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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 295. David's Sin
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David's Sin
2. Many of those who surrounded David's throne might have viewed the double crime as an unfortunate incident of the harem, a private slip of little account in a career otherwise unsullied and glorious. To Nathan, the prophet and friend of David, it was much more. To him it was a black sin, revealing more of the real David than a hundred victories, and tarnishing all the glory of his former achievements. While David was hugging the assurance that his dark deeds were unknown, or that in any case no one would dare to charge him with them, Nathan was ushered into his presence. He had a tale of injustice to bring to the king's notice-a tale of a poor man's lamb, which his rich neighbour had seized by violence. It was a case requiring restitution and justice from a king who bore not the sword in vain. Nobly did the king respond to the call: he solemnly swore that the mean aggressor should die, and restore the lamb fourfold. David was quite unprepared for the conscience-thrust that followed: “Thou art the man.” As Nathan put before him the enormity of his sin, his black ingratitude to God, and his base murder of Uriah, and declared that he had pronounced his own judgment, David quailed. He sincerely confessed his sin. Nathan thereupon announced to him that, while his sin was forgiven, the punishment could not be wholly averted; he must still reap as he had sown. For the sin a man commits will plague him and others long after it has been confessed and pardoned; the natural consequences remain unaltered, and other punishments may be needed to clear away the moral stain.
Dr. John Brown, author of Rab and His Friends, gives a vivid picture of his father's preaching on David's sin and its consequences:
I am in Rose Street on the monthly lecture, the church crammed, passages and pulpit stairs. Exact to a minute, James Chalmers-the old soldier and beadle, slim, meek-appears, and all the people in that long pew rise up, and he, followed by his minister, erect and engrossed, walks in along the seat, and they struggle up to the pulpit. We all know what he is to speak of; he looks troubled even to distress;-it is the matter of Uriah the Hittite. He gives out the opening verses of the 51st Psalm, and offering up a short and abrupt prayer, which every one takes to himself, announces his miserable and dreadful subject, fencing it, as it were, in a low, penetrating voice daring any one of us to think an evil thought; there was little need at that time of the warning-he infused his own intense, pure spirit into us all. He then told the story without note or comment, only personating each actor in the tragedy with extraordinary effect, above all, the manly, loyal, simple-hearted soldier. I can recall the shudder of that multitude as of one man when he read, “And it came to pass in the morning, that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. And he wrote in the letter, saying, Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten and die.” And then, after a long and utter silence, his exclaiming, “Is this the man according to God's own heart? Yes, it is; we must believe that both are true.” Then came Nathan. “There were two men in one city; the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb”-and all that exquisite, that Divine fable-ending, like a thunderclap, with, “Thou art the man!” Then came the retribution, so awfully exact and thorough-the misery of the child's death; the brief tragedy of the brother and sister, more terrible than anything in Æschylus, in Dante, or in Ford; then the rebellion of Absalom, with its hideous dishonour, and his death, and the king covering his face, and crying in a loud voice, “O my son Absalom! O Absalom! my son! my son!”-and David's psalm, “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions,”-then closing with, “Yes; ‘when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Do not err,' do not stray, do not transgress (μὴ πλανὰσθε), ‘my beloved brethren,' it is first ‘earthly, then sensual, then devilish';” he shut the book, and sent us all away terrified, shaken, and humbled, like himself.1 [Note: Dr. John Brown, Horœ Subsecivœ, ii. 94.]
3. The story shows us David at his worst; lower, it seems to us, he could not fall. But he bent before the prophet's rod; humbled himself with a broken contrite heart; took his punishment submissively. Slow and sad was his recovery; penal suffering dogged his steps henceforth; the wheels of his life dragged heavily; but the regeneration, the ascent, the exodus, was sure and faithful; the battered corrupted life regained, as it closed, the proud title of its maturity; he lives ever in the sacred page as “the man after God's own heart.”
“This is the man after God's own heart!” people sneer. Yes! Not because saints have a peculiar morality, and atone for adultery and murder by making or singing psalms, but because, having fallen into foul sin, he learned to abhor it, and with many tears, with unconquerable resolution, with deepened trust in God, set his face once more to press toward the mark. That is a lesson worth learning.2 [Note: A. Maclaren.]
“We must think of David henceforth as a weak man slowly regaining moral health and purity: battling painfully with the evil of his heart and private life; and learning by the calamities that fell upon him, blow after blow, to throw himself more unreservedly upon God, and to arrogate less power to the might of his own arm. Whether David wrote the 51st Psalm or not, the sentiments there expressed have their roots in such an experience as his, and indicate the cries of a true heart, under the Divine discipline: “Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.… The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”3 [Note: J. D. Fleming, Israel's Golden Age, 103.]
4. Sin may be forgiven, as David's was, and yet a long train of sad consequences ensue. The law of cause and effect will follow on, with its linked chain of disaster; though God's mercy to His erring and repentant children will be shown, in converting the results of their sin into the fires of their purification; in setting alleviation of the tenderest sort against their afflictions; and in finally staying the further outworking of evil. All these facts stand out upon the pages which tell the story of God's chastisements, alleviations, and deliverances.
David's immediate penance was terribly severe. With his warm fatherly heart, he loved Bathsheba's son with deep affection. The child, however, sickened to death. David at once recognized in the event the beginning of his punishment. He refused all food, lay on the ground all night, and prayed to God for mercy. When his nearest relatives came and tried to comfort him, he would not be moved. For six days this went on, and on the seventh day the child died. His servants were now afraid to tell him of his death, dreading a yet wilder outburst of grief. But he soon read the truth in their altered behaviour, and bade them tell him whether the child was dead or not. They answered that he was. Then, to their astonishment, David at once arose, removed all traces of his mourning instead of redoubling them, and, after worshipping God, took food again. When they questioned him as to this strange procedure, he explained that his prayers and mourning were intended to move God to spare the life of the child, but now it was beyond recall, and he must submit. He would go to his child in the other world, some day; his son would never come back to him.