The office of prophet at the court of an Israelitish king involved the performance of duties requiring much tact and adaptability. This was particularly the experience of Nathan who served both David and Solomon in that capacity. His was the pleasure of informing David concerning the promises which God made to him. He was historian to both monarchs and he had much to do when diplomatic moves were necessary to secure the throne for Solomon. One of his most difficult tasks was the time when he was called upon to repeat a parable to David. After he had secured a private audience, he told his simple story, which bore every indication of being an account of an actual occurrence.
“There were two men in one city; the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very abundant small cattle and large cattle: but the poor man had totally nothing save one little ewe lamb which he had bought. He nourished it and it grew up together with him and his sons. It used to eat of his own morsel of bread and drink from his own cup. It lay in his bosom and was as a daughter to him. To the rich man there came a visitor and he was chary to take from his own small cattle or his own large cattle to prepare for the wayfarer that was come unto him: but he took the poor man’s ewe lamb and prepared it for the man that was come unto him.”
As the prophet spoke, the king’s anger mounted, and when he ceased, the monarch declared that the pitiless culprit should be killed. Then, recollecting the punishment which the law allowed, he decreed that the theft should be restored fourfold. David was ill prepared for Nathan’s fearless response:
“Thou art the Man!”
The prophet continued speaking, and as he spoke the story of the recent past was conjured up in the mind of the king. He remembered the day when in the cool of the evening he walked upon his palace roof. He saw again the picture of the fair woman, whose beauty had so moved him. How quickly he had discovered that her name was Bathsheba and had made her acquaintance! How quickly, too, he had done irreparable wrong to Uriah, the soldier, her husband, absent with the army in the field! Later he had sent for Uriah from the front, on pretence of learning tidings of the war, and had offered him false hospitality. Uriah’s actions must have shown that he suspected what had happened, and David had been tempted to follow evil with worse evil. The temptation had overthrown him, and he had sunk to the lowest depths. How well, too, his commander-in-chief had furthered his efforts to take what was not his! When called upon to place Uriah in a position in the battle which would cause him to fall, Joab had deliberately arranged that David should be able to criticise the battle tactics which resulted in Uriah’s death. “Why did you allow the detachment to approach so near the wall? You might have known that the defenders would hurl missiles against them.” “Was not Abimelech, son of Gideon, smitten by a woman with a millstone, because he took undue risks before the tower of Thebez ?”
Such was the ready-made censure provided by Joab, but David had forgotten all about blame when the dispatch carriers announced that Uriah was dead. Let the siege go on now, a few casualties did not matter. Hardly had the days of Bathsheba’s mourning expired before she became the king’s wife. These were the thoughts passing through David’s mind as Nathan spoke on.
“Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul. And I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah: and if that had been too little I would moreover have given thee such and such things. Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil in his sight? Thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house: because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife . . .” (2nd Samuel 12:7-10).
The skillful approach of the prophet had forced the king to condemn himself. The last remnants of self defence were stripped off, and David saw the stark enormity of his crime. The effect was dire. He was overwhelmed with contrition. For the full expression of his penitence we must go to the book of Psalms: “I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight.” “Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, 0 God, thou God of my salvation . . .” (Psalms 51:3, 4, 14).
The sentence of God was not as hard as that of David in the case suggested by the parable. In his haste, the latter had decreed the death of the sinner; but to him God said through Nathan: “The Lord hath put away thy sin: thou shalt not die. Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also that is born to thee shall surely die.” David escaped with his life, but the days of glory and sunshine were over. His remaining days were darkened by the evils brought about by his children. Amnon did despite to Tamar; Absalom slew Amnon; Absalom was banished for three years and on his return rebelled against his father. David was compelled to flee from his capital city, and even though he saved his throne his sorrow was multiplied by the killing of Absalom, much loved, though of little worth. When we contrast the ruddy shepherd boy, who feared Goliath no more than he feared the lion or the bear, or the warlike king who for the first time made Jerusalem wholly Jewish with the broken man who came with sorrow to the grave, we understand how hard is the way of the transgressor. Most pathetic of all, and commanding our sympathy for his courage is the picture of the king when the effort to save his infant son was futile, standing up to life again and putting away the irredeemable past with the words, “Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.”
The parable is of the type which takes its story apparently from real life, and bears some likeness in this respect to the parables of Jesus. Its terms are carefully chosen to bring home the nature of his sin to David. The use of the terms “small cattle” and “large cattle” shows that the rich man had not even the excuse that all his sheep were too big to kill for a single guest. So David had many wives, having, by the law of succession, inherited Saul’s harem, and needed not to rob Uriah. Again, the description of the ewe lamb is made to indicate the poverty of the home. It lived with the poor man and his sons and was as a daughter to him. The fact that no wife is mentioned, and that the lamb was as a daughter, suggests that there was no woman in the house. It ate and drank at his table and may possibly have been purchased, as was sometimes done in the ancient east, for supplying milk for the family. Beside it he had “totally nothing.” So David, in taking Bathsheba from Uriah, had taken all that the unfortunate man had. Clearly Uriah and Bathsheba had no children and may not have been long married.
The parable has its lessons for us. First, as to the interpretation of parables. Too often in the attempt to understand the parables of Jesus, endeavor has been made to find a spiritual application for every detail. Parables are but shadows, showing merely the general outline of the reality, and Nathan’s parable is a notable example of this truth. It only partly represents the facts. There is no hint of adultery or murder in the story, and the narrative is content to represent everything by the selfish taking of the ewe lamb. On the other hand, it is not possible to find any counterpart in the historical record to the traveler who called on the rich man. These facts suggest that it would be useful to bear this parable in mind when interpreting others. Metaphors must not be pressed too far. Further, the parable deals only with selfishness of David and does not refer to the wrong done by and to Bathsheba, probably because of the inferior position of women in those times.
Secondly, the parable emphasizes the sinfulness of sin whether it be great or small. The figurative account illustrates the covetousness of avarice; while the historical facts illustrate the covetousness of lust. Both are from the same root, and it is the same law of God which is broken in each case. Evil on a small scale is nonetheless evil. Finally, there is the lesson of David’s punishment. Although the sword of Uriah’s destruction was the children of Ammon, the real murderer was David. For that blood-guiltiness, his own life was forfeit, but his sincere and broken-hearted penitence, coupled with his lifelong devotion to God, saved him from that penalty. Nevertheless, God is not mocked, and although the king’s sin had been forgiven, the train of events set in motion by him had to run its course in which others had to suffer.
For an impenitent man the prospect would have been dark indeed, “a fearful looking for of judgment.” But David was neither impenitent nor unforgiven. Hence, to him, the chastisement of the Lord was the token of divine mercy and of the cleansing of his pollution. Thus, as the shadows or his life lengthened, and his days declined apace to death in troublous times, he could bear his sorrows with patience and fortitude, in hope of tasting the full power of God’s forgiveness in the day when he should partake of eternal joy and gladness. David, by his sin, gave great occasion to the enemies of the Lord, both ancient and modern, to blaspheme, but his repentance and brave acceptance of his punishment gave much greater occasion to a much greater number of the friends of the Lord to be comforted by the assurance of forgiveness for their own trespasses.
“The thing that David did displeased the Lord.” Similar words might be written of some of the actions of all of us. May it be ours at times when this is true to receive, like him, of the mercy and, if need be, the chastisement of God, that we may be renewed thereby.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One