David and Bathsheba: sin, the prophet's word and repentance

Second Samuel 11-12 is the turning point of the books of Samuel. Up to chapter 10, David rises: he is made king, takes Jerusalem, receives the promise of an everlasting dynasty (chapter 7) and defeats his enemies. From chapter 11, the story turns, and the rest of 2 Samuel recounts the troubles of his house. Scholars since Leonhard Rost have often called chapters 9-20 together with 1 Kings 1-2 the Succession Narrative, since they ask who will sit on David's throne. The books are anonymous. Jewish tradition names Samuel, Gad and Nathan (Bava Batra 14b), and many modern scholars place them within the Deuteronomistic History, which was put in final form around the exile. David's reign was roughly 1010 to 970 BC.

The occasion is the war with the Ammonites, which began in chapter 10. Joab and the army are besieging Rabbah, the Ammonite capital, east of the Jordan, some forty miles from Jerusalem. The narrator states that it was the time of year when kings go out to war, and then says that David remained in Jerusalem. The first sentence already sets the failure: a king who should be at the front stays at home. The Chronicler, in his parallel account, mentions the siege of Rabbah (1 Chronicles 20:1) and says nothing of David's sin, which shows that the author of Samuel chose to tell it plainly.

The first readers knew David as their model king and as the ancestor of the Messiah. The story was written for them to read without softening it. Whatever the date of its composition, it served as a witness that Israel's kings were under the word of the LORD and that the prophets could speak against the throne.

Second Samuel 11-12 is Hebrew narrative at its most restrained. The narrator tells the events in short, quick clauses and reports almost nothing of David's or Bathsheba's feelings. The reader must watch the verbs. David 'sends' repeatedly: he sends to inquire about the woman, sends for her, sends to Joab, and sends the letter. He 'takes' her. The king's power moves through messengers while the army fights. The narrator's one comment on the whole matter is the last sentence of chapter 11: what David had done was evil in the sight of the LORD.

Three principles help.

• First, the story is not about whether the king had the legal right. Kings in the ancient Near East had wide powers, and the surprise of the chapter is that God holds David to the same law as anyone else. David breaks the commandments against coveting, adultery and murder (Exodus 20:13-14, 17), and Nathan's parable shows that the king stands under judgment.
• Second, the text does not tell us whether Bathsheba could refuse. It says David sent messengers and took her. Given the difference in power between a king and a soldier's wife, many scholars read this as an abuse of royal power, and the passage should not be read as blaming her.
• Third, notice the parable form. A parable (mashal) lets Nathan get past the king's defenses. David judges the case as a king, and so condemns himself. The parable is a trap in the best sense: it brings out the truth.

Chapter 11:1–5

While Joab fights at Rabbah, David rises from his bed in the evening, walks on the palace roof and sees a woman bathing. He inquires and is told that she is Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah the Hittite. Eliam may be the Eliam listed among David's warriors in 2 Samuel 23:34, and Uriah is also listed there (23:39), so both are linked to David's inner circle. David sends messengers, takes her and lies with her. She had been purifying herself from her uncleanness, a note that tells the reader the child is David's. She returns home. Then comes the message: she has conceived.

Chapter 11:6–13

David tries to cover the sin. He summons Uriah from the front, asks about the war and tells him to go home and wash his feet. Uriah sleeps at the palace door. He tells David that the ark, Israel and Judah dwell in booths, Joab and the servants camp in the open field, and he cannot go home to eat, drink and lie with his wife. By swearing to this he rebukes the king, and he does it by being faithful. David makes him drunk, and still Uriah does not go home.

Chapter 11:14–25

David then writes a letter to Joab and sends it by Uriah's own hand. It orders Joab to put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest and then withdraw from him so that he is struck down. Joab carries out the plan, though it costs other men's lives. Joab then sends a report, and the messenger is to tell David that Uriah the Hittite is dead too. David's answer is a proverb: do not let this displease you, for the sword devours now one and now another. The king covers a murder with a saying about war.

Chapter 11:26–27

Bathsheba mourns her husband, and when the mourning is over David sends and brings her to his house, and she becomes his wife and bears a son. The final sentence interrupts: the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.

Chapter 12:1–6

The LORD sends Nathan. The prophet tells a story of two men in one city, one rich with many flocks and herds, the other poor with only one little ewe lamb that he had bought and raised. It ate from his food, drank from his cup and lay in his arms, and was like a daughter to him. A traveler comes to the rich man, who spares his own flock and takes the poor man's lamb to feed the guest. David's anger burns. He swears by the LORD that the man deserves to die and must restore the lamb fourfold, which is the penalty of Exodus 22:1 for stealing a sheep, because he had no pity.

Verses 12:7-15a. 'You are that man!' The charge is that the LORD anointed David king, delivered him from Saul, gave him his master's house and wives, and gave him the house of Israel and Judah, and would have given more. Why then has he despised the word of the LORD by doing evil in his sight? He has struck down Uriah with the sword of the Ammonites and taken his wife. The sentence follows in kind. The sword will never depart from his house, and the LORD will raise up evil against him from within his own house. What David did in secret, his wives will suffer in the sight of all Israel. The reader will see this in Absalom's rebellion (16:22). David's reply is only two words in Hebrew: I have sinned against the LORD. Nathan answers at once that the LORD has put away his sin and he will not die. Yet because by this deed David has given the enemies of the LORD occasion to scorn him, the child born to him will die.

Verses 12:15b-23. The child falls ill. David fasts and lies on the ground for seven days, and his servants are afraid to tell him when the child dies. When he learns of the death, he rises, washes, anoints himself, goes into the house of the LORD and worships. He then eats. When his servants ask, he says that while the child lived he fasted in the hope that the LORD might be gracious, but now he cannot bring him back. He says he will go to the child, but the child will not return to him.

Chapter 12:24–31

David comforts Bathsheba, and she bears a son, Solomon. The LORD loved him, and through Nathan he was named Jedidiah, 'beloved of the LORD.' The chapter closes with Joab taking the royal city of Rabbah and sending for David to complete the conquest, so the credit would be David's.

The chapters teach that sin is first of all against God. David has wronged Uriah, Bathsheba and the nation, and yet his confession is 'I have sinned against the LORD.' Psalm 51, which the heading connects to this event, says the same: against you, you only, have I sinned (Psalm 51:4). Paul quotes that verse in Romans 3:4 to show that God is justified when he speaks. The point is that human wrongs are also wrongs before God, who is the judge of the powerful.

The chapters also teach the shape of repentance and forgiveness. David's confession is short, and the forgiveness is declared in one sentence by the prophet. But forgiveness does not erase every consequence. The sword in David's house, the death of the child, and the later troubles of Amnon, Absalom and Adonijah all follow. Scripture thus keeps two things together: the LORD removes the guilt, and he lets the sin's effects run their course. Psalm 32, which Paul cites in Romans 4:6-8, speaks of the blessedness of the person whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is covered, and many link it to this experience. Both the psalm and the narrative say that forgiveness is God's gift.

The chapters finally teach that the promise of 2 Samuel 7 does not depend on the king's goodness. God had said that he would discipline David's sons when they do wrong and not remove his loving devotion. The line goes on through the child of this union, Solomon, whom the LORD loved. The promise holds, but not by merit.

Two connections stand out, one of fulfillment and one of contrast. The first is explicit in Matthew 1:6, where the genealogy of Jesus names David as the father of Solomon by 'the wife of Uriah.' Matthew could have written the name Bathsheba and chose not to. The scandal is kept inside the line that leads to Christ. The Messiah is not born from a spotless record, but from a line in which God's grace persists in spite of sin, a point that fits the other women in Matthew's list, Tamar, Rahab and Ruth.

The second connection is a type by contrast. David, the shepherd king, here takes what is not his and sends a faithful man to die to protect himself. Jesus, the Son of David, takes no one's lamb and gives himself. Nathan's parable turns on a lamb taken from its owner. The New Testament calls Jesus the Lamb of God (John 1:29) and says he lays down his life of his own accord (John 10:11, 15, 18). This is an echo, held with care, since the New Testament does not draw the comparison with Nathan's parable.

Paul uses David's experience in Romans 4:6-8. He quotes David's words in Psalm 32 on the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works, and he does not hide that David was a sinner. The point there is that forgiveness comes by grace. The sin of David shows that Israel needs a king whose righteousness is not borrowed, and the New Testament points to Jesus as that king.