“Judah the father of Peres and Zerah by Tamar . . . Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David.” So far we have come; God has used the stubborn faith, independent wits, and deep hearts of these three remarkable women to bring Israel its greatest king, God’s chosen ruler, a man after his own heart, to whom God has promised the throne of his people for his descendants forever. Jewish nationalists might find each of these women questionable ancestors, but each by her actions has proven herself a hero of the faith, worthy to belong in such a great lineage.
But now! Now, we come to a very different sort of story, where the woman is not hero, but victim; now, we come to pure scandal. This great king has lived a life of blessing; he has faced severe opposition, but has always triumphed unscathed. Apparently, however, power and security have gone to his head, for here—not long into his reign—all that will change; here we read of a sin, or a complex of sins, that wreaks such terrible consequences on David and Israel that Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman compares it to the fall of Adam and Eve. Here we see the blessing and purity of David and his reign forever broken, forever marred; from now on, the golden king’s life of blessing is ended, and he will live a life under curse. From here through the end of the book, and even on into the books of the Kings, we have an almost-unbroken litany of family disasters; God preserves the nation, but David’s heart is crushed.
And how did it all begin? With the king neglecting his duty. “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle”—David stayed home. In those days, the king was first and foremost the war leader of the nation, and so it has always been with David as with other monarchs; but this year, when the roads dry out enough to be passable, when the weather clears enough to be bearable, David stays home. One afternoon, he takes a nap, and sleeps late; waking up bored, restless, with a burr in his soul reminding him that he belongs at the front, not in his own palace, he decides to go cool off on his roof—houses in that part of the world were built with flat roofs for just that purpose.
His is a high roof, and his palace is near the peak of Mount Zion, on which Jerusalem sits, so he has a commanding view of the city; and looking down, he sees a beautiful naked woman. Don’t blame her for this—she’s behind the walls of the courtyard of her house, where no one should be able to see; it’s David who’s in the wrong place. As it turns out, she has just completed her period and is finishing the purification required by the Law, but David doesn’t care a whit about that; what he cares about is that she’s beautiful, she’s naked, and he wants her. Now. (Shades of his ancestor Judah.)
Now, David’s a married man—in fact, he has at least three wives that I can think of; at this point, he should have gone and taken a cold shower, but instead he sends a messenger to ask who this woman is; he’s told, “This is Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” That she’s identified by her husband is normal; the fact that he’s a Hittite, a foreigner, means that he’s one of the mercenary soldiers who made up the backbone of David’s army, while the fact that his name is Uriah, which means “Yahweh is my light,” tells us that he was a worshiper of the God of Israel. What’s more, 2 Samuel 23 tells us that he was one of the Thirty, the elite squad of David’s army—equivalent to the US Special Forces, or Britain’s SAS. This was an important man in the army of Israel.
Given that, why is his wife also identified—first!—as the daughter of Eliam? We can’t be sure, but it seems likely that the reference here is to Eliam the son of Ahithophel; this Eliam was another member of the Thirty (which is probably why his daughter married Uriah), and his father Ahithophel was David’s most trusted councillor. In short, what David hears is that Bathsheba is closely connected to some of his most valuable servants and most important supporters, which means he really ought to leave her alone.
But he’s in the grip of lust, and he takes no thought for that; he sends messengers to bring her to the palace, and he has sex with her. We’re not told what she thinks about this, because the narrator is focused on David, and from David’s point of view, what she thinks doesn’t matter; he’s the king, and whatever she thinks, she’s going to do what he wants her to. So David gets what he wants—and in a little while, the bill comes due: Bathsheba sends him the message, “I’m pregnant.”
David probably panics at first, but then he settles down and conceives a plan: bring Uriah home, he’ll sleep with his wife, and they can pass the baby off as hers. Unfortunately, Uriah isn’t going to indulge himself when the Ark of the Covenant, the holy throne of God, and the whole army are living in tents on the battlefield, so he insists on sleeping in the palace guardroom with the rest of David’s servants. He shows himself a man of great integrity, more loyal to David and Israel than David is—and certainly more loyal than David deserves, just at the moment—and the core of this tragedy is that his integrity costs him his life. David sends a message to his general, Joab, to have Uriah killed—and in the crowning touch, he sends it by Uriah’s own hand.
Well, Joab obeys, but he doesn’t like it—especially since, to keep everyone from realizing what’s really going on, he has to put a whole squad of troops at risk; from a military point of view, he has to throw away the lives of a number of his best men (including Uriah) just to cover up for the king. It’s clear from Joab’s comments that he’s putting the blame for this squarely on David’s shoulders, and it seems likely that he’s figured out that there’s a woman involved in this; which means he probably has a pretty shrewd idea exactly what woman, and how, and why. He’s a loyal servant to the king, but his fury at what he’s been forced to do, and for such a sordid reason, is clear.
But David doesn’t care, handing the messenger a platitude and a proverb for his trouble. Uriah’s dead, Bathsheba will be available once she finishes her mourning for her husband—seven days was the usual period—and he’s foolish enough to think no one’s the wiser. And indeed, when Bathsheba hears the news, she mourns her husband, and then David sends for her again and marries her, and she gives birth to their son. All is well.
Except for one small problem: “The thing that David had done displeased the LORD.” David has forgotten what Onan forgot, what Judah forgot, what Cain forgot—you can’t slip anything past God—and God is not happy. After all, of the ten commandments, David has just broken three: first, he saw his neighbor’s wife and wanted her—that’s coveting, the tenth commandment; then he had sex with her—that’s adultery, the seventh commandment; and then he had her husband killed—that’s murder, the sixth commandment. What’s more, he had Uriah killed in order to cover up the adultery, so the murder was in service of a lie, which is also a sin. That’s a lot of evil packed into a very short time; and while it would be bad enough if one of us did all that, David was the king, God’s anointed ruler, and as such, he was held to a much higher standard. His conduct was reprehensible—he has “utterly scorned the Lord”—and God will not let it pass.
So, God sends the prophet Nathan to confront David with his sin. That story is told in chapter 12, which I encourage you to read; for now, I just want to point out the steep price David pays. The new baby will die, and David’s family will be cursed. His children will be at war with each other and with him; at the peak of the troubles, his son Absalom will launch a coup, drive him from his home and his city, and signify this by having sex with David’s concubines in full view of the people of Jerusalem. That act, incidentally, will be suggested to Absalom by Ahithophel, Bathsheba’s grandfather, who had been David’s closest and most valued counselor; it’s not hard to imagine why, given the opportunity, he will choose to side with Absalom against David.
Out of all this disaster, there is only one solitary grace note: after the death of David and Bathsheba’s first child, we’re told that “David consoled his wife Bathsheba, and went to her, and lay with her; and she bore a son, named Solomon.” The judgment on David stands—all his repentance cannot undo that—but God forgives; to David and Bathsheba is born the son whom God has chosen to carry on the royal line, to be king in Israel after David. Through Solomon, the son of Bathsheba, the line will continue which will ultimately bring Jesus the Messiah.
In one way, this seems inappropriate. David took Bathsheba from her husband by force; why should this sordid story lead to the birth of David’s successor? After all, David had other wives; just to name one, there’s Abigail, whose story is told in 1 Samuel 25. Abigail was clearly the equal of Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth, worthy to stand in their company; why didn’t God choose one of her sons? Why choose a son of the wife of Uriah, who would be a constant reminder of David’s great sin? It’s not something we would predict, yet it’s what God does; and from that, we have much to learn about him.
Out of evil and scandal, God brings good; from the black, black roots of sin, he grows a white flower of grace. His plan is to redeem the world, and there is no one and no part of it he cannot redeem; even such evil acts as these do not defeat him, and even so great a sinner as David may be restored. Even in the face of such darkness, God accomplishes his purposes and carries on his plan; and in this, we may see the shadow of the cross, where the greatest crime the world has ever seen would be the moment of the greatest glory and victory it has ever seen, the moment of its redemption. God is the God who brings white flowers from black roots. Or perhaps we might say, red flowers, red as blood: the red Rose of Sharon, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, descended from David and Bathsheba, whose coming we await.
Jesus declared, “I have not come to save the righteous, but sinners”—and he said that with tongue planted firmly in cheek, because even the most righteous are still sinners; the real division wasn’t between those who sin and those who don’t, but between those who admit it and those who won’t. That’s why the apostle Paul said, “It is a true statement and worthy of acceptance that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” The foremost leader of the church in all its history called himself the foremost of sinners. Can any of us claim to be better than Paul?
This is critically important for us, because if only those who never do something really wrong are qualified to be used by God, then let’s not beat around the bush—we’re hosed. If there is to be any hope for us, it must be that Jesus meant what he said, and Paul was right; and if there is to be any hope for the church, it must be that a bunch of us sinners all working and living and growing together, guilty of sins we admit and sins we refuse to admit and sins we don’t even recognize as sins, can still somehow be used by God in his plan for the salvation of the world—not because we do such a great job, but despite the fact that we really don’t.
That can be a hard thing to believe, and so we often don’t; instead, we either drift into insecurity and fear and negativity, feeling that we have to be good enough and can’t manage it, or we adjust our standards for our lives so that we can feel that we’re good enough, and God just can’t really be as unreasonable as all that. But if we look to the Bible, we don’t find any support for that point of view; rather, what we find is stories like this one of David and Bathsheba—stories that tell us that even the greatest and most godly people out there have done evil and disastrous things, and though God has disciplined them and allowed them to face the consequences of their sin, yet he has continued to love them anyway, and continued to work through them anyway to accomplish his purposes. White flowers from black roots; sinners saved by grace, through whom God works—warts and all—to save others. This is God’s method of operation; this is the gospel in action. And it’s implicit even in the birth of Jesus; just as his family line and heritage reflects the will of God to bring all the nations into his people, so in the story of David and Bathsheba it shows us his redemptive grace.