Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 2 Samuel 12:15 - 12:15
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
David's Penitential Grief, and the Birth of Solomon. - 2Sa 12:15. The last-mentioned punishment was inflicted without delay. When Nathan had gone home, the Lord smote the child, so that it became very ill.
2Sa 12:16-17
Then David sought God (in prayer) for the boy, and fasted, and went and lay all night upon the earth. וּבָא, “he came,” not into the sanctuary of the Lord (2Sa 12:20 is proof to the contrary), but into his house, or into his chamber, to pour out his heart before God, and bend beneath His chastising hand, and refused the appeal of his most confidential servants, who tried to raise him up, and strengthen him with food. “The elders of his house,” judging from Gen 24:2, were the oldest and most confidential servants, “the most highly honoured of his servants, and those who had the greatest influence with him” (Clericus).
2Sa 12:18
On the seventh day, when the child died, the servants of David were afraid to tell him of its death; for they said (to one another), “Behold, while the child was still living, we spoke to him, and he did not hearken to our voice; how should we say to him, now the child is dead, that he should do harm?” (i.e., do himself an injury in the depth of his anguish.)
2Sa 12:19-20
David saw at once what had happened from their whispering conversation, and asked whether the child was dead. When they answered in the affirmative, he rose up from the ground, washed and anointed himself, and changed his clothes; that is to say, he laid aside all the signs of penitential grief and mourning, went into the house of the Lord (the holy tent upon Mount Zion) and worshipped, and then returned to his house, and had food set before him.
2Sa 12:21-22
When his servants expressed their astonishment at all this, David replied, “As long as the boy lived, I fasted and wept: for I thought (said), Perhaps (who knows) the Lord may be gracious to me, that the child may remain alive. But now he is dead, why should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.” On this O. v. Gerlach has the following admirable remarks: “In the case of a man whose penitence was so earnest and so deep, the prayer for the preservation of his child must have sprung from some other source than excessive love of any created object. His great desire was to avert the stroke, as a sign of the wrath of God, in the hope that he might be able to discern, in the preservation of the child, a proof of divine favour consequent upon the restoration of his fellowship with God. But when the child was dead, he humbled himself under the mighty hand of God, and rested satisfied with His grace, without giving himself up to fruitless pain.” This state of mind is fully explained in Ps 51, though his servants could not comprehend it. The form יחנּני is the imperfect Kal, יְחָנֵּנִי according to the Chethibh, though the Masoretes have substituted as the Keri וְחַנַּנִי, the perfect with vav consec.
2Sa 12:23-25
2Sa 12:23 is paraphrased very correctly by Clericus: “I shall go to the dead, the dead will not come to me.” - 2Sa 12:24. David then comforted his wife Bathsheba, and lived with her again; and she bare a son, whom he called Solomon, the man of peace (cf. 1Ch 22:9). David gave the child this name, because he regarded his birth as a pledge that he should now become a partaker again of peace with God, and not from any reference to the fact that the war with the Ammonites was over, and peace prevailed when he was born; although in all probability Solomon was not born till after the capture of Rabbah and the termination of the Ammonitish war. His birth is mentioned here simply because of its connection with what immediately precedes. The writer adds (in 2Sa 12:24, 2Sa 12:25), “And Jehovah loved him, and sent by the hand (through the medium) of Nathan the prophet; and he called his son Jedidiah (i.e., beloved of Jehovah), for Jehovah's sake.” The subject to וַיּשְׁלַח (he sent) cannot be David, because this would not yield any appropriate sense, but must be Jehovah, the subject of the clause immediately preceding. “To send by the hand,” i.e., to make a mission by a person (vid., Exo 4:13, etc.), is equivalent to having a commission performed by a person, or entrusting a person with a commission to another. We learn from what follows, in what the commission with which Jehovah entrusted Nathan consisted: “And he (Nathan, not Jehovah) called his (the boy's) name Jedidiah.” And if Nathan is the subject to “called,” there is nothing to astonish in the expression “because of the Lord.” The idea is this: Nathan came to David according to Jehovah's instructions, and gave Solomon the name Jedidiah for Jehovah's sake, i.e., because Jehovah loved him. The giving of such a name was a practical declaration on the part of Jehovah that He loved Solomon, from which David could and was intended to discern that the Lord had blessed his marriage with Bathsheba. Jedidiah, therefore, was not actually adopted as Solomon's name.