulled away three times in order to leave the room. But the soldier grabbed his arm and desperately pleaded for him to stay and hear him out. Karl had participated in the ruthless execution of three hundred Jewish men, women, and children, in the town of Dnyepropetrovsk. The memory haunted him. He complained of suffering from miserable grief and despair, and he longed for forgiveness.
In the last hours of my life you are with me. I do not know who you are, I know only that you are a Jew and that is enough. I know that what I have told you is terrible. In the long nights while I have been waiting for death, time and time again I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him. Only I didn’t know whether there were any Jews left…. I know what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace.91
After a long period of reflection, Wiesenthal eventually decided what to do. Without a word, he turned from the room and walked away.
Decades later, still haunted by his decision that fateful day, Wiesenthal wrote down the story and mailed it to thirty-two of the brightest ethical minds he knew and asked this question: What would you have done in my place? Only six said that Wiesenthal erred in not forgiving the dying SS officer. Several concluded the enormity of Nazi atrocities precluded the possibility of forgiveness. Most of the non-Jewish respondents were reticent to speak to the heirs of the Holocaust about forgiveness at all, and justifiably so. But as Philip Yancey explains in his summary of this ethical dilemma, “Forgiveness may be unfair—it is, by definition—but at least it provides a way to halt the juggernaut of retribution.”92 His main point is that unforgiveness is an unending cycle that creates a monstrous past, awaking in unexpected places and times from hibernation to devour the present. The only thing that breaks the cycle is the blessed word from the cross (Luke 23:34): “Father, forgive them….”
Though human forgiveness is always wise, it is often fickle and at times nearly impossible to grant. The immense burden placed on the shoulders of the young Simon Wiesenthal that day in 1944 was too much for any mere human to bear. Who among us could claim they would have done differently? But that is just the beauty of the biblical message, especially as illustrated by David’s forgiveness in 2 Samuel 12:13: Forgiveness is not based on human sentiment, it is not placed on the shoulders of mortals.
It was unfair of the SS officer to place such a burden on Wiesenthal, who could not bear to represent his race at that terrible moment in history. But note the words of Nathan, “The LORD has taken away your sin.” Our hope is not in the hands of fragile humans, who are incapable of fathoming the depths of our sin and granting us restoration and peace. But David’s forgiveness was authentic because it was granted by Yahweh.
That experience of forgiveness, shared by all who name the name, is graphically captured in the immortal words of John Bunyan:
Now I saw in my dream that the highway which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called Salvation, Isa. 26:1. Up this road therefore did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came to a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulcher. So I saw in my dream that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulcher, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.93
Original Meaning
David, Bathsheba, and Uriah (11:2–27)
THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL have so far illustrated by means of both negative and positive examples the nature of genuine Israelite kingship. Saul was a negative example of how the monarch should appear; David in every case has been exemplary as the ideal king. But the shocking events narrated here reveal that David is capable of shameful actions that threaten his kingdom, his family, and his life. We would rather not read further. Yet the inspired text invites us to consider that we are all capable of such dark behavior, and taken together with chapter 12, we can learn even through these difficult narratives how to deal with sin and death.
The sad events narrated here may be divided into four episodes.32 (1) The first is David’s affair with Bathsheba reported in 12:2–5. After the carefully crafted introduction in verse 1, verse 2 portrays the king loitering about on the roof of the palace after first lounging on his couch. Again we are reminded of the contrast with Joab and the Israelite soldiers, who are destroying and besieging. While so occupied (or unoccupied!), David sees a beautiful woman bathing on a nearby rooftop.33 The narrator emphasizes Bathsheba’s beauty (she “was very beautiful,” 11:234) and immediately alarms the reader that danger lurks around the corner.
The narration is further characterized by three occurrences of our theme word, “send” (11:3, 4, 5; see comments on 10:1–5). David sends someone to find out more about Bathsheba. He is able to do so because he is, after all, the king. Just as his royal position qualified him to send messengers and generals and armies in the previous chapter (and in 11:1), so now he dispatches someone seeking information. The reported facts apparently do not deter David: The woman is the daughter of a prominent individual (Eliam) and the wife of Uriah the Hittite, whom we learn later is one of David’s faithful fighting heroes (23:39; 1 Chron. 11:41).35 Such details might arouse relief in the reader at first, but they eventually serve only to highlight the premeditated intent of David’s next action.
David then sends again, this time with the intention of fetching Bathsheba to the palace (of course, David knows that Uriah, along with all the other mighty warriors, are conveniently occupied in Ammon). The specific verbs used in 11:4 to describe David’s actions are painfully clear: He sends, he takes her (“take” is slightly obscured by the NIV’s “David sent messengers to get her”), and he lies with her. Mercifully brief, with no account of conversation or mitigating circumstances, the verse coldly recounts David’s crime.
The use of “take” here is probably also intended to recall what the wise prophet Samuel warned long ago: Kings are “takers” (1 Sam. 8:11–18): They will take your sons and your daughters (as David here takes Eliam’s daughter), the best of your fields and vineyards, a tenth of your grain, your menservants and maidservants, and a tenth of your flocks, and they will make them all their own.36 The Israelites requested a king like the other nations of Canaan. Samuel warned that such kings take and take, and when everything is gone, they force you into slavery. Now it appears that David is giving them what they requested.
The little phrase near the end of 11:4 (in parentheses in the NIV) sounds an ominous note: “She had purified herself from her uncleanness.” The point of the clause is that Bathsheba is cleansing herself ritually because of menstruation (as prescribed by the law of Lev. 15:19–24).37 Such a detail clarifies a few further facts about the episode. (a) She has not been pregnant prior to intercourse with David. (b) Intercourse with David takes place precisely at the most opportune time for conception. (c) Since Uriah is off in the battlefield, he cannot possibly be the father. A small phrase with big implications!
David is not the only character who “sends” in this episode, for Bathsheba sends a succinct message (only two words in Hebrew) that changes everything: “I am pregnant.” David exercised power in chapter 10 and thus far in chapter 11 by “sending.” But when Bathsheba “sends,” David must deal with a different kind of power. The power of wronged Bathsheba, the power of David’s own sin—these are powers that David will now attempt to answer with more “sending” (11:6). But ultimately, Yahweh will “send,” and David will relent (12:1).
(2) The second episode of chapter 11 narrates David’s first attempts to cover up the unfortunate consequences of his affair with Bathsheba (11:6–13). His machinations reveal a pitiful dependence on human power structures reminiscent of King Saul. Has David learned nothing from Saul’s failures? Will Israel ever understand the nature of an Israelite monarchy and how it must be different from Canaanite monarchies?
Our unit’s theme word (“send”) occurs three times in verse 6. David has the royal authority and power to send a decree to Joab, who has the military power to send Uriah back to Jerusalem from the battlefield. David believes he has a plan to hide the truth, and he does not hesitate to take action to enact the plan. In order to cover his guilt, David tries subterfuge and deceit, old and familiar friends of all who have walked this path (Gen. 3:12–13). He has faith in his plan, and he believes his royal power is sufficient for the task. So, as elsewhere, David sends in order to control and dominate, and also this time to conceal.
When Uriah arrives in Jerusalem, David appears to be greatly concerned about Joab, the army, and the progress of the war. His hypocritical questions in 11:7 are likely intended to give Uriah the impression that David has summoned him from the battlefield in order to get an accurate military report. But the reader knows better! In light of what David has just done, his feigned concern leaves the reader unsettled. How can our hero, the anointed of Yahweh, be so hypocritical? How can he maintain appearances of anxiety about the welfare of his troops after what he has done? Can such hypocrisy be allowed to stand? Will Israel’s king be able to cover up this royal mess, all while appearing to have Joab’s (and Uriah’s) best interests at heart?
David’s pathetic attempts to manipulate and control Uriah bring the king’s hypocrisy to the foreground (11:8–13). His suggestion that Uriah go home and “wash his feet” may be a euphemism for sexual intercourse, which is evidently how Uriah understands these words. At the very least, the expression “wash your feet” connotes a return home from a journey, so that David is inviting Uriah to refresh himself in his own home.38 Obviously, David wants Uriah to spend a night at home with his wife, creating the possibility later that Uriah is the father of Bathsheba’s child. David may also be attempting to trap Uriah in a legal technicality, since soldiers on active duty were required to abstain from sexual activity (Deut. 23:9–11).39 Whatever the cultural and legal implications, David was desperate. All would be well if Uriah would only spend a night relaxing at home with Bathsheba.
David has grossly underestimated Uriah’s character. He refuses to go home despite the king’s persistence and cajoling. He disregards the king’s invitations for two reasons: religious convictions and loyalty to his fellow soldiers (note his reference to “the ark,” “my master Joab,” and “my lord’s men,” 11:11).40 The great irony of our text is that this convert of foreign ancestry is more righteous than the Israelite king. Uriah, “the Hittite” (as he is labeled seven times in our text41), is a man of such character that he shuns any minor infraction of his duty as an Israelite soldier. He adamantly refuses to compromise his commitments to Yahweh’s war against Ammon or to his fellow soldiers. Yet King David, the anointed one of Yahweh, has abused his God-given power and attempts to manipulate a faithful and righteous servant in a desperate scam to save himself. Repetition creates a striking irony: “Uriah drunk is more pious than David sober.”42
(3) The third episode is the shocking account of murder (11:14–25). When David’s attempts to cover his sins with subterfuge and deception fail to work, he does something more sinister. He is not finished sending yet; he has still other powerful means at his disposal. His next step is to write Uriah’s own death warrant and “send” it to Joab by Uriah’s own hand (11:14). As David had sent and taken Bathsheba (11:4), as he had sent and retrieved Uriah from the battlefield (11:6), now he sends and kills Uriah. His powerful royal prerogative has been turned to evil purposes. The nine-month gestation period does not allow David much time to act in order to create the appearance that Bathsheba’s pregnancy resulted from her marriage. He becomes so intent on destroying Uriah in order to save himself that he jeopardizes his army’s actions against Rabbah and trivializes the deaths of Israelite soldiers that he himself has caused.
David had shown the capacity to grieve deeply over the deaths of men who were his adversaries (Saul and Abner in 1:11–27 and 3:31–39 respectively). In this case, Uriah is no adversary but a faithful warrior who has apparently been with David many years. Yet David does not mourn. His flippant response to the news of Uriah’s death (11:25) is shocking illustration of how far David has gone. His drive to cover up his sin leads him to sin again. Each new step of deceit and subterfuge seems easier than the last.
David carries out his deceit without even the remotest hint of remorse or sorrow recorded in the text. His words for Joab (“the sword devours one as well as another”) is roughly equivalent to, “Oh well, such is a soldier’s sad fate,” or “Oh well, we all have to die sometime.”43 It seems justifiable in David’s eyes that this good man should die in order to conceal the king’s sin, which illustrates how hardened David has become about his own guilt. Everything in the text reminds us of the tragic consequences of sin in our lives. Sin, once it has been committed, if suppressed and concealed, will only lead to more sinning and, if left uncontested, will result in hardened, uncaring sinners. The escalation of sinful actions—illustrated also by Genesis 3–11—is known to all of us as ubiquitous and universal in human experience.
(4) The fourth part of our chapter is the (apparent!) conclusion of the story (11:26–27): David takes Bathsheba as his wife, and she bears him a son. After the official time of mourning is over, David “sent and brought her” (lit., 11:27; NIV “had her brought”) to the royal palace. This is the last time in our text David is the subject of sending (the theme word šlḥ). From now on, God or Joab will do the sending (12:1, 25, 27). David has exercised his royal power for the last time; he has succeeded in manipulating everyone around him and has managed to cover his sin with Bathsheba. Thus far, everything seems normal, if not reflecting even a certain royal magnanimity in taking in a combat hero’s widow. From David’s perspective, that is the end of the matter; if the text ended with 11:26–27a, we would agree.
But this is why I called these verses the “apparent” conclusion. In reality, what ends the story in human eyes is really only the beginning of the struggle from God’s perspective. The fact is that 11:27a does not end the matter. Sin has been concealed from human view, but there is much more to reality than only the human view. The little clause that ends the chapter injects a different element, a divine element, that reverberates throughout chapter 12: “But the thing David had done displeased the LORD” (lit., “was evil in the eyes of the LORD”). In David’s eyes, sin has been concealed and the matter is over. But in Yahweh’s eyes, evil must be confronted.44
A number of scholars have proposed a concentric structure for chapters 11 and 12. In such a structure, David’s sending of Joab to besiege Rabbah in 11:1 corresponds with Joab’s sending for David to besiege Rabbah in 12:26–31. These matching paragraphs constitute an outer frame for the whole, as we have seen. Within them are more matching paragraphs forming an inner concentric arrangement as follows:45
A. David sends Joab to besiege Rabbah (11:1)
B. David sleeps with Bathsheba, who becomes pregnant (11:2–5)
C. David has Uriah killed (11:6–17)
D. Joab sends David a message (11:18–27a)
E. The Lord is displeased with David (11:27b)
D′. The Lord sends David a messenger (12:1–14)
C′. The Lord strikes David’s infant son, who dies (12:15–23)
B′. David sleeps with Bathsheba, who becomes pregnant (12:24–25)
A′. Joab sends for David to besiege and capture Rabbah (12:26–31)
Though there are features of this arrangement that seem somewhat forced, I am intrigued by the literary fulcrum of the arrangement at 11:27b. This type of chiastic or concentric literary structure often emphasizes the central core, suggesting in this case that the Lord’s displeasure with David’s actions is the focus of chapters 11–12. As one of the few places in the court history where the inner thoughts of God are stated explicitly, this little phrase is determinative for the rest of chapters 12–20.46
Beginning with the death of Bathsheba’s newborn, David’s life is plagued by manifold problems. The contrast with the historian’s account of David prior to the Bathsheba episode is striking. Though he previously had problems of a different nature (Saul’s attempts to kill him, etc.), David has lived an almost enchanted life. He has always seemed to come out on top. But chapters 12–20 portray a different picture in which David is plagued with problems stemming mostly from his own family. The role of 11:27b is to connect the dots, to draw a line from David’s sin and its consequences to the problems in his family. The ultimate reason is David’s own sin, which he futilely attempts to conceal and which leaves him with unresolved problems.
Nathan the Prophet: You Are the Man! (12:1–12)
Bridging Contexts
THIS UNIT’S LITERARY POWER and classic themes give it a universal appeal, which explains why it has inspired artists and authors for centuries. One of my personal favorites is the way in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used the story of David, Bathsheba, and Uriah as a clue for solving one of his wonderful Sherlock Holmes mysteries.69 However, as Christian readers we recognize this text has more to offer than remarkable literary qualities. With captivating poignancy, the text traces through the actions and responses of one of Israel’s great heroes of the faith three of the most salient components of that faith: sin, repentance, and forgiveness.
Sin and its consequences. This is one of Israel’s classic passages on the nature of sin and its consequences. It powerfully and subtly strips David of his luster and turns the focus on us as readers. It is “more than we want to know about David and more than we can bear to understand about ourselves.”70 The text painfully recounts David’s premeditated and methodical disobedience of three of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,” “You shall not commit adultery,” and “You shall not murder.”71
It may be useful when building a bridge from this text to current readers to associate it with other important Old Testament texts that deal with sin and then to connect these to pertinent New Testament texts. Thus, David’s actions in 11:2–5 illustrate and complement the origin and progression of temptation and sin (from perception and deception to covetousness, transgression, and death) as we learn them from Genesis 3:1–7 and James 1:14–15.72 This alone is enough to give this unit immediate pertinence for today’s readers. It teems with forceful lessons on sin and death; as we all know, our day needs to hear these lessons again and again. It would be tempting to stop here, because this is an easy way to apply this text to our times.
However, it would be a mistake to interpret the passage as a single-dimensional example of what happens when we break the commandments. There are at least two indications in the text that the unit has more in view. (1) This passage plays an important role in the overall structure of 1-2 Samuel. As we have seen, the books are answering questions urgent for that ancient day: What is the acceptable nature of the new Israelite monarchy? Who may serve suitably as Yahweh’s anointed one? The monarchy has been carefully circumscribed by Samuel as a vassalage of Yahweh; that is, the Israelite king is not really king but only a coregent for Yahweh.
Furthermore, Saul is presented as a negative example of who may serve in the new institution. In 2 Samuel, David has been established thus far as a positive example, as God-ordained and God-blessed in his role as king of Israel. This text takes us to the next level by demonstrating that no Israelite king, not even David, is permitted to behave like other ancient Near Eastern kings. If and when Israel’s kings do so behave, they will not be free of guilt and responsibility. A prophet of Yahweh will hold them accountable.
(2) In addition, the unit’s theme word (šlḥ) makes it clear that David has a problem with power. In fact, his abuse of power lies at the root of his sin. He has overstepped his boundaries as the vassal of Yahweh, chosen and anointed to represent Yahweh before Israel and the world. David exercises his royal power by sending and taking, and such abuse of power lies at the foundation of his sin. He sends instead of going in battle, and he abuses instead of serving.
In other words, this text is more than a moral lesson against breaking the Ten Commandments. It is that, but to stop there is to miss its grandest themes. It contributes to the books’ overall concerns by teaching that manipulative abuses of power will destroy us or those around us. Whenever we are seduced by the misappropriation of human power structures, we incur guilt and deserve to die (12:5). Regardless of whether our attitudes come to fruition in external transgressions against the Ten Commandments, as with David, we cannot escape the implications: The way we use power reflects either our faithfulness to God or our treason.
The account of David’s adultery with Bathsheba and his subsequent murder of Uriah confronts us as readers with our own manipulative and abusive ways. We may rigidly obey the Ten Commandments, but if we abuse the people around us, our hypocrisy will eventually be exposed, as Nathan’s parable exposed David’s hypocrisy. The way we impose our will on people around us, the way we “send” in order to “take,” certainly displeases the Lord, just as David’s displeased the Lord (11:27). Our actions are tantamount to despising “the word of the LORD” (12:9). Moreover, the book structure reveals that there are no exceptions. No matter how much power we wield, or how little, we are still responsible for the way we use it.
One further point might be necessary on the Old Testament’s understanding of sin. In certain respects, today’s readers find it easy to bridge the cultural contexts on this issue. Wherever we share similar ethical or legal assumptions with ancient Israel, we transfer the concepts into today’s context without difficulty, as for example happens when the Bible refers to disobedience, rebellion, or crime.
The Old Testament, however, has one important aspect relating to its understanding of sin that is foreign to today’s Western reader, one that may cause problems when interpreting texts like this one when it says that “the LORD has taken away your sin” (12:13). I refer here to the Pentateuch’s priestly understanding of ritual impurity from unatoned guilt as an aerial contaminant, mystically settling down over the community and attaching itself to the tabernacle (and later to the temple), resulting in pollution.73 The book of Leviticus, where this concept is established, does not always express its theology explicitly. But through prescriptions for ritual and sacrifice, it becomes clear that human sin resulted in impurity that polluted the sanctuary (Lev. 15:31; 20:3; cf. Num. 19:13, 20). Such pollution was perceived as a physical substance, an airborne contaminant magnetically attracted to and attached to the realm of the sacred, or in this case, the sanctuary.
This background is only vaguely apparent in our current text, though it has several important implications that affect our interpretation. (1) Personal sin in the Old Testament resulted in corporate guilt. When an individual Israelite sinned, the guilt contributed to the contamination of the sanctuary, for which the entire community was responsible. Because of our extreme individualism in North America, you and I may think we alone bear the guilt and punishment for our own sins. But we are wrong. The Old Testament has a healthy understanding of the suffering caused to the whole community when one of its members sinned.
(2) When left unatoned, sin was cumulative. The need for an annual decontamination of the sanctuary (the Day of Atonement, Lev. 16) illustrates that the guilt of sin accumulated whenever it was not expiated. Wherever it was ignored or suppressed, guilt eventually returned to the sinner (national or individual) later in life to exact punishment. Sin set a series of consequences in motion, and if unchecked it led inevitably to death.
(3) God provided an effective cure for sin. I will discuss this further below when we consider God’s forgiveness of David’s sin, but it is important to note at this point that the Old Testament devotes a great deal of attention to atonement (Ex. 25–31; 35–40; the book of Leviticus; Num. 1–10). Decontamination was possible, thanks to God’s sacrificial system. Many of the Old Testament’s images for the act of decontamination have to do with separating or removing the presence of the accumulated pollutant (Lev. 16:22). Sin may be cumulative and result in corporate guilt—but the good news is, there is a cure.
Repentance. The second component of Israel’s faith illustrated in this text is repentance. David’s words alone, “I have sinned against the LORD,” might be construed to denote mere confession.74 But in the context of the whole unit, David exemplifies the repentance Nathan required. As a result, Yahweh takes away David’s sin and suspends the death penalty (12:13).
Furthermore, David’s immediate and genuine penitence stands in stark contrast with that of Saul, who serves as the stubborn and recalcitrant counterpoint to repentance (1 Sam. 15:24, 30). The historian seems to be inviting us to make these contrasts ourselves. Saul’s confession (1 Sam. 15:24, 30) and David’s (2 Sam. 12:13) appear to be facing each other, stretching across the pages of the books of Samuel to present contrasting lessons on repentance. In David, we have an example of the correct attitude of repentance; in Saul, we have an example of equivocal and self-serving repentance (see comments on 12:13–25, above).
As we have seen many times, historical narratives such as these often illustrate implicitly the truths taught explicitly elsewhere in Scripture. The books of Samuel have been characterized from the beginning by prophetic interests, and primary among these is the definition and nature of repentance. The opening chapters of 1 Samuel condemned the Elide priesthood at Shiloh as perverse (1 Sam. 1–3). In addition, the nation Israel tried to manipulate God for personal gain and was generally plagued with sin and failure (chs. 4–6). At a critical juncture in Israel’s history, the prophet Samuel seized a moment of tragedy and suffering in order to call the nation to repentance. Using terminology characteristic of later prophetic preaching, Samuel called for a “return” (šwb) to Yahweh.75 To restore a right relationship with Yahweh implies at once both a turning away from the sins that have caused the separation and a returning unto God.
This return to God must be “wholehearted,” implying there can be no divided loyalties or opinions when one returns to Yahweh. In the specific case of Israel in 1 Samuel 7, repentance involved a repudiation of their allegiance to Canaanite gods and a renewed commitment to serve Yahweh exclusively. Samuel’s message synopsizes the Old Testament prophetic concern for repentance and stands like a watchtower over the rest of 1-2 Samuel. Though the specific terminology for repentance is not used in 2 Samuel 12, David’s “I have sinned” in response to Nathan’s “You are the man” is a powerful lesson in Samuel’s message of repentance. This text serves as a historical illustration for the sermon Samuel preached so many years before.
Forgiveness. The third prominent feature of Old Testament faith illustrated by our text is forgiveness. As we noted above on 12:14, Nathan’s words of forgiveness raise questions. Why did Yahweh suspend the just penalty for David’s sin? Why did Yahweh choose not to deal with David as prescribed by the Sinai covenant? If David were in charge of the universe, we know what he would have done! His verdict on the rich man in Nathan’s parable makes it clear (12:5): “The man who did this deserves to die!” Yet Nathan is quick to reassure: “You are not going to die.” Why not? We have seen that forgiveness in this text proves David’s repentance was genuine, and so it does. But more importantly, forgiveness in this text proves Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God.76 God loves and forgives because that is his nature.
Two dramatic statements are held closely together in our text (12:13): “I have sinned,” and “The LORD has taken away your sin.” They are separated only by the barest minimum narration (“Nathan replied”). Their very proximity begs us to understand this forgiving nature of God. Yet we, like the prophet Jonah, sometimes cannot quite get over the fact that God forgives, and sometimes we, again like Jonah, do not like it when he does! But this text is a powerful example of God’s forgiving nature. As such it takes its place among many in the Old Testament that emphasize the separation and removal of guilt from the confessing and penitent sinner.
In fact, the Old Testament is awash with metaphors for forgiveness, and this rich assortment often emphasizes the separation or removal of guilt. Sin may be healed like a disease, forgotten like a fleeting thought, stomped underfoot, thrown behind the back or thrown into the depths of the sea, cleansed, washed, wiped away, blotted out, or erased. Sin can be separated as far as east is from the west, borne away, or covered over. Several verbs are associated with forgiving, but the authors of the Old Testament found them inadequate to express fully the joy and celebration associated with forgiveness.77
There are few other obstacles to interpretation of this text because its themes are so powerfully and memorably narrated and, more importantly, because they are so universal. All of us know the truth of David’s failure because we have all lived it to one degree or another. All of us know David’s hypocrisy because we have all been hypocritical. Those of us who have faced our own sin and have cried in the night, “I have sinned,” need to hear afresh the profound truth contained in Nathan’s beautiful words, “The LORD has taken away your sin.”
Finally, we all need to understand again the message of 1-2 Samuel, that the anointed one who is worthy of God’s anointing must be willing to confess and repent of sin quickly in order to maintain the unique relationship he has with God. In this manner, the books of Samuel prepare us in a way we could never have anticipated for David’s greater Son, who needed no confession or repentance but who carried forgiveness in his blood (2 Cor. 5:21; Eph. 1:7; 1 John 3:5).
Contemporary Significance
Contemporary Significance
SATURATION WITH SEX. The contemporary application of this passage is multifaceted. On a basic level, it speaks to the need in our society to address sexual sin and the guilt and alienation caused by its infatuation with sexual pleasure. Over the decades, American culture has fallen prey to the lie that our highest human fulfillment is partially attainable through self-indulgent, unrestrained erotic expression rather than through faithful, enduring, monogamous love.
But this falsehood is as old as human civilization itself, and this text reveals the ancient lie for what it is. David surrenders impulsively to his most basic instincts, which lead him down a path that grows darker with each step. Rather than reaching his highest level of personal fulfillment, David discovers the darkness of his own soul. Likewise, instead of enabling us to reach our highest human fulfillment, reckless and illicit eroticism ensnares us in animalistic self-destruction. It is a hopeless cycle that ends only and always in death (Prov. 7:21–23, 27).
Yet our culture becomes more and more enamored with each passing decade. As the pornography industry grows with each new advance in technology and as the homosexual subculture expands, our culture falls deeper into the clutches of the ancient lie. All the while, the Bible’s emphasis on the surpassing value of a loving and lasting monogamous relationship is pushed farther back into the recesses of our national memory. The message of 2 Samuel 10–12 is as pertinent and necessary today as ever.
Abuse of power. However, the truths revealed in this text far transcend this basic understanding of human sexuality and fulfillment. On a larger scale, the passage addresses the tendency in all of us to abuse power in our interpersonal relationships. Whether considering one’s relationship with God or with mortals, our greedy attempts to control and manipulate lead only to pain and loss. One should always remember to read this unit in the larger literary context of the books of Samuel, which will add depth perception to an already vivid portrayal of lust, deception, betrayal, and murder. Such a holistic reading prevents an application limited to warnings about lust and sexual sin.
The full characterization of King David in the books of Samuel to this point makes his actions here more disturbing. He has towered over the literary landscape, looming ever larger in our sight and growing ever more central to our hopes for godly leadership in Israel. Because we gloried in his rise, we recoil at his fall. And we learn that no matter how close we live to God, no matter how much responsibility we are given in God’s kingdom, no matter how much power we hold, we too can fall. We must learn from David to guard our relationships carefully and to use power in ways that are never tyrannical and despotic.78
So these multifaceted applications make our text important when considering the use and abuse of power, sexual sins in our society, or the nature and consequence of sin in general. As we have seen in the Bridging Contexts section, this text has much to say also about repentance and forgiveness. Today’s audience is undoubtedly in need of the truth about sin, but we should also consider what this text teaches by way of illustration on the nature of repentance and forgiveness as well. In what follows, I offer a few reflections on the application of these themes.
Sin. To begin, I think it fair to say that the topic of sin has all but disappeared from the mainline denominations and even in many of our evangelical contexts. Well I remember a book I was required to read during my college days. Its title summarized the author’s thesis beautifully: Whatever Became of Sin?79 Its author, Karl Menninger, was a renowned psychiatrist who described the malaise of Western society and noted that one misses any mention of “sin.”
It was a word once in everyone’s mind, but now rarely if ever heard. Does that mean that no sin is involved in all our troubles … ? Is no one any longer guilty of anything? Guilty perhaps of a sin that could be repented and repaired or atoned for? Is it only that someone may be stupid or sick or criminal—or asleep? Wrong things are being done, we know…. But is no one responsible, no one answerable for these acts? Anxiety and depression we all acknowledge, and even vague guilt feelings; but has no one committed any sin? Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it?80
Exploring the causes of sin’s disappearance, Menninger concluded that many former sins have become crimes, so that responsibility for dealing with them has passed from church to state, from priest to policeman. Others have dissipated into illness, or at least into symptoms of illness, so that in their case punishment has been replaced with treatment.81 But these are changes of definition and societal mores, and sin, as Menninger argues, has not really gone away no matter how much we humans attempt to suppress it or redefine it. He proposes reviving public discourse on sin and enlisting the physician, the psychiatrist, the lawyer, the teacher—and above all, the clergy—to recognize the reality of sin in an effort to offer a needy world more than the hope of belated treatment, but of prevention.
Though we might bicker today over the details of Menninger’s argument, there is no question that he put his finger on a societal change that is profound and has continued during the last decades of the twentieth century. In fact, the collapse of modernism and the emergence of a more pluralistic society has left us in a situation far more severe than Menninger predicted. The church has not only lost its voice on issues related to sin and its consequences, but the church itself is guilty of raising a new voice in order to justify sin in different garb. Not only has sin taken up residence in our hearts; we have redefined it and given expression to it as a justifiable good!
For example, in 1988, a prominent bishop of a mainline denomination advocated reviving an old concept—betrothal.82 He argued that the church today should confirm those young people who feel led to determine their own standards of morality. Since they believe sex before marriage is acceptable as long as it is confined to a meaningful relationship, the church should support and bless betrothal as a legalized period before marriage when couples can live together. The bishop argued that such a relationship would carry the possibility of life-giving “holiness.” It would help to order and make holy the world of sexual testing that marks the lives of so many single young adults.
Of course for decades mainline denominations have struggled with questions of human sexuality, including the appropriate Christian response to homosexuals who feel called to ministry or who simply want to find acceptance in a local church. These are legitimate questions, which should always be approached in humility and respect. Unfortunately, some Christians would rather beat the questioners over the head with an oversized Bible than actually discuss the questions sanely and reasonably. Just as unfortunately, others in the church would address the questions without ever once raising the issue of biblical authority and the possibility of God’s preventing and life-changing grace. Once “sin” is no longer in the church’s theological vocabulary, there is no longer a need for words such as “forgiveness” or “grace.” Sin really has taken up residence in our hearts and found expression in less offensive ways.
I discovered through an article published in U.S. News & World Report in 1997 the logical extremes to which such reasoning may take us.83 The author spoke of a problem in today’s American universities, which he defined as “absolutophobia,” or an unwillingness to say anything is wrong. The point of the article is that our pop culture has pushed nonjudgmentalism to the limit so that now some students have difficulty condemning large moral horrors, such as human sacrifice, ethnic cleansing, and slavery. We have raised a generation of children so “dogmatically committed to moral relativism” that some of them are reluctant to say anything negative about mass slaughter! They argue that no one has the right to criticize the moral views of another group or culture.
The article told of classes studying human sacrifice in which many of the students had trouble expressing any moral reservations or objections to it. In another example, one professor asserted that in twenty years of teaching, he had never met a student who denied that the Holocaust happened. What he has encountered, however, may be worse. Approximately 10 to 20 percent of his students acknowledge the fact of the Holocaust but cannot bring themselves to say that killing millions of people is wrong! Students may deplore what the Nazis did, but their disapproval is expressed as a matter of taste or personal preference, not moral judgment. The professor quoted one student as saying, “Of course I dislike the Nazis, but who is to say they are morally wrong?”
The application of this passage’s assumptions about sin and its consequences are complicated by such fuzzy thinking in our day. One can no longer simply call a congregation to repentance. It will not do to merely exhort one’s hearers to lay aside all sinful impulses, sexual tendencies, and abuses of power. Instead, the ideological foundation needs to be carefully established and the moral compass explained. People now need to hear not only what sin is but why it is wrong. In this text we might emphasize the point that David understood his actions as sin “against the LORD” (12:13). In other words, David’s relationship with Yahweh provided a moral standard for his actions, a standard external to himself and superior in every respect. Yahweh’s character and self-revelation determined for David what was right and wrong for David’s behavior (see Contemporary Significance section for 1 Sam. 13:23–14:52). Such basic teaching, even remedial theology, is now necessary for the life of the church.
In exposing the falsehood of David’s sin, Nathan used logic and reason to persuade David of his guilt. I have also mentioned at various points the hypocrisy inherent in David’s actions. Hypocrisy is implied in his “killing time” at home while his army was away (11:1), but it becomes explicit in his sanctimonious concern for Uriah (11:7) and his indifference to Uriah’s death (11:25). Irony in biblical literature (as in history) is often used to expose the hypocrite. So here Uriah is ironically more devout and faithful than David (11:9, 11), putting David in a bad light. Further, David unwittingly condemns himself when he condemns the rich man in Nathan’s parable (12:5), providing Nathan with the ironic punch line for his sermon (12:7): “You are the man!” More generally, it is ironic that the king as Israel’s “covenant administrator” has become the covenant breaker.84
I was reminded of the role of irony and hypocrisy recently when I read what one leading historian of American history had to say about the combatants of World War II in the European Theater of Operations: “The world’s greatest democracy fought the world’s greatest racist with a segregated army.”85 He was referring, of course, to the incongruity of the U.S. Army’s struggle against the racist forces of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, all while segregating African American soldiers into isolated units.
He relates one ironic incident from the home front during the war that highlights the hypocrisy of the situation. In April, 1944, Corporal Rupert Timmingham, an African American soldier, was traveling with eight other African American soldiers through the South on their way to a new assignment. Timmingham reported having difficulty finding places to eat or buying a cup of coffee. Finally, the lunchroom manager at a Texas railroad depot said the GIs could go around back to the kitchen for a sandwich and coffee. As they were making their way around to the back of the depot, approximately two dozen German prisoners of war from a nearby prisoner camp, along with two American guards came to the station. Timmingham later wrote in Yank magazine, “They entered the lunchroom, sat at the tables, had their meals served, talked, smoked, in fact had quite a swell time. I stood on the outside looking on, and I could not help but ask myself why are they treated better than we are?”86
The magazine that published Timmingham’s letter received thousands of letters outraged by his treatment, mostly from GIs. The hypocrisy of the army’s segregation policy was further exposed by the efficiency of the African American soldiers during the war. Within a decade of the war’s end, the army had changed from one of the most segregated organizations in the United States to the most successfully integrated.87 Unfortunately, it would take our nation as a whole much longer to see the hypocrisy of it all.
The point of Nathan’s parable (12:1–6) is something akin to Jesus’ warning not to look for a speck in our neighbor’s eye at the same time we miss the log in our own (Matt. 7:3–5). David was quick to see the cruelty and inconsiderate nature of the rich man’s actions but missed the fact that his own cruel and inconsiderate actions came to fruition in adultery and murder. It is certainly appropriate when applying this text to warn our society against the dangers of unrestrained sexual promiscuity. But today’s Christian church also needs to hear this passage’s teaching on the use and abuse of power.
My own experience has taught me that many believers today fall into one of two extreme categories. They are either uncomfortable with authority and hesitant to take the reins of power because they are unsure of how to deal with it, or they are greedy when it comes to power. Believers I have met in the first category tend to shrink from responsibility in the church, while those of the latter category tend to squash those who disagree with them as “enemies” in the church’s political power structure. These believers presumably consider David’s adultery and murder deplorable, but they miss the significance of his abuse of power as a negative object lesson for their own lives. We need to be reminded of the dictum of Immanuel Kant: “Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.”88
Repentance. On the issue of repentance, we have seen how this text illustrates a larger theme in the books of Samuel (cf., e.g., comments on 1 Sam. 7:2–4). It is entirely appropriate to follow the long-standing tradition of reading Psalm 51 as an early Israelite commentary on David’s words, “I have sinned against the LORD”:
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge. (Ps. 51:3–4)
Our society’s loss of any sensibilities about the nature of sin has equally impacted our understanding of biblical repentance. How can we repent adequately if we fail to understand the depths to which sin has affected our lives? A full appreciation of the self-destructive nature of our own actions should lead us emphatically, even drive us relentlessly, to genuine repentance:
Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Surely you desire truth in the inner parts;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. (Ps. 51:5–6)
In the following quote from perhaps the greatest theologian of the early church, Augustine of Hippo (354–430) describes the self-realization that occurs when he was being convicted and convinced of his sin:
But you, Lord … were turning me around so that I could see myself; you took me from behind my own back, which was where I had put myself during the time when I did not want to be observed by myself, and you set me in front of my own face so that I could see how foul a sight I was…. If I tried to look away from myself … you were setting me in front of myself, forcing me to look into my own face, so that I might see myself and hate it. I did know it, but I pretended that I did not. I had been pushing the whole idea away from me and forgetting it.89
Forgiveness. Finally this text teaches that such genuine penitence results in forgiveness. But this may be the hardest part for today’s readers to accept. Indeed, retribution and vengeance seem to rule in our day. The Sunflower, a book written by Simon Wiesenthal, makes the point forcefully.90 By 1944, eighty-nine of his Jewish relatives had been killed by the Nazis. He had witnessed the execution of his grandmother in her home and his mother being forced into a freight car crammed with elderly Jewish women.
One day, while himself a prisoner of the Nazis, he was taken by a nurse into the room where a young soldier lay dying. The young man, whose name was Karl, summarized for Wiesenthal his Catholic upbringing and his childhood faith, which he had abandoned in the Hitler Youth Corps. Karl had volunteered for the SS and became an officer. But now, having been badly wounded on the Russian front, he had summoned a Jew to hear his deathbed confession. “I must tell you of this horrible deed—tell you because you are a Jew.” As the soldier began to describe horrible atrocities against the Jews in the Ukraine, Wiesenthal pulled away three times in order to leave the room. But the soldier grabbed his arm and desperately pleaded for him to stay and hear him out. Karl had participated in the ruthless execution of three hundred Jewish men, women, and children, in the town of Dnyepropetrovsk. The memory haunted him. He complained of suffering from miserable grief and despair, and he longed for forgiveness.
In the last hours of my life you are with me. I do not know who you are, I know only that you are a Jew and that is enough. I know that what I have told you is terrible. In the long nights while I have been waiting for death, time and time again I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him. Only I didn’t know whether there were any Jews left…. I know what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace.91
After a long period of reflection, Wiesenthal eventually decided what to do. Without a word, he turned from the room and walked away.
Decades later, still haunted by his decision that fateful day, Wiesenthal wrote down the story and mailed it to thirty-two of the brightest ethical minds he knew and asked this question: What would you have done in my place? Only six said that Wiesenthal erred in not forgiving the dying SS officer. Several concluded the enormity of Nazi atrocities precluded the possibility of forgiveness. Most of the non-Jewish respondents were reticent to speak to the heirs of the Holocaust about forgiveness at all, and justifiably so. But as Philip Yancey explains in his summary of this ethical dilemma, “Forgiveness may be unfair—it is, by definition—but at least it provides a way to halt the juggernaut of retribution.”92 His main point is that unforgiveness is an unending cycle that creates a monstrous past, awaking in unexpected places and times from hibernation to devour the present. The only thing that breaks the cycle is the blessed word from the cross (Luke 23:34): “Father, forgive them….”
Though human forgiveness is always wise, it is often fickle and at times nearly impossible to grant. The immense burden placed on the shoulders of the young Simon Wiesenthal that day in 1944 was too much for any mere human to bear. Who among us could claim they would have done differently? But that is just the beauty of the biblical message, especially as illustrated by David’s forgiveness in 2 Samuel 12:13: Forgiveness is not based on human sentiment, it is not placed on the shoulders of mortals.
It was unfair of the SS officer to place such a burden on Wiesenthal, who could not bear to represent his race at that terrible moment in history. But note the words of Nathan, “The LORD has taken away your sin.” Our hope is not in the hands of fragile humans, who are incapable of fathoming the depths of our sin and granting us restoration and peace. But David’s forgiveness was authentic because it was granted by Yahweh.
That experience of forgiveness, shared by all who name the name, is graphically captured in the immortal words of John Bunyan:
Now I saw in my dream that the highway which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called Salvation, Isa. 26:1. Up this road therefore did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came to a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulcher. So I saw in my dream that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulcher, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.93