For some reason, that particular evening, David found it difficult to sleep. It was probably still light; the RSV says it was “late one afternoon”. Therefore, more likely, he may have been merely resting upon his bed at that time, when he decided to arise from it to walk upon his rooftop. The narrative of 2 Samuel 11:2 suggests that David was preoccupied with his thoughts; perhaps he was concerned about the way his campaign against the Ammonites was going, or perhaps there was some other pressing matter of state we are not told about in the record. Since it was “the time when kings go forth to battle”, that is, spring, we understand that he should have been at war with his army. But this moment of idleness spent at home proved to be his undoing.
As he looked out of the ‘battlements’ (see Deut 22:8) his eyes fell upon a beautiful woman bathing herself. David lusted after her and began to covet her in his heart; her beauty beguiled him. He was so attracted by her that he enquired after her, and learnt that her name was Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.
The fact that Bathsheba was already married should have been enough to deter David from pursuing the matter further. In fact it did not, as we read in verse 4: “And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness: and she returned unto her house”. The RSV in this verse gives the comment in brackets: “Now she was purifying herself from her uncleanness”. According to Leviticus 15:18, Bathsheba, after lying with David, had to cleanse herself again, staying until the evening, before she was “purified of her uncleanness”. The AV margin of 2 Samuel 11:4 has the alternative rendering, “And when she had purified herself of her uncleanness she returned. . . “, which adds weight to the idea that the particular purifying referred to in this verse was that which was after she had been with David, and not her previous washing which David had originally observed. So it would have been the following day before she returned to her home.
This verse ( v. 4) raises a few questions. Why did Bathsheba not refuse to go with the messengers? Perhaps, with David being the king, she could not refuse his request. It may have been that she did not suspect the designs that the king had upon her. Did she go willingly to the king? Apparently she did; although nothing is actually written to substantiate it, the tone of the record in 2 Samuel 11:4 implies that she went to meet David quite willingly.
After meeting him, even then she could have refused his advances. Apparently she herself became equally as taken with David as he was with her. Verse 4 again implies that she consented to what followed; the pair of them were thus guilty of adultery. In the face of Bathsheba’s beauty David allowed himself to be ensnared, unlike Joseph in Egypt, who ran away when placed in similar circumstances by Potiphar’s wife (Gen. 39:7,8,12). During the incident with Bathsheba, David was weakened by the temptation she presented towards him, and was overcome, resulting in grave consequences in the future for his peace of mind.
Bathsheba, although keen enough to obey the precepts of the Law of Moses—washing herself for her purification—fell down just as badly as David. For her the ultimate disaster happened; she conceived in her womb another man’s child. There was no way out; how would she explain it to her husband? If he found out would he not have her stoned (Lev. 20:10)? Yet David, the father, was king of Israel. Death was the penalty for him too. She would tell him of her predicament: “I am with child” ( v. 5). Certainly it would have been a great shock for David. Now he would have to think of something to get them both out of this very serious trouble that they were in.
David’s scheming
From then on, from the fateful day when Bathsheba had told him she was pregnant, David seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the quagmire of sin he had created for himself. Whatever he tried for a solution appeared not to work. His first thought was to recall Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, from the battle front (2 Sam. 11:6). He did it on the pretext of enquiring into how Joab and his men were faring in the battle. His intention was to get Uriah to be with his wife, whom he had obviously not seen for some time, so that he would lie with her, which would hopefully disguise the paternity of Bathsheba’s child.
David said to Uriah: “Go down to thy house, and wash thy feet” ( v. 8). Uriah left the king’s presence, and a meal was sent to him by the king. Uriah, by now, may have wondered why the king was being exceptionally benevolent towards him, why he had so suddenly become the centre of attention.
The following morning David was told that Uriah did not go down to his house. This worried David so much that he went and sought out Uriah to ask him why he had not gone home the previous night, having recently arrived from his journey from the front. Uriah’s reply showed that, despite being a Hittite, his loyalty lay with Joab and the men of Israel with whom he served:
“And Uriah said unto David, The ark, and Israel, and Judah, abide in tents; and my lord Joab, and the servants of my Lord, are encamped in the open fields; shall I then go into mine house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? as thou livest, and as thy soul liveth, I will not do this thing” (v. 11).
David thought to have another attempt at getting Uriah to see Bathsheba. This time he resorted to making him drunk. Even this failed; Uriah did not go home this time either, but “went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord– ( v. 13). By now David was becoming even more desperate. Nothing had so far gone according to plan; he could not see any other way of getting Uriah and Bathsheba together as long as Joab and his men were fighting in the field. The only thing left was for David to send Uriah back to Joab. This time David’s final plot was to ensure the murder of Uriah. His scheming had reached its lowest depth. Uriah was therefore sent back to the battle carrying a letter from David to Joab which was effectively his own death warrant. The letter requested that Joab would place Uriah at the site of the fiercest battle: “Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die” (v. 15). Joab had no qualms or second thoughts about doing David’s bidding. He himself was a somewhat ruthless character. Very soon Uriah was dead.
At this point we might well think, How could David, the man after God’s own heart, descend to such depths of sin, to fail God so miserably? To us it shows how easily even the best of us can be deceived once temptation has borne fruit: “But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (Jas. 1:14,15).
David failed to remember God when he saw Bathsheba. He forgot God’s precepts, and used his God-given position as king of Israel to gratify his own selfish desires. Circumstances were against him, causing his sin to be compounded into something far worse at the end than it was at the beginning. All this was because he failed to admit his guilt to God and to himself. He had become spiritually blinded by the sin and sought to cover it up, or even to forget about it completely.
Repentance
All the time that David failed to acknowledge his guilt before God he was in danger of going further down the pathway of the wicked, whose end is as described by the psalmist: “Surely Thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction” (Ps. 73:18).
Examination of 2 Samuel 11:27 reveals that after David had taken Bathsheba for his wife he must have maintained his failure to repent for a period of at least nine months, because we read: “And when the mourning was past, David sent and fetched her to his house, and she became his wife, and bare him a son”. The son was born presumably after the normal nine-month period of gestation. All the while the child was in Bathsheba’s womb David did not think to confess his sins of adultery and murder to God.
So it was that David’s life was heading for destruction and rejection by God, as had happened to King Saul before him (1 Sam. 15:11,26). We read at the end of 2 Samuel 11:27: “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord”. It was thus necessary for God to warn him, which He did by sending the prophet Nathan to him with a parable to tell.
Until that time David had not confessed his sin nor sought forgiveness. Perhaps he had been too preoccupied with Bathsheba to even think about it. Nathan was sent to give him the opportunity to see his faults (2 Sam. 12:1-4). The parable was about two men, one rich and one poor. The rich man had everything he needed, having “exceeding many flocks and herds” (v. 2), which indicated his great wealth, whereas the poor man had merely a single ewe lamb, a female lamb that he had brought up and nourished. It lived with him as if it were his daughter, drinking of his cup and sharing his meals. The punch line of Nathan’s parable comes in verse 4: “And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock, and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him”.
David reacted with anger at the rich man, as he exclaimed: “As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die” ( v. 5). The AV margin gives David as saying the man “is worthy to die” or “is a son of death”. His judgement for the crime committed by the rich man in the parable was that the man should restore the lamb four times over ( v. 6), which was in accordance with the Law (Ex. 22:1).
However, ironically, and unbeknown to himself, David had pronounced his own condemnation in his initial outburst after hearing the parable. It was he who deserved to die for his adultery. Nathan said to him: “Thou art the man”. It must have troubled David greatly to hear Nathan say this, and then to hear him speak the words of the Lord in judgement against him.
If he had diligently kept the Lord’s commandments he would have heaped blessing upon blessing, giving him “such and such things” (v. 8). Now, because he had killed Uriah with the sword of the Ammonites, effectively murdering him, the sword was never going to depart from David’s house. God was going to “raise up evil” against him out of his own house (2 Sam. 12:1012).
Although it was after hearing Nathan’s words, David acknowledged and confessed his sin before God (v. 13). Despite the fact that God had forgiven him—” The Lord also hath put away thy sin”—the consequences of his iniquity were to stay with him for the rest of his life.
God further told him through Nathan: “Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die” (v. 14). We read in verse 15 that the child became very sick; this may well have occurred on the very day of the prophet Nathan’s visit. The child was sick seven days, after which it died (vv. 16-18). The point made here is that the child, having died on the seventh day, missed being circumcised upon the eighth, and was therefore excluded from the commonwealth of Israel.
A contrite heart
We can see how David felt about this terrible incident in his life by reading Psalm 51. This psalm is David’s request for God to cleanse him from his sin. He desired God to blot out his transgressions; he wanted a complete fresh start —something that we know today, as children of the New Covenant, that only baptism into Christ can really give. His remorse at having committed such wickedness was genuine, as the words of the psalm show. He desired in verse 2 to be washed throughly’, to be purged with hyssop, a herb used in the rite of purification when the red heifer (Num. 19) was offered to God. It was also used in the cleansing of lepers (Lev. 14:4). David felt that he was as unclean as any leper; his sin was upon him as an evil skin disease. He was constantly reminded of it: “my sin is ever before me” (v. 3). The psalm expresses David’s wish to be freed from the cloying, defiling taint of his sin.
In the psalm he acknowledges his sin and confesses his transgressions to God ( vv. 2-4). David desired God: “Hide Thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities” (v. 9). He wanted God to deliver him from “bloodguiltiness” ( v. 14). He requested God not to take away His Holy Spirit from him, as He had done to Saul whom He had rejected (1 Sam. 16:14).
David had truly repented from his wickedness, having a contrite and broken heart (Ps. 51:17). In reality he loved God, despite his terrible lapse. In the knowledge of his forgiveness, God had accepted his sacrifice of “a broken and a contrite heart”. David now wanted to rededicate his life to the service of his God; he wanted to teach transgressors God’s ways (v. 13). Psalm 51 pointed forward to the time when there would be no need for animal sacrifices in the tabernacle or in the temple to obtain forgiveness of sins. The psalm can perhaps be considered to form a bridge between the Mosaic and the New Covenants.
In his repentance David expressed the joy that he had for the salvation of God (Ps. 51:12,13). He knew that it was “not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins” (Heb. 10:4). These animal sacrifices were only a figure of something far greater which was to come. David knew that true forgiveness comes from God. He only in His mercy could blot out all his transgressions. He only could wipe the slate clean. At this time David probably had in mind the promise that God had previously made to him (2 Sam. 7:12-16) that there would be a seed, “one from his own bowels”, who would come as Messiah—the King who would be salvation from sin and death for many.
Blessed are the forgiven
If Psalm 51 was written in the period after Nathan’s visit, and the time when Bathsheba’s child fell sick (2 Sam. 12:15), then Psalm 32 was a sequel to it, written perhaps some time after the child’s death.
No doubt this psalm was written as David reflected upon the effect of the hand of God upon his life (v. 4). For David, the period he spent crying to God for the life of his child (2 Sam. 12:16,17) was a period of great suffering. It was as if the Lord’s hand was heavy upon him day and night (Ps. 32:4). It was probably with strong crying and tears that David regretted his sin. After his child’s death David recovered his standing with God. Knowing that his sins were forgiven, he was able to say: “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile” (vv. 1,2).
Christ is now our redemption from sin. He is our salvation. Christ’s sacrifice, and his shed blood, have opened the way to God for us. We have forgiveness of sin because of our faith in God the Father and in Jesus the Christ: “And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jno. 2:1,2); “for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood” (Rom. 3:23-25); “but if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 Jno. 1:7).
Another child
In the years that followed the death of their firstborn, God demonstrated His forgiveness for David and Bathsheba by giving them another child, Solomon, who became the rightful successor to David’s throne. For us today, who believe, the account of the sin of David and Bathsheba and their subsequent forgiveness is encouragement to us that God does forgive us our sins. It is a lesson for us in the forgiveness of God.
David knew that true salvation was to come by his promised seed, his “greater Son” who was yet along way off in time (2 Sam. 7:19). Through his mediation would forgiveness of sins be obtained (Heb. 7:25). Bathsheba’s sin was also forgiven, so much so that she, like David, is mentioned in the genealogy of Christ (Mt. 1:6). She became part of the godly line of the faithful who were privileged to have the Messiah as their descendant.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One