I am talking about King David. What made him so accomplished as a sinner was how he did so as an abuse of his power as king, as God’s own anointed king, to replace the "bad" king who came before him.
What do I mean by that? Well, his army was off to war (and he was not leading in the field, unusual for that way of doing things). That left him with the ongoing distraction of waiting for news from ‘the front’ while he was in Jerusalem. While there were always things to keep a king busy, waiting for news of the unknown has a way of dampening the desire and efficacy of doing the activities of daily living, even for a king.
Now, Jerusalem is built on top of a ridgeline, so the language in the Bible of going ‘up’ to Jerusalem is both metaphorically and geologically true. David’s palace (this is before the temple) was the high point in the City, so he too was up (setting aside any discussions of God’s representative as king and matters of kingly ego). But it meant he could look down on the City.
In one of these times where I imagine him walking away from the boring duties of king, going out to look to the gates to see if there was word from ‘the front’, he looked down over the City instead and committed adultery in his heart. He saw Bathsheba bathing on what she thought was the privacy of her own rooftop.
Now begins the abuse of his power. He has her brought to the palace, despite finding out she is a married woman because “it is good to be the king”. What choice does she truly have to resist his advances? The result is that she gets pregnant. So we have a problem. Her husband is away at the front. But David is king, so he has power to create a coverup.
He sends for her husband, Uriah the Hittite. The plan is simple, make him drunk, send him home, get him into bed with his wife, and he is now the father. If he doesn’t remember? Well, he was drunk, but home on leave. What else could have happened? David is the king and can move his soldiers around as he sees fit. Except there is problem. Uriah is on duty. While the army is in the field, he will not return home. He will stay ‘on call’, and out of his marital bed, at the palace.
This stalemates David for a little while, but he is the king. Conspiracy is the fun that makes ruling worthwhile. He sends Uriah back to the front with his own death warrant. The warrant tells Joab, David’s commanding General, to put Uriah in the front of the fighting and then fall back, leave him exposed to the enemy.
Now it should be said that in the books of Chronicles, Uriah the Hittite is mentioned as one of David’s elite, a general in the king’s army. Unlike David, who hung back in Jerusalem, he led from the front. So it’s easy to carry out David’s plan. Uriah was pushed to the front in an assault on the walls of the city they were besieging, the rest of the troops fell back, and Uriah was left in the open to be cut down by archers on the wall.
To bring this sordid story to a close, Joab sent word back confirming the conspiracy. It was what is probably a normal combat report, with Uriah’s name being highlighted from the casualty list. David, in fact, sends word of support back to Joab on the loss of one of his fighting generals. David then brings Bathsheba into the palace in what has to be an obscenely short of amount of time into her grieving process so they can carry of the charade that she was not already pregnant.
But he is the king, so who is really going to take him to task? Well, except for God. The consequence for David in all of this is that the baby dies. In an effort to appease God, David goes into mourning. He will not eat, he will not do anything but grieve before the Lord. It is so bad, his servants are afraid to tell him that the baby died, probably fearing he would harm himself. But David did not get to be king without being able to read people. He senses something is up and asks. When he finds out the baby died, he took some food and reentered life.
His grief was not so much self-destructive as it was desperate in his desire to change God’s mind.
What if these are the circumstances that shape the writing of Psalm 42? This coming Sunday, we look to the Psalm from the heart of grief. In this moment in David’s life, there are a few things that have come together. The first, I hope, is the realization just how far he has gone from God’s expectations of him to act in love and grace and for the people of God with whom David has been put in charge. Thou shalt not murder; Uriah. Thou shalt not steal; Uriah’s wife. Thou shalt not commit adultery; Bathsheba. Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s wife…
Secondly, conspiracy depends upon secrecy. That is what makes it so tantalizing for the rest of us. But Joab knows (or will figure it out when he gets back), but David probably assumed he could control the narrative and his commanding General. But now Nathan, God’s prophet, knows. Will the whole kingdom find out? This is the kind of conspiracy that might be expected to bring a figure of great power down. If not, it will make him a laughing stock. History has shown us men’s egos are fragile, especially those in power. I do not just mean characters like Stalin or Hitler. Look at John Adams, our Second President. Look at the McCarthy hearings.
Finally, consider the personal consequences. It is not so much that David lost a son. He did, but, in my modern sensibilities, it is rather disgusting to read about how many other sons he had by how many other women (but he married them or made them concubines so that’s okay). In fact, Nathan points out in downright insulting language (which I will not repeat here, but you are welcome to look to the book of 2 Samuel to see what he said) concerning women about how Uriah had only the one wife compared to all David’s wives. The treatment of women in the time of David was an all-inclusive horror.
I wonder if something else is going on here besides personal consequences. Now, in light of the coronation of King Charles III, we have been reminded that the ‘normal’ practice of royal succession is the eldest son. This has been highlighted by the slow movement into the modern era of doing away with the gender specificity of the line of succession. That is a modern thing-being the oldest (gender not mattering, that is ultra-modern in our world's sensibilities). Being the eldest might have carried weight in the time of David, but it was not the deciding factor on who would be king.
It is Solomon who becomes king. even though Solomon is very far down in line of the king’s sons. He is second-born of Bathsheba. What if one of David’s ways of playing favorites among his wives is promising that his ‘favorite’ wife will have her son on the throne? That he was desperate for the child to live so that Bathsheba would still like him. And yes, if things were that petty in the royal household, it is still something that God can work with in the unfolding of God's plan.
Maybe David is just as human as the rest of us as he pens the words of Psalm 42. Maybe he can be just as petty as we can. I would say he can be just as sinful as the rest of us, but as the king, he had the power to take his sinning up a few notches (and he did). But he is still enough of God’s child to come to our Father in heaven with some of the most intense words of personal grief that we will find in the bible.
May the prayers from his brokenness give us the permission to come to the Lord in our own brokenness.
Peace,
Pastor Peter
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